embedded engineer

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  • 10 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I’ll admit I may not understand economies well, but the inverse is that these publishers are enabled to charge higher prices in higher-income countries. The cost of creating their goods is constant, so if Valve isn’t selling at a loss to poorer regions then they are simply extracting additional profit from higher-income regions on the assumption that those customers can afford it.

    I wonder how this kind of scenario plays out in other industries. Regardless, it seems like the EU has a goal of reducing gaps in buying power between their members, and their unified digital market is a step in that direction.


  • Did you read the article? This isn’t comparable to your India vs America example, it’s specific to prices only within the EU where the EU has digital market rules that specifically prohibit this.

    What Valve did does sound like price-fixing too according to your linked definition of “an agreement among competitors to [fix] price levels”:

    “Valve and five publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) agreed to use geo-blocking so that activation keys sold in some countries … would not work in other member states. That would prevent someone … buying a cheaper key … where prices are lower.”


  • I can never stick with gnome/gtk because it’s been impossible for me to get a consistent theme/look across my apps.

    Newer gnome/gtk has its DPI jacked so that the title bar, buttons, etc. are far too huge for my desktop or laptop, with the only fix being to tinker with the theme config files. Older gnome apps don’t have this issue, but their themes are incompatible so good luck finding a matching theme pair. Non-GTK apps would get stuck with the newer title bar — I swear it would be >100px tall. And doesn’t gnome/gtk 4 have an even newer theme interface that’s incompatible with 2/3?

    I’ve since moved to openbox and tiling managers; they actually bother to get this right.


  • I think coastal New England has a lot of potential, specifically Portland Maine, Portsmouth NH, and Boston.

    I lived in Portland for four years: its downtown is very walkable/bike-able, they have decent transit options (buses, Amtrak, airport), and seem to care about growth towards people/pedestrian-friendly designs. They’ve been building up their bike lanes, running a bike sharing program in the non-winter months, and are starting to construct denser housing. If I had to settle in the U.S. somewhere, I would personally choose here.

    Portsmouth has a smaller downtown, but its also very welcoming to pedestrians. I’m confident they’ll continue in the right direction too.

    Boston’s much larger than either of these, though that comes with strong public transit through bus, train, etc. A better choice if you like big cities.


  • I recently got a Canon Pixma G3060 series printer. It’s one of those ink tank ones, so getting refills is no problem. It cost $300 CAD and came with ink bottles for ~7000 pages of printing; a pretty good deal if you’re printing often. I couldn’t find a good laser printer at this price point, certainly not a color one.

    Linux works great with it once it’s set up, no proprietary drivers or extra junk. CUPS does wireless printing just fine, and I can use Xsane to scan documents too.



  • I would figure out the range of salary the type of position usually goes for, then start with an estimate slightly higher than that. Assuming this a full-time role, you’ll need to account for things like “office” expenses, healthcare, utilities (internet?), and what you will eventually owe in taxes. Contractors’ rates will often be “higher” than salaries for the same position because of this, but in the end the amount you actually take home will balance out.

    I’ve done contract work since finishing university, and managing taxes and expenses has been a constant challenge. Make sure you’re comfortable with the deal you make.