I’ve been that guy at a computer store. Had already found what I needed on my own since I was quite familiar with the store and was browsing a different isle to look at the shinies. Overheard a customer ask a salesperson what the difference between product x and y was, which were marked very similarly on the box but one was something like 30-50% more.

I noticed the salesperson become quite unsure of what this specific technical difference was, so I added the quick TLDR paragraph of what the generalized difference was and what words the manufacturers use to differentiate them (since there were several product pairs that matched both classes elsewhere on the isle).

Customer says “oh ok that makes sense”. I forget which one he decided on (I think it might have been the more expensive one kek), but the salesperson put his commission tracking sticker on the selected box and the customer wandered away, hopefully happy. Salesperson turns to me sheepishly “Um… I guess you probably don’t need help?” I responded “No, I’m just browsing, but do you want to put your sticker on this gizmo I found in the bargain bin over there?” He seemed happy with this arrangement, adds the commission sticker, and we part ways.

…did I inadvertently make a pact with a different type of fae?

I don’t think I’ve seen that movie, so that explains why I missed the joke

I’m still lost… I’ve been following the XZ thing since it broke, so I get the context, but I’m not sure how the meme at the bottom is connected?

Isn’t the point of PGP/GPG that there’s no central database?

Good thing the timeout was long enough :)

Much easier to scroll through a HTML layout formatted to my phones font than clicking on several images in sequence

As a complete outsider to the situation, that article makes the company appear to be exploiting child labor and then putting a positive spin on it for the news.

Hardly the best first impression.

https://tenor.com/7cqP.gif

I get the statement you’re trying to make here - serving the name of a platform you dislike with the same reverence as he-who-must-not-be-named in Harry Potter (Voldemort) - but all you’ve done is obfuscate the search engine. Now if someone is skimming for information on the platform via search, you’ve hidden your comments and post from someone who might find your perspective useful. No one is going to try 15 ways of spelling a platform name (except maybe trying stackoverflow with and without spaces). Internet users are pretty lazy.

Why are you redacting platform names like it’s profanity? My brain keeps trying to read it as markdown…

I’ve only had issues with embedded serial consoles and things where you have to swap ctrl-h/? for backspace. But usually it’s solvable with key mapping.

Also you mention vi/m but insert is red? That’s the toggle switch between insert and replace mode (i vs shift-R)

It’s this supposed to be a dad joke as an anti joke?

This elicited a genuine laugh from me.

Excellent work, OP. I can feel the scope creep in my bones.

So that’s the nifty thing about Unix is that stuff like this works- when you say “locked up”, I’m assuming you refer to logging in to a graphical environment, like Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc. To an extent, this can even apply to some heavy server processes: just replace most of the references to graphical with application access.

Even lightweight graphical environments can take a decent amount of muscle to run, or else they lag. Plus even at a low level, they have to constantly redraw the cursor as you move it around the screen.

SSH and plain terminals (Ctrl-Alt-F#, what number is which varies by distro) take almost no resources to run: SSH/Getty (which are already running), a quick process call to the password system, then a shell like bash or zsh. A singular GUI application may take more standing RAM at idle than this entire stack. Also, if you’re out of disk space, the graphical stack may not be able to alive

So when you’re limited on resources, be it either by low spec system or a resource exhaustion issue, it takes almost no overhead to have an extra shell running. So it can squeeze into a tiny corner of what’s leftover on your resource-starved computer.

Additionally, from a user experience perspective, if you press a key and it takes a beat to show up, it doesn’t feel as bad as if it had taken the same beat for your cursor redraw to occur (which also burns extra CPU cycles you may not be able to spare)

Absolutely can and will take action. Doesn’t always kill the right process (sometimes it kills big database engines for the crime of existing), but usually gives me enough headroom to SSH back in and fix it myself.

Even better, you can swapoff swap too!

IMO the joke is more “timeless” because it uses state names instead of company names.

Imagine if instead it mentioned Xerox computers, DEC terminals*, IPX, and Ethernet hubs. We’d say “wow that comic didn’t age well”. Even something as recent as “EVGA GPU” will go down in history books instead of commonplace.

*Yes, I am aware that the VT100 terminal spec is from DEC. But they don’t make DEC terminals anymore

10 years down the road, we don’t know what tech will look like. But there is a high likelihood that the state of Pennsylvania will still exist and hold relevance.

And now you can listen to some cool smooth jazz and bloopers while reading the closed caption easter egg instead of watching the credits

C Hypercube… C Hyper… Hyper C… wait is this where HolyC fits in? (/s)

We have on prem and do all our upgrades by burn the OS and move the data, with the exception of the hypervisor OS (which has a pretty resilient bulk self upgrade built in, and we have a burn-the-OS plan documented for if they do crash). Even system file corruption of a random pet server? New VM and reattach the data disk. Need high availability? Throw F5 or HAProxy at the problem (assuming L7 protocol support).

Both cloud and on prem can work equally when done right. The most important part is to understand that both have different types of cost (human, machine, developer) and to make the right choice based your/your customer’s needs and any applicable laws or regulations about data locality. And yeah, sometimes one will be better for someone and not someone else.

Seven figures of cloud engineering can’t solve stupid, but neither can seven figures of datacenter. This isn’t some Sith/Jedi concept where you have hard definitions of dark and light or good and evil - though sometimes both will see each other as the enemy, and they are in a way competitors.