I should probably try what the O.P. did as I also have an ASUS router with Merlin. However, in my case, I have a Synology NAS and I set up VPN on that and use that server as my VPN. I have a certificate-based sign-in through a single port on the router.

I use a Public VPN service when I’m out and about and then connect to my VPN when I need to do stuff on my network, Like syncing my Joplin notes.

I see. From what you wrote, it sounds like you’re saying I need to be a revolutionary and go out and fuck with people. I’m not ready to do that on my own.

Further, I don’t have a strong social network of support. Anything I would do would be a lone wolf operation. And I don’t have the training or experience for it. Lone Wolf operations fail and do not change the world.

Plus I have a child who’s not old enough to live in the world on his own. I am not going to take away the support he needs by throwing my life away.

Dealing with a surveillance state like the United States of America requires a whole lot more finesse and sophistication than you seem to think is necessary.

If you’re paying them, why do they need to know your location to accept it? We’re in a capitalist system. Money is money.

Always on although my Phone VPN recently has failed to start up automatically or has shut down randomly lately and I got to get that fixed.

My reasons are just privacy. I’m not using it to get around regional restrictions. Additionally, it helps when I want to use a public Wi-Fi, especially if it doesn’t have any passports on it.

I will not connect to public wifi without VPN.

you mean like elecing progressives, being vocal in my town? well, duh. does not change the fact that the current federal government is actually suportive of the surveillance and is more likely to harass protesters than listen to them.

I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I was referring to the current situation with our government when I said no one will stop them. I assure you I am working to elect their replacements. Even then, if they get total control of Congress, there will still be two years before they can get control of the executive.

Once they have that, it will be several years before they clean out the operators behind all of This crap.

We are fighting the flock surveillance. I am not exhibiting defeatism. I am exhibiting resignation. It is a fact that with the powers that are currently in control, nobody is going to do anything. In fact, they are Increasingly helping it to get worse.

they don’t even care about PR anymore, do they?

they and the other large corporations know nobody will stop them, and anybody who needs to fly has no recourse. ethics? that’s for us, not them.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody.

How do we thrive?

Accept that change happens. Be equal parts curious and critical about the new stuff.

That is not the solution. One cannot thrive if one cannot be seen or has been discarded as a relic no matter how up to date that person is. They will never be granted the opportunity to thrive as they have before as an employee. Their only hope to thrive is if they (magically) gain all the skills and networks necessary to be an entrepreneur that can do it all themselves. Nearly a unicorn.

Meantime while trying, they burn through what savings they have on the hope and dream of “being relevant again” and have about a 5% chance of success.

Maybe the author is misunderstanding the gist of the original article. Regardless, he raises an obviously accurate assessment of those who hold the hiring power. When I was recently out of college learning my craft, it was a common sarcastic refrain of either, “What could be so hard about it, it’s all 1’s and 0’s” or “What’s taking so long - you’re just typing on a keyboard”.

This has been a problem since long before I graduated from college (when classifieds called for 10 years experience on an IBM system that was released two years ago) (see, things don’t change so much - names and places, sure, but not much else). People who are in leadership positions, who think they’re better and smarter than most everybody else, frequently belittle those who do the grunt work, both physical and mental. It’s gotta be a corollary to dunning-kruger theory (or maybe an example of it).

Oh, they “come home to roost” almost immediately - you just don’t see it because whole teams are doing everything they can to hide it or ignore it - nightly manual data update statements, etc… Here’s just one real example.

In my last (read: final) job as a senior software engineer, I discovered dozens of serious problems with the system I was assigned to “maintain”. They ignored all of them - wouldn’t let me fix anything. Meanwhile I was responsible to solve production problems on the daily (duplicate data, insert failures, performance slow-downs, etc).

It wasn’t long before the fact those problems weren’t going away that they became problems I “caused”. Meanwhile, all the fixes I wanted to make were ignored. I had one problem I dissected and and gave my boss a brief write-up of the scenario. He told me I needed to do deeper analysis. When I came back a few hours later with a considerably more detailed explanation, he didn’t read it and complained of a “wall of text”, which he literally told me to write. Then he created a random-number hack to “fix” the problem.

They did not grasp the concept of data normalization and primary keys as they had one particular table that represented two levels of detail (for example, account -> order). They put both in one table and had a code based special update to the “account” number so they would not get a PK violation rather than just fix the data structure.

They had as single database connection open all the time to handle all inserts in a singleton service, then launched as second one on the same database to process messages faster - and couldn’t understand why it didn’t double performance.

The main routine had a cyclomatic complexity of 360! I shit you not! And everybody agreed it was “95% working” even as we continued manually fixing (the same) problems daily.

Week after week, the customer (internal) would raise more data issues as “new” problems. I’d routinely ask two to three questions about the data set and explain that’s the same problem that’s been going on for six months, and if we could just get my PR reviewed, we can test it and deploy it.

All these problems were in a single service.

I was let go not long after the 1 month probation they soon initiated and told I was not performing at the level of a senior developer.

This is how delusional these people are. They refuse to acknowledge their flaws even after hiring someone specifically to solve them. They blithely call their monstrosities “successful” while committing many staff to late nights and weekends “managing” it.

Haven’t read this story, just some of the comments. I’m guessing this is similar to the story I read a decade or two ago about the boy (in China) they discovered who could see in the dark like cats.

Isn’t this how the 3rd Terminator movie started? Software going haywire all over the place?

Well, for me, when this comes to the U.S.A., that’s when I stop using the technology unless I get my hands on pirated software and alternate hardware.

I’m quite capable of walking away from all this. Heck, I swore off video games for 20 years because World of Warcrack was eating my life, so I have receipts.

I recently commented somewhere here on Lemmy that our technology idiots keep reading classic science fiction and fail to grasp that much of it is warning about the horrific effects or uses of the technology. These people are so devoid of human decency and compassion that they think those horrors are the goal. Hell, it’s pretty clear to me that Elon Musk read some Cyberpunk and decided this was a future he wanted to create. Right down to the neuro-chips.

Since you mention Neal Stephenson, I feel compelled to add that Cryptonomicon was about the creation of Bitcoin, a decade before someone created Bitcoin. It’s a dense read, but absolutely amazing.

It’s sad when citizens have to actually bring physical proof of just how angry they are. Good leadership should see that their people aren’t with them well before guillotines and nooses start showing up to the public meetings.

Use AI, learn the methods, tools, uses. Then keep working through the process yourself like you do now with AI as a partner who sometimes flakes out.

Remind yourself of the tenents of critical thinking regularly. Never just accept what AI tells you. seek proof behind the answers. Think through those answers to ensure you understand the logic behind them.

Fight complacency.

We can’t ignore this. We need to know how it is done if we want to earn salaries. Reality rarely makes a dent in the corporate herd until years later.

By then, careers are obliterated.

There are ways to protect your mind in the meantime.