u/Shinubz

i just found out my email has been leaking my ip this whole time. like i thought i was using one of those email security solutions and it turns out it does literally nothing for metadata
been using proton for like a year thinking i was safe and then i read one reddit thread and now im in full panic mode
like what even is the point of these email security solutions if your provider just logs everything anyway
what are you guys actually using?

my health monitor watch has flagged "irregular rhythm detected" twice in the past two weeks. Both times I checked my pulse manually and it felt completely normal.

I've read that wrist-based optical sensors have a high false positive rate, but I'm not sure whether to just ignore it. My HRV has also been dropping randomly on nights where I felt totally fine, which is what made me start paying attention to the health monitor watch data in the first place.

GP appointment is booked but three weeks away. Has anyone had false rhythm flags from their device, or should I be ask for an earlier appointment?

our 9 year old lab mix has been on amantadine for dogs for about six weeks now, vet added it on top of the carprofen he was already taking for his hips, and i dont know if its working or if im just hoping too hard.
we moved to this new house like four months ago and the stairs here are brutal for him. he would just stand at the bottom and look at me. broke my heart every time. vet said his arthritis had gotten worse and threw out amantadine as an option to kind of reset the pain signals or something. so hes maybe a little better? like he attempted the stairs twice this week without me carrying his rear end up. but its hard to tell if thats the meds or the weather getting warmer or just a random good day. the cost is fine actually which surprised me. not the budget destroyer i expected
but i cant figure out if we're supposed to see a clear difference or just a slow gradual thing. i asked the vet and got a very long answer that i also did not fully retain. i think he said 2,3 weeks but its been longer than that and im still not sure
anyone with a senior dog who tried amantadine for dogs know what the timeline actually looked like? did you notice a specific change or was it more like one day you just realized they seemed better

the new iphone update came out and i did what i always do and updated immediately without thinking and now my vpn just refuses to connect?? i rely on it for literally everything, public wifi stresses me out so much and my roommate keeps telling me horror stories about people getting hacked so i've been so good about using it

and it was FINE before the update. like perfectly fine. and now it just spins and spins and then dies. i've tried different servers, deleted and redownloaded the app, restarted my phone like four times. i even googled about it and i still have no answers

someone in another post mentioned the new iphone update sometimes messes with vpn permissions in the settings but i went there and everything looks toggled on?? i don't know what i'm looking at honestly

has anyone else run into this after the new iphone update or does apple just personally hate me???

I've been meaning to do this for a while, and this weekend I finally sat down and ran John the Ripper against a bunch of hashed passwords I'd exported from some old test environments I set up years ago. Thought it was a good way to audit whether my past self had any idea what he was doing
it was humbling. Most of the MD5-hashed ones cracked in under a minute with just a basic wordlist. The bcrypt ones held up much better, which reassured me about my current setup. If you haven't used John the Ripper before, it's honestly one of the most useful tools to understand your own threat model, not just for CTFs or pen testing, but for real self audits.

Weak passwords fall embarrassingly fast, even with modest hardware, salt matters A LOT, unsalted hashes are just begging to be cracked, password managers aren't optional at this point, they're table stakes and if you're still using SHA-1 anywhere, please stop

Running John the Ripper is about understanding exactly how exposed you'd be if someone else ran it on your data. That hit different when I saw my own old passwords popping up in plaintext on screen..

Anyone else done self audits like this? Curious what setups or wordlists people are running with these days

my 6 year old beagle has been squinting a lot lately and the vet mentioned we might need to start using eye drops for dogs to help with what looks like mild dry eye. We got a prescription but I honestly have no idea what I'm doing, every time I try to apply them he turns his head at the last second and I end up getting it on his fur instead of his eye. I've been reading a bit about eye drops for dogs online but most of what I find is either super technical or just trying to sell me something. I'm not sure how often I should be applying them, whether to do it before or after walks, or if there's any trick to getting a wiggly dog to cooperate.

Has anyone dealt with this before? Especially curious if there's a good technique for holding their head still without stressing them out too much. I know I should probably just call the vet again but it's hard to get an appointment quickly and wanted to see if other pet owners have been through the same thing with eye drops for dogs.

Any advice appreciated!

im in the united states and keep getting ads for this thing. been noticing some hair thinning and started looking into it last night instead of going to bed. i'm not sure about the irestore reviews though..

they are all over the place. some people say it helped, others say it did nothing. hard to tell who's being honest.
i dont get whether people are using it by itself or with a bunch of other treatments. are the irestore reviews legit? anyone actually try it and think it was worth the money?

I've been trying to figure out if it's worth buying a home air quality tester or if the consumer ones are basically expensive guesses. We had a stretch of bad wildfire smoke last year and it made me realize I have no real data on what my indoor air is actually like the rest of the time.
Did the research and the market is all over the place. Devices range from $30 IKEA units to $300+ Airthings setups. The cheap ones mostly measure PM2.5 and maybe VOCs with sensors that have questionable accuracy. The expensive ones add CO2, radon, humidity, pressure, and use better sensor packages, but I can't tell if I'm paying for actual precision or just a nicer app.
the VOC numbers specifically confuse me. Every review I've read says VOC sensors on consumer devices are the least reliable readings, and the values can swing wildly based on cooking, cleaning products, even alcohol in the room. So if the VOC number is basically noise, what am I actually getting beyond a particle counter and a CO2 sensor?
For anyone who's actually used an air quality tester at home for more than a few months, did the readings change anything you did (added a purifier, ventilation habits, etc), or did it mostly just give you another number to stress about?

I never see people asking about bunnies in this sub, but i need someone to tell me my bunny isnt dead because im so scared right now
i adopted my mini lop about 3 months ago and 20 minutes ago i walked into my room and she was just LAYING THERE on her side with her eyes OPEN and not moving, i thought she died i actually screamed
then she kinda twitched her ear when i got close and i realized she was breathing?? so apparently shes just... asleep??? with her eyes wide open??? like a horror movie
so i googled do bunnies sleep with their eyes open and it seems like this is a real thing because theyre prey animals and they wanna look alert even while sleeping which is the saddest thing ive ever read, but also nobody warned me about this when i adopted her and i feel like this should be on the welcome packet because i almost called the emergency vet over my bunny taking a NAP
is this actually normal for every bunny or do some sleep with their eyes closed too?? how do i tell if shes actually asleep and if shes like... having a medical emergency. because i cant be having heart attacks every time she gets cozy on her side 😅

i work with mostly sysadmin and support. thinking about switching to a data center technician job because there are a few data centers close enough to drive to. i care a lot about privacy (mine and customers), so im trying to understand what the job really looks like each day, not just that you install servers.
I thought the job was to install hardware (servers, storage, switches), do cabling and labels, basic checks and swapping broken parts and some remote hands for customers and that all sounded fine. but after reading job ads and talking to a couple people, some parts started to worry me. some job posts say you get access to cctv or help with badge access reports, one guy said he sometimes has to pull door/badge logs for hr or security and another said they help with compliance checks, like making sure monitoring and logging tools are turned on and working plus the usual stuff i expected: keycards, security doors, cameras everywhere. i just didnt think the technician would be involved in looking at that data much, beyond basic tech work.
I read a bunch of dc tech/ field engineer job ads, watched “day in the life of a data center technician” videos, read privacy sections on some providers’ sites and checked reddit, but most people talk about salary, shifts and back pain, not privacy
Also, swapping drives that could still have customer data on them (even if encrypted, its still a big responsibility, handling hardware returns where you have to confirm wiping or destruction and being there when police or auditors come in to access certain racks or cages sound weird to me
someone told me they were once told to pull drive X from customer Y’s server and give it to security with zero explanation. that sounds like a dont ask questions  moment, which i really dont like.
im also not sure how much we as staff get tracked. besides obvious stuff like badge logs and cameras, is there more? are they watching patterns like breaks, who you talk to, where you stand, or is it just stored and used if something happens?
emotionally im stuck between “this is normal for a high security job” and “im helping run a surveillance machine”. not trying to be dramatic, it just feels hard to see the line between protecting systems and collecting way too much data on everyone

my questions:

1. how much real access to sensitive data does a normal data center technician have, not just in theory you could?
2. is it normal to be pulled into internal investigations (hr, security, police) just because you can touch the hardware?
3. from a personal privacy view, are you basically saying yes to having your whole workday tracked (movement, logins, cameras) without really knowing how long they keep it or what they do with it?

anyone here working as a data center technician who actually cares about privacy: did the job ever feel like too much for you, or is it just lots of cameras, strict rules, dont be dumb”and you get used to it? trying to see if im overthinking this or if this kind of job just isnt great for someone who’s a bit paranoid about surveillance.