Absolutely.

I don’t have a CS degree, I have a Cybersecurity and Forensics one. But, I love programming, and between the overlap of the two degrees and and my advanced designation I ended up taking about 3/4ths of the classes needed to get a CS degree.

Diversifying helped so much with me becoming a well rounded developer. My assembly programming class, while optional for CS, was mandatory for me, made me a significantly better dev. That assembly knowledge got me to become a skilled debugger, which made my C++ classes 10x easier, and it helped me understand memory at a lower level, making the memory problems easier to diagnose and fix.

I convinced a CS friend to take one of my cyber classes, Reverse Engineering, and he found te components of the class where we analyzed a vulnerable program to find and exploit the vuln, or the bit where we tried and determined the bug based on malware that exploited it is insightful to learning to program securely.

Learning about the infrastructure used in enterprise during a Windows admin or Linux admin class will make it easier to write code for those systems.

From the cybersecurity perspective, many of my CS classes carry me hard. Knowing how programs are written, how APIs are developed, and how to design complex software lets me make more educated recommendations based on what little information I’m given by the limited logs I am given to investigate. Writing code that interfaces with linux primitives makes it easier to conceptualize what’s going on when I am debugging a broken linux system.

I have tons of experience with enterprise linux, so I tend to use Rocky linux. It’s similar to my Fedora daily driver, which is nice, and very close to the RHEL and Centos systems I used to own.

You are slightly mistaken with your assumption that debian is insecure because of the old packages. Old packages are fine, and not inherently insecure because of its age. I only become concerned about the security implications of a package if it is dual use/LOLBin, known to be vulnerable, or has been out of support for some time. The older packages Debian uses, at least things related to infrastructure and hosting, are the patched LTS release of a project.

My big concerns for picking a distro for hosting services would be reliability, level of support, and familiarity.

A more reliable distro is less likely to crash or break itself. Enterprise linux and Debian come to mind with this regard.

A distro that is well supported will mean quick access to security patches, updates, and more stable updates. It will have good, accurate documentation, and hopefully some good guides. Enterprise linux, Debian and Ubuntu have excellent support. Enterprise linux distros have incredible documentation, and often are similar enough that documentation for a different branch will work fine. Heck, I usually use rhel docs when troubleshooting my fedora install since it is close enough to get me to a point where the application docs will guide me through.

Familiarity is self explanatory. But it is important because you are more likely to accidentally compromise security in an unfamiliar environment, and it’s the driving force behind me sticking with enterprise linux over Nixos or a hardened OpenBSD.

As a fair word of warning, enterprise linux will be pretty different compared to any desktop distro, even fedora. It takes quite a bit of learning, to get comfortable (especially with SELinux), but once you do, things will go smoothly. you can also use a pirated rhel certification guide to learn enterprise linux

If anything, you can simply mess around in a local VM and try installing the tools and services needed before taking it to the cloud.

This is why I did a “walkthrough test” when I had to write documentation on this sort of thing. I’m a terrible technical writer, so this shit is necessary for me.

I grabbed my friend who knows enough about computers to attempt this, but not enough about infrastructure to automatically know what I meant when I was too vague.

Took two revisions, but the final document was way easier to follow at the end

My cats love to get behind my servers. When I’m running a compute job and the fans spin up my cats scurry over to bask in the heat

Dominos is outrageously expensive if you don’t shop the deals.

When I was in college, I’d get dominos with my roommates when they had the 20$ special, which would be about 30$ after tip and delivery. The special had 2 medium pizzas, garlic knots, cinnamon twists, and soda.

After I moved back home, I learned my local dominos doesn’t always have that deal. I’d get something similar to what you got and I’d be upset that I got less food for a bit more…

Now what really pisses me off is the high end neopolitan place near me is cheaper on their dinner special days, where you can get 2 personal pizzas that taste so good I’d accept it as proof that god is real for about 25$ including tips and gas money.

It’s not just the phone manufacturer, but the mobile carrier, and apps with access to your location (like weather apps, or map apps)

I run two APs, and a Unifi server running on a thin client linux server.

I have the U7, and the U6 extender that goes in a wall outlet

I have a few of their small poe powered ethernet switches, they’re great since I have a poe switch as a backbone I can put it near a group of devices in a room, like consoles, raspberry PIs, etc, and just not have to worry about much setup or powering yet another tiny device.

Highly recommend unifi devices

I find this statement funny cuz it also implies that the reason why freedom fighters are not terrorists is because they won, and likewise the only reason why terrorists are deemed such is because they lost.

I feel that.

Three years ago I moved to fedora and RHEL based distros like Rocky for my devices and servers because I’ve gotten suck of Canonical’s shit. Don’t regret it.

That’s some serious capitalist realism you’ve got there, it would be a shame if you were incorrect.

Real big shame…

It would also be a shame if people are trying to put said other systems in action right now

Real

big

shame

I’m a huge panopticon fan. I got one of their CDs from a local radical book shop the other day.

I’ve not heard of the other three, I’ll check em out!

Edit: I’ve listened to a song by all three, and I really dig Cauldron and Warmoon Lord. I can definitely see cauldron go in my catalogue for when I need to mix things up, they’re outside my normal go-to genres.

To throw two more back at you, check out Dawn Ray’d, an excellent melodic black metal/RABM band with some great lyrics, themes, and some solid songwriting. The band’s politics are similar to Panopticon, or Woe.

Others by No One, a prog metal concept album I can’t exactly describe. To me, it feels like the only band that has carried Native Construct’s torch, which is one of the best compliments I can give. It’s an enthralling listen.

Blind Guardian and Opeth are sick!

Try out some Botanist.

Two instrument black metal. Drums, and hammer dulcimer. Sometimes has Bass guitar. Very atmospheric. Interesting vibes.

here is their upcoming album which has some good singles

here is my favorite release

Hamferð is also pretty slick.

Their new album Men guðs hond er sterk is an absolute banger. Absolutely crushing death-doom. Their previous album, Tàmsins likam was probably my favorite album of the year.

I’m genuinely hyped for this DLC

My local coffee roaster also sells loose leaf teas from a local company, and their tea is excellent. I grab some tea when I refill on coffee.

Linux passwords can be set to expire. A non-expiring password is sometimes just set to expire so far in the future that it will not be reached by the user (such as 100 or 200 years). A really broken clock could surpass that and cause expiry.

No, I don’t think that participation in tipping culture is a good comparison to participating in the policing system.

The only accurate comparisons are: The system is harmful, a good server cannot fix it by participating in it, and servers materially benefit from it.

First, as shitty as it is to not participate in as a customer, tipping culture is, for the most part, optional. When a server indirectly asks me to tip as a customer, I could easily hit the custom tip button and enter 0.00$. That would be shitty on my part as I would be reducing the income of waitstaff who rely on tips. If I tip, I now have a few dollars less, and the waitstaff have a more livable wage. If a police officer asks me to get on the ground with my hands on the back of my head, I don’t have much of a choice. If I do, the police officer will likely arrest me, and this compliance is only coming at the threat of what happens if I don’t. If I refuse, then the police officer could shoot me (if he deems me a sufficient threat), taze me, pepper spray me, or otherwise physically force me to the ground and possibly injure me. Further, I could get in significant legal trouble for not following the orders, most often in the form of resisting arrest, or possibly getting charged with assaulting a police officer if I act in self defense, regardless if I act within the law. This problem here lies in the fact that there is hierarchic authority that a police officer has which waitstaff lack.

Second, there is something that servers can do to make the system better outside of participating in the system laid out by their boss. While not easy, and with some risks attached, waitstaff can unionize and demand better pay, such that no tips are needed. Obviously, it isn’t super likely that the union would remove tips because waitstaff like their tips, but this act will fix one part of the system, being the part that they are not paid living wages before tips. While unlikely, widespread unionization could cause people to want to tip less knowing that waitstaff are able to subsist on wages alone and therefore impact tipping culture.

Cops don’t have this ability. I’d argue that police unions are not the same as a typical labor union. Like a normal union, they provide the workers protection from being fired, and have a positive impact on wages. Unlike a police union, police officers are called to break up the strikes of labor unions. If the police union went on strike, the only theoretical way for their employer, the state, to break it up would be using another militaristic arm of the state, be it the state reserve militia, if it exists in that state, or the military in other cases. Unlike calling the police, there is significant political capital being expended when doing this.

Another point to consider with that is which cops are fired, what leads to that happening, the impact of it, and how they are protected. Often, it’s “bad cops” rather than good cops, though both is possible. The union often steps in to protect even the worst cops from being fired. The impact of a bad cop is significantly more harmful than a bad server. A bad cop is violent, often kills or maims people, and terrorizes communities. A bad server might spit in my food, let it get cold/warm, or not deliver it at all. Short of physically hitting me (which a union will not protect them for), the most harmful thing they could do is steal my credit card details. Bad cops are fully and legally able to do much worse through civil asset forfeiture.

Lastly, and most importantly, the context of the system is vastly different. I’d argue the most harmful system that is held up by a server working a job isn’t tipping culture, but wage labor (and capitalism) itself. Just like police, anyone participating in this system cannot fix it by participating in it. Unlike police, those participating in wage labor lack the power to directly reinforce it through violent action because they lack the state’s monopoly on violence that the police lovingly wield. Any harm done by a person reinforcing this system can be offset by various acts, such as creating and participating in labor unions, creating co-ops, protesting and agitating for socialism, etc.

Police, on the other hand, not only indirectly reinforce this system by being payed wages, but they also directly reinforce this system by making it difficult to combat wage labor by breaking up strikes, protecting private property, terrorizing and killing protesters, killing organizers, etc.

Worse yet, police also directly support the hierarchic structure of the state, an unjust hierarchy, and the unjust hierarchies of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism and cisheteronormativity. Police have always been the arm of the state that has had their literal boot on the neck of black people, suffocating their communities. When the police are not the ones to harm these communities, they often don’t do that much to prevent it from happening, or prevent it from happening in the future. Let’s not forget that about 50% of those killed by cops have some sort of disability, or their historic violence against LGBTQ people, and how LGBTQ rights were only taken by clashing with the cops at Stonewall and demanding rights. While police aren’t the sole people upholding these hierarchies, they are one of the most arms of the state doing it.

I elaborated a lot more on this in a different comment.

The main thing is it is about the participation in the system that makes all cops bastards. In my opinion, the good thing about this slogan is it starts discussions and debates about the system itself and how even “good cops” contribute to it when cops do something bad.

if all the decent people don’t go into the police, the ones with integrity… that leaves the bad apples

and

[good cops that] help/protect their people from … bad apples

I think this is flawed. The policing system is built in such a way that it protects the bad apples at all costs. From police unions making it difficult to get rid of the bad cops, to the laws, legal precedent, and cultural norms which make it impossible to prosecute them. In the US, police are allowed to lie to people, but they are often trusted in court, regardless if they regularly lie. The police often form a Blue wall of silence in order to protect other cops when literally perjuring themselves in the process. Qualified immunity makes it impossible for people to seek damages from individual cops when they violate their rights. While good cops might break the blue wall of silence (and they might get punished for it) and they don’t violate other’s rights and therefore are not protected in court by qualified immunity, the participation of these good cops does nothing to address the system in the first place.

You and I both agree that there are many legal or governmental institutions that are rotten, but police fundamentally protect them and enforce their will. It is police who break strikes. It is the police that arrest protestors and activists. It is the police that hold the power to call legal protests illegal by declaring them riots. Fundamentally, the police protect the system that lets them be corrupt, and make it difficult to change it outside the impossible task of making change within electoral systems.

… protect their community from criminals …

Police are often an ineffective force at catching criminals. One of the best examples of this is sexual assault and rape. 70% of survivors do not involve the police. All the survivors I know did not call the police. They have good reason not to, 24% of them are arrested after doing so! If a person belongs to a group that is often oppressed by the police, such as gay and trans people, or a group that is criminalized, such as sex workers, there is nowhere for these people to turn in order to get justice.

In the event these people do call the police, odds are there will be no arrests. Only 5% of cases will result in arrest. Fewer will result in convictions and incarceration. (WATR Zine (this is a download link))

On a more ironic note, Policing increases crime. After NYC cops went on strike and reduced proactive policing, major crime reports fell.

So for [cops] going into a system and hoping to change it for the better … and make a real difference in lives …

While I wholeheartedly support trying to make a change for the better, and protecting and building community, I think police are a terrible way to do so. I think working outside the system is a much better way to materially help people’s lives. Organizations like Food Not Bombs helps people with food insecurity eat. Instead of joining the police which might make you destroy homeless encampments and make them worse off, you could instead volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Joining an antifascist organization can help protect communities from fascists, but joining the police might make you side with the fascists and protect people with demonstrably harmful rhetoric, or worse, oppressive and murderous, fascist, intent

by that logic [cops] striving for better are still bastards and that just doesn’t feel right to me.

I still think it is fair to call them bastards. While it sucks to call someone with good intentions a bastard, ACAB points out that police as a whole is a flawed institution, and participating in it does not change that, it reinforces the legitimacy of it, and brings erroneous hope to people that it can be fixed from within, when in reality it needs drastic change if not total abolition.

Again no hate here just a genuine conversation

I genuinely appreciate this, ngl. I live in a very conservative area and when speaking about this, I’m used to discussion quickly devolving into meaningless argument

How can thousands, millions of people doing a job be reduced to such a binary statement

The reason why most people (including myself) say ACAB is because of the system of policing, not the merits of any given police officer. Systems are inflexible and adverse to change. Individual good cops can exist, but once again, the system itself is the problem. A good cop can never fix the system, nor could a hundred, or a thousand. A million could, at best, give the illusion of a good system. People often say a rotten apple spoils the bunch, and I think that looking at policing from the perspective of individual rotten cops, or rotten cops “spoiling the bunch” is problematic when the system itself is rotten. And for participating in the system, yes, all cops are bastards.