USB-C charger reuse is now common (Apple chargers still gets the UK/EU law exemption)
RoHS prevents Pb content in recycled parts (less toxic waste)
Lithium battery recycling drop bins are next to the store entrance (financial incentives)
ATX12V/EPS12V power supply in your PC is a standard component between motherboards
Aluminum and steel instead of plastics is common (consumers like the aesthetics too)
Under the guise of recycling, problems arise when third-world people use vats of acid to strip trace gold/platinum from electronics. Others strip, relabel (laser marking), and resell aged chips as new stock... this can cause safety/reliability problems.
Some firms now use solder centrifuges to extract RoHS solder off parts, and resell the tin bar-solder back to manufacturers.
e-Waste can be a desirable resource, but few people want old Lead contaminated CRT or mixed plastic filled with inserts etc.
Companies like AMD with AM5 compatibility across chip generations should get an award for their great work reducing waste. Linux <6.0.8 kept a lot of laptops out of the landfills too, but now kernel >6.0.15 will no longer support old GPU/Laptops as NVIDIA ends legacy driver support. =3
In general, most firms form relationships with marketing lead generation companies. i.e. you pay for customers interested in buying something, and pay a reward if a sale is made.
Don't bother spamming with FAANG, as the conversion rates are still hypothetical for many. Go to trade shows, and note how sales people operate with the public... hint, the big deals are never done on the floor area.
The sales conversion rates and tax postures will determine if this type of business is viable in your area. =3
Most people start side-businesses for tax reasons, and those that seek others to solve their problems for them... usually don't last long in business.
I've witnessed many firms run the gauntlet with varying levels of success, and would suggest the following:
1. sell what the customer already wants, as people with loss aversion stick with what they already know.
2. sell what makes customers feel good buying, and reward them with actual functional utility in their life
3. Never compete, focus on service with a novel niche product. Stupid people by their nature destroy everything around them regardless of long term benefit.
4. Never hire people unless absolutely necessary, and contract with tax responsibility clauses when possible.
5. Never buy equipment unless absolutely necessary, or lease when possible
6. Never enter legal or subscription agreements even with your own legal specialists feedback
7. Never become a poser burning $170k/month on labor in a vestigial office
8. Position your firm to leverage tax and grant programs
9. Stay quiet (especially online in a sea of cons), and only talk about the distant past when people try to goad you into telling them how you make revenue
10. Avoid bums in suits as many are dangerous well practiced thieves. Never let technical staff talk with the customers, or vendors. Some people go crazy when they see a bit of money, and do not behave rationally.
11. There must only be 1 president, and all agreements must be in contract form.
12. Never risk more than 15% of annual revenue on ANY deal. Customers lie and disappear on rare occasion... Large firms can grab your firm like a dog with a rag doll, and may still stiff you on the contract knowing the legal and fiscal power asymmetry
13. Chasing customers means your business model still needs work. If people are happy with what you are providing, than growth should naturally happen every year
14. Go to trade shows to see what other people are selling, and ask yourself what else does the customer need
15. Cash is king, as long as the money flows most other problems are irrelevant
Ubuntu Desktop 24 LTS: Kernel 6.0.8 will work on older GPU/Laptop hardware, but OS will be deprecated in 2029
Ubuntu Desktop 26 LTS will be out in a few months: Will be supported till 2038, but note old GPU drivers may not work on more modern Linux Kernels above >6.0.15
The normal Ubuntu Desktop requires a few days to make it usable, and a lot of customization to make it enjoyable. However, network printer and webcam access is usually trivial to install. google equipment installs before you buy... ymmv
Dual boot from two SSD if you need to work on the machine. You will swear less when (not if) you break something, and not everything windows works in Wine or kvm. =3
And unstable for novices that have no clue what they are working with OS wise.
The virt-manager is easy for most Desktop folks looking to drop Win11 in a frozen backing-image sandbox with a local samba folder loop-back mount (allows fake network share in Win11 or MacOS guest OS.) =3
Virt manager is the least intuitive (discounting actively antiuser crap) program I've ever dealt with. I still don't quite get it and I've used Linux exclusively for more than 5 years.
GUI might not be as powerful, but in my experience, it's similarly non-intuitive as alternatives, such as VirtualBox / UTM (macOS) / VMware Fusion/Player.
For anything more complex (e.g. GPU passthrough) you will need to drop into manually modifying XML files.
The GUI. Random permission errors, python tracebacks, saving the settings don't always work, and the mysterious charade with "storage pools" that causes new permission problems.
I just started using Incus now. It seems way more intuitive. Its remote feature is amazing too.
An unconstrained json/bson parser without recursive structure limits must be bounded somehow. In many cases, the ordering of marshaled data cannot be guaranteed across platforms.
The best method is walk the symbolic tree with a cost function, and score the fitness of the data compared to expected structures. For example, mismatched or duplicate GUID/Account/permission/key fields reroute the message to the dead-letter queue for analysis, missing required fields trigger error messaging, and missing optional fields lower the qualitative score of the message content.
Parsers can be extremely unpredictable, and loosely typed formats are dangerous at times. =3
LLM are not AI, but are a great context search tool when they work.
When people first contact ML, they fool themselves into believing it is intelligent... rather than a massive plagiarism and copyright IP theft machine.
Fun is important, but people thinking zero workmanship generated content is sustainable are still in the self-delusion stage marketers promote.
I am not going to cite how many fads I've seen cycle in popularity, but many have seen the current active cons before. A firm that takes a dollar to make a dime in revenue is by definition unsustainable. =3
I like coding AIs because they're plagiarism machines. If I ask you to do some basic data manipulation operations, I want you to do it in the most obvious, standard way possible, not come up with some fancy creative solution unless it's needed for some reason.
If I'm dockerizing an app, I want the most simple, basic, standard thing - not somebody's hand-rolled "optimized" version that I can't understand.
Community efforts should almost always be kept separate from commercial works.
The one exception occurs during product deprecation, as there is no longer commercial interest in the investors property or curatorship. =3
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