Ration(al|ing)

Dear Supermarket Managers:

Learn from Black Tuesday. There was a run on the banks. Here’s how the banks that survived handled it:

  1. Day one: dole out withdrawals as fast as possible. Passers-by will see there are no long lines and no runs on the bank, therefore they will not add to the panic.
  2. Day two and on: Make transactions move as slowly as possible. This stretches out the supply of cash on hand for as long as possible.

Granted, there is no supply shortage this time, only a demand surge. But the same economics applies. Here’s how you do it:

IPFS

This website is now on IPFS. What does that mean for you? Well, nothing, really, unless you’re cool enough to run your own IPFS node/gateway.

What does that mean for me? A few extra steps when updating the website. I’ll work on automating it. Maybe.

State of Duress

Someone just suggested that Tesla add a “duress PIN” that silently notifies emergency services that you are being carjacked. One of the responses argued that, while a nice idea, you would likely forget both PINs under stress. That reminded me of a time I was in a car accident.

Unappreciated

I spend a lot of time trying to make the digital infrastrucure my family uses safe, secure, and – to the extent possible – convenient for them.

And I feel incredibly unappreciated.

Self-Hosting Mail Again

I moved off of Gmail back to my own servers. Why self-host my email again after all these years?

Why I Share My Phone Number With Impunity

Recently I purchased the domain dpcn.us. Ever since then there has been a torrent of spam calls cascading into my telephone number. (I’ve been receiving a lot of spam emails, too, but those are less disruptive.) You see, the .us TLD doesn’t allow registrants to hide their identities. Perhaps that’s why the domains are so cheap.

So why am I not complaining?