MystikIncarnate

As a nearly full time internet user since dialup, the web has changed a lot. Dynamic updates to websites is one of the nice things that's changed. You no longer need to mash F5 to keep up to date on anything. Wifi is way better, though for a while there it wasn't really a "thing".

The people have changed for sure. Originally it was a lot of techies and nerds, either by circumstance or due to the efforts needed to make the internet operate. Most people online had similar hobbies and interests, so most people online were similar, and their interests varied only a little on specific things.

Ads were basically a joke. Everyone had a website, usually on Geocities or something. You'd spend hours painstakingly putting together your website, then when you went to other people's websites, you'd skim over it and never look at it again.

No bots existed, if someone was talking to you, then you probably knew them somehow, or you were on a public forum/IRC. No YouTube, no Netflix, but mp3 file sharing was happening even before Napster.

There wasn't a lot to do at first, but after you found a few websites you liked, whether Slashdot or fark, 4chan or something else, you were hooked. People were brutally mean, especially for sites like hotornot. No social media or social networks, no corporations, just people mostly. Most sites selling stuff were scams. Early eBay was a trip.

This all morphed into a more congealed mass when social media became a thing and "high-speed internet" was more readily available. WiFi g ERA, back when it was always referred to by the standard, 802.11g. only laptops for a while then the iPhone dropped and it's been a steady downhill after that.

Now the internet is huge, everyone and their fridge is on social media. Ads are everywhere and worse than ever. Almost everything is trying to funnel you into one of a handful of categories that you don't fit into to sell you something. A few gems still exist, like the Foss community and stuff like Lemmy.

IDK, the old web sucked in some ways, but was awesome in other ways. Now there's just too much to keep up on, and unless you spend every waking moment consuming content, it's basically impossible to do. Some people have staked their entire career on basically aggregating memes and popular stuff, to give an overview to those who don't have the time to do it themselves.

Media streaming is pretty good, though, media companies keep trying to make it into the next cable TV bundle package, and keep raising the prices and enforcing rules that were not possible 20 years ago, and that sucks.

I'm don't think that this is better. It's certainly different, but not better. The way things are going well cause the internet to become a wasteland of AI bots and advertisements all run my corpos because everyone else will be unemployed and unable to find work because their job has been replaced by some AI or other technology that doesn't cost the corp as much as humans do. I'm sure minimum wage and salaries will be corrected to match inflation right after the majority of the workforce is laid off to be replaced with whatever technology does their job for them, which will create an elite class of super rich (moreso than they already are) who own the company either through shares or by being in an upper management kind of position, and a "middle" class of the people hired to maintain and fix the technology... There will be no lower class, just a massive pool of unemployed people, unable to work because all the jobs have gone to, what is essentially, bots.

My prediction is that when that happens, it will maintain a steady state until the vast majority is living on unemployment benefits, at which point the unemployment system will collapse because the money will run out for it, and either we'll go into a massive depression, which will set us back 50 years or more, or the entire system will collapse and either we will die off from all the pollution and destruction to the planet, or we'll have to move to something that's not capitalism to survive. I'm rooting for a star trek like economy, where your status is determined by reputation, and money no longer exists. Unlikely, but I still want it.

No idea when things will start to shift, but IMO, Amazon (the company) will make the first major move, since they burnout their workers so quickly (specifically in the warehouse and item delivery segment) that they're already seeing the effects of running out of people willing to work in their warehouses in some areas, and as a consequence of them being unwilling to pay appropriately for the work, and/or afford the workers enough latitude to handle the work without burning out, by either hiring more people to reduce the workload, or give people... IDK, breaks to use the bathroom.... They will very likely turn to robots to do the work instead. Once they get to that point, it's all downhill as other companies will follow suit.

Depends on the UPS. Many cheap offline UPS units don't. Anything line interactive or online will.

APC makes low end offline UPS units, which are cheap garbage.

They also make line interactive and online ups units, which are decidedly not completely garbage.

I pick up line interactive APC units from used locations like eBay, and go buy off label replacement batteries. Haven't had any problems with them so far.

To date, over the last ~10 years of running a homelab, I have used mainly SMT 1500 units, one was a rack mount. I've recently upgraded to an SMX2000. I've replaced batteries, but never a UPS, and never any server components due to power issues. I've run servers ranging from a Dell PE 2950, to a full c6100 chassis, plus several networking devices, including firewalls, routers and PoE switches. Not a single power related issue with any of them.

I'm also a remote guy and I see both sides as well.

The critical assumption you've made in this example is that a large majority will choose to be remote, so there won't be anyone in the office for the in-office people to work with.

I don't believe that's as much of a problem as you seem to imply it will be. The problem with the argument is that it's all assumption and opinion based. To my understanding, there hasn't been any reliable data produced on what percentage of the population wants in-office and/or remote to be permanent.

Relative to that, you'd also have to take into consideration for populated the company is, and how many people would actually be in the office, before making a determination whether it would be a ghost town or not.

Additionally to that, not everyone wants in-office work for the social aspects of it. Some people's home life is too chaotic so they prefer in-office, to separate themselves from the chaos of home, and focus on work. It's not a desire to connect that drives them to the office (pun might be intended here), but rather a lack of outside distraction from their home life while they try to "earn a living".

There's also the consideration of who is at home all the time. A homebody spouse, such as a stay-at-home mom/dad, may appreciate having space from their spouse to get things done, as they appreciate the space away. Having such separations can be very healthy and beneficial for relationships, which can also play a role IMO.

The fact is, not everyone is doing it as a social and/or company culture thing. The percentages of people who want it for company culture vs the people who want to for personal reasons, is also an unknown metric.

So in all, at present, we don't know how many overall people want remote/in-office work, and we don't know what their motivations for making that choice are. Without that data, it's difficult to make a value proposition about a decision.

Company owners don't really care about the metrics, since, during COVID and mandatory isolation, everyone was WFH, and productivity was overall increased. Whether that was because people now had 24/7 access to their work systems, or because people were overall happier about it in average, and were simply more productive due to that, is anyone's guess.

I appreciate the comment, but there's a lot more in play than simply socializing and company culture.

I'm not new in my career, when I started, my training was a couple of days on a full-day teams call with my direct manager, where he showed me the ropes of how we do what we do with the tools we have.

I think it was 3 or 4 days for me, until I had grasped enough of the basics to properly adapt to their way of doing things.

Within a week or so, I was pretty much up to speed. Like with any job, there's specifics that I learned as I went, but I got the broad strokes during the first week.

I imagine anyone that's green will need more mentorship that I did. I'm fairly senior in my position, so many times I'm on the other side of mentorship. It's been a while since I've been green.

My work does a weekly "meeting" that's specifically just a hangout for everyone in the company, just to hang out and talk about whatever.

It's like a social hour every week, so we can get to know the boss and eachother.

I've worked at the place less than a year and there's been two in person social events so far with everyone, and at least three with my team additional to that.

The culture of the company is clearly important for them, and I'm happy about it. They do what's needed, and losing an hour of productivity every week isn't as important as giving everyone the opportunity to connect with eachother.

I was informed by Google music, when they shut that down and forced everyone on Yt music, that all my uploaded data would be erased.

I downloaded it all and sorted it into my personal music on my PC.

May I ask what app you're using there? I don't see that on Yt music on Android.... At least, I can't find it if it's there. Maybe I'm blind.

I'll have to look into this. I appreciate the heads up. There's a few things I'd like to put on my library if I can.

That's fair. Take my comment more as a clarification of what you were saying.

Being single and childless or being in a relationship and childless, isn't in and of itself a problem with someone being selfish.

Personally, I choose not to have children because gestures at everything.... I don't even want to be here, why would I forcibly make someone else live with gestures at everything again all this.... The world is crazy. I don't want to subject my offspring to what's happening. I'd rather that they don't exist than to do that to someone who I love more than anything.

They don't and will never exist, and I love them enough to not subject them to the insanity that is our society.

Unless we get to star trek levels of prosperity before I'm beyond the age where I am able to create offspring, then I don't see me having any. I'm not even talking about space ships, and FTL/warp speed, I'm taking about the principles under which they lived in the federation. Unified, peaceful, and free.

Realistically, that won't happen in my lifetime, so I guess I'll never procreate.

And a note before I go. While I don't want to be here, I'm trying to be a net positive for the world while I'm here. I'm not depressed nor suicidal, I have no inclinations to harm myself or others. I'm here, I've dealt with that fact, I'm making the best of it. I just got engaged, and I'm looking forward to growing old with my partner, and peacing out after another 30-40 (maybe more?) years on this planet, hopefully making everything I touch just a little better as I go for those that will survive after me. My entire life is in the service of others....... and I'm not religious. Go figure.

Yt music for me because I needed more Google drive storage. I just couldn't get around it anymore and had to get more (long story explained elsewhere). Anyways.... The recommendations are generally trash but it's free and ad-free with my Google one thing, which I share with my family, so there's like four or five of us getting it for the cost of one subscription. It's one of the lowest tier subscriptions too.

I also know the Plex/radarr gambit, and it's been wild to say the least.

I swear that if there was a unified online video platform, the same way that music is distributed, where it doesn't matter if you're on Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime video, Netflix, Paramount+, whatever, you just get all the content regardless of platform and the platforms are affordable, then I'd turn all that shit off. It's not worth the headache.

Music companies are fighting with very little piracy as a result of their openness with people like YouTube music, Amazon music, Spotify, Apple music, etc..... Specifically because no matter which one you get, you have pretty much all the music ever. It's packaged slightly differently per service, but it's all there. Sure, it still happens, but it's pretty rare IMO. I hear more and more stories like yours so over, and very few where anyone feels the need to start warehousing music data.

There will always be a market for high fidelity/physical music, and there will always be a few that want their own copies of the music to have, and some of those may get that through piracy, but the fact is, it's way down from the days of Napster, when just about everyone was doing it.

I've long thought that the video media companies should take a page from the music industry and just open up the licensing, but they've gone the other way on it. IDK. Seems dumb.

They're still fighting with piracy and shit, so.....

I did/do. I share gdrive stuff with friends and family for all sorts of reasons, bluntly, I don't trust most cloud storage providers, and I certainly don't trust them any more than I trust the big G... Not saying that the big G is without flaws, but I haven't seen any major data breaches from them that were handled poorly, unlike a lot of other providers. Meanwhile, they're one of the biggest online entities, making them prone to getting attacked.

As far as security of my data from bad actors on the internet, the big G seems to have it where it counts for security....

There's obvious problems with them willingly sharing data to other organizations, but that's a risk regardless of who you give your data to.

And please don't start with the self hosted stuff. I can't even begin to describe how tired I am with trying to get people to use anything that's didn't ship pre-installed on their phone. I have a handful of friends that could navigate a FOSS file sharing system, and a large number more that would need to have their hands held through the whole process every time they accessed it, which bluntly, I don't have time for.

Plus, everyone in my circles already has a Google account for one reason or another, so they already have some idea how to use it, and access controls are made easy by that fact. I really don't want to have to set each of them up with an account and guide them through the process of accessing it and everything. They are used to Google drive at this point and I'm not going to change that, since it took so much damned effort to get to a point where it's actually functional for everyone.

I get stuff like spreadsheets shared with family where they can input stuff like their bills and stuff (for tracking payments and trends), and sharing pictures and video, to keeping backups of important files. I can build a FOSS file depot for that, but once I move everyone over to it, I need to spend even more making it redundant with offsite backups and shit.....

I'd rather pay the $5/mo and just not worry about it. I'm on one of the lowest "Google one" plans and I don't see a reason to upgrade or change what I'm doing. I work in IT, I manage enough already, both for my work, myself and for my family. I don't want to add to that burden because "big G bad".

Most of the people around me have long ago given all their data to Google, Meta, Twitter, tiktok, etc (or some combination of those). I don't think they care about having more data in the "cloud".

Plus, I can share my Google one benefits like YouTube premium, and YouTube music, with my family, so individually it works out to maybe a bit more than a dollar each per month. It's truly not a bad deal.

That's the only pinch as far as I can tell. Some of the people who prefer face-to-face communication, are the bosses. So they force everyone into return to office for their own comfort/convenience/preference....

Those that prefer WFH be damned I guess.

The problem is, you can't really say no to the boss, you either comply, or find a new job. Not everyone is in a position where they can quickly/easily find a new job that suits them better.

In my experience, the highly skilled long-tenured staff tend to lean towards WFH, but it's not an absolute. Plenty of skilled people who prefer in-office work.... My point is that a disproportionate number of long-tenured workers are finding new jobs when RTO policies are put in place. There's a lot of highly skilled workers in the market looking for WFH positions. Easy pickings for anyone wanting to hire for remote jobs.

Obviously a lot of the people who prefer in-office aren't really looking for anything right now, so the job market is kind of crazy. WFH jobs are snapped up and in-office jobs are posted for weeks or months... Simply by allowing people to WFH, a company can pick up some highly skilled talent pretty easily.

As an aside, WFH has saved me upwards of $5k/yr on gas, parking, wasted time on the road, maintenance on my vehicle..... It's quite remarkable.

Fair enough. All the business owners I've met have said something to the effect of "my way or the highway" about it. So I personally just aligned myself with a job where the bosses "my way" is the way I prefer.

In my case, work from home.

My current job doesn't even have a physical office. We're all work from home. I like it.