#what is amazon web service

[yekokataa]

i keep seeing all these calls to leave goodreads because it's owned by amazon (spoiler alert, it's been that way for a decade). if you want to hurt amazon's bottom line, you need to stop buying products from amazon.com. whole foods, too, if you shop there. changing your consumerist habits is much harder than switching social media sites of course, but you moving to storygraph is barely going to register as a blip in their metrics.

[empresa-journal]

Does Amazon Web Services (AWS) make Solana (SOL) the Most Valuable Blockchain?

Interestingly, Amazon Web Services (AWS) could make Solana (SOL), the world’s most valuable blockchain. Developers can deploy Solana nodes as a code app in the AWS Blockchain Node Runners repository. They claim developers can deploy Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) nodes with minimal effort and a low cost. Hence, developers can connect AWS decentralized apps (dApps) to Solana’s blockchain.…

[codeonedigest]

Compare CloudTrail Vs CloudWatch Services in AWS

Full Video Link https://youtube.com/shorts/izMnQPCZeQk Check out CodeOneDigest's latest #video tutorial on #AWS CloudTrail vs CloudWatch! Learn about AWS CloudTrail & CloudWatch and stay ahead of the technology curve. #CodeOneDigest #YouTube #cloud

CloudTrail enables auditing, security monitoring, and operational troubleshooting by tracking user activity and API usage. CloudTrail logs, monitors, and retains account activity related to user actions across AWS infrastructure, giving you control over storage, analysis, and remediation actions. CloudTrail is active in your AWS account when you create it and doesn’t require any manual setup.…

[contemplatingoutlander]

It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president

Isn’t this what a newspaper is supposed to do?

I love that The Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri took it upon herself to endorse Harris for her paper after Bezos pulled the plug on the editorial board doing so. This is a gift🎁link, so feel free to read the entire article. Below are some excerpts:

The Washington Post is not bothering to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin and the founder and executive chairman of Amazon and Amazon Web Services, also owns The Post.) We as a newspaper suddenly remembered, less than two weeks before the election, that we had a robust tradition 50 years ago of not telling anyone what to do with their vote for president. It is time we got back to those “roots,” I’m told! Roots are important, of course. As recently as the 1970s, The Post did not endorse a candidate for president. As recently as centuries ago, there was no Post and the country had a king! [...] But if I were the paper, I would be a little embarrassed that it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to make our presidential endorsement. I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them. Let me tell you something. I am having a baby (It’s a boy!), and he is expected on Jan. 6, 2025 (It’s a … Proud Boy?). This is either slightly funny or not at all funny.  [...] Well, that world [the baby will be born into] will look very different, depending on the outcome of November’s election, and I care which world my kid gets born into. I also live here myself. And I happen to care about the people who are already here, in this world. Come to think of it, I have a lot of reasons for caring how the election goes. I think it should be obvious that this is not an election for sitting out. The case for Donald Trump is “I erroneously think the economy used to be better? I know that he has made many ominous-sounding threats about mass deportations, going after his political enemies, shutting down the speech of those who disagree with him (especially media outlets), and that he wants to make things worse for almost every category of person — people with wombs, immigrants, transgender people, journalists, protesters, people of color — but … maybe he’ll forget.” “But maybe he’ll forget” is not enough to hang a country on! [...] I’m just a humor columnist. I only know what’s happening because our actual journalists are out there reporting, knowing that their editors have their backs, that there’s no one too powerful to report on, that we would never pull a punch out of fear. That’s what our readers deserve and expect: that we are saying what we really think, reporting what we really see; that if we think Trump should not return to the White House and Harris would make a fine president, we’re going to be able to say so. That’s why I, the humor columnist, am endorsing Kamala Harris by myself! [color/ emphasis added]

How far The Washington Post has fallen into the "darkness" it used to work so hard to ward off to help keep our democracy alive.

[edited]

[mareastrorum]

These are just initial thoughts, and perhaps I’ll learn something that changes my mind on it, but I’m glad to see Critical Role making the leap to their own subscription service with Beacon.

As a lead in: I’m an attorney that has some background in IP law, though it isn’t what I practice currently. I’ve kept in contact with several active practitioners, particularly those that represent small-time creators either in their own independent practice or via nonprofits. I do not have an extensive Rolodex of IP peers, nor do I spend the money to keep up on IP CLEs. I’m just someone who used to know a ton because I did heavy research and work in that space, and that hasn’t been the case for years.

So here’s my thoughts a bit on the IP angle:

The primary reason I’m happy to see this leap is that CR is taking active steps to keep control over its IP. It’s a boring thing to most people, but when I start paying attention to a specific creator (authors, directors, companies, etc.), I tend to be very attentive to how they use their IP. How freely do they license their marks to partner with other creators to make merch? How often do they allow others to make adaptations or derivatives of their copyrights? What is the quality of those products? What is the supply chain like? Are those third parties objectionable in some way? Were the other parties faithful to the original works or marks? Was this a cash grab or an earnest effort to make something worth the price tag?

Honestly, I like how CR run their business. They have a history of tapping fans and fellow small businesses when making new merch or spinoffs. They embrace the culture of fan-made derivative works, both by featuring fanart/cosplay and by sharing their success. Do you know how rare it is for a company to pay fan artists for their already-made and freely posted work and then sell books of it? Let me be clear: CR bought a limited license from each artist so they could print and sell each work in a physical book, then paid the cost of publishing that book with no guarantee that CR would make that money back, let alone profit. I have a copy of the collector’s edition art books: they’re actually very well made and the packaging definitely cost a pretty penny. That’s not a rainmaker idea, that’s genuinely risking financial loss to sell something people could access for free if they wanted to.

The art books aren’t a one-off either. Darrington Press is CR’s separate LLC for tabletop games. (It’s good business practice to split off companies that handle products in different industries.) CR has also made shows based on those games, and the Candela Obscura series has quite a dedicated audience. Everything about Candela belongs to them: the game itself, the rule book, all the art in the book, the web series based on the game, and merch. It’s so successful that they invested in scheduling a live show for Candela later this month. That’s HUGE.

Contrast that with the distribution of Campaign 1 and the first 19 episodes of Campaign 2. CR cannot host those videos themselves; Geek & Sundry still exists and still holds what I presume to be distribution rights (but I don’t have the contract to review). So G&S gets to host those videos on YouTube and reaps the advertising. I can’t speak to whatever share CR gets from that, but considering that CR is locked out of hosting their own copies of those videos, I doubt it’s much, if any, revenue. (If you’re wondering why CR just didn’t buy those rights back, I ask: what incentive does G&S have to sell something that’s making them money for no cost?)

Knowing that background about G&S, I was wary of CR choosing Amazon to host and distribute The Legend of Vox Machina. Originally, TLOVM was not the plan; CR had a kickstarter for an animated special based on C1. It was only because they blew past the goal that CR was able to make an entire season. The reasonable assumption is that choosing Amazon had to have secured CR additional funding for future seasons of the show, which seems evident from how quickly season 2 was announced, Mighty Nein Animated is also going to be a thing, and that season 3 of TLVOM is scheduled for fall 2024. CR had the option of just doing 1 season and keeping it purely in their control, but going with Amazon meant they could animate more of their works. Animation is expensive. I cannot stress enough how doubtful I am that CR would have been able to afford this many episodes and both campaigns if they had not gone this route. As wary as I was in the start, it paid off, and it’s going well—so far. Hopefully CR doesn’t regret that decision if Amazon tries something sleazy. But, as before, we don’t have the contracts and can’t know how secure CR’s position is if any dispute came up.

CR also partnered with Dark Horse Comics to make Vox Machina comics and Might Nein Origins comics. What’s especially surprising is that each of the cast had a hand in writing the MNO comics for their characters, with Matt listed for multiple. That isn’t very common with comic adaptations. Often times, IP owners let comic companies go ham with minimal oversight. Being listed as one of the authors comes with IP rights that have to be negotiated. That means that Dark Horse had to talk with CR about whether that warrants more or less revenue going to which party in exchange for that—or, alternatively, whether the comic gets made at all. That’s a ballsy move. You think people can just demand to write the comics that a publishing company is going to pay to print? Pffft. CR wanted some creative control, and that is a big ask. However, Dark Horse still has the distribution rights, both digitally and for physical copies. You couldn’t buy the comics from CR until they came out with the library edition, a book bound compilation of 4/8 comics. But the publisher is still Dark Horse; CR is just allowed to sell the book directly from their own site as well.

Contrast that with the novels about CR characters. CR partnered with Penguin Random House to publish novels about Vex and Vax (Kith & Kin), Lucien (The Nine Eyes of Lucien), and Laudna (What Doesn’t Break). Liam and Laura were vocal about having some say in K&K, whereas Madeline Roux said in an interview that she had full control over TNEOL. Both of those novels were narrated with CR voices, but narrating a book doesn’t come with IP rights, it just brings in a paycheck. There’s a lot less IP control in there compared to the comics, but this isn’t abnormal for book publishing. To be blunt, I doubt PRH would have agreed to publish the novels if anyone from CR had been a co-author or had heavy oversight over the author or the editing. I don’t think PRH even considered that as an option. Either an author that has already managed to sell X number of copies or nothing. Creative control over a book a huge ask, asks come with reduced revenue, and switching to books from a web series is already a leap. The fact that Laura and Liam had any say is surprising, really.

That was a long meandering tour of what we’ve seen CR do with its IP. The reason I bring up each of these things is that navigating the way to protect an IP in this space is rife with challenges. Different types of IP warrant different strategies because of the cost involved in creating each medium and the challenges placed by industries that have already sprung up around them. Any time that a third party is tapped to create an IP, it’s usually because they already have the funds and resources to create the work, and CR has to negotiate for revenue, creative control, distribution, and—the big one—who gets to be the owner. These are not easy, quick, or fun conversations, and CR is always going to be the smaller company at the table.

Knowing that, I’m not surprised or worried that CR is creating its own independent subscription service with Beacon. It tells me that they’re being careful with their IP whenever they can. A subscription service means they don’t have to trade away distribution rights or give up ad revenue to a third party. They’re in this for a long term investment, and that requires solid income not tied to third parties that can definitely outspend them in litigation in the event of a dispute. A subscription for bonus content is one of many parts in a diverse revenue stream.

(All that said, this isn’t meant to criticize creators that cant afford to do this type of thing. It took 9 years for CR to get to the point where Beacon is financially feasible and a desirable business decision. They have enough ongoing, popular content to warrant paying for a subscription, and they’ve built sufficient trust with their audience that more will be added. That takes time and an awful lot of money.)

As a final note, I take this step as a sign that CR definitely intends to stick around. This isn’t a move people make when they plan on ending the business after the current campaign. I’m glad to see CR is taking steps to secure their foundation and keep making new content.

I’m sure people will chime in on other issues (cost, content exclusivity, etc.), but I hope my perspective gives an idea of why this sort of thing is good for business generally and why it would be good for CR.

[thatstormygeek]

boycott target. boycott amazon. boycott walmart.

Ah. So people in the rural midwest are just supposed to...what? Believe it or not, there are things you cannot buy at Family Dollar or a gas station.

"we're not talking about you! only people who can!"

Right. But you're never talking about these folks. Or maybe you're just assuming that nobody in the rural midwest would be progressive enough to want to participate? You tell yourself you know that there are no truly "red" or "blue" states, but when you look at a map of the US, you go ahead and write off the entire bible belt.

I live in a suburban town, so my options aren't as limited as that and we're still struggling to find another location to get the things that we can't buy at Aldi.

"you don't need anything at target. go to a museum." cool. well, there isn't a museum in my town and there is a target, so one is much more accessible than the other. But mainly I don't know that going to a museum is going to help me find my vitamins and paper products. "I can buy my leggings elsewhere." cool. how about toothpaste and skincare products?

"instead of shopping on amazon, go to the store's website and order from there!" sure, that does avoid giving Amazon their cut, so it's definitely worth doing. but the store's website is likely to run on AWS (Amazon Web Services), so you're still shopping on Amazon. Isn't late stage capitalism fun?

I dunno. We could blame the media and their endless "working class Trump voter" stories for encouraging people to not give a shit about red staters. But I've lived in Kansas or Missouri for the vast majority of my 4 dozen years and it's always been this way. Back in the 80s and 90s, we'd run into people who were surprised we had electricity and indoor plumbing in Kansas. We're called "flyover space" for fuck's sake.

The funny part is that I am 100% in favor of boycotting Walmart and Amazon and Target (and more - y'all should see my personal blacklist, f'real). Hell, I've been avoiding Walmart as much as possible since I worked there back in the day. I just wish some of you would crawl out of your own asses at some point instead of living life high on your own farts.

[a-d-nox]

web of wyrd: the career number

paid reading options: astrology menu & cartomancy menu

enjoy my work? help me continue creating by tipping on ko-fi or paypal. your support keeps the magic alive!

the number we are focusing on today is based on the SACRAL PHYSICS NUMBER AND THE FLOW NUMBER (ex: my career number is 7: 8 + 17 = 25 -> 2 + 5 = 7 (recall that numbers must be summed a second time if they total 23 (i.e. 2 + 3 = 5) and above)). for some reason this is a calculation error in my astro-calc chart - my monetary number and relationship numbers are swapped (don't be afraid to question your numbers and check the math of websites).

but what does this number mean?

this number represents your career and monetary situation in this lifetime. that being said, this number can give you insight into what you can do for a career long-term, what you are like at work (your strengths and weaknesses in the workplace), and your monetary mindset.

so let's talk about some examples:

7 - the chariot

click here for the card description of the chariot found in a prior wyrd web post.

for unblocked 7s it is important to maintain focus, have clear intentions, and a plan in their line of work. they often work from the bottom up - they start in an entry level position then come into power (in some theories, the charioteer was both the page of swords and the page of wands before they came into power in the major arcana). often it is their careful planning and plotting that gains them their success.

blocked 7s often lack confidence at work and fear being talked down to / judged for their actions. they often lack focus and direction, which causes them financial stress. they are in need of careful planning and reflection to get out of their burdensome situations. they should try to be less impulsive and more intentional at work and when searching for jobs in order for them to find what works for them.

careers for the charioteer are chauffeur, delivery driving (UPS, amazon delivery, mail, etc), military services, pilot, police men, emergency services (firefighting, EMT, etc), security guard, equestrian, chemist/pharmacist, chef/cook/baker/nutritionist, political diplomat, marine biology, phlebotomist, ship captain, babysitter/nanny, hotel manager, housekeeper, fisherman, fertility specialist, farmer, land baron/baroness, pottery maker, plumber, real estate agent, and other related fields.

14 - temperance

rider-white's temperance (symbolic of sagittarius) depicts an angel facing the view with their eyes shut. their purple-y/red wings emphasizes their passion for the mystical as well as harmony. their golden curls are haloed showing that the angel is an enlightened being. they stand in a white (innocence) robe with one foot on land and the other in water - which shows they are connected to the emotional and the physical world. water seamlessly flows between the cups, meaning to show the flow of energy in life forces. a sun (alludes to the sun card) rises in the distance and illuminates a path for the angel to take. the irises to their [the angel's] right show that they have the wisdom needed to take on whatever gets in their way on this journey.

unblocked 14s seek help from those around them so that they can reach their monetary and career goals. they look for signs as to what they should act upon in their career and as to what they should do for their long-term career. they are flexible at work and are often very even-keeled. they are patient at work and when it comes to making money.

blocked 14s often try very hard at work and to make a lot of money - they can be too hard on themselves and their co-workers. they might struggle with relaxing - they have a lot of monetary stress. they have to realize that being overworked does not mean they are working efficiently/effectively. look at you schedule / your role and try to find ways to slow down so that you can realign with your values and goals.

careers for the angelic temperance person are medical careers (doctor, nurse, etc), pharmacist, scientist, librarian, life insurance agent, marketing/advertisement, air steward/stewardess, attorney, banker, religious leader, teacher, philanthropist, philosopher, publisher, podcaster, radio show host/hostess, writer, and other related fields.

18 - the moon

rider-white's the moon (symbolic of pisces) depicts one wild dog/coyote and one tame dog (the duality of human nature) barking at the moon or rather an eclipse. behind and between the two dogs is a lobster - the lobster is a bottom feeder of sorts, thus could represent the shadow self. the lobster emerges from the water to walk a moonlight/guided path through the mountains similar to how the hermit once walked the mountains - thus alluding to the lobster doing self-discovery / the quartet doing shadow work. first the lobster must walk between the rebuilt towers - likely face personal change.

unblocked 18s embrace their darker selves when in the workplace - they are okay with failing and having weaknesses. they see it as room made to grow/evolve. while they know how to be civil, they also know when to be impulsive and aggressive to get things done. they are open to others ideas - they are open to learning what they perviously didn't know before. they are ambitious and want to go outside the scope of what they are already know. they don't fall for things that sound too good to be true in their financial realm. they are willing to confront why they maybe the ones in their own way of gaining more money, getting a raise, etc.

blocked 18s often refuse to acknowledge that they are in a career that is making them unhappy or is not compatible with their monetary lifestyle. they might be the type to ignore their debts for awhile or to the point where it gets bad and they struggle to catch up / recover. they are also prone to falling for "get rich quick" schemes; they also might struggle with gambling - the might not know how to walk away when they have made money back / are gaining. they hate failing at things or having weaknesses in the workplace. they are prone to staying in a job that is comfortable for them without growing or accepting promotions. don't be afraid to break free.

careers for the moon are night club owner/manager, psychic, doggie daycare center management, dog kennel owner, dog breeder, night club performer, professional water sport athlete, alcohol vender, sommelier, marine biology, art therapist, artist, bartender, mental health professional, chemical engineer, detective, drug manufacturer, life guard, prison guard, private investigator, relief worker, writer, and other related fields.

have ideas for new content? please use my “suggest a post topic” button!

return to nox's guide to metaphysics

return to the masterlist of the web of wyrd

© a-d-nox 2023 all rights reserved

[mariacallous]

In March 2007, Google’s then senior executive in charge of acquisitions, David Drummond, emailed the company’s board of directors a case for buying DoubleClick. It was an obscure software developer that helped websites sell ads. But it had about 60 percent market share and could accelerate Google’s growth while keeping rivals at bay. A “Microsoft-owned DoubleClick represents a major competitive threat,” court papers show Drummond writing.

Three weeks later, on Friday the 13th, Google announced the acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. The US Department of Justice and 17 states including California and Colorado now allege that the day marked the beginning of Google’s unchecked dominance in online ads—and all the trouble that comes with it.

The government contends that controlling DoubleClick enabled Google to corner websites into doing business with its other services. That has resulted in Google allegedly monopolizing three big links of a vital digital advertising supply chain, which funnels over $12 billion in annual revenue to websites and apps in the US alone.

It’s a big amount. But a government expert estimates in court filings that if Google were not allegedly destroying its competition illegally, those publishers would be receiving up to an additional hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Starved of that potential funding, “publishers are pushed to put more ads on their websites, to put more content behind costly paywalls, or to cease business altogether,” the government alleges. It all adds up to a subpar experience on the web for consumers, Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser says.

“Google is able to extract hiked-up costs, and those are passed on to consumers,” he alleges. “The overall outcome we want is for consumers to have more access to content supported by advertising revenue and for people who are seeking advertising not to have to pay inflated costs.”

Google disputes the accusations.

Starting today, both sides’ arguments will be put to the test in what’s expected to be a weekslong trial before US district judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia. The government wants her to find that Google has violated federal antitrust law and then issue orders that restore competition. In a best-case scenario, according to several Google critics and experts in online ads who spoke with WIRED, internet users could find themselves more pleasantly informed and entertained.

It could take years for the ad market to shake out, says Adam Heimlich, a longtime digital ad executive who’s extensively researched Google. But over time, fresh competition could lower supply chain fees and increase innovation. That would drive “better monetization of websites and better quality of websites,” says Heimlich, who now runs AI software developer Chalice Custom Algorithms.

Tim Vanderhook, CEO of ad-buying software developer Viant Technology, which both competes and partners with Google, believes that consumers would encounter a greater variety of ads, fewer creepy ads, and pages less cluttered with ads. “A substantially improved browsing experience,” he says.

Of course, all depends on the outcome of the case. Over the past year, Google lost its two other antitrust trials—concerning illegal search and mobile app store monopolies. Though the verdicts are under appeal, they’ve made the company’s critics optimistic about the ad tech trial.

Google argues that it faces fierce competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It further contends that customers benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts, and features that the government is challenging. “Google has designed a set of products that work efficiently with each other and attract a valuable customer base,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.

For years, Google publicly has maintained that its ad tech projects wouldn’t harm clients or competition. “We will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will fuel the creation of even more rich and diverse content on the internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 to US senators concerned about the DoubleClick deal’s impact on competition and privacy. US antitrust regulators at the time cleared the purchase. But at least one of them, in hindsight, has said he should have blocked it.

Deep Control

The Justice Department alleges that acquiring DoubleClick gave Google “a pool of captive publishers that now had fewer alternatives and faced substantial switching costs associated with changing to another publisher ad server.” The global market share of Google’s tool for publishers is now 91 percent, according to court papers. The company holds similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (around 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court filings say.

Google’s dominance, the government argues, has “impaired the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the ad tech tools they would prefer to use and diminished the number and quality of viable options available to them.”

The government alleges that Google staff spoke internally about how they have been earning an unfair portion of what advertisers spend on advertising, to the tune of over a third of every $1 spent in some cases.

Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be broken up into multiple independent companies, so each of its advertising services competes on its own merits without the benefit of one pumping up another. The rivals also support rules that would bar Google from preferencing its own services. “What all in the industry are looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.

If Google ad tech alternatives win more business, not everyone is so sure that the users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may shift, but the experience for investors—or in this case, internet surfers—doesn’t.

Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, users’ experiences would get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-block developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products also may cost more because companies need to not only hire additional help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an ad executive turned Syracuse University associate professor, told reporters in a recent call arranged by a Google-funded advocacy group.

But Dina Srinivasan, a former ad executive who as an antitrust scholar wrote a Stanford Technology Law Review paper on Google’s dominance, says advertisers would end up paying lower fees, and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would mark an end to the spell Google allegedly cast with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states, and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Mad again, but to me, the KU boycott is another great! example of how performative activism is really just a way to make yourself feel good so that you don't have to confront how scary (and difficult) the actual challenges we're facing are.

Book sales are not what's giving Amazon its power. Fuck, general retail sales aren't either.

Amazon Web Services dominate the WS market, and that is, last I checked, Amazon's most profitable division. And it's not easy to confront THAT, because you can't just boycott AWS when its past and current clients have included:

The Department of Defense

NASA

the US Navy

MI6

the CIA

many many many many many financial firms across the globe

That kind of shit... scares me! It is scary! I don't know how to fight that off the top of my head. You know what seems a lot easier? Canceling a subscription and patting myself on the back, even though that does effectively nothing to Amazon and everything to people who are literally just trying to make it through this.

And again! There is no problem with being unable to square up morally with Kindle Unlimited, and fuck, if we're tightening our belts, it definitely seems like a quick thing to cut. But when you put that out there as like... the L authors should be okay with taking because it's part of your mission to save the world?

Like. Be serious here.

[mltshphq]

BRB... just upgrading Python

CW: nerdy, technical details.

Originally, MLTSHP (well, MLKSHK back then) was developed for Python 2. That was fine for 2010, but 15 years later, and Python 2 is now pretty ancient and unsupported. January 1st, 2020 was the official sunset for Python 2, and 5 years later, we’re still running things with it. It’s served us well, but we have to transition to Python 3.

Well, I bit the bullet and started working on that in earnest in 2023. The end of that work resulted in a working version of MLTSHP on Python 3. So, just ship it, right? Well, the upgrade process basically required upgrading all Python dependencies as well. And some (flyingcow, torndb, in particular) were never really official, public packages, so those had to be adopted into MLTSHP and upgraded as well. With all those changes, it required some special handling. Namely, setting up an additional web server that could be tested against the production database (unit tests can only go so far).

Here’s what that change comprised: 148 files changed, 1923 insertions, 1725 deletions. Most of those changes were part of the first commit for this branch, made on July 9, 2023 (118 files changed).

But by the end of that July, I took a break from this task - I could tell it wasn’t something I could tackle in my spare time at that time.

Time passes…

Fast forward to late 2024, and I take some time to revisit the Python 3 release work. Making a production web server for the new Python 3 instance was another big update, since I wanted the Docker container OS to be on the latest LTS edition of Ubuntu. For 2023, that was 20.04, but in 2025, it’s 24.04. I also wanted others to be able to test the server, which means the CDN layer would have to be updated to direct traffic to the test server (without affecting general traffic); I went with a client-side cookie that could target the Python 3 canary instance.

In addition to these upgrades, there were others to consider — MySQL, for one. We’ve been running MySQL 5, but version 9 is out. We settled on version 8 for now, but could also upgrade to 8.4… 8.0 is just the version you get for Ubuntu 24.04. RabbitMQ was another server component that was getting behind (3.5.7), so upgrading it to 3.12.1 (latest version for Ubuntu 24.04) seemed proper.

One more thing - our datacenter. We’ve been using Linode’s Fremont region since 2017. It’s been fine, but there are some emerging Linode features that I’ve been wanting. VPC support, for one. And object storage (basically the same as Amazon’s S3, but local, so no egress cost to-from Linode servers). Both were unavailable to Fremont, so I decided to go with their Chicago region for the upgrade.

Now we’re talking… this is now not just a “push a button” release, but a full-fleged, build everything up and tear everything down kind of release that might actually have some downtime (while trying to keep it short)!

I built a release plan document and worked through it. The key to the smooth upgrade I want was to make the cutover as seamless as possible. Picture it: once everything is set up for the new service in Chicago - new database host, new web servers and all, what do we need to do to make the switch almost instant? It’s Fastly, our CDN service.

All traffic to our service runs through Fastly. A request to the site comes in, Fastly routes it to the appropriate host, which in turns speaks to the appropriate database. So, to transition from one datacenter to the other, we need to basically change the hosts Fastly speaks to. Those hosts will already be set to talk to the new database. But that’s a key wrinkle - the new database…

The new database needs the data from the old database. And to make for a seamless transition, it needs to be up to the second in step with the old database. To do that, we have take a copy of the production data and get it up and running on the new database. Then, we need to have some process that will copy any new data to it since the last sync. This sounded a lot like replication to me, but the more I looked at doing it that way, I wasn’t confident I could set that up without bringing the production server down. That’s because any replica needs to start in a synchronized state. You can’t really achieve that with a live database. So, instead, I created my own sync process that would copy new data on a periodic basis as it came in.

Beyond this, we need a proper replication going in the new datacenter. In case the database server goes away unexpectedly, a replica of it allows for faster recovery and some peace of mind. Logical backups can be made from the replica and stored in Linode’s object storage if something really disastrous happens (like tables getting deleted by some intruder or a bad data migration).

I wanted better monitoring, too. We’ve been using Linode’s Longview service and that’s okay and free, but it doesn’t act on anything that might be going wrong. I decided to license M/Monit for this. M/Monit is so lightweight and nice, along with Monit running on each server to keep track of each service needed to operate stuff. Monit can be given instructions on how to self-heal certain things, but also provides alerts if something needs manual attention.

And finally, Linode’s Chicago region supports a proper VPC setup, which allows for all the connectivity between our servers to be totally private to their own subnet. It also means that I was able to set up an additional small Linode instance to serve as a bastion host - a server that can be used for a secure connection to reach the other servers on the private subnet. This is a lot more secure than before… we’ve never had a breach (at least, not to my knowledge), and this makes that even less likely going forward. Remote access via SSH is now unavailable without using the bastion server, so we don’t have to expose our servers to potential future ssh vulnerabilities.

So, to summarize: the MLTSHP Python 3 upgrade grew from a code release to a full stack upgrade, involving touching just about every layer of the backend of MLTSHP.

Here’s a before / after picture of some of the bigger software updates applied (apologies for using images for these tables, but Tumblr doesn’t do tables):

And a summary of infrastructure updates:

I’m pretty happy with how this has turned out. And I learned a lot. I’m a full-stack developer, so I’m familiar with a lot of devops concepts, but actually doing that role is newish to me. I got to learn how to set up a proper secure subnet for our set of hosts, making them more secure than before. I learned more about Fastly configuration, about WireGuard, about MySQL replication, and about deploying a large update to a live site with little to no downtime. A lot of that is due to meticulous release planning and careful execution. The secret for that is to think through each and every step - no matter how small. Document it, and consider the side effects of each. And with each step that could affect the public service, consider the rollback process, just in case it’s needed.

At this time, the server migration is complete and things are running smoothly. Hopefully we won’t need to do everything at once again, but we have a recipe if it comes to that.

[nykloss]

I'm seeing so much actively harmful misinfo regarding boycotts.

If you are spreading information on a boycott PLEASE focus on just what the BDS is asking you to boycott. In my honest opinion even THAT is a lot to keep track of, but boycotts work better the more laser-focused they are.

This is the closest thing to an official boycott being asked:

I've seen a lot of posts both here and elsewhere asking people to boycott not just everything on that list, but also Walmart, Amazon, Google, PespsiCo, Coke, Nestle, 4 dozen other big name conglomerates, and a big list of at least 50+ individual celebrities/CEOs/actors. That is not boycotting.

If YOU want to personally abstain from every Israeli-supporting-prduct/service you can, please do it!!!! Even before now, I've personally always abstain from chick-fil-a and 🏴‍☠️ most of my media–but that isn't an organized boycott. In fact, spreading info that every single one of those companies/individuals are "part of the boycott" is blatant misinformation and actually harms the boycott.

Giant lists that include dozens to hundreds of giant conglomerates and individuals that are hard to keep track of are meant to overwhelm individuals and dissuade them from boycotting at best, and are actively impossible to personally enforce at worst. If you are reading this post, chances are you are breaking one of the many unofficial "boycotts" being asked of you.

For example, following every ""boycott"" being asked of you 100% means: stopping use of any Google products (quitting a job that uses Google workspace, abandoning your Android phone, switching to Firefox or Safari web browser, not using Gmail, not using YouTube), stop using most/all social media, making entirely home cooked meals (every restaurant, even small ones, support Pepsi/coke), only being allowed to buy ingredients for those home cooked meals from physical, local small businesses (which may be wiped out in your area/take more gas to drive to/cost more money to buy from), and cross-checking every single item you buy with a giant list (that I hope you printed out, because chances are you can't use your phone/the internet without sending precious ad profit to Google!).

Telling someone to "do that much or do nothing" is going to result in the vast, vast majority of people doing nothing. Think about the every day people in your life–parents, coworkers, community members. Are they going to do that much? If the answer is no, then a boycott is ineffective. (Plus, doing a lot of that stops you from staying informed on the situation, which is top priority right now!)

Stick to spreading the image at the top of this post. The more people boycotting a small handful easy-to-remember companies, the more effective a boycott will be. A small amount of companies will lose a lot of money, and will have to re-evaluate their stance to give money to Israel–the point of a boycott. But, if everyone only ends up boycotting a handful of completely different companies depending on what list they were given online, all of those companies only lose a little money and no impact is made at all.

TLDR: Feel free to personally abstain from whatever products/services you want, but spreading that they are part of the boycott if they AREN'T is harmful!

[comeonamericawakeup]

To ensure its independence, Jeff Bezos should "donate The Washington Post to a public charity," said Steven Waldman. Until his recent, last-minute decision to kill the newspaper's endorsement of Kamala Harris, the Amazon mogul was an admirable newspaper owner who "kept his opinions to himself" while letting editors make the journalism decisions.

Now, though, he is "simply too financially compromised" to maintain the Post's credibility. Amazon and his spaceflight company, Blue Origin, are deeply dependent on federal regulation and dollars--which makes Bezos vulnerable to political punishment for what his newspaper publishes. When he was president, Donald Trump retaliated against Bezos by ordering the Pentagon to deny Amazon Web Services a $10 billion contract. To protect his reputation and that of the Post, Bezos should now set up a foundation with an independent board to run the paper, and add a $100 million donation to get the new arrangement rolling. The owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times have overseen similar transitions. Bezos would go from embattled corporate censor to an Andrew Carnegie-like national benefactor-and ensure the survival of "one of the most important news outlets in America.”

THE WEEK November 15, 2024

[beardedmrbean]

March 12 (UPI) -- A coalition of the world's biggest corporate energy users signed a pledge Wednesday in Houston to support a tripling of nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

Founding signatories include tech giants Google, Amazon and Meta as well as Occidental, Dow, Allseas and OSGE.

The World Nuclear Association brought the companies together to make the pledge to support the nuclear energy goal.

It marks the first time companies outside the nuclear sector have come together across industries to push for concerted, robust nuclear power expansion to meet future global energy demand.

The pledge initiative was led by Sama Bilbao y Leon, Director General of the World Nuclear Association.

"The unprecedented support announced today by some of the world's most influential companies to at least triple global nuclear capacity by 2050 sends a clear signal to accelerate policy, finance and regulatory changes that enable the rapid expansion of nuclear power," he said.

"Google will continue to work alongside our partners to accelerate the commercialization of advanced nuclear technologies that can provide the around-the-clock clean energy necessary to meet growing electricity demand around the world," Google's Lucia Tian said.

Anti-nuclear power organizations like environmental activist group Greenpeace oppose the expansion of nuclear power, advocating sustainable solar and wind power instead.

"Nuclear reactors are inherently unsafe. Meltdowns like the ones in Fukushima or Chernobyl released enormous amounts of radiation into the surrounding communities, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate. Many of them may never come back. If the industry's current track record is any indication, we can expect a major meltdown about once per decade," Greenpeace said in a statement.

Greenpeace asserted that nuclear plants are not only more dangerous but are more expensive and take longer to build when what the world needs are fast, affordable and environmentally sustainable solutions.

"As global economies expand, the need for a reliable, clean, and resilient energy supply is paramount. Nuclear energy, with its ability to provide continuous power, can help meet this rising demand," Meta's Urvi Parekh said.

Amazon Web Services said in October it will invest $500 million in small nuclear reactors to generate electricity needed for expanding tech services, including artificial intelligence. It's part of Amazon's zero-carbon emissions effort.

"Accelerating nuclear energy development will be critical to strengthening our nation's security, meeting future energy demands, and addressing climate change. Amazon supports the World Nuclear Association's pledge, and is proud to have invested more than $1 billion over the last year in nuclear energy projects and technologies, which is part of our broader Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040," AWS Head of Americas Energy and Water Brandon Oyer said.

"It will be a lot harder to address environmental concerns while facilitating economic development in the world without the reliable, 24/7 base load power nuclear energy provides," Urenco Chief Commercial Officer Laurent Odeh said in a statement. "This support from large energy users is another sign for governments to enable new nuclear projects so we can accelerate construction and meet the energy needs of both industry and the public."

[darkmaga-returns]

by Murtaza Hussain

We have a commitment to ensuring that our journalism is not locked behind a paywall. But the only way we can sustain this is through the voluntary support of our community of readers. If you are a free subscriber and you support our work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or gifting one to a friend or family member. You can also make a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation to support our work. If you do not have the means to support our work financially, you can do your part by sharing our work on social media and by forwarding this email to your network of contacts. We know a lot of people have strong opinions about X/Twitter, but it is where many Palestinians are posting updates on the genocide in Gaza. If you use that site, make sure to check out our feed, which we run as a regularly updated news service. We are also on Instagram. Paid subscribers also have access to our internal Discord Server

—Drop Site News

In mid-March, Google announced that it was paying the staggering sum of $32 billion for the acquisition of the Israeli cloud-computing security company Wiz. The acquisition, pending regulatory approval, will be the largest ever of an Israeli firm.

“Organizations of all sizes—from start-ups and large enterprises to governments and public sector organizations—can use Wiz to protect everything they build and run in the cloud,” Google said in a statement announcing the acquisition. The statement added that Wiz would join Google Cloud, but that the Tel Aviv-based company’s security services would still be available across other cloud platforms used by major firms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

What was left unsaid in Google’s announcement, however, were the personal backgrounds of its four founders. The co-founders of Wiz—Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik—are all veterans of Unit 8200, the signals intelligence division of the Israeli military, which is playing a key role in helping to carry out Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

[theplushfrog]

As yet another webcomic I read slowly disappears from the web, I remind people that if you like a piece of media... get a physical copy, have a digital backup, anything, just don't let precious things drift into the forgotten.

This includes when streaming services decide to randomly cancel series. This includes when megacorps like amazon decide to delete your purchases from your devices.

But this also includes media like webcomics or fanfics, that can be removed from the web at any time for any reason. Sometimes the creator has a bad day and decides to delete all of their work. Sometimes they can no longer pay the hosting fees. Sometimes a megacorp sends them bullshit legal threats and they take down their work to avoid being sued despite doing nothing wrong. Sometimes the hosting service they were using claims ownership of their work and they have no recourse except to remove it from the public's view and hope one day they can post it again. Sometimes they just stop updating and you never know what happened to them but slowly their work disappears in bits and pieces like a castle falling into ruin.

This is your reminder to download your favorite fanfics. Buy prints or ebook PDFs of your favorite webcomics. Keep backup files of your favorite ebooks. Buy physical copies of books when possible. Buy the dvd or download the files of your favorite movies and series.

Don't let things precious to you fade and disappear.

[st-just]

“Seller services,” as Amazon refers to these and other sources of revenue, are a large and growing part of Amazon’s revenue — larger than Amazon Web Services and quite profitable. They also mean that letting a seller market off-brand products on your platform is often going to be more profitable than selling your own discount brands: Undercutting an independent seller’s small coffee-grinder business is, it turns out, a bad look and, in the big picture, maybe not worth the trouble. Sellers serve a lot of purposes for Amazon and joke among themselves about the free labor they provide. In exchange for access to the largest sales channel on the internet, they do a lot more than just pay Amazon its fees. They perform market research, obsessively investigating review data and marketplace trends to figure out what’s going to be popular on the platform next. (Recent red-hot third-party product types include miniature waffle-makers, reading lights that drape around your neck, and dog puzzles.) They handle customer service. They exert downward price pressure on one another, and they absorb a lot of risk (dozens of dog-puzzle sellers fail so that one may thrive). No matter what happens to them, whether their own businesses succeed or fail, Amazon makes money. This is a great deal for Amazon, and over the years it has become Amazon’s main deal — in 2021, the company estimated that activities on its marketplace created “more than 1.8 million U.S. jobs” and shared success stories from its hundreds of thousands of American sellers, some of whom had become millionaires. It was a slow and, in hindsight, astounding transformation in which the “everything store” substantially outsourced its store.

-John Hermann, The Junkification of Amazon