??

I'm no expert on the technical side of the protocol, but my BT devices only ever connect to sources they've been paired with.

Why would this be more difficult for hearing aids than for headphones?

All the advances in execution methods haven't been made to make it more humane to the victim - they've been made so it seems more humane to everyone else.

AFAIK, statistics-wise, the execution method with the lowest quota of horrible mishaps is the guillotine. A sufficiently fast 4t weight to the head would probably be even quicker for the brain to go, although it'd also require more cleanup.

(Yes, even overdosing on narcotics has more mishaps - and there are little to no narcotics abailable for executions, because the producers don't want them to be used for that.)

All of the more reliable methods are... grisly, and civilisation doesn't want grisly. We want to press a button and the victim goes to sleep to never wake up, because that makes it easier on us.

I had something vaguely similar happen to me.

We got called out of the line for a manual luggage inspection because, as a surprisingly bored security agent informed us, X-ray showed a knife of about a foot length in our luggage.

We had no idea what they were talking about.

We were half-way through unpacking the whole pack when my SO lit up and asked "could it be my ice skates?"

Agent took a look at the X-ray, nods, and lets us pack it back up without any further checking.

Overall, turned out harmlessly, but the sheer confusion of where that supposed knife had come from, combined with how blasé that security person was about the whole affair from start to finish stuck in my mind.

Frankly, this is not a question for the Internet - it is a question for you.

You can certainly find someone to try have a relationship with.

But: What do you think about non-vegans? Do you see yourself unreservedly loving someone who eats meat, even though you (presumably) think it's morally wrong?

Because that will definitely leak into your relationship as a whole.

Anyone who hits enter on a dd command without triple-checking it gets exactly what they deserve.

Alien intelligence is not required to follow human reasoning.

The Lords of Alpha Centauri could run a long-term social engineering program on Earth because they believe capitalism, conflict and social darwinism are objectively Good for You and we need to be purged of the folly of humanistic ideology before we can be allowed to join the galactic ~~civilization~~ market.

Or because they find our struggles entertaining.

What I can tell you is that no rational spacefaring civilization would need to resort to social engineering if they just want to kill us. Just toss a bit (or a lot) of spare delta v on a sufficiently large asteroid (or five) and humanity goes the way of the dinosaur.

(Different story if they want us dead, but want to make it look like suicide because of the space police.)

My take:

Most things (especially abstract ones) that exists beyond the scope of the small-hunter-gatherer-tribe setup our brain is developed for: Quantum mechanics, climate change, racism, relativity, spherical earth, ...

What separates us from the dogs is that we've developed abstract analytical tools (language, stories, mathematics, the scientific method,....) that allow us to infer the existence of those things and, eventually try to predict, model and manipulate them.

But we don't "grasp" them as we'd grasp a tangled leash, which is why it is even possible for medically sane people to doubt them.

I'd argue that you can even flip this around into a definition:

If a person with no medical mental deficiencies can honestly deny a fact (as in: without consciously lying), then that fact is either actually wrong, or it falls into the "tangled leash" category.

Midnight Commander has been around for ages. It's a straight ripoff/homage to the original Norton Commander, a full-fledged file manager and a godsend on week-kneed machines (like old netbooks).

When I started playing Shadowrun, I was confused about this as well. Why can I remote access someone's cyberarm to begin with? The damn thing should have exactly one data connection: To the user's nervous system. That's it.

Now that I work in IT, I can tell you that it's actually extremely realistic.

Most of these systems (yes, even "hardened milspec stuff") are highly complex tech that only megacorps can design. They aren't designed for security. They're designed to sell fast and with the minimum necessary design/production investment.

That wireless access you're highjacking? It's probably a maintenance access / private data siphon with a known unpatched CVE. Or an underpaid, overworked designer/dev forgot to remove the wifi module from the prototype spec and fixing that is "somewhere down the roadmap".

If you try to flash your 'ware with secure FOSS software, you have to overcome safeguards that are designed to prevent it and risk bricking your own arm / inviting an armed "patent protection" corpo squad to your door.

Truly secure custom-build 'ware does exist, made by a small community of independent tech nuts, but making it without a full factory/devteam requires a hideous amount of work and they're just plain-out inferior than the highly-funded, mass produced corpo crap that doesn't bother with ITsec.

Most professional runners just have a good decker of their own who will run interference for them (increase RAM cost) or try to trace the hack and disable the source before it completes.

When I DM, I always keep the idea in my back pocket that an enemy that has been distracted by a familiar too often will ready an attack to get rid of it the next time it is in range.

It'll still eat their action, might miss, and I telegraph it sufficiently that an attentive player might adapt their familiar's behavior, but it's a thing that can mix up combat and keeps players on their toes.

The buff persists across stat increases.

You don't see it in the level-up-screen, but it's applied afterwards.

It's easy to test:

Make a save, Withers, eat the hair, level up.

Players Decide, PCs act.

You tell me what your PC wants to achieve and how. I set the DC to check how well they perform at that attempt (or declare "no roll needed", because it's trivial / impossible).

You want to persuade an NPC? Tell me the gist of your argument and I'll consider how receptive your target is and set a DC for checking how well your PC can present said argument.

(In some cases like "I want to hit them real good with my sword" or "I want to climb up that wall", no detailed description is necessary, we both know what you mean.)