For those asking about API keys - While it makes life easy to have API keys, it's quite easy to just use something like Puppeteer[0] to control it via a Lambda etc.
I owned an Elantra and I am not a fan. (Just the scheduled maintenance for the first 100,000 miles is expensive, and I was getting a $200 or so repair bill every month for the last few months with my Elantra)
American dealerships have always tried to talk people out of buying a small car, even at times when there have been great American small cars such as the Neon at the end of it's run or the current Chevy Sonic.
Lately I have been getting this treatment from Honda and Toyota dealerships too. Nissan Sentras are available but I don't want to drive a Sentra.
See, I've had the exact opposite experience here in Canada.
My family owns a range of Hyundai cars (Elentra -> Sonata, Veolster -> Kona, Santa Fe -> Palisade when it releases) and all those cars have been driven to ~100-200k each. The most we've ever paid is $200/yr for the yearly service (apart from tire cost) + $150 / 2 yrs for interior + HVAC cleaning (for that new car smell).
I've never had a bad experience at the Hyundai dealership (can't say the same for Kia, Nissan and Ford).
Every single thing else (maintenance, oil change etc.) was included when I got my car (for 8 yrs or 200k km).
Oh man! I love how climate change pushers (not saying I don't believe in Climate Change - I do) love to point at something we can do to matter about CC. I feel even if every. single. person. on the planet works towards CC improvement, it'd not matter as much as improvements in commercial transportation - trucks, ships and airplanes - all of which if we seriously tackle, will raise price of our current QoL by such a massive amount that no one wants to deal with so it's easier to just point at consumer habits.
Drive a truck. Enjoy your life. It's too short to matter in the long run. But do be contentious about your consumption when doing so. Think about others (if not your kids' future, other people's future).
Disclaimer: I love cars and driving (going on a 7 day driving road trip in a few weeks) but I'm a bit tired of CC pushing me to change my lifestyle for changes that have minimal impact from the looks of it but my QoL keeps getting worse.
The scenarios for humanity are quite grim if climate change isn't addressed in a major coordinated effort in the next few years.
Water scarcity, the death of _all_ coral reefs, sea-level cities everywhere being flooded, massive species die-offs (including ones crucial to human survival, like pollinating insects), oceanic fisheries collapse. . . with more severe scenarios seeing the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of South Asia becoming uninhabitable.
Avoiding this scenario is going require every intervention, large and small, that humanity can muster. This is serious stuff. There's a reason that climatologists sound like doomsday prophets these days.
And part of any successful effort is combating the selfishness and denial of the average person. So pardon me if I'm somewhat unsympathetic to your attitude of self-interested helplessness - "Drive a truck. Enjoy your life. It's too short to matter in the long run." We're literally concerned with the fates of hundreds of millions of human beings here.
The UN said the same in 1990s. So forgive me if I'm unsympathetic when everyone screams doomsday. There is absolutely nothing you can do today in your personal life that'll matter at a scale to impact the global issue of climate change.
You want real change? Fine, let's work together to ensure that companies and corporations are held accountable for their emissions, reduce population in areas most impacted and stop the hyperbole. Climate change is real. It's here. and hyperbole is not going to save us. It didn't in the 90s and it's not now.
The sad bit is, those 100s of millions will die none the less so you can have your grande caramel macchiato in a non-recyclable cup instead of making coffee at home and using a mug. Excessive consumerism had a massive hand in leading us to this point, and now consumerism is trying to sell us the cure in the name of zero emission cars and expensive recyclable crap? Spare me the hypocrisy.
> And part of any successful effort is combating the selfishness and denial of the average person
Does that include people in the developing world having far too many children? Anything we do in the developed world will be utterly swamped by global population growth.
The internet always has been (and is) whatever we make it to be.
I do really mean that - in fact, it's more accessible than ever.
For example, personally for me, it means that I can go online and access vast resources of knowledge to make myself better at my job, my business etc. It provides me with hours of entertainment - both free and paid. It also has enabled be to in touch with friends and family across the world.
For my mom, it means she gets to see videos and tv shows she had given up on decades ago (Indian tv drama - 1 ep / day, it adds up quite quickly). It also means, I can send her stuff that I know she'll find funny. She can keep in touch with her family, friends etc.
For my dad, it means he can see places online that he's never been to. He loves maps and the internet has enabled him to see detailed maps he'd never even dream of.
For others, it could a dark place of business - a place to sell drugs, or organs or others. For some it's a glimmer of hope that their stories / struggles could be put out there for the world to see and empathize.
The internet is what you make of it. For those looking for what the author mentioned - those still exist - you have to know where to look. But for the "normies" - Those that are not concerned about programming, internet etc. - it's something totally different and they've moulded what internet is for them.
I recently found out that I could get a 2 GB / 2 Core machine for ~ $15/yr - and my plan is to buy a bunch of them (~ 150 - 200) to make my own cluster for my personal needs, learning and running some stuff I charge $ for.
One thing they didn't mention was specifically MongoDB management - Backing up, restore etc.
Personally I was planning on using Nomad (or K8S if I could get into the GCP K8S Engine Hybrid Cloud Preview) to manage my clusters.
Then, I automated buying a ton of them into one bill as they generally don't allow you to bulk buy (which lead to a failed bill as it broke their billing. This lead their sales team to contact me to discuss my usage. Then they provided me with a better quote than the one on Lowendbox).
I wrote $15 / yr as that's the "discounted" price on Lowendbox. But if you bulk buy or buy with a commitment for 3 yrs - it's even cheaper (or you can negotiate to get more stuff for the same price). I can't talk about how much I end up paying as we've a special deal based on our usage.
For what it's worth, last time I checked pretty much every host on lowendbox is a customer from ColoCrossing (the owner of the site, data center owner) and there's recently been some shady stuff happening over at LowEndTalk (basically forum side) of spammers and other hosts being unbanned by CC (as they own both sites, and operate LEB, LET is mostly operated by volunteers) , and just recently one host offering 3 year amazing deals, similar/better than what you got, operating for little over a year and little bit after BlackFriday where they again we're selling their 3 year deals just completely closed shop, almost without any communication, and CC deleted any mention of them from LEB.
Not exactly saying your host will do the same, but there's a reason almost all the hosts offer same locations (NY, LA and Chicago), and those specs with that price (even without discount) is unbelievable cheap, maybe too cheap
I had noticed that almost all of them had the exact same website, emails and billing software. I assumed that it was like how all sites using Wordpress are essentially the same if you take away the flashy JS stuff.
I am currently paying for a year and if all goes well, maybe update to a 3 yr contract. My plan is to architect the cloud in a way that I can immediately migrate / scale to GCP at the first sign of trouble - so my data / customers etc. should ideally not have issues. But from a cost standup, it's definitely going to be difficult.
That and they free ride on the R&D of other companies. I was talking to an engineer at Ciscoper years ago, who mentioned that they copied a router design down to the English silk screened assembly instructions in the PCBs.
With all the layoffs across the telecom equipment industry, Huawei should be able to get a ton of highly qualified/knowledgeable engineers in Europe, Japan and the US full of trade secrets.
As my friends in India tell me- China is very good at sponsoring stories. They don't pay the newspaper- they pay the journalist.
Unlike IBM of old (and apple of new) where newspapers are/were rewarded with ads, China rewards journalists, usually in kind so as to avoid all suspicion.
In this debate of Huawei vs. rest , i feel both the parties have valid assertions. Although the Chinese online propaganda army is strong.
Just the other day as i was watching a video about a bridge being constructed in India, the top rated Youtube comment was a snarky remark suggesting that India talks first, builds later while it is opposite for China.A host of similar comments made an otherwise fine video undigestible.
aren't all big telco's state sponsored is a multitude of ways? either by direct funds, tax breaks, support or expensive state contracts that the states have to use because there aren't any alternatives?
There's a different level with Chinese corporations.
Remember that China is a single-party system. You're either with the party, or you're not. In other countries, there are two (or more) major political parties to be aligned to. Any corporation that tilts towards one political group will lose power when the other groups come into office.
Ex: Farming corporations tend to be aligned with Republicans. Environmental corporations tend to be aligned with Democrats. While they get benefits when their party is in power, its hard to keep the subsidies going when the opposition enters.
That's not true of China. If you're with "The Party", then you get all the benefits of being with the party all the time.
> Any corporation that tilts towards one political group will lose power when the other groups come into office
not if they simply shift their campaign donations to the other groups. federal level politicians spend a huge fraction of their time constantly and aggressively looking for campaign cash.
Big telcos tend to get in bed with governments because they're a strategic intelligence source. Since companies can be gagged, no one knows for sure how much in bed they are. Choose as if choosing which government you want to spy on you.
any sufficiently large corporation is state sponsored yes. the original “too big to fail”. but telcos like ATT, Verizon, are more sponsored than telco appliance manufacturers.
That is fairly accurate.. the story of The Bell System is pretty interesting if not totally bizarre. Things are a bit more capitalist these days since most transport is IP and the commercial IT sector drives most development there, but cell networks are still largely the product of a handful of companies as PSTN switching and interface equipment were.
Nokia works - good joke ;-) disclaimer - I work in that circus.
Huawei is far more technologically advanced than Nokia and E///.
Their stuff is cheap and well thought.
Let's take massive-MIMO (it's key for 5G)- Nokia is about 5 years behind Hua, E/// is at least year behind Hua.
Nokia HW for 5G baseband costs several times more than Hua equivalent.
Huawei has nothing to learn from Nokia - beside how not to do stuff ;-)
USA is pissed off on Huawei because every telco vendor tied to US failed miserably - Motorola & ALU. They have nothing and must rely on E/// & Nokia on their strategic infra. US operators have no options than take E/// and NOK - they are not in position to negotiate prices because you need to have at least 2 telco vendors.
Like recent BS Bloomberg stories about evesdropping on iCloud servers, I find it highly suspect that their stuff actually works - even in a nefarious way.
They're Chinese, end of story. If it's true, they had help from somewhere.
And it's well known all Chinese do it steal, right? At least have the decency to start the comment with "I'm not trying to be racist/xenophobic/a-hole/etc." before being one.
I'm not trying to insult you but you just generically applied to 1.4 billion people a conclusion based on a data set so small even you can make use of.
No matter what country or a people you belong to someone can find something about them that will "make you proud" and which surely applies because I already have one data point showing it.
And just because you were curious how empires are built but not enough to actually go beyond bigotry, here's an example: [0]. Spoiler alert, it's stealing from the current leaders.
A few friends of mine work for a company that most would consider terrible. I know for a fact that when ex employees do leave bad reviews, they have a line to call Glassdoor, and get it taken down under promise of buying a new subscription or renew existing subscriptions.
I know this because it's one of my friend's responsibilities - He does this on a monthly basis (based on the whims of the owner)
The main use of Glassdoor as an employee is not the company reviews - it's for interview questions.
> The main use of Glassdoor as an employee is not the company reviews - it's for interview questions.
I'll add that it's salary survey information as well. Similarly with Indeed. They've saved me a lot of time when I've had companies want to set me up with unpaid hours upon hours of interviews and testing while offering effectively half of what I was seeking, with few other benefits.
At one company, the reviews did inform me, and in numbers, that they promoted pair programming to the extent that you were assigned a fixed station and shared that station with another—not as onboarding, but as a fixture of your role. I killed that one, and fast.
That said, I view all the other reviews with a high degree of skepticism. I prefer to talk to people directly to get a feel.
> I'll add that it's salary survey information as well.
Not really. Here in Germany (where Glassdoor isn't even as popular as in US/English speaking countries) I've noticed the salary skews towards the low end because A) employers are bombing their profiles with fake salary figures and/or B) entry-level to lower-mid tier employees are more likely to drop numbers. Can't imagine how much worse the propagation of false info is in other countries where Glassdoor is more popular.
Specifically in Berlin, where "bErLiN iS a PoOr N cHeAp CiTy So ThE sAlArIeS aReN't HiGh" might as well be a meme because it's the standard welcome message for foreigners, if you negotiate your pay based on Glassdoor info, you're going to be screwing yourself out of thousands of €€€.
None of the non-tech crowd is going to admit they're being paid 55-65k brutto (before taxes) with 3-5 years of experience. I know people like this and have seen their payslips so I know they aren't lying. You only hear about the non-techies making 24-35k from their small startups or Zalando.
Same for dev/tech. You'll only hear the same bit of info that "45-60k is a LOT for a dev with 5-10 years experience, because cost of living in Berlin is low (it's not) so come on over and relocate!". The devs/engineers making 65k starting with 2 years of experience, mid-level devs pulling 70-90k and management/directors pulling 120-200k in Berlin aren't opening their mouths.
If I put my tinfoil hat on, I'd say there's a concerted effort in Europe to keep salaries down by keeping information suppressed/spreading lies (I see this a lot on Reddit/HN too in the form of comments)
Honestly hadn't considered that they might be doing that as well.
Just the same, if the company is trying to bomb average salaries, then they're posting that they don't pay what I want and I'm avoiding them anyway. (and it sounds like a good thing if that's how they operate)
But good points. It's certainly something to be skeptical about, even if one doesn't want to go full tin-foil about it. ;)
According to Glassdoor, my workplace supposedly pays highly specialized engineering talent about the same as they'd get flipping burgers. The claim is $44,000 for experienced cleared vulnerability researchers in San Antonio.
This, I'm sure, is impacting recruiting. Such a low value is below our minimum for a freshman college intern in the office with the lowest cost of living.
We sure didn't make such a post. I suppose a competitor could have done it, intending to create downward pressure by making other employers (like us) look bad. Can you see a motive for Glassdoor to do this on their own?
This is amazing! One of the main reasons I went with Spotify after 3 yrs of Apple Music is because I moved to use Linux as my primary desktop and I didn't have an Apple Music client there. This is making me reconsider getting Apple Music subscription again!
I'm going to see if there's a Github link or maybe reverse engineer the API and make it into a desktop app (mainly for Media key controls and Desktop integration to be honest).
same here. I really want to learn more about my past and also learn about my DNA (and all there is to learn with that data), but the invasion of privacy by such companies is just unacceptable (hence my refusal to take such tests).
[0] https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer