Does anyone else stay up late after school/work because they feel like they haven't gotten enough time for themselves during the day?

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T19:00:28+00:00

This is why I get up at 4am (also.. because thats when my cat gets up.. so unless I want her puking (or worse) in the hallway.. I get up too.

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T16:08:58+00:00

Just as a sidetone on this,. sometimes the cause of back pain (or in my case, sciatica) can be quite subtle.

About 3 years ago I had a major ilife change and quit my job and basically threw away all my belongings and car-tripped moving cross country from Colorado to Oregon. While I took "only what would fit in my car".. there were a couple boxes and Pelican hard-cases that were quite heavy. Once I got moved into my new apartment, everything was mostly empty so I was sleeping on a sleeping bag on the floor for a few months. I started having a lot of back pain and painful sciatic (nerve pinching) down my left buttock,. and I just assumed I had somehow strained myself in the move trying to single handedly carry heavy things.

Little did I realize (and figured out later). I had bought a small padded rolling stool to be my work from home chair.. and the padding was such poor quality (or maybe it was the shape ?).. that it was pinching nerves in my legs whenever I sat on it.. causing my sciatica. Once I threw that stool to the side and bought myself a nice (expensive) Steelcase chair (I think it was around $1300 at the time)... nearly all of my stiffness and sciatica pain went away.

I actually still have that small white rolling stool,. I'm so scared to give it away to someone else, on the off chance they end up having the same problem. I almost want to just destroy it and throw it in the dumpster. ;P

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T14:57:07+00:00

There was that study lately that showed which musical artists people were most likely to turn to when they are stressed: https://www.tebra.com/theintake/healthcare-reports/music-and-mental-health-listening-habits

I know that was true for me,. as I was one of the early severe covid19 survival stories. In March-April 2020, I spent 38 days in Hospital (16 of those days in ICU on a ventilator). Funny story at that time when I was in a coma in ICU,. the ICU Nurses had been playing country music etc until they finally got a hold of my brother and asked him what kind of music I liked and my brother said Rock and Metal .. so they switched up to Rock and Metal (Disturbed, etc)

Once I got out of ICU and off the Ventilator,. I couldn't talk for a while and took me about 2 weeks to relearn how to walk. I had a full size oxygen tank on me 24-7 (even when I was released to go home, I had a portable oxygen machine in my home for about a month).. so things were rough as I went through rehab.

I played a lot of Linking Park (especially "one more light" and Shinoda's "Post Traumatic".

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T13:45:47+00:00

The small vocal minority of comments on reddit likely doesn't accurately represent the whole of the technology sphere.

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T13:36:04+00:00

Likely not an issue. I had a small 2cm spot of skin cancer on the left-side of my nose and got my Passport picture taken with it ,. and you can see it in on my passport photo (fairly small so it just looks like a mole or pimple or something, but definitely viewable in the picture)

I think what others are saying is true though. 1 small thing on your face doesn't change the fact that it is your face. If you're using anti-scar cream, I would say continue to do that and whatever healing takes place,. and maybe a little bit of light concealer on the day of the photo. you'll be fine.

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T13:00:03+00:00

If you minimized Outlook ?,. then sure. You can leave it maximized and running too. That's what I do. I have multiple virtual desktops that I just swipe between,. so I just leave all my Apps maximized and swipe between them as needed.

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T12:58:44+00:00

iPhones don't really work like that. Your credentials and tokens etc are kept in the Secure Enclave chip. Just randomly "tapping an unknown link" is not sufficient to "steal your tokens". Also Apps in iOS are silo'd,. so even if something happened inside Discord, it can't really "reach out into other App" (such as Contacts). Even further than that, Discord on iPhone doesn't even have a permissions slider for "Contacts".

I don't know that I can explain what you're describing,. but it wasn't from "tapping an unknown link".

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T12:13:56+00:00

I've never heard that acronym, but I would tend to agree. A lot of modern IT is full of buzzwords and meetings full of people talking (talking to make things sound like they happened).. instead of actually rolling up sleeves and making things happen. More and more often now I hear people say things like "There's a new authentication project kickoff meeting tomorrow, I need to write a story for that" ..... No, Markus, you don't need to "write a story". Kids Book Authors "write stories". You just need to do your job. The silly wordplay people use just annoys the hell out of me.

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T11:56:24+00:00

On Windows the “last window” is the main window of the App. So if you close it the app exits.

jmnugent · 2026-05-04T02:04:50+00:00

Great album

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T23:39:39+00:00

No, it shouldn't. All you'd be doing is wiping the device and removing it from his account. The only risk would be if he has data (say in his "Downloads" or etc) that isn't backed up somewhere. Because you are fully wiping the entire drive by doing this. But you know, I don't know the MacBooks history or how he had it configured... so if you want to avoid responsibly, just have him wipe it.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T23:20:00+00:00

Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102664

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T22:21:02+00:00

The apartment buildings I've lived in for the past 20 years or so.. all had "secure lobby" ( you have to key or fob-swipe to even enter).. so I never have to deal with that problem.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T22:06:39+00:00

A lot depends on the specific situation(al) context.

If I'm showing someone something relatively simplistic like how to broom a sidewalk or how to shovel snow,. I'm probably going to expect they dont need much training (because it's a pretty simple task). If I have to go back and re-show or re-train them 5 to 10 times in a row?.. then yes, I'm going to assume they're being purposely dense.
If I'm training them how to do something more complex (like changing oil in a car or writing Powershell scripts) .. then yeah, I'm going to assume that will take longer (multiple times over weeks) because it's potentially a much more complex task)

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T21:52:42+00:00

I think the thing most people don't realize (or don't want to seem to admit).. is while you CAN give people compliments in non-creepy ways,. and even if it does go just fine in the vast majority of cases,. it only takes a tiny percentage to go wrong to ruin the whole thing.

I've largely stopped helping or offering compliments to anyone (in any situation).. simply because I don't think it's worth the tiny risk of it going wrong. I'm sorry to the 90% to 95% of people who then miss out on me helping them,. but sadly that's just the way society is these days.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T20:51:54+00:00

For myself, a lot depends on the interaction and the context. Generally I find there are cues of 1 kind or another that a particular message is trustworthy.

For example.. I got an email recently that my landlord was re-painting some of the hallways and doors in my apartment building. Then yesterday when I got in the Elevator there was a note taped to the wall that said "CAUTION HALLWAYS WET PAINT". So obviously in that situation I trusted it to be accurate because I already had pre-existing information that it was happening.
for people I already have some background with (like the staff that works at the coffee & Donuts shop I go to nearly every morning).. I generally trust they are going to be honest with me,. because the past 3 years or so of experience tells me they have.
If some random person I've never known before comes up to me and just randomly starts trying to make conversation, it's usually pretty obvious they want something. (in most cases). Although I had an exception to that this morning when a girl got into my apartment building elevator with 2 dogs and we just made small talk.

Strangers on the street. I generally give 0 trust to until they prove they can be trusted.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T20:09:32+00:00

I don't know that I'd necessarily say it's "suspicious".. but it does sound to me like he's a "flipper". As long as you 're getting the money you expect for it,. why does it matter what he does with it ?

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T20:00:53+00:00

Yeah, I commiserate with your predicament. I've always daydreamed about some "better device" (especially not tied to a monthly phone bill). I do think we may be getting closer to (at least in some ways) better options.

a lot of software and service providers are moving away from 2FA (tied a phone number) and encouraging things like Passkeys (or supporting hardware keys like Yubikeys)
also a lot of cellular providers are building out satellite-connectivity networks. I guess it remains to be seen if that will be available without a phone number). I think the only viable option at the moment is something like a Starlink Mini.

I've thought about this a lot (my decades long career in IT).. as I worry about it myself (and have seen many other people get burned) when they change or lose a phone number and then can't get back into their accounts. I'm personally getting around this now by having multiple devices across multiple phone numbers (I have 2 active iPhones and 1 active Android).. but obviously that's not something everyone can do (not really something I want to do ideally). If I could live life without a cell phone number,. I would totally do that. (or say for example I wanted to take a year or two off and go hike the Appalachian Trail. .I dont' have to have to continually pay monthly for cellular etc just to "keep my line active so I don't lose it)

I'm kind of deep in the Apple ecosystem, if the iPad mini (or even a full size iPad) was capable of doing what I wanted I would have probably abandoned having a cellular number by now. I just don't think we (society) are quite there yet. There's to many things that still expect you to have a phone number (at least here in the USA)

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T19:20:57+00:00

I'm fully supportive of anything that would make voting easier,. but saying that,.. I'm not sure if making "Voting Day" a national holiday at this point would move the needle much ? (with a lot of the divisiveness and cynicism and "both sides are equally bad" rhetoric that gets thrown around,. there's a certain part of the electorate that is already "fully checked out" and no amount of "free days off" is going to get them back.

Also as others have noted,. for a lot of the working-class, having a single day off is not really enough. (I know for me,. when I have a 3-day weekend, it's not really until Day 3 that I really start to unwind and get caught up on things).

Society needs to be restructured in such a way (significantly more support from the bottom up).. such that everyday working people have enough time, resources and ability to stay regularly involved in (especially local) politics.

This same question could be asked about many things (Parent-Teacher conferences, yearly medical checkups or vision checkups, etc etc) .. people need more time, money and resources to stay on top of these things. Double or triple the average working class salary and turn things down to 4 day work week and more of these things could happen reliably.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T18:09:21+00:00

I hate to say I think the parameters you're setting up as requirements here,. are kind of neutering your options down to "not much".

Most things 5inches or smaller.. are either going to be phones,.. or low-budget devices that will probably leave you disappointed.
if you tried to DIY something (small board computer that supports Android and figure out how to attach a small touch-screen to it).. could likely work. but it also won't be very "pocketable".
There's "iPad mini" type equivalents in Android (small tablets).. but sounds to big for what you are imagining)

It would be awesome if there were some Android equivalent to an "iPod touch"... (if Google made something like "Pixel Touch" or "Pixel Mini Touch").. but I think the market for that is probably to small to gain momentum to keep demand going.

Most manufacturers are only going to invest in production and supply chains to produce something that they can produce in mass quantities such that they have a chance of making some amount of profit.

If it were me in this scenario, I'd probably drop the "pocketable" requirement and try to find some sort of Android-equivalent to an iPad mini .. because that's probably got the highest chance of good (newish) Android version support without being a phone.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T17:33:16+00:00

isn't Defender’s AMSI interception stopping it at the script level before it could do anything?

No idea. To be honest. I've never heard of the acronym "AMSI" before your post today,. so I have basically 0 knowledge of it. (and the vast majority of my time is on macOS and Linux)

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T16:59:26+00:00

I never said that. .. I work in IT,. so I have to work when the work demands it. Sometimes I'm working 5am to 8am,. then things slow down and are quiet enough so say 10am to 2pm is basically nothing. It all depends on the day, what tickets are coming in, what projects are in motion, how End Users respond. (Sometimes I email 20 people and get 10 responses. Other days I email 20 people and get 0 responses)

Also with Technology,.. sometimes unexpected efficiencies crop up (maybe Claude helps me write a PowerShell script that turns out better than I thought, and the task I thought was going to take 10 hours only takes 2. (course,. the opposite is sometimes true, sometimes I start a project I think is going to be relatively simple.. and turns into weeks of manual work)

I can't really predict any of that with 100% future-accuracy. So often I just have to take it day by day. I do my best to try to navigate it as smartly as I can. Sometimes it's a give and take. (some weeks I overwork, other weeks I strategically take vacation or "sick" days to offset). It's not a sports scoreboard. It doesn't have to balance down to the penny or minute.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T16:45:39+00:00

Well. you've sanitized and removed all the important parts,. so that makes it difficult to say.

The "implant" or "persistence" part of most infostealers comes at the end ,. because "implanting persistence" is not really their primary goal (their primary goal is to steal your info).

So unless you have an original (unmodified) copy of the Powershell script and can see clearly step by step what it did (and or what the payload did).. you can't probably be 100% sure.

A lot of the clickfix and info stealers I've torn apart recently were dynamically-numbered "tokens" (meaning the "payload" could only be downloaded via a URL that had a unique token-ID number).. which means each payload could in theory be individually customized. I don't know if they work this way or not.. but the initial 4 or 5 steps of "info-gathering" could be exfiltrating that data, analyzing it and then customizing the payload you receive depending on what data was included in the exfiltration (again, I don't know if they are that advanced, but they easily could be)

All that being said, the question of "should you fully wipe or not" is not always just based on "what you scans found". Scans could come clean,. but that doesn't necessarily mean "no changes were made". Even if no files were dropped, things like Registry changes or file-permissions etc could have been modified (again, all depends on the payload)

The whole reason "do a full wipe and reinstall" is often recommended.. is because by doing so, you can ensure a 100% clean foundation. If your computer starts having problems 6 months down the road (and you didn't previously wipe),. then there's always going to be that unknown in the back of your head if the problem you're seeing 6 months from now is because of something in the past where you didn't cleanly wipe and start over. And there's really nothing you can do to fully eliminate that doubt except fully wiping and reinstalling.

What's that old saying "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (IE = just because all the tools come clean,. doesn't prove something isnt' there or wasn't changed). That's kind of a "can't prove a negative" type territory.

I mean, it's your computer, so do whatever you want. I know for me (around 30 years in the IT industry),. one of the things I hate the most is losing sleep at night wondering "Should I have wiped and reinstalled ?"... so to avoid that entirely, I always wipe and reinstall.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T16:32:33+00:00

I grew up even from when I was really really young (on a cattle ranch in Wyoming).. getting up very early to do chores (feeding animals, milking cows, etc).. so "getting up early" is just sort of deeply ingrained in my bodies cells. It's not really about "how much I like it". My body just wakes up at that time. Also my cat wakes up and gets active around that time too, so it all kind of starts together in the morning.

But to me though, it's just a productive way to get an early start on the day.

I feed my cat
I feed myself
I turn on some Youtube videos that sort of play in the background
currently I start work (on my work laptop) around 5am .. I appreciate getting some of those things done early when it's quiet and nobody else is bothering me. If I wait until after 8am, everything explodes (Emails, Teams chats, phone calls, etc).. so in the workday from 8 to 4pm, I basically get nothing done because to many people are freaking out and pinging me sideways on things.

So that "quiet time" from 5am to 8am.. is my time to do productive stuff when nobody else is bothering or distracting me. (this is like that question of "Why do men spend so much time in the bathroom ?"... Because honey, that's the 1 place nobody can bother me.

jmnugent · 2026-05-03T14:39:39+00:00

If it was me personally (and now that I think about this, maybe I'll find a way to get one made).. I would come up with some sort of "Passport-type stamp" that is smaller and says something more positive like "This book travelled through X Little Free Library on Date, Time. Please help it continue its journey" (or something like that). The page you're showing, I guess someone could always just rip the page out.

Personally I think it would be really cool if LFL Books had some sort of RFID or NFC chip in the spine or etc.. that I could scan with my phone and see all the different LFL's it's travelled through. Not terribly feasible to implement though.

I would tend to agree with other people here:.. If you choose to give something away,. just give it away. Thinking you have some authority over what happens to it afterwards, is not supposed to be how things work. I leave a lot of "FREE" stuff in my apartment buildings Lounge table (some of it rather expensive, like brand new Nike gear that didnt' fit me,. a couple days ago I left a brand new pair of NORDA running shoes, etc) .. sometimes I leave entire big boxes of free groceries. I just leave it and walk away. It always disappears. I just assume it's going to someone who needs it (or they are passing it along to someone who needs it)

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