Something else to be aware of is compromised LinkedIn profiles. I was recently contacted by a very real looking profile on LinkedIn, who was supposedly recruiting for a very real position at a very real company that the profile actually worked for. Red flags were:

1. Bad english/spelling in messages
2. Compensation a little too good to be true
3. Sounded too easy to ‘get’ the job
4. Person’s job title had nothing to do with recruitment until very recently
5. ‘Application form’ they sent me looked a little bogus

They wanted me to fill out a form with all my info., including SSN, and send photocopies of my ID. When I asked for an email address at the company in question to send everything to, they ghosted me.

Yikes, that one almost got me. Advice here is to always manually ‘two factor’ identify people who contact you out of the blue.

Safe hunting folks.

Yep, my kid is just starting to fool around with Minecraft and every time we play, I launch the client from the command line. Planting the seeds…

Nope, not at all. Uninstalled weeks ago. Actively avoid in search results. Had been subconsciously looking to move on for a long time. See ya later, better things to do and places to be.

Yeah, totally - the longitude doesn’t really matter, it’s the latitude that’s important. Auroras usually occur between 10 and 20 degrees from the geomagnetic pole. This does bias North America and Greenland a bit, since the geomagnetic pole is shifted toward Canada relative to the geographic north pole. But, if you take a look at the University of Alaska link I posted, they do publish forecast maps for Europe and the north and south poles as well as the US.

Me too! Happened to see it in Connecticut when I was a teenager, totally took me by surprise. Space weather apps were definitely not a thing at the time.