Yeah. If you work for the Men in Black, and you’re a regular employee the policy is going to be something like “never under any circumstances plug anything into your PC that hasn’t been given to you by MiB IT staff”.

If you work for the Men in Black in cybersecurity and your job might involve investigating strange USB drives handed to you by aliens, agents, spies or employees who found one in the parking lot, you probably already have a rigidly documented procedure involving a special air-gapped, locked down computer in a bomb-proof, EM-shielded, dimension-shifted room, and you don’t need to ask for advice on Lemmy.

If you work for the Men in Black in cybersecurity and there isn’t yet a procedure for investigating strange USB drives handed to you by aliens, agents, spies or employees who found one in the parking lot, and you’re somehow in charge of creating such a procedure, you’re again probably not going to be posting on Lemmy asking for tips. You’re probably going to be doing deep research on various USB and USB-look-alike threat vectors. Then, write a report, have it reviewed and in a decade you’ll have an ultra-safe procedure that nobody follows.

For everybody who doesn’t work for the Men in Black, just plug it in and take a look, and don’t do anything dumb like double clicking on “Really Just A Word.doc.exe”.

There are exceptions, like if you have a psycho jealous ex who also happens to be a ruthless hacker. But, that isn’t most people, thankfully.

But, this is a cybersecurity forum, and so you’re going to get praised for coming up with the most outlandish possible threat vector, and the most complex and inconvenient way to counter it. Suggesting normal levels of precaution is going to get shouted down because it implies that that person isn’t knowledgeable about the vaguely possible incredible threat vectors that you can prove your worth by showing you know all about.

Or, maybe it’s a tiny thermonuclear device cleverly disguised as a flash drive. Or, it might be a living, breathing creature that has evolved to mimic the look and feel of a flash drive but will detach itself from the computer and attack you at night while you’re asleep.

If you’re working with the Men In Black, you might have to consider these things. For the average person, it’s almost certainly just a flash drive and you can take reasonable precautions and be more than reasonably safe.

AFAIK computers with normal setups won’t auto-run anything on a flash drive you insert. At most they’ll prompt you to ask if you want to run something. (Say no.)

So, it’s pretty safe to look at what files exist on the flash drive. Then you just have all the various exploits that exist with unknown files. Obviously, don’t run any executables on the drive. Don’t double-click on anything that looks like it’s a document (say PDF or word doc) because it might not be. To be extra safe, even if it is actually a PDF or word document, don’t open in the standard program (word or acrobat) because there’s a slight chance it might be an actual PDF that exploits an unpatched vulnerability in that program.

If I work in Iran’s nuclear program, and found this flash drive on the ground outside, I’d be a lot more cautious and maybe do some of these extremely paranoid things people here are suggesting. But, if Aunt Jenny was just over for a visit and I found a flash drive in the hallway near her room and want to check to see if it might be hers, it’s probably safe just to insert the drive take a quick look and not click on anything.

So, pre WWII that was more-or-less East Prussia. Does anybody know how Russian it is these days, in terms of language and culture? Is there any remaining hint of Prussianness vs Russianness? I would think that having no land route connecting it to the rest of Moscow might result in it having its own identity. But, I don’t know enough about its history to know if any of the people there feel a connection to the pre-WWII identity.

OTOH, sometimes you get the opposite effect, like people in the Falkland Islands feeling even stronger connections to Britain than a lot of the people actually living in the British Isles.

Also, since it’s the home of the Black Sea fleet, I imagine that means a lot of Russians in the navy moving there, which would tend to exert a strong Russian cultural influence on the area.

Greater Catalonia.

I haven’t gotten into the Beta, so I haven’t played it, but I’m curious, is the game designed so you can’t do anything without walking, or is it so that you can creep along at a snail’s pace without walking but to actually make real progress you have to walk?

It seems to me like you could use the psychology of a Pay To Win / Microtransactions game to motivate people but by using walking instead of money.

Does GPS really require an internet connection? I know it uses the radio, which kills the battery, but AFAIK you can get GPS without Internet access. For example, I’ve downloaded offline areas for Google Maps and have tracked my location that way, while traveling in countries where I didn’t have a SIM allowing me to access the Internet.

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It’s just his default “people are taking pictures of me” move. I guess it was a habit developed at a time when he was just a celebrity. But, it’s telling that he either can’t learn to do something different now and doesn’t have staff who step in front of the cameras and say “dude, you can’t do that thumbs up move here”.

We are prepared to release footage

Thereby proving they broke the law:

Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign

No, it abolished slavery with an exception carved out for punishment for crime.

The difference is important. Saying it was “made a punishment” suggests that before the amendment that option didn’t exist. It did. The 13th amendment just clarified that that use was allowed to continue.

But, it’s also worth noting that in the late 1700s and early 1800s imprisonment was uncommon, and a lot of crimes just carried the death penalty. In England, pickpocketing more than the modern equivalent of about $40 could result in a death penalty. Same with cutting down trees, or stealing from a rabbit warren. For less serious crimes there were the stocks, whipping, and fines. England had an option that wasn’t available to the US: transportation. Australia was originally a penal colony, and the people sent there were forced to labour until their sentences were up.

Prisons (along with their work programs) were seen as a new, progressive idea that could potentially reform a prisoner, rather than just killing / punishing them.

Millions of people, unfortunately.

Joe Rogan Listeners is as much of a voter bloc as something like “Soccer moms” or something.

This gives him too much credit.

A barbarian khan would legitimately be trying to understand how the world works. Yes, sometimes he has a scientist on and he’s forced to learn things. But, other times he has a guest on so that that guest can promote their terrible worldview – see RFK Jr.

I think the rot really set in before the Spotify stuff. I’ve never used Spotify, so anything exclusive to that platform is something I miss. I occasionally listened to his stuff before the Spotify deal, but I’d stopped listening long enough before that change that it didn’t change anything for me.

What seemed to change for me is that originally he really was just asking questions. He admitted that he was uninformed and he asked his guests questions on what they claimed to be experts about. Often his guests were real experts, but sometimes it was a conspiracy theorist. When it was a conspiracy theorist, often they looked dumb when Rogan asked a pretty basic question and the answer was ridiculous.

But, over time he went from honestly asking questions to “just asking questions”. Like, he had his mind made up and was instead trying to push some kind of ideology.

What made it especially bad is that his Spotify Exclusivity deal started around the same time as the Pandemic, and if he’s not an anti-vax nutjob, he’s at least nutjob adjacent.

What about the Nazi-sponsored English motor-racing legend, Dick Seaman.

Is he trying to get people to watch the democratic convention? I’m sure the democrats will be happy for more people to watch.

Oops, I thought Vance was an officer, not an enlisted member. Thanks for the correction.

As for Walz, I don’t know how quickly he advanced through the ranks, but IMO a Command Sergeant Major is one of the most impressive titles. It’s a leadership rank but done the hard way. If you enter the military as an officer, you immediately outrank 80% of the military. A Command Sergeant Major has to practice the difficult art of leading people who technically outrank them.

I’m curious what voters will think of the two VP candidates military service.

JD Vance was in the Marine Corps as an corporal for 4 years and served in Iraq, but he served as a combat correspondent, a military journalist, not in a combat capacity.

Walz was in the Army National Guard as an enlisted soldier for 24 years. AFAIK he was never in combat, but his specialty (heavy artillery) was definitely a combat-oriented one. He also achieved the rank of Command Sergeant Major, which is a very high rank for an enlisted soldier.

IMO, being in the Marine Corps sounds more impressive than being in the National Guard. But, 4 years as a combat correspondent sounds a lot less impressive than 24 years, starting out in artillery and moving up to a Command Sergeant Major role.

Yeah, but he’s no salt-of-the-earth type like JD Vance who is a hilbilly^* who attended Yale Law and then worked for totally normal guy Peter Thiel at his Venture Capital firm in San Francisco.

* Not really a hilbilly

She only picked him because she needs to show that she’s committed to fixing immigration, because he’s from a border state. ;)