Favorite would be a highly customized zsh.

fizsh (not fish) is what I actually end up using, as I can’t be bothered to copy that config around and retune it for each machine. Gives me the syntactic sugar of zsh with common default options on by default, an OK default prompt, and doesn’t break POSIX assumptions like fish. Also Installs quickly from the package manager without needing to run through the zsh setup each time - unlike oh-my-zsh. And if I still need customization, all the zsh options are still there.

No - it was the language that I said was transphobic, not the author. Given that there were two different word choices (“transsexual” and “perceived gender”) that reinforced each other, it seems more likely than not that they reflected the mindset of the author, but not having looked further for their other writings I was not sure. That’s why I said " transphobic language" and not “transphobic author”.

More, but there’s an even simpler solution. In the context, the author is distinguishing between “sex assigned at birth” and “perceived gender.” The equivocating word " perceived" could simply be dropped with no loss of clarity.

There’s nothing wrong with the example in and of itself, but the word “transsexual” in place of “transgender” is not generally random. It is explicitly chosen by Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) as well as by right-wing transphobes as a dog whistle to conflate gender dysphoria with drag queens and cross-dess fetishists so as to delegitimise transpeople and suggest some sort of sexual deviance. Coupled with the equivocation of “perceived” gender, motive doesn’t even have to come into it. The words themselves and the concepts they reinforce are transphobic and harmful.

A witch hunt would have been for me to say that the author is a transphobic asshole whose writings need to be wiped from the internet - which is very far from what I actually posted, which was regret for the way the language they chose distracted from the flow of their argument by reinforcing the social stigmatization of trans people. (Edit: That was a deliberate choice on my part. Not knowing enough about the author to be sure of motives and having no desire to deep dive into their history, I decided that it was only appropriate to point out the hurtful nature of the language and not imply motive.)

A well argued point. Could have done without the random transphobic comments about “transsexuals” and “perceived gender”.

Good point. That was in the “static IP” category and not counted in the 200+ million install “malicious code” category, though. It could be a warning sign of false positives, but the example was such a small snippet it could also be opening after a VPN is established. That example was supposedly part of code that opens a connection for shell access from the other end, but without more details it’s not really possible to say.

The researchers are releasing the scanning tool they created for people to be able to run against their own installs.

Except their summary is wrong. The researchers went on to search other extensions for known malicious code, and found it in thousands of extensions with tens of millions of total installs.

Depends on the cat. Surely true for a bonded pair like this, but I had one cat who for the remaining ~10 years of her life never got past the grudging acceptance stage when we adopted a second, then a third. That second cat reacted similarly when another cat joined the household years later.

Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet - who is the company’s HIPAA “Compliance Officer”? If it’s anyone other than your boss, you could document the situation to them in an e-mail. If you want to be slick about it, ask them if there is “still any compliance need to keep the replacement machine ready or if it would be OK to repurpose it, given [your boss’s name here]'s decision not to move forward with the upgrade.” They’re on the hook for compliance violations, so they’ll likely see to it.

I would also suggest making a habit from now on of documenting verbal conversations that result in actionable decisions in short e-mails to the other party: " To recap our discussion, [bullet point list]"

You can excuse this as being for your own reference so you don’t forget any to-do items or so that they can correct any misunderstanding on your part, but it makes for a fantastic CYA if that ever becomes necessary. For really important items likely to bite someone later, print a paper copy if you don’t fully own and control the machine AND the e-mail local archive. Only bring those out if absolutely necessary, as in when SOMEBODY will be fired or you’re about to be legally scapegoated. They’ll save your butt once, but it will probably be time to start looking for another job because the boss will think either that you should have pushed harder earlier to fix the issue or be worried about their inability to scapegoat you in the future.

Of course, that assumes lack of regulatory capture, a regulatory agency interested in effective enforcement, enough funding to do that enforcement, and effective protections for whistleblowing when employers threaten to fire employees who don’t report high enough tips even when they don’t receive them.

The US don’t have more than one of these (I don’t know the situation on regulatory capture, so I’m giving benefit of the doubt there).

And not subject to compliance based retention standards

Yes. Personally I can’t stand guided meditation - it never moves at the right speed. Za-zen, Vipassana, Hwa Tou, mantras, fire gazing, Silent Illumination, and others can be helpful.

The key is to remember that meditation is practice - there’s no end state where you’ve “gotten it right.”

Getting distracted is not failure. Noticing that you’ve become distracted and bringing attention back to your focus is success.

In the US, this is a common question from most psychologists and therapists. On the one hand, insurance companies require a diagnosis code in order to pay for any treatment and the same is true for certain kinds of government assistance. On the other, being diagnosed with a mental health condition considered “serious” can trigger various consequences for employment (especially if it involves security clearances), court (particularly custody battles), and random social consequences from people (especially family) who still believe neurodivergence is something to be ashamed of.

Typically the person asking is trying to find out whether an official diagnosis would be helpful or harmful to you, so they know what to put on the billing or other paperwork without causing more harm than good. This is really better done in a conversation where they explain that than on a form where they don’t, though.