I’ve worked with Swarm in a startup setting. It was an absolute nightmare. We eventually gave up and moved to Kubernetes.

That said, your use case does sound simpler. As I recall, we had to set up service discovery (with Hashicorp Consul) and secret management (with Hashicorp Vault) ourselves. I believe we also used Traefik for load balancing. There were other components as well, but I don’t remember it all. This was over 5 years ago, though.

The difficulty wasn’t configuring each piece but getting them to work together. There was also the time burned learning all the different tools. Kubernetes is great because everything is meant to work together.

But if it’s just two machines with separate configuration, do you even need orchestration? Is there a lot of overhead to just manage them individually?

Unfortunately, it was too long ago to remember the details of differences between compose and swarm. I do remember it was a very trivial conversion.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat

It had an archive in the game. It detailed the social structure, military structure, customs, and history of the Clans, which you play as a member of, from an outside perspective. I was only 8, but I read through the whole thing, end-to-end. I put an album of it on Facebook for posterity when I was in high school.

I decided I wanted to be like them when I read it. I have a much better understanding of them now, and I do not agree with everything. The concepts behind some core tenants still stand for me. Individuals are valued within the context of the Clan. One’s value is based on their contribution to society, but society must value them in order to expect their contribution. If a leader acts in their own interest and not that of the Clan, their subordinates are obligated to challenge them. If the conflict stands, they face in a Circle of Equals. Generally, personal disputes are delayed and adjudicated, but there is a Trial of Grievance if the parties can conduct if they cannot delay. In the real world, I translate these to a value in community, a mandate to not tolerate poor leadership, and good practice in letting cooldown time followed by direct dispute resolve conflict.

Of course, there are questionable things. A caste system, though some Clans allow more mobility than others. Eugenics based on combat prowess for the warrior caste. Promotion by combat for the warrior caste. Poor military strategy based on the concept of honor.

I still consider myself a Clanner, to some degree. Sometimes I try to see if others took it as much to heart as I did, but I am afraid of rejection. I do not know if I could pass various Trials. I know I am too old, now, or at the very least, approaching that. Maybe someday, I will find other children of Kerensky.

I may not be well informed, so feel free to cite sources that prove me wrong, but I’m not 100% convinced about the co-ops being equally competitive or that they’ll be just as profit-seeking.

Yes, individuals outside of sociopathic executives are also driven by profit, but they’re also more influenced by other factors. For example, most non-executives might opt for a more ethical solution over a more profitable solution. This may also carry over to efficiency: maybe a co-op could opt for a more efficient, if less profitable, solution in order to keep prices low. There are several incentives for this: long-term growth, social good of making things more affordable, personal pride in being the lowest price, general lack of desire to optimize for a single metric (profit). Now, these are all guesses. I don’t know of any good studies about co-op behaviors in aggregate versus traditional corporations, but this sounds feasible to me.

All that said, it sounds like you’re better read on this than I am, so I’d love to learn if you can throw some sources at me

I’m not convinced of this. One could argue that profit is waste. It’s an overhead of wealth delivered for value provided. If co-ops are less incentives towards profit, e.g. by not having a tradeable stock to manage, then the pursuit of profit is a lesser priority. This means the overhead is less, which could mean lower prices.

To put it bluntly, if you don’t need to pay dividends to shareholders who deliver no value or huge bonuses to executives at the top, maybe the operating costs could be lower. Yes, the cooperative members would take some of that money as profit sharing among the members, but the working class tends to be less sociopathically greedy than those in power.

Definitely open to feedback. This kind of thinking is newer to me

Got it. That makes much more sense. Thank you for the clarification! And very clear explanation

That all makes sense except the class distinctions part. If whole cooperatives share the capital of the organization, how is there a class divide?

Everything you’re saying about competition and private interest makes sense, with my limited understanding. I just don’t get the class point you made. Help me understand?

Go read through “Foundations of Geopolitics,” think of recent Russian history, and reconsider your statement

I’ll start by saying I’m not a doctor. This is my layman’s understanding.

Historically, vaccines have been samples of either weakened or dead viruses. Through trial and error, we’ve been able to determine how to weaken or kill these viruses, then inject them into ourselves in the hopes that our immune system can learn to recognize and kill the virus. This has worked really well for a long time, but it’s costly and can be difficult to scale. For example, horses have very strong immune systems. It’s quite common to inject a virus that hurts humans into a horse, then harvest the horse’s blood to acquire the material needed to produce a vaccine. The horse’s immune system learns how to kill the virus, and we can use the to teach our immune systems.

mRNA vaccines take a whole different approach. They kind of co-opt the mechanism that viruses use to replicate.

First, let’s tall about what RNA is. You might know that DNA is used to produce proteins, and proteins are the tools that life uses to do… stuff. Almost everything, really. Thing is, DNA is stored safely inside cells’ nuclei, but protein production happens outside the nuclei, in ribosomes. So if DNA is needed to produce proteins, but DNA can’t be moved to the protein production center, how do? Our cells can produce another molecule called RNA. It’s basically half of DNA. Since you can derive one half of DNA from the other, it essentially carries the same information. Inside the nuclei, RNA is produced based on your DNA. That RNA is then moved to the protein production center to be used as the blueprint for protein production. Voila! Your cells have proteins now and can do stuff.

What did that have to do with viruses? But first, how do viruses work? Funny thing: at their core, viruses are kind of like protein missiles with an RNA payload. (This is why people argue that viruses aren’t really alive.) Viruses pierce your cells and inject their RNA into your cells. That RNA provides the blueprints to produce more RNA and the protein module, effectively, a copy of the virus. The viruses uses your cells’ infrastructure to reproduce.

With me so far? Here’s where it gets cool.

What if we could capture a virus’ RNA? What if we could then isolate just enough of the RNA blueprint to get some part of the protein missile, without the payload? And then what if we could get so specific that we could make sure that part of the protein missile is something your immune system could learn to recognize and kill? Lastly, what if we could package this harmless but recognizable part of the virus in a manner that your cells could mass manufacture it?

This is mRNA, the “m” standing for “messenger.” mRNA vaccines basically give your cells the blueprint to produce a recognizable part of a virus that won’t hurt you. Your cells then produce that virus part, and your immune system learns how to recognize and kill the virus based on that part.

The best part? We can do this fast. No need for trial and error on how to weaken viruses. No need to manage livestock like horses specifically to harvest their immune system material. The COVID vaccine was an mRNA vaccine. I haven’t actually checked the numbers, but I’m very confident that the COVID vaccine R&D was the fastest humanity has ever had for any vaccine. We’d been researching and experimenting with mRNA vaccines already, but they weren’t yet approved for medical use. For good reason, medicines go through a huge amount of testing before we start injecting ourselves with magic feel-good juice. Given the emergency that COVID was, most countries fast-tracked their approval process for the COVID mRNA vaccine. In the long run, this may actually have been a benefit, as we’ve learned a lot about how to produce these types of vaccines rapidly, at scale and even update them for new variants of a virus.

So yeah, mRNA vaccines are super fucking cool. They’re also a remarkably clever innovation, copying an idea from viruses and adapting it to a way to kill viruses. Theoretically, future vaccines should be produced faster, be better targeted, and have fewer side effects.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk? 😅

But that’s an arbitrary distinction. You could also argue, “what’s the difference between a vaccine and medicine?” Or “what’s the difference between medicine and physical medical treatment?” mRNA vaccines involve more innovation and impact than bloodletting via leeches.

But I won’t respond to that line of thought anymore because you didn’t answer my question.

You can choose to answer my question or just not reply. Do you know what the differences are between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines?

Are you familiar with the differences between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines in terms of production?

You assume the actors in the system act in good faith and that the system’s incentives are well designed. It is not.

What kinds of people want to join the organization responsible for keeping foreigners out? How many of those groups are racists that don’t actually care about the citizenship part? How do you measure the success of this organization?

When you start asking these kinds of questions, you start to see the cracks. Additionally, when you look at US immigration policies compared to other developed countries, they’re quite harsh. I emigrated to Korea. It’s quite easy if I have a college education and some work experience. I benefit Korea’s economy. My Korean friends who want to go to the US have a totally different experience.

Additionally, you need to look at the US’s history with regards to race. See the Japanese internment camps of WW2 or the fire bombing of Tulsa, OK. We don’t necessarily distinguish between actual citizens and foreigners.

You can also look at how illegal immigration is managed in the US. Look at Ron DeSantis in Florida. He spooked illegal immigrants in Florida with his crackdown on immigration. The orange farmers started panicking because there were no workers. The oranges were rotting. Did DeSantis prop up the orange industry and encourage them to hire Americans? The good faith act? Fuck no! He rolled back the crackdown, and the illegal immigrants continued to be used for basically slave labor. America doesn’t want legal immigration. They just want a group with no rights to beat the shit out of when they’re feeling bad and to use for labor that citizens don’t want to do.

Your argument of people behaving in good faith with regards to immigration doesn’t have a lot of evidence to support it when looking at history.

The right thing to do would be to pursue immigration reform first, give time for current illegal immigrants to become legal, crackdown on the employers of illegal immigrants, and then start enforcing immigration law more strongly. But surprise! It ain’t happening.

Of course, my comment assumes you’re trying to argue in good faith, which also may be naive. Let’s see

Edit: wait, you might be right. As I understand, net neutrality is for the last mile ISPs, not the L1/L2 providers. So uh… what I explained below isn’t relevant. Eh, I’ll leave it in case people wanna learn stuff.

It was a bad explanation, assuming you had knowledge of network infrastructure things, but it does make sense. I’ll explain things if you’re interested.

Net neutrality is the idea that ISPs must treat all content providers equally. Your phone is not a content provider (most likely. You could run a web server on your phone, but… no). YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, TikTok, and your weird uncle’s WordPress site are content providers. Without net neutrality, ISPs can say, “Hey YouTube, people request a ton of traffic from you on our network. Pay up or we’ll slow down people’s connections to you.” The “neutrality” part means that ISPs must be neutral towards content providers, not discriminating against them for being high demand by consumers.

For the L1 and L2 part, that’s the networking infrastructure. The connection to your home is just tiny cables. I don’t recall how many layers there are, but it’s just “last mile” infrastructure. The network infrastructure between regions of the country or across the ocean are giant, giant cables managed by internet service providers you’ve never heard of. They’re the kind of providers that connect AT&T to Comcast. These are considered L1 or L2 providers. The data centers of giant companies, like Google for YouTube’s case, often pay these L1 or L2 providers to plug directly into their data centers. Why? Those providers are using the biggest, fastest cables to ferry bits and bytes across the planet. You might be pulling gigs from YouTube, but YouTube is putting out… shit, I don’t even know. Is there a terabyte connection? Maybe even petabyte? That sounds crazy. I dunno, I failed Google’s interview question where they asked me to estimate how much storage does Google Drive use globally. Anyway, I hope that gives you an idea of what L1 and L2 providers are.

I’m not a network infrastructure guy, though. If someone who actually knows what they’re talking about has corrections, I’d love to learn where I’m wrong

In case you were innocently using whataboutism without meaning to, here’s a tip to avoid it.

If you’re going to compare to the US or wherever, first ask yourself if that place was mentioned in the comment you’re replying to. If not, it’s whataboutism.

I run a group that does free software programming education in Seoul. There’s a similar group in LA. When I came to Korea, I just set up a meetup account, paid the fee, rented some space, and started teaching people stuff and studying together. Great way to make friends. Been running it for 7 years now. I’ve had about a dozen or so people come say the group has helped them change their career to IT for the better. A dozen sounds like a small number, but it’s a huge impact on those people

So be the change you want to see. If you have a skill that can help people improve their lives, whether it’s career or life stuff, share it! Learning a new skill is hard, and having a community to support you in learning, goes a long way

Very cool! Tough jobs. I have a new SQA engineer starting tomorrow. I’m really hoping I can support her well. Wish me luck

I hope all your bugs are easy but interesting and that the customers are kind

Ahahaha this is so obtuse. I love it. Bit of a brain teaser to parse that.

Let me see if I’m understanding correctly. Are you software QA or machine learning validation? Or am I totally off?

I work with machines to create lessons for other machines to learn how to figure out you’re sick before you feel sick.

Yeah… that sounds like bullshit haha

100/100 for 22,000 KRW/month (about $16.50 USD).

Other options with my provider:

• 500/500 for 35,750 KRW ($26.85)
• 1000/1000 for 41,250 KRW ($31)
• 2500/2500 for 44,000 KRW ($33)
• 5000/5000 for 55,000 KRW ($41.31)
• 10000/10000 for 82,500 KRW ($62)

And that 100/100 is effective. Shit downloads fast

One of many, many reasons I’m not fond of going back to the US. Maybe Europe next, we’ll see. For now, Korea is pretty sweet

The lack of policing ideas is what allowed Hitler to come to power. This is a result of the tolerance paradox. A tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance, or it will erode into an intolerant society.

I have zero idea what your angle is, but for the benefit of others…

Nazi-ism is a chosen belief system with a core belief in depriving other groups of basic human rights. The depriving other people of basic human rights is the key part.

Hate speech is directed towards people with attributes that they cannot change or religion. Religion gets added in there because changing religion is not a simple thing, and in major religions doesn’t hurt people. (Don’t start citing religious terrorists - that is fundamentalism within a religion and not a commonly shared belief among all followers.

So hating on nazis is cool.