Hey everyone!

Sorry if this is a long post, but I've done my research and I would like to make a few questions.

I've decided that I would like to buy a NAS mainly to storage all of my documents, photos and videos, so that, I can access them from multiple devices and also use it to upload important documents to Backblaze B2. Then, I've actually discovered that I can install a few Docker containers and I could use it as a media server (Jellyfin) and serve the content to my Apple TV (neat!).

I considered a QNAP (better hardware for the price) but everyone recommends Synology instead (because of the stronger security and better overall software), but to be honest, I'm not sure what should I get.

My budget would be to buy a NAS (without counting the disks) below €1000. Ideally, €500-600 but I don't mind stretching to the €700 mark, if it is really worth it.

Spoiler alert: I think, it should be the DS920+ (4-bay) or the DS1520+ (5-bay). I think a NAS above 4-bay is better for future-proofing.

Looking here in Germany at price comparators, I could buy the DS920+ for €663 and the DS1520+ for €750. But these prices seem to be at an all-time high :(

Questions & Assumptions:

0. I'm not sure if the price difference of about €100 is worth the premium to get the 5-bay model. There are only two differences between these two models: The 5-bay has one extra slot, and it has 4x 1 Gbe LAN ports instead of 2x 1 Gbe. All the rest is the same. What is your opinion?

1. I've read that if you run a few containers (~10) it consumes quite a bit of RAM (~3 Gb), so it should be ideal to have at least 8 Gb. This is the reason I've said that I think I can only choose the DS920+ or DS1520+. Looking at official Synology resellers, these models, seem to come already with 8 Gb, and they are within my budget. Is my research wrong?

2. These two models, have an encryption engine. I think this is necessary to encrypt my files before sending them to Backblaze, or?

3. A lot of people seem to say to simply pick Synology's hybrid RAID setup called SHR-1 or SHR-2. I would go the easy way here and pick one of those two. Would you think that is a bad idea, and it is better to pick a specific (standard) RAID? I've read about the long long long RAID rebuild that could happen in some situations, and picking the "right" RAID could decrease the rebuild in days (or weeks!!!!).

4. In case, I choose a NAS model with Nvme cache slots, most people say it is not worth it to use if you are not running Virtual Machines and the SSD’s "burn" really fast. I have no interest on VMs.

5. Most people say to pick an Enterprise (Server) HDD instead of a NAS HDD mainly because price is similar in some cases and Enterprise has longer life and warranty. I should also pick a CMR HDD which is helium filled. 5400 rpm would be preferable to 7200 rpm because of the noise. Sadly, all Enterprise HDD's and most of NAS HDD's are 7200 rpm. Is the noise difference that big? The NAS will be in our living room.

6. Is 8 TB still the best cost per Terabyte?

7. I was extremely sad to hear that the Hitachi hard drive division was bought by WD. I've had lots of misfortune with WD drives (and let's not forget the debacle with the SMR and CMR drives) and I would prefer not to give money to them, but, nevertheless, I'm still tempted to buy the Ultrastar drives that belonged to Hitachi. Does anyone know if WD kept the components, manufacturing processes, staff, etc., that made these brilliant disks?

8. Following the HDD topic, what is your experience with Seagate or Toshiba drives?

9. These two NAS models have the same Intel Celeron CPU, which supports hardware transcoding. To be honest, I don't know in which cases would that happen. It seems if I use Infuse on the Apple TV it would never transcode (and instead direct play) because Infuse would do the transcoding in software. Should I take in account that hardware transcoding is a must-have or a nice-to-have?

10. Would you recommend having a CCTV system connected to the NAS? Should I dedicate one entire HDD just for the NVR system? Would a standalone NVR device be better?

11. My last question is: Should I just wait for the new model of the DS920+ or DS1520+? The 20 means it was launched in 2020 (in Summer specifically) and it seems Synology refreshes the model every two years., that means, a new model would be available in Summer this year. Most people say it is not worth the wait because Synology is very conservative in its model updates/refreshes. People are saying that a better CPU will be of course available (do I even need that for my use cases?) and probably upgrade the 1 Gbe LAN ports to 2.5 Gbe or 10 Gbe (10 Gbe I really doubt it). I've read that a 4K stream does not fill a 1 Gbe bandwidth, and you could theoretically have three 4K streams in a single 1 Gbe connection. If all else fails, I could just do a link aggregation of the two ports to be 2 Gbe, or?

12. Anything I'm forgetting? Should I be careful with something in particular?

I know I should buy a UPS too, but I think I'll create a separate post regarding this topic because I would also want a recommendation regarding a UPS for my other devices.

I know that I could actually build my own NAS and use Unraid for the OS. Furthermore, I'm just at a time in my life with too much on my plate (baby and small child) and having something that just works is preferable. When they are older and more independent, I'll have more time to investigate this option :)

Again, sorry for the long post. Thank you everyone!

I finally got around to upgrading my mom’s computer (an Asus laptop from 2015) from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. I’ve already deleted a few apps she won’t use (e.g., Xbox) and disabled/stopped some unneeded services. What else can I do to keep her computer fast? Particularly interesting in more services I can disable and the best browser/ad blocker combo. Thanks y’all!

Title says it all. Bootstrap+jquery has been my default route and path of least resistance when it comes to web development. Perhaps because I'm coding since a long time and belong to the old school when modern libraries like react weren't yet invented yet?

I had tried to meddle with Angular.js 1.0 back in those days but was soon disillusioned! It was cool and cutting edge but highly opinionated. It tried to do so many things under the hood that I soon quit the effort and the word "Angular" was stigmatized in my mind ever since! I don't know how different today's typescript based Angular is but that stigma or phobia prevents me from even looking at that direction!

React is another cool technology which everyone is talking about and I'm sure it has some merits. But I'm not sure exactly what React brings to my development workflow which jquery doesn't already do. Can you tell me some specific advantages or pros of react over jquery which can motivate me to learn the former and let go of the latter? What should I do?

I finally decided to accepted that my interest in working and playing with computers and servers is worth to spend some money on. So I ditched my old box in the corner and with it all my fights with my ISP, their NAT, dynamic DNS and all that and got myself a VPS and 1 TB storage solution for less than I would have paid a static IP with my ISP.
Best decicion ever :-)

So I'm getting into Docker a bit, just because it's just so easy to get Nextcloud running. I used native Caddy as a reverse proxy, because if I got this "machine" there I will use it for other things as well, so make it right from the beginning. And I used native b.c I did not yet understand bridge/host mode and installing caddy native seems easier.
Then I fought for one day with CIFS and the nextcloud gui to get the semantics right to get my storage solution accepted as external storage.
Then I set up Jellyfin with Docker because why not. As well through caddy.
Then I fucked something up and was like, fuck it, lets start again this time for real :-P
I wiped my VPS clean (chose ubuntu again) set up and hardend ssh + sudo installed Docker, and then I found out about docker rootless and in the docker docs it's mentioned that it is/might be more secure, so I set up docker rootless and installed all the rest again.
And then I was like, hmm, do these Docker Images/Containers update themself? Like snap did?
It seems not, so I looked for a solution and found watchtower. And now I wasted another day trying to get watchtower to run, and I just can not.

I tried so many variations of the run command now most recently I tried:

docker run \
--name watchtower \
-v ${DOCKER_SOCKET_PATH}:/var/run/docker.sock \
containrrr/watchtower

time="2023-01-20T01:17:41Z" level=error msg="Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?"
time="2023-01-20T01:17:41Z" level=info msg="Waiting for the notification goroutine to finish" notify=no

/run/user/1000/docker.sock exists, I own it, i tried connecting to it through docker -e and containrrr/watchtower --host "unix:///run/user/1000/docker.sock"
I dont now what to try more and I'm at my end with my ddg-fu as well.

And now while proofreading this, I read everything again and decided to try something again and it just worked...

docker run \
--name watchtower \
-v /run/user/1000/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
containrrr/watchtower

seems like the environment variable was not set. But I'm shure I tried that before and it did not work... ghost in a machine :-)

So thats where I'm at. I have to say it was a lot of fun and doing and learning all that tingled my brain in a funny way :-)

But now I have some questions for my much more experienced Tildes-friends:

• Do I even need watchtower? because I'm not actually interested to connect to my server regularly to do the updates/maintenance.
• Was switching to docker rootless even a good idea? it seemed so reading the docker installation docs, but just now I read the Archwiki and there it seems it has some heavy security implications, so I made the security situation acutally worse by thinking making it better.
• How do I get this watchtower thing to fucking work? (only if I actually need it)

I very much appreciate all further/other advise, tricks, recomendations, questions and discussion as well :-)

So I disassembled my old PC, and there are a few spare parts that I believe are still good. According to the technician, the motherboard is fried. I have no way to test this, so I'm believing him for now.

I wish to use those parts on a new desktop PC, but I have no idea where to begin... what do I need to buy new? Of what kind/brand/specification/pricepoint?

So here's what I got:

• AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor
  • with the AMD cooler that came with it
• 1TB 7200RPM non-SSD hard-drive
• 1 Ballistix by Micron 16GB 2400MHz RAM stick
• 1 240GB WD Green Sata SSD M.2 2280

I may have access to another 8GB RAM stick of unknown origins from my partner's old PC, but she's a bit protective of those things so I'll way for her to be home to open it in front of her :P

There's a power source attached to the case, which reads ATX-600W. Image1, image2.

The computer case itself is a little beat up but I don't care about looks at all. Its external dimensions are 34.5cm by 35cm, with a width of 16cm. Here's how it looks (Xbox controller for scale).

I wanna build a new machine with the goals of:

• video editing
  • so Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, some audio work, and maybe streaming.
• gaming
  • nothing super high-end, I'll probably get one or two 1080p 24" monitors because 4K reduces my options quite a bit. But here are some of the games I'm looking forward to playing (all MMOs): World of Warcraft Classic and Retail, FFXIV, Guild Wars 2, and the upcoming Ashes of Creation (which I believe is an Unreal 5 game).

My budget (including the monitor or monitors) is roughly 1400 US dollars. I understand that is not a lot of money for the majority of Tildes users, but that is just my reality. My 1400 US dollars PC is very much a luxury around here.

If needed for budget purposes I can get just one monitor now, and another down the road.

So, what's the best I can do?

Thanks! ;)

(apologies if this isn't the correct place to ask, I'm just a bit out of ideas)
(content warning for abusive parents)

I have a friend who's abusive parents track her location using the stalkerware app life360.

she currently runs graphene os (android 13) on a pixel 7 pro.

in my past android experience there are plenty apps that can spoof your location via developer settings. however they all crash on android 13 (or at least on graphene..)

see below (none of these work, and they also crash on my android 13 phone, but they have worked for me in the past on like android 9):
https://github.com/mcastillof/FakeTraveler
https://github.com/wesaphzt/privatelocation
https://github.com/warren-bank/Android-Mock-Location
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lexa.fakegps&gl=US

if there are no functioning apps that will do this. do you know any other solutions? on other android roms or with root with magisk / xposed? obviously this is less secure than graphene os but the current problem is her parents more than anything else.

we r also considering a secondary phone just for the stalkerware which can be opportunistically left in innocent places. or just killing the life360 app on occasion when needed. or just letting the phone die when it needs to. But not sure how obvious this might be to the abusers. any insight is appreciated.

(suggestions like "leave her parents" are good but far easier said than done and while it will eventually happen its not feasible at the moment. That being said if you can provide detail suggestions are welcome)

Thanks :)

[SOLVED]

Thank you so much for everyone's support and suggestions, it seems that I may have overreacted a little bit. One of the things that I did was send a form to Google, but the form was not really for this issue, so I wasn't hopeful at all. To my surprise, I received a message just now with instructions to recover the account and change the 2-factor phone number to my mother's current one. The cause of the issue is not clear, but whatever it was, they sorted it out. She is obviously ecstatic, when I went to her house two days ago I couldn't disguise my pessimism.

I set her recovery email to my own and will generate recovery codes shortly, so we're good for now. I instructed her on how to download all her data from Google (it's easier than I thought), just because this made her quite paranoid, and I'll take the opportunity to gradually move my family out of Google, as well as myself. Thanks for being so supportive, this was very stressful, to say the least! Sometimes it's nice to know we're not alone ;)

Original post

So, for some reason Google logged my mother of everything at once: browsers in two laptops and two smartphones (one Android and one iPhone). Trying to recover the account sends a message to a cellphone number she no longer has. I understand Google is basically unreachable, but there must be something I can do, right? We're not famous, but she does pay for YouTube Premium.

So, next year, I will spend two 3-month periods at a place that is 1400km away from my home. Because of my somewhat large, superfast dog, with a tendency to run away and topple people, I will have to go by car, dog in hand (don't worry, I won't be driving :P). Each roundtrip amounts to 42 hours on the road.

At the same time, I'm budgeting for a new desktop workstation for gaming and video editing (so both fun and work). I could get a much inferior gamer laptop with the money, but I wanna have a good machine for things like Adobe After Effects, and the inferior part bothers me quite a bit.

Hence the question: how can I safely transport a desktop PC plus monitor for an 84-hour car trip? Should I take it "whole"? Disassembled? Or not at all? I really don't wanna screw up my brand-new PC!

As with many Twitter users, I'm finally at the point where I want to leave and join Mastodon. About a year ago I set up an account after seeing some people on Tildes talk about it, but I found it confusing and ultimately closed the account. I want to give it another go, but I'm a bit confused about all the different instance options, what the practical differences are, and more. Are there any comprehensive getting started guides? Does it matter which instance I join? How did you choose for yourself?

So I used to be quite a fan of Dr. Who, but life got in the way shortly after Smith ended his run. Hearing about Tennant's return, I'd love to catch up, but also don't have time to watch filler.

Do any tilderinos have some advice for an abridged viewing that minimizes the episodic filler without missing too much of the main plot?

I found out about these types of games about three years ago. I attempted playing Zork I, as well as this other film where you’re trying to get inside something and apparently it turns into a time travel game where you meet The Beatles (and if someone knows the title of that game I would really appreciate it because I’ve forgotten).

I’ve been fascinated by some of these games. Big problem though, is that I suck at video games in general, and these text adventure games are particularly brutal. I saw some video about Zork, which were great, but for some of them (like the aforementioned time travel game) don’t have videos. So is there a way to just read it like a book. I’ve found guides on how to complete the games, but even those leave me lost and confused.

Given how the 2020s have gone so far, I'm feeling some meaningful concern about the news that we might be getting rolling blackouts if European fuel supplies get too low. I'm not at all sure whether they're overplaying the risk to prepare people, or dramatically underplaying it as they did with the first COVID lockdowns.

I'd be interested to know what, if anything, people recommend as preparation? I don't want to go overkill on something that may not even happen, but it also seems reasonable to consider the issue before everyone starts panic buying supplies.

I'm in the middle of a city, which has definite advantages in terms of walking access to shops and public buildings, but everything I own (including gas boiler and gas stove) needs electricity to run. It seems like a 500Wh LiFePO battery might be a good middle ground in terms of keeping creature comforts up and running, but they aren't exactly cheap so I'd be interested in any opinions and recommendations there?

More broadly it'd be great to hear what people think about the general risks, good preparations to make, and useful supplies that are easy to overlook?

Beginning of next year I am setting out as an independent software engineering consultant. As such I am interested in hearing from others who have already done something similar! I have been working as a developer and team lead for more than 10 years of which the last 5 have been focused mostly on the .Net stack. Now I want to expand my horizons a bit more, preferably with a new domain or another tech stack.

What are some suggestions/advice you'd give someone just starting down this path? Anything I should avoid doing? Anything I should definitely do? I suppose the specifics will vary a bit by country, but are there some general things I should be thinking about?

Oh, if you happen to have a need for a senior developer/tech lead, give me a ping!

I'm primarily a freelance backend dev and for the first time venturing on full-stack development of a non-trivial web app on my own, hence I needed some guidance.

I've got all the backend stuff in php/mysql covered, I just want to know what's the best way to create a dashboard (with left sidebar) considering various aspects like long-term code maintenance and support, robustness, etc. Looks don't matter that much as it's a CRUD app but obviously, better is more appreciated.

Based on my research until now, AdminLTE seems to be the most popular way of doing it among most devs although a few others like material and coreui also seem to have some street cred.

But another approach I'm considering apart from AdminLTE is to just use pure bootstrap and fiddle up my own sidebar using something like this. That way, I won't be tied to just one Bootstrap version which is used by AdminLTE (v4.6) and troubleshooting will be much easier through google search and StackOverflow. What do you guys think is the right approach?

I’ve always enjoyed rally games but only recently decided to buy a wheel (just a used Logitech G29) and also decided to give F1 22 a shot. I feel like I’m okay-ish at DiRT Rally 2.0 and WRC 10 but atrocious at F1 22. How do I actually learn to be better instead of constantly making mistakes?

I subscribe to quite a few youtube channels to get notified when there are new videos posted. I've had this set up for several years.

Today I tried to add a new channel I've discovered. My RSS reader informs me it's blocked. I check all the other youtube feeds. Every single one of them reports "Error transferring <feed url>." server replied Forbidden (201).

Update: One day later and every feed is connecting and transferring again. It seems to be a temporary block. My IP address has changed overnight though so that's still my main suspicion.

It seems like I'm not the only victim

That contains a link to the author's issue on google's issue tracker

The official response is

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29752447/how-to-get-a-youtube-channel-rss-feed-after-2015-april-20-without-v3-api


They completely misunderstood the question - it's not asking how to find a feed, it's asking why that feed is getting blocked.

Not only this but using DuckDuckGo bangs for to search google get randomly sent to a captcha page - issuing the exact same query a second time goes through perfectly. The same is happening with keyword searches I set up in my browser. .

Any ideas what to do about this?

So sick of google's monopoly.

I'm starting to get tired of being complacent about the fact that I am using Google's services when I'm well beyond the 'reasonable doubt' phase of Google being evil. They're a giant monopoly and I want to stop making them money as much as I possibly can.

Thankfully, I'm not as badly intertwined with them as I could be; I have already downloaded all the music I bought from them and since I have switched to iPhone, I'm not reliant on too many of their services. They do have some of my old files and pictures, but that shouldn't be too hard to get out. The biggest problem I can see is my email. Right now I'm actually paying $4/mo for an Amazon WorkMail account for a failed venture (which I'm planning on getting rid of), but I'm sure there are much better alternatives out there. I'd prefer something that has good spam filtering options including custom filtering. I was also wondering if anyone would recommend Apple's email service since I'm already paying for iCloud+ to store my backups.

Another more specific recommendation I need is for a replacement to Google Authenticator that works on iPhone. It looks like there are several options but I'm frankly not sure how to evaluate them.

If you have any other resources you'd like to share, please feel free to share.

I have a work-related ethics question, and I thought the fine people here on tildes were perfect to give feedback. I'll try to be brief but still give all of the information.

Background

I work for an energy utility. This company isn't a charity, but it is a non-profit. We are owned by the people who buy power from us (called "members"). We don't profit off of the electricity we sell to our members, but we do generate extra electricity to sell to other utilities (mostly to for-profit ones). Any profit we make is either set aside for future use or is sent out to the members as a check. Yes, our members actually get a check each year. This cooperative was built to serve rural communities since at that point in history profit-driven companies weren't willing to spend the money to run electricity to these communities. We cover 90% (geographically) of our state, along with portions of a neighboring state. We generate using wind, hydro, solar, coal, and natural gas. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I believe roughly 30%-40% of our generation comes from renewables, and we now have a dedicated team researching nuclear power (SMNR) and energy storage (which would allow us to further shift to renewables).

Context

There is a PAC (an entity that throws money at politicians in exchange for votes) for rural electric cooperatives that we participate in. This PAC can only accept donations from our members or employees. While the stated purpose is to advocate for rural cooperatives in general, I personally think that largely translates into advocating for fossil fuels.

Every year there is a 10-day period in August where they start asking us employees to donate. Anyone can donate at any time, this is just the time that they emphasize it. Leadership has REPEATEDLY emphasized that there is no pressure and that our supervisors can't see who has and hasn't donated. I've been here nearly five years, and they've said this each time. I know that under the previous CEO (he left ~10 years ago) there was pressure to donate, and that's probably why they emphasize this now.

Issue

I've discovered however that the leadership CAN see information on who has donated and how much. PAC donations are public information, and the names and amounts can be easily seen online if you know where to look. I do believe that my division leader didn't know this, though I can't really know whether the other leadership did or didn't. There's no way to know if any supervisors have looked at this data or made decisions on it. After I brought it up to my division leader he thanked me and said he will send this new information out to our division.

However, communicating this to the rest of the company is beyond his control. He's alerted the people who can do this but what they do is up to them. While my division doesn't really care who donates, I get the impression that other divisions feel differently. IT has a profoundly different culture than the rest of the company. Senior leaders say there's no pressure, but that's not neciserily the case for supervisors and managers. It's been implied to me that the teams that work in power production, transmission planning, etc still have expectations about donations.

What to do?

So here's the core ethics question: Is it unethical for senior leadership to withhold this new information about the visibility of donations from the rest of the company? The assurance of anonymity was intended to reassure us that there would be no retaliation for those who don't donate and that there would be no favoritism for those who do.

Is this just a small thing that's not really important? If this is an issue, how significant is it? It's obviously not "dumping toxic waste in the river" bad, but it still feels like it must have some level (or potential level) of impact. If this is an issue, what actions would you personally take? How much would you be willing to risk taking action on this?

Thanks in advance, I just want to do the right thing.

Hi Friends,

I'm in the (very) early stages of creating a financial endowment fund for a small non-profit community organization I help out with. I feel they're a good fit for such an investment vehicle: their current revenue stream fluctuates a bit and many of their events rely heavily on attendance fees for funding, which is unrealistic when they attempt to cater to lower-income demographics. However, they have a relatively wealthy patronage that tends to remain involved for years or decades, and I believe they have the institutional stability to operate more complex financial instruments.

I pitched the idea of an endowment at a high level to the Chairwoman last week, and the Board is interested in moving forward. We haven't decided how exactly we want to structure the endowment yet: restricted endowment, quasi-endowment, etc. We also haven't determined exactly how much money we should fundraise for a principal investment, what our portfolio spread should look like, and how much of the annual interest we can afford to spend. (I have estimates, but they're not final.) I'm particularly interested in resources that can help the institution plan for inevitable economic downturns.

Has anyone here done this kind of work before? If so, would you be willing to chat about some of the nuances of organizing it, and/or do you have recommendations on reading material to help with the creation and maintenance of such a fund? We plan to receive consultations from an accountant and a lawyer, but I don't have much formal background in finance and would welcome any experience, advice, warnings, or external resources Tildesians can offer.

Thanks,
Atvelonis

Long story short, I wiped my keyboard with a moist towel and I knocked out exactly 6 keys on my mid-2020 MacBook Pro (Magic Keyboard, A2251).

I'm now looking at either paying $300+ to have it serviced by a technician. But I have the tempting option of buying an aftermarket replacement keyboard for less than $100 and replacing it myself. That + I'm in the spirit of DIY repairs to keep my things going longer.

Has anyone attempted this before? Any tips and advice?

It seems slightly daunting because the keyboard is adhered to the aluminium body so I would have to literally tear the existing one off.

I recently moved to a place with harder water than I'm used to (more minerals). It tastes bad, it makes my detergents less effective, it forms soap scum everywhere, and it's definitely not good for my appliances. Does anyone have advice on how to deal with this in a cost-effective way?

I unfortunately can't install a point-of-entry water softener here. I can theoretically install point-of-use softeners for each of my appliances (bathroom sink, kitchen sink, dishwasher, washing machine, maybe shower), but the portable ones cost like $300+. I can't decide if it's worth the purchase. I also don't know enough about the different kinds or whether they're available in portable formats (reverse osmosis filtration, potassium chloride water softening, and sodium water softening; maybe others). Does anyone have recommendations?

I recently bought a showerhead with a better filter, which will probably help reduce skin irritation, but it can't actually remove calcium or magnesium. I can't visualize what a genuine point-of-use softener for a shower would even look like or how I would attach it to my showerhead, and I don't know where to get one that isn't just marketing fluff.

I have some CLR that I intend to use with my dishwasher, but I don't want to have to buy this stuff constantly (just another cleaning product in my cabinet). And I have a Brita for drinking water, but was thinking of getting an under-sink filter as I don't like waiting for it to refill; I have no idea how much to spend on this or which brands are best.

Happy to hear everyone's thoughts on household water management!

Long story short I am a web developer that currently makes more money than I've ever made in my life to this point. The downside is that my benefits package is sub-par. Very few vacation days, no health insurance (though we do get $ on our checks to go toward costs), fairly bare-bones retirement plan, etc. I also feel kind of aimless at this job. There is no clear path for raises or promotions. It's too small of a company for that.

I got an offer today for a job with a company that a former manager of mine works at (We both left our previous jobs around the same time, so no poaching concerns there). It's an opportunity to change my specialty from backend development (databases, server-side code) to frontend development (HTML, CSS, JS). I've always enjoyed frontend development more than backend. Feel free to giggle about this terminology because it's definitely ridiculous. The job basically resolves all of my benefits issues. Unlimited vacation, pretty good health insurance, and a more robust retirement plan. There are also very clear paths for raises/promotions. In fact one of the first things you do when you get hired is sit down with your manager and department head and plot out a career track for yourself. So in my case I'm aiming for team management or something along those lines in a few years. So they would cater my training and promotions around that. There's a guaranteed yearly raise, plus a nice 5% bonus at end of the year.

So what's the problem? Because the second job seems perfect, right? Well the second job pays nearly 12% less a year. So what's the problem? Because that's an insane drop in pay, so clearly stay where I'm at, right? Well I was told by my former manager (and potentially new department head) that the plan would be to fast-track me into something closer to my current salary once I'm there for a few months and start excelling at my job. And I trust this guy because he fought for me to get raises twice when I worked under him before. It's rare to work under someone who will go to bat for you, and he was always that guy for me and I've no reason to think he wouldn't be again.

Because the way I see it, once I get a raise or promotion under my belt I should be pretty close to where I'm at now, but with substantially better benefits. And in a place with more of a future for me than my current job.

I just really don't know what to do here. I've "made a decision" in my head about a dozen times today, going back and forth between options. I kind of feel like it's worth taking the hit in the short term to be working at a place that will pay off better in the long term. Not just financially, but I'll get to broaden my skill set and actually have a concrete plan for progressing in my career.

Looking for any advice, or opinions, or whatever. I'm completely torn here.

edit -- Just wanted to thank everyone here. I decided to accept the job offer. My wife and I are working on a plan to weather the loss of income. Next step is writing the resignation letter....which always sucks. I hate disappointing people and it's a small company that I'm leaivng so my departure will be felt.

I'm an on-again off-again smoker, currently (the past 4-5 months) on-again. Been meaning to requit, but it's been much harder for me this time.

Here's the crux. Two of my roommates just tested positive (for Covid). Not guaranteed, but it's a good bet that, within another 2-3 days, all 5 of us will be symptomatic.

Am I better off quitting right now, or will that just put added stress on my lungs during the coming illness, and I should wait until after I recover (always assuming I survive it, of course)?

ETA: Y'all are shooting holes in my, apparently, flimsy justifications to keep smoking. Just switched to vaping now.

Thanks everyone.

I currently dual-boot Arch and Windows and just use the Windows EFI partition in Arch as well, however I only have about 13 MB of space left on it.

I’d like to try installing Gentoo on an extra SSD I have with nothing on it, but don’t really want to have a second EFI partition if I can avoid it.

So my question is, can I shrink the Windows main partition towards the right and expand the the Windows EFI partition into the newly freed space?

First off, fuck job applications. It's an awful and tedious charade. Creating accounts on hundreds of websites for the resume parser to not work and have to manually upload that all again, to then write a cover letter that's skimmed at best, for a word to be missing from the resume which their detection tech passes before you're given a real shot.

But regardless that's not why I'm here. I'm in the process of applying to jobs, but for the first time I'm applying to jobs internationally (I'm US based). Have any of y'all applied for and received jobs abroad? What was successful and what wasn't? I'm primarily looking into pharmaceutical research or pharmacovigilance/drug safety because that's where English language jobs are in my area of study, but hope to eventually become fluent enough in a different language so I can move back into infection prevention or disease surveillance.

My life is split between the US and the Netherlands, where I have friends and work in both places. I try to fly as little as possible: only one intercontinental flight per year. But even that puts my individual carbon footprint far above the average human's. I buy carbon offsets but that just shifts responsibility.

I've long been deeply inspired by Greta Thunberg's protest act of sailing from England to New York to attend a 2019 climate summit. But sailing across the ocean in a racing yacht with a crew simply is too extreme.

So I'm curious what are the options for reducing carbon emissions when traveling between continents.

I've contemplated hopping on a freighter ship. My thinking is that: freighter ships are extremely efficient cargo-weight-to-emission ratio-wise, so the marginal carbon emission of me as added 'cargo' must be much lower than as another passenger on an airplane. Plus, the freighter ship will be sailing with or without me on board; whereas as a plane passenger I enable the business of a passenger flight.

So far I have been having a surprisingly easy time learning iOS. It is incredibly intuitive! Though to be fair, my friend who has always been on iOS said the same thing about Android when she switched.

There are so many things that are basically identical on the two operating systems. But I am sure I am missing out on a lot of things that my iPhone 13 can do that my Samsung A50 could not do.

So far I'm really loving the switch, everything feels smooth. But I am very accepting of any tips and tricks that anyone might have up their sleeves! 😊

I skim-read the news, 90+% just headlines, for an hour a day, if not more. I do like to stay informed, so I feel it's not entirely wasted effort, but most days, I'm caught up within 10 minutes, and after that, it's basically just apocalypse FOMO (is that a 'thing'? It should be).

Lately, as an alternative, I've started paging my way back thru the xkcd archives.

What else would you recommend, low-effort, distracting, not horrible?

Hello, I've had two ideas for games I find pretty compelling, and both would require different custom scripting languages. Unfortunately, I don't have any formal CS education or experience with parsing or scripting languages. So, I'm feeling a bit lost and thinking it'd be a herculean effort, is that correct?

Has anyone here written their own language or DSL and have any insights, resources, or starting points to share?

Like the title says, over the past couple of years, I think I slowly forgot how to have fun. I'm looking for any advice anyone might have (whether you've gone through the same process or not) on how to have a bit more fun.

The past 4 years have been transformational and formative for me. At 21 I decided to switch majors and move out from my parents' house to a more urban city. I mentally (depression) and financially struggled for the first 3 years, going broke in my second year of my second chance at undergrad at one point, eating bowls of rice. I identified my shortcomings (lack of achievements and disposable income) and worked on them. In the 3rd year I worked part-time while also taking a TA position with a full engineering course load. Last summer I completed an internship while also working as an independent contractor for a startup and kept the contractor position while being a full-time student up until this year. I signed a full-time offer at a big company this January and have one course left to fully graduate. I'm also correcting exams and tests on a part time basis for a professor. All this to say, I suddenly had a significant boost in income the last couple of months, and even more free time, whereas I was living on ~20k/year previously, with no free time.

This doesn't mean I don't enjoy or appreciate any fun activity I partake in. When I do go out with my friends I'm having a lot of fun and I'm breathing in every moment. I'm not depressed (not anymore), but I find myself having a more neutral mood outside of hangouts. What I'm struggling with is initiative with regards to fun. What can I do to have fun? I live in a cramped-up studio which I plan on moving out of in spring, but for now I don't have space for a TV let's say. I don't have a gaming pc, because up until now I couldn't afford one. I have a ps4 with a couple of old games, though sometimes I struggle to play them because of a lingering feeling of guilt from using it as a medium of procrastination in my teens. People mention lifestyle creep that follows an income boost, but I think my financial situation in the past has some lingering effect on me that's inhibiting even a small healthy dose of that. It's hard for me to justify upgrading some of my stuff, because they still work. Or buying some items I've wanted, because I'm doing fine without them. The isolation in a studio and the now gone uncertainty that was during the pandemic before I signed a full-time offer also played a role here I think.

So, having read through all that, I welcome any ideas or suggestions on how to spice my weekly life a bit more. I want to shake off the fight-or-flight phase that I was in. What are some things that you do that you think I could adopt to have a bit more fun by myself?

Hi, I'm pretty new to browsing coffee at home.

Currently using aeropress, timemore c2 titanium, and electric gooseneck kettle with no temp control.

The coffee I'm making is pretty good (to my novice taste buds) but I'm looking to elevate that. I'm planning on upgrading either the the grinder or the kettle.

From what I understand, grind quality can affect taste, but consistent water temperature should also help improving workflow and taste as well.

Which one do you think is the better upgrade in terms of producing better coffee?

For grinder I'm now considering 1zpresso K-plus. For kettle, I'm looking at Timemore fish kettle.

Thank you.

Hey folks,

I want to prototype a tool to help groups of people make decisions using a new decision making mechanism.

We have two systems of democratic decision making that have major downsides:

1. Direct democracy - everyone votes on every issue. Downside: not everyone has the time and the necessary expertise to vote on every issue.
2. Representative democracy - everyone votes who will represent them and the representatives vote on every issue. The downside is the corruption - the representatives may not represent the best interest of those who entrusted them.

The idea I want to explore is a hybrid of the two systems:

• Like in a direct democracy you can vote on every issue.
• If you do not vote on a given issue, then your vote is automatically delegated to people who voted like you in the past.

To test this out I want to build a website [1] where anyone can create a group and invite others to the group. The group members can create proposals and vote on them to make a decision.

For the idea to be tested the group needs to make many decisions over time (ie, not one-off polls like strawpoll.*). Only then can it take advantage of the delegation based on “voted like you in the past”.

The details of the design will depend on the use-case:

• How should the group roles work? Would it be enough to have owner & member roles?
• How to invite to the group - by sending email or a link.
• Should every member be able to propose options or just the creator or the vote?
• Should the voting be closed automatically after some time or by hand?
• Do you delegate implicitly or explicitly - ie, have a vote option to delegate.
• Do you vote for a single option or can you rank options in the order of your preferences?
• Open ballot vs secret ballot?

Some ideas for use-cases:

• Choose the next “team-building” activity at work.
• Make content moderation decisions.
• Which book to read next in a book club. Maybe transfer the list of books and the votes from the previous vote to the next.
• Make and record company decisions by shareholders. In this case you would want to weigh the votes based on share ownership.

I think starting with a specific use-case in mind is a better strategy than trying to build a generic tool.

What do you think? What would you use such a tool for?

[1] - I will likely make it part of my existing project https://linklonk.com/ unless I find an available good-sounding domain name.

Hi everyone,

I recently got accepted into University and Lethbridge and University of Manitoba for Computer Science second degree.

Both of them have co-op programs, but I don't know which would be better for me. Ideally, I want to go the uni with a better job market for CS, so Lethbridge seems to be the winner since it is close to Calgary. But I am also looking to immigrate to Canada in the future, and I know that Manitoba has easier requirements for Permanent Residence nominations.

I am in a bit of a bind, and I am trying to gather as much information as I can before I make a decision. Anything you have to share would be much appreciated. Thanks!

P.S. I know Toronto and Vancouver are much better places for jobs, but sadly I missed the deadline to apply to most of the colleges there. I do plan on applying for jobs in those cities though.

I've been using Tbird since forever, the past 6-7 years on Linux (Debian/Ubuntu downstreams). A couple years ago, I think during the 68-71 release cycle, there were are lot of panicky blogs about "don't upgrade; the new Tbird will irrevocably screw up your Contacts/Calendar/Other Plug-ins", I may even have tried it and experienced issues myself (I don't recall) ... and as a result, I've held my copy at the 60.something release since then.

Now the 91 update has been out and stable for awhile, and a major overhaul upgrade to 102 is in the offing ... and I'm looking for feedback ... is it safe to upgrade? Might I still hit breaking issues? Or was it always safe?

hi tildians,

i'll be moving to VA pretty soon. if there's anyone who's lived there, and could possibly share any tips, that would be nice! and I mean anything -- places to check out, info for people out of state, etc.

thanks!

For example Vanguard Russell 2000 Growth ETF shows a pe ratio of 19.5 on it's portfolio page, but etf.com (which reportedly calculates PE ratio in the "logical" method we probably all think of) says it's 236.89.

There is also the russel 2000 etf, which shows 14.3 on vanguard and 43.63 on etf.com (I saw no clear indication on the vanguard website they are removing losing companies), ishares does say that for it's etf.

I want to know the PE ratio because economic bubbles (like the dot comm bubble and japan stock market bubble) were characterized by very high pe ratio, and there is historical evidence low pe performs better (probably because of the optimism bias).

I can use etf.com, but would like another source to validate etf.com is reporting correctly .

Hey there people. Long time lurker here. I decided to start writing because it's late at night, my mind is running wild and I'm trying to piece together the situation myself here. This will probably turn out to be a wall of text. Apologies to anyone who might see it as spam or bothersome - my bad.

Context:
in the second half of my 20s. Working in Germany. Healthy and slim. Working as a field technician for a company installing machines for industrial kitchens. Since this whole pandemic started I have always worked (and traveled around the city). I had offered myself for AZ when people were refusing it, got my second as Pfizer and 3rd with Moderna after 6 months from my second shot. Always followed guidelines regarding masks, vaccines and the whole shabang.

These past 6 months the whole 'global pandemic thing' kinda started becoming 'old news' so-to-say for me. Yes, some people I know got it recently, yet most had little to no symptoms and all recovered without a problem. In my mind I have been thinking 'come on, in 2 years working in closed environments with no ventilation and all sorts of people I have never caught it - I am surely one of those fully immune or asymptomatic ones, right?'.

On top of that I have started to indulge actually going out: drinking with friends, dining with people, casual socialising... I still believe that there is no way going forward without it. I know I cannot stomach another Christmas, Easter, birthday or whatever by myself. And still here I am freaking out after actually getting COVID.

Being brutally honest I was actually quite chill up until about an hour ago. I had been watching the last episodes of a certain very lighthearted anime comedy series that's coming out while lightly coughing, cleaning my nose pretty often and drinking as much water as I could. At some point I came to realise that something was not right. Initially I couldn't put my finger on it, I was just feeling uncomfortable.

Then it hit me: I couldn't smell anything. Not the laundry I did today, not the soap I had used to shower myself with, nothing. Up until this point it had been nothing more than some cough, sore throat and phlegm. Now it felt real - or rather unreal, it still feels like a nightmare.

Thinking logically it doesn't even make sense to me - I mean, come on, it's just smell right? - still losing the sense of smell is the first thing that has truly scared me since testing positive 2 days ago.
I have been going around the apartment for 20 minutes trying (to no avail) to smell stuff:

• old spice deodorant stick
• mouthwash
• toothpaste
• perfume
• isopropyl alcohol
• chlorine (super concentrated mildew killer spray)
  I just feel like i have ice up my nose. It's a very weird and unpleasant sensation (or lack thereof).

I have now just decided for no particular reason to do a mouthwash, and since then I can faintly distinguish smells. What the fuck.
I am now in between putting paper imbued with mouthwash in my nose and drinking a glass of the heaviest edible alcohol I have in my apartment. This is just insane.

Noone I know has lost smell or taste since the original variant, 2 years ago. I am worried and scared. Be brutally honest with me people, should I be or am I just being unreasonable and overly emotional?