I had a remote relay box: 8 channels of power control, so I could at least power cycle machines from remote when all else failed.
I actually ended up not using it much at all, it was a nice security blanket, but the last time I decided that I wanted to power cycle something was about 6 years ago, and at that time I realized it had been over 3 years since I had previously used it, and that usage was more of a “let’s make sure this thing is working like I think it should” test.
It’s not Unix, it’s you.
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Back in the 1990s I developed an app over the course of 6 years, first 3 in C/DOS then we ported that to C++/Borland/Win95 and continued developing it for another 3 years. I was the only coder, we had a dedicated tester / documentation specialist and the algorithms lead who was more of an idea guy than any hands-on code work.
We got bought out. Buyers “needed it in native Win32 because of the depth of the talent pool.” Whatever, I’m here to help if they want it during porting. Buyers estimated 2 developers could port it in about 2-3 months. Yeah, o.k. Never asked for help, but at 6 months in they had expanded the dev team to 6 guys and were still struggling and looking to hire more. Ultimately they reduced scope a little and called it “ready to use” in Win32 after about 15 months. Glad they got it “maintainable” by switching to that Win32 dev environment with such a deep talent pool to hire from, they easily spent more man hours on the port than we spent developing it in the first place.
That was a company of 1000 employees, over 500 of them in the traveling global sales force. There were about seven guys at the top taking home millions a year in those bonuses, and their whole priority was to maximize their personal incomes as much and as soon as possible.
In the shiny promotional videos, we were all about helping our customers, improving their lives, but in reality we weren’t very good at that, only about 1/3 customers saw any benefits and maybe 3/100 would get anything close to what they were really hoping for, but… they didn’t have any alternatives, so they were willing to let their health insurance pay for a $30K surgical procedure on the chance that they might be one of the lucky ones.
Research around methods of testing to determine who might and who might not benefit from the product? Actively undermined by the company.
Research around ways to improve product performance? Squashed as I described, it was more likely to “disrupt” the short term income streams they leaders were all enjoying than to make any significant improvements in income for them on any time schedule they care about.
I have spent 30 years developing computerization of traditional medical tasks. Anytime a project gets anywhere near M.D. territory they villify it mercilessly, it’s a threat to their cash cow, a threat to their status as the exalted font of all knowledge, a threat to their $600K/yr practice income - they think.
Doesn’t even have to be about that. Einstein was a disruptor. He scribbled some theories on paper and it dramatically reshaped the global power and wealth dynamic.
The extremely rich have a singular top priority: to stay that way. Unpredictable change, regardless of the net change for good or bad, is not their friend.
This works at all levels. I was hired into the mid level of a company to “lead research to improve the product” - but I quickly found out: that was just a carrot to get me and others like me in the door to fill roles required by regulatory bodies: so many degreed this and thats to oversee implementation of the quality procedures, etc. Everyone above Director level in that company was making fat bonuses every quarter and they didn’t want ANYTHING to change, not even an improvement in the product, it was making plenty of money with no signs of competition on the horizon. To announce a potential future improvement would be to derail current sales volumes, and there were new mansions under construction that still needed more quarters of bonuses to complete.
A shorter take: x11 is old, and big, and didn’t originally consider security much at all.
Wayland is newer, therefore lacking some bells and whistles of x11 that some x11 users may still care about, but also designed with more awareness of security issues - making it more extensible and maintainable into the future.
There was a time Wayland wasn’t a great x11 replacement due to its level of development. When it will become the better choice all depends on what kind of user you are, but it seems inevitable to become the better choice for most users in the future.
I have used both, back and forth for years.
Chrome serves me better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)
They delivered their promise: they were at least not evil, at first.
Too late, they own my soul already. I have successfully resisted Meta, X, Microsoft, and any number of lesser daemons, but the one true G has shown me their light and I am unable to look away.
I’m reasonably happy with XFCE/Xubuntu - it’s not as slick of a desktop as KDE or Gnome, and in some ways that’s a great thing.
Docker in a snap is too meta for me.
Agreed, not a secret, and not wanted. I uninstall Firefox and install Google Chrome from a .deb - disadvantage: you have to update it manually. Advantage: it doesn’t update itself automatically.
All in all UBI would be a huge win, the poor could do more with a STABLE small income than they do with the unreliable sources most of them operate off of now. The whole needs testing bureaucracy can just die, saving Billions in administrative costs. Services and stores for low income people could do much better when their clientele has reliable income instead of being flat broke most of the time.
In my view, if UBI is good enough, there’s no more need for minimum wage, let people volunteer if they want to, pay to work in some highly desirable jobs, that’s fine.
I believe the primary objection comes from the people who hire the poor, they can’t imagine people working without the imminent threat of starvation and homelessness. If that’s how your workplace operates, that needs to change. With UBI I believe a lot of workplaces would self-regulate better, because if they don’t their employees will just quit.
Florida is making some progress on the early childhood side, they’ve been funding “Free VPK” for 20+ years now, and unemployed parents get automatic “Florida KidCare” insurance (basically Medicaid) for their children. Still, could be better.
Friend of ours is a well educated psychologist, she does drug counseling in lieu of jail. Convicts in her program have 4x better outcomes and her program (including her salary) costs the county less than 1/10th what they pay to keep drug charge convicts in jail. Still, the county refuses to expand the program and pays far more to send the majority of their drug cases to jail, because that’s how the judges want to handle it.
Rent by the hour does tend to be more expensive…
Taking a tangent: with reliable UBI the homeless and poor would have enough of their own money to reliably pay for whatever type of shelter they desire, whether that’s a standard apartment, or a bed in a big shelter dormitory for less per night, but either way: they would have a reliable source of income to pay for it with, instead of having to scrounge needs-tested welfare + whatever else they can scrape together.
For clarity, I have done it myself - plenty, but not just on Unix boxes.