09:10 – It was 53.7F (12C) when I took Colin out at 0700, partly cloudy.
The Equifax breach just keeps getting worse and worse. First it was revealed that they’d waited almost six weeks after discovering the breach to make it public. Then it comes out that high executives with the company sold lots of their stock soon after the breach, supposedly not being aware of it. Yeah, right. Now it’s revealed that they were aware of the vulnerability for months, that there was a patch for it, and that they didn’t bother to apply the patch. Jesus.
And their response is pathetic. One year of free credit-monitoring service? How about lifetime free credit-monitoring service? And how about a significant payment to anyone affected by the breach? Say an amount equal to the combined credit line of each person. We have only two or three credit cards, with combined limits of maybe $50,000, but other people may have much more. Say the average is only $10,000. If 143 million people were affected, that would cost Equifax $1,430 billion, so it might put a crimp in their stock value.
But all of the credit agencies are in the wrong here. The default should be to freeze credit on everyone unless they specifically ask that it be unlocked temporarily if they want to apply for credit. It’s inexcusable that this is not the default, and even worse that they charge to freeze an account. At least North Carolina requires them to freeze an account without charging.
Email from a guy who’s pretty well prepared on the basics—water, food, shelter, cooking/heating, communications, etc.—but lacks antibiotics for his beloved decorative pet fish. He’s uncomfortable with the idea of buying antibiotics from Mexican or Canadian pharmacies, eBay, or other random Internet sources, but is comfortable storing Thomas Labs fish antibiotics, available from Walmart.com and many local pet supply stores. Interestingly, it appears that Amazon.com has stopped offering Thomas Labs fish antibiotics. I hope that’s not a sign of things to come. I’ll include only retail list prices below, but third-party vendors generally sell these products at a 15% or 20% discount.
He wanted to know that if I limited myself to these products, which one or ones would I stock, and how much of each per fish. With the usual disclaimer that I am neither a physician or a pharmacist (nor a veterinarian), and assuming that his fish have no drug allergies, I recommended the following, roughly in order of priority:
Note: All of these dosages assume that we’re treating a 160-pound (72 kilo) adult fish that is not pregnant.
1. Doxycycline, 100 mg tablets or capsules – This would be my top priority, as it is broad-spectrum and is generally tolerated well except by pregnant and juvenile fish. A typical course of treatment is one 100 mg dose every 12 hours for 7 to 10 days, so for one fish I’d want to have 14 to 20 tablets on hand. Thomas Labs sells a bottle of thirty 100 mg doxycycline tablets for $50 or 100 tablets for $150.
2. Sulfamethoxazole/Trimethoprim (SMZ/TMP), 400/80 mg or 800/160 mg tablets – This would be my second priority, assuming your fish have no sulfa allergies. A typical course of treatment is one 400/80 mg tablet every 12 hours for 7 to 10 days, so for one fish I’d want to have 14 to 20 of the smaller tablets (or 7 to 10 of the larger tablets) on hand. Thomas Labs sells SMZ/TMP as 800/160 mg tablets, which are scored and can easily be split into two 400/80 mg tablets. A bottle of thirty 800/160 SMZ/TMP tablets (equivalent to sixty 400/80 mg tablets) sells for $15 or 100 tablets (equivalent to two hundred 400/80 mg tablets) for $35. This stuff is cheap and is effective against many common serious infections, so there’s no reason not to have it on hand.
3. Metronidazole, 500 mg tablets or capsules – This drug was introduced as Flagyl in the 1950’s as an anti-protozoal and it was only discovered by chance in 1962 that it’s also effective against anaerobic bacteria. The other antibiotics listed here have little or no effect on either protozoal infections or anaerobic bacterial infections, so metronidazole is definitely something I want in my arsenal. A typical course of treatment varies, depending on the particular disease and its severity, but ranges from 2000 mg/day for five days up to 4,000 mg/day for ten days, so to be safe I’d assume one course is a total of 40,000 mg. Thomas Labs sells Fish Zole Forte as 500 mg tablets, at $45, $65, and $100 for 30, 60, or 100 tablets, respectively. A daily 2,000 mg dosage is therefore four tablets, and a 4,000 mg dosage eight tablets. You’ll want to continue this for up to ten days, so for the maximum 4,000 mg/day for ten days, you’ll need 80 of the 500 mg tablets. Go with a bottle of 100 to be safe.
4. An antihelminthic drug – This is not a Thomas Labs product, but it’s important just the same. Parasitic worms are probably responsible for more morbidity and mortality in fish than any other parasite, so you’ll want something on hand to treat them. My first choice here would be mebendazole, with albendazole a close second. Unfortunately, both of those are extraordinarily expensive in the US. (About $.01 to $0.10 per dose outside the US, but $200 to $400 per dose in the US. See the Wikipedia entries on those drugs to find out why.) My next choice would be pyrantel (50 mg pyrantel per mL as the pamoate salt), which is over-the-counter in the US, and sells for $0.50 to $4.00 per dose. It’s not effective against all types of helminthic parasites, but works for the most common ones–pin worm, hookworm, and roundworm. As far as I know, pyrantel is sold only as a suspension. Typical dosages of the 50 mg/mL concentration are 1 mL per 10 pounds of body weight, so you’d give your 160-pound fish 16 mL. Call it one tablespoon. A 16-ounce bottle—roughly 32 adult doses—sells for $15 or so, and a 32-ounce bottle for twice that. A course of treatment for any of these antihelminthics is usually just one dose, so a little goes a long way. The best-known version of this drug is Reese’s Pinworm Medicine, which sells for $7 or $8 per ounce ($3.50 to $4 per dose), but it’s also available as a generic OTC medication in pint and quart bottles for about $0.50/ounce.
If you’re stocking for a family or group of fish rather than just one fish, you won’t necessarily need to multiply the quantities per fish by the number of fish in the group. For example, for 25 adult fish, we’d keep 200 grams of metronidazole on hand, which is only five maximum to twenty minimum courses.
Keep these drugs unopened in their sealed bottles, and stick them in your freezer, where they’ll remain safe and potent for literally decades. The only exception is the one liquid drug on this list, pyrantel pamoate suspension, which should be refrigerated, where it’ll remain safe and potent for many years.
What if there is no more refrigeration or freezing capability in a SHTF situation? How long would these products last?
We’ve got a combined 420 pounds of adult fish here. They tolerate the cold very well but not so much the heat and humidity.
When prescribed for people, Sulfamethoxazole usually has warnings on the retail bottle that the drug should be taken with plenty of water. Of course, this isn’t as much of an issue for a fish, but if you’re dosing, say, Colin, make sure the patient maintains high fluid rates in/out of their system to avoid having the drug accumulate in the kidneys.
“What if there is no more refrigeration or freezing capability in a SHTF situation? How long would these products last?”
Freezing is kind of a super-SLEP. Kept at room temperature, all three of the solid antibiotics would remain usable for many years, probably for a decade or more (and my guess is a LOT longer). Some may gradually lose potency, but the government did a massive study and found that most drugs, including antibiotics, remain usable for many years past their “expiration” dates.
And they remain safe forever, in the sense that they don’t degrade into dangerous/toxic products. There was a scare about tetracycline that was based on one report in 1962 or 1963 that has made people forever scared of expired tetracyclines. The problem then, if indeed there was any problem (the death may not have been contributed to by the “old” tetracycline) was the manufacturing process, which was quickly modified. No tetracycline or tetracycline derivatives manufactured since the early 60’s have been subject to this problem. And doxycycline, despite what a lot of people who should know better, including many physicians, has NEVER been subject to the problem. The differences in its structure from plain tetracycline (or oxy- or chlor-tetracylcline) mean that the problem simply cannot occur.
“the drug should be taken with plenty of water”
Sure. As I’ve said repeatedly, there are lots of gotchas with antibiotics. Even knowing as much as I do about them–and that’s a lot–I wouldn’t administer them to myself or anyone else except in a SHTF situation where I was convinced the infection was life-threatening. I have a PDR and other resources to guide me in that situation.
But antibacterials are simply too critical to ignore just because they’re not cheap and potentially dangerous to use. Most people aren’t aware that the Spanish Flu, which was the worst pandemic ever in terms of body count, wasn’t the real killer. A relatively small percentage of victims who died did so as a direct result of the viral infection. The vast majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia. If they’d had antibiotics in 1918, the body count would have been a tiny fraction of what it was. And the same is true of many other dangerous viral infections: it’s often the bacterial superinfection that kills the victims.
RE: Equifax Breach
While reporting a breach is mandatory and the length of delay is fixed by law, the laws do vary state to state. Normally, it’s a maximum of 45 days after the discovery of a breach.
BREACH is defined (in TN law) as “Unauthorized access or acquisition that materially compromises the security, confidentiality, or integrity of the covered information”. Note the weasel phrase “materially compromises”. Lawyers can make a good living arguing over what that exactly means.
Having worked in IT Security for 30+ years I can tell you that many security “incidents” go unreported because there is no compelling evidence of data exfiltration or manipulation. Meaning that the culprits hid their tracks too well or that the breach was detected long after the data was removed and logs no longer exist to prove data was lost. In addition, I have seen breach notifications delayed by the Feds due to not wanting to tip-off the threat actors involved.
Just because you have evidence of a threat actor active in your network does not constitute a reportable breach. Many times these sophisticated attackers will infiltrate one firms network in order to gain access to one of their partners data through insecure connections.
Now the sale of stock after detecting a breach but before reporting it is a HUGE NO-NO. Whenever a suspected breach is detected any reputable firm will get the lawyers involved who will put all persons with knowledge of the matter on a “persons of interest” list. Their communications will be monitored and the company legal dept. must approve all purchase or sale of stock. This is insider trading and can lead to federal Prison.
My brother, who spent some time as a guest of the Feds, met several “important” people who had thought they could get away with it.
The Wife and I got our Flu shots yesterday at Costco, $0.00 on Medicare. We got the Fluad vaccine which is designed for those 65 and older. “They” have found that the conventional flu vaccine is ineffective in seniors.
Ref: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/adjuvant.htm
Being the gooberment though, this Fluad vaccine might just contain something to terminate us at the gooberment’s whim.
Last year we got the Prevnar 13 vaccine for pneumococcal disease (such as pneumonia or meningitis). This, again, is recommended for seniors 65 and over (however the gooberment being the gooberment the recommendations can change at any time, consult your doctor). Supposedly we only need to get the regular pneumonia vaccine for here on out. We have to wait at least 4-weeks from the flu vaccine before we get the pneumonia vaccine.
WRT Equifax:
I have yet to read that anyone, other than Equifax, recommends taking up Equifax on their offer of “credit monitoring”. Equifax is in the news almost hourly with another outrageous story of gross incompetence.
Is there a single definitive and recommended course for us old farts WRT getting flu and shingles shots? I’ve gotten mine from the VA docs but wonder about wife getting hers, for the time being. And that’s the first I’ve heard about Prevnar 13 vaccine; wussup widdat?
WRT to Equifucks and other credit reporting agencies; it’s not like we ever had a choice with that stuff. Short of freezing our own credit on our own and being charged for doing so. These organizations just seemed to pop up many years ago and they’ve been in the saddle ever since. As one of the classic movie lines from long ago said: “Who ARE those guys?”
Is there a single definitive and recommended course for us old farts WRT getting flu and shingles shots?
I just got a shingles and DTAP at Nellis AFB. Later I’ll get a pneumonia shot and flu. MrsAtoz suffered through shingles when pregnant with the Twins. Shudder.
They still doing those role-playing jet-fighter duels in the sky out there? With MIGs and suchlike?
“I Explain the Persuasion Techniques President Trump is using on The Wall and DACA”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/165334092961/i-explain-the-persuasion-techniques-president
My man Scott Adams says that my man President Trump is smarter than the average bear. I agree.
My man Scott Adams says that my man President Trump is smarter than the average bear. I agree.
Since rejoining the workforce, sadly, I’ve noted that the lessons of 25+ years of “Dilbert” have been largely forgotten and the strip virtually unknown to young’n’s. I won’t go into details (I have no idea who lurks here), but I walked out of a meeting yesterday which would have provided a solid two weeks of material for Scott Adams back in the day.
I’m waiting for someone to drop by and tell me to make sure my TPS reports have coversheets.
I’m waiting for someone to drop by and tell me to make sure my TPS reports have coversheets.
Was ist TPS ?
Toilet Paper Sanitization.
Was ist TPS ?
Watch “Office Space”.
We used to write TPS reports at GTE so my guess is Mike Judge either worked there or at a Texas company whose management spent time in Irving pre-Verizon.
In the mid-late 90s at GTE, “Office Space” was widely viewed as a documentary.
They still doing those role-playing jet-fighter duels in the sky out there? With MIGs and suchlike?
Don’t know. They practice Thunderbird stuff all the time.
TPS = Toilet Paper Stretcher ?
Toilet Paper Sniffing?
“Prevnar” >???
The dog gets prevnar every year….
n
didn’t know it was a people drug
TPS = Toilet Paper Stretcher ?
Less useful. Test Procedure Spec. At GTE, written by developers totally in violation of the IEEE rulebook.
Testing is a thankless chore. My line is that I will deliver pizzas before I go into software QA full time. It is the ghetto of over-40 developers on the West Coast, and being demoted to test engineer was why I walked out of my job in Seattle without notice (not a good career move regardless of the stupidity of the management).
“Office Space” is frickin’ hilarious. It could just about serve as well today at most prolecube-farms.
“…why I walked out of my job in Seattle without notice (not a good career move regardless of the stupidity of the management).”
Been there and done that, in state gummint up here, summer of ’02. Mos def not a big help to my so-called IT career. If I hadn’t, though, I probably would have killed somebody. Seriously, no joke. I was in a state of rage every day all day because of those people, and still drinking then, of course. Paxil had zero effect anymore. But I paid for that, and so did my family.
My time in IT over the decades would give Scott Adams a couple more volumes, I’m sure. If anything, the intel I still get tells me that shit is worse than ever now. Good riddance.
Meanwhile it looks like I’ll be adding to the shit on my plate this next week with being appointed to the Veterans Advisory Committee down at the Lakeside Innovation Center clinic, in conjunction with the White River Junction VA Medical Center. Once a month meetings on Friday mornings and a few other “events” during the year. I figure if it has any chance whatsoever of making life easier for vets in some way, I’ll do the gig. And I’m gonna have to have a serious sit-down with one of our guys ASAP, maybe two of them, but one in particular, and tell him he really needs to get professional help immediately and regularly. Maybe he’ll buy it coming from me, I dunno.
And meanwhile again, wife and son think I should learn and be certified in Salesforce.com admin stuff and make more money working from home. I said gee, guys, didja get the memo on how I’m in grad skool again? With a bunch of stuff to do every week there and here? But I said I’d look into it. Son is now a big exec in corporate strategic intel for them (specializing focus on Microslop Corporation) and seems to know what he’s talking about. Just turned 32; my, how tempus fucking fugit. He’s not fond of M$ anymore and I remember when he was a kid how he told me Linux was “gay.” Haha.
Also gave a Linux/Brave/Quant pep talk to our former combat nurse on the phone earlier; she’s fed up with Goolag and Microslop, too. Also another right-winger, as it turns out, haha.
I am doing some good work today, folks….
“PM HITS BACKTheresa May scolds ‘unhelpful’ Donald Trump after he claimed Tube bomber was known to Scotland Yard”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4472698/parsons-green-donald-trump-terror-attack-twitter-bucket-bomb/
Methinks that there will not always be an England.
And I am shocked to see that Johnny Rotten is still alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_SQI9kgqIc
Testing is a thankless chore. My line is that I will deliver pizzas before I go into software QA full time. It is the ghetto of over-40 developers on the West Coast, and being demoted to test engineer was why I walked out of my job in Seattle without notice (not a good career move regardless of the stupidity of the management).
Don’t quit your day job until you have a new job is what I have always heard. I said that one day about 100 times to myself as I was cleaning an 8,000 gallon lube oil tank as a junior engineer. From the inside with a foot tall pile of red rags. I managed to piss off the maintenance foreman and so he gave me a washout job while we were ripping a steam turbine apart. No fresh air, just a two foot wide porthole to get in and out.
Test Procedure Spec. At GTE, written by developers totally in violation of the IEEE rulebook.
Huh, I don’t know anything about this IEEE rulebook. I just run my business by the seat of my pants (which is getting wider everyday seemingly).
And my support engineer guy does our testing analysis for me. I run a script which runs many other scripts on my office pc. Takes about a week if I let it run to completion. Hint, it never runs to completion. And then Mr. QA takes a look at the differences files that I wrote a custom program to minimize the differences (think of the diff program on steroids).
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/k-blog-vete-a-la-mierda-gringos/
https://kakistocracyblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/innocence-and-obligation/
There are some very advanced CS and math wizards on this blog. I am not one of them. However I can do simple arithmetic pretty fucking well.
The swarms coming in across the borders and airspace will be multipliers. So one couple or one family in x years becomes, well, it don’t even take simple arithmetic; use your imagination. Then in x years again. And again.
Don’t think for a minute that this never crossed our masters’ and overlord’s minds back in the day. This was set up deliberately, with malice aforethought. And it’s not just votes for the Evil Half of the Party or cheap labor for the Stupid Half. The object of the exercise is for US to be REPLACED. This is known as ethnic cleansing. We didn’t like it when the Serbs did it. And the result was a civil war in the former Yugoslavia with multiple factions and warring bands of criminal brigands and scum preying on the helpless population. See Selco on all that.
And my support engineer guy does our testing analysis for me. I run a script which runs many other scripts on my office pc. Takes about a week if I let it run to completion. Hint, it never runs to completion. And then Mr. QA takes a look at the differences files that I wrote a custom program to minimize the differences (think of the diff program on steroids).
I’ll pitch in and help test, but doing it full time in a formal QA group is a career dead end IMHO, even more so than the niche I dug in VPN/Crypto for a decade.
The object of the exercise is for US to be REPLACED. This is known as ethnic cleansing. We didn’t like it when the Serbs did it. And the result was a civil war in the former Yugoslavia with multiple factions and warring bands of criminal brigands and scum preying on the helpless population. See Selco on all that.
If the USA decomposes into several warring states, I wonder who will step in to stop the battlefield nukes being used in the Cumberland Gap and other pinch points ?
“battlefield nukes being used in the Cumberland Gap”
sounds like a Ringo novel….
n
“battlefield nukes being used in the Cumberland Gap”
sounds like a Ringo novel….
Dude, I steal from the best …
And that was used in a PA novel also that I cannot remember the name or author of at the moment.
battlefield nukes being used in the Cumberland Gap
Deadman Pass, OR.
Train adventure is over. Quite a rush. To think that something that big moves on steam at 160 PSI, temperature unknown. I do know that steam only enters the cylinders for 35% of the stroke (controlled by the Johnson Bar) for normal travel. Pressure does part of the work, expansion of the steam does the rest.
Smelly (coal burning), hot, and noisy from the tracks. Got to use the Johnson Bar, throttle going uphill, and brakes going downhill. Slick way to operate the brakes. You open a valve and let air pressure into the brake pistons, then clamp the pressure. Once you get slowed down, let the air out with the same control. Repeat multiple times going downhill.
Never realized how much work the fireman does. Keeps the pressure up by feeding coal, about 3/4 ton on this trip. Keeping the water level up in the boiler using a venturi injection system rather than a pump. No moving parts. Needs to vent the injectors to prime them for water than inject water in the boiler. This locomotive uses 100 gallons of water every 10 miles.
Working on pictures and videos now.
I am waiting for the “Johnson Bar” jokes…
You can’t make this stuff up:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-ceo-hired-a-music-major-as-the-companys-chief-security-officer-2017-09-15
Meh, a lot of my work could be described as shirttail engineering, and I have an Arts degree. Tons of relevant work experience though…
And the scrub job looks guilty as he11.
n
Was gonna comment about the religion of piss trying to kill some more good people, but I’m getting used to it. The new normal.
In other news, “Harry Dean Stanton, famed for roles in Alien and The Godfather II, dies ‘peacefully’ at 91 ” one of my favorite character actors, who I’ve quoted here before.
From Repo Man, “Ordinary fuckin’ people, I hate ’em.” one of the best lines evah.
n
I guess you only ‘license’ your season passes…
“Detroit Lions fan who posted a Snapchat calling an African American couple ‘ignorant n******’ because they refused to stand during the national anthem is forced to return his season tickets”
Who knew? I thought it was a contract. You pay your money and get a well defined benefit. Guess not. And keep in mind, this is the same NFL that bans guns in stadiums, even for permit holders, and allows their players to make on field statements that end up costing them revenue. Also the same NFL full of rapists, violent thugs, felons, and the occasional murderer.
n
Then there’s this:
” What would YOU do in a zombie apocalypse? Most of us are ill-prepared, poll reveals
A YouGov Omnibus survey found 11 per cent of Brits had a zombie plan and just six per cent of people said they would work with other survivors.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4887488/We-CLUELESS-zombie-apocalypse-poll-finds.html
To think that something that big moves on steam at 160 PSI, temperature unknown.
Unless there is a superheater coil in the smokestack, the steam is around 100% saturated. At 160 psig, the saturation temperature of steam is 371 F.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/saturated-steam-properties-d_273.html
The UK is screwed; they lost two generations of their best men in the world wars and have never really recovered from that.
I guess the death-and-slavery cult people lit off another bomb on the train over there; chin up and tally-ho! Mustn’t respond to hate with hate, eh wot?
RIP Harry Dean Stanton; I didn’t know he was that old.
WRT Equifax; a total mess, in the nooz for a few days, tops. And then something else will pop up somewhere and Equifax will be forgotten. Just outta curiosity I’d like to know what the other major credit reporting companies have been doing since this broke in the media.
“Rush on the Vince Flynn American Assassin Movie: It’s Awesome!”, “Vince Flynn Was Mitch Rapp”
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/09/15/vince-flynn-was-mitch-rapp/
“Movies made from books can go any number of ways. A book that takes you a number of days to read, you know, they condense that down to a couple of hours in a movie. They have to edit. They have to leave certain things out, and you just never know. Vince wanted to be involved in writing the screenplay, wanted to be involved in it and tried for seven years. And people were deeply invested in the project. They finally got it done, and the movie premieres today — and I have to tell you, I was stunned at how good it was.”
I am taking my Dad to this movie for his birthday next week. I also ordered him a Ted Williams tshirt but I forgot to close the website cart until last Monday. I doubt that the tshirt will be here by Monday. Dad is a big Ted Williams fan, both baseball and fishing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7MiPagrXzA
I’m a dreamer, too, and hope I wake up before succumbing to the notion that this country operates with logic:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/dreamers-dreaming-dreams/
Another “story” in the nooz for a few days; something else will blow soon and we can forget about it.
Unless there is a superheater coil in the smokestack, the steam is around 100% saturated. At 160 psig, the saturation temperature of steam is 371 F.
The engine has super heater tubes as do most of the steam engines. Makes the engine operate more efficiently. The museum is in the process of rebuilding an engine and the front was open. Saw the boiler tubes and super heater tubes.
Gladness abounds, that Mr. Ray did the gig and is outta there safely, with no footage like that in “Runaway Train,” starring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts.
The engine has super heater tubes as do most of the steam engines. Makes the engine operate more efficiently.
Superheaters are nice and do help with the efficiency. It is better to have a steam condenser though. That is where the true efficiency lies and you get the bonus of water reuse. But, a steam condenser requires a lot more equipment such as a hotwell pump, a hotwell, the condenser heat exchanger, some method to blow air across the condenser tubes, a steam jet air ejector, etc, etc, etc.
You know, I getting very tired of the NSA. They are sucking up all of the 8 TB and 10 TB hard drives out there. I was going to order another WD 8 TB USB external for the backup drive replacement in December. But not only is Amazon not selling them for $197, but they are also out of stock !
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC/
Plus I need to shuck two more of these externals to get the 8 TB bare drive to replace the other two LAN internal drives that are currently 4 TB and nearly full.
Superheaters are nice and do help with the efficiency.
The exhaust steam is is discharged up the stack same as the firebox exhaust. The discharge of the steam helps the exhaust from the firebox and helps pull air into the box thus creating a hotter flame.
I was incorrect earlier. The engine I drove uses 100 gallons of water per mile.
Meh, a lot of my work could be described as shirttail engineering, and I have an Arts degree. Tons of relevant work experience though…
I know great IT people with art degrees, but, back in the 90s, before H1B really got rolling, I saw a lot of questionable hiring in the name of “diversity”, especially in management ranks. It looks like that was the case at Equifax.
” Just outta curiosity I’d like to know what the other major credit reporting companies have been doing since this broke in the media.”
In most cases they are raising their rates for locking and unlocking accounts, in the states (most) who have not forbidden it. They have also been raising the rates for what they charge for identity theft protection and are really pushing their most expensive plans that used to be $30/month.
And I am sure they are busy covering their trails and checking their golden parachutes.
https://www.ft.com/content/54de09fa-35a1-3c36-bab4-0ac13c997737
As well as hiring because “my neighbor’s kid needed a job” or “my wife’s college roommate couldn’t get a job because of her lack of skills and poor work ethic so I’ll stick her in a position where she can’t hurt anything important” and the ever-popular “she put out”.
Saw the “diversity is our vibrancy” hiring too many times to count during my IT years since the 1980s and ditto in college and university humanities and social “science” departments, and, of course, police departments. Almost always a problem or “issue,” ranging from relatively minor “we can live with it” to disastrous. Nevertheless, the usual suspects have since doubled- and tripled-downed on it, and any perceived dissent or opposition is deemed utterly rayciss, nativist, xenophobic and/or misogynist. All mortal sins with the new religion, and make no mistake, that is what it is.