Children Forever

Chill Evil

Wow, all of that has gotten so much worse. I rented a hotel room back in the 90s as a sixteen-year-old in Orlando, Florida. A decent one too. My friends and I were going to see Tori Amos and didn’t want to drive back in the middle of the night.

It looks like that’d be totally impossible now even as a twenty-year-old. Which is fucking insane. But I guess that goes hand in hand with the insistence by many “feminists” that women are children until they are 35 or 40. Different aspects of the same terrible trend.

Hours Matter

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Tech

Also, as most of you reading this are not familiar, at the true enterprise level hardware support simply cannot be that shoddy as what Synology is offering. Since that higher tier is what they are attempting to move to, having a drive show up “lol, whenever” is simply not any sort of acceptable answer.

I worked at a hosting provider a while ago. We had very large HP 3PAR SANs (60+ drives in each). When a drive failed in those we often had a replacement in two hours. Yep, two hours. Someone from HP literally drove from the distribution center with the drive or drives, showed up at our datacenter, put the drive in and verified it worked. We were by contract guaranteed a new drive within four hours but almost always received it much sooner. And we paid dearly for that, by the way.

Until Synology can offer something close to that, they ain’t enterprise shit. They’re just playing pretend; hoping to capture the margin but not providing what’s required by the true enterprise market.

Plot Lost

Chill Clowns, Tech

Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move.

I was previously a loyal Synology customer. No longer. I will never buy one of their devices again. Their lock-in model means paying more for drives that aren’t even as good as the ones I already use and are vastly slower to receive if something goes wrong.

And as the article points out, if Synology goes out of business you’re fucked. You will not be able to find working replacement drives.

Big nope. There are tons of alternatives out there. Shit, I have the skill to build my own NAS from scratch. And no, I don’t mean TrueNAS. I mean using the raw tools (mdraid etc.) and making it work. That’s what I did before Synology was even a thing. I can do it again if needed. All I really use a NAS for anyway is storage (not transcoding etc.) so it’s not even that hard.

I got into a rather salty exchange with some clown-ass Synology product manager I emailed directly about this, which was fun. Entertaining, at least. I’m very good at making people angry, which might not be that productive but is certainly enjoyable when I make a doofus fume.

No matter the price or even lock-in, a vendor that can’t get a NAS drive to me in 24 hours is fucking worthless. For home, but especially for enterprise. Just to make that clear.

So there are at least four major reasons to steer clear of Synology now: ancient hardware, lock-in, price, and donkey-based shipping.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Chill Links

Even with Exemptions, Tariffs Will Hurt American Energy Production.

‘The Studio’ Knows the Real Reason Movies Are Bad.

Nearly 60% of U.S. Households Unable to Afford a $300K Home.

Dismantling NOAA Threatens the World’s Ability to Monitor Carbon Dioxide Levels. Part of the point of doing it. Fucking idiots.

Observations from people watching.

Something Pretty Right: A History of Visual Basic.

Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings.

‘We Currently Have No Container Ships,’ Seattle Port Says.

Forwardness

Chill Tech

Linux kernel is leaving 486 CPUs behind, only 18 years after the last one made.

Now that’s extended support; I used my first 486 in 1991 or so. At the time, they seemed wicked fast. I remember those days of waiting expectantly for every upgrade, hardware or software, as it always offered real improvement. Now every update is dreaded as yet more will be taken away for fake security1, to show you more ads or to steal your data left and right.

Much was far worse then, but we had a lot to look forward to. Or so we thought.

  1. That shit-for-brains doofclowns buy into for some reason

Next-level Clownishness

Chill Clowns, Evil

MAGA clowns are so stupid. Fundamentally, they are just dumbasses.

No Energy Star: I want my refrigerator rollin’ coal!

No NSF or NIH: I want to be sick with everything all the time forever while living in a cave! I love the smell of pustules and buboes in the morning!

No NOAA: Durrr, I think weather is the same as climate and both are evil!

No trade with other countries: Elves will surely make all this shit by magic! I saw it on Joe Rogan!

No EPA: I love nothing more than burning rivers and my kids dying of lead poisoning at six years old. That is, if the measles or rubella or whooping cough don’t get ’em first!

Come on, these are not serious people. Though they are seriously harmful. They are idiots and absolutely deserve to be made fun of.