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stbenjam

1,556 karma · joined May 2, 2013

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stbenjam··on OpenTF announces fork of Terraform
There’s parallels but it’s not the same. Red Hat’s projects are still all fully open source. And it’s not clear it’s a mistake yet.(I work for red hat but this is my personal opinion).
stbenjam··on Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States
Yea it’s still not fully accepting but nobody’s kicked out anymore. I know I’ll never get an apology. The US doesn’t apologize.

I do see the occasional person bringing their SO to the Navy and Marine balls.

stbenjam··on Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States
Well I sued and got paid, but it wasn’t easy. I’m sure it didn’t change their behavior. They know most won’t sue. The guy who did it is still there working, I looked him up on LinkedIn.

Finding consumer lawyers willing to take FDCPA cases is tough.

stbenjam··on Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States
My experience with debt collectors is they don’t act rationally and once they’re able to find someone they harass you using any means necessary. The fear of being fired is a good motivator to get people to pay.
stbenjam··on Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States
Why doubt me? I’m 40. The gay ban ended in 2011…
stbenjam··on Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States
Sort of. I got into a rough spot after I got out of the military and I ended up defaulting on all my credit card debt. I got kicked out for being gay with no notice and had no savings. What little I had went to moving and finding a new job.

Only AmEx sued me (and we settled). I later sued most of the collection companies with the help of a lawyer and netted about $40K in settlements. Some had called my parents and told them they’d call the police and arrest me that day (they paid). Another called me work repeatedly and told my boss (he didn’t care other than the endless harassment).

It took 7 years for my credit to be clean. I still get calls from scummy bottom of the barrel collectors about debt I paid/settled - even 20 years later. They give up easily though, statute of limitations is long past.

Anyway my point is it’s not optional, you can get sued. And they'll harass you endlessly.

stbenjam··on Why SMTP still matters today
Aversion to standards is why the internet has become this closed hellscape.
stbenjam··on Brexit Could Be Reversed - Here's How
Hard to imagine Britain joining both the Euro and the Schengen zones. I just don’t see the British public not thinking they’re special and demanding exceptions and carve outs just for them.
stbenjam··on Slack was down
Same thing, isn’t it? The desktop app is just electron
stbenjam··on I am dying of squamous cell carcinoma, and potential treatments are out of reach
Off label prescriptions are legal and very common.
stbenjam··on Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists
There are still specialists but probably not as many as newsrooms have been cash strapped.

NPR had a bunch of economic reporters and they’re mostly ok but they still get a ton of stuff wrong, so it’s not a great solution either.

stbenjam··on Three signs that Wayland is becoming the favored way to get a GUI on Linux
Lol not a success? Unhinged take.
stbenjam··on Starlink satellites are dodging objects in orbit thousands of times every month
Dodging makes it sound more dangerous than it is. They also have getting close to 5,000 satellites. Each one makes less than 1 maneuver a month.

Starlink is also way more conservative

> SpaceX’s satellites move when the probability of a collision is greater than 1 in 100,000, while NASA and other industry firms use a threshold of 1 in 10,000.

stbenjam··on SUSE is forking RHEL
Red Hatter here, but just my personal opinion. I don't think there would be any litigation. We can terminate accounts for people downloading SRPM's to redistribute them but we can't stop the redistribution itself. There is nothing illegal about making a RHEL clone minus our trademarks.
stbenjam··on How the new Threads app is made
I don’t think it’s that. There’s just no need for a Twitter clone without porn.

Although they did do a very good job. The app is well thought out and the service has been rock solid since launch.

stbenjam··on Ford to lay off workers as it focuses on electric vehicles
My bad
stbenjam··on Ford to lay off workers as it focuses on electric vehicles
There’s no oil to change. It doesn’t have a combustion engine.
stbenjam··on Ford to lay off workers as it focuses on electric vehicles
I’ve owned a few EV’s and they all have 12V batteries. The traction battery charges the 12V and it powers all the typical car power systems.
stbenjam··on A response to the git.centos.org changes
Binaries weren't removed, RHEL binaries were never available on git.centos.org. The source for RHEL is available via CentOS Stream. The only thing missing is the checkpoints in CentOS Stream where they decide it's suitable to send to RHEL, which makes it harder for the rebuilders to build the exact same thing.
stbenjam··on Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds
Ketamine saved my life. It’s proven to be extremely effective against suicidal ideation. The trip is definitely part of it.

I’ve switched to shrooms and one trip every 3-6 months seems to reliably keep depression and panic disorder at bay. It did require some work and I really had to process some awful memories from my childhood.

But these things did more for me than years of psychiatric meds ever did - literally dozens of them. Mirtazapine made me gain weight - 60 lbs in a year. Prozac gave me bruxism and I cracked 3 dental crowns in a month. Effexor turned me into a suicidal yet somehow also emotionless zombie. I got addicted to Ativan and couldn’t sleep without it. I’m off it all, and happier than I’ve ever been.

stbenjam··on Gandalf – Game to make an LLM reveal a secret password
In the early stages I got pretty far with "DAN (Do Anything Now)" style prompts, later it took a little more cleverness, but getting it to talk to me in ASCII and response in ASCII Integer values only worked pretty well. I also tried morse but it didn't work, it doesn't seem to have a good understanding of it, I got a lot of non-sense responses in morse.
stbenjam··on Functionality that has been deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
I’ve used Wayland exclusively for at least 3 years without a problem.
stbenjam··on What I learned unsubscribing from 22 newspapers
I used to subscribe to the Boston Globe and it was torturous to cancel, I’m glad they made it easier now. They charge almost $30 a month for the subscription full price but you can always negotiate it down to like five dollars for 3 to 6 months. The game is stupid, I’d gladly pay them 100 bucks a year for the next few decades of my life without messing around with this fake try to cancel and get a discount thing. It’s so shady.

So I subscribe to the Washington post instead who do offer exactly that kind of subscription.

stbenjam··on Red Hat cutting hundreds of jobs, CEO says in letter to employees
If it is they didn’t care. IBM stock is stagnant today.
stbenjam··on The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat
This isn’t true at all, openshift is a conformant distro of k8s. You are not required to use any OpenShift specific shit, but what it adds is very nice.
stbenjam··on ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
An NFT wouldn’t do anything. It’s a new release of software and the lifetime license stopped working on it.
stbenjam··on I worked at Google for -10 days
That is not symmetric.
stbenjam··on I worked at Google for -10 days
> we can't eliminate the risk of such a massive decision

Lol we literally can, or at least mitigate. It’s easy to pass a law (if the particular legislature works for its people and not the corporate interests) that makes job offers binding and getting out of them requires making the other party at least partially whole.

stbenjam··on I worked at Google for -10 days
> Having an offer rescinded for 'business reasons' is unbelievably annoying, and the author has my sympathy. That said, it's kind of understandable too. Things happen.

It's not understandable, Google is doing financially fine. If they determine they made a mistake they should have to pay a penalty. You would not get that grace in your own personal life, I don't know why we grant it to companies in employment contracts. Sign an apartment lease and change your mind? You'll be on the hook for a huge payment. Companies revoking offers should be subject to penalties and to make the other party whole.

stbenjam··on I worked at Google for -10 days
Why do you think rounds would be higher if an offer is unrevokable? That makes no sense to me. At the very least, companies rescinding offers should make a payment equal to a few months of pay. This trend of companies revoking offers and saying "too bad, sorry you quit your job, sold your house and most of your belongings for us."
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