thejml @ thejml @sh.itjust.works

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1 mo. ago

Do young children even hold phones near their heads anymore? I rarely see a kid less than their early teens doing anything but FaceTime or games. And after that point, video chats, texting, and doom scrolling.

Even my 15yo daughter never holds the phone against her head.

While I 100% agree with the fact that even modern things can be fixed with some knowhow and troubleshooting (and spare capacitors or the like), there’s a few things at play: `

• people generally don’t have this skill set
• electronics tend to be made cheaper, this means they may fail faster but also means they can be replaced cheaper
• it costs real money for tech support that can fix said issues, often many times more money than the thing costs to replace `

As a retro enthusiast, I’ve fixed my share of electronics that only needed an hour and a $2 capacitor. But there was also $7 shipping for the cap, and 30-60min of labor, and my knowhow in troubleshooting and experience. If the company had to send someone out, they’d likely spend well over $200 for time, gas, labor, parts, etc. not including a vehicle for the tech and the facility nearby and all that good stuff. Even in the retro sphere, the math starts to side towards fix because of the rarity, but it’s not always clear.

As a DevOps manager who regularly talks with development about hiring/architecting, and works at a Fortune 500. Here’s our short list:

• kubernetes/containers (like deep knowledge, not just “I ran helm once”)
• CI/CD, and IaC + GitOps
• golang/rust/dotNet… modern statically typed and compiled languages are greatly preferable. Python/bash/PHP is clutch, but it’s also easy to pick up if you know the above, and honestly I kinda just assume it at this point.
• actual complete understanding of Git.
• solid full stack development experience/understanding
• cloud experience (AWS or Azure mostly, but GCP is close enough)
• thinking/problem solving skills

Honestly, I’ve seen so many people with AI experience of some sort, it’s not a difference maker. It’s fairly easy to learn and no Fortune 500 is hosting their own LLM unless that’s the point of the business. If you actually understand the stack and how things relate, it’s huge.

A big part of hiring is understanding what the person knows and how well they know it to know if they can apply their wisdom to other things. You know some day AI is going to burst, something better than Blockchain will happen, Rust or Golang will be superseded, a new cloud provider will appear, etc. I need to know you can apply your understanding and knowledge to some new challenges using tools that aren’t even concepts now.

I’ve heard lots of good things about Ghost. I’ve also hosted Grav for a while and it’s pretty solid. You can do Wordpress, but I’d stay away as it gets bad fast and there are better alternatives. If you needed even more scale, Mediawiki is selfhostable too.

China’s government is absolutely bankrolling the AI efforts there, just as the US government is openly bankrolling efforts here in the US. It would be dumb for them not to. The Cold War of AI is upon us.

I’m not sure western AI companies will go bankrupt due to China’s models winning, though. There are plenty of security focused “we can’t use foreign AI” things that would keep them afloat, especially as not everyone needs the absolute most cutting edge AI for their stuff and many US and EU companies are self hosting tuned models for their customers needed.

There’s, of course, the fact that most of it at the moment is a giant bubble that will eventually pop as the next big thing takes its place in importance for world dominance. Will AI continue to find a place in the tech stack? Definitely. New models, tweaks for niche use cases and huge benefits for specialized industries, etc. Will newer tech and processes usurp it over the long run, absolutely. That’s just the way Tech has always worked.

I’m sure “and Canada will pay for it!” Just like the Wall.

Hey a chrome alternative!

• New product is part of OpenAI's broader strategy to capture data on users' web behavior

Oh, so same thing as Chrome, got it.

What do you use for your music server if I might ask?

I’m feeling called out here.

Over my 25 yrs driving and getting inspected here, I’ve found a mix of issues.. I always inspect my car before dropping it off, most times in their own parking lot.

• good old boys that don’t care and pass it without obviously checking because they know they won’t make money on it anyway.
• ones that talk down to my wife because she must just believe any BS they make up (until I get involved, call them out, the apologize and I don’t go back)
• dealers that make problems for you to have to fix (had two places… one obviously shoved a screwdriver through my CV boot that was fine when I drove it in and wanted $989 to fix. The other said I was missing lug nuts that I know were there when I dropped it off and wanted to charge me $5/each plus $100 installation.)
• places that are actually good and fair.

One issue with the first is that the state doesn’t actually pay them enough per hour that it makes sense to take their time and do it right… they just crank them through finding obviously high money making issues and skipping the rest.

A law not saying you need to, is not the same as a law saying you need not to.

Mine has been arguing this point for a while. Apparently there wasn’t really a drop of issues here when they went into place, so they question the usefulness.

That said, they’re just done incorrectly in the first place. They are done by dealers/shops that lose money in doing them and are instead banking on charging you lots of money for problems they find and hope you get fixed with them. They need be done at an independent run spot with no interest in anything but safety and no way to be bought out.

I think the IDEA of Elon back then was charismatic and energizing. He was seen pushing space flight and EV’s forward into the future. Watching a video stream of the first Falcon flight to land the booster back on Earth was exciting. The fact that their stream was on the internet and full of interesting detailed real time telemetry and video was something new and different and felt like the future.

But watching Elon the man talk and stumble through even early interviews and press conferences was not, and to this day, I find it painful to watch. A great orator he is not. But then neither is Trump, I suppose.

Sure, but Elon isn’t charismatic in the slightest.

I’m torn here… PS5/XBox games brand new can easily go this high or much higher (definitely seen a bunch over $100, especially for special editions and such.) and I recommend absolutely no one does that either…

However, if no one bought them new for whatever the cost, I’d not be able to get used copies secondhand.

Sales are obviously the way to go, but used games basically account for the majority of my physical copies, especially for Nintendo stuff. I just happen to like physically owning things.

Don’t bow down to the psychopath! You know he’s going to just pull out of NATO anyway.

Sometimes I’ve found a site that gets partially blocked and causes a fuss. There’s an option to allowlist domain(s).

Also, some sites try to use ad domains to serve legit traffic, and some use legit domains to serve ads, so it’s not perfect, but it works pretty darn well overall.

PiHole is DNS based ad blocking and local DNS for everything on your network. So, even things that can’t run their own adblocker.

The number of tabs I have open from sites I’ve clicked on, started reading, said “eh, I’ll get back to this later” and never have, says no.