• 0 Posts
  • 146 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 7th, 2023

help-circle




  • In order to buy out Paradox, EA would have to make an offer for their entire existing share float, which would then have to be accepted by the shareholders. This means that they would almost certainly sell their stock at over market value (because why would they accept less?).

    From their point of view, this would be a good thing. So why then would the shareholders allow this project to be cancelled if it was about to net them a huge payout, according to your theory?





  • Yeah, try to avoid using USB hard drives.

    A refurbished business PC is an excellent choice (or, better yet, make friends with someone who works in an IT department and grab a few machines when they’re being thrown out; you’d be amazed how often companies dump perfectly good hardware). Don’t worry about the windows license, you’re not actually paying for it by the time you get to refurb prices.

    You should easily be able to pick up something decent for under $200 (hopefully that fits your budget). If you go with a small form factor (not ultra small) you can probably get an SSD and two 3.5" drives in there (watch out for the small form factor Lenovos though, they only have one 3.5" slot). Alternatively, look for a larger desktop tower style that could have 3 or 4 drive bays if you want to do something like a RAID5.

    Don’t sweat too much about buying older hardware. What’s old and busted for Windows is lightning fast when we’re talking about self-hosting a file server or a Pihole.







  • Get to grips with Docker. OCI containers are the standard method of self hosting basically everything now, so once you’re comfortable with Docker and compose files, literally anything you could want to host is available as a drop in component for your system.

    An excellent way of playing around with Docker is to install Dockge. It’s a web UI with some really helpful features. First, it can convert Docker Run commands into compose files for you (once you start to play around with this it’ll be clear why that matters), and second, its very good at pointing out where and how you’ve made errors in your compose files. But most importantly, unlike Portainer (the most popular Docker UI) it works with the Docker command line rather than trying to replace it. With Dockge you know exactly where all of your files are and if any part of your setup breaks you can repair it very easily. It also doesn’t have Portainer’s problem of flashing error messages on the screen for 0.3 seconds then whisking them away. It exposes the entire Docker terminal output so your debugging process is much, much easier.

    You’ll also want to learn about reverse proxies (I reccomend Caddy for its unbelievably simple config file; an entire site is three lines). These are really important for serving multiple different services from one source.

    For anything that you can’t run in Docker, VMs are an acceptable solution, and LXC containers are a better solution, but one that requires a little more work to get to grips with (fun fact, LXC has its own web UI, which is fantastic, but almost nobody seems to even know it exists). Since you’re already familiar with Linux, you may want to ignore the suggestion to use Proxmox and just set up a server with your preferred flavour and go from there. All of this can be done with any modern Linux distro, so you might as well work in an environment you’re comfortable in.


  • I can’t vouch for this, but I heard once from someone who claimed to be an expert that the majority of snake bites occur on the hand or lower arm, not the leg, and that the majority of snake bite victims were found to be intoxicated at the time.

    I’m other words, most snake bites happen because drunk idiots try to pick the little fuckers up.


  • Roast or saute is almost always the correct answer to the boring veg blues. It largely comes down to the addition of fat and high heat, which in turns adds the Maillard reaction, AKA flavour town. Add some salt and you’re u golden.

    Even something as something as simple as green beans gets a million times better when you saute them in light olive oil and hit them with salt and pepper just before they’re done.


  • There are two reasons why you hate brussel sprouts:

    1. You probably only remember them from when you were a kid. About 15 years ago a new, less bitter cultivar of brussel sprouts was developed, and is now the main the cultivar.

    2. Your parents (or grandparents, or whoever did the cooking at Christmas) probably boiled or steamed them, which is a perfect way to make any vegetable taste bad.

    Here’s what you actually do. Dice up a small amount of bacon and lightly fry in a tiny bit of oil, just until the bacon fat starts to render out. Add a nob of butter (altogether the amount of fat should nicely coat the bottom of the pan). Cut your sprouts in half and place them in the fat cut side down. DON’T TOUCH THEM. Let them sit until a nice brown crust forms. Then add a splash of water (or chicken stock if you’re a true degenerate) and cover for a few minutes to steam. When done, a knife should pierce them with some resistance (bite into one, it should have a little crunch to it, but not unpleasantly so; just enough to not be mushy). Drain off the liquid, hit them with kosher salt and a little bit of black pepper.

    Note that the bacon is totally optional. If you’re just adding a quick veg to a meal you can skip that part and they’ll still taste great.