zerosleeps

Pay special attention to the “Nearly every RFP will have” section in this article.

I’ve been involved in these things a few times: as a customer creating the request, as a bidding provider responding to requests, and as a developer trying to meet the requirements and responses given. It’s always been a pencil-pushing exercise, fooling absolutely nobody, and generally a massive waste of everyone’s time. Vague requirements with watery responses which by themselves are arguably true, but when all the individual requirements and responses are put together the thing is pure fantasy.

The current state of the default Ubuntu server shell:

Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-69-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Sun Apr  9 07:03:41 UTC 2023

  System load:  0.0                Processes:             129
  Usage of /:   69.4% of 24.05GB   Users logged in:       0
  Memory usage: 44%                IPv4 address for eth0: [redacted]
  Swap usage:   81%                IPv4 address for eth0: [redacted]

  Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest:
    http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud

 * Introducing Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications.
   Receive updates to over 25,000 software packages with your
   Ubuntu Pro subscription. Free for personal use.

     https://ubuntu.com/pro

Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.

0 updates can be applied immediately.

Enable ESM Apps to receive additional future security updates.
See https://ubuntu.com/esm or run: sudo pro status


You have no mail.
Last login: Sun Apr  9 01:00:19 2023 from [redacted]
[redacted]@[redacted]:~# 

That’s about 11 lines of advertisement, which is exactly 50% of the non-blank lines. Gross. Canonical’s gotta make their money somehow and I certainly don’t give them any, but this is the last server I have that’s running Ubuntu and I plan on moving it to Debian when version 12 is released.

Something about this post from Linode makes me nervous. Linode as a brand/company feels, to me, as if it exists to serve the little guy: indie developers and fast modern companies.

Akamai does not feel like that to me. It’s a big company, which is only interested in working with other big companies.

I switched a bunch of self-hosted services - which are almost exclusively used by me here in Melbourne - from DigitalOcean to Linode in June 2020 simply because Linode had servers in Sydney. The closest I could get with DigitalOcean was Singapore, and the difference was noticeable. But DigitalOcean now has servers in Sydney as well, and still has that indie feel that I like.

I’ll give Akamai a chance and see what happens though.

Someone else expressing something I feel much more eloquently than I would ever be able to:

I tried using AI. It scared me.

As threatened, I slapped down 45 Australian Rupees and purchased a “Worry-Free” licence for Sancoale Slab (normal regular variant) from Fontspring.

Isn’t it beautiful? 😍