I learned early on not to trust anything with a sticker that claimed warranty supported by Fry's (that meant it was a return and tested No Problem Found and sold as is).
Too many return trips eats up any profit reselling parts to my clients.
But it was a blast back in the day when I could get shrinkwrap tubing, RAM modules, individual electronics components (resistors, capacitors, etc.) personal care items like combs, brushes, snacks, etc.
And then there were the books... With a cafe built into the store. I spent a lot of time and money at a number of the Silicon Valley Frys locations.
I hope Synology gets its act together, it has been a convenient product to resell for clients who down-size. Very simple, very low maintenance. And very simple to set up, versus all of the home-grown *nix boxes I have built over the decades.
"There ought to be a law" is why we have nanny-state government. I imagine that is why there have been "no spitting" and "no chewing gum" laws on the books.
People going to lord it over others in the pursuit of what they think is proper.
Society is over-rated, once it gets beyond a certain size.
Along the same lines, I am currently starting my morning with blocking ranges of IP addresses to get Internet service back, due to someone's current desire to SYN Flood my webserver, which being hosted in my office, affects my office Internet.
It may soon come to a point where I choose to block all IP addresses except a few to get work done.
Having constraints may also make something more achievable. It helps avoid issues like analysis-paralysis, and helps me focus on the path through the obstacles towards the destination I desire.
So for me, still goals, but made more efficient by constraints?
I think that just shows our different perceptions - I, too, see many HN posts as very left. Frequently seen in assumptions about values/ethics/morals...
Update: On further reflection, it is not HN that I am describing. It is the content of the posts that seem to lean that way...
I am outside both of the US parties, I think it is like being sober at a party of those partaking in alcohol. Different perception of the same situation.
Thanks for posting this. While craziness may reign in various places, parts of the world go on healing itself, one human effort at a time, and faster when more than one do so together...
This is also a good argument to me to continue working at being a generalist. The more disciplines I am aware of, even if not expert in, the faster I may come up with an "outside the box" solution that might work.
Details observance, combined with the facility to abstract, is probably what makes me a programmer of the caliber I am. Not that I am great (far from it, when I see and compare others' work) but I have products being used by clients successfully, so good enough, I figure...
Ah, another thought: Also conversations with others about a problem I am facing. My wife has an uncanny ability to suggest things that sometimes cause me to reconsider some of my assumptions, and have the blinding flash of insight that allows me to successfully navigate through whatever my current obstacle might be. And she does not try to keep up with my area of technical knowledge anymore, yet still so valuable!
I chose to use a flip phone over a previous Android phone around 10 years ago when ISPs/Phone providers showed that security lapse issues for them was just a cost of doing business. I used to store private client info in Exchange and sync it, but I could not, in good conscience, continue to do so with the knowledge of that information's exposure.
I recently worked with NetGear support to have a new router replaced after we determined the firmware was known to be problematic, and the only way the level 2 support person had of correcting it required their app.
So fortunately, there may still be ways around working with IT without a "smart" phone, and I will continue to blaze that trail as needed.
For me, that is the value of tags. No need to have duplicates to have items represented in multiple categories, yet each appropriate category gets a nod about the particular item.
FWIW: I am switching from Fedora to Debian. Fedora has what amounts to almost daily updates, I prefer more stability/less changes. My work flow is usually being up for weeks in between boots, multiple projects open at the same time.
"We may wonder also what fun a determined hacker could have with Microsoft running random bits of JavaScript on their servers and allowing these to talk to the world (or to Microsoft itself even)."
So maybe there might be a way to disincentivize this behavior?