IN THE MIDDLE OF MY BACKSWING?!?!

This person is suggesting that there are more options to pursue than meeting people at work and the gym. And that it sounds like something else might be stopping you from seeking those things out.

Legit same

“Ben. Benny. Benjamin. I need you to put this on hold for a week or two, okay? Then I’ll be in office and we can genocide together, alright? Gotta save some for me. Can you do that for Don? Thanks, Benjy. You’re great.”

Interestingly there is a body of research that suggests enjoyment of music comes from having exactly one of two things, never both:

Familiarity and predictability

If it’s neither familiar nor predictable, it is inscrutable and therefore discomforting to listen to

If it is both familiar and predictable it is boring

If it’s familiar but unpredictable, it feels like a journey through known emotions

If it’s predictable but unfamiliar it feels like ‘logical discovery’ and is fun and satisfying

A bit reductive but I love this idea

You used the term “NATO stan” and call my response a cliche? I could tell you were a .ml user without even looking at your account.

The irony is entertaining. Thanks for the laugh, tanky

User instance checks out

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I think their point was: even if you’re uncomfortable, what are you going to do about it? Interfering in any way - even just suggesting that this relationship is a problem - is controlling.

As another reply said, if you want to say something like “I’m not implying anything about this guy, but it does remind me to make certain you know the signs of predatory relationships”, that’s probably a good thing.

Just know that your son may react defensively at the perceived threat to his first meaningful friendship outside his home town (even if you’re not actually a threat), and you have to let that be okay.

For the record, I’m 40 and have had friendships that started in my early 20s with people much older than me, and am currently friends with some kids in their 20s. Especially for introverts and people with niche hobbies, there’s a lot more care for shared interests than social norms like age gap.

Ayyyy awesome! Glad to hear you’re getting full speeds now!

I’ve personally run into this before, when I got my first gigabit connection. Definitely took me a long time to track it down, and required someone on SmallNetBuilders forum telling me about it haha

With a gigabit connection, you shouldn’t really need QoS, unless your upstream is getting saturated (since I don’t think the coax gigabit providers offer symmetric up/down). But if you do, you’ll want to get another device to do it, or use more simple approaches like just capping throughput per device. If you don’t already have a homelab server, a recent Raspberry Pi should be able to handle it (and then you’d also be able to set up PiHole and other fun self-hosted services)

Issue 1: Don’t use the speed test on your router. Use OpenSpeedTest on your desktop browser. Router hardware isn’t made for this type of function and can often pass traffic (using hardware acceleration) faster than it can decode packets (using the CPU, required for speed tests).

Issue 2: test at off-peak times of day. Last mile for ISPs can get congested and limit actual speeds

Issue 3: Disable QoS, detailed traffic analysis, or other packet-inspection tech on your router. These often require passing the packets through the CPU which can limit max throughput. Check to be sure that “hardware acceleration” is active if possible for your router (sometimes called “cut through forwarding”). This can impact WAN <=> LAN traffic by not LAN-only as it needs to be bridged in a way that LAN-only traffic doesn’t.

Unfortunately, no, not really. They are absolutely able and willing to confiscate your devices at any time once you’re on Chinese soil, and once you’ve lost physical control, that’s the end of trust for that device. Even beyond that, it’s not unheard of for there to be vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc that make your device susceptible to wireless attacks. IMO it’s not worth the risk.

Here is just one example of this type of thing uncovered by The Guardian, New York Times, and others in a joint investigation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border-guards-surveillance-app-tourists-phones

Do not bring your normal personal devices to China. They are notorious for injecting spyware on foreign devices at every opportunity. Use a freshly formatted device and create all new accounts to use with it.

Regarding services: do not use self-hosted services unless you you spin up fresh, isolated instances of your services for use while abroad and spin them down afterwards, including formatting any OS they were hosted on.

Regarding VPN: because we are assuming that any device used in China is compromised, do not connect to your VPN unless you have set up a segregated VLAN and are connecting through a VPN server instance created specifically for use while in China.

Basically, assume anything you use in China is compromised. And assume your connections are being monitored. And assume that any device you are connecting to from China is at risk of being compromised. So everything needs to be segregated from the rest of your network and set up specifically to be deleted after you’re back home.

Yikes. That’s a LOT of money to be received ~weekly from an international source.

That means this has been going on for 2-4 months

This amount of money is likely to be reported to tax authorities if it hasn’t been already.

Is your son a talented artist of some kind? Musician? Video editor? Anything that might get them a contract job online that could be billed in different amounts each week? (A typical job would pay the same amount every week, whereas if they’re billing for “hours worked” it will be different each time)

I’m trying to be as generous as possible with explanations but I think you are right to be concerned (unless your son has a reason he would hide money from you, like a history of having his possessions disrespected or taken from him)

They wind up broke, sure, because the house always wins in the end. But that doesn’t mean they’re broke all the time. Winning is what makes it addicting in the first place. You’re up $100. Then you’re up $1000. Then you’re down $2000. That’s how it works

There are several possibilities unrelated to lovers. As others have mentioned, cryptocurrency is likely. Selling drugs is also possible. Organized crime in China is very real so it could be other things besides drugs.

It could also be a relatively legitimate side-hustle. Art, music, or video production could yield this kind of money for a big project, especially over time.

If they’re not paying taxes, this is a problem no matter what. That is too much money for the banks to not take notice and report on it. This needs to be addressed either way.

How much are “big transactions”? That will help us understand what kind of payments are being received.

FiveThirtyEight, specifically:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-benchmarks/

Sense & Sensibility 🤓

Get it? Because it’s a period piece?

I’ll see myself out

I appreciate your capacity to recognize a valid argument even when it conflicts with your initial position ❤️ It’s more than I expect from the average internet commenter