iodbh

Just leaving this here to contrast with the “murder tech good” vibe.

If your greatest achievement ended up with a bunch of people dead - maybe there would have been more utility in self-destruction.

If you feel like defending cool missile tech to avoid offending a potential juicy customer - maybe you need to get your family bombed and remember that “skin in the game” can be literal.

If you think that violence is necessary - maybe you need to be in situation where violence is a possible outcome to remember no one wants it.

Everyone deserves the receiving end of their designs.

You might be interested in “chaos magic”. Writings on the topic can be out there and often heavily metaphorical, but the core idea is that one designs not only their own rituals, but also the belief systems the rituals are based upon, often per-ritual. It doesn’t take suspension or reason or “belief in magic” - ritual magic - like religion - can be viewed as the combination of a symbolic model of the world and self-conditioning through that model. It’s a subject I find fascinating and want to write about at some point.

Anyway, I’m curious about your approach and always interested in discussion about these topic, drop me a line if you’d like to discuss ! Email is my username @ my username .net

Development is currently quite active. Everybody’s risk analysis is different, but my assessment is that :

- open source means that we can contribute the fixes and improvements we need - not being dependant on a commercial product protects us from events outside our control : what if the company goes under and does not release their code ? What about licensing / pricing changes ? - it follows that in the worse case scenario where the project is completely abandoned, we have the code base and opportunity of maintaining it - others are in the same position, which strengthens the incentive to collaborate on maintenance

That is not to say I’d systematically reject commercial products in favour of FOSS, just that both have different risk profiles that may or may not fit a given situation :)

The project has been donated - there are some leftover references to the enterprise offering, but all features have been open sourced

Love StackStorm ! I had never heard of it before my employer adopted it, despite having looked for exactly what it provides before.

Writing integrations is very easy, which makes it a great “hub” where events from different sources can be collected and watched, while miscellaneous tooling can be gathered behind the same UI and auth. My team is adopting it big time.

It’s not without warts and there are alternatives better suited for other environments, but I still believe StackStorm deserves more attention than it has received !

I live in Norway and got one - you just need a delivery address. I used a friend’s; but there are forwarding services as well

It’s a strange thing to assume that an entire, loosely defined type of relationship is bound to end up in tragedy or abuse. Keep an open heart !

At the time I lived there, tipping 500 for holding the door was not uncommon and half expected.

You’re joking about the briefcases, but a friend of mine had a group of bodyguards swarm the $LUXURY_SPORTS_CAR dealership he was working at, followed by the customer who bought a car cash - as in « literal cash from a suitcase »

I grew up working class 20mn from Monaco. That place has been an excellent introduction to the notion of inequality.

It is quite unique. The entire riviera’s economy is focused on tourism, but Monaco takes that to the next level : it is a city designed to attract the ridiculously rich and extract as much money from them as possible while they are there through a carefully maintained wealth signaling culture.

My go-to example is this : a couple of years back I visited the region with some friends and took them to Monaco one day. Obligatory visit to the Casino, around which two things had changed :

- the park in front of the casino had been redesigned. You know how airports force you to go through the duty free, or IKEA has you walk around the entire store to find the exit ? Well that’s what they did with that park, the only way to the casino is through the (luxury brands) shops - in front of the casino itself, there was a new statue with a plaque. The plaque states « artist : anish kapoor. Donated to the principality of Monaco by miss so and so »

Nothing says « wealth signaling » like donating an anish kapoor to Monaco.

When I say that culture is carefully maintained: the Monaco police will turn you down at the city entrance if you’re driving a beater. They have asked me to take a detour rather than drive my crappy moped in front of the casino. I general, Monaco only exposes you to luxury and incentivized you to show off by burning money.

The default tip to service staff is the highest denomination bill. When the currency changed, it went from the highest francs bill to the highest euros bill - easy conversion.

I could go on and on about how ridiculous this all is, the permanent yacht completion in the port, the luxury sports cars stuck in a permanent traffic jam (locals drive mopeds), the dozens of « out of touch oligarch » stories, the looks of disgust and disbelief I’d get for wearing regular clothes…

In the flip side, Monaco treats their workers well. I have worked a few summer jobs well and everyone I know in the area works is has worked in Monaco. The minimum wage is higher, low income jobs get more after tax than before (there is a « prince’s bonus »). You will at least double your income from tips if you work in the service industry.

Like the article says, The country has been good with its population, allowing them to benefit from living in a playground for the rich rather than displacing them. As a result the royal family is well liked, and it’s not uncommon to meet the prince at places where the workers hang out.

If you think Donald trump has good taste in interior design, love the smell of money and tax evasion or just have a lot of money you’d like to get rid of, visit Monaco !

More seriously, I’d recommend paying it a visit if you find yourself in the vicinity. It is a unique place that will be of interest to curious folks.

I'm a native french speaker and only recently realized that "Qu'est-ce que c'est ?" ("what is it ?") literally translates to "what is it that it is ?".

I think I've never seen worst GDPR compliance : big "I Consent" button with no negative counterpart, except a link to the cookie policy where the "opt out" section invites you to disable cookies in your browser and manually edit local storage. Is that a joke ?