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Comment Re:I run Debian and i3 / Sway (Score 2) 49

I mostly run application fullscreen and switch between them. The only exception is when I'm comparing the content of two windows (in which case I tile horizontally or vertically) and file selection (floating).

When an application uses the entire screen without the window decorations needed in a regular window manager, a screen's limited real estate is in fact better used in a tiled window manager.

Comment Re:If it's the lowest salary you'll accept (Score 1) 60

It's a lot easier to decide what you're "willing to accept" than it is to actually get that amount of money. To get it, you have to find and get hired by a company that will pay you that amount. This process can be tremendously disruptive to one's life, especially if it means relocating. Sometimes, the benefits of that desired salary are outweighed by the risks or disruption. But that doesn't make it somehow "childish" to be unhappy that companies use tactics like this to keep your salary low.

Sure. I was offered a position around DC, as a "Beltway Bandit". Would have made a significant increase in pay. But doing the research showed CoL was way higher, and fighting with traffic, horrifying, less access to the natural world, and in the end, I would be making less money after all expenses. Plus my wife was a VP at her place of work. So it really wasn't all that hard a decision to say "No thanks" - turned out to be the right decision in the end as well.

Comment Re:Of course they are (Score 2) 60

But the biggest problem is that they are allowed to ask you how much you earned in your previous job and use it as a baseline.

The only answer to that question should be: "No, you don't need to know. I had been underpaid in my previous job for years before finally reaching the limits of my loyalty and leaving. So no - you tell me what I am worth to you right now".

I was never asked about how much I used to make. It was always pretty simple. I'd ask them to make an offer, if interested in me, then respond as needed. If someone mad an insulting offer, I'd just say no thank you. If it was in the ballpark I'd then ask for what I believe would be acceptable. Places would usually accommodate to what I wanted.

Know your worth, people. And if someone tries to lowball you, just thank them for their time, and scoot.

Comment Re:Yes, and it's even worse than that... (Score 1) 60

It is illegal* to ask if candidates are married.

It is illegal* to ask if candidates have children.

It is illegal* to ask if candidates live with their parents.

* In America.

Yup, I was not allowed to ask female candidates anything about family or children. I could get fired if I did.

There were a number of women I interviewed who were aware of this issue, and at some point, they would say something like "I know you aren't allowed to ask, or even react, but I am not having any more children, and will not have my family interfere with my work."

And for a lot of positions, like Team Lead, it is really important to have some idea about family matters, like are we going to have multiple team leads so that the woman can have children and take leave?

Point is, not being allowed to ask questions like that, while on the surface is protecting some sort of privacy, it also makes for a decision process that might favor male candidates in more critical positions.

I've never been in a position where I could take large swaths of time off. Some positions are like that. Even for accidents. Day after I got out of the Hospital for a broken ankle I got calls to come in. I told them I could come in the next day, but they had to understand I was quite drugged up, that I had on a bloody cast that I had to keep elevated.

Hell, the wife intercepted a call from them trying to get me to come in the day of my ankle operation. She's a professional too, but wouldn't tell me until a couple weeks later. She wasn't at all happy. note, that ended up being quite a kerfuffle. Wife was so pissed she was swearing at me, people at work were pissed, mostly at who asked me to come into work - but a little at me as well. One of our photographers grabbed a picture of me in shorts and T-shirt with my cast propped up. I think it might have been for evidence.

But even in more normal times, I'd get phone calls for some emergency while I was at the beach, or across the country. Just part of the territory.

Shit needs to get done, and team leads are often a pinch point.

Final note: I'm sure people in here will chime in calling me a psychopath, maybe a people pleaser. I know right?

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 60

Bettridge much?

My employer countered $25k more than I originally asked for. Then a year later they said we were underpaid by industry standards and gave us all 15k raises in addition to the usual merit increase.

And I got a 50 percent raise after 1 year in my present position, and on occasion, 100 percent more on the new rate. (I'm paid per project)

This whole looking at your social media to somehow find out how little money you will accept is just weird.

Employers do check on social media to see if you are disparaging them, like the woman who was fired from GameStop for posting a video ridiculing GameStop, their customers, and their products, finally showing the location of the store safe.

Or the Chili's employee who made a video about how stupid the customers were, for expecting good food and a clean rest room.

Or the Psychologist who made a twerking video while complaining about patients.

Or the nurse who took a dick pic of a well hung patient, then shared it with other nurses, and it made it onto the web (I think it was 4 nurses fired)

Or the woman who was posting her "Office Siren" journey on TikTok - an Office Siren is a woman who wears provocative party dress Club like clothing to work, and to get reactions from men, whether validation or getting men fired. She recorded her interactions with HR after men complained about her trying to provoke and probably get the men fired. Turned out HR and the company didn't like the clothing choice, the recordings with HR, or the unsafe workplace environment.

It isn't just women - I've seen men posting about getting fired for social posting, but it is never as outlandish or memorable.

Comment Re:Socialism (Score 1) 80

A lot of people have a lot of trouble understanding

There is nothing about such a mission that mandates obsolete, 2x order of magnitude money torching. Please stop it with your commie shilling.

It doesn't really matter in the long run. Sooner or later the US with elect another (D) president and the teacher's union and/or some other pressure group will once again cut NASA's space program and take the money. After than, NASA or whomever will be forced to adopt cost effective solutions.

All you do is show your level of ignorance. I've posted nought but facts, and you act like the special child screaming "Neener neener, neener I can't hear youuuuuu!" While holding his hands over his ears. If you cannot understand a launch envelope, and why Spacex even has expendable missions, well there ya go!

Comment Re:Wow (Score 2, Insightful) 32

>"What a shit show Microsoft has become."

I don't remember it NOT being. Although I guess it depends on comparisons to which point in the show.

And I thought I heard they were 'listening to their users' and trying to undo some of their "mistakes". Hmm. Any word yet of removing forced cloud logins? Ads in the menus? Changing browser choice/settings without permission? Removing artificial hardware requirements? Opting out of "AI"?

Here's my recent W11 story.

For my Digital radio classes, I picked up a Lenovo Laptop. A decent one. I wanted to have something similar to the class member's computers. So after a couple weeks of dealing with the update problems of class members, I had my first. Despite my disabling OneDrive The update re-activated it, but I didn't know until the next class, when I found out that they moved all of the non-program files with program settings and multiple instance settings and other program related folders to OneDrive. And the programs stopped working. And somehow nuked my local account, which made for an unholy mess. I also needed to create a new way to run multiple instances of a program for people, and had to publish one for W10, and another for W11.

I had to uninstall OneDrive. My first classes were during Windows 7 times. Only took 2 sessions to get everyone running. The last W-11 class ended up taking the entire course devoted to figuring out why the student's computers worked last week, but not this week.I ended up switching to my Mac because the instructor should have a working system.

The whole point is that W11 is degenerating and falling apart. Updates are more malware than malware is. At least the bad guys let your computer function, while Microsoft can leave your computer non functional.

I call it security through bricking.

The next class that recently started is me teaching Linux first, then we'll move on to the digital radio matters. This is what was requested by my students.

Comment I run Debian and i3 / Sway (Score 4, Interesting) 49

on all my machines. Once you get past the tiled window manager paradigm - if you've never used one before - you realize how fast and seamless it is, and it truly is the least common denominator in terms of memory usage.

I left Mint (which is really a Ubuntu derivative) years ago, and now i3 / Sway let I have the same unified desktop on all my machines, fast or slow, new or old, and they all feel perfectly usable.

I highly recommend spending the time to create a i3 or Sway config file. It's well worth the effort and it's a one-off.

And if you just want to try i3 or Sway on your existing distro, install it and simply change the Window manager for your user in the display manager: it lives totally independently of whatever your currently use, so it's risk-free.

Comment Re:"Force-updating" (Score 2, Insightful) 32

>"Your experience is not an indication of a good practice."

My experience is normally updating frequently. But it is still on my schedule, when I choose to do it. I wouldn't say it is bad practice, especially since I am aware when the rare high-priority update is released. The few that are not updated that I mentioned are those that are intentionally isolated (and are safe regardless).

>"Linux is somewhat sheltered because of its low adoption as a desktop operating system."

That is true. But it is also generally more secure, outside of its obscurity. And updates usually come out much faster. And most do not require rebooting.

I've never bought into poster's security through obscurity claims. There are plenty enough Linux machiners out there, as well as all the Apache servers - and let's not forget all those Raspberry Pis - to make a decent "attack force" for whatever the bad guys want to do.

As for the update process, here is a reason Windows forces their updates, and Linux and MacOS allow you to install them at your leisure. People don't avoid Linux and MacOS updates because the computer works afterwards. Windows? Well this article is all about yet another Windows update trainwreck

Comment Yes, and it's even worse than that... (Score 1) 60

Ever heard of a race to the bottom?

So you have two candidates for a job. But one of them has a family to support and the other one is still living at home. You don't think that's relevant to the salary offer that each candidate will consider acceptable?

Too bad the future of society depends on people having families and therefore on having incomes high enough to support families. Unintended consequences and all that stuff.

Comment Winners and losers (Score 1) 178

Actually the big winners are pretty clear: Netanyahu and Putin. And they are NOT tired of winning yet. Especially not on America's dime. And speculators with insider information. They also won too much and are still winning.

I'm not sure who the biggest losers are yet. Obviously the Iranians are leading candidates, especially any moderate Iranians running loose in Iran. They were probably the most targeted victims the day after the war started.

My growing concern is with Xi's plans to get in on the winning. What sort of "other shoe" is Xi going to drop on the YOB when they meet? Some kind of deal providing Chinese boots on Iranian ground to "fix" the Hormuz problem? Perhaps in exchange for a permanent military base on Taiwan? Let's have a "great deal" to eliminate any threat of a messy amphibious invasion? Or maybe offer the YOB a couple of hotel towers with golf courses near Shanghai and Hong Kong? The corruption also knows no bounds.

Comment Re:Who's driving? (Score 1) 169

Actually they take pictures that include the driver's face. Just recently read about someone being impressed by the high quality of the images. They sent copies with the citation. The question of the identity of the driver seems like a minor one at that point. They would only need to confirm that the face matches a known face. If you tried to claim you had loaned the car to someone else, then it becomes even easier, just proving the photographed face does not match the claimed face. But it reverts to the general facial recognition problem if they send a photo of an unknown person who would then have to be identified using a large database of faces...

However the direction the world seems to be heading, the next step will be real time checking of registration information to make sure the car isn't stolen. After all, that could explain some of the speeding. A car thief is extra likely to be in a bit of a hurry.

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