Asklemmy

Chocolate production is infested with slave labor, child labor and child slave labor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwHMDjc7qJ8

The cost of digital advertising cannot be justified by its effectiveness (or rather lack there of). We've collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars creating the infrastructure for invasive hyper targeted ads that do not get better results than simple billboards and terrestrial TV ads even now. We've created a global economy of marketing, media, advertising and sales solely reliant on technofeudalist overlords who've provided very little actual improvement of anything.

The world is littered with fake empty buildings used to obscure phone line junctions and internet provider stuff.

Almost every neighbourhood has one. But they look like normal houses, so you can never tell unless you know where to look for.

Most of hacking is done by mass effort with maybe a couple percent of people that aren't doing basic things to protect themselves being affected. That couple of percent is enough to keep the hackers flush. (So please, follow basic cybersecurity steps, people.)

The plain truth of the matter, though, is that if a hacker or group of hackers is targeting someone individually for reasons, that person is in real trouble.

This has been a PSA for everyone chasing fame and clout.

Many game companies specifically target vulnerable people, who end up spending their entire pay check every month, and are called Whales.

Most problems are being solved by turning it off and on again.

The quality of education at college and university is in free fall.

Building HVAC engineering (equipment sizing, ducting design, etc.) has been largely handwavy bullshit for a very long time and only recently has moved towards any sort of precision. Not uncommon to find boiler plants that are 3-4 times the maximum heating load in the winter, or fans running at 100% 24/7 when code only requires half of that.

Costs just get passed on to tenants so there was never much motivation to do better, the only reason building owners are moving now is because of government regulation and incentive programs.

A whole bunch of welds in nuclear reactors are visually inspected using cameras duct taped onto the end of incredibly long poles which also get duct taped together. This would be the inside of BWR plants near the fuel and jet pumps. There is also an "art" to moving the cameras and poles around to get the shots you need. And if you get stuck the talented people know how to get you unstuck. There are also cameras just duct taped to ropes that the camera handler "swims" to certain spots.

Don't get me wrong, we have cool ultrasonic inspecting robots as well, but I was absolutely blown away by what visual inspection looked like in practice.

PS: The high dose fields make the camera look like it is being blasted with colorful confetti because of the high energy particles bombarding the camera module.

~Things people don’t want to know~

Putting a layer of tissue between your butt and the toilet seat doesnt provide enough of a barrier against microorganisms over the time it takes to shit or piss to prevent transmission.

Keeping the air dry reduces both the length of time microorganisms can live outside your body and the length of time that vapor particles can harbor them.

The n95 (and other) rating(s) are over time in free, circulating, open air. Derate safe exposure time sharply for use inside or in spaces with stagnant or unmoving air.

75% of American drinking water needs treatment to reduce particulate and parasites, and the treatment additive used to render the water safe is produced at a single chemical plant located in an area of severe flood risk -- which means that a flood could take it offline for a day or two, or damage it for weeks.

(Efforts to build a second site recently fell through due to ever-changing regulations. Of course they're stockpiling it in some mountain bunker, I'm sure)

The next Katrina could give us a brain-worms infestation via tap-water.

I want to comment here so bad but given that I am one of two people that know and one of maybe a dozen that suspect, it would definitely violate multiple NDAs.

ProTip: Invest in off-grid solutions for your home.

With the exception of at large buildings in dense city centers, just about everywhere else, utilities enter a building at just some point on the back, out in the open. This includes utilities that feed alarms and security cameras.

While some places will have systems in place for situations where these outside connections have been severed, like independently operated cameras on an intranet, cellular data backup for alarms, electrical generators, etc., most places don't, so successfully circumventing their security is just a matter of cutting all the cables on the back of their building at the same time, and then being gone before they notice

The NYPD does not internally call itself a "police force", its always "paramilitary organization" or similar.

Nice try FBI

the oh so well kept secret of the software and services (surrounding it) industry that people seem to think is worth paying money for.

Yet time after time these paid software companies produce the most vile awful, dysfunctional, and garbage software (and services) that have ever been created. While somehow a group of people who aren't being paid, and aren't doing this for any sort of reason other than "why not" manage to create the most functional software ever, while also managing to somehow catch the single biggest potential software vulnerability in this decade (other than wannacry) purely because ssh has slightly sus behaviors when running the infected payload.

Please stop doing web dev, it isn't real.

Systemd was built by a guy who wanted to work at Microsoft with the help of someone berated more than once for an inability to work with others and generate decent kernel code. These are your gods

Not exactly secret, but not very well-known. In many states your credit score can be used as a factor in determining the cost of auto insurance for you. Lower credit scores can equal higher premiums.

Dog groomers get almost zero legal repercussions for mistreating dogs. It has to be undeniable that the groomer injured the dog on purpose before anything really happens. That's why it's SO important to trust the person grooming your dog if they're the type of breed that needs it.

Governments don't pay consultants to do work, but to leave when the work is done.

ITT: things that people may not be aware, but aren't exactly secrets.