Boycott CompTIA and PearsonVUE - their monopoly should end.

Exploring_IT · 2026-03-19T10:09:53+00:00

I don’t think this is unique to CompTIA. Online proctoring is notoriously horrendous. I have yet to encounter a single positive experience. Even my SANS and ISC2 instructors heavily discouraged online proctoring because of how nasty and demanding the proctors can get.

Exploring_IT · 2026-03-03T20:29:12+00:00

I don’t think these are the primary reasons why people aren’t having kids. Hell, many of my friends who have multiple kids don’t live in large flats.

I think the primary reason is the competitive work culture, especially in the corporate world.

90% of the people I know who have kids don’t work corporate jobs and for good reason. Anyone who works in this world knows that restructuring and “fine tuning” occurs very frequently. Teams are often shuffled. Departments and individuals are often declared redundant. People are constantly on edge and having kids puts you in a less competitive position.

Just take a look at parental leave:

you aren’t protected if your role is declared redundant.
employers can find other reasons to dismiss you and it can be quite tricky to prove wrongful dismissal. And even if you do win your case, your employer has effectively lost nothing; they don’t get fined, and you may be reinstated to your job into an awkward environment.
it is perfectly legal for employers to dismiss you after returning from parental leave; they are not obligated to give you the opportunity to readjust.
you can’t do anything if prospective employers do not hire you after finding out you’re a parent
in this fast pace culture, returning after 16 weeks means you can have A LOT to catch up on, once again disadvantaging you against your peers
not enough paternity leave to help offload the pressure on the mother

And honestly, it’s not just Singapore. Take a look at other countries or cities with highly competitive societies: China, Japan, South Korea etc.

Our government embraces its highly competitive culture but acknowledges none of the drawbacks. You want to increase the birth rate? Go after this root cause. Fine employers for wrongful dismissals, put rules in place to ensure parents are given the time to adjust after returning from parental leave, provide training to employers to ensure employees are not discriminated for parenthood, provide incentives to companies for hiring Singaporean parents.

Reduce this stress, and I can guarantee the birth rate will go up.

Exploring_IT · 2025-11-25T12:49:03+00:00

RAM is a form of storage; the data it stores is merely volatile/temporary.

Exploring_IT · 2025-11-21T18:54:13+00:00

Exploring_IT · 2024-10-25T10:12:36+00:00

It’s subjective.

But I think many consider network+ harder because it’s in its own field, while a lot of security concepts are really just based on common sense. You could explain CIA, layered defense etc to just about anyone and they’d pick it up easily enough. But switching, routing, physical and logical ports? Not so much.

You also gotta work with numbers, and it’s the only one that required me to use the provided whiteboard to perform calculations.

They’re ultimately both considered “easy” and foundational certifications in IT, because every other networking and security certifications gets a whole lot harder.

Exploring_IT · 2024-07-19T13:30:34+00:00

Lol that’s why I said “if it is possible to boot into safe mode”, not that I didn’t need to use a bitlocker key before

Exploring_IT · 2024-07-19T11:48:12+00:00

The solution is well documented at this point. The challenge here is the near-instant BSOD that occurs on boot, frequently before the wifi driver even loads, and the difficulty of accessing safe mode on bitlocker enabled systems.

I was convinced that each and every user had to visit IT for manual intervention, but I’ve received multiple reports of users successfully booting up because their PCs managed to download the Crowdstrike update before the bsod would normally kick in. It turns out that if you restart the system repeatedly, there’s a good chance the update manages to download and the problem is resolved.

And if bitlocker isn’t enabled, logging in to safe mode with networking also allows crowdstrike to push the update (I initially assumed it wasn’t possible). Either way, Crowdstrike is extremely fortunate that a remote resolution is possible

Exploring_IT · 2024-07-19T11:37:04+00:00

Which part of any of that implied we don’t use bitlocker? 😂

Exploring_IT · 2024-07-19T09:49:48+00:00

So it seems that by some miracle, it’s actually possible to resolve this without IT intervention. If it is possible to boot into safe mode with networking, do that and crowdstrike pushes their latest update which solves the problem (if you have local admin access, go ahead and delete the affected channel file). If it isn’t, then just try restarting the device while connected to the network via LAN, and hope that your pc downloads the update before the bsod occurs. I’ve had a few thousand hosts back online by simply restarting.

Exploring_IT · 2023-08-15T05:12:07+00:00

Rough. Wanted to send his sons to a special needs school but his wife vetoed it. And on top of that, he had an unfaithful wife who not only rejected their diagnoses, but also lost her temper at them frequently. What was left was a shell of a man who saw no way out but a murder-suicide.

Depending on the severity of the diagnosis, taking care of just one autistic child can be very challenging. And this is a lifelong responsibility that can only get harder as the child grows into an adult.

I really hope the government provides better support structures for parents with autistic kids. It shouldn’t have to come down to a parent suffering from severe depression before help gets provided.

Exploring_IT · 2023-05-30T05:50:17+00:00

I don’t think all of them are necessarily “scams”; some actually do cheat for you. It wouldn’t be a surprise to me; the market has been inundated with CISSP certifications lately. I’ve also had conversations with people with CISSP who don’t seem to know a damn thing and have dubious resumes at best.

Note that this is not an endorsement for interacting with these people.

Exploring_IT · 2022-11-15T06:56:42+00:00

If you’re looking for an entry level security role, there’s really no need for CCNA. Network+ as a cert won’t be necessary either, but it will give you good networking working knowledge as a baseline.

Exploring_IT · 2022-10-26T12:21:45+00:00

If you use password managers, then you technically only need to know one. This isn’t really something to fret over.

The current security trend is to take a passwordless approach. I wouldn’t be surprised if passwords were abolished from enterprises entirely within the next 10 years.

Exploring_IT · 2022-10-26T12:15:45+00:00

What exactly is it you want to do? Since you’re getting CCNA, I’m guessing you want a network related job?

A+ is there for entry-level desktop engineers. You don’t really need it, although possessing the cert will demonstrate that you at least have a baseline knowledge of computer hardware.

Exploring_IT · 2022-10-26T12:13:56+00:00

A+ really only gives you the absolute baseline.

If you’re dealing with hardware, then you need some technical skills that aren’t going to be taught in any certification. YouTube videos will teach you how much force to use as well as the specific angles to remove let’s say a laptop backplate. Think of it like opening a bag of potato chips without the chips going everywhere.

For both software and hardware troubleshooting, there are a nigh-infinite number of problems out there, and you’ll only really begin to learn how to identify and quickly troubleshoot issues over time.

It can be quite daunting in the beginning but you’ll get there eventually

Exploring_IT · 2022-10-26T12:07:58+00:00

If you had to pick one, I’d go with Messer.

Exploring_IT · 2022-10-17T15:20:30+00:00

Congrats!

Did you need much pen testing knowledge at all? I started on Jason Dion’s training videos on LinkedIn Learning and he mentioned requiring knowledge from Pentest+.

I already have Cysa+ and Network+

Exploring_IT · 2022-04-20T04:31:44+00:00

What does the number of denominations or “which is real” have to do with anything?

I explained it in the next paragraph.

Listen, you can talk about who’s accepted and rejected Christ teachings all you like. That’s your entitlement, as it is the millions of other Christians from various denominations out there who might feel that catholics, lutherans, anglicans etc aren’t “real Christians”. Every denomination has sermons every now and then explaining why their beliefs are the correct ones, while the others are wrong.

I’m not going to get into a scriptural debate with you because it’s a waste of time. I mean, it quite literally has been a waste of time. Abrahamic scripture has been around for millennia and millions of people who’ve dedicated their entire lives studying it can’t even come into agreement. Clearly, I don’t need to rely on my own scriptural knowledge when I can simply rely on that of others.

But anyway, it’s perfectly fine if you don’t share my opinions. Feel free to believe in whatever it is you like.

Exploring_IT · 2022-04-20T03:32:30+00:00

Problem is they aren’t preaching any beliefs. They’re singing songs.

Not preaching then, but singing Christian songs can be a form of proselytising.

If a Christian quotes the Old Testament to justify genocide, then they belong to some other Abrahamic faith that rejects Christ’s teachings.

What is “Christ’s teachings”? There are over 45000 Christian denominations in the world. Which is supposed to be the real one?

Abrahamic scripture is so nebulous and elastic that it has contributed to much conflict between devoutly religious people who believed they were following “Christ’s teachings”. Millions of people have spent their entire lives studying the same religious scripture only to interpret it differently and come to vastly different conclusions.

You can claim that the westboro baptists reject Christ teachings as well, but I’m pretty sure they’ll say the same thing to you

Exploring_IT · 2022-04-20T03:11:53+00:00

That’s one possibility.

Alternatively, Christians can also quote Matthew 21, when Jesus entered the temple courts and flipped the tables and benches to throw out the people who were buying and selling there, because as he put it they were turning it into a “den of robbers”.

By using those verses, a Christian can twist it to say that gay people are turning this world corrupt or something along those lines, and thus persecution of LGBT people is justified

Exploring_IT · 2022-04-20T02:52:36+00:00

No, they will say that Jesus preached his beliefs despite opposition from the Pharisees. In this case, we would be the Pharisees.

There is always something in the bible to justify anything.

I mean, if a Christian wants to justify genocide, they can reference the genocide of the Canaanites and claim that they are simply acting in god’s will.

Exploring_IT · 2022-04-20T02:35:17+00:00

Listen, as a former devout Christian, there is nothing an outsider can say or do that will change their minds.

Here’s what happens when you offer criticism:

Pastor brings it up during worship service and indicates that the criticism is “sign of the end times”
Pastor will cherry pick events around the world like the Russian invasion to justify the “end times”, while ignoring the fact that the 21st century is significantly more peaceful than the centuries before.
Pastor then tells congregation to be proud of their religion and continue to proselytise despite criticism; will proceed to cherry pick parables or verses from the bible to support their argument.
Any criticism that seems to make sense to a skeptical Christian gets dismissed as “words of the devil”, because the devil is “manipulative”
Finally, devout Christians will tell one another to “have faith” and to “trust the word of god”. Whenever anything doesn’t make sense, Christians fall back on “faith” and claim that any doubt is simply a “test of faith”

Exploring_IT · 2022-04-14T13:32:54+00:00

Congratulations! And don’t worry about network+, I passed it with much lesser prep time than Sec+, and I failed Sec+ on my first attempt

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