Maybe a new version of the directory harvest attack[0]?

For example, if someone has an email address (or list of email addresses) from somewhere else, one can easily tell if you (or they) have a Facebook account by simply requesting a password reset against it (them). If there's no throttling on password reset requests, one could process a large list rather quickly.

[0] - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/recipient-filterin...

There's also the verisimilitude that it can also mean an inferred ceiling. For example, Principal Engineer role[s] at Microsoft is [are] typically the highest that you can go - if you stick to the IC (read: non-managerial) track[s].

If you're into privacy-conscious search engines and want one that's not susceptible to blanket FISA warrants[0], check out either Qwant[1] or SwissCows[2].

[0] - DuckDuckGo's address is in Pennsylvania - 20 Paoli Pike, Paoli, PA 19301.

[1] - https://www.qwant.com

[2] - https://swisscows.ch/

[0] - https://www.oddee.com/item_98735.aspx

"Windows port work is underway, but is not yet working. The difficulties are in figuring out the set of system library APIs to intercept, in getting the memory management and dirty memory parts of the rewind infrastructure to work, and in handling the different graphics and IPC pathways on different platforms."

In fact, their documentation makes a specific call-out to TTT (Time-Travel Debugging) on Windows; so, I suspect that this is the API that they would like to use but are unable to do so at present (presumably because many of the features are still lacking in the API, which Microsoft could - and most probably would - enable).

[0] - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/We...

The war against profanity is strictly a Puritan, I mean American, thing.

In most sensible countries in Europe (read: those still not devoutly religious), profanity on the "state-run" TV stations is a normative part of life (e.g.: "helvete" or "fan" in Swedish - https://youtu.be/4ofbqaLiPe4).

Also, why do they use the term emphatically in the title of the article and then state, "...presumably removing toxins associated with Alzheimer's, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science." That comes across as, "We don't actually know what this is doing but we're going to take a guess and just run with it."

In fact, from the abstract of the paper itself, "Sleep is also associated with increased interstitial fluid volume and clearance of metabolic waste products. It is unknown why these processes co-occur and how they are related."

I don't understand how metabolic waste products automatically equates to "Alzheimer's toxins" nor how they're reaching these conclusions if they don't understand their coincidence - whether accidental or intentional.

Can anyone help a stranger on the internets and connect these dots? =]

I think, maybe, you're mistaking the community that forms around religion (e.g.: churches, friendships, church groups, etc.) for religion, itself.

If the argument were that lack of religion is a precursor to increasing suicide rates, then we in Europe should be killing ourselves off in droves because we're the least religious lot (compared to our North American counterparts).

I think it's actually the fact that the war on opioids has translated into a war on prescription pain drugs, in general.

So, when you're a chronic pain sufferer and have gone without and you get ahold of something - anything - to remediate the pain, you're far more likely to take a little extra just to get the pain to STFU for a while so you can do things like sleep through the night for the first time in seemingly forever.

I've heard tales of American veterans (through the VA) being referred to things like yoga to manage their chronic pain, when it's entirely due to neurological damage and things like yoga will do fuck-all to help with that.

Is it any wonder then that people might be more liable to OD when they obtain something to try to manage the pain that otherwise never ceases?

I'd say it is a fundamental issue in American society (the war on opioids translating into no pain management medications whatsoever) with callous indifference - rather than anything else.

I think you missed a vital reason and that is portability and sharability. No one needs to install anything special to read or edit a text file.

It's the digital equivalent of paper and pen when you think about it and that makes it a popular platform for everyone to be able to consume it.

Plus, back when we were all old and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the text file was the lightest/smallest way to transfer data (read: ideas) between computers.

The practice/behaviour saturated the industry so much that many readmes of today are still on text files.

Maybe there's a correlation to the real world, where we're definitely more apt to consume mediums that don't have superfluous data points than the words/ideas that they're meant to convey? Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass?

Either way, plain-text resources are the easiest to create, share, and consume because there's almost a universality in the standard for text files (except the EOL and CRLF but that's more of an inconvenience than anything).

A proven deterrent? Do you have any facts to back-up your posit? The crime and recidivism rates would seem to indicate the contrary; especially, in the states.

Essentially, we should - in theory - have no crime by now (given it's been over a millennium) as all rates should've diminished to zero, yeah?

At best, punishment as a deterrent is keeping the for-profit prison-industrial complex in business and that's about the extent of any benefit[s] (if it can even be called that) it might be providing to society.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon

The OC's point was by default, meaning/inferring clear-text is still the modus operandi for generally getting onto IRC services.

>Many applications still aren't encrypted by default, like IRC.

SSL and SASL aren't, precisely, user-friendly implementations with some clients (e.g.: IRSSI[0] - but if you're using IRSSI, you don't want a user-friendly GUI to begin with, so...).

SASL has less to do with the actual encryption mechanism and more to do with the authentication mechanism (think NTLM)[1].

If IRC services dropped clear-text, today, that would go a lot further to standardising (e.g.: making default) encryption but, back to the OC's original point, it is not the default today.

[0] - https://freenode.net/kb/answer/irssi

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Authentication_and_Secu...

This exists everywhere, though, so Sweden's personnummer isn't exactly unique in this case.

For a small subset of examples, take Norway's fødselsnummer[0] or Iceland's identification numbers[1] or Ireland's PPS number[2].

[0] - https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%B8dselsnummer

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_identification_numbe...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Public_Service_Number

This seems to be on the micromanaging level of things. If you have to operate at this level, you're trying to "control" the all of the elements of the team dynamics, instead of letting the dynamics work for you.

A team is a team because it operates together. It isn't just about the manager-employee relationship.

>Give specific expectations and behaviors that you want the employee to execute. Don’t be vague or use words like, “better” or “more”. Be specific by saying, “You need to complete all stories within 25% of your estimates this month.”

This seems a bit metric-driven and metrics with a distribution of disproportionate work is going to drive bad culture and bad habits. The low-hanging fruit will drive metrics high for one individual and, if they're gaming the system, it will be obvious; but if it's all down to metrics, they're getting the job done, right?