Nogero Trail

Nogero Trail

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It’s no secret that Oregon is not doing the best right now. It currently has one of the worst performing school systems in the country (despite decades of plenty of funding they are looking to close up to 14 schools due to funding mismanagement and declining population). Oregon is now near the top in the country in unemployment rates. Add to this the livability problems of some of the highest rates of mental illness, homelessness, a failed legalization policy of drug use that turned parts of downtown into an open air drug dens that has resulted in massive spike in homelessness, deaths, and crime. Oh – and don’t mind the 2nd highest tax rate in the country.

So, maybe it’s time to leave – like a lot of their most important workers are doing.

Enter cracker_barrel_69 who created Nogero Trail – the Oregon trail backwards to Missouri. You load up at an REI garage sale of used equipment, and then maybe get robbed before you even leave town (car breakins are a pandemic in Portland). Perfect.

Hahaha this is amazing. 80% of my stuff got stolen while I was trying to load it up at REI

WE SURVIVED THE NOGERO TRAIL! We bought a big house for a fraction of the price in Missouri. That was fun thank you!

Microsoft’s uses almost 20% of an 8gb system’s ram – for a ad-bloated weather app

Microsoft’s uses almost 20% of an 8gb system’s ram – for a ad-bloated weather app

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The Weather app in macOS consumes five times less memory and isn’t riddled with ads, Windows 11’s app can sometimes reach 1.6GB of usage.

Memory prices are astronomical. Sales of new PC’s are down because people cannot afford systems configured with 32gb or 64gb of ram. Microsoft has been trying to say you can run Windows on systems as low as 8gb, but when your ad-chocked weather app uses up 20% of your system ram, it’s hard to believe any of their claims.

Ransomware targets the decisionmakers

Ransomware targets the decisionmakers

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More data on ransomware attacks. This time from Zscaler/ThreatLabz which tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations hit by one ransomware campaign over the course of a month:

The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors.

Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first. Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company’s response.

“The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns,” the security outfit wrote. “Rather than targeting executives directly, attackers are increasingly focusing on managers and other key personnel with the authority or influence to accelerate payment decisions.”

Everything is now open source

Everything is now open source

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With the advent of (admittedly mediocre quality) reverse engineered apps via claude coding and tools like Reverse Engineer Anything , you can now create your own version of anything – and people are.

The implications of this are pretty astounding. Is SAS completely dead? What does security look like when everyone makes their own apps? What if we don’t even buy or make traditional apps anymore – but generate whatever software we need on the fly?

Claude makes Lego sets for anything

Claude makes Lego sets for anything

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Describe a model or drop in a photo, and Claude designs it in bricks where every piece is actually connected, then you get the full step-by-step manual.

It was able to design a 2,874-piece called Canal Clock Square that takes 487 steps across 498 pages, with 15,880 stud joints.

Rixels – Vector method that reduces texture footprints by 98%

Rixels – Vector method that reduces texture footprints by 98%

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4J Studios has debuted a technology called Rixels which replaces normal texture maps. Instead of individual pixels, each contain one of 23 vector shapes. A standard 512×512 texture in 4J’s Minecraft-like game Reforj required 4MB of memory. But with Rixels, the same sized grid can be made from 20×20 squares, using only 72KB of memory – a reduction of over 98%.

It works best for stylized rendering that must have massive scale.