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davkan

593 karma · joined July 19, 2023

Systems Administrator
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davkan··on Discord Alternatives, Ranked
My experience using discord for technical projects and communities is largely similar to IRC. I jump in, ask a question in the appropriate channel, someone answers quite quickly, i say thanks, I leave.

I’d prefer having openly searchable forums and chat archives and to use IRC but I can’t say the experience is that onerous.

davkan··on France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Yes I agree there is no pure hosting/cloud company that comes close to the scale of the big 3 who also use their cloud infrastructure expertise and inventory to subsidize all the other parts of their businesses. Maybe it’s only possible to be reach the top if you already have all the money and infrastructure in the world, but just pointing out that for the top two cloud providers these platforms are at the core of their business and are their most profitable units.
davkan··on Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
You are correct
davkan··on Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
I’m all for universal benefits and doing away with means testing but doing so without fixing our regressive tax system it truly is just a gift to the wealthy.
davkan··on France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
For what it’s worth, Amazon’s largest profit center is AWS. Likewise for Microsoft and Azure.
davkan··on Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
I was able to find a decade old video via llm with the prompt “YouTube video of a french band on a radio station with a girl wearing orange jumpsuit”. I had tried many google searches without success trying to remember the video but the llm came right out with the correct video of The Dø on KEXP first try. 99 times out of 100 I prefer normal search though.
davkan··on “Let people help” – Advice that made a big difference to a grieving widow
Let them help!
davkan··on TikTok is now collecting more data about its users
Modern reddit behaves like social media unless you limit yourself to very niche insular subreddits that do not reach r/all.

Overall the site has become social media. Any sub that reaches critical mass gets absorbed into the slop hivemind. Browsing r/all is almost indistinguishable from browsing public facebook posts nowadays. Just loads and loads of bot slop catch-all subreddits like r/interestingasfuck or r/woahthatscool and drama subreddits like r/amioverracting. My filter list is over 100 subs long at this point.

When i log on to an actual classic forum like tacomaforum.com the difference is stark.

davkan··on The mushroom making people hallucinate tiny humans
Young me was always interested in trying datura despite the harrowing trip reports on erowid. Glad i never was presented with the opportunity.
davkan··on Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires
No need for fiber for 1.6 gigabit, Cat5e can do 10GbE over short distances, 2.5GbE over longer distances.
davkan··on White House Posts Altered Photo Showing Arrested Minnesota Protester Crying
> In fact, discouraging people from getting educated because of the system is its own form of oppression.

Who is doing this? Did I suggest that addressing the systemic issues with the cycle of poverty precludes individuals pursuing education? No, I said it doesn’t on its own resolve the issue of poverty as a whole.

> Only if we keep repeating things like this.

I still think the answer to this problem will not hinge on individuals choosing to interact with social media less and more intelligently. The vast majority of us know social media is manipulating and dividing the population. We all know we should use it less. We already have these discussions and have been for years and it shows to have very little actual effect on the overall situation we find ourselves in.

You are right in that it can be a yes-and type situation but my worry is that bringing personal responsibility to the forefront of the conversation mostly serves to diminish the responsibility we face as a society to reign in these monstrous (in both ways) companies that are actively destroying our social fabric in pursuit of profits in the most charitable view, or in pursuit of bringing us into a hellscape of a new world order, re Thiel et al.

davkan··on White House Posts Altered Photo Showing Arrested Minnesota Protester Crying
You’re asking for a hundred million people to personally overcome engineered manipulation rather than addressing the manipulators. What you say is true for the individual but it’s not a solution at scale for our societal issues.

It’s much akin to suggesting that poor people should not blame the system that keeps them poor and instead should focus on their education and getting themselves out of their current situation. Sure it’s accurate for the individual but, it’s not an actual solution to the problem at scale.

Heroin addicts quit aided by the intense and direct efforts and support of the people around them. Whether that’s hospital staff or family. And you often do tell heroin addicts it’s not their fault. You tell them addiction is a disease. That their addiction is not a moral failing.

davkan··on Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee
I find managing the system to be more tiring and stressful than just driving to be honest. I do not like when my vehicle behaves in a way I didn’t anticipate.

Maybe I just need more time with it but, my toyota had adaptive cruise and slammed on the brakes one time and I did not like it. On a one lane highway the car a decent ways in front of me slowed down and started moving into the shoulder to take a right turn into a driveway. As i came up on him he was almost all the way over, just his driver side wheels on the line. I moved to the far side of the lane with plenty of room to clear without slowing down and my toyota slammed on the brakes going from 65 to like 40 and it scared the shit out of me. It was a greater level of surprise and fear than I’d experienced in probably the last 20k miles of driving and was completely avoidable had I been using dumb cruise control.

Driving my mom’s Honda insight with lane assist also made me nervous when I would be near the edge of a lane on purpose and it would move the wheel on its own.

I’m not opposed to fully automated driving, but what I don’t want is to be in a situation where I need to remain alert and responsible for managing a system that does the driving. I’d rather just do the driving myself. I’ve driven for almost 20 years now, some of that professionally, and it’s second nature at this point and doesn’t require active thought outside navigating new routes and finding parking. Managing the system requires more effort for me.

I now drive a standard 33 year old truck and it’s bliss. No software updates, no bs, just a machine that takes my inputs and gets me from A to B. That said, without airbags, crumple zones and abs I’d have to get something more modern if there were children in the picture.

davkan··on Gentoo Linux 2025 Review
Okd was a mess when i tried to use it years ago. The documentation was just a 1:1 copy-paste of openshift docs despite significant differences in installation. It really wanted you to use OLM but the upstream operators like maestra (the istio based upstream of redhat service mesh) were often very out of date in the catalog to the point of being incompatible with the current version of okd. I raised the issue on GitHub and a redhat employee replied that they were not happy with the situation at the time but to keep asking to show there was interest. I switched to talos instead for a more vanilla k8s where i could actually get a service mesh installed.

Not really comparable to the experiences i have running keycloak where the upstream documentation is complete or freeipa where it’s identical to idm and you can just use the redhat docs. Those are both excellent pieces of software we are lucky to have.

davkan··on Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11
Non power users just want a desktop with a browser shortcut, and maybe office apps. I extended the life of a laptop many years for my aging non technical parents. I even encrypted the hard drive for them and since Microsoft basically committed security malpractice by not making encryption available to Home edition users it was significantly more secure. After a 5 minute explainer they never once asked me a single question about it.
davkan··on Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11
To be fair, while many of those are indeed optional or non-issues, the problem is that user experience has been degraded in w11 while there has been almost zero value-add for end users.
davkan··on I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great
I would imagine a significant portion of the cloud revenue is derivative of windows though. Whether that’s lift and shift workloads or entra id which is picked over alternatives for its compatibility with existing windows and AD infrastructure.
davkan··on Anti-aging injection regrows knee cartilage and prevents arthritis
You just get used to trail running over time. If you’re nimble and light on your feet a slip almost never turns into a fall. With practice you dodge the bad steps without much thought or you step knowing it’s iffy, slide and keep running. You don’t commit hard down on your heel.

The form i use basically the “natural” running style. Land with your body over your foot, land on your foot flat or on the ball. This is good for trail running because it’s much easier to not commit to a step when you’re not planting hard with your heel.

I’ve never sprained an ankle trail running, not that it can’t happen. I’ve gone like 90 degrees on my ankle before but I can usually unweight and collapse on that leg and catch myself on the other leg and keep running. I run in sandals and I backpack in trail runners.

Trail running strengthens your ankles what with all the uneven ground that has to be compensated for.

davkan··on 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
Loans can be confusing in double entry accounting for the uninitiated.

On the accounting side you have liabilities:mortgage which would only include the principal. Then for an individual bill you have to debit liabilities:mortgage the principal portion and debit expenses:interest the interest portion.

I’m not sure how mortgage bills usually come but for my auto loan the principal vs interest were not noted on the bill, so i had to calculate via apr myself for each payment for which the interest accrued daily. If i imported those payments from my bank statement or the bill i would not be able to enter the transaction correctly without doing the math.

For calculating interest automatically upon entry based on the rate and payment amount and date I used python iirc as i used beancount, but that was a while ago.

davkan··on A website to destroy all websites
Using tech bro on Torvalds is well outside the pattern of usage I’ve seen, which trends more towards GP’s definition, at least in the past 5 years.
davkan··on I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13
You’re missing the common alternative in the modern age which is the manufacturer not selling the part at all and being left with a pile of unrepairable junk despite an otherwise functioning device.

Laptop hinges were notorious for killing laptops for like a decade.

davkan··on How did DOGE disrupt so much while saving so little?
> We all fall into this trap, thinking we can do better than others.

I do not think we all have the level of hubris required to shit all over large governmental organizations as Musk did. I think maybe even the majority of people would say woah hold up let’s take look at what’s going on before tearing it down.

And of course that’s under the charitable assumption his actions weren’t malicious.

davkan··on After nearly 30 years, Crucial will stop selling RAM to consumers
They wrote SODIMM not DIMM.
davkan··on Trillions spent and big software projects are still failing
My relationship with my employer is coercive, not consensual. They have something I need in order to survive. If I leave it will have deleterious effects on the quality of my life. You could make the argument that they are not the ones coercing me, society is or something, but I do not associate with them freely.

This was even more apparent before the ACA passed, when insurance providers were not prevented from denying or charging more for customers with pre-existing conditions. Hate your job but have cancer? Better not leave, you might not even be able to get insured at your next job.

davkan··on Google steers Americans looking for health care into "junk insurance"
Yes, we should not have built internet scale services and forums if it was not possible to moderate them effectively.
davkan··on X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run
Yes everyone does do that. Most people will not take a tangential single sentence criticism of an institution to mean that you hold none of the typical accompanying political views and are just narrowly opining on your experience.

I would imagine a large majority of readers read your original post and immediately in their head thought, “are they one of those school voucher people” or something along those lines.

davkan··on X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run
And this is in contrast to private schools how? Just that they may diverge from the current moral zeitgeist to insert their own morals in the same places?
davkan··on ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk
I am in support of the ICC largely and would prefer that the US were a member. Maybe we wouldn’t be living with the shame of crimes like abu ghraib if we had ratified.

Historical counterfactuals are tricky and I’m not an expert on Russia’s consideration of Rome statute ratification. I find it hard to believe that they would have ratified or not withdrawn the moment a warrant was issued for putin’s arrest.

davkan··on ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk
None of those countries are the preeminent military and political power in the world. Most stand to lose significantly less as signatories. The US does not need to be a member of the ICC to influence it, and they can largely operate with impunity as a non-party state that has permanent UNSC veto powers. Is South Korea in similar circumstances?
davkan··on ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk
Pragmatically what does the US gain from joining? From a US perspective it would just be ceding power no?

Only a year after Clinton signed the statute 9/11 was perpetrated. I can’t imagine any of the most powerful countries would have ratified it if they were in the midst of prosecuting a war.

Since then the US has softened on the ICC as it benefits them to maintain a relationship but, at this point why sign other than for ideological reasons.

And even if there was an intent to join there would likely be stipulations from the US. And it would have to pass the divided senate, after which it would likely go to the Supreme Court who with the current bench would certainly strike it down, meaning a constitutional amendment would be needed. It’s less feasible to join now than it ever has been unfortunately.

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