Indeed, you're quite right. It appears that many online services eventually follow a familiar pattern of stagnation, cost-cutting, injecting advertisements, over-moderation, imposing arbitrary charges, culminating in their decline. This cycle seems to have affected platforms like Digg, Netflix, Microsoft Windows, among many others. If Microsoft Windows decides to include more ads or introduces subscription fees, Apple might well follow suit, capitalizing on the chance to generate additional profit. Given Microsoft and Apple's profit-driven nature, such a move would likely propel users to seek out alternatives like Linux.
Reddit seems to be the latest casualty of this trend, where the essence of its service is being compromised in the pursuit of profit.
The recent significant drop in Reddit's valuation implies a fundamental flaw in their valuation strategy, particularly when it comes to assessing the value of a tech company. Tech companies often appear to be overvalued and face difficulties in sustaining their valuation growth once they've reached their peak.
it's very much borrowed from one of the reddit subs i frequent(ed) often, but the idea is to share what we're playing weekly and hopefully create discussions around those games (or simply have a sort of "check-in").
Generally, I tend not to dwell on the intricacies of politics, as no one fully embodies any particular political stance, be it left, right, progressive, or otherwise. My belief in reincarnation leads me to strive for leaving Earth better than how I found it. While decisions that favor the future over the present may not directly benefit me in this lifetime, if reincarnation holds true, they may be advantageous for my future self.
This concept forms the foundation of my political leanings. Any political perspective promoting discrimination against others could, in turn, affect me in a future life. Poor policies could trigger a cascade of suffering across generations, potentially impacting my future existence. At present, I find myself more naturally aligning with progressive political views, particularly those emphasizing the rule of law and accountability.
hey folks, here's another meta-post. this one isn't specifically in response to the massive surge of users, but the surge is fortuitously timed because i've been intending to give a good idea of what our financial stability is like. as a reminder, we're 100%-user funded. everything you donate to us specifically goes to the...
Scaling up can become quickly cost-prohibitive with large-scale servers. I've noted that the most affordable option with Digital Ocean, at $12/month, offers only a basic droplet with 1 vCPU, 2GB of RAM, and 50GB of SSD storage. When you consider a higher-end configuration with 16GB of RAM, 8 vCPUs, and 320GB of SSD storage at $96/month, it may not seem economical, especially as storage and backup needs increase with server scaling.
As an alternative approach to minimize costs while scaling, consider purchasing used servers from platforms like eBay and setting up a small-scale hosting operation in your garage. While this route does introduce overheads like business internet services and electricity costs, along with regular maintenance such as HDD replacements, it could be more cost-effective in the long run.
For instance, you could acquire a server on eBay for about $300, offering 20 CPU cores, 64GB of RAM, and 8TB of SAS HDD storage. Comparatively, a similar setup on Digital Ocean would cost around $544/month or $6528/year, making the used server a strong competitor against cloud services.
Just some food for thought if you're contemplating scaling in the future.
Absolutely, and at a minimum, I'd suggest implementing the 3-2-1 backup strategy, widely regarded as the "gold standard" for maintaining data integrity. This involves keeping a total of three backups: two stored locally, but on different devices, and one off-site backup (ideally kept in a secure location such as a bank safe deposit box, with hard drives rotated every two weeks).
Indeed, one challenging aspect of data backup is the necessity to confirm that the backup is restorable. This adds another layer of complexity to system administration. However, with the aid of a well-crafted script to handle backup verification, reliability of backup restoration can be ensured, potentially through a method such as hash comparison.
Backups can sometimes give you a deceptive feeling of safety. If you neglect regular verification, you might find that your backup fails just when you need it most for a restoration.
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what are you playing this week?
it's very much borrowed from one of the reddit subs i frequent(ed) often, but the idea is to share what we're playing weekly and hopefully create discussions around those games (or simply have a sort of "check-in").
how would you describe yourself politically, Beehaw, and why?
we previously had this thread but it was lost in a sitewide crash. kind of fortuitous, given all the new people!...
the financials of Beehaw as of June 2023 (and how you can help our website stay up and be more reliable) (opencollective.com)
hey folks, here's another meta-post. this one isn't specifically in response to the massive surge of users, but the surge is fortuitously timed because i've been intending to give a good idea of what our financial stability is like. as a reminder, we're 100%-user funded. everything you donate to us specifically goes to the...
What are we listening to today?
Thought I'd see who's about and whether we could get a thread going on music recommendations from what we're jamming today....