Depends on who you know.

If you are well connected to a cartel or a similar crime organisation or at least in good standing with them: No, it’s not that difficult, sadly.

If you are not, thankfully it’s hard.

Why? Because it’s illegal and that is a problem for the buyer in that case. Why? Because if you hire someone he can simply fuck off with the money. Now what do you do now? You can’t go to the police or sue him. You can of course hire another hitman and try to kill the first hitman . But who guarantees that this hitman is not also fucking off with the money? (There was literally a case when this happened).

So unless you have some kind of “society net” behind you, that protects you from this, either via coercion (“Pablo will kill your family if you fuck off with his money, the buyer is his veterinarian!”) or other guarantees (“You are no longer welcome with lemmafia, you screwed over one of us!”) you are likely fucked.

And if you would,you would not ask that here.

Which is good.

The old school hitman that worked for a higher up in a syndicate has nearly disappeared these days at least in the industrial nations. DNA based investigation techniques are fairly common these days and it is nearly impossible to be certain that you left no traces. And these can fuck you over 20 years later. So it’s not a long term career these days as people don’t want to risk being caught for drunk driving 20 years later and now have a murder case brought up against them all of a sudden. Additionally these kind of people are a liability - they can connect someone who does not want to be connected to a crime to one. Which makes them very interesting witnesses.

Even the crime cartels often use kids/minors as hitman these days - sometimes even brought in from South America,etc. just for the crime. They have very little risk of detection as they won’t be in any databases, they don’t care if they get their DNA on something when they disappear into a slum (or worse) afterwards anyway and if caught they won’t get harsh sentences most of the time.

It’s not that new, actually.

Mossad killed Mahmoud Hamshari, a leader of the terrorist cell that kidnapped and killed Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics with a bomb in his (non mobile) phone. They called him, confirmed he was on the phone and blew him up.

Yahya Ayyash the chief bomb maker of the Hamas was also killed by an exploding mobile phone in 1996.

The size of the operation here is truly impressive,but it’s hardly new - and nothing another bad faith state level actor couldn’t do. There is a good reason proper governments control incoming shipments of communication devices for their officials and security services very closely.

Stay away from the combo units. They are shit. And the reduced throughput is a major issue.

A tower design has to have the washer below the dryer, as the washer is creating more vibrations and simply weighs more.

Not all manufacturers allow a dryer to be placed upon their washers and not all washers have a big enough top.

Some (Bosch-Siemens-Appliances does i.e.) do offer specialised “tops” that you can use and that are working quite well. (Example

Personally I would put another lashing strap around the combination, though,just to be extra safe, especially if you have children or pets.

Other than that the combination works without a problem,we have been using that for around 15 years by now, only interrupted by our experiments with combo machines.

The combo units are shit. Believe me,I tried.

Efficiency sucks, you can often dry less than you can wash. And especially if you have larger amounts to wash/dry you can only have half the throughput.

And according to a few customer protection/test organisations they seem to be less reliable as well.

Still waiting for it to get better ten years later.

And yes,I had world class treatment with no financial limits.

I must actually revoke my statement,it seems like it is now being revived and is developed again, at a much slower pace,though.

But much better than nothing and at least security updates seem to be working.

Sorry for the misinformation, my bad, the different sources are quite misleading sometimes.

And sadly MeshCentral is pretty much death development wise, isn’t it? The main dev left Intel and now has not enough time for the project, wasn’t that the story?

Edit: it seems to be developed again, much slower,though. But better than nothing.

And this ladies and gentlemen is what is wrong with Linux and its communities.

Technological gatekeeping is THE major problem in the Linux world. You use Linux to use Linux. You intentionally do not want people that you consider “below” you to use Linux or even be present in your communities.

Most people use computers to get something done. Be it development, gaming, consuming multimedia, or just “web browsing” (which you intentionally use to degrade people “just” doing that). They do not use computers to use computers. They don’t need to and should need to. If you want to do this, good for you.

But stop trying to gatekeep people out of it. That’s just an a****** behaviour.

Cloudron is also an option. More polished than Yunohost, created by a German company. Very low rate of admin interaction required. But not for free if you need more than two Apps.

Bring neighbours together. One step at a time.

The problem with a lot of small projects in towns is that they cater to a certain crowd - but there are often not enough people to sustain that momentum for a longer period of time. And it’s sometimes used to keep people away. (Aka the soccer fans go to their club, the old folks to bingo, the Christians to their “clubhouse”, the D&D to theirs. And in the end small bubbles form)

So organise something that caters to “basically everyone”.

I once lived in a neighbourhood that suffered from exactly this problem until a few people (one had actually a research background in this matters) started a small initiative which did exactly this: bring the neighbours together with some things people hardly can be opposed to. First they rented a proper Pizza oven and did a “pizza festival”. They “sold” the dough,tomato sauce and baked the pizza, but you had to bring your own toppings (saved them from the ongoing debate about that). Someone volunteered to get the older folks to the location (a cul de sac). Proceedings did not go to any cause beside the festival itself, they only covered their cost.

Next time they organised a outdoor movie night with a -intentionally non-confrontational- movie from the 80ies.

Etc. Etc. Other neighbourhood followed with similar concepts.

Now multiple neighbourhood bought a mobile pizza oven together and gifted it to the city so that it can be used by every neighbourhood. Etc.

But this was their way to bring people together beyond their interests/hobbies.

And it worked.

Holy shit, what kind of system do you use?

On this side of the pond most H0 engines are still well below 200$. Sure,there are some that are more expensive, but I could only find sets or special editions in that range here.

Pellagra usually comes from eating a high corn/sorghum diet without proper nixtamaliziation (I really hope I spelt that correctly), the alkalisation of the food before cooking. While some chronic digestive diseases, alcoholism and a few other causes can also lead to it, malnutrition is the main cause and neither of these causes come upon an otherwise healthy looking child overnight. While I might not rule out that someone is idiotic enough to feed their kid only corn and sorghum it is rather unlikely and diarrhoea is one of the rather late symptoms.

(I transferred a five year old with major liver and some cerebral damage after the parents kept the poor kiddo on a “barley, corn, yeast, self produced apple juice and full grain” only diet for a year…one can imagine what that leads to)

The bad parents as in “not caring” aren’t the worst ones, at least for me (not a doctor, paramedic with former leadership/admin roles including in a hospital like environment)- the ones who think they care but really don’t are the ones that get most of my colleagues and me far more. Because for “simply not caring” parents you can at least inform the proper authorities and at least here they are actually fairly good at dealing with them.

But there are so many “bad faith” parents out there meanwhile - intentionally withholding Information from both the healthcare providers as well as the children, withholding care, working against the best interest of their child.

Just to put themselves and their beliefs first. It’s a huge crowd these days:

• The alt-righters who think that their children will get nanobot vaccines and that that modern medicine is against them anyway.

• The alternative medicine idiots who believe in homeopathy and crystals

• The religious numbnuts who think that their God gave them a prayer as universal treatment - and not modern medicine.

• The instagramers. The ones who either need their sick child as a way to gain sympathy or even money in social media, to exclude themselves from other obligations of adult life (that borders on Münchhausen by proxy often). And the ones who blindly follow some influencer and their “new nutrition supplements” that helps against everything.

• The know it all’s. The ones who think a quick google search can actually replace a multi year medical training and specialisation and the four buzzwords they just googled in the elevator make them the new noble price winner. There are actually two types of these people: The diagnosers and the undiagnosers. The first ones have already diagnosed themselves and will jump from hospital to hospital,from doctor to doctor until they finally find someone who gives them the diagnosis they already had in mind four years ago. The undiagnosers are always three steps ahead of you and you can always count in them to bring in another rare disease that needs to be checked out.

People can belong to multiple of these categories. And parents are especially bad at it - I get it, it’s your child - but after working in healthcare on 4 continents for 20 years now it feels like these people spin faster and faster down their rabbit holes today.

Just to give you a few examples(not all directly from me,some from colleagues I know):

• The mother who replaced the “Chemo” for her deadly sick child with saline in an unobserved moment. The twist: It wasn’t even a chemotherapy drug,it was an immunoglobulin, 10k per session. Kid nearly died as a result and will be disabled for life.

• Parents who withhold cancer care for their daughter, daughter suffers immensely and dies. They thought prayer would be enough.

• A mother faking vacation certificate so her kid could attend kindergarden. A few months later the kid showed measles symptoms in the kindergarden and was sent home. The mother faked a doctor’s certificate that the kid was well and non-contagious so the kid could attend an event there. The event was also attended by other parents and the younger siblings. Multiple kids still too young to vaccinate got infected and one kid died.

And a few more recent ones:

• Parents brought their lawyer to the ED when they attended it for a broken arm.

• Parents demand a hymen-repair surgery at 4am on a Sunday for their 17 year old daughter.

• Parent told me the 6 year old kid with diarrhoea and fatigue (at 2am at night) surely had pellagra. Dumbfounded I asked how much corn or sorghum they eat. None,the children don’t like either.

A Chinese low cost manufacturer from Shenzhen. Their parent company is actually one of the Top 5 manufacturers - but none in the North/West has heard of them.

They were specifically founded to provide smartphones for low and medium income markets like Africa, India, etc. Meanwhile they also manufacture phones there.

Their parent company holds almost 50% of the African market share.

They are actually producing decent phones by now - had the chance to take a look of one of their most recent phones a few weeks back. 5G, dual SIM, dedicated microSD slot, headphones jack (yes Lemmy!) and a big battery - but the camera and display were mediocre. Overall still a decent phone for a good price, even though they don’t sell them everywhere and I would be weary of the updates issue.

It depends very much on the legislation - in many legislations it is absolutely illegal to retain it.

Anyway, there are more than enough non-evidence class materials that need to be removed asap.

In theory a good idea, but there is lots of content that needs to be gone serverside asap - either because it’s CP, otherwise illegal, spam that clogs down the Fediverse/can even be used to DoS a server,etc.

Clear vote for Matrix.

Easily works with basically every system from iOS, Android, Windows, Linux,Mac and there are Web-Clients as well. And everyone can find their own client of choice.

You can use one of the huge federated instances like matrix.org or set one up yourself.(Which is much easier than setting up an Activity pub instance,btw.)

There are rooms/channels that can be open or semi-open just like in Telegram, and bots are absolutely not problem (Not Like in signal). Registration is not bound to a phone number like it was in signal for a long time (but is no longer) and (unlike still needed in signal) a phone does not need to be used for sign up&transfer between devices works seamlessly.

If you selfhost or use beeper you can even bridge to different services (signal,WhatsApp, telegram) etc. so you only use one app for everything.

I had my fair share of health problems,from a major motor vehicle accident with a broken spine,burns,ruptured nerves, etc. to a stroke, a dislocated shoulder and knee, etc.

But the worst one? By far?

A fucking kidney stone. It literally redefined my 10/10 pain level.

Sorry, it would be easy to identify the customer then, so sadly I can’t.

You know when a scientist/expert warns people about a disaster and they don’t believe him and a short time later they actually suffer from that disaster?

Well. I was that expert. I do disaster response planning for a living.Told a large public company that they are at risk of a certain scenario. They told me that they don’t believe it would apply to them and basically kicked me out.

Two weeks later they were on national news for it.

Not that it would have changed a thing - projects we do take months and do not prevent a disaster, just deal with the risk much better.

But still. Felt surreal.