#Benefits of full stack developer

[priya-joshi]

Becoming a Full-Stack Developer: A Deep Dive into the Multitude of Benefits

In the fast-paced world of technology, the role of a full-stack developer has emerged as a coveted and multifaceted career choice. These professionals possess a unique skill set that bridges the gap between front-end and back-end development, making them indispensable assets in the tech industry. In this comprehensive exploration, we will delve into the numerous advantages that come with being a full-stack developer and how it has become an attractive career choice for many. From versatility and cost-efficiency to in-demand skills and job security, we will cover every facet of this dynamic profession.

Here are some of the key advantages of being a full-stack developer:

Versatility: The One-Stop-Shop for Web Development

At the heart of full-stack development is versatility. Full-stack developers are adept at both front-end and back-end development, allowing them to work on various facets of a project. This versatility is akin to being a "one-stop-shop" for web development. They have the capability to design user interfaces with an eye for aesthetics and user experience, while also managing the intricacies of databases and server-side logic. This comprehensive skill set empowers full-stack developers to take on a wide range of responsibilities within a project.

In-Demand Skills: Meeting the Digital Age's Demands

In today's digital age, businesses are in a constant quest for individuals who can create complete, end-to-end solutions. The demand for full-stack developers has surged because they possess the skills required to handle the entire development process. They are proficient in both front-end and back-end technologies, making them invaluable assets to organizations seeking to streamline their development efforts.

Cost Efficiency: A Boon for Startups and Small Companies

For startups and small companies with limited resources, hiring a full-stack developer can be a game-changer in terms of cost efficiency. Instead of recruiting separate front-end and back-end developers, they can employ one talented full-stack developer who can effectively manage both aspects. This approach not only saves on labor costs but also simplifies project management by reducing the number of team members involved.

Faster Development: Streamlining Project Delivery

Full-stack developers possess the unique ability to streamline the development process. The elimination of communication gaps between front-end and back-end teams leads to more efficient collaboration and quicker project delivery. This, in turn, translates to faster time-to-market for products and services, a critical factor in today's competitive landscape.

Problem Solving: A Holistic Understanding of Systems

One of the distinct advantages of full-stack developers is their holistic understanding of systems. Being proficient in both front-end and back-end development equips them with a comprehensive view of how applications work. This understanding enables them to troubleshoot issues effectively and optimize the performance of web applications. Full-stack developers are not limited to a single aspect of a project; they can address challenges across the entire development stack.

Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Bringing Ideas to Life

Full-stack developers possess the skills needed to bring their own ideas to life. They have the technical proficiency to create web applications and startups without relying on external technical expertise. This entrepreneurial spirit empowers them to innovate and turn their creative visions into reality, opening doors to new business opportunities.

Job Security: Valued for Their Broad Skill Set

In the world of tech, job security is a valuable asset. Full-stack developers often enjoy a high level of job security because of their broad skill set. Companies highly value professionals who can contribute across the entire development stack, reducing the need to hire multiple specialized developers. This versatility makes full-stack developers indispensable team members and safeguards their careers in a constantly evolving industry.

Career Advancement: A Stepping Stone to Various Paths

Full-stack development can serve as a stepping stone to various career paths within the tech industry. While some full-stack developers choose to specialize further, others take on leadership roles, becoming technical leads or architects who design complex systems. Additionally, the skills acquired as a full-stack developer are highly transferable, enabling career transitions and diversification.

In conclusion, the role of a full-stack developer offers a myriad of advantages, from versatility and cost-efficiency to in-demand skills and personal satisfaction. The ability to seamlessly bridge front-end and back-end development is a valuable skill set that opens doors to a world of opportunities in the tech industry.

If you're intrigued by the prospect of becoming a full-stack developer or are eager to enhance your existing skills in this field, ACTE Technologies stands as your trusted partner on this exciting journey. ACTE Technologies offers a comprehensive range of Full Stack Developer courses and resources designed to equip you with the knowledge and hands-on experience needed to excel as a full-stack developer. Whether you are a beginner taking your first steps or a seasoned developer looking to advance your career, ACTE Technologies can be your gateway to unlocking the thrilling possibilities that come with being a full-stack developer. Explore their offerings today and embark on a path towards a rewarding and dynamic career in the world of technology.

[sierraconsult]

Embark on a journey into the future of technology! Exciting opportunities await skilled VR Developers ready to shape immersive worlds and redefine human interaction. Join us in crafting the next frontier of virtual reality experiences. Your dream job in VR development starts now!

[centrally-unplanned]

3 questions:

What is it you like... do, where does all the political expertise come from?

Do you have a platonic ideal of city development and what is it?

What's your take on communitarians? I never got the basic intuition about what makes it appealing, honestly smells totalitarian

- I lie about having political expertise on the internet mainly, that is where the expertise comes from!

But otherwise I am an ex-political analyst/quasi-academic - I took many classes and read many books on the subject. And also blogs, which certainly used to be an incredibly good source for more "foundational" knowledge - still good ofc, but we are past the heyday of the blogosphere. I personally think there is no substitute for "reading a bunch of diverse books in sequence on a topic", not only because you learn about the subject but because you start to see all the diverse approaches to any subject and how to synthesize it all, which can be applied elsewhere.

My actual job these days is in higher education, I build courses, degrees, etc. It definitely is something that keeps me exposed to good info sources but it is not load-bearing on how I grow as a writer. It's true perk is giving me access to good scanning equipment for anime archiving.

- I don't "actually" have one as I think all city development should be organic and contextual, no two places should look identical. In particular you can't really force economies, the industries be where they are. Overall I think the key things are to reduce localism while preserving democratic engagement, so you build up a strong regional government with elected officials holding critical power that can't be overridden by institutional stakeholders so they can pursue majority-benefitting policies. To be more granular, I think diversity of housing options is perpetually underappreciated - you want neighborhoods having studios to 4 bedroom units to even detached homes as you trickle out from the metro stops all next to each other so you can cultivate local economies that cater to diverse crowds and governance units that are "full stack" on the people they need to support. This happens pretty organically without zoning restrictions - US cities just try very hard to force housing types into specific zones.

I do also support every city of a sufficient size having a Kowloon Walled City-esque hyperdense housing complex at their center as a "stopgap" housing option for anyone of any stripe who wants to come to the city and try their hand at it. I am not even joking on that.

-Definitely too diverse a field to have "one" take! So to paint a very broad brush, they are a classic "cause" ideology that hits on correct social problems but doesn't give their solutions the same treatment. It is true that no one is an island, that social dependence is endemic to modernity, that "we are all connected" and individualist decision-making results in suboptimal outcomes. And not only for "others", but even for the individual, the isolating anomie of modernity that everyone falls into is a legitimate problem. In the abstract "more community" can do a lot of good.

But once you move away from abstraction the grubby realities of implementing something like the Responsive Communitarian Platform it tends to fall apart. Individuals are not the best deciders for themselves, but they are typically better than the rest of the options on the table as flawed, biased, or openly hostile governing authorities are the only real alternative. Community orgs are often populated by niche interest groups and oddball activists as typical people are too buys living life to care. Welfare is typically better done by distant, standardized, centralized cash payments instead of a "community" with its fickle resources and personal agendas. And so on. Obviously community has its place, but it is a place that typically already exists - we have had say schools and school boards for a long time! So as a movement it tends to collapse back to good ol' incremental social liberalism as those are the only practical things it can offer.

(But again YMMV based on individual thinkers, a diverse field)

[neobastard]

neopets posted a very lengthy update to the portal site, the new format replacing the monthly AMAs.

the full post can be found here: https://portal.neopets.com/news/may22-neopets-updates

but i'll summarize the community questions and other updates beneath the cut:

community QnA:

Q: is neopets planning a "rugpull"?

A: no, the team working on the site has doubled over the past two years and everyone is working hard to revive not just the brand but the site itself. these teams' commitment to both neopets,com and spinoff projects and merchandise for brand relevance is described as "unwavering"

Q: why are they making money with nc releases but not improving the site?

A: there are different teams working on engineering, improvements, and nc releases simultaneously. the engineering and improvement team is much larger than the team working on nc, it's just less visible to players than new items because it's "wizard behind the curtain" changes (they described it as fixing issues on an older tech stack). every dollar they make goes back into neopets in some form, including events, collaborations, and further development. the company is still at a loss but it's not as dire as it used to be two years ago (which is a great improvement, NC discourse aside).

as for major updates:

revamped NC mall - the nc mall will get a new converted layout around late Q2 to Q3 this year, and a tutorial along with the changes.

easier to find on-site wishlist

one click purchasing (alongside the cart)

fixed pet preview!!

reorganized shop directory

new shopkeeper NPCs

here's the new mockup:

website loading speed improvements - there's been a 35% improvement in loading speed since january as a result of specific optimizations, such as backend enhancements, optimizing database queries, cleaning up records, and upgrading servers (a bunch of tech talk essentially)

anti botting progress - neopets has seen a 15% reduction in bot traffic by blocking it at the network level (which likely improved the performance of the site in and of itself). they intend to further tighten defenses, through methods that remain unstated but will likely hit these paid bots and the people who benefit from them hard.

wearable NP and NC item bug fixes - 37 items have been fixed since april, with 21 items on the chopping block for later this month.

and what's on the horizon:

altador cup: they grey year

enhancements to jhudora and illusen's quests, including new battledome item returns (and a $7 club perk that grants extra time)

more progress on converting NP and NC items

expansion of the avatar high score table

adding invisible pets to the customization spotlight

updates to the trading post, including a page conversion

and of course, the void within: episode 2

i'm glad that this new format allows for more transparency, a lot of people thought the video/stream format was too "corporate" and so these big updates to the portal allows them to cover a lot more. i'm excited for what's to come, and i'm honestly glad they ripped the bandaid off and just outright said "yeah we're working on the site behind the scenes y'all just don't see that part cause it's nerd shit".

a lot has improved over the last two years in this site, and i'm appreciative of the team's hard work regardless of my numerous complaints about things like neocash items and the $7 club. they clearly care about feedback and making neopets for the players before all else including any kind of profit.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Golden haystacks shaped like teardrops have been a symbol of rural life in Romania for hundreds of years. The 3-metre-high (10ft) stacks are the culmination of days of hard work by families.

Together they cut waist-high grass, leave it to dry in the hot sun and stack it up to be stored over the winter, combing the hay downwards to protect it from harsh winds, heavy rain and snow. Throughout winter, clumps of it are removed from the haystacks and fed to livestock.

The work is labour-intensive and communal, and it benefits far more species than just humans and their livestock. Research shows these meadows are among the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems anywhere, full of grasshoppers, butterflies and spiders, as well as more than 100 species of grasses and flowers, including grass vetchling, hedge bedstraw and field scabious.

It is human activity that makes these habitats so rich for wildlife: hundreds of species of plant, bird and insect have adapted alongside centuries of cultivating and harvesting meadows, their life cycles becoming intertwined with farming.

Studies have found that Romania’s traditional hay meadows can be richer in wildlife than meadows managed as nature reserves. From May to July, before the hay is cut, they are awash with wildflowers and insects.

Romania is home to some of the largest grasslands in Europe still managed by traditional methods. But as modern agriculture creeps in, the haystacks are becoming a symbol of a vanishing way of life.

In most of western Europe, the advent of artificial fertilisers has put an end to the wildlife-rich hay meadows that would once have carpeted the countryside. The UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows since the 1930s. Things are rapidly changing in Romania too: as young people leave the villages looking for work elsewhere in Europe, humans and horses are being replaced by machines and fertiliser.

Many people are working to ensure the golden haystacks do not become relics of the past.

Nat Page is director of Fundația Adept, a biodiversity conservation and rural development organisation based in Romania that works with farmers on how best to manage grasslands profitably. It helps farmers access funding for protecting biodiversity and create markets for their products.

Its work covers 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of grasslands south of Sighișoara in south-east Transylvania, which is managed by about 5,000 small-scale farmers.

“You can walk for days through hay meadows,” says Page. “Transylvania is the last European country with great, large-scale traditional farming landscapes. We’re keen to give small-scale farmers an incentive to stay.��

However, on the ground, the destruction of Romania’s traditional methods continues unabated, with half of hay meadows left unmown in some areas.

[diaryujin]

𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐑 - 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍

summary: Sunghoon has never felt any spark in his heart, none of that silly love he’s read about in novels in his free time. No one interested him, and it wasn’t like his father, the king, would let him have friends, male or female, for fear of being betrayed or developing feelings for them. He lived a life of isolation, excited for nothing – neither the idea of being married to a pretty princess or becoming the next ruler of the Park kingdom. He most certainly did not expect you, his new guard, to change all that. He did not expect you to brighten his days and light up his heart.

includes: no warnings in the teaser!!

death, murder, war/battle, attempted murder (kinda), royal au, romanticized medieval setting of sorts, forced marriage/proposal, a lot of time skips so it moves somewhat quickly, more warnings will be added in the final oneshot

pairing: prince! sunghoon x guard! fem! reader

word count: 904

genre: angst

READ THE FULL FIC HERE !

Sunghoon was reading over some papers pertaining to the kingdom’s matters when he heard a knock on the door.

“Enter.”

One of the guards came in, before bowing upon seeing him.

“Sire, his Majesty wishes to see you.”

He nodded and set the papers in a neat stack. He then put them in a drawer and locked it for security. He then stood up and followed the guard, maintaining a neutral expression.

His mind was working much faster than normal though.

His father was very strict, and the slightest mistake meant an extremely harsh lecture. He flicked through his memories, trying to remember what he could have done wrong, and what he should say as his apology. 

He pursed his lips as a thought crossed his mind - was his recent trip to the colder regions made known to his father? He had gone for administrative work, but he couldn’t resist spending some time there ice skating, which the king always considered useless since it benefited only the person skating, not the country. He had done his best to keep it under wraps, but maybe one of the guards reported this to the king. Damn it.

He mentally slapped himself for using such crude language. Those were the words of peasants and did not suit a prince like him. Holy moly…buckling barnacles, great heavens…such lengthy words to express frustration, he thought. ‘Damn it’ was only two syllables.

As he snapped out of his reverie, he entered the Throne Room. His father was seated on the grand throne at the end of the airy space. The seats where the ministers sat were empty. Court was always in the morning, and it was probably lunchtime by now - the prince wasn’t sure. 

He stood a few feet away from his father. The guard bowed and left, and Sunghoon made eye contact with the old man in front of him. He didn’t seem angry, so the younger relaxed a bit, letting out a sigh.

“Why have you called me here, father?”

“I’ve received some proposals from other kings. They’ve sent me paintings of their daughters. A lovely selection of princesses, I must say.”

Sunghoon had to physically hold himself back from rolling his eyes.

“Father, I’ve already told you this. I am not ready for marriage and I am not interested in this topic.”

“Yes, but it’s good to start early. Maybe you’ll change your mind after-”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you Father, but why have you actually summoned me?”

The king narrowed his eyes at his son but didn’t say anything more about the topic.

“Well, I’ve decided to get you a personal guard. There have been many threats of attacks on the palace, so it’s better to take this precaution.”

“Interesting. Will he be with me all the time or-”

“She.”

“What?”

“Your guard is a female.”

To say he was shocked was the understatement of the century. His father? Hiring a woman? As his bodyguard? What if he-

“Are you serious?” “Yes. She is very capable and I’m sure she will protect and serve you well. I trust you to keep your relationship with her strictly professional.”

It wasn’t like he knew how to have a non-professional relationship with anyone outside of his family anyway.

“Yes, Father. Will she be with me at all times?”

“Indeed she will, except for when you are sleeping. At that time, she will stand outside your door and guard you.” “What about her food and sleep?”

“That is not your concern.”

“But-”

“Silence!”

He immediately bowed his head slightly as a sign of remorse for stepping out of line. This was going to be interesting, he thought. He had little to no interaction with women outside of his mother and sister, and the small talk he made with princesses and duchesses of other kingdoms was always awkward. Now he was having someone of the opposite gender, a woman, watching over him nearly 24/7.

He slowed down his train of thought. Why was he thinking like a teenage boy ogling over a girl? He was the crown prince, he was better than that. It was going to be a new experience, that was all.

“May I meet her now?”

“Of course. She’s arriving as we speak.”

Just then, the door opened, and you entered, a male soldier on either side. Sunghoon’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, but nothing came out of it. 

He was having a cultural shock of sorts. All the women he had met were all dainty, graceful and poised - the epitome of perfection. You, on the other hand, had an air of authority about you — rough and firm. A few scars were on your face, probably from battle. You bowed the full 90 degrees, and he could only respond with a small nod.

Oh fuck, you were gorgeous.

And he used foul language again. Stupid Sunghoon, he reprimanded himself.

He didn’t take back what he said, however. Your beauty wasn’t the type written in books or sung in ballads, but it had to be known to the world, somehow. He was almost tempted to write one himself. 

Hold on, why was he thinking all this? His father had just told him to not think anything about you that crossed the lines of professional, and thinking about how pretty you were was not within those lines.

“This is your new personal guard, Y/N.”

a/n: it kinda reads like ‘y/N iS nOt LiKe oThEr gIrLs’ in this bit but i swear that was not the intent! hoon (is a loser) has simply never had real interaction with women who aren’t royals, so pls don’t take it in that manner <3 this is probably going to be my longest oneshot yet, my motivation to write is not completely dead we cheered!!

there is a taglist for this oneshot, lmk if you want to be added on it in my asks!

[mariacallous]

On paper, the first candidate looked perfect. Thomas was from rural Tennessee and had studied computer science at the University of Missouri. His résumé said he’d been a professional programmer for eight years, and he’d breezed through a preliminary coding test. All of this was excellent news for Thomas’ prospective boss, Simon Wijckmans, founder of the web security startup C.Side. The 27-year-old Belgian was based in London but was looking for ambitious, fully remote coders.

Thomas had an Anglo-Saxon surname, so Wijckmans was surprised when he clicked into his Google Meet and found himself speaking with a heavily accented young man of Asian origin. Thomas had set a generic image of an office as his background. His internet connection was laggy—odd for a professional coder—and his end of the call was noisy. To Wijckmans, Thomas sounded like he was sitting in a large, crowded space, maybe a dorm or a call center.

Wijckmans fired off his interview questions, and Thomas’ responses were solid enough. But Wijckmans noticed that Thomas seemed most interested in asking about his salary. He didn’t come across as curious about the actual work or about how the company operated or even about benefits like startup stock or health coverage. Odd, thought Wijckmans. The conversation came to a close, and he got ready for the next interview in his queue.

Once again, the applicant said they were based in the US, had an Anglo name, and appeared to be a young Asian man with a thick, non-American accent. He used a basic virtual background, was on a terrible internet connection, and had a single-minded focus on salary. This candidate, though, was wearing glasses. In the lenses, Wijckmans spotted the reflection of multiple screens, and he could make out a white chatbox with messages scrolling by. “He was clearly either chatting with somebody or on some AI tool,” Wijckmans remembers.

On high alert, Wijckmans grabbed screenshots and took notes. After the call ended, he went back over the job applications. He found that his company’s listings were being flooded with applicants just like these: an opening for a full-stack developer got more than 500 applications in a day, far more than usual. And when he looked more deeply into the applicants’ coding tests, he saw that many candidates appeared to have used a virtual private network, or VPN, which allows you to mask your computer’s true location.

Wijckmans didn’t know it yet, but he’d stumbled onto the edges of an audacious, global cybercrime operation. He’d unwittingly made contact with an army of seemingly unassuming IT workers, deployed to work remotely for American and European companies under false identities, all to bankroll the government of North Korea.

With a little help from some friends on the ground, of course.

christina chapman was living in a trailer in Brook Park, Minnesota, a hamlet north of Minneapolis, when she got a note from a recruiter that changed her life. A bubbly 44-year-old with curly red hair and glasses, she loved her dogs and her mom and posting social justice content on TikTok. In her spare time she listened to K-pop, enjoyed Renaissance fairs, and got into cosplay. Chapman was also, according to her sparse online résumé, learning to code online.

It was March 2020 when she clicked on the message in her LinkedIn account. A foreign company was looking for somebody to “be the US face” of the business. The company needed help finding remote employment for overseas workers. Chapman signed on. It’s unclear how fast her workload grew, but by October 2022 she could afford a move from chilly Minnesota to a low-slung, four-bedroom house in Litchfield Park, Arizona. It wasn’t fancy—a suburban corner lot with a few thin trees—but it was a big upgrade over the trailer.

Chapman then started documenting more of her life on TikTok and YouTube, mostly talking about her diet, fitness, or mental health. In one chatty video, shared in June 2023, she described grabbing breakfast on the go—an açaí bowl and a smoothie— because work was so busy. “My clients are going crazy!” she complained. In the background, the camera caught a glimpse of metal racks holding at least a dozen open laptops covered in sticky notes. A few months later, federal investigators raided Chapman’s home, seized the laptops, and eventually filed charges alleging that she had spent three years aiding the “illicit revenue generation efforts” of the government of North Korea.

For maybe a decade, North Korean intelligence services have been training young IT workers and sending them abroad in teams, often to China or Russia. From these bases, they scour the web for job listings all over, usually in software engineering, and usually with Western companies. They favor roles that are fully remote, with solid wages, good access to data and systems, and few responsibilities. Over time they began applying for these jobs using stolen or fake identities and relying on members of their criminal teams to provide fictional references; some have even started using AI to pass coding tests, video interviews, and background checks.

But if an applicant lands a job offer, the syndicate needs somebody on the ground in the country the applicant claims to live in. A fake employee, after all, can’t use the addresses or bank accounts linked to their stolen IDs, and they can’t dial in to a company’s networks from overseas without instantly triggering suspicion. That’s where someone like Christina Chapman comes in.

As the “facilitator” for hundreds of North Korea–linked jobs, Chapman signed fraudulent documents and handled some of the fake workers’ salaries. She would often receive their paychecks in one of her bank accounts, take a cut, and wire the rest overseas: Federal prosecutors say Chapman was promised as much as 30 percent of the money that passed through her hands.

Her most important job, though, was tending the “laptop farm.” After being hired, a fake worker will typically ask for their company computer to be sent to a different address than the one on record—usually with some tale about a last-minute move or needing to stay with a sick relative. The new address, of course, belongs to the facilitator, in this case Chapman. Sometimes the facilitator forwards the laptop to an address overseas, but more commonly that person holds onto it and installs software that allows it to be controlled remotely. Then the fake employee can connect to their machine from anywhere in the world while appearing to be in the US. (“You know how to install Anydesk?” one North Korean operative asked Chapman in 2022. “I do it practically EVERYDAY!” she replied.)

In messages with her handlers, Chapman discussed sending government forms like the I-9, which attests that a person is legally able to work in the US. (“I did my best to copy your signature,” she wrote. “Haha. Thank you,” came the response.) She also did basic tech troubleshooting and dialed into meetings on a worker’s behalf, sometimes on short notice, as in this conversation from November 2023:

Worker: We are going to have laptop setup meeting in 20 mins. Can you join Teams meeting and follow what IT guy say? Because it will require to restart laptop multiple times and I can not handle that. You can mute and just follow what they say ...

Chapman: Who do I say I am?

Worker: You don’t have to say, I will be joining there too.

Chapman: I just typed in the name Daniel. If they ask WHY you are using two devices, just say the microphone on your laptop doesn’t work right ... Most IT people are fine with that explanation.

Sometimes, she got jumpy. “I hope you guys can find other people to do your physical I9s,” she wrote to her bosses in 2023, according to court documents. “I will SEND them for you, but have someone else do the paperwork. I can go to FEDERAL PRISON for falsifying federal documents.” Michael Barnhart, an investigator at cybersecurity company DTEX and a leading expert on the North Korean IT worker threat, says Chapman’s involvement followed a standard pattern—from an innocuous initial contact on LinkedIn to escalating requests. “Little by little, the asks get bigger and bigger,” he says. “Then by the end of the day, you’re asking the facilitator to go to a government facility to pick up an actual government ID.”

By the time investigators raided Chapman’s home, she was housing several dozen laptops, each with a sticky note indicating the fake worker’s identity and employer. Some of the North Korean operatives worked multiple jobs; some had been toiling quietly for years. Prosecutors said at least 300 employers had been pulled into this single scheme, including “a top-five national television network and media company, a premier Silicon Valley technology company, an aerospace and defense manufacturer, an iconic American car manufacturer, a high-end retail store, and one of the most recognizable media and entertainment companies in the world.” Chapman, they alleged, had helped pass along at least $17 million. She pleaded guilty in February 2025 to charges relating to wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering and is awaiting sentencing.

Chapman’s case is just one of several North Korean fake-worker prosecutions making their way through US courts. A Ukrainian named Oleksandr Didenko has been accused of setting up a freelancing website to connect fake IT workers with stolen identities. Prosecutors say at least one worker was linked to Chapman’s laptop farm and that Didenko also has ties to operations in San Diego and Virginia. Didenko was arrested in Poland last year and was extradited to the United States. In Tennessee, 38-year-old Matthew Knoot is due to stand trial for his alleged role in a scheme that investigators say sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to accounts linked to North Korea via his laptop farm in Nashville. (Knoot has pleaded not guilty.) And in January 2025, Florida prosecutors filed charges against two American citizens, Erick Ntekereze Prince and Emanuel Ashtor, as well as a Mexican accomplice and two North Koreans. (None of the defendants’ lawyers in these cases responded to requests for comment.) The indictments claim that Prince and Ashtor had spent six years running a string of fake staffing companies that placed North Koreans in at least 64 businesses.

before the hermit kingdom had its laptop farms, it had a single confirmed internet connection, at least as far as the outside world could tell. As recently as 2010, that one link to the web was reserved for use by high-ranking officials. Then, in 2011, 27-year-old Kim Jong Un succeeded his father as the country’s dictator. Secretly educated in Switzerland and said to be an avid gamer, the younger Kim made IT a national priority. In 2012, he urged some schools to “pay special attention to intensifying their computer education” to create new possibilities for the government and military. Computer science is now on some high school curricula, while college students can take courses on information security, robotics, and engineering.

The most promising students are taught hacking techniques and foreign languages that can make them more effective operatives. Staff from government agencies including the Reconnaissance General Bureau— the nation’s clandestine intelligence service—recruit the highest-scoring graduates of top schools like Kim Chaek University of Technology (described by many as “the MIT of North Korea”) or the prestigious University of Sciences in Pyongsong. They are promised good wages and unfettered access to the internet—the real internet, not the intranet available to well-off North Koreans, which consists of a mere handful of heavily censored North Korean websites.

The earliest cyberattacks launched by Pyongyang were simple affairs: defacing websites with political messages or launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down US websites. They soon grew more audacious. In 2014, North Korean hackers famously stole and leaked confidential information from Sony’s film studio. Then they targeted financial institutions: Fraudulent trades pulled more than $81 million from the Bank of Bangladesh’s accounts at the New York Federal Reserve. After that, North Korean hackers moved into ransomware—the WannaCry attack in 2017 locked hundreds of thousands of Windows computers in 150 countries and demanded payments in bitcoin. While the amount of revenue the attack generated is up for debate—some say it earned just $140,000 in payouts—it wreaked much wider damage as companies worked to upgrade their systems and security, costing as much as $4 billion, according to one estimate.

Governments responded with more sanctions and stronger security measures, and the regime pivoted, dialing back on ransomware in favor of quieter schemes. It turns out these are also more lucrative: Today, the most valuable tool in North Korea’s cybercrime armory is cryptocurrency theft. In 2022, hackers stole more than $600 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether by attacking the blockchain game Axie Infinity; in February of this year, they robbed the Dubai-based crypto exchange Bybit of $1.5 billion worth of digital currency. The IT pretender scam, meanwhile, seems to have been growing slowly until the pandemic dramatically expanded the number of remote jobs, and Pyongyang saw the perfect opportunity.

In 2024, according to a recent report from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the number of people working in North Korea’s cyber divisions—which includes pretenders, crypto thieves, and military hackers—stood at 8,400, up from 6,800 two years earlier. Some of these workers are based in the country, but many are stationed overseas in China, Russia, Pakistan, or elsewhere. They are relatively well compensated, but their posting is hardly cushy.

Teams of 10 to 20 young men live and work out of a single apartment, sleeping four or five to a room and grinding up to 14 hours a day at weird hours to correspond with their remote job’s time zone. They have quotas of illicit earnings they are expected to meet. Their movements are tightly controlled, as are those of their relatives, who are effectively held hostage to prevent defections. “You don’t have any freedom,” says Hyun-Seung Lee, a North Korean defector who lives in Washington, DC, and says some of his old friends were part of such operations. “You’re not allowed to leave the apartment unless you need to purchase something, like grocery shopping, and that is arranged by the team leader. Two or three people must go together so there’s no opportunity for them to explore.”

The US government estimates that a typical team of pretenders can earn up to $3 million each year for Pyongyang. Experts say the money is pumped into everything from Kim Jong Un’s personal slush fund to the country’s nuclear weapons program. A few million dollars may seem small next to the flashy crypto heists— but with so many teams operating in obscurity, the fraud is effective precisely because it is so mundane.

in the summer of 2022, a major multinational company hired a remote engineer to work on website development. “He would dial in to meetings, he would participate in discussions,” an executive at the company told me on condition of anonymity. “His manager said he was considered the most productive member of the team.”

One day, his coworkers organized a surprise to celebrate his birthday. Colleagues gathered on a video call to congratulate him, only to be startled by his response—but it’s not my birthday. After nearly a year at the company, the worker had apparently forgotten the birth date listed in his records. It was enough to spark suspicion, and soon afterward the security team discovered that he was running remote access tools on his work computer, and he was let go. It was only later, when federal investigators discovered one of his pay stubs at Christina Chapman’s laptop farm in Arizona, that the company connected the dots and realized it had employed a foreign agent for nearly a year.

For many pretenders, the goal is simply to earn a good salary to send back to Pyongyang, not so much to steal money or data. “We’ve seen long-tail operations where they were going 10, 12, 18 months working in some of these organizations,” says Adam Meyers, a senior vice president for counter adversary operations at the security company CrowdStrike. Sometimes, though, North Korean operatives last just a few days— enough time to download huge amounts of company data or plant malicious software in a company’s systems before abruptly quitting. That code could alter financial data or manipulate security information. Or these seeds could lay dormant for months, even years.

“The potential risk from even one minute of access to systems is almost unlimited for an individual company,” says Declan Cummings, the head of engineering at software company Cinder. Experts say that attacks are ramping up not just in the US but also in Germany, France, Britain, Japan and other countries. They urge companies to do rigorous due diligence: speak directly to references, watch for candidates making sudden changes of address, use reputable online screening tools, and conduct a physical interview or in-person ID verification.

But none of these methods are foolproof, and AI tools are constantly weakening them. ChatGPT and the like give almost anyone the capacity to answer esoteric questions in real time with unearned confidence, and their fluency with coding threatens to make programming tests irrelevant. AI video filters and deepfakes can also add to the subterfuge.

At an onboarding call, for instance, many HR representatives now ask new employees to hold their ID up to the camera for closer inspection. “But the fraudsters have a neat trick there,” says Donal Greene, a biometrics expert at the online background check provider Certn. They take a green-colored card the exact shape and size of an identity card—a mini green screen—and, using deepfake technology, project the image of an ID onto it. “They can actually move it and show the reflection,” says Greene. “It’s very sophisticated.” North Korean agents have even been known to send look-alikes to pick up a physical ID card from an office or to take a drug test required by prospective employers.

Even security experts can be fooled. In July 2024, Knowbe4, a Florida-based company that offers security training, discovered that a new hire known as “Kyle” was actually a foreign agent. “He interviewed great,” says Brian Jack, KnowBe4’s chief information security officer. “He was on camera, his résumé was right, his background check cleared, his ID cleared verification. We didn’t have any reason to suspect this wasn’t a valid candidate.” But when his facilitator—the US-based individual giving him cover—tried to install malware on Kyle’s company computer, the security team caught on and shut him out.

Back in london, Simon Wijckmans couldn’t let go of the idea that somebody had tried to fool him. He’d just read about the Knowbe4 case, which deepened his suspicions. He conducted background checks and discovered that some of his candidates were definitely using stolen identities. And, he found, some of them were linked to known North Korean operations. So Wijckmans decided to wage a little counter exercise of his own, and he invited me to observe.

I dial in to Google Meet at 3 am Pacific time, tired and bleary. We deliberately picked this offensively early hour because it’s 6 am in Miami, where the candidate, “Harry,” claims to be.

Harry joins the call, looking pretty fresh-faced. He’s maybe in his late twenties, with short, straight, black hair. Everything about him seems deliberately nonspecific: He wears a plain black crewneck sweater and speaks into an off-brand headset. “I just woke up early today for this interview, no problem,” he says. “I know that working with UK hours is kind of a requirement, so I can get my working hours to yours, so no problem with it.”

So far, everything matches the hallmarks of a fake worker. Harry’s virtual background is one of the default options provided by Google Meet, and his connection is a touch slow. His English is good but heavily accented, even though he tells us he was born in New York and grew up in Brooklyn. Wijckmans starts with some typical interview questions, and Harry keeps glancing off to his right as he responds. He talks about various coding languages and name-drops the frameworks he’s familiar with. Wijckmans starts asking some deeper technical questions. Harry pauses. He looks confused. “Can I rejoin the meeting?” he asks. “I have a problem with my microphone.” Wijckman nods, and Harry disappears.

A couple of minutes pass, and I start to fret that we’ve scared him away, but then he pops back into the meeting. His connection isn’t much better, but his answers are clearer. Maybe he restarted his chatbot, or got a coworker to coach him. The call runs a few more minutes and we say goodbye.

Our next applicant calls himself “Nic.” On his résumé he’s got a link to a personal website, but this guy doesn’t look much like the profile photo on the site. This is his second interview with Wijckmans, and we are certain that he’s faking it: He’s one of the applicants who failed the background check after his first call, although he doesn’t know that.

Nic’s English is worse than Harry’s: When he’s asked what time it is, he tells us it’s “six and past” before correcting himself and saying “quarter to seven.” Where does he live? “I’m in Ohio for now,” he beams, like a kid who got something right in a pop quiz.

Several minutes in, though, his answers become nonsensical. Simon asks him a question about web security. “Political leaders ... government officials or the agencies responsible for border security,” Nic says. “They’re responsible for monitoring and also securing the borders, so we can employ the personnel to patrol the borders and also check the documents and enforce the immigration laws.”

I’m swapping messages with Wijckmans on the back channel we’ve set up when it dawns on us: Whatever AI bot Nic seems to be using must have misinterpreted a mention of “Border Gateway Protocol”—a system for sending traffic across the internet—with national borders, and started spewing verbiage about immigration enforcement. “What a waste of time,” Wijckmans messages me. We wrap up the conversation abruptly.

I try to put myself in the seat of a hiring manager or screener who’s under pressure. The fraudsters’ words may not have always made sense, but their test scores and résumés looked solid, and their technical-sounding guff might be enough to fool an uninformed recruiter. I suspect at least one of them could have made it to the next step in some unsuspecting company’s hiring process.

Wijckmans tells me he has a plan if he comes across another pretender. He has created a web page that looks like a standard coding assessment, which he’ll send to fake candidates. As soon as they hit the button to start the test, their browser will spawn dozens of pop-up pages that bounce around the screen, all of them featuring information on how to defect from North Korea. Then loud music plays—a rickroll, “The Star-Spangled Banner”—before the computer starts downloading random files and emits an ear-splitting beep. “Just a little payback,” he says.

Wijckman’s stunt is not going to stop the pretenders, of course. But maybe it will irritate them for a moment. Then they’ll get back to work, signing on from some hacking sweatshop in China or through a laptop farm in the US, and join the next team meeting—a quiet, camera-off chat with coworkers just like me or you.

[charmwasjess]

Dooku+questions 2,3 and 11!!!

YESSSSSS, YES! MY EVIL GUY! :D Thank you!!

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

There are so many things I love about Dooku and I could (and do, I love y'all) talk about them forever - on any given day I could truly answer this a dozen different ways. But what I’m thinking about today is that despite him being a criminally underdeveloped character in the films, at worst, a cardboard cutout villain, there is a whole host of rich little details about how cringefail and awkwardly authentic he is.

I like that he's a bookworm who installed a library on his dumb antique nerd ship. I like that the first thing that he can come up with, put on the spot to describe a benefit of the dark side is acquiring friends and lovers - the things he destroyed to get the dark side. I like that he has the magic all-powerful Sir Christopher Lee voice but can't quite talk shit better than “twice the pride, double the fall” when he’s like 80 and famously eloquent but beefing with someone a quarter of his age with less emotional regulation than a toaster. Ugh, that he hates Anakin because he sees himself in him and is outright jealous of no longer being Yoda’s golden boy?! Not just daddy issues, but the whole subscription. I like that he smiles through his duels and that it’s the only time he seems happy. His inability to control his bitchy face journey when his boss, the guy who can choke him out over Zoom, is describing his convoluted schemes in TCW.  I like how extra and dramatic he is - he steps off a ledge or jumps out a window to leave a conversation he’s losing, he has to backflip all two meters of his lanky ass instead of walking down like SEVEN stairs in RotS, and god, those dumb, dumb whimpering puppy eyes at the end.

What a magnificent loser. 

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

Dooku killed my other favorite character?!?! Actually like. All of them??? 

No, I actually love that about him, the way he deconstructs his own support system piece by bloody piece, all while still actively and genuinely grieving them. Haha. :D That sucks, dude.

It’d be easy to cheat here and just tell you my least favorite thing is that he's a character often neglected or sidelined by the creators. A plot tool to develop more important characters rather than going on narrative arc himself.

But to get real, Dooku’s character mainly exists as a piece of foreshadowing for Anakin’s fall. A 1.0 of what a Jedi who went bad might look like. His fate is preordained; redemption is the gift saved for Vader, as is the ultimate form of monstrous former Jedi tool of the Sith, so Dooku is doomed to always dwell in the halfway - a sketch or a shadow. His role in the narrative isn't Stover's sundragon, but rather the lamentable protagonist of Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

(I) am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

Twenty years later, I don't think I've ever really gotten over the fact that they could have done so much more with Dooku than kill him off in the first scene of RotS, and didn't. 

11. Would you date this character?

I would not date Dooku. Being close to Dooku is the self-killer. However, I would *gesturing to indicate sexually splitting and stacking him on a pile like so much dry firewood to warm my home in the dead of winter.* 

[aorish]

i keep developing skills and talents that are not terribly ethical. the primary subfield of physics i worked on in undergrad is really only useful for natsec jobs, which im not eligible for or willing to do. the primary skillset im developing in grad school is... well, "full stack" AI/ML. which i probably wont have a hard time finding a job doing but most of the jobs i can find will not exactly be making the world a better place! high chances if i take the first offer i get im either spying on people to more efficiently sell them products or im finding ways to automate people's jobs away for only marginal benefit to the overall economy. if im lucky maybe i'll get something in advanced manufacturing or knowledge management or something not totally horrible. or just like a generic software dev job i guess

but uhhhhh i hate how little this feels like a coincidence? jobs pay well because not a lot of people can do them but also because they fuck over a lot of people and thats what results in a sufficient amount of wealth to pay the salaries that highly-skilled™ workers like me will demand. but maybe i can land something meaningless and inconsequential enough that i can sleep easier knowing im not making the world not too much worse. if i play my cards right i'll probably "semi-retire" at 40 and go back to grad school for something i actually care about. maybe i can spend the second half(?) of it doing something i truly think is worthwhile even if it doesnt pay all that much. i guess that's far luckier than most people...

[mc-critical]

Come to think of it, it's namely Mahidevran's small amount of scenes in S02A that show her coming into her own and having settled down at least a little bit, emphasizing her getting used to the status quo around her to some extent and her hopes for it to change becoming more likely to be realized than ever. Because her (both gleeful and earnest) happiness in these episodes isn't as fragile as it once was, with Mahidevran getting numerous victories in succession, both new ones she wholeheartedly embraces and old ones she couldn't reach before no matter what she did alike: seemingly getting Nigar on her side [like she aimed to in S01], SS showing her favor again by giving her money for charity, Isabella bringing woes to Hürrem [and it's in relation to Isabella Mahidevran gets one of the few scenes of happiness in front of a mirror where that happiness isn't tainted but enforced afterwards] long enough for SS to even bring her to the harem [Mahidevran senses Isabella's possible danger but she's less of a threat than she would've been; her being in the harem is welcome to Mahidevran as long as it bothers biggest individual threat Hürrem, and Mahi could gain advantage while Isabella and Hürrem are fighting, even Valide mentioned that in E37], Mustafa getting Hatice's chambers [what Mahi also wanted in S01], Mahi gaining possession of Leo's diary several times and being the one to fully incite the revelation of its secrets by giving it to Valide [another S01 callback as Mahi had suspicions about Leo as well], with the biggest, most important victory of all being her seeing Mustafa grow and Süleiman acknowledging her efforts as his mother {and that's very interesting not only because Mahi obviously becomes closer to Mustafa the further into the show we get, but also because most of her interactions with Süleiman in S02A are also about Mustafa - his education, his progress and the benefits and approval Mahi gains from SS due to that, it's only due to that she could gain it now and it looks stronger than ever, fueling her hope to get SS's love back, in contrast to early S03A where Mahi gets more scenes where she interacts with Mustafa before he leaves for Manisa and her hope, her love for SS have already evaporated, along with SS's changed view of the one thing he approved from her in forever - her motherhood - post-E55, arguably even post-E48?}. And even if these victories don't last or aren't actual victories, the bad doesn't linger in Mahi's mind, doesn't impact her as much precisely due to the scarse focus she gets throughout the half-season.

The less we see her, the less detailed or possibly drawn-out reactions we witness (even SS getting mad at Mustafa in E29 isn't as much about her or even Mustafa at the moment as it is about what Valide thinks could happen with SS in the future) and the more we zoom in not only on her relation to the main protagonist's story (her even more frequent antagonising of Hürrem), but also on the main highlights of Mahidevran's own life. Mahidevran not having as many scenes points to her not getting development but the setup of one, to her being in certain stasis until that transitory period passes, and this stasis is, for once, calmness and even happiness while she's doing her own thing and she learns about the main events she is less involved with than usual, that she always returns to no matter what (instead of returning to sorrow as she did for the majority of S01; this also reverses that emotional joy vs. sorrow dynamic she had with Hürrem especially in early S01 for many episodes). Her good mood and all the reasons for her to have it last and/or accumulate before a sorrow not just for one or two episodes but for an entire half-season and even when Mahidevran gets her full focus back (arguably E38-onwards, but really in, IMO, E40-onwards) and things start to be stacked against her again, with her facing subsequent failures instead (Isabella's disappearance and that scene in the balcony in E38; Valide falling ill; Hürrem getting freed in E40), she still holds onto getting SS back (E41) and gains even more presumed victories (the recognition for her charity and Leo's diary in E39 again; Hürrem's exile,marrying Nigar to Matrakci, even Hatice's pregnancy all in E41 again; Mustafa in general again) as a compensation that only give her strength to continue (E41 as a whole is a transition between the states of pre-wedding Mahi and post-wedding, pre-Edirne Mahi).

All that, of course, is there to only open the door to the biggest sorrow for Mahidevran, the one that confirms that she can't ever get SS back, that all hope is gone for good: Süleiman marrying Hürrem (and even that happens and is announced during a victory of Mahidevran's: Mustafa's circumcision, but Mehmet is also circumcized, so the victory too is shared with Hürrem this time). The presumed victories begin to recede and center on the one and only person she always has beside her: her son (E42 directly makes the near completion of that turnaround clear through Mahi looking at Mustafa when she tells Hürrem that her hope is right here), while the sorrow escalates again as Mahidevran processes SS's marriage (E43-44 where she witnesses either Hürrem's victories or the turmoil of her closest people, namely Valide and Hatice). This is how E45 gets an even more culminative feel (with Mahi fully leaning on Mustafa at the end, the shifting of priorities on Mahi's part that S02A built to completes itself) and her infamous E55 scene with Mustafa, or rather a certain line of it, is revealed in another light: "I kept quiet for years. I've waited patiently for my punishment to end! But it didn't". Because it's become true. Mahidevran really kept quiet in anticipation of that faithful day SS embraces her again... not in S01, but in S02A. She really waited patiently for the end of her punishment...not in S01, but in S02A. So when that end never comes, when she can't wait any longer, watching as her fate is dictated by someone else, allowing it with her silence, you can really feel the years of pent-up resentment and anguish (and in E43 and E44 she even slides back to the background of the events again both figuratively and literally for everything to truly pile up). You can really feel her pain. But perhaps that would've never been entirely possible without S02A. Perhaps it all would've never been as impactful, as powerful if S02A wasn't set up the way it was for her.

[omgmaxsmith-blog]

Can Open Source Integration Services Speed Up Response Time in Legacy Systems?

Legacy systems are still a key part of essential business operations in industries like banking, logistics, telecom, and manufacturing. However, as these systems get older, they become less efficient—slowing down processes, creating isolated data, and driving up maintenance costs. To stay competitive, many companies are looking for ways to modernize without fully replacing their existing systems. One effective solution is open-source integration, which is already delivering clear business results.

Why Faster Response Time Matters

System response time has a direct impact on business performance. According to a 2024 IDC report, improving system response by just 1.5 seconds led to a 22% increase in user productivity and a 16% rise in transaction completion rates. This means increased revenue, customer satisfaction as well as scalability in industries where time is of great essence.

Open-source integration is prominent in this case. It can minimize latency, enhance data flow and make process automation easier by allowing easier communication between legacy systems and more modern applications. This makes the systems more responsive and quick.

Key Business Benefits of Open-Source Integration

Lower Operational Costs

Open-source tools like Apache Camel and Mule eliminate the need for costly software licenses. A 2024 study by Red Hat showed that companies using open-source integration reduced their IT operating costs by up to 30% within the first year.

Real-Time Data Processing

Traditional legacy systems often depend on delayed, batch-processing methods. With open-source platforms using event-driven tools such as Kafka and RabbitMQ, businesses can achieve real-time messaging and decision-making—improving responsiveness in areas like order fulfillment and inventory updates.

Faster Deployment Cycles: Open-source integration supports modular, container-based deployment. The 2025 GitHub Developer Report found that organizations using containerized open-source integrations shortened deployment times by 43% on average. This accelerates updates and allows faster rollout of new services.

Scalable Integration Without Major Overhauls

Open-source frameworks allow businesses to scale specific parts of their integration stack without modifying the core legacy systems. This flexibility enables growth and upgrades without downtime or the cost of a full system rebuild.

Industry Use Cases with High Impact

Banking

Integrating open-source solutions enhances transaction processing speed and improves fraud detection by linking legacy banking systems with modern analytics tools.

Telecom

Customer service becomes more responsive by synchronizing data across CRM, billing, and support systems in real time.

Manufacturing

Real-time integration with ERP platforms improves production tracking and inventory visibility across multiple facilities.

Why Organizations Outsource Open-Source Integration

Most internal IT teams lack skills and do not have sufficient resources to manage open-source integration in a secure and efficient manner. Businesses can also guarantee trouble-free setup and support as well as improved system performance by outsourcing to established providers. Top open-source integration service providers like Suma Soft, Red Hat Integration, Talend, TIBCO (Flogo Project), and Hitachi Vantara offer customized solutions. These help improve system speed, simplify daily operations, and support digital upgrades—without the high cost of replacing existing systems.

[sierraconsult]

AWS consulting services might be just the answer your organization needs. A move to AWS is a superb choice.

SIERRA helps businesses big and small with Splunk Enterprise Deployments and Enterprise Security.

Today’s high-velocity, software-enabled business environment demands IT to deliver faster.

SIERRA’s dedicated center of excellence for SAP Hybris promotes research around the Hybris

[connectinfo1999]

This blog will discuss the benefits of hiring a full-stack developer. We will also go through exactly what a full-stack developer is and what abilities are required to become one. So let's get started.

[thsndsptlghts]

there's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home - life is beautiful; sixx:a.m

EVANGELINE BOUDREAUX, VAMPIRE.

( jessica lucas . female . she/her ) — blasting wanted dead or alive by bon jovi down main street we’ve spotted EVANGELINE BOUDREAUX sporting their worn leather jacket. the age in letters year old VAMPIRE who’s been in town for six weeks often can be seen sat at the corner of the bar, or working as a BARTENDER/PART TIME BOUNCER at ENVY. people say they display loyal and aggressive traits, but we rather trust their vibes: wisps of smoke in the nights light, leaning on her motorbike watching the stars, top shelf whiskey and a good book. also, we’ve heard they love their coffee too sweet ! aren’t they fascinating ?

★ FULL NAME: Evangeline Boudreaux ★ NICKNAME/ALIAS: Eve, Evelyn (during WW2), Eva (prefers Eve) ★ GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis-Female / She/Her ★ SPECIES: Vampire ★ AGE: 102 / Appears around 28 ★ SEXUALITY: Pansexual. ★ OCCUPATION: Bartender / Part Time Bouncer @ Envy ☾ HAIR COLOUR: Dark brown, sometimes with ombre blonde ends. Has been known with black hair in the past ☾ EYE COLOUR: Dark brown with some golden flecks ☾ HAIR STYLE: Usually worn either down, naturally wavy or straight or up in a high ponytail ☾ DISTINGUISHING MARKS/TATTOOS/PIERCINGS: A few simple dots on her fingers, to test if being a vampire would disturb the ink, though Eve would like more tattoos in the future. Many ear piercings, most often worn as rings/twists. ☾ DEFINING FEATURES: ☾ TRADEMARK CLOTHING: Her worn leather bike jacket and stacked rings on her fingers. Combat boots - occasionally swapping for chunky heeled boots. ☾ UNIQUE SUPERNATURAL STRENGTHS: Eve favors her hypnosis-type powers to get her way and has developed a sort of siren song-esque way of using it. ☾ DAYLIGHT TOKEN: A silver ring with a mystic topaz stone set within a moon, surrounded by diamonds taken from her mothers' wedding ring, enchanted by a witch from New Orleans for her.

♥ PARENTS: Deceased during the War ♥ SIBLINGS: None ♥ EX-PARTNERS: TBC ♥ NOTABLE CONNECTIONS: - Louisa Allerton; jokingly referred to as ‘louisas emotional support vamp’, often helps calm her or catch any rouge flying objects. - Beaufort McGovern; someone Eve enjoys winding up and making digs at (more to be added) OTHERS TBC ♥ WANTED CONNECTIONS: - a past love from the war, someone who thought she was dead/vice cersa - the one who turned her/someone who helped her with the transition - friends from the war/previous cities - drinking buddies - friends with benefits/enemies with benefits OTHERS TBC ♥ PINS: https://pin.it/zMUwyg0VT BACKGROUND ♦ Evangeline was born in 1916 in New Orleans to immigrants from the Caribbean. She grew up working alongside her father in their mechanics shop, her mother a nurse at a local hospital and learned all she could from them both. ♦ When World War 2 broke out Eve (known at the time as Evelyn) was happy to join the forces, using her mechanics knowledge for work on vehicles and nursing those she could. Her dual skills were to be valued and soon she was placed for deployment. ♦ Killed in action (sort of - an attack on a base she had been shipped out to) and only a letter sent home to her mother reporting her death. Or at least that was what everyone would think. She had managed to crawl toward a nearby village, hopeful for help or at least something more peaceful than being in the mud, help was certainly what she got but not in the way she expected. Maybe some of those old folk stories weren’t quite so fairytale horrors after all. ♦ Sneaking back onto a ship at the end of the war was easy for the woman, finding her way back to the States and hopeful she could reunite with her mother, as so many other things in her life; this didn’t go to plan. Perhaps she had moved, or perhaps she had been caught up in bombings, all Evangeline knew was she had no family in New Orleans anymore and even if she did, was it safe for her to be there at all? ♦ After bouncing around for a few years, sticking to vague names and short stays in small towns here and there Eve found herself following an old friend to Portum and recently settled into the idea that she didn’t have to live such a solitary life anymore - something she had struggled with for decades. ♦ She has been in Portum for a few weeks now, finding a job at Envy as a bartender and occasionally her rough around the edges demeanor earning her reputation as one to not be trifled with, often taking on the job as bouncer when needed.

[deathbysatellite]

Features I've Missed From Other Packs

I only have a couple days left before Samir ages up to young adult and the third generation begins. Since I've only been playing with the packs necessary to a particular generation, there have been a lot of items and features I've missed, especially ones that would have been useful to this household in particular.

Fish tanks: Martin had "Presenting the Perfect Private Aquarium" as his Lifetime Wish. I had a fish bowl on an end table in his bedroom, one on the coffee table in the upstairs living room, two on the coffee table in downstairs living room, one on an end table by the front door, and two coffee tables in the first basement filled with four fish bowls each. Do you know how much space I could have saved if I only had to use two tanks and one bowl? Do you know how much time I could have saved if I could feed six fish at a time, instead of feeding all thirteen fish individually???

Digital photo frames: Just because I had to max out the photography skill doesn't mean I sold every photo I took. In fact, I amassed quite the sizable collection. Nearly half the walls and surfaces in their already large house ended up littered with photographs. Not that the digital frames will do me much good in the next generation; I'll only need one to store the cell phone pictures of heirs, spouses, and weddings

Self-employed skill careers: I know it doesn't matter much, especially since some of the adults had sources of income, but I like being able to officially say that something is my Sim's job. Plus it can be a little annoying when my Sims spawn wishes to get a job, because they're unemployed by the game's standards

The consignment system: not that the Ivey-Hong family needed more money (they're literally millionaires who own three vacation homes, the diner, the beach, and the fishing hole by the waterfall), but I like how overpowered the consignment system is. That tiberium could have been making them twice as much money. Plus I like making trips to the consignment store a part of my Sim's work routine. That's why I had Martin sell his fish and produce at the grocery store instead of selling it straight from the inventory

Stylist feature: If it wasn't available via MasterController, I would greatly miss the stylist feature. I like being able to edit hair, makeup, and clothing all at once, especially when I'm using different hairstyles for different outfits. Having to go back and forth between "Change Appearance" and "Plan Outfit" was super annoying back in the day, especially since I would need to switch between outfits to change the hair and makeup for them individually

BUNK BEDS: Generation 1 had. Nine. Fucking. Sims. Generation 2 had eight. Dear God, did I miss bunk beds. That house I built was not meant to house families that large. I could have easily kept them on the original lot if I had bunk beds, but I didn't. Do you know how long it took to find a base game only lot that was not only large enough for Gen 2, but could also be easily modified to suit the Ivey-Hong family's needs (namely, a backyard large enough for a garden and a pond, and the ability to use the basement tool without having to do massive renovations)? And then I found out that I already have that lot installed in my game

Sleeping bags: It would have been nice to have something Janelle could get a full night's sleep in, instead of having to stack naps on loungers and benches in the action queue

Wedding arches/cakes: It's a little thing, but it really helps make weddings feel more like weddings

A lot of the toys from Generations: even if the Gen 3 kids developed their own hobbies pretty easily, it's still nice having things specifically for kids. Plus toddlers definitely benefited from that expansion

Shower Woohoo: It is genuinely the most practical woohoo location. On top of all the benefits of woohooing, you also get two Sims clean at the same time, streamlining their morning

The gem cutting machine: I miss cutting gems for free, and not having to wait for them to come back in the mail. Some gems just aren't worth cutting the regular way, because you can't break even on them even with the cheapest cut. And my Sims ended up receiving so many gnomes, I ended up having to sell some of them because I had over a dozen at each vacation home

Seasons/Weather: On the one hand, I like not having to worry about my plants not going into hibernation, and I like not having to worry about the negative effects weather can have on my Sims (especially since the older triplets had to spend all their waking hours outside as toddlers because the house had one bedroom). On the other hand, I love the way the weather makes the town look, and I do miss some of the new interactions they add. And while I like that Sunset Valley's Central Park is open 24/7 without Seasons, I do like the fun little activities the festival lot brings

Beach lots being connected to the water: This is more of a pet peeve, since it's something that affects any world created/last updated before Island Paradise, but I find it annoying that Sims will leave your party, or have to separate from a group outing because you're all on a beach and they decided they want to swim in the ocean

Lot types: Not necessarily any specific lot type, I just miss having more places for my Sim to hang out with friends/family

[seat-safety-switch]

Zoning is zoning, so how can we get along communally? City councilfolx, I have noticed that there is very little downtown parking, despite our entire town only owning one (1) bus that sometimes doesn't run when Old Clyde has to get to his haemorrhoid appointment. Now, certainly, you know this, which is why you have some professional drivers taking you to City Hall in some fancy-ass Town Cars. That way, the driver takes the car away after and you don't have to pay $27 for three hours of parking in what the newspaper said the Mayor called "Asshole's Row."

This parking is tremendously expensive because of the private parking company's constant bribery of council. Why bribe them? It keeps the city from doing something crazy, like building a train. There's simply no way to benefit from this state of affairs legally: that is, unless I were to accidentally come across some kind of reactionary government pressure group. Oh shit, is that what is happening at this very city council meeting? Boy, I just totally blundered into this one, didn't I? Must be that old luck of the Irish my mom told me about while she was teaching me to shoplift by throwing bars of soap at my head as a kid.

The thing is, esteemed members of the city council: I want to park a whole bunch of cars, so many that there is no longer room for them in just my neighbourhood, and I figured out the password to the admin account of the local racist Facebook group. Believe me, those folks will do literally anything to anyone, as long as they are given the slightest imaginable rationale for violence. Threatening people is illegal, blackmailing them even more so: I would never stoop so low as to do that. I'm just spitballing some community-minded ideas here, ideas like "re-zone the former site of Billy's Tacos as a parking garage and I won't have your homes burned down with you in them." That's Latin for "sustainable development."

You can lull yourselves to sleep tonight on your pillows stacked full of money, knowing that you still aren't helping your average citizen. To convert primo downtown real estate into a storage facility for just one dirtbag's pile of rapidly self-disassembling domestic automobiles is the height of ridiculous, especially in this era of climate consciousness. The reason why you can feel good is that none of these cars run, and therefore cannot pour carbon into the atmosphere. In fact, with how much rust they've taken on, the panels probably contain more iron hydroxide than they started with, which helps trap the carbon dioxide. And I managed to fill up the entire parking garage myself, which means downtown will still remain beautiful, walkable, culturally rich, and contain absolutely no free parking spots. You're welcome, too, planet.