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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • In my mind, introducing Rust would only make sense if:

    1. There was a serious lack of current kernel developers (which I don’t think there is)
    2. New hardware and tech was evolving at a rate that the Linux Kernel could not keep up (again, I don’t think this is am issue)
    3. The end goal is to migrate the entire Kernel to Rust.

    Regarding point 3, having both C and Rust really only makes sense as a transition phase (measured in years) - as it would require kernel developers to be savvy in both C and Rust, or would force developers to stay within whatever domains were implemented in C or Rust.




  • +1 for this.

    Just be transparent and honest with your Team.

    Explain to them how the actual budget is out of your direct control. However, also explain what knobs you and your IC can influence (for example being more visible with your Team/IC’s accomplishments at an organizational level).

    Also many companies have a “flight risk” box, when calculating raises. Explain to your IC’s that you can hit this checkbox (if the IC wants), but it’s pretty much a onetime use button.

    Don’t be afraid to rock the organizational boat. They won’t hold it against you, as you’re just doing your job. Your goal, first and foremost, is to get the most you can out of your Team and money is a good motivator.

    If you need other “cheap” motivators:

    • have the Team take some time off (paid or unpaid) and watch/stream a movie, with the mic on. Encourage people to trash talk the movie. If you’re in I.T. Office Space is a classic.
    • for ~$40 / year, you can get a subscription to Boardgame Arena. Only one person needs a paid account (so they can create games and invite people). It’s all online and they have quiet a selection of games to choose from. King of Tokyo is one of our favorites.
    • Introduce “Fantastic Friday”: this is a bit controversial with upper management, but works great with my Teams in the past. Basically, reserve a Friday (bi-weekly/monthly) where your Team can explore whatever topics they want as long as they’ve already finished their current workload. Usually, that disclaimer isn’t necessary, as people will usually want to get their normal work done. The pitch for upper management (if they ask) is that Fantastic Friday is a tool (ie: a canary in the coalmine) to help the Team create accurate estimates and deliver with more reliability. If they over commit, then that Fantastic Friday can be repurposed as a day to “catch-up” (while the Team can understand/refocus on why they didn’t get a Fantastic Friday and pivot accordingly). Furthermore, Fantastic Friday was often used to explore more “outside the box” ideas that actually boosted the Team/companies productivity, but we would not have normally persuded because it was outside our current task’s scope.

    edit: added more about Fantastic Friday and fix grammar.




  • It’s more than needing a reminder: Let’s Encrypt Certs are valid for a maximum of 90 days before they need to be reissued. Doing this 4 times (or more) a year, for years on end will be tedious and error prone.

    Most tools that request and install Let’s Encrypt Certs automatically do this without the need for human interaction (30 days prior to the expiration) . Actually, they work so well you don’t notice the “behind the scenes work” that’s happening.

    The problem is when this renewal process “stop working”. I’d been using Let’s Encrypt for years w/o problems, but eventually the client I was using wasn’t updating and it was using a deprecated Let’s Encrypt API. Ultimately, the cert stopped updating, but I got the email reminder from Let’s Encrypt and I was able to fix it w/o a disruption.

    Now, this was just a server for personal use. So if the SSL cert expired, it would not be the end of the world. Plus, I would have gotten a bunch of SSL errors the next time my client was trying to sync data, and I probably would have dropped everything to fix it. But the email reminder was a convenient feature, which allowed me to fix it whenever I had time.

    That said, if Let’s Encrypt wants to save some money for their free service, I’m certainly not going to complain (although I will miss it).


  • Fantastic! Thank you for sharing this.

    I have it installed, I’m curious how effective it will be.

    Lately, I’ve been reporting AI generated cruft as “spam” to duckduckgo. In fact, it’s not really spam - as there are some nuggets of useful information, but so sparse, I’d rather of skipped the article/website entirely. I hope these kind of Blocklists will evolve to include this kind of quasi-spam.




  • If you do opt for OpenVPN, I believe UDP is generally better for performance. TCP support is mainly there for scenarios where UDP is blocked, or on dodgy connections where TCP’s more proactive handling of dropped packets can reduce the time before a lost packet gets retransmitted.

    It’s great that you brought up TCP vs UDP. And you are totally right about TCP being a bit slower, higher overhead, but it’s there for situations where UDP is blocked.

    I’ve used my VPN at all sorts of hotels, coffeeshops, etc. I’d say 1 in 10 places block UDP (or more likely don’t properly route UDP). If you’re using a SIM card, you won’t have any issues.

    However, it’s worth mentioning that WireGuard is UDP only. There are some hacks/workarounds to have it work over TCP, but then you’re going to need to find WireGuard clients that also supports these hacks (which is possible on computers, but harder on cellphones/tablets).

    If you want something that “just works” under all conditions, then you’re looking at OpenVPN. Bonus, if you want to marginally improve the chance that everything just works, even in the most restrictive places (like hotel wifi), have your VPN used port 443 for TCP and 53 for UDP. These are the most heavily used ports for web and DNS. Meaning you VPN traffic will just “blend in” with normal internet noise (disclaimer: yes, deep packet inspection exists, but rustic hotel wifi’s aren’t going to be using it ;)