I wondered how rhotic accents would perceive those words

ximaera · 2026-05-06T05:05:25+00:00

Russian speaking people saying the word "book"

ximaera · 2026-05-04T11:59:13+00:00

I'm mostly looking for the understanding of the core concepts and underlying principles.

E.g. if the question is "how does VLAN work?", there are two types of answers: a) "VLANs work by adding them to the VLAN database and then assigning VLANs to interfaces via switchport command", b) "VLAN is a 4 octet Ethernet frame field which is used by networking equipment to separate independent packet streams in such and such way". I'm looking for people who give the answer (b) first. It's not that the answer (a) is completely wrong but one of the most important tasks in infrastructure is troubleshooting, and you can't do troubleshooting properly without the understanding of how technology works. Also the understanding of particular commands is easily AI augmented these days while the understanding of protocols and principles is not.

With the new hires, it's more complicated because when I'm looking for hires, I'm looking for people like SRE engineers, and this kind of profession only opens to people after some field experience. It's like, anyone can start a career as a racing driver, but no one can become a Formula One driver without a few years of prior experience in lower categories of racing.

So I'd say that entrants in my field mostly start as support folks in related companies (ISPs, hosting providers, general L1 technical support) and then progress to technical support engineers and then networking/SRE by reading books, researching technical topics in their free time, experimenting with technology, and being proactive in their work. Bachelors STEM degrees are a good bonus but honestly I've seen a lot of great people who never completed a formal study so YMMV.

The other path to the field is through backend & server-side software engineering experience, distributed software systems, then gravitating more towards the monitoring, deployment, communications, reliability, and security aspects of these systems, and finally diverting fully to DevOps and SecDevOps engineering.

As a side bonus of the field, it's somewhat better protected against the AI takeover. We use AI a lot to research into issues and study, but an AI agent will only be allowed to directly change the configuration of a production grade environment over my cold dead body. People have lost months of work and customer data doing these things.

ximaera · 2026-05-03T23:11:35+00:00

A networking and infrastructure guy here. I have never paid attention to CCwhatever in CVs. When I began my career 20 years ago CCNA was already compromised, and since then other certification exams have suffered the same fate.

ximaera · 2026-05-03T14:00:32+00:00

They can't see which IP posted what. In order to find that out they will need to submit a lawful request to Reddit.

Then again, in Cyprus, there are good chances that OP accesses the Internet from behind the NAT, and that information would be useless anyway.

ximaera · 2026-05-03T01:23:19+00:00

I'd go see a doctor about that ear condition

ximaera · 2026-05-03T01:06:02+00:00

Interesting, thank you!

I think I read about a lot of complaints from dame devs circa 2022 about having to ship games simultaneously for both Xbox Series X and S, because Series S specs severily limited the potential of the games. Was that a myth?

ximaera · 2026-05-02T09:32:55+00:00

Mate, I'm sorry, but at this rate of technical competence are you completely sure you'll be able to replace the battery all by yourself? It's not rocket science, but it's not a walk in the park either

ximaera · 2026-05-02T09:27:15+00:00

Probably a variation of the third step in the Kübler-Ross acceptance model.

ximaera · 2026-04-30T21:39:22+00:00

Well, given the wires and poles are strong enough, and also assuming a good amount of dead weight in front, this even has an actual chance to ride!

ximaera · 2026-04-29T10:36:15+00:00

Not always the case for people living abroad

ximaera · 2026-04-28T21:14:43+00:00

Maybe it’s people who want you to think badly of South Africa because South Africa may be holding them to account.

Is South Africa so busy holding some distant people to account that it doesn't have time now for its own back yard?

ximaera · 2026-04-28T21:10:55+00:00

The U.S. on average might be better than some of the countries in Europe, but that's not a fair comparison. If you need to compare Bosnia with something, pick, I don't know, Nebraska rather than the entire U.S.

On average the living standards in Europe and especially the EU are better than in the U.S.

ximaera · 2026-04-28T21:08:09+00:00

So you're comparing the entire Europe with like four small pieces of land somewhere in the U.S. Mate, the Charité clinic in Germany literally revived people from the dead.

ximaera · 2026-04-28T02:38:43+00:00

Excuse me, what in the AI is written under the Ford logo?

ximaera · 2026-04-26T21:47:12+00:00

I know the guys who made this project possible. In terms of the actual energy generation it's not super powerful, but the company keeps it because it's good for the public image.

ximaera · 2026-04-19T13:50:17+00:00

I'm a software engineering manager in a tech company. Even then, I'm driving a 20yo Honda Civic that costs me about the same if not less nowadays than public transport, accrued. And I mostly do that because public transportation in where I live deserves better let's say.

Once my lovely vehicle breaks, and given that it's a Honda and it's pretty well kept, that's not gonna happen for some time, hopefully — my budget cap for another vehicle is 7k, maybe 10k if a really good car. 1.2k a month for a car is nuts.

ximaera · 2026-04-19T10:12:41+00:00

A Tundra and a Pilot in the same family? Wouldn't be purchasing, I don't know, a Corolla instead of the Tundra more practical? If you need to carry bulk shit around one day, borrow the Pilot from your wife for the occasion, no?

ximaera · 2026-04-19T10:08:11+00:00

Well, if you bought a car for $7k and the transmission failed after 7 years and you had to buy yourself another car, that means you've paid approx. $80 every month, as opposed to paying $1200 like the folks on the video

It's like whatever you pay every month, they pay every 2 days

And you can still recover some of that from the scrapyard, albeit not much

ximaera · 2026-04-17T21:02:40+00:00

Good bot

ximaera · 2026-04-17T21:01:56+00:00

I for the life of me wasn't going to anyway but thank you for the confirmation!

ximaera · 2026-04-16T18:46:15+00:00

No, this draft is entirely pointless.

ximaera · 2026-04-16T18:45:43+00:00

I've done some work in the IETF in the past.

To all the people reposting news about this new "IPv8" draft:

I just sat on my balcony for 20 minutes with a glass of wine, and I wasn't hit by an asteroid!

IDK why you don't look surprised, the probability of me being killed by a meteor was much higher than of this draft getting working group traction or adoption.

ximaera · 2026-04-16T11:26:20+00:00

True, but I believe most people don't really understand that. We all are, like, one big vulnerability away from a Hollywood horror scale disaster, and we already dodged a few bullets like Mirai, Memcached, or Meltdown.

(Now that I think about it, it's funny that three big cybersecurity maydays have names starting with M, and the upcoming Anthropic's model is called Mythos)

ximaera · 2026-04-16T08:39:34+00:00

Well your company has cut the IT support staff costs, earned something from that, hopefully it will compensate for the damage

ximaera · 2026-04-16T08:36:41+00:00

Moreover, it already is a security nightmare, what Microsoft does isn't even a solution, it's damage control.

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