If you have a domain name registered, you need to renew your registration every few years. You can generally ask for a 1-3 year cycle.

If you like your DNS registrar, there is no need to switch.

Today I received paper mail from a company called iDNS. I'm not a …

I haven't seen this documented before, so I will do so.

Let's suppose that we are playing the Internet's favorite interactive game, Discuss Something. I'm sure you've played it. One person makes a statement, another person decides that they should correct the statement, and the game is on. Assuming an appropriate medium - Usenet, an email list, a chat board, Facebook, LiveJournal, the comments section of a newspaper - other people might join in.

One style of argument is to present evidence, preferably citing sources, along with a chain of reasonable statements that move from the evidence to the desired conclusion.

Another style of argument is to present hypotheses that exactly counter the last evidence of the other side.

In a game of escalating hypotheses, where one side feels bound to respect evidence and the other gets to make up stories, the side that makes up stories also gets to make up the story where they win.

To be clear:

• If I link or otherwise attribute a source for a statistical figure, that's the source that I'm using.

• If I blather off an estimate like 87% of all statistics are made up on the spot, that is almost certainly hyperbole.

• If I show my work on making an estimate, I am reasonably confident that my logic is consistent and my sources are not absolutely ridiculous. But it's an estimate, and you should confirm it independently before relying on it in any serious decision-making.

As a manager, you can tell if an engineer is happy with their work if they are comfortable with giving higher-ups constructive feedback about issues at hand directly. As an engineer, you can tell if a manager is actively working for you if you see at least some action performed …

Useful tip (for me): any time ZFS emits internal error: Invalid argument, what it probably means is that the DKMS module and the userland utilities are different versions.

sudo modinfo zfs|head will tell you what version your kernel is using; apt show -a zfsutils-linux will tell you what versions …

I had the most satisfying Eureka experience of my career while attempting to teach flight instructors that praise is more effective than punishment for promoting skill-learning. When I had finished my enthusiastic speech, one of the most seasoned instructors in the audience raised his hand and made his own short …

The price for using a math library developed by Foobar Corporation is $10,000 plus 1% of the sale price of your product, or whatever you negotiate with them.

The price for using a GPL'd math library is that you must license your source code under the GPL as well.

The price for using an LGPL'd math library is distributing the source for the library along with your product. If you modify the library itself, then that falls back to the GPL.

This is the end of my second year as a Google Fi subscriber.

TL;DR: I'm keeping this service and I recommend it for people who are happy with the limited phone selection.

Many people like to claim "my time is worth the $/hour I could have earned". It's usually bull.

If you are paid hourly, it is 95% likely that your hours are set by your employer, not you. You can't spend a random extra hour working to get another $X. If …

• Melissa Olson, Nightshades
• Harry Connolly, The Twisted Path
• Ryk Spoor, Princess Holy Aura
• Faith Hunter, Flame in the Dark
• Mira Grant, Into The Drowning Deep
• Brandon Sanderson, Oathbound
• Jim Hines, Terminal Alliance
• James Allan Gardner, All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault
• Sebastian de Castell, Spellslinger

I liked all these …

Your company probably needs a librarian. Maybe more than one.

A modern librarian selects, installs, configures and administrates knowledge management software. They are experts in organizational methods and search techniques.

A librarian may take in paper documents and convert them to electronic formats. Everything gets stored, indexed, and made searchable …

It's not enough that Net Neutrality be enforced. That's just a basic requirement to keep corporations from completely exploiting their customers.

What would a good long-term solution look like?

We can look at history. In 1982, the eight-year antitrust suit against AT&T was ended by the breakup of AT …