• 0 Posts
  • 63 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

help-circle


  • Sending messages like this isn’t uncommon.

    Back in the early 1960’s my dad had a high level security clearance at a defense contractor. He was one of a handful of people who knew the full details of a project to “identify, track, and destroy a hostile satellite”. This was in direct response to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik. The President of the US was another one of the handful that knew the full details of the project.

    After a lot of R&D work a test was performed. A rocket was launched from somewhere in the South Pacific. It tracked a derelict satellite used as a target, closed on it, and disabled it. At that point my dad’s involvement on the project ended.

    A few months later while at home he & my mom were listening to a speech by the President. In the middle of the speech he announced to the American public that the USA now had the ability to identify, track, and destroy hostile satellites. My mom says all the color drained from his face but she had no idea why since the entire project was still highly classified. In fact when my dad got to work the next day there was a memo waiting on his desk telling him that he was not to confirm, deny, or even discuss anything he may have heard on the radio or tv the previous night.

    The President didn’t make that announcement for the benefit of the American people. He was sending a very public message to the leadership of the USSR.

    (And my dad never told this story until well after the 25 year time frame established for routine declassification of such materials.)



  • That would surprise me. Companies like Akamai maintain very up-to-date lists of Tor exit nodes, commercial VPN exit nodes, etc. My employer uses Akamai and blocks all traffic from Tor given the huge volume of malicious traffic coming from it. It would be trivial for us to block VPN traffic as well if we wanted to. Those blocks occur on Akamai’s systems before it ever makes it to ours. No browser-based tool is going to get around an IP based block like that.

    No idea if Reddit is doing something similar here, but my guess is they are.










  • Our house has 5 heating & 2 AC zones that I installed Ecobee thermostats on. Three rooms also have skylights that can be opened. When we open the skylights the thermostats all turn off, and when closed they turn them back on to the mode they were previously set to.

    Our house is set back in the woods on a long driveway. When either me or my wife arrives home after dark all the driveway / walkway lights turn on. And when we’re both away they all turn off.

    I also have a “bedtime” button on my phone that turns off all the lights, locks the doors, turns off our WiFi speakers, puts all the Ecobees into sleep mode, etc.