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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • For anyone looking for a chair that doesn’t want to spend >$1000 or get a gaming chair, I recommend looking for an office furniture reseller in your area.

    There are a lot of shops that buy used furniture from companies either going out of business or moving.

    I was able to get a new Steelcase for like half the price, still had its tags and packaging. Granted this was during covid where a lot of businesses were dumping their in-office supplies, but still worth a look.




  • Yeah I saw a post about it a long time ago on Reddit for users with lots of devices

    Basically it is just setting up one or two “central devices” that know all the client devices, but not linking the client devices individually.

    IE: One server is connected to your phone, laptop, tablet, desktop, etc. But the phone is not directly connected to your laptop or desktop or tablet.

    To be fair I don’t actually know if this is the best approach anymore or if just connecting all of them in a mesh is better 🤷

    Here is a forum post describing it.




  • Yeah and I just want to make it clear I am not arguing that no one should post anything that benefits them. We all gotta eat, get that bag 💰, etc.

    I think if affiliates are allowed, the rule should be that the proper disclosures are in place so anyone viewing the community knows who is benefiting. Then the community can decide if they are okay with whatever is happening, as long as the users know exactly what’s happening.

    I posted in a reply below but here is the FTC’s stance

    You should disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site, so readers can decide how much weight to give your endorsement. You could say something like, “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.” In some instances – like when the affiliate link is embedded in your product review – a single disclosure may be adequate.


  • I disagree, not making it explicit adds a level of abstraction and assumes that everyone needs to know how online affiliate programs work. Users should know, without any question or confusion, who exactly is benefiting and how whenever they use an affiliate link. Otherwise there are perverse incentives.

    And its not just me, here is the FTC’s stance.

    You should disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site, so readers can decide how much weight to give your endorsement. You could say something like, “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.” In some instances – like when the affiliate link is embedded in your product review – a single disclosure may be adequate.

    I know FTC is American, but I think its a good guideline.



  • Yeah I am okay leaving it to mods. But I think in this particular case if the mods themselves are posting affiliate links with no indication they are getting money for each use, that seems like misaligned incentives.

    There were some subreddits that would have stickied posts or something that allowed affiliate links, but that aggregates it all into one place and also lays it out clearly for whoever visits.

    My main concern is not that someone is making money, we all gotta eat, its just when people aren’t aware they are potentially being manipulated for someones benefit.


  • Sneaky as in the wording doesn’t convey that they are getting a benefit (which they are). And it’s also written to intentionally confuse using wording like “use our affiliate link”. Who is “our”? It’s just one person who is trying to make some cash?

    It’s just so out of place on the platform and shouldn’t be allowed IMO. Especially added by a mod in the sidebar of a community. Better approach would be a stickied post with affiliate links posted by users or something similar.

    “If you’re interested in joining Wealthsimple, you can take advantage of our referral link. By using it, you’ll receive up to $3,000 in cash to trade stocks or crypto when you fund a DIY trading or Managed Investing account. Use code XXXXX or the link below to sign up.”






  • I run everything in rootless containers using systemd service files generated with podman generate systemd.

    Podman Compose is a “community effort”, and Red Hat seems to be less focused on its development (here is their post about it).

    There are ways to get it working but I find it easier to go with podman containers and pods through systemd because the majority of documentation (both official and unofficial) leans in that direction.

    I don’t know how much you already know, so here is just a summary of things that worked for me for anyone reading.

    Podman uses the concept of “Pods” to link together associated containers and manage name spaces, networking, etc. The high level summary for running podman pods through systemd:

    • Create an empty pod podman pod create --name=<mypod>.
    • Start containers using podman run --pod=<mypod> ... and reconfigure until containers are working within the same pod as desired.
    • Use podman generate systemd to create a set of systemd unit files. Be sure to read through the options in that man page. – this is more reliable than creating systemd unit files by hand because it creates unit files optimized for the podman workflow.
    • place the generated systemd unit files in the right place (user vs. system) and then it can be started, enabled, and disabled as with other systemd unit files.

    Note: for standalone containers that are not linked or reliant on other containers, you can should skip creating the empty pod and can skip the --pod=<mypod> when starting containers. This should result in a single service file generated and that container will operate independently.

    This post goes over pods as systemd services.

    This doc goes over containers as systemd services.

    The Red Hat Enterprise Linux docs have a good amount of info, as well as their “sysadmin” series of posts.

    Here are some harder to find things I’ve had to hunt down that might help with troubleshooting:

    • Important: be sure to enable loginctl enable-linger <username> or else rootless pods/containers will stop when you log out of that session.
    • If you want it to run a container or pod at system startup you will need to specify the right parameters in the [Install] section of the systemd file, see this doc page. Podman generate systemd should take care of this.
    • If you are using SELinux there is a package called container-selinux that has some useful booleans that can help with specific policies (container-use-devices is a good one if your container needs access to a GPU or similar). Link to repo