I have a similar job, but I have been in the unfortunate position to be swamped with work for the past month or so.

I have had one task that needed babysitting in the past 3 weeks, and I was so busy that I was jumping between tasks at that point.

Exactly.

I use it a lot on my systems for very simple scripts because I am significantly more experienced in python compared to bash.

I remember getting given a 10k line python script which “was the documentation” for an API i had to interact with using powershell. I hated life so much because of that stupid project.

It’s the best scripting language I know of, but man I hate dynamically types languages. I am so used to rust and C/C++ that reading any large script or program will drive me insane

And the whitespace instead of {} tokens…

Sorry, but you weren’t the type I thought you were all the time

Me with python

That’s a fun mistake to make. I had a similar thing happen with Kubuntu uninstalling my GPU drivers. I could never figure out what caused it.

The world is full of creatives who make things without any expectation of income, but people create anyways. Look at open source software, or the many youtubers who don’t get enough views to get paid yet they post anyways. There’s quite a few journalists who operate solely on optional donations.

Fuck IP. Copyright is theft. IP kills.

I’ve run into the same problem with an API server I wrote in rust. I noticed this bug 5 minutes before a demo and panicked, but fixed it with a 1 second sleep. Eventually, I implemented a more permanent fix by changing the simplistic io calls to ones better designed for streams

Absolutely.

I don’t have a CS degree, I have a Cybersecurity and Forensics one. But, I love programming, and between the overlap of the two degrees and and my advanced designation I ended up taking about 3/4ths of the classes needed to get a CS degree.

Diversifying helped so much with me becoming a well rounded developer. My assembly programming class, while optional for CS, was mandatory for me, made me a significantly better dev. That assembly knowledge got me to become a skilled debugger, which made my C++ classes 10x easier, and it helped me understand memory at a lower level, making the memory problems easier to diagnose and fix.

I convinced a CS friend to take one of my cyber classes, Reverse Engineering, and he found te components of the class where we analyzed a vulnerable program to find and exploit the vuln, or the bit where we tried and determined the bug based on malware that exploited it is insightful to learning to program securely.

Learning about the infrastructure used in enterprise during a Windows admin or Linux admin class will make it easier to write code for those systems.

From the cybersecurity perspective, many of my CS classes carry me hard. Knowing how programs are written, how APIs are developed, and how to design complex software lets me make more educated recommendations based on what little information I’m given by the limited logs I am given to investigate. Writing code that interfaces with linux primitives makes it easier to conceptualize what’s going on when I am debugging a broken linux system.

I have tons of experience with enterprise linux, so I tend to use Rocky linux. It’s similar to my Fedora daily driver, which is nice, and very close to the RHEL and Centos systems I used to own.

You are slightly mistaken with your assumption that debian is insecure because of the old packages. Old packages are fine, and not inherently insecure because of its age. I only become concerned about the security implications of a package if it is dual use/LOLBin, known to be vulnerable, or has been out of support for some time. The older packages Debian uses, at least things related to infrastructure and hosting, are the patched LTS release of a project.

My big concerns for picking a distro for hosting services would be reliability, level of support, and familiarity.

A more reliable distro is less likely to crash or break itself. Enterprise linux and Debian come to mind with this regard.

A distro that is well supported will mean quick access to security patches, updates, and more stable updates. It will have good, accurate documentation, and hopefully some good guides. Enterprise linux, Debian and Ubuntu have excellent support. Enterprise linux distros have incredible documentation, and often are similar enough that documentation for a different branch will work fine. Heck, I usually use rhel docs when troubleshooting my fedora install since it is close enough to get me to a point where the application docs will guide me through.

Familiarity is self explanatory. But it is important because you are more likely to accidentally compromise security in an unfamiliar environment, and it’s the driving force behind me sticking with enterprise linux over Nixos or a hardened OpenBSD.

As a fair word of warning, enterprise linux will be pretty different compared to any desktop distro, even fedora. It takes quite a bit of learning, to get comfortable (especially with SELinux), but once you do, things will go smoothly. you can also use a pirated rhel certification guide to learn enterprise linux

If anything, you can simply mess around in a local VM and try installing the tools and services needed before taking it to the cloud.

Maia Arson Crimew, one of my favorite hackers, is in a webring https://maia.crimew.gay

I find this statement funny cuz it also implies that the reason why freedom fighters are not terrorists is because they won, and likewise the only reason why terrorists are deemed such is because they lost.

I feel that.

Three years ago I moved to fedora and RHEL based distros like Rocky for my devices and servers because I’ve gotten suck of Canonical’s shit. Don’t regret it.

I’m a huge panopticon fan. I got one of their CDs from a local radical book shop the other day.

I’ve not heard of the other three, I’ll check em out!

Edit: I’ve listened to a song by all three, and I really dig Cauldron and Warmoon Lord. I can definitely see cauldron go in my catalogue for when I need to mix things up, they’re outside my normal go-to genres.

To throw two more back at you, check out Dawn Ray’d, an excellent melodic black metal/RABM band with some great lyrics, themes, and some solid songwriting. The band’s politics are similar to Panopticon, or Woe.

Others by No One, a prog metal concept album I can’t exactly describe. To me, it feels like the only band that has carried Native Construct’s torch, which is one of the best compliments I can give. It’s an enthralling listen.

Blind Guardian and Opeth are sick!

Try out some Botanist.

Two instrument black metal. Drums, and hammer dulcimer. Sometimes has Bass guitar. Very atmospheric. Interesting vibes.

here is their upcoming album which has some good singles

here is my favorite release

Hamferð is also pretty slick.

Their new album Men guðs hond er sterk is an absolute banger. Absolutely crushing death-doom. Their previous album, Tàmsins likam was probably my favorite album of the year.

Linux passwords can be set to expire. A non-expiring password is sometimes just set to expire so far in the future that it will not be reached by the user (such as 100 or 200 years). A really broken clock could surpass that and cause expiry.

I dont feel that a two state solution would actually fix things. Creating a Palestinian state would be incredibly difficult, it’s why attempts to do so have failed. Israel would object to all but the most disfavorable terms for the Palestinians, and as seen in the past, Palestinians will object to disfavorable terms.

Forcing a two state solution on them will not work either, wherever state lines have been drawn in the past there has been conflict because of those borders.

A Palestinian state would also give some legitimacy for Israel to create conflicts with them, and due to their hyper-militization and incredible intelligence capabilities (much less, the capabilities of the USA helping them out) would certainly make any conflicts with the fledgling nation. There will be no peace when there is official means for the two sides to fight amongst them selves, especially when adding religion, border disputes, and Israel’s history of oppression.

Ideally, as an anarchist, I’d love a no state solution, as it would be impossible for state mechanisms to oppress any group of people with no state. But I think that is not geopolitically feasible because states like states, and creating a stateless society would harm the legitimacy of states themselves.

Realistically, I think a one-state solution is necessary, but not in the sense of making it an ethnostate for any one group. We would need to follow in the footsteps of attempts to do similar tasks, be it the de-apartheidization of south africa, as well as from the horrors America did in the wake of reconstruction and their colonial expansion, abd various other former setteler-colonial countries. And we should certainly learn from the mistakes of the past. Speaking as an American, with an American-centric view, I think the best way forward is decolonization.

Israel is rightfully concerned by becoming the minority, they’ve done unspeakable evils to Palestinians, and many Israelis think they are beyond forgiveness, that they are too far gone. Combine that with a long history of minority jewish groups being oppressed by many states all over the world, and their anxiety on this is very understandable.

However, as long as there is oppression, there will not be peace. Putting a minority group on par with a majority group gives an unequal advantage to the minority, but letting the minority group get trampled is just as bad. I think that in order to protect the religious rights, the state must be secular, and it must have inalienable rights enshrined to everyone equally.

I think the only way to lower tensions is for Palestinians to forgive Israelis, and the only way for that to happen is for Israel to make up for their crimes. State leaders should be prosecuted, war criminals should be prosecuted, and Israel should fund the repairs needed to provide housing to Gazans, and Palestinians who fled. Palestinians should be able to return to their homelands, and if their homes still exist, they should return to them. If this involves kicking out an Israeli, the state should fund housing for them.

This isn’t a complete plan by any means, and I don’t want to insinuate that it is. This is just my statist idea on how peace could be achieved, even if I believe that a stateless anarchist revolution would do waaaay better.

Free Palestine. FTRTTS

I’ll admit lemmy is left wing, especially compared to sites like reddit, bluesky, voat, or any one of those fascist twitter clones like parler. But unlike the fascist twitter clones, I’d say many of the more popular instances here aren’t echo chambers, just spaces with larger overton windows.

there were no vaunted ideals of free speech

So? Even as someone who loves free speech (i am literally an anarchist), I recognize that speech has consequences, and sometimes those consequences are getting banned or defederated. This article talks about how not being a free speech absolutist makes a site more appealing by removing fascists, and lemmy’s issue with tankies by being more open to them. The second issue sorted itself out using federation and defederation.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing if people don’t want to see hate speech and wanf moderation. That was the feature that got me to join lemmy at first, beehaw was my first instance and was certainly the least toxic place I have found online.

No, I don’t think that participation in tipping culture is a good comparison to participating in the policing system.

The only accurate comparisons are: The system is harmful, a good server cannot fix it by participating in it, and servers materially benefit from it.

First, as shitty as it is to not participate in as a customer, tipping culture is, for the most part, optional. When a server indirectly asks me to tip as a customer, I could easily hit the custom tip button and enter 0.00$. That would be shitty on my part as I would be reducing the income of waitstaff who rely on tips. If I tip, I now have a few dollars less, and the waitstaff have a more livable wage. If a police officer asks me to get on the ground with my hands on the back of my head, I don’t have much of a choice. If I do, the police officer will likely arrest me, and this compliance is only coming at the threat of what happens if I don’t. If I refuse, then the police officer could shoot me (if he deems me a sufficient threat), taze me, pepper spray me, or otherwise physically force me to the ground and possibly injure me. Further, I could get in significant legal trouble for not following the orders, most often in the form of resisting arrest, or possibly getting charged with assaulting a police officer if I act in self defense, regardless if I act within the law. This problem here lies in the fact that there is hierarchic authority that a police officer has which waitstaff lack.

Second, there is something that servers can do to make the system better outside of participating in the system laid out by their boss. While not easy, and with some risks attached, waitstaff can unionize and demand better pay, such that no tips are needed. Obviously, it isn’t super likely that the union would remove tips because waitstaff like their tips, but this act will fix one part of the system, being the part that they are not paid living wages before tips. While unlikely, widespread unionization could cause people to want to tip less knowing that waitstaff are able to subsist on wages alone and therefore impact tipping culture.

Cops don’t have this ability. I’d argue that police unions are not the same as a typical labor union. Like a normal union, they provide the workers protection from being fired, and have a positive impact on wages. Unlike a police union, police officers are called to break up the strikes of labor unions. If the police union went on strike, the only theoretical way for their employer, the state, to break it up would be using another militaristic arm of the state, be it the state reserve militia, if it exists in that state, or the military in other cases. Unlike calling the police, there is significant political capital being expended when doing this.

Another point to consider with that is which cops are fired, what leads to that happening, the impact of it, and how they are protected. Often, it’s “bad cops” rather than good cops, though both is possible. The union often steps in to protect even the worst cops from being fired. The impact of a bad cop is significantly more harmful than a bad server. A bad cop is violent, often kills or maims people, and terrorizes communities. A bad server might spit in my food, let it get cold/warm, or not deliver it at all. Short of physically hitting me (which a union will not protect them for), the most harmful thing they could do is steal my credit card details. Bad cops are fully and legally able to do much worse through civil asset forfeiture.

Lastly, and most importantly, the context of the system is vastly different. I’d argue the most harmful system that is held up by a server working a job isn’t tipping culture, but wage labor (and capitalism) itself. Just like police, anyone participating in this system cannot fix it by participating in it. Unlike police, those participating in wage labor lack the power to directly reinforce it through violent action because they lack the state’s monopoly on violence that the police lovingly wield. Any harm done by a person reinforcing this system can be offset by various acts, such as creating and participating in labor unions, creating co-ops, protesting and agitating for socialism, etc.

Police, on the other hand, not only indirectly reinforce this system by being payed wages, but they also directly reinforce this system by making it difficult to combat wage labor by breaking up strikes, protecting private property, terrorizing and killing protesters, killing organizers, etc.

Worse yet, police also directly support the hierarchic structure of the state, an unjust hierarchy, and the unjust hierarchies of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism and cisheteronormativity. Police have always been the arm of the state that has had their literal boot on the neck of black people, suffocating their communities. When the police are not the ones to harm these communities, they often don’t do that much to prevent it from happening, or prevent it from happening in the future. Let’s not forget that about 50% of those killed by cops have some sort of disability, or their historic violence against LGBTQ people, and how LGBTQ rights were only taken by clashing with the cops at Stonewall and demanding rights. While police aren’t the sole people upholding these hierarchies, they are one of the most arms of the state doing it.