I'd like to make a case for modern hair pieces / hair prosthesis (colloquially known in the black community as man-weaves), which have seen huge improvements in function and aesthetics over the past couple of decades. Combined with a skilled stylist, the results are jaw-dropping.
I'll leave these 2 videos here to demonstrate what I'm talking about:
This reminded me of a steganography blog post I wrote back when I was doing computer security.
It should be possible to binarily concatenate compressed (RAR'd or ZIP'd) text data directly to a JPG.
Then you can save it as an image on the client, or uncompress it in the client browser and read the data.
The differences are 1) the saved image won't look like random pixels-- it'll look like whatever base image you choose and 2) you don't have to worry about writing the encoding/decoding data as bitmap stuff.
Southern Virginia here. Stinkbugs are EVERYWHERE right now (and have been for the past few years around the end of the summer and into fall).
As I read the headline for this post I saw one slowly meandering up my wall. I also began to think about the possibility of this being done intentionally...
You see, the brown marmorated stinkbugs we have are native to asia. They have no natural predators except for a tiny small wasp that parasticies their eggs (also native to asia).
When I was researching them, I thought "What if China intentionally introduced them to the USA as some sort of ecological attack?" That would be some next-level warfare. Or just a really mean prank.
And then this impending laternfly invasion re-piqued my interest in this theory. It turns out that a similar type of parasitic wasp is the natural predator for laternflys too...
Could this really be a coincidence? Could it be a response to the new tariffs? What if they offer to sell us some bio-engineered wasps (a la Monsanto ) to help control our infestations? But the wasps die after a generation, so we have to constantly buy then...
Of course it could still all be coincidence, but it's fun to think about.
Sounds like we just need to import some Chinese wasps to eat all of the stinkbugs, then needlesnakes to eat the wasps, then needlesnake-eating gorillas of course... and in the winter the gorillas will simply freeze to death! Easy.
Accidentally shipping species around is such an inevitable result of global trade that it doesn’t seem very useful to try to hang it on malice.
Also, as the article points out, you can’t just import the pest’s predator because you may find out that predator much prefers your other species to the one you want to eradicate.
Not that I take it seriously, but, following the path of this wild speculation/paranoid thinking: what if the end goal is not to harm the US, but to give the US the problem in order to see what kinds of solutions (if any) US problem solvers invent?
Personally, the 'free tiers' offered by the big PAAS and cloud providers are good enough for small projects and MVPs-- can't beat free. If and when extra resources are needed, it's usually easier to just start paying at that point rather than to switch platforms entirely.
Free tiers are are extremely effective (albeit crafty) in a "the-first-one-is-on-the-house" kinda way.
I often hear or read about how there is a developer/software engineer shortage. And the rising salaries seem to reflect that-- supply and demand and all that...
Yet it seems that there are hundreds of applicants vying for each position.
How is this possible? Are there really that many lesser-skilled people trying to finagle their way in as software developers? Is the shortage one of _skilled_ engineers, while the deluge of applicants is a result of posers and imposters trying to get a slice of the pie?
The fact that China's government moves so decisively in areas of technological advancement may have to do with the fact that many of their government officials have degrees in engineering, science, math, etc.
With so many of the Chinese officials having technical degrees, I can't help but wonder if the United States government could benefit from technocrats in Washington.
Technocrats lack the skill set to win elections where everyone lies outrageously.
If they had such skills, they would be common American politicians. One if the few benefits of China's collectivism is all the politicians have to share the same reality, even adjusted by party propaganda. It allows technocrats to operate effectively since they do not need to compete with outrageous liars.
Is it about lying outrageously? I grant that occurs in high-profile and memorable cases, but is the average race for the house or a local seat corrupted by outrageous lies? It just seems sensible and historically continuous that those who study the law (lawyers) end up being the ones who most frequently write the law. I am 100% for more STEM and humanities-oriented law-makers, however I'm arguing technocrats lack specific knowledge of laws, not of lying.
Do you genuinely believe that when many laws are written by interest groups and past with little modification?
And yes, the average race us corrupted by outrageous lies. I have literally never seen an election at any level that lacked outrageous lies by at least one of the candidates.
Bonus points for landing government contracts if you can fit into one of the underrepresented/minority/disadvantaged group or small business categories.
There's basically a quota that some percentage of contracts must be awarded to those groups.
-Make sure you qualify as a “small business” under SBA regulations
-Make sure you have the necessary accounts (DUNS number & CAGE code) to accept Purchase Orders and be awarded a government contract.
https://www.sam.gov/portal/SAM/#1#1
-For instances in which the agency may pay you via credit card, make sure that you have some way of accepting credit card payments that does NOT use a third-party intermediary like PayPal.
This is one of the reasons why you will see Alaska native corporations winning US DoD/fedbizopps contracts. They essentially act as a GC and then implement the project using eight different specialized subcontractors for all of the unique tasks.
I'll leave these 2 videos here to demonstrate what I'm talking about:
before/afters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIRuZFLDHP0
stylists perspective and more information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Ik8eah5Vw