Yep. Back in the day all the MUD servers ran on Linux. I wanted to set up my own. I knew my cousin used it so I asked him about it.

He never answered my questions directly. But he did show me how to look up the answer to my question using man pages and/or search for info online.

That first install was so painful… My friend and I didn’t know how to set up the network and it turns out the tulip driver wasn’t installed by default. So we’d boot to Linux, try something to get the network working, write down the error message on a sheet of paper. Boot to windows to research the fix to the error message. Rinse and repeat until we finally got it working.

Anyway, 99%+ of people can’t consistently tell the difference between a 160kbps OGG and lossless, because of limitations in either their equipment, training, ears, or a combination thereof. This has been blind tested many times and the audiophiles that ‘swear they can tell’ are always proven wrong, they then usually blame the equipment or test. There’s tests you can run yourself too, eg here: https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html

Ooohhh I did that test when I got a new speaker / amp setup at my PC and as a musician I thought “I got this”. Plus I was trying to decide if Tidal was worth upgrading to from Spotify.

I did slightly better than average. Like just slightly. I might have the results somewhere.

I ended up doing Tidal’s free trial. I couldn’t tell a difference. Went back to Spotify. (though now my group of people are on an Apple Music family plan).

spice satellites

The spice must flow.

Netflix charges me, a single guy, for 4 simultaneous streams if I want 4k. So I shared with my parents.

Then they had the audacity to stop people from password sharing or to charge even more if you want to share. I set up an automatic email forward so my parents get every sign in related email.

For Microsoft 365 / Office 365.

This guy did just that:

https://youtu.be/qy_9w_c2ub0

Thought it was a really cool idea / project. Essentially a modified Z Flip.

This was an interesting video / project I quite enjoyed.

https://youtu.be/qy_9w_c2ub0

Watched a guy using an air horn on his bike riding around a European city using it on people walking in the bike lanes. So many people had no idea they were in a dedicated bike lane. Either blocking it or walking in it or crossing over it right in front of him.

I love that my global settings has a whole section labelled Privacy, but I can’t disable this globally for all chats my account joins.

Instead I have to disable it for each chat individually.

What awful design WhatsApp (obviously on purpose so I’ll forget with new chats).

Well maybe this is the push that those friends will need to move to Signal…

Oh absolutely having an aggressive manager and skip will help you with bonuses and promotions. But they don’t force managers to give people low scores anymore.

While the management tool had a weird slider and score system (you could give a number between 0 and 1000 IIRC), the general terminology was you could get between 0 and 200, indicative of how you compared to the average person at your level. 100 meaning you did average per-say or completed about 100% of the work an average person could complete.

While not unheard of it was basically impossible to get 200% (required at least your skip/M2 and maybe your M3 to agree).

Last I heard (keep in mind this was 2023 or so) managers got around 105% or 110% of their bonus allocated for their team. Generally that meant you could give everyone “100” if you wanted, but practically it never worked out that way.

Also there were strict rules you couldn’t take from a more junior budget to give a more senior person a higher bonus. You could however take from a more senior budget and give it to a junior.

I. E. I couldn’t give two SWE1s 80 to give a SWE2 a 120. The reverse was allowed though.

Layoffs are generally done algorithmically. I’m not kidding. They don’t want to be sued. They follow all the legal rules otherwise (can’t layoff a US citizen without laying off a Visa employee first, etc).

Source: I worked there for 11 years, I was an IC but have many friends who are managers who would tell me how the system works, and have been laid off twice. The first time I found another position within MSFT but the most recent time, in December, I opted to take some time off and find something else.

Edit/addendum: when the managers get in the room for people discussions a lot of that is around promotions. Very little is bonuses. Bonuses are determined by your manager, then go up the chain. So your manager sets and signs off on your score. Then your M2 checks it and either sends it back if they don’t agree or signs off and sends it up. Then your M3. At the M3 and higher levels I suspect they don’t look too close but just make sure everything makes sense and the budgets balance.

Microsoft got rid of that in 2014 or so, when Nadella took over.