Recent submissions

Comment · 5 years ago
Do you run a business? I do. Industry-wide races to the bottom that have existed for decades before I was even born have put margins so razor-thin that paying more than slightly higher than the usual industry thresholds is untenable for smaller businesses. You raise your price too much to compensate, and your business dries up. Regulations designed to curtail abuses by large corporations can be devastating for small businesses.

I don't like this fact, and this obviously isn't going to be true for every industry, but these twee 'truisms' don't accurately represent reality.

Comment · 5 years ago
Do YOU? Because I did farm chores growing up and the stuff you're tasked with doing is never particularly dangerous. Dirt and grime washed off just fine and it was good exercise and time outdoors.
Comment · 5 years ago
>The phrase 'if you're not the customer, you're the product' comes to mind

That doesn't really apply to the warez scene. People aren't releasing cracked software for profit, they're doing it for the challenge and to say they were the first to do it. It's pure ego.

Comment · 5 years ago
>Bonus annoyance this year: the eternal covid lamentations of bar and restaurant owners, as if governments purposely wanted to destroy their businesses, as if one's bar is more important than other people lives, as if they didn't paint themselves and their stupid restaurant for years as an example of entrepreneurship (apparently the free market is a good idea only when your business goes well).

Fuck off into the sun. Of course people are going to lament when their jobs vanish and the business they built over years of hard work is in a very real danger of tanking. I should know, my food service business is down quite a bit - and we're one of the lucky ones that is doing well enough to stay afloat given that we had a strong takeaway focus even before the C-19 hit. An entire segment of jobs blown away - what do those people do? Shit like "learn to code" is not a helpful answer, and history suggests that what they do end up doing after a long enough period of hopelessness is not pretty.

Comment · 5 years ago
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered BSD community when IDC confirmed that BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for BSD because BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for BSD. As many of us are already aware, BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that BSD has steadily declined in market share. BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save BSD from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, BSD is dead.

Fact: BSD is dying

Comment · 5 years ago
Fads was a strictly YTMND term. On 4chan they were generally called memes, on SA they were image macros.
Comment · 5 years ago
Because it's wrong, new accounts absolutely do not get shadowbanned. People make burner accounts for 2-3 anonymous posts all the time.
Comment · 5 years ago
I already had it. No need to get vaccinated for something I've already had where the current research is indicating that immunity is either permanent or very long-lasting.
Comment · 6 years ago
I don't really consider myself an audiophile, but I do love music and vinyl. My general suggestion if someone wants to buy new is an Audio-Technica LP 120X turntable and a pair of Klipsh R-51M bookshelf speakers. The 120x has most of the features a newbie will want/need, and the speakers are fairly low priced while still sounding pretty good (although they're not quite as punchy on the bass as I'd personally like). The setup will probably run around $500, but the turntable won't make mincemeat of your records like a cheapo Crosley.

Of course, the real answer is to find vintage equipment at a local audio place, but that isn't always easy for newbs and is a bit dependent on your local music nerd community.

Comment · 6 years ago
I got a tetanus shot about two months ago. I used pain medication (just normal-ass ibuprofen) because the injection site gets very sore after a few days. There's a lot of valid reasons to be concerned about being in the early run of a brand new vaccination, but injection site having a bit of pain is hardly one of them.
Comment · 6 years ago
>At an R.V. park near Boise, Idaho, she noticed a Wi-Fi hot spot whose name was the equivalent of a middle finger directed at all Californians.

>During one curbside conference call in Eugene, Ore., a nearby man with a weed whacker began roaring his motor. Ms. Adair-Smith told him that she was trying to salvage her career. He didn’t care.

Comedy gold.

Comment · 6 years ago
>Those explorers always have the luxury of going back to civilisation after relatively short excursions into the unknown. I doubt many people are willing to live the entirety of their lives in constant danger and constrained resources.

Yet a very large majority of North America is descended from people who did exactly that.

Comment · 6 years ago
The fact that a one sentence, unsubstantiated claim to /r/bitcoin from a week-old Reddit account is number 14 on the front page of HN shows how fucking sad the state of affairs is around here.
Comment · 6 years ago
This is a bit myopic - $200k for two people for what's basically a no-skill gig is a pretty decent income in most of the country. At that scale it's not a side gig anymore, it's your primary income, and I can imagine the hours are probably comparable to a normal job. And really, I can think of way less appealing jobs that pay worse with less flexibility.

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