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_cudgel

189 karma · joined September 13, 2014

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_cudgel··on The poor are better off when we build more housing for the rich
You know, it makes sense to me that increasing supply should drive down demand and hence prices. But I frankly don't care.

The entire piece reads like an excuse to not do things for the poor. How about we actually do things FOR THE POOR instead of tossing them scraps from the tables of the rich?

_cudgel··on Twitter’s User Growth Goes Nowhere as It Meets Revenue Expectations of $710M
I'd take fewer people online in general. The number of people that are glued to their smartphones because of all this supposed progress frightens me.
_cudgel··on Twitter’s User Growth Goes Nowhere as It Meets Revenue Expectations of $710M
As a crotchety old timer, I agree completely.
_cudgel··on Twitter’s User Growth Goes Nowhere as It Meets Revenue Expectations of $710M
Neither can they ;)
_cudgel··on Gmail Will Warn If Message Is Not Authenticated/Encrypted
You're absolutely correct. The cost of my AWS deployment in service of my personal email, and less than 5 other people comes in at ~$5.06/mo. The time, however, is the real cost. If/when I gain significant users, Fastmail would be at the top of my list of companies to consider.
_cudgel··on Why expat Americans are giving up their passports
I think it's important to note that, for the most part, both patriotism and religion need to be deeply ingrained in a person at a very young age for them to defend either so blindly.

US families take care of the religious aspect; US public school take care of the patriotism. If you weren't of the age where you simply don't question what you're told yet, I believe (perhaps hope?) both of these would die out in a few generations.

_cudgel··on Gmail Will Warn If Message Is Not Authenticated/Encrypted
EC2 blocks/throttles outgoing SMTP by default.

As with so many things in AWS, it's left up to the customer to inform AWS that a) you're running a mail server, b) what the purpose/use case is and c) request they configure the reverse lookup associated with the elastic IP you've allocated.

Source: I've been running public facing SMTP servers in EC2 for years with no issues.

_cudgel··on What a World Without Oil Looks Like
Hilarious! This reminds me of "Kill all the poor"..

https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg

_cudgel··on Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
> There's a reason that these alternatives are winning.

Yes, and that reason is that the current crop of up-and-coming developers have the same problem as past generations: They'd prefer to implement their own solutions vs. looking to the past.

Slack just happens to be the current darling in group communication. At some point, someone will make something that will change the fad-diet to The Next Big Thing.

_cudgel··on Indian Women Seeking Jobs Confront Taboos and Threats
My advice here is straightforward: fuggedaboutit.

Adults curse; sometimes too much. It makes them look stupid, too. But there's no need to be both annoyed and offended. Be annoyed, sure, but then perhaps consider that you're simply a better person. Consider, too, that going to HR over something like this _will_ make you enemies.

Finally, consider just how much care and feeding that moral high-horse costs you, in emotional and mental energy.

Just let it go!

_cudgel··on How Art Became Irrelevant
> it never had any deep emotional or cultural impact to those who saw it in the first place.

How could you possibly know what had a deep emotional impact on anyone other than yourself or possibly the people you interact with most closely in life?

Here's an alternate proposal for you: You've grown as a person, and all the deep emotional impacts that music might be able to make on you have been made. To those still growing, you aren't able to assess the impact, because you now view the world through the eyes of an adult.

Give it 30 years, and watch as all these things come back again into pop-culture because those kids from today will be in your shoes, as decision makers at TV/Internet/Whatever companies that push pop-culture -- being guided by their own sense of nostalgia about the things that impacted them as kids.

_cudgel··on Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up
The paradox is that IMO the simplest way forward is...

I feel like this statement is the crux of the issue. Have you considered that your opinion is simply wrong?

_cudgel··on FastMail: Shutting down our XMPP chat service
s/Customer/Citizen/ and you've hit on a large portion of the problem with representative democracy.
_cudgel··on Justice officials fear nation's biggest wiretap operation may not be legal
What do they fear? A public relations nightmare? Because they sure as hell aren't going to go to jail for any of this. Neither the Justice Dept. officials, nor the Judge authorizing this, nor the police carrying it out will have to deal with any negative consequences as a result. The USA is a nearly-complete police state, after all.
_cudgel··on Attachment to highway bill would deregulate trading of startup employee shares
> I don't understand why the US allows it, and it screams of corruption/bribery/etc.

Seems to me like you understand it completely. The US is, like most countries, mired in a bit of corruption/bribery/etc. I am of the opinion this is simply part of the human condition, and is virtually impossible to eliminate.

_cudgel··on Busybox removes support for systemd
Thanks -- this is exactly the sort of follow-up I was hoping for!
_cudgel··on Busybox removes support for systemd
I'd also like an answer to this question, as well as an answer to the question of what, in exacting detail please, was so wrong with the previous system it needed to be torn out and replaced?

I definitely tend toward the curmudgeonly, but to this grumpy old man, it seems like we're replacing things simply for the sake of change.

_cudgel··on Measuring Happiness Helped Us Build A Better Team
This is partly a side effect of the, at this point, long-running trend of employers not training people on anything, let alone proper management.

I've had some awful managers in my career. One was formerly an elementary school teacher. She, very predictably, treated everyone like they were in elementary school, going so far as to give people gold stars for things. When called out on it, she confessed she really had no idea how to manage adults.

I've only had two excellent managers in my career, people who had studied management, were also technical, and cared about being effective at their jobs so the people they managed could be effective as well. These folks had formal training, undertaken of their own initiative, and it absolutely showed in all facets of what they did. Top notch folks!

I suspect this lack of training is an American phenomenon, but have no data to back up the claim.

_cudgel··on Tmux 2.0 released
Try these options:

  set-option -g mode-mouse on
  set-option -g mouse-resize-pane on
  set-option -g mouse-select-pane on
  set-option -g mouse-select-window on
_cudgel··on OS X Reviewed
I believe you're misreading this. He isn't trying to imply Siracusa has autism, but rather is implying that the level of detail in his reviews is similar to what one might expect of someone who does have autism. This is a significant difference.
_cudgel··on Why the World Is Obsessed with Midcentury Modern Design
Isn't this entirely off-topic for HN?
_cudgel··on I Quit: What really goes on at Apple
Why is it that, at a certain level, intelligent company leaders seem to stop thinking of their employees as individuals and instead start thinking of them as company assets?

I think this is directly related to the language used within most companies -- at least all those I've worked at -- to describe their employees: human resources. I think this is because people too easily conflate human resources with natural resources, which are consumed by some manufacturing process.

Once upon a time, I worked at a company whose internal management guidelines stressed loading new hires with as much work as they could bear to determine their breaking points. Work load was then scaled back to some sustainable-ish percentage of that maximum, and the employees were worked until burnout. The expectation was they would then leave the company. Obviously they had an absolutely absurd amount of turnover. Upper management saw nothing wrong with utilizing their resources in this manner. This experience obviously colors my view of things.

In my opinion, the phrase human resource is simply dehumanizing. But, I also think it might be a necessary psychological barrier that is required by massive companies. If the upper management actually conceive of their organization as made up of employees, not human resources, they may act or react more slowly, become less risk averse, etc. That is bad for business! Likewise, I think there's a similar statement to be made about citizens vs. consumers when speaking about another type of large organization: governments.

Language and the words we choose matter. They shape our thoughts, and define what is possible. We ought to choose better words.

_cudgel··on Facebook use linked to depressive symptoms
I would encourage you to read this:

https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816

I suspect these people your age making a lot more money lead lives similar to what's described in this article. These do not seem like happy lives to me!

If you're actively saving lives, that is more valuable than all the money in the world, and I thank you.

_cudgel··on Fertility Is Kaput, but Life Goes On
Or maybe, just maybe they'll stop using these absurd time-wasting devices and re-engage with the rest of humanity via physical interaction.
_cudgel··on The forgotten history of human zoos
Did I mistakenly go to Tumblr?
_cudgel··on Ask HN: I just got my Stackoverflow Python gold badge - is it worth anything?
I came here to say "that and $5 at starbucks would buy you a cup of coffee"... but I see your boss already mentioned that.

I will say this: Congratulations! You appear to have set a goal and attained it! This is a good thing for you, and you should be proud of it.

You also appear to looking for some validation for your efforts. Here, I think you're going to be disappointed. But you don't need external validation for this to have meaning. Enjoy what you've accomplished!

_cudgel··on Best Linux server backup system?
I use and have been using Amanda Network Backup for ~5 years now, and am extremely happy with the results. Some of the highlights of my decision to use this tool include:

- Uses native OS tools (tar, gzip, gpg in my case) for the actual backups and restores, and includes the actual command used to create the archive in the header of the archive! You can use this to restore it without Amanda in the event of an emergency.

- Supports on-disk backups in a holding area for quick restores

- Supports S3 as a virtual tape library

- Supports vaulting (i.e. moving an archive from one tape library to another)

- Your choice of client, server, or no compression & encryption

- Highly scriptable

- Works over SSH, among other methods

- Catalog data is easily backed up itself via simple OS commands, and stored in S3.

The systems I backup are all in AWS, so this is ideal for me. I've frequently thought it would be ideal to adapt Amanda's script agents to creating EBS snapshots, but I simply haven't had the time. It's on my someday-maybe list. Remember to vault your backups to another region!

(Edits: formatting)

_cudgel··on The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
Could you point us at that exposure? I'd like to read it.
_cudgel··on Curt Schilling Fights Back Against Daughter’s Twitter Trolls
Predator Drone.
_cudgel··on Stack Overflow: How we upgrade a live data center
Likewise, I always find these write-ups fascinating, well written, well planned, etc. I really appreciate the extra effort involved in making all this public!
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