the free market at work

Sure Jan.

Whatever you do, and whoever you end up working with, document document document. Take notes.

And I mean on paper, in a notebook, something that can’t crash or get accidentally deleted and doesn’t require electricity to operate.

You’re doing this for yourself, not for a boss, which means you can take the time to keep track of the details. This will be especially important for ongoing maintenance.

Write down a list of things you imagine having on your network, then classify them as essential vs. desired (needs and wants), then prioritize them.

As you buy hardware, write down the name, model and serial number and the price (so that you can list it on your renter’s/homeowner’s insurance). As you set up the devices, also add the MAC and assigned IP address(es) to each device description, and also list the specific services that are running on that device. If you buy something new that comes with a support contract, write down the information for that.

Draw a network diagram (it doesn’t have to be complicated or super professional, but visualizing the layout and connections between things is very helpful)

When you set up a service, write down what it’s for and what clients will have access to it. Write down the reference(s) you used. And then write down the login details. I don’t care what advice you’ve heard about writing down passwords, just do it in the notebook so that you can get back into the services you’ve set up. Six months from now when you need to log in to that background service to update the software you will have forgotten the password. If a person you don’t trust has physical access to your home network notebook, you have a much more serious problem than worrying about your router password.

Because they want step-by-step guidance and support, and design help, and long-term support, not just a few questions answered.

This is a job. The kind of work that IT consultants get paid for. A fair rate would be US$100/hr, minimum, for an independent contractor.

How is America relevant to OP?

obvious whataboutism is obvious

You can just use openssl to generate x509 certificates locally. If you only need to do this for a few local connections, the simplest thing to do is create them manually and then manually place them in the certificate stores for the services that need them. You might get warnings about self-signed certificates/unrecognized CA, but obviously you know why that’s the case.

This method becomes a problem when:

1. You need to scale - manually transferring certs is fine maybe half a dozen times, after that it gets real tedious and you start to lose track of where they are and why.
2. You need other people to access your encrypted services - self-signed certs won’t work for public access to an HTTPS website because every visitor will get a warning that you’re signing your own encryption certs, and most will avoid it. For friends and family you might be able to convince them that your personal cert is safe, but you’ll have to have that conversation every time.
3. You need to implement expiration - the purpose of cert expiration is to mitigate the damage if the cert private key leaks, which happens a lot with big companies that have public-facing infrastructure and bad internal security practices (looking at you, Microsoft). As an individual, it is still worthwhile to update your certs every so often (e.g. every year) if for no other reason than to remind yourself how your SSL infrastructure is connected. It’s up to you whether or not it’s worth the effort to automate the cert distribution.

I’ve used Letsencrypt to get certs for the proxy, but the traffic between the proxy and the backend is plain HTTP still. Do I need to worry about securing that traffic considering its behind a VPN?

In spite of things you may have read, and the marketing of VPN services, a VPN is NOT a security tool. It is a privacy tool, as long as the encryption key for it is private.

I’m not clear on what you mean by “between the proxy and the backend”. Is this referring to the VPS side, or your local network side, or both?

Ultimately the question is, do you trust the other devices/services that might have access to the data before it enters the VPN tunnel? Are you certain that nothing else on the server might be able to read your traffic before it goes into the VPN?

If you’re talking about a rented VPS from a public web host, the answer should be no. You have no idea what else might be running on that server, nor do you have control over the hypervisor or the host system.

This looks like either underextrusion causing gaps in the surface, or the filament sticking to the nozzle a little too much and tearing as the nozzle passes over it.

Simple things first:

• check that the extruder clamp screw (that holds the filament against the extruder drive gear) is still tight - it’s possible that the filament is just not being pressed against the extruder drive, allowing it to slip

• is your nozzle clean on the outside? or does it have a clump of plastic buildup on it? if there’s plastic stuck on the outside of the nozzle, the extruded plastic may be sticking to it and tearing

• is this a filament that you’ve used on this printer before? have you done a temperature tower? have you done a flow rate calibration?

• do you have more pictures of your test prints? other angles?

Don’t worry, nothing will change, it will still be Obama’s fault somehow.

Oh right… need to hire someone to go to the bar for me…

I mean… do you expect the results of these calls to be… good?

'Cause like, if your standards for the outcome of these calls aren’t too high, then just go down to the nearest bar and buy some half-drunk guy another round to make the call for you.

On the bright side, you probably won’t be obligated to call that person again!

Sure, then you get outbid by another contractor who is willing to cut corners.

Uyghurs in China are being rounded up and forced into labor camps

I think this set of photos of one of the camps in Xinjiang is particularly illustrative:

This isn’t some short-term persecution for the sake of political influence, it’s not the whim of a few local officials, and it’s not just basic racism. This is a systemic problem, not just with the government but with Chinese culture broadly. Uyghurs are seen as inferior, and therefore it is acceptable to use them as labor or worse. What’s being done to these people is akin to the African slave trade of the 1800s, it’s just being done mostly within China’s borders. It is exploitation at an industrial scale plotted by the highest levels of political power and executed ruthlessly.

To change this would require forcing large portions of the Chinese population to see the Uyghurs as equals, as fellow humans with a right to self-determination, and then act on that conviction to change the government.

With China being a nuclear country, military intervention is out of the question.

Yeah, pretty much. Even a non-nuclear conflict at any level that would affect regime change would be devastating.

So the only option left is political

Even if the entirety of the UN got together and unanimously condemned the PRC for the treatment of Uyghurs, I doubt they would care. China is about as likely to change domestic policy based on external political pressure as they are to collectively tap-dance to the moon.

and economical pressure and sanctions.

Effective economic pressure requires a position of economic superiority. China is the second largest economy in the world, which means they are inextricably intertwined with the largest economy (the US) and so nobody has that position.

Long term, I believe we can get our balls out of their death grip, and then sanction them properly.

I doubt it. The situation is not just a death grip… China is the second largest economy in the world. In order to effectively sanction another nation you have to be in a position of economic superiority, such that you can affect the trading decisions of other nations. Even if western nations could extricate their manufacturing needs from China, they would still be dependent on raw materials trade. There just isn’t a way to cut trading ties with China, short of a broad collapse of international trade… and then, well, a lot of people die.

If there are still any Uyghurs left by then…

This is the part that feels so wrong. Choosing to not do anything about this terrible thing that we know is happening seems self-interested. I feel that at some point in the future the descendants of the Uyghurs will look at the world and ask, “Why didn’t you do anything to help us?”, and what could be our answer then?

But… doing something in practice would mean so many deaths, and so much suffering before the conflict was resolved, and more suffering after while trying to pick up the pieces.

I disagree… beyond just saying shit, the actual biggest problem is that no one (west, east, whatever) can do shit because that would basically require direct military intervention… which would probably have a much higher human cost.

At what point is the cost of negligence too high? At what point is it ethically valid to commit the lives of troops from your country to change the behavior of a government of another country within its own borders?

Historically, the answer is never. No country will commit its own military in this way without an initial military provocation, except when using the human rights abuses as a pretext for territorial acquisition.

It’s still important to talk about the truth of these atrocities, to not let their perpetrators pretend they’re not happening. But… the reality of this will not change without regime change in the PRC.

What if there are other things wired to those switches?

I tend to agree with this line of thinking. If you’re trying to hire an effective problem solver, well the first step to solving any problem is understanding the problem - the whole problem - and often more importantly the context in which the problem exists.

And while my first reaction is to be frustrated with the person asking for a solution to such a vague problem… in the real world problems are rarely clearly stated, and frequently misstated. Investigating the apparent conditions of the problem is always necessary, and generally the fastest path to resolution.

Based on the provided information, there are some switches of unspecified type in one room and a light bulb of unspecified type in another room. There is no power source, nor do we know if there is even wiring between the switches and the bulb. For all we know, the switches and the bulb are still in their product packaging waiting to be installed by an electrician.

The bulb is not controlled by any of the switches in any meaningful manner.

Also, per the problem specification, I am allowed to visit the room with the light bulb only once. I am not allowed to visit the room with the switches, or operate the switches.

The comment in the original image is the most rational possible answer to such an exercise. Poorly stated problems are a waste of time.

*Edit: You know what, scratch all that, none of it really matters.

I’m not messing with an unknown electrical circuit without seeing the circuit diagram and verifying any relevant lockout/tagout. People die from that shit.

This assumes several things to be true, which might not be true:

• power is available/the upstream circuit is on (always a bad assumption to make)
• the bulb is an incandescent type that will generate an appreciable amount of heat in a short amount of time
• the bulb was in the off state before you changed the position of any switches, and has been off long enough to be cold
• the bulb is connected to any of the switches
• the bulb is connected to only one of the switches (parallel circuits are a thing, as are multi-switch lighting circuits)

If any of the above is not true, the conclusion is invalid.