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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • I see a lot of references to Ubuntu being filled with ads or scaring people into buying their services, but I’ve been daily driving it for over 15 years on personal desktops and servers and never noticed that. What have I missed?

    I never saw the Amazon ad stuff, I hear it was a referral link?

    Last I checked Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 machines.

    I use apt to manage all my packages and upgrades, including dist-upgrade, maybe that’s why I’ve never noticed snap? Why does snap suck?




  • I’m pretty sure I didn’t mess with systemd, though that would probably be the right way to handle it.

    I was able to update a runtime config so if any storage wasn’t available it just halted the service. Then I created a short script I’d invoke manually which decrypted the luks drives and brought the dependent services up. I also added monitoring to alert me when the drives weren’t available for whatever reason.


  • I use separate disks for data storage and my OS. That way a headless system can boot and all the services like SSH can become available, and I can decrypt the data drives remotely.

    When there’s an unexpected reboot I can still get into my system and decrypt remotely which is nice. I can also move the data storage disks to another system without too much hassle.

    I did have to make sure some services were fault tolerant if an encrypted volume was unavailable when the OS booted. An example of this might be torrenting software, I needed to make sure the temporary storage was on an encrypted volume. The software had a sane fault mode when the final storage location was unavailable, but freaked out for some reason when the temp storage was missing.

    Once set up the whole thing is pretty easy to manage.




  • I’d enact a set of changes which would end up making NCAA football look like the NFL, but with relegation.

    Recind NCAA governance of college football, form a football only league.

    Enforce two primary conferences at the championship level, with a max size of 20-ish teams per conference. Only teams in these two conferences may compete in the end of year 8-12 team championship playoff.

    The bottom two teams from each championship conference get relegated at the end of the year, and the top two teams from the non-championship conferences are promoted.

    Promote interconference play at the league level during the regular season to get a better idea of strength of schedule. Require teams who want to maintain rivalry games with teams from other conferences to use their non-conference game weeks.

    Make the money side of the game more standardized, with profit sharing from championship conference teams with those in other conferences. Protect a promoted team from being relegated for 1-2 years to encourage roster and program building.

    This way we can still have a hundred bowl games, and teams with less money or organizational motivation to maintain championship level programs can still play meaningful games in competitive conferences.

    I can almost guarantee that the promotion and relegation bowls will be more interesting than the national championship.


  • I know this is a privacy community, but I’m not sure I’m onboard with the outrage on this particular one. If you rent/lease or go on a payment plan for the device you’re using, then it isn’t yours, it belongs to the entity you borrowed it from.

    If I don’t make car payments, the bank can repossess my ride. If I dont pay my mortgage or rent, I can be evicted by my landlord or bank.

    If I don’t make my phone payment, the company should have recourse to prevent me from using their device.

    This could open up the ability for bad actors to disable my device, and I agree that’s a horrible prospect. But the idea of a legitimate creditor using this feature to reclaim their property is not something I find shocking.



  • I’m not sure what qualifying language you took offense at, and I wasn’t intending to be condescending.

    I admitted that my experience was indeed anecdotal, but I stand by my statements. If you’re good at what you do in tech, you have a few years of experience, and you’re willing to take take positions that differ from your comfort zone you should never be without well paying work.

    I’m always in the market as you put it, even though I’m not looking to leave my current position any time soon. I did 2 interviews in the last 7 days, and I turn down offers probably once a month.

    I know this isn’t how it works for everyone in tech, but once you get your career grooved it isn’t unrealistic.


  • This hasn’t been my (anecdotal) experience, or that of anyone in my network.

    The industry is unstable no doubt about that, but we’ve never had trouble finding better places to land.

    IMO if you’ve been in tech building your skills for a few years, you really shouldn’t have trouble finding work. '01 was weird but there was still plenty of work, especially in defense. '08 was scary but turned out to be a great time to join a startup. Sometimes it’s a lateral move instead of up, sometimes it requires relocating , but if you’ve been doing good work and building your professional network you should never have to go back to driving forklifts (unless you choose to).


  • Thanks again for the insight, it sounds like you’ve got things on the right track.

    Truthfully, I feel like I’m struggling, but relative to most I’m probably living very well. I own my home near the ocean in a major metro in California.

    Any advice I’d feel comfortable giving doesn’t revolve around money investments or savings. When my relationship with my now wife first got serious, we talked transparently about what kind of life (and lifestyle) we wanted. We did a back of the napkin calculation of the minimum income required to support ourselves, and at the time we were very short. We agreed that we would become very aggressive about our careers and income generation. This is why I asked you about whether you’d been exploring the job market with your sights set on long term goals.

    My wife and I decided to work together to defray the risk inherent in solving the income problem. We started by having one of us find a job with a salary slightly above our old ones. Then that person became the anchor for the household which enabled the other person to find a job that was far riskier but with much higher financial upside. Once things stabilized with that person’s career, making it less risky, that person became the anchor for the household which permitted the first person to take on risk (and debt) to go back to university for a degree specifically selected to improve their earning potential once they graduated.

    Over and over, slingshotting each other forward by taking turns and being very aggressive about generating income, and then investing that income. 20 years later we feel like we can do most of the things we want. We still stress about having enough or being on track for retirement, but it’s a different kind of stress.


  • Hey, I appreciate the context and explanation. I’m sorry if I came across as offensive, that wasn’t my intent. It appears that I made a couple of assumptions about your situation which weren’t true, and you cleared them up for me.

    I’m from the same generation as you, and come from generally the same circumstances (no inheritance, DINK, etc), but I live in the US so I’m not very familiar with Canada’s job market, or wages. I also made a bad assumption about diplomas being bachelor or master’s degrees.

    700k house with $4500 monthly mortgage sounds strange as well, but maybe you have a shorter term loan than I expect. I know housing prices in Canada are crazy, but 700k in the middle of nowhere is bonkers.

    $200k household income puts 4 adults at about the average salary in Canada. That’s a little distressing given your degreed qualifications, I’d think that IT work and nursing would bump those numbers quite a bit.

    I know you didn’t ask for advice, so I’m not going to attempt to give it. Thanks for helping me to understand your situation, sorry again if I sounded like a jerk.




  • I’m betting they’re selling plenty of product bulk to businesses. Lots of commercial installations are going in, and they probably represent nearly all the revenue for Ubiquiti. The small business or home users just aren’t as important to their bottom line. Would they prefer to have enough stock for everyone? Yes. But they’re still creating revenue by prioritizing their biggest customer base.