mattjaynes

If you don't have access to a bidet, just use the "dab of lotion on the TP" technique.

Wipe like normal. Then put a bit of lotion on new folded TP and wipe. Repeat a few times until the TP is completely clean. It's not at the level of bidet, but it gets you pretty squeaky clean (try it).

Best is to use thicker lotion with enough "slipperyness", like true cocoa butter, etc. Cheaper lotions generally don't work as well. Keep a small tube of the lotion in your backpack if you need it when you're out and about.

(Fun fact: I submitted this technique as part of my YC application years ago and PG mentioned it to me when I ran into him at Stanford)

One of my favorite films. Can't think of anyone who could have played Olive more perfectly. Underrated classic.

That's fair. I have limited experience with the rest of their offerings. They only came onto my radar because of regular critical CVEs that needed urgent fixing. The communication from the company had no hint of apology - just "hey, better fix this before your server is p0wned" - which did not seem like they were to be taken seriously.

I love Kevin Kelly, but I really wished he would have done more with his recent book "Excellent Advice For Living" which is essentially a similar list of extremely brief "advices". They are all excellent, but it's an overwhelming list of nuggets of wisdom without any context or stories or anything else for the mind to process. So I end up going from point to point and quickly burn out on what quickly becomes a shopping list of unrelated wisdom points.

If this had just been a calendar of a point of wisdom per day that you can ponder, that would have been much better. Or better yet, a book with short chapters that elaborate on each point with a story so that your mind has the time and context to absorb it.

Hopefully he does that at some point, because there are a lot of gems here which are underserved in the no-context list format.

Thanks - I was curious to check "ninja" and "rockstar". They seem to have peaked 8-10 years ago (from a quick glance). Was surprised they are still used at all after taking that pounding from job ads for so many years.

Backblaze's B2 is cheap - but if your'e using them in production you must include these costs:

* their weekly 2 hour maintenance window 11:30-13:30 PST (which usually has no downtime, but sometimes is a full outage in the middle of the US day)

* having to file support tickets when your error rates increase above a usable threshold (for us about once a year for the last few years)

* support which does not look into the issue, just asks tons of questions as if they do not have error logs or any visibility on their end

* false success on uploads where B2 says it successfully saved your file but it is 0 bytes on their system (ALWAYS verify the upload despite B2's success code)

* extended outages if there's a high severity CVE (ex: they shut down for 10 hours for the Log4j2 CVE)

They have the best price - but when comparing options, it is simply not a directly comparable product to more mature cloud storage services.

(edit: formatting)

It's never been easier or cheaper to run systems.

And yet, engineers would rather deliver a pizza by organizing an expedition team, climbing Mount Everest, taking a picture of the pizza at the summit, then fly the pizza back home, rent a Lamborghini and drive the Mongolian rally race, then 18 months later deliver said pizza.

While they do that, just get on a cheap scooter and drive it down the street. Win.

Yes, but helping these people save face smoothes the transition. My guess is that those folks were waaay out of their depth and they naturally made naive mistakes. It doesn't benefit anyone to stomp on them. I'm sure they learned hard lessons, and Sam's message is what we call "grace", which is classy.

Is it politics? Sure, but only in the best sense. By not dunking on the losers, he builds trust and opens the doors for others to work with him. If you work with Sam and make a mistake, he's not going to blast you. It's one reason that there was such a rallying of support around Sam, because he's a bridge-builder, not a bridge-burner. Over time, those bridges add up.

Silicon Valley has a long memory and people will be working with each other for decades. Forgiving youthful mistakes is a big part of why the culture works so well.

Reminder: B2 is great for backups, but is not good for production assets that you expect to be available 24/7. They have a weekly maintenance window on Thursday for an hour. It often doesn't involve an outage, but sometimes it does. You need to account for that in your production planning.