Another option is to go all Jeff Bezos and get mega rich, crush all the competition, do whatever it takes, then once I'm about 75% of the way through my life and have a trillion or so to my name, use it all to fix a bunch of stuff

Even doing nothing as a president would be better than what we have now.

An effective altruism sort of thing?

Haven't heard of that but probably

You could possibly do more good in a leadership role in a party, pushing the party's members towards some agenda of yours, than as President

e.g. by creating a mind control drug, giving it to all of Congress, and using them as your sockpuppets

One thing is I really don't want to be part of a party, but since there's literally zero chance of getting elected otherwise I'd have to

Even outside the US, that's unlikely, yeah

You could, of course, time travel to the first Presidential election :P

My main goal would be more of a meta-President, fixing stuff like the electoral college and the way the government itself operates

(In addition to my other dream of sneaking a flamethrower into the state of the union address and burning the nuclear codes to absolute frick on live TV)

One President isn't going to be able to fix that

You need to somehow change most of America to want that too

Easy. Just get rid of all laws. Let America rip itself apart and a new one be born from the ashes.

speaking of presidents, What do you guys think about Donald J Trump...

Like all presidents, he's corrupt. I liked him only because he was so inept that he kept was unable to get anything done. That's an improvement, if you ask me.

@forest are you from alaska?

I'm from one of the US states. :P

@forest good. probably not ALL presidents, but most of them

hooray joe biden

I don't like Biden either. He was the original guy behind the crypto wars of the 90s.

Probably the worst person to have as president if you value privacy, beside perhaps Obama and Bush.

well, joe biden's probably better than trump

More qualified? Sure.

But Biden is evil and knows how to get things done. Trump is evil and is too ignorant to get things done.

haha

Base64 isn't cryptography, it's just a way to encode things.

So RSA isn't in base64 (it's just binary), but you can convert it to base64 for e.g. PGP keys.

So it sounds like you're interested in classical cryptography, which is the older type, before modern cryptography was invented.

yah

Learning classical cryptography can help you learn modern cryptography, too.

right, i was about to call it ancient cryptography I'm so stupid hahaha

( to be honest, you don't want the teacher to catch a message that says fuck... you want it to say french umbrellas call kangaroos without the emphasis of course )

(tho, your friends probably gonna be angry...

I use fsck, which is the name of a program on *nix (fsck = File System ChecK): man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/fsck.8.html

chinese "md" is like a swear word. so i think i don't like markdown...

@forest haha

"sb" is a swear word as well and we sometimes substitute 51 for it. bonus points if you can guess why (no, not related to chinese)

Si? Sl? No idea.

The element antimony has an atomic number of 51 and uses the symbol Sb.

yah

Clever.

and if we ever say sb we can say we're discussing chemistry

Just embrace cursing.

I mean, not on SE since it's not allowed here. Just in general.

wait, it's not alowed on se?

I just looked at the stick comic, so sorry for the slow reply...

Well, strictly speaking it's not, but no one really enforces it unless you do it a lot.

oh, really... ok

@forest Shit, I didn't know that was a rule here

cursing is just normal, right? unless you go and eff your friends up or call them the son of an X, as long as you dont insult anyone i think it's ok...

Yeah it's mostly okay

As long as you're not swearing in front of kids or doing it excessively, I guess

and don't use geedees near someone religious

Geedees?

@user pah, i'm a kid

@user quote "the knife of never letting go" god damns

Ah

@NobodyNeedsNames Shh

I think we can say goddamn here.

@user why

So I can swear freely

i mean, i'm 13. does that count as kid..................

Yes lol

@user what the fuck...

You really shouldn't tell people your age online

@NobodyNeedsNames im 13 too :D

(as long as you're a kid)

@user well, i've already done it like 5 times so idc

@AidenChow :D

/me goes to check if Aiden has an account on Crypto

@user well too late lmao

@user why

@forest hahaha

It doesn't really matter if you tell people your age, as long as you're not stupid.

The scary online strangers will sell you candy filled with drugs, didn't you know?

I'll sell you drugs filled with candy.

@forest lolol, what would happen if i were to make an acct on crypto rn XD

@forest i was just about to ask why

(not saying i actually would)

@forest I'll take either drugs or candy, don't even want both

he would tell the se team to verify if you are in EU...

@AidenChow I'd just have to send a message to CMs that there's an underage user. I'm only required to report underage users if they're on a site I moderate. If you're in the EU, then staff would ban you for being under 16.

@forest It might be safe here, but people might try to take advantage of you elsewhere

i wonder, who's in eu here?

@NobodyNeedsNames Like, just have good opsec (operations security). Or in other words: Don't tell people anything that they could use to screw you over. So don't tell people secrets that they could use to blackmail you. That kind of thing.

for instance...?

I could definitely see an adult convincing a dumb kid to pay them real money in exchange for in-game stuff or something

Yeah, that would fall under "stupid".

@forest my email?

No I mean things like secrets.

@user pah, i dont have $

@NobodyNeedsNames r/TIFU

@forest as in

@NobodyNeedsNames Your parents do

@user and?

Where you live (in detail), financial information, etc.

Those kinds of things can come back to bite you.

There have been kids stupid enough to order stuff using their parents' cards

and i never play stupid game with ingame stuff you've gotta play for.

@user Inside Out? (Movie)

What does Inside Out have to do with this?

Tbh, even adults do stupid things online and get into shit because of it.

Because the kid gets on a bus?

It's a matter of foolishness, not age.

the kid takes her mom's credit card

I mean, she's being controlled by little creatures in her brain, so I can't blame her

@forest I LIVE IN somewhere in the milky way

@user aren't we all...

(if the movie is true which it is not)

No, I personally am controlled only by The Voice

One thing to be aware of: It's really really easy to get someone's IP on Stack Exchange, so assume that anyone can, just by embedding a picture in chat or the main site, find out roughly where you live.

Unless you use a VPN or Tor, of course.

@forest 0_0

How much info does an IP give you though?

so i shouldnt send any pics in chat ?

No, don't open pics

@user Approximate location, unless your router is vulnerable in which case it can give away a lot more.

@AidenChow It's more about seeing pics.

If someone links a picture hosted on their server, if you access this page, they can see you accessing that picture

@user ?

I think NoScript or something can block that, or Tor has an option, at least

If that was hosted by my own server and not Imgur, I'd have gotten all your IPs.

@user You'd have to disable images.

@user Does it give an attacker your location or something?

Very approximate location.

I've seen people do that in movies but it sounds wrong

Ah, okay

Sometimes to within a city, sometimes less.

@forest as in?

Look up "geo ip".

Huh, I thought IPs were just random identifiers

Oh

That's fun

@NobodyNeedsNames Do a Google search for "my ip". There are lots of sites that will tell you.

So any site you visit knows your approximate location? That's amazing

Yes.

Actually, on most browsers, your exact location, too.

If you have "location services" enabled.

Ah, at least I disabled that

I can't afford a VPN and Tor sucks as an everyday browser :(

@forest it tells me i am in singapore

b//c vpn>

?

Did you steal a Singaporean computer?

@user if you're in china youy'd probably need one

@user noNONONONoNOnoNonONonONoNONoNO

I use Tor as my exclusive browser.

Works fine for me.

@forest does vpn change your ip?

Yes it does.

good

wait

Do you have separate profiles for super-private browsing and private-but-not-private-enough-to-break-certain-delicate-sites browsing?

tor need admin to download or no ?

It's not enough if someone really sophisticated wants to know your real IP, but it'll cause sites who simply log your IP to log the VPN's IP, not your own.

@AidenChow No, I don't think so.

It's standalone.

Because I can't access a ton of stuff with Tor, and many of the sites I can access think I'm a robot

Yep, that's true. You just have to get used to it. I find the sites that block me aren't worth visiting anyways.

so if at the time you reported my age my VPN linked to eu...

(which i never do but)

They're jerks but I've found plenty that I've wanted to visit :(

Well, I told them that you use a VPN, so hopefully they'd be aware. But it's always possible they'd just have looked at the IP and nuked you.

@NobodyNeedsNames I mean, you can just say you aren't really in the EU

@forest oh ok

@user SE might have a legal liability to distrust that.

Do people not have a chance to defend themselves before getting nuked?

Huh, okay

So they err on the side of kicking out legit users? That's not great

i mean, what if someone in eu purchase a VPN...

@user I have no idea.

@user go ahead and try to buy a VPN, link it to EU, register in Cryptography, and tell @forest that you are 14 years old or something

I mean, I'm not a kid so it wouldn't matter to me

Well, if he's not under 16 then I don't have to do anything.

i mean, what if he/she says he's 14 when he/she's not

Then he/she gets nuked.

so go ahead, @user , create a new account...

Do you mean under 14 in the US?

get it to 20 rep

@user EU

Why

under 16

@user Under 16 in the EU. Under 13 elsewhere.

So if you're 13 anywhere but the EU, you can use SE.

I mean, I am somewhat curious to find out what it's like to be nuked but I don't really feel like it

@user Your account just stops existing.

Aww

As if it never existed in the first place.

Wish that could be done irl

It can. It's called murder. Pretty sure it's illegal.

hahaha

no it's not

if a spambot's a killer you're just executing 'em

Pretty much.

except maybe they are something else, not killers

shrug, who cares

@forest what do spambots do?

Post spam.

Usually for gambling sites, cryptocurrency scams, and occasionally prostitution.

post spam in where?

what kinds of spams?

Most of the time they don't even post, they just... exist.

And hope people find their profiles.

um...

@forest not like that lol

I meant making it so someone never existed

oh lol

I don’t understand why someone would think making a profile on se is a good way to reach people tbh

Especially on smaller sites like cgcc

Just bots.

Someone has to tell it to sign up here

Unless it’s smart enough to go around the internet and sign up for websites on its own

They probably already do, but you just don't see them post.

Or they don't post in the first place.

Which could be possible but captchas and other stuff should make it not worth spammer’s’ time

Captchas are easy to get around.

Just have 200 kids solve captchas all day for a few cents and you're golden.

Isn’t it expensive to solve them?

No.

Huh

I bought a service like that some years ago. It was like... $5 per 1000 solved captchas? Something like that.

That’s ridiculously cheap

wtf

...

@user yah

@forest why will you buy it

Reasons(tm)

@forest and why would someone solve 1000 solved captchas for 5$ ?

@forest ... a bot?

woah: Starting from $0.50 for 1000 solved CAPTCHAs

Yeah that sounds about right.

@NobodyNeedsNames research on captchas or something?

Had a kid in my class who made a tool to solve captchas almost as well as humans. I assume he tried out the humans first

(Incidentally, in his presentation, he claimed using humans was super expensive)

@forest Yeah, that sure fucking helps in the middle of a pandemic

And he sure has no problem doing things when it's things that benefit him personally

@RadvylfPrograms I don't think he's clever enough to do things that benefit him.

He's not that smart, no, but pretending all the bad results of his presidency are due to incompetence hides how awful of a president and a person he was

He was an awful person and awful president.

And I think quite a bit of the bad things that occured were intentional on his part

The sole reason Trump won was taking all of racism and classism the republicans supported and saying it out loud

well

And things like "all politicians are corrupt" just masks problems that exist as facts of life (which is a common tactic of conservatives, actually), and implies some equal level of corruption no matter who's in charge, both of which serve to (sometimes maliciously) defuse valid points.

Given that both parties are equally correct in the US, it's not something that's hard to say.

That's another good example of a politically nihilistic statement that makes a false equivalence to mask the harmful actions of one group or another

Oh I'm not saying one group's actions are not (or less) harmful.

Just that American politics is so bad that anything which slows it down is a good thing.

It's perfectly sensible to take the centrist route and argue that both sides do a lot wrong, and that blindly supporting either side is bad. But calling them equally correct is harmful in a lot of ways.

I'm not a centrist, I'm a leftist. But the current parties are equally incorrect.

But they're not. Unless you think that every belief, action, underlying philosophy of both sides happen to add up to the exact same level of harm/incorrectness, which I doubt you do.

No matter who is in power, they'll make it worse. So the best solution is to limit whoever is in power so they can't accomplish what they want. If they're limited because of their own ignorance (e.g. Trump), then good.

"No matter who is in power, they'll make it worse." - What makes you say that?

Politicians.

Seeing them all lie about everything, no matter what side they're on, makes me say that.

Seeing them all promote American exceptionalism makes me say that.

That's the same sort of thing as climate doomerism where it impedes actual change by declaring it's useless to try in the first place

The climate is something we can actually fix. American politics? I don't think so.

Trying can't hurt

Being all nihilistic about it just gives you justification to support people who are clearly doing more harm than someone else would

Yes, but no politician is willing to try.

@RadvylfPrograms Trump slowed down the progress of the American military-industrial complex despite supporting it.

@forest I disagree with that

The number of drone strikes on children sharply dropped when Trump became president - not because he was against drones, but because he was incompetent. Hell, he got troops out of Afghanistan, something I've always been hoping for, purely because he has no idea what he's doing. Biden, on the other hand, has increased the rate of drone strikes back up to that of the Obama era.

He also failed to act to slow down a pandemic that's killed over a million Americans. Stopping drone strikes due to incompetence is great, but that's dozens or hundreds of lives. An effective response to COVID could've saved hundreds of thousands.

@RadvylfPrograms Dozens or hundreds impacted directly. It's millions if you count the fact that it continuously destabilizes countries and allows extremist groups to stay in power because they have a common cause.

And a president who is actually against drone strikes could do even more than one who stops them out of incompetence

Any president who claims to be against that is lying. Just look at Biden.

Now, if a president who was honest tried to do something about it, that would be great.

But the last honest person who ran for president was stabbed in the back by his own party when they rigged the system against him (Sanders with the DNC).

Anyway, I gotta go. You now know that I am not a fan of America or anyone in power here. :P

o/

Let's change Off Topic TNB to just Off Topic. There's nothing in common. :-)

Hi, @user

does any of you know any free vpn's?

yeah i do... make your own

@forest i am about to make an account there :P

and done :P

i am about to turn 15

@PyGamer0 how

@NobodyNeedsNames just make your own \o/

let Rad and eman help you with that :P

ok @RadvylfPrograms @emanresuA help!

Abbr.s sould smug

what is unusual about the picture? seriously?

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