> How are you all dealing with this?

I'm learning a very niche trade. It involves using my hands. Very artistic. Very, very difficult to master. I don't think AI will be able to do it, at least not until they have humanoid bodies and are able to move exactly like us.

The web is trash. I hate it now. Let the power grid collapse. These trillion dollar companies instantly become worthless.

Thats great. I think every form of art is very difficult to master, and that AI will never be able to do it. It can try. It can fool people, but it will never master it.

Is there any way to check if your ID was compromised without going on some onion site?

I don't know if it even matters. I always assumed every bit of my information was available somewhere. Just curious.

I think IDScan should set something up so we can check if our data was compromised, at the least.

What I would love to know is who is selling my info. I get texts from all kinds of politicians but I didn't know who sold them my number. Seems like selling someone's property without their approval should be illegal. It'd be great if I could request who sold them my data, then go to that entity tell them to stop selling (rinse and repeat)

At least here in California (maybe the whole US) I think there is a law requiring the government to give our phone numbers to politicians to spam us.

Seems crazy until you realize politicians write the laws

> What I would love to know is who is selling my info.

Car dealerships. Heck, even the DMV. Sign up for Credit Karma? Enjoy credit card offers arriving to your house. It seems everyone is "in" on selling/sharing our data. If you ever read the terms of services, you'll usually see a "third party partners", or something like that, which mentions how they "share" your data.

Opt out should be the default, but it isn't.

> It'd be great if I could request who sold them my data, then go to that entity tell them to stop selling (rinse and repeat)

There are a number of companies (e.g. Delete Me) that offer that service. They wouldn't have caught the subject of this post since it was a breach.

The problem here arose from ID verification where you need to show your ID to an entity that then has the opportunity to store it.

Most of these companies are themselves data harvesting scams. You have to give them all your data so they know what to delete. Then they sell that data.

This is true. I think Brian Krebs reported on a scam involving this. Some of those data deletion companies actually own the data companies...

> I went through the stupid process of providing my government ID

I did this once in my life for my first ever Facebook account. I still could not proceed either, which made me even more annoyed. Now they have my ID stored somewhere. Will never, ever do that again.

My Facebook account got suspended and they asked for ID, I provided one and still didn't get my account back.

The whole situation is getting out of control; they have become completely useless using them nowadays. What's the point, really?

That's exactly what frustrated me the most!

I agree with you. I think most people never read into it too much, they just learn about it from some (misguided) social media reels and run with it from there.

There was a completely different Stoic community around 2012-2015. But, hey, I suppose that's beyond our control.

At least the kids are reading. LOL

> Then take any shopping mall in Bangkok, that's an absolutely next level experience, clean, smells good, relaxing music. Mmm...

When I traveled to Thailand, I first stopped in Abu Dhabi. The bathrooms in the airport were amazing. I couldn't believe they had stalls that were basically personal bathrooms (whereas in the US, your feet are exposed, and anyone who wants to see you can simply peak through the many cracks, or even throw something on you from above). The bidet thing was a little weird at first, but had no choice but to use it.

Likewise, when I got to Thailand (Bangkok), I could not believe how clean the bathrooms were (with the personal room-style stall as well). These bathrooms were as clean as you'd find them in a clean-freaks home.

When I arrived back in the States (JFK NY), I needed to use the bathroom really bad, but upon entering the restroom... I just couldn't do it. Urine all over the floors and toilets. Even at the entrance. Graffiti everywhere. Absolutely disgusting.

It really changed my perspective. And let's not forget bidets... I'm mind-blown that people in the US use tissue paper to wipe their a*es. Yeah, I've done it for most of my life as well, but after using a bidet in multiple countries, you realize how tissue paper alone isn't effective. It honestly makes me angry that they're not in every public/private bathroom.

Why do we have trigger warnings for things of little importance, but not for this?

You know, I wasn't focusing on my tinnitus until seeing this on page one. Thanks, OP.

I gave up. Like you, I've built many projects in the hopes they'd generate enough income for me to never have to work a job again. I had blogs, e-commerce shopify dropshipping stores, multiple SaaS projects, e-books published, monetized social media accounts, etc.

I remember waking up every morning excited to check the balances for everything. At most, maybe $10.00. That slowly brought me to depression. I was working 12+ hours per day on every thing, but had nothing to show for it. I did this for ~3 years (although I've been building things for 10+ years). I worked as a freelancer to earn real money as well.

Eventually, I just had enough. Got a job. Started letting domains fade away (I owned perhaps 50+). What a tiring lifestyle!

Nowadays, I will not build in the hopes of becoming rich. I'll build things I want to exist - things that I will use personally. Sure, I'll slap a price on it (as you can see on leetchess), but by no means am I trying to retire from the income.

So, maybe don't give up in the sense that you no longer build. But perhaps it's worth evaluating why you build.

OMG, I can almost see the future of my life in your story LOL. It is honestly heartbreaking, but at least you now have a stable job. For me, I am a freelancer, which makes the situation even harder because my income is not always stable. I really like your point about building something you personally want to exist, because that is exactly what I did with this project as my last serious try. I am still going to give it one final real chance because I honestly feel this is the best idea I have ever had. After that, I may need to seriously get a job.

Same. I was so fascinated by lower-level stuff (chips, assembly, etc.), but when I finally started to dig into it, AI came around and did what would take me forever to do myself in seconds. I thought pivoting from software dev to pentesting would be spark my motivation, but again, AI can do it quicker. I don't find this stuff rewarding anymore.

This made me think about the kinds of things I do find rewarding. OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, etc. are billion dollar companies. But what exactly are they? You cannot touch them. You can't smell them. They're not real in the sense that other things are, such as a painting or a statue. If the global power grid were to go down, the value of these companies would drop to 0. Of course, this is unlikely, but I think the point holds.

Nowadays, I want to build physical things; I do wish I went into a different engineering field.

My first experience with the police was just as bad. A friend and I were waiting on the porch of another friend (all like 14 years old). We were waiting for him to come home. He knew we were there waiting for him.

His neighbors yelled something to us out of their window. We went to see what they wanted, but they didn't say anything when we got near.

We went back to the porch and waited for maybe 10-15 minutes, but decided to leave as we felt really weird about those neighbors. As we started walking, a police officer pulled up screaming at us, telling us we were under arrest for throwing rocks at the windows of those neighbors. The police officer took us to the police station, put handcuffs on us, as well as shackled our feet to the floor, where we remained for like 2 hours. He made us write a statement, and then told our parents to come get us.

It was truly the most confusing thing I ever experienced. Angers me a bit today thinking about it.

Had this happened to any solo person, they'd surely be thrown in jail immediately with a heavy bond. Rules are for poor people.