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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • I appreciate the interest in doing all the math, and I am also not specifically familiar with audio or the audio library, but I believe you could use a similar argument against the OG library of babel, and I happen to know(confidently believe?) that they don’t actually have a stored copy of every individual text file “in the library”, rather each page is algorithmically generated and they have proven that the algorithm will generate every possible text.

    I’d wager it’s the same thing here, they have just written the code to generate a random audio file from a unique input, and proven that for all possible audio files (within some defined constraints, like exactly 15 seconds long), there exists an input to the algorithm which will produce said audio file.

    Determining whether or not an algorithm with infrastructure backing it counts as a library is an exercise left to the reader, I suppose.




  • MacBooks actually aren’t too bad to get into, but doing anything once you get the bottom off is another story- there isn’t much that isn’t soldered down.

    I actually regret pointing out rust- it’s what I’ve been looking at learning myself, and I think it’s a poor choice for a first language, just because you can learn the basic stuff in something like python and have far less time spent fighting the compiler and needing to understand memory. Still a cool language, though.

    Metasploitable is more or less what I meant, yeah. I would recommend, if you have a spare machine, install proxmox/esxi so you can virtualize a whole environment around it and learn about working with those things. You sound like you probably have linux experience, but being able to say that you can work on a server purely through the terminal is big, even if you only touch network equipment in your first role you will perform much better if you can ssh into a box and do anything you need to do.

    It sounds like you already have enough to start applying for junior positions, I was in basically the same knowledge state when I got my first it job earlier this year. It took me months of hardcore job hunting to get a position, but if you have a real passion for stuff and show that you are a tinkerer and excited to learn more, that is what people are looking for. There have been a lot of lay offs in the industry so you may be competing with mid levels for junior positions still, but many employers know that investing in passionate people at entry level is often a good investment.

    Biggest interview tip I know is not to pretend you don’t know about something, try to relate it to something you do “Do you know JS/React?” “No but I have worked with python and made [x], and I am excited to transfer that experience to your environment.” The positions you should be looking for shouldn’t care much about what you already know, they should care about how long in seat before you know what you need to. Show that you’re trainable, definitely talk about stuff you do at home (training they won’t be paying you for).

    Most people will have to work help desk a couple of years before any of this, but if you look hard/long enough (and probably get fairly lucky), you can jump right into the industry. I would look for small-medium businesses if you want to skip helpdesk hell- if you’re going to be the second of two employees in IT, yes you will do helpdesk, but you won’t be a phone slave 8 hours a day, you’ll get the opportunity to work on new things and learn.

    Hope that helps. I’ve only been professionally in networking/security for about 6 months, and definitely got my current job in part from networking from my repair tech, so you may have a different experience. I was 24 when I started, I don’t have a college degeee or any certs yet, though, so I would honestly say the soft skills of interviewing, social networking, and presentation are what will help you get the job the most.

    Hope that helps and you can get what you want. Job hunting will crush your soul, but if you enjoy computers, the other side of that tunnel is a great place to be.



  • You’re never too old to start learning that stuff.

    For networking, there’s a ton of resources on selfhosting and homelabbing, and big communities here on lemmy and elsewhere. It can be as expensive a hobby as you want, you can stretch an old laptop pretty far, get really cheap stuff from the cloud, or build a data closet in your house/apartment.

    If you wanted to learn more about software, Rust has a ton of high quality official documentation available and would be really valuable knowledge for a career.

    For the raw hardware tinkering getting the $30 essentials set from ifixit will get you into 90% of consumer devices, and even as a professional I’m usually watching a 5 minute youtube video before dissassembling anything, and that’s really all you need.






  • I usually haven’t, but I installed Clam about a month ago on my desktop, ran a full and complete scan, then left it running scheduled scans. Hasn’t found anything, and I get a lot of software from outside of my package manager, and use wine for a lot of it, so I’d say my risk/exposure is higher than most.

    I think it’s fine to go without AV on a linux desktop, but I like the peace of mind. There will definitely be more things targeting linux sytems as/if more market share is acquired, but in terms of security it’s more important that you harden the system than run an AV.