The problem with that is that, being on the reasonable side, if we just assume the obvious and then are somehow ‘proven’ wrong on a specific topic (there are thousands of them, so it’s bound to happen sometime) we legitimately lose actual credibility in the eyes of people who matter.

Like the ‘they’re eating the dogs!’ things. It’s perfectly reasonable to mock him for it being an issue, but insisting it has never happened and that even the idea is ridiculous, opens the entire side to being wrong if even one crazy or oblivious person of color has ever done it, which it almost certainly has. I mean if you look hard enough, you could probably find a crazy example of that from any cultural group. One example and pretty much all the mocking gets flipped around in the minds of anyone only half paying attention, and certainly from the other side next time we insist something doesn’t happen.

Because Democrats want someone who will run the country and Republicans just want someone who will maintain their minority control. We are concerned for the country, they are scared for their very existence and self reflection itself is dangerous for their existence. Basically self reflection is necessary for what Democrats want to do, and it fatal for what Republicans want. So we do it, and Republicans avoid it at all costs. We get a Kamala who we hold to a high standard, they get a Trump who can punch them in the face and they’ll still support him because of the party.

It doesn’t require suspension of critical thought when you can look around the world and see that nowhere does anyone have high speed rail spanning distances and population densities equivalent to what the US would need to go from, say, New York to LA, it East to West Coast in general. There are plenty of examples similar locally to East or West Coast population centers, but nothing in between. High speed commercial routes? Maybe. High speed commuter rail? It’s not even close to being worth the cost: utilization.

Not sure what you are arguing with exactly, theres a huge difference between commercial and commuter ‘profitability’. Things that freely allow for commerce like a road can be justified from many different direction where a periodic service only makes sense based on demand. That isn’t to say that maintaining an underutilized route with the goal of it becoming utilized based on is availability is always a bad idea, but a road can be built and it’s cost can at least roughly be correlated to it’s use. If you had to periodically rebuild every road, at roughly the same cost whether it was used or not, they would end up with the same ‘profitability’ concern, but mostly you have to build all the roads for minimal usability and then spend the most money on the most used roads. Freeways are understood to improve commercial visibility and are funded by taxes for that reason. The entire country benefits by having clear routes for good to move. Commuter rail primarily benefits a local area and is funded heavily by fares and local taxes.

A benign scan could just be looking for an ftp server to connect to or a repeater or relay server of some sort. There are plenty of open services people make available for free and the fact that you would consider it an attack it doesn’t make it one.

At minimum you could be alerted to look for someone attempting to connect to your ftp server with a single basic anonymous authentication vs someone flooding that port with known malicious software attacks, and block the latter across your entire network and effectively ignore the former. Really it seems like you’re advertising your lack of imagination in this context than a legitimate lack of possible uses for spoofing open ports.

I think he’s always had a problem trying to break out of his childhood nerd acting personal and just wildly overdoes it… Kind of like those guys who intentionally deepen their voice and walk with their arms out a little like their biceps are a little too big… He’s even mimiced that in movies before, but then unconsciously goes back to doing effectively the same thing unironically a few seconds later.

That’s probably a majority of the point. Falsely report that some interesting ports are open and he’ll spend time on them and potentially trigger alerts or blocks.

Fake open ports aren’t something a normal user would bother with or understand, but with all the tools available in the nefarious side, it makes sense to have options that make their job harder if you’re willing to use them.

Maybe what you’re referring to is along the lines of a port being open but the software on the other side of it not sending acknowledging responses?

At a guess, you might tell the difference between some benign scan and an attempt to actually take advantage of the port, perhaps to use as a trigger to automatically ban an ip address? or a way to divert malicious resources to an easy looking target so they are less available in other areas?

The difference between someone scanning for open ports and someone attacking a port they find open seems significant enough to at least track and watch for patterns… Whether that’s useful for the majority of users or not is rarely why a feature is implemented.

I don’t think it’s that, i think it’s the part of about acting like biden being a bad choice is fairly comparing him to a alternative. It’s like saying Biden is a car that might break down so don’t buy it…but the car that’s already broken down, had knives for seats and only plays white supremacy youtube stations on loop on the radio. I mean we can admit a lot of flaws on the democrat side before we have to actually start comparing it to the republican options.

No, sarcasm is really hard to do, I’m sure only humans can possibly understand the nuances of language like that.

That is true, which is why most of the reports have to have some meta-analysis on them to be useful, but where dog breed and injury type/circumstances are broadly available within the report, breeds like labrador, spaniel, chihuahua, poodle, etc (and other, reasonably recognizable breeds) the injures are almost overwhelmingly related to non-life-threatening injuries and/or unusual circumstances (feral dogs, part of packs, extreme neglect or abuse) while deaths or serious, life-threatening instances where breeds seem reasonably documented, 60%+ are from the three commonly expected breed/types, which very heavily outweighs the percent of those breeds in the population.

If type of dog commonly labeled ‘pitbulls’ made up 60% of the population and were involved in 60% of attacks, that would basically mean they posed no more threat than any other breed…if they only make up 1% of the population and are involved in 60% of life-threatening attacks, it’s fair to say that ‘breed’ is extremely dangerous. It’s much closer to the second example than that first. If you wanted to make a good argument, if you could identify some specific breed that is commonly identified as ‘pitbull’ but which arguably are ‘not’ involved in life-threatening attacks, that might be worth highlighting, but unfortunately, just like everyone ‘calling everything that looks vaguely like a pitbull, a pitbull’…the instincts that earn then the poor reputation are just as spread out across the group as the physically recognizable traits.

Basically, the response to your comment is ‘yeah, but…’ because even though you’re right that we probably will never know exactly what breed caused which injury, there is an obvious enough pattern that pretending there isn’t a pretty heavy relationship between dogs ‘significantly mixed’ with pitbull and rottweilers and serious attacks is either intentionally deceiving or ignorant.

That’s why these discussions generally come down to understanding/misunderstanding ‘instincts’. Certain breeds have at least broadly understood instincts when it comes to offensive/defensive postures, and those instincts may never be triggered in their day to day, even year to year, routine…but extrapolating that to mean ‘my little Cuddles would never X if Y happened’ is dangerous and selfish.

I think you are stretching the semantics pretty far…the US is primarily rural geographically and urban only in very sparsely spaced cities…where Europe is urban in more condensed areas. The US doesn’t make everything ‘more inconvenient’ for the most part, most things are simple more inconvenient by nature.

On the other hand, within cities themselves, the US does shoot itself in the foot with it’s policies and what it subsidizes. Overall, though, most people don’t realize how really big the US is, space vs population-wise, compared to Europe or Japan.

There is no way a US federal high speed rail would look anything nearly as successful as ones in europe or other highly populated locations. I think people fail to realize that for the most part the US is very sparsely populated. with the exception of maybe 2-3 ‘regions’ that might look close to the population density and public transportation feasibility of Europe, there just wouldn’t be enough people going between each individual point to make it profitable, even if subsidized. Imagine putting up 300 miles of high speed rail that cost many millions of dollars to build, millions of dollars a year to maintain, and thousands of dollars to run each round trip, and then finding out there are only a few dozen people that need to go between those particular terminals each hour. Trying to adjust by running less often just makes things worse because running less often means fewer people yet will find it convenient…running more often makes it less profitable…so you end up like the US and basically don’t bother making routes and stations without enough traffic.

I like the song and the movie…i wouldn’t say the movie did anything to ruin the song for me.

As an American it is horrifying to not be able to argue with this directly, because for every outward appearance it might as well be true.

But the argument I would make is that Americans are not the dumbest people in the world, Americans are simply allowed to survive and visibly prosper in spite of, and sometimes because of, their obvious stupidity. And combining this with the entitlement inherent in ‘just happening to be born here’ and the relative complete lack of suffering most of them experience, makes it easy for them to publicly hold opinions that people in most countries would either have to keep to themselves for their own personal safety, or just because few others are willing to join arms with them.

Basically it’s a constantly building bubble that could happen anywhere, and to smaller degrees probably happens all over the world in small communities, but here it’s a bubble that for some reason has been resistant to popping, to the point where any attempts to pop it are easily avoided due to it’s mass and ridiculously protective userbase.

Look at the UK and Brexit, or Russia and the mass of people outwardly supporting Putin, or the Middle East and apparent support of honor killings. Even if the majority of the people living in these areas don’t agree with this outward support, fear or resignation or something stops them from being the loud voice in the space. In the US it might be closer to resignation or hopelessness, but across the world we’re all really the same when you sit down and talk normally…there are stupid people everywhere you look, here we just don’t have a good way to embarrass them into shutting up.

not to justify bad behavior, but your points are rather off base. Thinking you’re superior to something doesn’t mean you hate it…One might consider themselves superior to plants and not hate them. One might consider Ford superior to Chevy and not hate Chevy. A woman can be misogynistic and consider males superior without hating females. Just because the 2 other points often come along for the ride doesn’t mean they are part of the definition and shouldn’t be asked.

Sounds like a self correcting problem? Maybe just replace the ones that protect traffic below them…

A free printer might be awesome if it’s laser…a free ink jet printer is like saying you got stabbed ‘for free’. I mean, yeah, it was free.