Indeed. I have absolutely no way of knowing anything for certain.

I’m just screaming into the void from this hellscape we call Earth.

I’d bet that channel “members” don’t get ads for that channel regardless of premium status.

IMO, Google made premium, almost nobody bought it. So they went after adblockers, hoping that people would get premium to get rid of the ads. People most just Adblock harder.

While this is happening, one exec is peering over the fence at twitch. Where they only way to get away from ads without a pretty good Adblock, is to subscribe to the individual creator.

So they make “memberships” to channels a thing.

Almost nobody buys that either. So they go… What if, even if someone is premium, we give them ads, unless they’re a channel member.

Genius.

Paying to block ads per creator/channel/whatever, is a special level of bullshit that twitch has always had.

The system is working as expected. The companies are trying to find the best way to extract the most value from you using their platform.

I chalk most of the shit that makes teams horrible, is closely related to electron and their whole web app as a desktop app bullshit.

Buckle up, because they’re doing that same enshittification to outlook next. It’s already begun. There’s a “new” Outlook. FML.

I think when the hype dies down in a few years, we’ll settle into a couple of useful applications for ML/AI, and a lot will be just thrown out.

I have no idea what will be kept and what will be tossed but I’m betting there will be more tossed than kept.

I don’t mean to, I wasn’t exactly looking at a comprehensive list of steam features when I wrote that. I’m sure I missed several of steam’s very good features from what I listed.

My main point was, and still is, that the core thing that made steam stand out, has more or less stayed the same throughout its existence. You log in, buy, download, and launch games right from one really easy to use program, it manages all the particulars about product keys and saves, etc. So you can focus on playing the game rather than trying to get the game running.

There’s a ton of other really good features that steam and valve in general have introduced, and I’m not trying to diminish the impact of those things.

While other games stores are pulling crap like exclusives to their platform, and requiring dumb shit like invasive spyware “anti-cheating” rootkits, steam has kept the basic formula the same, and doesn’t restrict any major publisher from deploying something on their platform. Other developers will still delay making their games available on steam for one reason or another, but steam has been fairly neutral in what’s published.

I am aware of some exceptions, so I’m not going to say it’s entirely universal that anyone can publish anything to steam, but it’s fairly rare that steam is preventing a game from being available on the platform.

That core purpose of steam has always been good. All the other stuff is almost always also good, but the core purpose of having steam installed is the same, or better then, when steam was first released.

The biggest thing that valve did that kept them in everyone’s good graces is that steam’s core functionality hasn’t had any major changes in years. Dare I say, more than a decade.

It’s a platform where you buy games, download them, and play them.

In the early days you still had to deal with all the bullshit, including third party launcher installs and crap to get things going, and over time, valve simplified all of that, making it easier than ever to take advantage of the core function of steam: buying, downloading, and playing games.

Literally the only improvement I can absolutely, positively credit them for, is making that entire process, easier, simpler, and quicker, than ever.

Sure, you can chat to people, track achievements, comment on your profile, comment on your friends profiles, buy and sell cosmetics on the market thing, even voice chat and I think they have a way you can stream your game to friends… Not sure on that last one.

It’s like Facebook, FB marketplace, FB messenger, discord, Twitter… And a bunch of other services, all huddled together to make a bastard child with the entire PC video game industry… That’s steam.

But the core mechanic that was always the main reason why steam was great, remains the same.

One thing that was recommended to me by someone a while ago, is that, unless you need it for something specific, mount your media in Plex as read only.

Plex has functions where you can delete content from the library from their UI. If you need that for some reason, obviously don’t make it read only. If you’re hoarding the data, and therefore never delete it, or use an external system for deleting files, then RO all the way.

The only caveat to this is if you’re using a local disk on the Plex system, which then shares out the drive/folder for adding new content, in which case, you’re screwed. It has to be rw so the OS can add/remove data.

In my case, as I think may be common (or at least, not rare), my back end data for Plex Media is on a NAS, so it’s easy to simply have the system running Plex, mount that network share as RO, and you’re done. The data on the NAS can be accessed and managed by other systems RW, direct to the NAS.

Since Plex is exposed to the internet, if anyone with sufficient rights is compromised, in theory, an attacker could delete the entire contents of your media folder with it. If you limit RW access to internal systems only, then that risk can be effectively mitigated.

This I can get behind.

I don’t need it on all my 18650s, but a few would be nice. Also 21700s.

Someone bring this back.

Just keep repeating the same companies, they can pay for relief each time.

I don’t really see a problem.

The sponsorships should be for companies that thrive because they make products that increase global warming (or use them), which is most companies, so I digress.

It should also be an involuntary thing. Getting a natural disaster assigned to you should be a badge of shame, and any company named for it should be obligated to help with relief efforts.

Given the negative PR and cost for providing relief, I’m betting that quite a few would clean things up pretty quickly so they don’t earn the badge of shame. Maybe enough to slow or stop global climate change.

But all of this requires that we care more about people and the climate than we do about corporations and their profits. Since it’s been made clear that the government is basically bought and owned by corporate interests, this will never happen.

The solution is to supplant the existing government with one that actually represents the interests of the people that live in the country, not the corporations.

Fair enough. I haven’t used spectrum, so I have no opinion. I’m not in the right country to subscribe to their service, so there’s that.

Have a good day.

It’s that recent. Jeez. Feels like it’s been a thing for months.

Wait, what day is it? WHAT YEAR IS IT?

OH GOD

IMO, the post is centered around proton VPN, and since that’s a public VPN service, it’s the focus of the discussion.

Private VPNs are a very different story.

Yes and no.

Modern HTTPS connections send the URL you are connecting to in the initial hello, so the remote webserver knows what security certificate to use when you connect. A lot of web servers host multiple sites, especially for smaller webpages, and so it doesn’t assume that since you connected to that specific webserver, that you’re connecting to the site that the webserver is hosting, even if it’s only hosting a single site.

This can leak the data to anyone sniffing the traffic.

You can also determine some traffic by IP address, this is for larger web services like Facebook, youtube and other sites of similar size. They load balance groups of IPs for their traffic, all are serving the same data. So if you connect to an IP that’s owned by Facebook, for example, then your actions can be easily derived.

Since the connection is still secured by TLS, the content can’t be deciphered, but the location you are going to absolutely can.

It really depends on a lot of factors.

All ISPs are legally obligated to forward that shit to you. The alerts are not from spectrum, they’re just relaying the information.

Right now, copyright owners do not have legal permission to find out who you are directly without a court order. They would only seek that information if they were planning to file a lawsuit.

Media companies know, from the Napster incident, that such actions can backfire stupendously. It’s rare that they even bother anymore. I can go into detail on why, but I’ll leave it out for brevity.

So they send the notice to your ISP, who is legally obligated to match the information on the notice to the subscriber and forward the notice to you.

For many, this goes to an ISP provided mailbox, which most people ignore the existence of it. Clearly spectrum operates differently.

The notices are from copyright holders who have no idea who you are, and can’t determine that information unless they intend to sue you. So those can be, for the most part, ignored.

It’s not your ISPs fault that you got those. They couldn’t give a shit less about what you do on their service, or what you download. They just want you to pay your bill every month and keep the gravy train rolling.

Depends on the UPS. Many cheap offline UPS units don’t. Anything line interactive or online will.

APC makes low end offline UPS units, which are cheap garbage.

They also make line interactive and online ups units, which are decidedly not completely garbage.

I pick up line interactive APC units from used locations like eBay, and go buy off label replacement batteries. Haven’t had any problems with them so far.

To date, over the last ~10 years of running a homelab, I have used mainly SMT 1500 units, one was a rack mount. I’ve recently upgraded to an SMX2000. I’ve replaced batteries, but never a UPS, and never any server components due to power issues. I’ve run servers ranging from a Dell PE 2950, to a full c6100 chassis, plus several networking devices, including firewalls, routers and PoE switches. Not a single power related issue with any of them.

I’m also a remote guy and I see both sides as well.

The critical assumption you’ve made in this example is that a large majority will choose to be remote, so there won’t be anyone in the office for the in-office people to work with.

I don’t believe that’s as much of a problem as you seem to imply it will be. The problem with the argument is that it’s all assumption and opinion based. To my understanding, there hasn’t been any reliable data produced on what percentage of the population wants in-office and/or remote to be permanent.

Relative to that, you’d also have to take into consideration for populated the company is, and how many people would actually be in the office, before making a determination whether it would be a ghost town or not.

Additionally to that, not everyone wants in-office work for the social aspects of it. Some people’s home life is too chaotic so they prefer in-office, to separate themselves from the chaos of home, and focus on work. It’s not a desire to connect that drives them to the office (pun might be intended here), but rather a lack of outside distraction from their home life while they try to “earn a living”.

There’s also the consideration of who is at home all the time. A homebody spouse, such as a stay-at-home mom/dad, may appreciate having space from their spouse to get things done, as they appreciate the space away. Having such separations can be very healthy and beneficial for relationships, which can also play a role IMO.

The fact is, not everyone is doing it as a social and/or company culture thing. The percentages of people who want it for company culture vs the people who want to for personal reasons, is also an unknown metric.

So in all, at present, we don’t know how many overall people want remote/in-office work, and we don’t know what their motivations for making that choice are. Without that data, it’s difficult to make a value proposition about a decision.

Company owners don’t really care about the metrics, since, during COVID and mandatory isolation, everyone was WFH, and productivity was overall increased. Whether that was because people now had 24/7 access to their work systems, or because people were overall happier about it in average, and were simply more productive due to that, is anyone’s guess.

I appreciate the comment, but there’s a lot more in play than simply socializing and company culture.

I’m not new in my career, when I started, my training was a couple of days on a full-day teams call with my direct manager, where he showed me the ropes of how we do what we do with the tools we have.

I think it was 3 or 4 days for me, until I had grasped enough of the basics to properly adapt to their way of doing things.

Within a week or so, I was pretty much up to speed. Like with any job, there’s specifics that I learned as I went, but I got the broad strokes during the first week.

I imagine anyone that’s green will need more mentorship that I did. I’m fairly senior in my position, so many times I’m on the other side of mentorship. It’s been a while since I’ve been green.

My work does a weekly “meeting” that’s specifically just a hangout for everyone in the company, just to hang out and talk about whatever.

It’s like a social hour every week, so we can get to know the boss and eachother.

I’ve worked at the place less than a year and there’s been two in person social events so far with everyone, and at least three with my team additional to that.

The culture of the company is clearly important for them, and I’m happy about it. They do what’s needed, and losing an hour of productivity every week isn’t as important as giving everyone the opportunity to connect with eachother.