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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • I seriously don’t understand why Apple won’t make server macs, with proper server features like IPMI, rack mounting support, virtualization. As a software developer, macs are horrible to work with.

    Beyond the nightmare that is code signing and certificates (required even for debug builds), the physical devices are special snowflakes. Getting them to play nicely in a CI/CD system is really difficult. They often freeze or misbehave requiring physical access to fix. Also, if you want to target older OS X or iOS versions, you need to use an older version of XCode (that Apple makes really difficult to find) and an older version of MacOS.

    There are many other use cases beyond software development, such as render farms, network storage, backup etc.









  • Also, the movie industry is struggling because of many reasons. Movies are getting too expensive, the safe formulas big studios relied on aren’t working anymore, customer habits are changing with people going less to movie theaters.

    At the same time, just like with video games, the indie world is in a golden age. You can get amazing cameras and equipment for quite a small budget. What free software like Blender can achieve is amazing. And learning is easier than ever, there are so many free educational resources online.



  • Hard drives offer the best price/capacity ratio, but they need to be powered periodically (at least once or twice per year). As with any other storage medium, include parity data and have multiple backups to avoid data loss.

    Tape is too expensive.

    Optical media can also be pretty good as long as you get discs made from inorganic materials and store them properly. M-disc is supposed to last like 100 years. The biggest problem is that they are on the path to obsolescence and optical drives may stop being manufactured. Also, it’s a good idea to check on the condition of the discs periodically and redo any that shows signs of degradation (probably a good idea to replace non-M discs every 10 years regardless).

    But regardless of the media, there is no archival method that doesn’t require active maintenance, like periodically checking the data, ensuring you have multiple backups, refreshing any aged media.