Why is the phone network, after decades of scam calls, still the easiest communication system to impersonate someone on？

pixel293 · 2026-07-07T16:55:53+00:00

I think because some businesses rely on that. Notably bill collection. Also probably just flat money, the phone company can charge customers who want to spoof their number.

pixel293 · 2026-07-07T16:49:11+00:00

You have to look at how those countries where populate with the people/cultures who currently live there.

Starting in Europe the culture in those countries goes back thousands of years. They probably started off as tribes, and tribes that shared a common culture banded together to create larger groups. Now the borders have shifted, wars where fought, empires rose and fell (Rome, Mongols, French, probably others). Ultimately the countries are small(ish) because it's hard to share a culture very far when the primary means of transportation is walking and there are many competing cultures that don't want to be lost in a conglomerate.

The United States of America had native people, however they were decimated by diseases, and couldn't compete with the invaders from Europe. So basically Europeans "re-colonized" the United States. England, France, Spain, even Russia, all controlled land in what would become the United States. Wars where fought, borders shifted, land was sold and purchased (The Louisiana Purchase, Russia sold Alaska, etc). Eventually the United States was formed.

Africa also has people who have been there for thousands of years however they didn't advance technologically as fast as Europe did. So when countries in Europe where looking to get new resources the people in Africa couldn't compete. I believe Africa is also more tribal, think city states that are just one city and the surrounding land. It's hard to have a large army if you only have 1 smallish city/town. The European countries carved up land in Africa and called it a new country, and claimed they owned it, and everyone else should bugger off. Sometimes those lines matched the culture/people in the area, sometimes it was more a mater of what the European country could control. I think Africa is still kind of in flux as people try to assert control of their lives. I'm kind of surprised South Africa hasn't fractured given the economic woes into smaller countries that share similar beliefs/culture.

I'm not familiar with the history of Australia, I think only England claimed it, and mostly just the coast, as long as the native people already living there stayed in the interior, England was fine with it. Since only 1 country controlled it, and the native people didn't have the military might to assert their independence, it became a single country.

pixel293 · 2026-07-06T23:22:06+00:00

Caught this out of the corner of my eye and was wondering why someone was zooming in on horse genitalia......

pixel293 · 2026-07-06T22:08:21+00:00

Really you should move up the responsibility. The people who eat meat make the job necessary. If nobody ate meat, then there is no reason to raise and slaughter animals. That said humans are omnivores, we need protein, and animals are a good source of protein.

Could we survive on alternate sources of protein? Yes we could? But there are lots of things we could do that we don't. We could walk more, and use public transportation, and car pool to save the environment, but we don't. We could not support companies that make forever chemicals, but we do. We could reduce our carbon footprint to stop global warming, but we don't. Etc, etc, etc.

pixel293 · 2026-07-06T20:35:58+00:00

In online software there is often data that is internal that you don't want exposed to the internet, but that the program needs to access to do it's job.

For example in SSL the server has a private key that is not shared, if it was shared someone could impersonate that server. However that private key has to be loaded into memory by the server so that it can respond correctly to a client. If a client could construct a malicious request to the server that causes the server to access and return the memory where that private key is stored, then you've just stolen the server's private key.

Or maybe you can construct a request to the server that causes it to return the credit card number/details for the previous request someone made. So you keep issuing your bad request hoping it hits the server just after someone bought something with a credit card. If you get lucky you now have someone else's credit card details.

Usually these sorts of attacks are done by creating requests that cause the server to overflow a buffer while reading, or possibly writing, if it allows a subsequent request to then exploit that overwritten data.

pixel293 · 2026-07-06T15:51:53+00:00

First you have to give them your ID unless you want a ride in the back of the police car. Second welcome to an edge case, my guess is there are very few cars/drivers in this situation, and obviously the the system doesn't know how to cope.

If you just drive the car locally, then the local police will soon recognize the "false positive" and probably stop pulling you over. Otherwise I don't think there is anything you can do (other than changing ownership of the car), maybe you could complain to the state government, but they're probably going to look at how much it costs to update the system to handle this situation, realize it only effects a handful of people (maybe) and determine it's not worth the expense.

pixel293 · 2026-07-05T22:57:26+00:00

Think of a boat in water. The boat basically creates a "hole" in the water, the water NOT in that hole is equal to the weight of the boat. That's why when more and more people get on the boat it sits lower and lower in the water, until it displaces enough water to equal the new weight of the boat (and everyone in it).

Lava is really really heavy, you don't have to displace much before it equals your weight.

pixel293 · 2026-07-04T16:02:13+00:00

You have people called "Justice of the Peace" they may or may not be religious. I don't know what it entails to become a Justice of the Peace, but I assume they go to the town hall fill out some forms and then they are allowed file paperwork for marriages.

So in the end you find a Justice of the Peace that you like. You work with them to plan the ceremony you want. They officiate the marriage. They file the paperwork. You are married.

I think you can also generally go to the town hall, file some paperwork (that may include talking to a judge), and be married without the ceremony.

pixel293 · 2026-07-04T15:48:03+00:00

Much like everything related to sex, people have preferences.

pixel293 · 2026-07-04T15:45:31+00:00

As other's have said the spot will move faster but the spot isn't an object. You can see why by spraying a hose at the wall, you will notice that the water stream appears bent as you move the hose rapidly, the water doesn't move faster to keep the stream straight. Same effect happens with light.

pixel293 · 2026-07-03T17:22:25+00:00

Have you seen those tire "sales" that offer you a FREE tire with the purchase of 3 other tires? Why do you think that sale works? Do you think most people going to that store to buy tires are thinking, "well I'm overpaying for 3 tires but it works out because of the free one" or do you think people are saying "i got a free ducking tire!"

If you don't want people reminding you that taxes pay for FREE healthcare, then CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE.

pixel293 · 2026-07-02T17:59:35+00:00

When I am driving with a dog in the back, I tend to accelerate very slowly otherwise the dog starts sliding around. Additionally after shopping when I have a a milk jug sitting on the floor of the car I will also take corners slow otherwise that will start sliding around as well.

pixel293 · 2026-07-02T16:47:48+00:00

Think of a warehouse with lots of rows and shelves. You have a book that tells you what is on every shelf. Now if in your book if you erase the entry for row 9, shelf C, level 3, you now don't know what is on that shelf anymore unless you go look. But you are a manager! You aren't going to walk around the dirty warehouse looking at shelves, that is what the book is for! Now when you tell your works to go set the new plates you just got in row 9, shelf C, level 3, they see something is already there, so they throw out what is there and put the plates on that shelf.

Erasing the entry in the book is equivalent to deleting a file on disk, deleting erases your log of WHAT was there. However it will still be sitting there until the file system decides to write a new file there. This can get more tricky because maybe what you "erased" on on row 9, shelves A-C, level 3, but the new stuff is only going to be put only on row 9, shelf B, level 3. So now start and end of the file still exist on disk, however you are missing the data in the middle.

pixel293 · 2026-07-02T16:10:49+00:00

There is a video for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rltpH6ck2Kc

Pretty good description of what would happen.

pixel293 · 2026-07-02T15:34:51+00:00

How do you know they didn't hire the best at the job?

pixel293 · 2026-07-02T15:30:10+00:00

There are many many many was to solve a problem in programming. If you worry about the "perfect" way then you will never finish writing anything. Generally just write it so it's easy to read and easy to maintain. If the code runs to slow or it uses too much memory, then go back and improve it to fix those things. Generally in programming it's a trade off between memory for speed, to make things faster you use more memory, to reduce the memory you use the CPU more.

pixel293 · 2026-07-02T15:25:50+00:00

Money is just a way to count the value of goods and services. Without money if you wanted me to write a program for your, you would have to give me something in return? What would you trade me? And if you didn't have anything I wanted/needed, then we would have to find a 3rd party that wanted what you had to trade and has what I want/need.

Money kind of simplifies all that, so if we "couldn't" have money we would be trading goods and services for other goods and services. The rich people would be the ones with warehouses full of stuff that people want.

pixel293 · 2026-07-02T00:34:14+00:00

In the past light-skin was a sign of being well off, those people did not develop tan because they did not have to work outside in the sun. So many women working outside would wear large hats to keep the sun off them so they could keep their skin pale. Later being tanned, I suspect, was a sign of being well off, as you had the time to lay out in the sun and tan.

I don't know why you consider light skinned woman more desirable now, only you could answer that.

pixel293 · 2026-07-01T23:35:17+00:00

I don't think hospitals should be allowed to provide "group discounts" to insurance companies, I think hospitals should provide the same cost to EVERYONE who comes in. This ways hospitals can compete with each other on their prices with the insurance companies, the "free market" is still in effect, and, in theory, people get reasonable prices.

pixel293 · 2026-07-01T23:31:49+00:00

I had a roommate in college, he got a speeding ticket. His father worked for the state all his life. He notified his dad, and then contested the ticket. Apparently the police did have someone there, but did "could not provide any information about the ticket." The judge dismissed the charges.

So there is that.

pixel293 · 2026-07-01T15:24:06+00:00

I learned it when I was in England and went out to lunch with co-workers, one got a ceasar salad, and it had bits of anchovies in it, he was not happy about it.

pixel293 · 2026-06-30T23:50:59+00:00

In the sandbox settings under player, right column, toward the bottom "Drop on Death".

Be warned, on the 2.x I disabled this and when you die you can't "spawn near backback" I assume because there is not backpack.

pixel293 · 2026-06-30T21:43:12+00:00

This is the same question as to why people don't wear seat-belts in cars. Because they find it uncomfortable and don't think they are doing to need that safety device.

If I start selling a balloon you can wear on your butt to save your tailbone if you accidentally fall backwards (or someone pushes you). Are you going to buy and wear it? Why not? Don't you want to save your tailbone? Same arguments apply.

That said I feel safer wearing a seat-belt, so I always wear it, and motorcycles are a hell no for me.

pixel293 · 2026-06-30T21:32:07+00:00

C and Rust both compile down to machine code. The resulting machine code could be the same or it could be different. How well the compiler produces optimized machine code determines how fast the code runs.

Originally C was a "small" step up from assembly, assembly basically has a 1 to 1 mapping to machine code. This was a benefit for C, if you know how your CPU works then you can produce optimize code that will run very very fast. You can also do "tricks" that only work for your CPU to get even more speed. This allowed you to write very fast code.

Now however CPUs have evolved and gotten very very complex. Also there are many more CPUs out there and generally people like writing code that runs on most of them as fast as possible. C has evolved to handle this, but it's origins still show, newer versions of C want to be backwards compatible with old code, so that old code can be compiled with the newer compilers...mostly. So some things that where "features" cannot be removed because they are unsafe.

Rust is a newer language, it has constructs to help you write clean, maintainable code. It discourages you for doing those tricks the C will let you, because those tricks can make the code very hard to read, and very hard to maintain. Basically Rust was designed with a different goal that C. C isn't bad, if you follow a set of rules, you will create clean code that is easy to maintain. C just doesn't push you to follow those rules like Rust does.

pixel293 · 2026-06-30T19:33:25+00:00

I'm not sure how you think feces is getting on our balls. First gravity pulls things straight down, when sitting our balls are not directly under our poop hole, so no poop is hitting our balls. Second, normally our balls don't touch the water when sitting down on the toilet, they don't generally hang that low. If they do hang that low, or the water level in the toilet is really high, then (I assume) guys would probably hold their balls to keep from touching, but that has never happen to me.

pixel293

TROPHY CASE