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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • I used to have a TCL soundbar.

    In addition to being extremely mediocre, it promised to integrate with my WiFi so that music could be airplayed through it. After adding it to my WiFi, it still broadcast the open ‘setup’ WiFi network.

    If you joined the setup network, you could SSH into the soundbar as root without a password and dump the dhcp.conf file, which would give anyone access to my home WiFi network. Other TCL models also allowed for root via SSH, but used 12345678 as the password. A skilled hacker could just bot these via wardriving and turn them into network listeners.

    It may have still broadcast the setup network because I blocked the device from accessing the internet. I only ever went poking around on it because I noticed that the setup network kept getting set to the same channels as my home network and it was causing interference. I eventually just factory reset the device so it had no information on it at all.
    After the umpteenth time of not being found by my TV, a hard reset killed it. Just got stuck booting and never recovered.

    Anyway - crap brand. Sad day for Sony TV fans.


  • Having just read a comment about someone who actually went through the process of having a kid by employing stuff like cycle and fertility tracking, scheduling both sex and abstinence, as well as other not-fun stuff, your comment made me think of taking the kink to an extreme, where instead of lots of rambunctious boning, it was a couple nerds doing intense and fruitless science to find the optimal way to impregnate someone that was impossible to impregnate. (Unless they start looking at the mating habits of bedbugs, but that’s a third, separate, entirely unhinged thing.)

    I mean, I’m pretty sure I know which interpretation you meant. But brains are weird and I’m sleep deprived.


  • As someone who isn’t going to have kids and doesn’t want them, I still get the growing old alone concern.

    It’s not that I would have wanted children to take care of me, but that I don’t trust the social safety system in the U.S.
    Even if things are going well, it’s still a terrifying proposition. My first job ever was as a dietary aid at a mid-level retirement home, and while some of the people there were thriving (namely the folks who somehow managed to go into the home with their partners), the majority were a study of what happens when the ability to live exceeds the will. It was a formative experience.

    That’s why I’m in therapy and desperately scared that between neurodivergence and trauma, that I’m not going to be one of those really social old people with friends everywhere that care for them and keep them company. Although I think it’s not a given that kids will automatically be there for you as you age, I can see the appeal of doing what you can to hedge your bets. It’s a terrifying world out there, and we only have each other.