randolando

The problem is the fundamental shift away from the long accepted design philosophy of software doing one thing and doing it well.

This means "grown adults" can't uninstall the software components that they like, because they aren't individual components anymore.

Systemd would probably not be hated on as much if it was only a "better" init. But instead it is an opaque and centralized system that is replacing a growing list of tooling ( init, ntp, cron, syslog, network config, to name a few)

This will possibly be unpopular, but I want to share my experience anyway.

On more than one occasion I have jokingly mentioned food products like "cheetos" or "doritos" only to have ads for these products (that I was not being advertised before) show up in my feed a few hours later.

Each time this happens, I'll check my privacy settings and realize that I let a social media app, like instagram for example, have access to my microphone in order to capture a video (or similar)

It seems like more than a coincidence, but of course I have no way to know for sure. So it usually is brused off as paranoia.

Still I can't help but feel like I'm being monitored more closely than I think.

Presumed personality traits aside, there's more to it than ability to strike.

Google makes money from advertisers who are buying screen time with certain viewers.

If multiple high profile creators acted in a coordinated way it absolutely could disrupt the flow of dollars to Google and necessitate fairer policies in order to retain the creators who make them money.

Indeed, presumably they have paid a sizable team of designers quite well to create these diagrams, graphs, etc.

I was impressed by all the varied ways they have visualized their "data". The tipping scale, for instance, gives a clear before/after projection while being much more visually interesting than a plain graph.

Not to say that I believe all of it, but I do think visually appealing and/or dazzling graphics do have an effect on some types of people. Conscious or not.

If that's the case, 99% will be booted off the platform and they will have to meet certain numbers of visitors and engagement every month, or lose their job..which is what unionizing means.

Youtube already does this to some degree in the form of changing their monetization requirements over time.

I'm all for giving more collective bargaining power to the creators. Youtube provides the infrastructure to connect creators to users, but I think over time we've seen them begin to take advantage of this in a way that is not fair to individual creators.

Have you?

Yes, and not just a Boeing plane. The happenings around the MAX make me reluctant to fly on new aircraft in general.

As I understand, parts of the certification process had been outsourced by the FAA to 3rd parties with monetary incentive to accelerate approvals and downplay safety critical issues.

That just seems to be asking for trouble and a step backwards in vetting the safety of new aircraft designs.

I like the principles that you outlined about balancing automation with repeatable human processes. But you lost me at writing your own config management system.

That seems at odds with rule number 3 because sysadmins must have fundamental understanding of the systems/network/OS, in-depth knowledge of your custom homegrown config manager and the language it's implemented in in order to debug.

Happy to hear it works for you though. Personally I'm willing to accept the shortcomings of an existing config management system like Ansible because it's a system that is already understood by a large percentage of sysadmins and the core program does not require any maintenance time/effort from my team.