IT is a very wide field, and maybe that generalization is actually not good

That was what set me off. I was having a bad morning and misread the tone to be more dismissive than it likely was.

I’ve misread the tone, I agree. I apologize for that. However, I find that his complaints were not about things that are always “fundamental core principals of working in IT”. For some, sure, but where I work I’m by far the employee with the most familiarity with CLI/powershell and scripting. Almost everything is done via a GUI or web interface if it can be. I would tell any of my coworkers that maybe IT isn’t for them.

I also, in a rush to finish, misremembered and incorrectly reread some of your words too quickly. You did not recommend the “clone a repo” solutions, you advised against them. Again, I apologize. I still am suspicious of this massive collection of self hosted services that work perfectly with each other after like 20 minutes of tweaking and little maintenance. That was what I was trying to imply with that section. I’ve lost close to a dozen 6-10 hour sessions on Saturdays pulling my hair out because I can’t seem to find out how to do some specific things that it seems like I need to do to make some “easy” new service to work with my setup. It’s like that Malcom in the Middle (?) clip of the dad 5 projects deep at the end of the day trying to fix some simple problem in the morning.

I’ll try to document some of my issues this weekend. I would honestly appreciate any help or recommendations.

That being said, I think there’s a bigger issue at play here. If you “work in IT” and are burnt out from “15 containers and a lack of a gui” I’m afraid to say you’re in the wrong field of work and you’re trying to jam a square peg in a round hole.

Honestly, this is the kind of response that actually makes me want to stop self hosting. Community members that have little empathy.

I work in IT and like most we’re also a Windows shop. I have zero professional experience with Linux but I’m learning through my home lab while simultaneously trying extract myself from the privacy cluster fuck that is the current consumer tech industry. It’s a transition and the documentation I find more or less matches the OPs experience.

I research, pick what seems to be the best for my situation (often most popular), get it working with sustainable, minimal complexity, and in short time find that some small, vital aspect of its setup (like reverse proxy) has literally zero documentation for getting it to work with some other vital part of my setup. I guess I should have made a better choice 18 months ago when I didn’t expect to find this new service accessible. I find some two year old Github issue comment that allegedly solves my exact problem that I can’t translate to the version I’m running because it’s two revisions newer. Most other responses are incomplete, RTFM, or “git gud n00b”, like your response here

Wherever you work, whatever industry, you can get burnt out. It’s got nothing to do with if you’ve “got what it takes” or whatever bullshit you think “you’re in the wrong field of work and you’re trying to jam a square peg in a round hole” equates to.

I run close to 100 services all using docker compose and it’s an incredibly simple, repeatable, self documenting process. Spinning up some new things is effortless and takes minutes to have it set up, accessible from the internet, and connected to my SSO.

If it’s that easy, then point me to where you’ve written about it. I’d love to learn what 100 services you’ve cloned the repos for, tweaked a few files in a few minutes, and run with minimal maintenance all working together harmoniously.

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, really, truly.

When I look, credit unions advertise great savings rates for balances of up to $1,000. After that, it’s depressingly small: 0.05% or 0.10% vs. competitive rates of 3%+ which I currently get at my evil-corp-mega-bank. 3% doesn’t even come close to inflation and fractions of a percent feels like pissing my money away while saving for the pipe dream of owning my own home. Maybe I’m misreading something? “Finance” is not something I’m particularly confident about.

Do you know of any tools that would help people shop for ethical, local credit unions? I don’t trust any results from a web search at face value these days and I don’t have the patience to research every result to see how legit it is and do a background check to find that their board or whatever is run by fascists or something.

When new video game stores were opening that charged much lower commissions than Valve, I decided that I would provide my game “Overgrowth” at a lower price to take advantage of the lower commission rates. I intended to write a blog post about the results.

But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM. This would make it impossible for me, or any game developer, to determine whether or not Steam is earning their commission. I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores.

https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action/

It seems it was not explicit in the agreement regarding non-key sales, but allegedly threatened and possibly enforced in practice.

The practice I’ve found the most concerning is the alleged “most-favored nation” clause/provision in the Steam Distribution Agreement. I haven’t been able to actually find the actual Steam Distribution Agreement anywhere, which itself is concerning. I just see it mentioned alongside an NDA that must be signed.

The MFN basically requires that Valve never be undercut in any way, whether or not the game is distributed elsewhere using a Steam Key or not.

No discount. No bonus content. No perks. Steam key or direct download from your own website without any involvement of Valve whatsoever - it doesn’t matter.

Edit: It seems it was not explicit in the agreement regarding non-key sales, but allegedly threatened and possibly enforced in practice.

When new video game stores were opening that charged much lower commissions than Valve, I decided that I would provide my game “Overgrowth” at a lower price to take advantage of the lower commission rates. I intended to write a blog post about the results.

But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM. This would make it impossible for me, or any game developer, to determine whether or not Steam is earning their commission. I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores.

https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action/

I’ve recently learned that a good chunk of Democratic donation solicitations are more or less just a scam. That and seeing Democrats firmly believing that letting Trump fuck everything up is the easiest way to ensure they’ll people’s votes…

“So the question is, how should Democratic politicians respond to this? And what I think they should do is what we call in rural America, play possum. Just let it go. Don’t get in the way of it. Or as we like to say, don’t just stand there, do nothing. Let this germinate… We don’t need to get in front of it. This freight train is moving. Let’s just get out of the way and then we’re gonna have time.”

-James Carville, Feb 2025

… just pushes me farther into doomer territory. We can’t have nice things. People will find ways to extract the maximum amount of personal gain, with minimal effort, from anything. They don’t care what it might cost society.

Find any good cause these days and you’ll find a swarm of catchy slogans and effective marketing used to convince you that spending your money with them will further that good cause and help save the world. In reality, many of those campaigns are pretty paint hiding outright lies or half truths. It ends up being more just people looking to skim off some cash by finding a place for themselves between people who want to do good and the good they want to do.

I feel like the next step of the orphan crushing machine metaphor is finding out that the reason we have an orphan crushing machine is because the collecting-donations-to-save-orphans-from-the-orphan-crushing-machine industry is extremely lucrative and has a massive lobby.

Not really fraud when it comes to insurance which is what my wording most implied. Good point.

I was thinking that it might be considered fraud when amounts were reported to Brink but I admit I know nothing about transportation/security type things. If Brink is just insuring it and the security is just to protect what is insured maybe it doesn’t matter. I know I’d be pissed if I was told I’d been transporting a much higher value target than I was paid to transport, and on a regular basis. $150 million is way more dangerous to transport than $8 mil.

Personally, I think “pretty” things kept artificially scarce and heavily marketed to the point that there is a social obligation to purchase them for certain occasions are worthless. I have no idea why you are trying to pick a fight about this stupid shit.

Under capitalism, the economic system in which this “heist” took place, things are worth what you can sell them for. That’s the capitalist definition of value. If you mark them up 1000% and people will still buy them then you can say they are worth 1000%.

The Insurrection Act would fast track and legitimize (in their eyes) the process. They do want that. The key for the rest of us is to be as peaceful as possible until it becomes socially untenable to let it continue - allow it to achieve critical mass. After that, something will happen and the situation will change, through whatever means it takes.

It’s more like the GOP hires bloodthirsty, racist thugs who are beating the shit out of anyone they can with total immunity. Then the GOP is shrieking from the rooftops that they are fighting a brutal, dangerous civil war and that it most definitely qualifies as insurrection so the other side keeps encouraging peaceful resistance. Then the completely disconnected, useless fuckwits pretending to represent the rest of America pass a funding bill to fund the hiring and paying of the bloodthirsty, racist thugs while politely wagging their finger and saying, for the umpteenth time, “if they don’t calm down, we’ll actually do something next time!”

I think it was said the fraud is actually in the other direction. Jewelry is regularly undervalued to reduce the cost of insuring it.

Brandy Swanson, the director of the San Mateo jewelry show, previously said the jewelers robbed of their gems had lost more than $100 million in the theft. Vendors claimed the figure was as high as $150 million.

Swanson noted it was her experience that jewelry owners tend to underestimate their pricey inventory when it comes to insurance, to keep costs low.

“That’s where the discrepancy comes in,” she said.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/13/brinks-doubts-gems-were-150m-in-jewel-heist-lawsuit/

Regardless, I think jewelry and precious gems are a racket. Also, fuck the rich.

if they think they are oh so clever while doing some of the dumbest shit one could imagine.

Yes, shitbird, they do think that don’t they.

Be quiet 🤫

Never.

with funny tweets

Those are from a team of social media savvy folks. He’s demonstrated that he doesn’t always understand his own tweets.

That was my shower thought this morning. Maybe some good will come of these circumstances in the form of optimization.

They don’t just sell AI cards. They have an entire AI Datacenter “Platform”.

Video from the “Consumer” Electronics Show 2026

2. raising children was historically a communal responsibility and you are doing what was historically done by the extended community anyway

US perspective here. The problems I see:

• In many cases, the parents don’t have time to give their child the attention that they need and the “extended community” has shrunk to maybe some extended family like grandparents or aunts/uncles. This is particularly bad for those in poverty and working multiple jobs.
• Existential dread and financial uncertainty for the parents, the child, and the teachers.
• Reduced educational funding - downward pressure on teacher compensation, teachers paying for classroom supplies the school and parents can’t provide.
• Increasingly corporate structure in school districts - a focus on efficiency, metrics, test performance, etc. instead of the much harder to measure intellectual and social growth of the students. See NCLB.
• Massive, rapid-paced social and technological change.

They use a different kind of RAM.

It’s the capacity to make RAM and the materials required to make RAM that is going to datacenters.

The Nobel prizes are silly to begin with. This just makes that more plain to see.

Hey shitbird. ♥️

Encouraging those people to rise up and act:

✅ Helpful!

Shaming and mocking people for choosing their conscience instead of understanding game theory, well over a year ago:

❌ Being a shitbird