tuxidomasx

This reminded me of a steganography blog post I wrote back when I was doing computer security.

It should be possible to binarily concatenate compressed (RAR'd or ZIP'd) text data directly to a JPG.

Then you can save it as an image on the client, or uncompress it in the client browser and read the data.

The differences are 1) the saved image won't look like random pixels-- it'll look like whatever base image you choose and 2) you don't have to worry about writing the encoding/decoding data as bitmap stuff.

Southern Virginia here. Stinkbugs are EVERYWHERE right now (and have been for the past few years around the end of the summer and into fall).

As I read the headline for this post I saw one slowly meandering up my wall. I also began to think about the possibility of this being done intentionally...

You see, the brown marmorated stinkbugs we have are native to asia. They have no natural predators except for a tiny small wasp that parasticies their eggs (also native to asia).

When I was researching them, I thought "What if China intentionally introduced them to the USA as some sort of ecological attack?" That would be some next-level warfare. Or just a really mean prank.

And then this impending laternfly invasion re-piqued my interest in this theory. It turns out that a similar type of parasitic wasp is the natural predator for laternflys too...

Could this really be a coincidence? Could it be a response to the new tariffs? What if they offer to sell us some bio-engineered wasps (a la Monsanto ) to help control our infestations? But the wasps die after a generation, so we have to constantly buy then...

Of course it could still all be coincidence, but it's fun to think about.

Well, that escalated (and got resolved) quickly.

Personally, the 'free tiers' offered by the big PAAS and cloud providers are good enough for small projects and MVPs-- can't beat free. If and when extra resources are needed, it's usually easier to just start paying at that point rather than to switch platforms entirely.

Free tiers are are extremely effective (albeit crafty) in a "the-first-one-is-on-the-house" kinda way.

I often hear or read about how there is a developer/software engineer shortage. And the rising salaries seem to reflect that-- supply and demand and all that...

Yet it seems that there are hundreds of applicants vying for each position.

How is this possible? Are there really that many lesser-skilled people trying to finagle their way in as software developers? Is the shortage one of _skilled_ engineers, while the deluge of applicants is a result of posers and imposters trying to get a slice of the pie?

I made it 3/4 of the way through the video, then clicked around the website in frustration looking for the download button.

The fact that China's government moves so decisively in areas of technological advancement may have to do with the fact that many of their government officials have degrees in engineering, science, math, etc.

With so many of the Chinese officials having technical degrees, I can't help but wonder if the United States government could benefit from technocrats in Washington.

Bonus points for landing government contracts if you can fit into one of the underrepresented/minority/disadvantaged group or small business categories.

There's basically a quota that some percentage of contracts must be awarded to those groups.

Amazon Web Services free tier, elastic beanstalk running node.js, S3 for static files and stuff or basic web page hosting

or

Google Cloud free tier, Google App Engine running node.js, google cloud storage for static files and stuff or basic web page hosting

both are git-compatible and deployments are as easy as : "eb deploy" or "gcloud app deploy"

for front end stuff, if its just a prototype i just copy a bootstrap 'live preview' design that i like, and jquery stuff together.

"Although some of these problems may not result in symptoms under less visually demanding conditions, the high demands of computer work cause them to become manifest. "

THIS. After about 7 years of staring at a screen all day at work, then coming home and staring at a screen all night (gaming, programing, etc), plus marijuana = dry squinty eyes-- the cumulative effect was that my eyes began to always focus slowly and unevenly, especially on things far away.

I got glasses and they helped, but it felt like more of a bandaid than a solution.

I have since reduced my close-up computer screen usage dramatically. I also do the occasional eye exercises (youtube has a lot of these and they really help).

I stopped wearing glasses and spend more time outside and away from the screen so my eyes actually have more things to do than look at bright pixels 3 feet away.

If I could give any advice to my younger self it would be to minimize long stretches of staring at the screen. Take plenty of breaks to give your eyes a break.

The altcoin crowd insists that people with a lot of bitcoins can and do "diversify" their cryptocurrency holdings by exchanging them for altcoins, thus making bitcoin somewhat of a "reserve" cryptocurrency.

This would also give those mining altcoins a nice market to convert their coins to btc and subsequently cash out.

I guess the question is, if bitcoin drops, will everything drop? Or will spreading your stake around the altcoin minefiled be enough to protect against huge losses?

No. My dad still calls them "bitcorns." He heard about them on NPR.

It's anecdotal, but cryptocurrencies practically don't exist in my non tech-related social circles.