#Internet Technology

[lobster-x]

Loud Man Needs Quiet Friend, 2024. 30” x 40” acrylic paint on canvas. No simpler words have ever been used to describe me.

[insertcleverusername101]

Borderline insane technical ramble ahead. Might be entertaining. Might be informative. Might just be nonsense. Beware.

I fucking love the Dell Optiplex line.

One of my oddities is that I collect computers like no one's business. I've got like 20 of the things.

Recently, one of my fleet, an HP consumer grade computer died. I'm not too broken up about this (or any computer's death, if I'm being honest), since I was able to pull the drives, there was nothing important on it, and it was an HP, which sucks ass.

I was able to replace it with a new guy: A Dell Optiplex 990.

Now, these little bastards are everywhere. They've looked almost identical for the better part of 15 years, too. They're so ubiquitous that no matter who you are or where you are, you're almost guaranteed to have seen an Optiplex line computer at some point.

Dell Optiplex computers are a standard machine in almost any workplace, from factories to hospitals & research facilities. They're aimed at commercial and industrial use, so most workplaces have them somewhere.

Many of them have also made it into the consumer market, since when companies need to upgrade their fleets, they will often auction off the old computers. Companies will reimage them, then sell them as cheap refurbs, at which point they'll keep chugging along. Some of the oldest of their most iconic design, the black box with the silver grey front bevel plate, are coming up on 20 years, and can still be found occasionally in service in distant corners.

Begs the question though: Why are there so many of them? There are a lot of commercial manufacturers of hardware. Almost all the computer brands that you're probably familiar with make commercial hardware.

The answer is simple. They're good computers. Things like hard drives and the RAM can be swapped and upgraded without tools, making them dead simple to service. They don't really have the same firmware problems other manufacturers do (cough HP cough), so you won't see performance falloffs or stability problems.

They're not really obnoxious pieces of hardware either. They're not loud, brightly colored, or large. The SFF and USFF computers are super densely packed, but still have solid hardware inside. They can just sit in a dark corner until they're needed, quietly humming away. Since their cases are so plain, they're not really a distraction, they're just kind of... there.

Really, they're what a computer should be. Easy to maintain for anyone, reliable, and nondescript.

[insertcleverusername101]

I know this is like, a joke and all, but Windows, games, and modern software in general are extremely bloated beyond what they need in terms of space.

Like. I'm gonna be totally blunt here. I often use a 12 year old laptop (going on 13). It runs Discord, a browser, and I can watch shows + movies and stuff on it. It's snappy, fast, and stable.

All I had to do was move beyond Windows - the thing runs a lightly modified installation of Ubuntu 24.04.

Now, don't take this as a "move to Linux no disadvantages, fuck Windows" post - it's not that. I do feel that Windows is a piece of shit and Windows's time in the sun will come to an end eventually, but I also get most users would struggle with doing some stuff on Linux systems.

But we don't do a whole lot more than we did a decade ago. 2014 - 2024 we ran the same OS - Windows 10. Same common business applications - the office suite, Edge, and Chrome.

More memory - more processing power - more disk space. We just keep burning and burning through more and more to compensate for a lack of developer skill in memory management, and it just isn't sustainable.

this is a controversial opinion and I’m not a gamer but I don’t need my graphics to be that good. I don’t need to see every individual feather on a bird. my poor computer doesn’t deserve to carry that weight either.

[webdizainolaboratorija]

Minimalizmas: naujausia interneto dizaino tendencija

Minimalizmas yra dizaino filosofija, kuri pabrėžia paprastumą, funkcionalumą ir esmę. Pastaraisiais metais minimalizmas tapo populiaria interneto dizaino tendencija, nes jis padeda sukurti vizualiai patrauklias ir lengvai naudojamas svetaines.

Minimalizmo privalumai interneto dizainui

Pagerintas vartotojo patogumas: Minimalistiniai dizainai yra lengvai suprantami ir naršomi, todėl vartotojams lengviau rasti jiems reikalingą informaciją.

Sumažintas įkrovos laikas: Minimalistiniai dizainai paprastai yra mažesni, todėl jie greičiau įkeliami nei dizainai, kuriuose yra daug elementų.

Padidintas konversijų skaičius: Minimalistiniai dizainai padeda vartotojams sutelkti dėmesį į svarbiausią informaciją, todėl jie labiau linkę imtis veiksmų, pvz., užsiprenumeruoti naujienlaiškį ar įsigyti produktą.

Pagerintas SEO: Minimalistiniai dizainai yra labiau optimizuoti paieškos sistemoms, todėl jie gali užimti aukštesnes pozicijas paieškos rezultatuose.

Kaip sukurti minimalistinį interneto dizainą

Naudokite paprastą spalvų paletę ir venkite naudoti per daug spalvų, nes jos gali atitraukti dėmesį nuo jūsų turinio. Taip pat pasirinkite aiškų, lengvai skaitomą šriftą. Naudokite daug baltos erdvės. Pavyzdžiui, balta erdvė padeda sukurti vizualiai patrauklų ir tvarkingą dizainą. Pasirinkite dideles, ryškias nuotraukas, kurios gali padėti perteikti jūsų žinutę ir padaryti jūsų svetainę įdomesnę.

Minimalizmo pavyzdžiai internete

Apple svetainė yra puikus minimalistinio dizaino pavyzdys. Ji naudoja paprastą spalvų paletę, aiškią tipografiją ir daug baltos erdvės. Google svetainė taip pat yra puikus minimalistinio dizaino pavyzdys. Ji naudoja paprastą spalvų paletę, aiškią tipografiją ir dideles, ryškias nuotraukas. Airbnb svetainė yra dar vienas puikus minimalistinio dizaino pavyzdys. Ji naudoja paprastą spalvų paletę, aiškią tipografiją ir daug baltos erdvės.

Taigi, minimalizmas yra puikus būdas sukurti vizualiai patrauklų ir lengvai naudojamą interneto dizainą. Jei norite sukurti sėkmingą svetainę, apsvarstykite galimybę naudoti minimalistinį dizainą.

[insertcleverusername101]

Warning: This is a very long, very tech related post, which expands on the post above in a very winding way. If that doesn't interest you, do not proceed.

I am a Gen Z systems administrator (IT guy, techie, etc. for those of you who have not heard the term before). And let's be clear, I didn't end up in this position because I'm some kind of computer genius freak who's been a compsci-doctorate level programmer since I was eight years old (I have been programming since I was ten, but it was pretty much at an age appropriate level). I can:

Use Google.

Withstand enough of Microsoft, and when the occasion calls for it Apple's, bullshit with enough patience to fix most problems.

Make use of available diagnostic methods and tools to isolate problems to specific programs and hardware in computers, which relates back to option one.

Read hard to read technical documents, logs, and discussions to get information that is not immediately clear.

I am very rarely innovating new methods of finding things. I rarely work on issues that no one has encountered or fixed before (although it has happened a few times, it happens to every sysadmin). The skillset I have is, on some level, interchangeable with every mechanic or technician for any machine ever made, including cars, ships, and planes.

And, ultimately, the need for that skillset is what's missing from computers nowadays. It used to be, to use a desktop, even on the most basic rudimentary level, required you to have some technical skill. Without a GUI, you would have to know how to load programs and navigate a filesystem in DOS. You would have to know how to un-park the heads on a disk, and park them when you were done. How to operate a modem.

Doing the basic stuff, up until like, Windows 7 (and the release of the iPhone, the first ever smartphone two years earlier), took some level of technical acumen. Want to mod a game? Have fun downloading janky third party mod packers and managers, and editing files manually inside the game config. Same problem for getting games as a whole. Buy the CD. Put it in your computer. Doesn't work because you have dependencies missing. The dependencies also have missing dependencies, which you then have to find. Packages are missing. So on and so forth. Keeping your stuff running the way you wanted was hard.

Now? Not so much. Windows does a lot in the backend on computer systems. As an example to contrast something I brought up in the previous paragraph is Steam, and other similar stores. One click to install with all dependencies, and one click to install mods. And more importantly, us sysadmins do even more shit on the backend on incredibly powerful commercial systems which are also very heavily integrated and automated. But it's all still there.

These systems, much like many things in our society, are designed to discourage user-level fixes. But you can still do it, even if everything has been designed to cut out that basic level skillset development.

What's really killing us here is that we're giving the very young highly commercialized and consumer oriented devices like iPads to play with, which reinforces this anti-problem solving, "there's always an app for that" style of thinking.

We can and should have those devices, don't get me wrong. There is a place for them where reliability is at a premium, and you just need things to work and be simple for performing low level tasks. I manage multiple construction companies, and a few of them make incredibly effective use of managed tablets and iPads for on-site management personnel, like foremen and project managers, to give a practical example. Easy to set up, easy to swap around, and easy to use with very low failure rates. Great for people who don't need to do super technical work but need to be very effective communicators.

But that's not what we should be teaching people on, because it ruins any chance at proper problem-solving thinking. What we want to train them on is a system that has room for failure, and room for troubleshooting. And that is where the open source and full desktop environments comes to the rescue.

If you want your kid to learn how a computer works, give them a locked down (or not-so-locked down, up to you) Windows PC. Or even better, give them a clean copy of Ubuntu on a laptop with a touchscreen to work with for their childhood. Shit will break, fail, go lopsided, bug out, etc. Part of the cost for using that device will, inevitably, be learning how to fix it, and also as they get older, fixing it themselves.

We can bring these skills back. But it means, like in all things, standing up and resisting the ever encroaching rise of corporations and their locked down technology.

another thought about "gen z and gen alpha don't know how to use computers, just phone apps" is that this is intentionally the direction tech companies have pushed things in, they don't want users to understand anything about the underlying system, they want you to just buy a subscription to a thing and if it doesn't do what you need it to, you just upgrade to the more expensive one. users who look at configuration files are their worst nightmare

[lobster-x]

Artificial Arachnid Appearance, 2024, sketch with pen and watercolor. Nanobots will one day fix other things - even create the things that fix other things.

[spongebobssquarepants]

[insertcleverusername101]

One of the creators of my industry. We stand on the shoulders of giants, like Lynn.

Goodbye, Lynn. Thank you for your constant support and encouragement since the day I started these comics. It has meant the world to me, and I wish I could have told you. We will remember you forever.

[pc98-rom]

[yodaprod]

Burger King Internet corner, New York (1998)

[political-us]

[insertcleverusername101]

It's the same with operations, really. We are an expense. The servers have to keep running, and we are the ones who do that. But, we are a cost drain, and so are the machines. The only reason we don't stop existing is because maintaining massive computer networks and infrastructure is hard. There's a reason heavy duty computing is called "big" iron, and it's not because it's one simple box anyone could manage.

I 100% agree with the criticism that the central problem with "AI"/LLM evangelism is that people pushing it fundamentally do not value labour, but I often see it phrased with a caveat that they don't value labour except for writing code, and... like, no, they don't value the labour that goes into writing code, either. Tech grifter CEOs have been trying to get rid of programmers within their organisations for years – long before LLMs were a thing – whether it's through algorithmic approaches, "zero coding" development platforms, or just outsourcing it all to overseas sweatshops. The only reason they haven't succeeded thus far is because every time they try, all of their toys break. They pretend to value programming as labour because it's the one area where they can't feasibly ignore the fact that the outcomes of their "disruption" are uniformly shit, but they'd drop the pretence in a heartbeat if they could.

[prokopetz]

Honestly, the thing that really burns my ass about mobile web design these days isn't even the bloated ads – it's the pages where there's nowhere that's safe to touch to scroll because every single pixel is a clickable hotspot that whisks you away to somewhere else, including the text. I truly believe the owners of websites that do this should die.

[meanya]

I saw a post before about how hackers are now feeding Google false phone numbers for major companies so that the AI Overview will suggest scam phone numbers, but in case you haven't heard,

PLEASE don't call ANY phone number recommended by AI Overview

unless you can follow a link back to the OFFICIAL website and verify that that number comes from the OFFICIAL domain.

My friend just got scammed by calling a phone number that was SUPPOSED to be a number for Microsoft tech support according to the AI Overview

It was not, in fact, Microsoft. It was a scammer. Don't fall victim to these scams. Don't trust AI generated phone numbers ever.

[thisischeri]

instagram: cheri.png