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Comment by simoncion | Hacker News Reader

$DAYJOB issues us Mac laptops. (Seems like a waste of money, but it's not MY money.)

So, I've been using a CalDigit TS3 Plus device for the last two or three years. I have USB 3, Ethernet, and DisplayPort going out from it, and a Thunderbolt cable going into it. Other than sometimes having to unplug and replug the DisplayPort cable to get the screen to wake [0], it works fine.

[0] To make this easy, I have an F<->F coupler near the display that doesn't have latches. I just slip out one end of the cable from the coupler and slip it back in. Quick and easy, if slightly annoying that I have to do it at all.

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Yep that was my exact story too, before the first sock gave out shortly before warranty, was replaced (at least regarding customer service im happy), and then same exact story with the second one.

Given that i had a third unrelated dock fail recently it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect something on my end might be causing this, but then again that’s the only hardware that failed on me in a while and i don’t do anything that unusual besides having 3x4k screens plugged into it and the occasional mouse charging/flash drive drawing power off it.

In all cases the PSU of the dock died with it (but also the docks themselves) so i suspect current DL chipsets overheat and eventually burn out when pushing clost to their max resolution.

Off topic but why refer to it as $DAYJOB (is it really a variable like that?) rather than just saying “work” or “my job”? I see it all over HN but I’ve actually never understood why people do this. Sorry for veering off topic.

The syntax is written like a bash shell variable, the idea (I assume) is that the actual job itself doesn't matter but the idea of it being something they do for work does (because contextually it means they have less decision power.) So, if it were me, saying I work for Puzzmo is about as useful as me saying I work for $DAYJOB in a sentence like that.

Also it’s just some HN slang. No more, no less.

Way more, actually. It likely predates HN by decades.

Yeah. Over the past (dear god) fourteen years, I've noticed approximately zero HN-unique vocabulary.

There's the proliferation of both "manager speak" and "self-help coach vocabulary", but that's (sadly) not unique to HN.

> Sorry for veering off topic.

Nah, there's no need to apologize. If folks don't want to read and/or participate in the subthread that changes the topic, then they can just fold up the subthread using the handy "fold up the subthread" button.

And yeah, with the exception of the fellow who called it "HN slang" (or whatever) the folks who replied to you all have good answers to your question.

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