I'm wondering the same! I have an old Android tablet that just boot-loops and has a swollen battery. I'd like to get rid of it but not sure how to wipe it first!
497 karma · joined April 5, 2012
https://github.com/NJAldwin/maven-central-test
I wanted to release a jvm lib on Maven Central -- which no longer requires opening a jira ticket for a new package! Instead, simple DNS TXT verification is all that's needed. However, the caveat is that it's the new Maven Central service, which doesn't have as much support in build tools as the older sonatype one. jReleaser is one of the few tools which supports it.
So I hacked together a fully self-contained minimally reproducible example of a Gradle library, built and published in GitHub using jReleaser.
There were several things that had me scratching my head with jReleaser, and the docs are strangely organized IMO (it comes from supporting so many facets, I believe), but it ended up working well enough!
I ended up adding a doc build and some other stuff to the repo too. Now I have a full example that I can use to trivially publish new libraries (such as in-progress https://github.com/NJAldwin/ambient-consumer ).
(Why Maven Central? Since the demise of jFrog/jCenter/BinTray, there's not been an easy way to widely publish jvm libraries. At work I've used GH packages, but that requires a GitHub login even for public packages, which is a significant barrier IME. JitPack is one option, but it does on-demand builds linked closely to the origin repo, whereas I wanted the classic immutable build published on release.)
One wonders what kind of excellent discworld books we would have gotten had Sir Terry still been around in the age of AI...
Definitely bookmarking your post
What line of work are you in that you can take a winter break, and furthermore, that you can actually not work during that break? I'm envious...
I've always wanted to do AoC but on top of work it is too much.
> No CAD was used in the design
This is amusing -- while I understand they mean "CAD tools" like 3d modeling software, the entire engine was literally "computer-aided design", no?
Though the question arises of how to use this HAT with the active cooling system... if we can get both an SSD and a fan on the same Pi (without sacrificing WiFi), that gets us to basically full blown computer performance!
It was hard enough finding a therapist (and retaining them -- my therapist dropped me because the office only allows them to see someone for 1-2 years max).
If anyone has tips on more effectively finding therapists and psychiatrists, I am all ears. (I'm in the US if it helps)
I also "cheat" at the start by using vanilla commands to research and level up in all the disciplines -- makes the game more about finding and efficiently utilizing resources without also having to scavenge random stuff to "research". Since there's such a breadth of everything, it reduces the grind ("specializations" are annoying if you're forced to be a jack of all trades) without making it too easy.
It still feels like a real accomplishment to build a large building -- both architecturally and via thinking about how each block traces back to the resources pulled out of the ground -- without requiring huge amounts of time in the game. I'm fairly proud of this one [1], and more so of the industry and infra that supported it.
Plus, Eco is just gorgeous, especially when in single-player with low ecological impact there are so many animals hanging around all the time (peep the alligator in that shot).
I hadn't thought about bus cameras capturing the collapse -- wonder if this'll ever be released (or leaked)?
A number of these near-crashes seem to be pretty odd errors (a couple of times it just decided to drive on the wrong side of the street?) -- albeit ones that one _could_ see drivers unfamiliar with the area making.
If a human driver started driving on the wrong side of a street, etc -- at least in Boston -- they would be greeted by a chorus of horns and rude gestures from those around, which would hopefully indicate to them that they were in error. Brings up an interesting question: does anyone know if Teslas are monitoring for surrounding horns/etc?
Another common problem in Boston is being blocked by geese crossing the road. Are Teslas able to detect such low, slow-moving obstacles?
It seems like it's not super feasible to rely on self-driving vehicles in a dense city like Boston, but maybe such features could be geofenced to areas like highways?
Your way of working sounds wonderful, but I find that I would probably struggle with this part. How are you able to define the end of your day and ensure you have such time marked off? I have tried this but always end up getting sucked into endless other issues/problems/etc and basically passing out at some point, only to wake up the next day to dive right in -- no time to be able to do that sort of retrospective note-munging...
(this is not exclusive to trying to find retrospective time; it applies to things like finding time for food/dinner, blocking out vacation time, or other things, too. work never ends!!)
As a backend engineer, I had no idea that frontend monitoring was this advanced, but apparently it is. So now we all have to be extra paranoid, because _any_ website could be using this tool to "spy" on everybody.
Of course, it _was_ very helpful to us in tracking down some issues (ever tried to tell a customer how to send you a HAR?). And I assume that operating with an adblocker and blocking nonessential cookies will prevent or hamper the output for us more technical types. Even so...
We've found that it's worth it for most use cases to switch to a vanilla JDBC Kafka Connector with frequent polling. This also allows for cases such as emitting joined data.
Other than Debezium, Postgres + Kafka + Kafka Connect builds a pretty stable system for sending data around all our different dbs, apps, and data lakes.
Maybe this is different for folks with families (those who generally didn't hang out after work even pre-pandemic -- no judgment there), but for some of us more social single folks, I'm surprised at the vitriol here from people who don't seem to understand us at all. Isn't there some middle ground here? I definitely don't miss being _forced_ to go to work (sick coworkers spreading flu around the office, loud talkers interrupting focus time, etc) but on the flip side why are people so happy to be _forced_ to never interact with people?
This is of course all separate from whether you can actually physically go offline from work, too. If a Slack ping at any time causes you to reopen your work laptop, even if you have different surroundings, you can't really fully escape "work mode." If you always wake up immediately into dealing with work, your bed becomes a "work area" too...
I have found myself missing the work commute more and more. Granted, I had a pretty nice one (15min train, 10min walk; not spending hours in traffic), but the biggest benefit I'm retroactively realizing was the clear separation between work and home. Working on finishing up a commit? Too bad, gotta run to catch a train, and then I'm no longer in work mode. Thinking about that bug the next morning? Maybe, but can still allow some personal time in the morning because not really "at work" until the physical commute in.
> move to a larger and cheaper apartment since you don't have to live directly next to the office anymore
In the Boston area, this basically comes down to "either live with space in the middle of nowhere isolated from anyone, or live in the city core but pay $$$$$$ for a tiny place" -- and especially if we are discussing working only from home (so limiting that potential avenue for socialization), moving away from any other social avenues can be daunting. Maybe this is less of a dilemma for someone who has a family, since then they can just socialize with SO/kids/etc.
> Maybe try that whole getting a pet thing.
If only 99% of landlords didn't disallow pets...
> Also consider using a separate computer for work and nonwork stuff, and turning the work computer off at a specific time. Once it's shut down, you're done for the day.
On the surface, these are valid points, but they contain a few assumptions that can be challenging. For example: that your company is okay with you being offline for _16 hours_ of the day. How does that work if you've got an on-call rotation, coworkers in other timezones, critical products with low bus factors, etc? For example, at 11pm ET it is 9:30am IST -- not being able to respond to pings/questions/PRs from coworkers on your team who are on the other side of the globe can be detrimental. There's also the physical aspect -- if you are in the same (350sqft, in my case) room 24 hours a day, and you use it for work for 12-14 hours every day, even when not working, it's easy for the mind to stay in "work mode" despite trying to shut off work computers, etc.
> You can give yourself permission to disconnect from work without forcing everyone into an office.
I know this is in response to the post itself, regarding Google (delaying) forcing people back to the office. However, there might be some middle ground here. I have been going into my office one day a week for a change of pace (and to have _some_ on/off time via my train commute) -- but it is a lot nicer when other teammates join me in-office, to get some semblance that I'm working with other human beings for a change. I'm totally not on board with _forcing_ anyone to go in, but it is nice to have the option to coordinate. I have found myself missing casual after-work beers on Fridays -- even pre-pandemic, not everyone joined (those with families would generally leave to get home early), but among those who _did_, it really helped build more camaraderie and made the company feel like it was staffed with _people_ rather than just anonymous cogs.
FWIW I am a mostly-happy customer for multiple years, and I always seem to be able to find files that I am looking for in my backups.
However, I've run into the following issues on _multiple Windows PCs_:
- `bzfilelist.exe` takes up 100% disk constantly on my SSD. I have to kill it anytime I want to do anything remotely disk-intensive (such as running a game or editing video). Not sure if this is a workaround to avoid having to watch the filesystem, but it is an annoyance. Changing the process priority can help in some cases, but usually I have to kill it to get acceptable performance in other applications. Also not sure if this is good for the SSD's health.
- Certain folders are hardcoded to be excluded. Standard folders such as `C:/Windows` make sense, but it also hardcodes excluding _all of program files_. This means that Steam game files are not automatically backed up (yes, this is not an ideal spot for Steam to store files, but it's how it has done it for a long, long time). I had to hack together a powershell script that periodically copies my files to another drive so they can be backed up by Backblaze. "Automatic backups" eh?
- Despite the above, it _does_ automatically back up Chrome's temporary files, which means a ton of churn as I browse throughout the day. I can manually exclude a path, but if they're going to be draconian about hardcoding paths to not back up, why not hardcode Chrome's app data too?
In addition, I have played around with their B2 service, an "S3-compatible" offering, and run into issues there as well:
- The S3-compatible hosting is not at parity with S3. There is no index.html autodetection, so I had to hack together an nginx proxy to assume `index.html` files at directories.
- The S3-compatible web hosting is extremely slow. It's a common pattern to want to host a periodically-updated static site out of an S3 bucket, but I have found the speed to be insufficient for even basic HTML in B2.
- I was unable to get their provided tooling for backing up local files to B2 working on a local Raspberry Pi. I ended up rsyncing to a different service.
Am I the only one with these problems?
I got one, immediately logged in separately and changed my password, logged back in, then shortly after everything went down...
As an example: the neighborhood I've lived in for a decade used to be a relatively low-income neighborhood. Rents were low in the old buildings, most folks walked to their jobs in the medical area, and there was a cheap Shaws grocery store for food, as well as several fast food places and family-run storefronts. Public transit (light rail, buses, and commuter rail) was accessible close by.
Then a development company bought nearly all of the parcels along the main road and built a wall of mid-to-high-rises. Accordingly, all rent in the area went way up, forcing most of the lower-income folks out of even the older, shittier tenement buildings. A Target went in, and the Shaws rebranded as the more expensive Star Market (and will soon close so they can build a new Whole-Foods-type expensive megastore). All of the small storefronts closed, and now the area is nearly entirely high-end shopping outlets and expensive gastro-restaurants. They shut down the bus lines running through the neighborhood because all the rich people who moved in have cars (Porsches and Lambos now rev through the neighborhood at all hours) and bus ridership was down.
Where did all of the folks -- and their families -- previously able to afford the area go? To areas of Boston where the rent is still cheap. Many of these places are nowhere near good public transit (e.g. if someone moved from this area of Boston to Dorchester, then took transit to their same job, it would require 3-4 transfers on packed buses and trains). So now these people are forced to get a car as well.
The worst part of all of this is: who wins here? Not the people forced to leave their neighborhood, not the people who suddenly need to buy a car, not the people who can no longer afford to run a restaurant in the area... not even the rich people living in the expensive high-rises (or not living in -- many are vacant "investments" from overseas). The developers win. They pumped as much money as they could out of the neighborhood, and then moved on to their next target, leaving a less livable city in their wake.
I can't stop re-reading "a clause in her auto loan contract that restricted her from driving outside a four-county radius". Is that a normal thing in auto loans? Restricting free movement? How is that even legal?
This is great, but the _last part_ is so important. A lot of parents try to follow this path, but they end up providing the kids only with false choices. Think "do you want to do your chores or play outside?" where the only answer the parent will actually accept is "do your chores". This is ultimately still parents telling their kids what to do, but framed as though the parents were _helping_ the kids. Children faced with these sorts of questions can grow up always seeking validation, always trying to pick "the right answer" -- leading to failure avoidance, lack of confidence, etc. This can lead to an adult who cannot make choices for themselves (everyone knows people who are always paralyzed by decision-making). Works great for training kids to do well in school, though, since school follows a similar pattern of always having one "correct" answer...
Perhaps less incomplete than you think (and certainly more complete than the standard tracking websites, which outside of hiding planes also must honor a 5-minute data delay requested by the FAA).
The advisory circular bots the author runs link to https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/ , which is run from a home-grown network of SDRs. It makes a point of not hiding anything that reports its position with ADS-B -- which all aircraft (over a certain size) must report by law. I've even seen Air Force One and its escorts on this service, something that is always absent from other flight tracking services.
Like OP, I'm looking for strategies to help self-cope, as that's the only way forward for many of us for now.