jaredhallen

Seems like a weird crusade. Pointing everything directly at the IP address might not seem so swell when it's time to upgrade the server or the address has to change for some reason. Sure would be nice to just update the DNS record to point to the new address.

Not a developer by trade. But incidentally, today I took my first stab at "vibe coding". I wrote a little gui program to streamline a process that I've been doing for years. The code is an absolute wreck. But the program works and does what it's meant to do. I wouldn't ever expect anyone to maintain it, but for what it is, I can't complain. The alternative would have been for the tool to have not been written at all. The level of effort was so low that a) it passed the threshold of it being worth my time, and b) if it needs to be re-vibe-coded over again, then no worries.

Impressive, no doubt. But I think there might be a few lines of supporting code in the browser.

I love Linux. I've been using it for about 25 years now. I try to be a realist, and historically, it has always been my opinion that it is a less polished experience, suitable mainly for power users. But my opinion now is that many flavors actually do offer a superior desktop user experience for most use cases.

That seems like a pretty rare situation compared to any number of alternative use cases. Most of which are decidedly less wholesome.

Nice, I worked at one of those mom and pop computer shops in the late 90's. I built the computers, and I even went with my boss (the shop owner) to those shows a couple times. From what I remember, the show scene was pretty well declining at that point, at least in our area. I still remember the TV ads, though. "SUPER VGA! CD-ROM!!"

I can absolutely relate. I bought a series x at launch with the exact same idea, and have had the same disappointment. Minecraft and Borderlands have been about the only solid split screen titles on this whole generation. That being said, I do feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of the hardware. It just didn't play out like I was hoping. Also, I agree with the article's complaint about gamepass. I had ultimate starting when I bought the console in 2020. I don't remember what I paid at the beginning, but I think it was like $8/month. They lost me when they just upped it from $20-$30. I mean, $20 was already a stretch, but a 50% increase on top of that? Bye.

dd = (D)oes what it says it (D)oes

You know, this is true. And I've read any number of "you should never use dd, use this instead" articles over the years. But man, do I love me some dd.

I mostly agree. Tapes worked pretty well. The big advantage of CD's from my perspective was the ability to jump straight to a track. Rewinding and fastforwarding was quite annoying. But CD's skipped like crazy on any mobile application, especially on the early hardware. Of course mp3's solved this. And there was a nice time, albeit short, time where we downloaded music and felt as if it was ours to own. Granted, a lot of this was probably pirated, otherwise maybe you ripped a CD. But still it represented a great state of solid technology (they just played for you without any fuss) and reasonable ownership. Then along came streaming. It does, of course, have its advantages, but they come with many significant drawbacks.

This is a very different take than my own. I do agree with the author on one point. I think trying to pinpoint a specific range of years to define a generation is missing the point. It's more about culture and the experience of your upbringing than it is about a particular date. I was born in '83, and I couldn't identify more with GenX. I listened to all the same music, experienced the free-range childhood, share the ideology, etc.

That being said, I don't view it in a negative light at all. Whatsoever. I don't feel that the adults let us down. I don't consider myself a trauma victim. And I never felt alone. I, too, walked myself home from school and found my own snacks. And then I took off again. On my bike or on foot. I met up with friends or cousins and we lived a life I could only dream about now. We built forts, played in the mud, shot our bee bee guns. Rode bikes, used tools, fixed things. We crashed, we got hurt, we solved our own problems. We lived, we learned, we built confidence, capability, and self sufficiency. We had a freedom that makes me want to weep yearning for it now.

Our parents, mine at least, didn't neglect me. They trusted me. And they didn't trust me not to fuck up. They knew I'd do that. They trusted me to learn from it.

Stranger than fiction.

There's a financial incentive if they're displaying ads or collecting and selling data.

Absolutely true. I bought a "dumb" Samsung around 2010. It still works to this day. In 2020, I bought a mid-range TV with Android. The computer in it died after 3 years, and I wasn't able to find a replacement at a reasonable cost. I sat on it for 2 years before finally ewasting it, because the wastefulness made me sick. I guess my main point is that it was the "smart" part that failed. If it was just a display, it would almost certainly still be trucking along.

Cox 0.049?

I agree that he came out blasting, and the language and tone, particularly at the beginning are pretty off-putting. That being said, having read the full post, I can't say I disagree with the motives and point of view.

Will it stop enabling dns over https by default?

That only makes sense if you have the opportunity to make more money than you'd be paying the mechanic with the time you spent fixing the car. I'd venture to say that's true less often than not. Even if you day job makes more per hour than you're saving by repairing the car, it doesn't necessarily mean you can just choose to book more hours on the job. To make it more concrete, let's use the given example. Let's say the repair is $300 in parts, and $700 in labor. Let's call the shop rate $100/hour, to be conservative. So in order for it to make sense for me financially, I have to a) have a job that makes at least $100/hour and b) have the choice to work an extra 7 hours.

My 20 year old GE doesn't.

And an aging population isn't helping the situation.

Agreed on the ridiculous page counts, but I don't find Stephenson's pages a slog. Exhausting, maybe. There's a lot going on. But he makes me laugh. I'd like to meet that guy.

Agree to disagree.

Sure. Getting 10x the resources for the same price is another valid way to express the thought. Saving 10x isn't, though.

But that's 4x the savings compared to another saving. I suppose you've upped the pedantry and are technically correct, but that's a pretty narrow use case and not the one used in the article.

I'm fully aware this is pedantic, but you can't save 10x. You can pay 1/10. You can save 90%. Your previous costs could have been 10x your current costs. But 10x is more by definition, not less. You can't save it.

I think what you're driving at can be more generalized as users bringing solutions when it would be more productive for them to bring problems. This is something I focus on pretty seriously in IT. The tricky part is to get the message across without coming across as unhelpful, arrogant, or obstructive. It often helps to ask them to describe what they're trying to achieve, or what they need. But however you approach the discussion, it must come across as a sincere desire to help.

You can smooth out a cast iron cook surface. It only tales a few seconds with a flapper wheel on an angle grinder.

Except when all your login sessions time out and you spend 20 of each 25 minute working segment logging back in to things.

Not necessarily. Not everyone has easy access to that kind of service. The nearest one to me that I'm aware of is about half an hour drive away. The sharpening system that I have just takes a few minutes. It's definitely easier for me to do it myself than take them somewhere.

Maybe the next hype train won't rely on GPU's.