piou
Joined 7 years ago
Karma
59
Submissions
16
Member since
Jul 2
Recent submissions
Comment · 5 months ago
Comment · 9 months ago
Most of my customers (small VPS host here) don't like the companies behind AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, especially the amount of influence they have in the world and how they wield it. And the pricing often isn't that much different between a small VPS host and either a cloud provider or one of the larger VPS providers (Akamai/Linode, Digital Ocean, etc.) - larger providers have economies of scale, but smaller providers don't have as much overhead for paying sales and C-suite.
There's also the human touch in terms of who you talk to: a lot of the smallest VPS hosts are 1-2 people, both technical, so customer support = sysadmin = contact for everything.
Comment · 9 months ago
The majority of the U.S. votes on paper: https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/. Most of the rest of the country votes using Ballot Marking Devices that produce paper ballots; less than 5% of the population lives somewhere where the only or default choice is electronic voting.
Comment · 10 months ago
> I really loved the previous design with the physical numpad
That's their MP02, different product line, which is pretty much just talk and text plus Signal ("Pigeon" on the MP02): https://www.punkt.ch/products/mp02-4g-minimalist-phone
I recommend the MP02, with one caveat: don't buy it right now. Because there have historically been problems with Pigeon, you really ought to use Signal for Desktop at the same time as Pigeon, in case Pigeon starts having problems. But as of now you can't you can't connect the two (though Signal for Desktop keeps working fine if you already have them synced).
I've found the call quality and reliability on the MP02 to be great after a year of use.
[Edited to add: MP02 doesn't require a subscription.]
Comment · 2 years ago
Clearly my business/branding sense and my sense of humor are off... it is a real product offering, and I'll honor the offer and the coupon if you sign up. Typically I provide website and VPS hosting, just hadn't advertised colo services publicly so threw the product page together. I'll change the product names eventually when I come up with something I like.
(Standard disclaimer: while supplies last.)
Comment · 2 years ago
In case there's some confusion - I'm not with MonkeyBrains. I hope my comment didn't read like I was. (And just FYI, I know people who host with MonkeyBrains, and they have no complaints.) I'm just (self-interestedly) providing an alternative across the Bay.
I can't speak for them, but my service is on a 10Gbps line because that covers the needs of my clients at the moment. With a network provider at a data center, you'll typically have a good Service Level Agreement, and throughput will actually match what you're paying for. Looking at the home fiber offering from one of the big players just now, they tell you up front, "Actual speeds may vary."
Comment · 2 years ago
Well shoot, if you're in the East Bay and would rather colo in Oakland, use the coupon code "non-clown" to get half off the prices here:
https://account.eppihost.com/order/colocation/
(I typically offer VPSes, but just added some colo options for my hosting services because of this thread, as you can probably tell by the package names I chose. The coupon only applies to colocation.)
Comment · 3 years ago
The prose is unclear, but I expect by arrival they mean success/dominance, in the sense given by the phrase "truly arrived." See the definitions given at https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/have+arrived. Seems like poor phrasing rather than straight up contradiction.
Comment · 4 years ago
ep Productions, Inc. | Junior Junior DevOps Engineer/Sysadmin | REMOTE (US) or onsite, Berkeley, CA | Full Time
ep Productions, Inc. (eppi) is a small web development and server hosting company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are seeking a junior DevOps Engineer/System administrator to help in our mission of providing creative, secure, privacy-respecting technology for non-profits, social justice organizations, and small businesses. This is a full-time (4-day workweek), salaried position.
Two of our current projects include:
* a GIS- and SQL-heavy project for a highly-respected national non-profit promoting election security and verifiability * a streaming video service and Digital Asset Management system for a social justice organization
The ideal candidate will have experience with, or a desire to learn more about, server administration (FreeBSD or Debian), virtual machines, and automation.
eppi strives to be a diverse, inclusive workspace, and encourage applicants from a variety of backgrounds to apply. For more information, see the full job posting at: https://eppi.com
Comment · 5 years ago
> If you think Andrew Yang is establishing a political party to win a government race, I think its a bit too naive.
> I think he is trying to use a third party lever to influence a bunch of small things to snowball into larger things...
If we're talking about what we're _thinking_, I think Andrew Yang is establishing a political party to make a lot of money, whether it's through direct donations or a higher profile that turns into more financial opportunity elsewhere.
I don't discount the possibility of him doing it just for the political influence, though.
Comment · 5 years ago
ep Productions, Inc. | Junior Full Stack Engineer | REMOTE (US) or onsite, Berkeley, CA | Full Time
ep Productions, Inc. (eppi) is a small web development and server hosting company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are seeking a junior full stack developer to help in our mission of providing creative, secure, privacy-respecting technology for the non-profit sector and small businesses. This is a full-time, salaried position, working closely with the company's technical founder.
We are a remote-first company that believes in a four day workweek. As long as you get your work done, we encourage employees to take Fridays off; if you feel you want to "work" on Fridays we encourage independent technical study.
Half of your time in the first few months will be spent on a data-intensive project for a non-partisan, non-profit client using evidence- and fact-based methods to promote greater accuracy, security, and verifiability in elections. The other half will involve helping develop our hosting services.
The ideal candidate will have at least a full year's experience with, and a desire to learn more about, PHP, MySQL/MariaDB, Javascript and git.
eppi strives to be a diverse, inclusive workspace, and encourage applicants from a variety of backgrounds to apply. For more information, see the full job posting at: https://eppi.com/jobs.html
Comment · 5 years ago
Interrupting the way you flow into the negative activity is a great idea.
I used to spend hours playing two simple online games (Generals and Slither) compulsively, to the detriment of sleep, work, and relationships. Something that weaned me off for a while was going to a conference where I didn't have my regular laptop with me, but a new one; because the laptop felt different, I didn't feel compelled to play, and even when I got back in town, I stayed off the games for a while.
But I started playing again. I realized that playing was just a very very compelling habit, so I beat it with another habit: when I felt the desire, I'd go to one of the games' websites, hit the start button to join a game, then logout immediately and close my browser, multiple times. At first just 5 or 10 times, but sometimes 20 or 30 times in a row in rapid succession, enough times to get really bored doing it.
So my advice, if you can make it work: whenever you think about using one of those sites, go to the website, login, logout immediately, turn off the phone, then turn it back on and repeat. 10-20 times, beyond the point where you get bored. Repeat this daily for at least a week or two.
Comment · 5 years ago
"have a roommate or live-in significant other" - life's killer app.
Comment · 5 years ago
For some part of the population, me included, taking the action of reloading feels better than being pushed from one piece of content to another - it helps me tell myself I'm in control, unlike with, say, video sites that automatically queue up the next video.
A killer anti-design feature for a place like Hacker News would be to limit how many links and comments get posted every hour or day. Which would have me reloading less often, which would - accomplish the goal of me spending less time here, I guess?
But seriously, the thing most likely to keep me from infinite scrolling or reloading is to have a roommate or live-in significant other.
Comment · 5 years ago
Step one, as others have said, is make sure things are rock-solid enough that you're not nervous about being offline. When nothing critical has gone down in 6 months, you can start relaxing. If things are going down once a month, you need to work on your infrastructure and processes.
I do make sure I'm always available to fix things within a reasonable time. Practically, I try not to do anything where I would be physically unable to get to a computer with Internet access within 30 minutes, though pre-pandemic I would set my phone to silent when I went out to see a movie or was at the gym. Sometimes this also means bringing the laptop in the car when going places you don't plan to actually work, just in case.
One side effect of needing to watch for incoming notifications: I have East Coast relatives who insist on texting pre-7am Pacific (sometimes 20-message text chains), and wouldn't lay off when I told them it was too early and I couldn't just turn off my phone because I need to check for work notifications. Texts and calls from them are now muted 24/7, at least until I eventually get a work-specific cell phone.
The pictures on the website are a little misleading: it comes with a strap to keep the device in your nostrils, so they don't just fall out in the middle of the night.
FDA-approved, and does require a prescription...