Pretty certain that Facebook (and Intel, Apple, Microsoft, whatever) have formed legally independent entities from which to operate in Germany. Worst that could happen is that Facebook GmbH (the German subsidiary) gets nuked, leaving Facebook (US) untouched.
(...and vice-versa - for instance, Solarworld is the biggest Solar panel maker in Germany, but their independent subsidiary, Solarworld USA, is legally separate, with its own C-level, its own financial and tax structure, its own distinct set of contracts with various vendors, etc.)
The parent and subsidiaries are structured to keep things separate, but have no qualms (or obstacles) to shipping money between them through various (And fully legal) mechanisms.
To be fair, different cultures/governments hold speech in differing regards. Germany doesn't hold it in as high regard as the UK does, and the UK doesn't fully enshrine it as a near-holy and near-inviolable law like the US does.
To be fair, the company, like nearly any sane/competent company on the planet, will avoid making any public comment, and instead save it for the courtroom.
HR could end up costing the company money as well...
A few years back, my wife was in-and-out of the hospital for what turned out to be a rare congenital disorder (currently under control and in remission of sorts). When it began, I filed ADA paperwork with HR to the effect that, as her de-facto caretaker, I would occasionally have to work remotely or take off from work on occasion for her doc appointments. HR and my manager were understanding and quite fine with it; I just had to occasionally work odd hours to ensure that it never affected my performance.
If Mr. Davis filed similar paperwork (he really should have, even before starting work there), the company may well end up eating a big judgement.
I'm mostly curious as to why they didn't try to make it a straight commodity to be traded against first... they'd have an easier time of it in Chicago than they would in New York. Of course it'd be a bitch to get a certified and unassailable benchmark of value that the SEC would put up with, but still...
Depends... from what I hear, a lot of the Fleet Street periodicals each have a massive cash stockpile that's earmarked for nothing but libel suits (they tend to attract 'em, as you might have guessed). Maybe she got a piece of that dosh from her employer? Not entirely sure, though - it would depend on whether or not she was posting in her capacity as a columnist or not. If not, then she's likely fscked.
In the 1950s they made it illegal to pay DJs to play music. A day later the job of 'program director' was invented. It has never been illegal to give massive free prizes like money, cars, vacation packages, and concert tickets to play music.
FTFY.;)
It's a lot more subtle these days, and rarely if ever involves giving money directly to a station (or rather, a syndicate of stations). Instead, the studios give them high-ticket items and/or money in the form of 'contest prizes' (with of course a small percentage to the station as a 'handling fee' to pay for 'advertising' the 'contest'), in exchange for pushing a coterie of favored 'hits' from that studio up on the playlist, often over time as they come out.
The contests/giveaways are then used to drive listener loyalty, which in turns drives up advertising dollars. The stations*cough*syndicates*cough* still get paid, just indirectly, and clear enough of payola laws to stay out of a courtroom.
I mean seriously - it's not like a radio station can afford to give away a free vacation for four to Hawaii every month off of its own budget...
Autotuned voices, corporate-created-idols (usually some pretty teenaged kid with a previous 'career' as a Disney 'talent employee'), new stars with a pre-baked 'image' (naturally built/provided by the studio), lyrics that are focus-group-tested and written by someone else, a catchy tune usually ripped-off from some unknown who got paid a pittance for it...
Most *music* these days is fucking garbage. Okay, some of that may be the 'get off my lawn' syndrome on my part, but honestly, in the past the musician and/or band usually had to come up with everything themselves: lyrics, chords, composition, image, vision, etc. Even as late as the 1990s or so, there were still artists who did it themselves, and the quality tended to show through more readily. Yes there were pre-baked 'stars' in the past as well, but their appeal tended to die off pretty quickly, or their star faded long before their second album... much like, well, today. It's just that the signal-to-noise ratio went to hell of late.
Nowadays, it all seems, I don't know... not crafted, so much as assembled. Disposable talent would be a good way to put it, I think. Nowadays, to find the good stuff, you have to cast a really wide net, to local up-and-coming independent artists (pre-contract), obscure bands in Europe, Asia, etc.
Don't get me wrong entirely, though - some of it, intentionally assembled (e.g. Electronica) can be pretty damned good; but then, underneath it, you find independent artists who carefully crafted what they themselves produced.
Nota Bene: Microsoft is making a *Linux* version of MS SQL Server... so yes, you're correct in that Microsoft can adapt as needed.
That said, it still brings up GP's point: Eventually a tipping point will be reached, where people start asking "why bother buying Windows when all my stuff either runs on a web browser or it runs on {something with a Linux kernel under it}?
We'll know when that tipping point is reached when OEMs start defaulting their consumer devices to ChromeOS (or whatever), instead of defaulting to Windows.
1) Government workers and government worker unions are apples/oranges compared to private-sector unions. They operate under vastly different environments, parameters, and conditions.
2) You're misrepresenting the argument: the actual reason for busting the public school employee unions (and not the NEA or AFT, which are national teacher unions) was to remove forced-membership requirements and the massive fraud/waste/abuse (and not a little political abuse) that had sprung from its membership and leadership.
Fun fact: Most of the "1%" got there recently - as in, within 1 or 2 generations at most. Split inheritances and a higher-than-normal crop of dumbass offspring tend to blow away most fortunes, and severely decrease others to the point where they individually fall out of that "1%" designation. There are of course a few exceptions, but in reality they are barely a quorum, let alone anything approaching a majority.
If the vast majority of humanity becomes unemployed (which is what this apocalyptic scenario implies), then no one will be buying the products that these robots make. Without customers and the money/purchasing they bring, businesses tend to collapse fairly quickly. You could counter with "well, the rich will just buy stuff from each other", but 1) the scale won't be there to justify the automation in most cases, and 2) in economics, just like in biology, when the genetic pool gets too small for a species, the result eventually becomes extinction.
Look, I get it, but honestly, this is the same argument that was being advanced 100 years ago when electricity was automating things (and 'OMG that Westinghouse guy is going to have more money than a god while the rest of us starve!'), 200 years ago when steam was automating things, etc etc. People have always adapted, shifted their career focus, and created new industries which are not as easily automated. Unless someone can come up with an argument showing how this time will be different (hint: it probably won't), then this is just a rehash of an old argument.
Yeah - gotta agree with sibling... 10 years' salary on a mortgage is friggin' insane, doubly so when you get a nice place outside of California for only 2 years' salary.
Not to mention that the figure also changes depending on how close you are to retirement. If you're younger and doing well, maybe get one priced at 3-5x annual salary, but once you get past 40, you may want to lower the sights a bit and be realistic.. that 30-year fixed is (barring early payoff) still going to be there demanding cash out of you for another decade when you turn 60.
Example? No problem - my wife and I just bought our new we're-retiring-here-dammit log cabin on six acres, in a gorgeous part of the Oregon Coastal Range. I paid exactly 2 years' salary to get it from the previous owner. Glopping a bit of extra principal on the mortgage payments will have the place entirely paid off in 10 years, leaving me a nice cushion of time before I retire for good... and by the way, the missus no longer has to work. Meanwhile, I still have a decent amount of extra dosh each month after the bills to put towards, well, anything. That's why you get realistic about it (besides, what the hell was I going to do with a 4-bdrm Victorian-style monster, what with the kids all grown up?)
You can say that I'm in no particular hurry to go get a $1.3m house that would cost me a mint in taxes, upkeep, labor, etc... the Joneses can go fsck themselves. YMMV, though.
Apple has always allowed you to disable it (in a very easy-to-find spot with admin credentials) in OSX/MacOS, and they've had it in place for like 17 years - and for the entire decade or so that the App Store has existed. Pretty sure that they're in no hurry to lock your laptop/desktop down to the App Store if they haven't done it by now.
Google is also perfectly okay with what they refer to as side-loading... and have allowed that with just an easy click or two since Android and ChromeOS have respectively existed.
What's different here is that Microsoft has a nasty history of trying to lock down the consumer when they think the rubes aren't looking. Time will tell, obviously, but I have no trust for 'em. (Personally, I think they're just looking to put PC-Matic and similar app-whitelisting products out of business since it's kind of embarrassing to have a whole industry built off of your flagship product's well-deserved reputation for flaws and crap security...)
Actually, by default it restricts installation to the App Store and "Identified Developers" (e.g. established 3rd-party developers like Adobe). IIRC, you can also type in the admin account user/pass in the prompt to bypass it. Only the really out-there stuff requires going into System Preferences and explicitly allowing it.
That one TV-advertised product PC-Matic mimics this behavior in Windows if memory serves, which makes me think that Microsoft just wants to bump that company off, perhaps?
If even true. The cost of a full solar setup is far far far over the claimed $30,000 that supposedly did the land, well, septic, home, and all.
Not really - 280 Wp panels can be had online for $300 each - 20 of them for $6k, which will give you 5.6 kW peak, an obscene amount of potential juice for a typical household that accounts for cloudy days.
Overall cost for a luxury rig if you do it yourself is maybe $12k, maximum (including the inverter gear, battery bank, a small shed to park the battery bank in, etc). You'll have to replace the batteries every 5-10 years (depending on brand/quality., where you live, how much you use it, etc), but otherwise it's quite doable, and you'll pay way more than $16k in power bills over the 25-year expected lifetime of the panels ($150/mo. average power bill over 25 years = $45k...)
Lmfao. No. No 50,000. No internet in stix. No jobs in stix. Also need car. You do not live on minimum wage.
I live in "stix"... the nearest town to me is 20 miles away, and it has a population of 2000. Population density out here is 14 / sq. mi. The nearest city is 50 miles east of me.
I have Internet (I recently got 14mbps DSL, and still have 25mbps Satellite Internet as backup to it.) I work remotely most days, but the hour-long commute on the days I do go (downtown PDX) in is actually faster (and way more pleasant) than the commute of some of my co-workers who live in some PDX 'burbs.
A car? Hell, my commuter vehicle, a cheap-but-damned-reliable 2000-ish vintage minivan, cost me a mere $2,500. I do not live on minimum wage, but once the house/land is paid off (10 years hence - I'm paying it down fast/early), I could *very* easily do so.
--
My neighbors? Many of them live and work at astoundingly low income (a substantial portion on a fixed retirement income), and do just fine.
Gotta agree with sibling, and can drill down even further...
There's a reason I still support and read our local paper, printed in the town nearest my house; this is a town that has barely 2,000 souls in it, mind. Oh, and the "local" TV news around here covers and centers on Portland, OR - which is 50 miles away.
The NYT isn't going to tell me the school board minutes, the city council minutes, or the local budget/tax/bond stuff. I don't expect the NYT to print a picture of my kid making the winning score at the last high school basketball game, or remind me when stuff like the Friendship Jamboree is coming up. No coupons for the local grocery store are going to be found in the NYT, either.
--
Also, there is a hazard in consolidation, one we can already see. The US (and UK, and etc) have a grand tradition of slanted/yellow journalism that is present even today, denials be damned. Only difference is back then, the papers proudly proclaimed their slants up-front (today? Not so much - you usually get denials from 'em). The best way to counterbalance that bias was to have competing outlets with different slants, then you could compare/contrast to get the actual truth of a given matter if you wanted it.
Besides, do you really want to go back to the days (1970's-1990s or so) where a select few outlets were the literal 'gatekeepers of truth'? Personally, well, fuck that. Let the marketplace win out - webhosting is cheap, the code for it is free of cost, and it doesn't take much more than a 10th grade education these days to set up a working bit of homegrown journalism. The market can (and in my opinion will) choose the winners and losers from the lot (see also The Drudge Report --love it or hate it-- as an example of a local gossip rag/site that exploded and went international.)
[...] was turned down as I had not been actively using Puppet in the previous few months. Sometimes the job requirements are strict.
There's a massive diff between Puppet 3.x and 4.x (or 2016-x), which likely explains why if they indeed gave you that reason (for example, roles and profiles are dead, and R10k became something entirely different along the way). It's a bullshit reason, but maybe they had a candidate who had demonstrated a more current and complex grasp of it?
In my experience, that is completely different. If you interview for a DevOps role, you will be asked a laundry list of programs like Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Bamboo, Jenkins, TeamCity, Vagrant, Terraform, Saltstack, Kubernates, Katello, Foreman, and Rake. If you don't know one of those programs (say you know the ins and outs of GitHub Enterprise, but not BitBucket), the interview stops -right there-, you are shown the door, and they call for the next candidate.
*sigh* - it's a troll, but I'm currently waiting for something, so...
I can count only a few companies that interview that way, and you're right... the interview would stop right there, because *I* would walk out of it, telling them in so many kind words to go fuck themselves on my way out. What you described is a laundry-lister, and any company which still (in this century!) interviews like that is either going to hire an incompetent or a liar.
Let me explain for the studio audience why your premise is bullshit and pick through a few of these: Puppet/Chef(or cfengine)/Salt are similar enough that finding experience in one means you can quickly train your candidate in the others at very little cost if they have the skills/drive to learn them. Bamboo/Jenkins/TeamCity? Same-same (though SCM tasks are more and more being automated into oblivion, handed off to the dev teams to do their own housekeeping, or still run by a dedicated team as a service to the devs). Few folks use Foreman anymore (you get what you pay for, no?), Kubernetes (- note proper spelling) is primarily for Docker (which curiously you did not mention), and Fleet (which you also did not list) still competes with it. You only list one language of sorts, and it's an extension set to Ruby, which you did not list. You also left out service discovery (e.g. Consul), process security (e.g. Vault, also a Hashicorp product), and totally left out deployment methodologies (though you did casually mention CI/CD), which is fucking *primary* if you want to fit into a new company (e.g. a company that is still religious about gitflow isn't going to cotton so well towards the GitHub feature/master branching model). Also left out are process methodologies, which often are akin to religion in the dev world.
TL;DR, you have no idea how this whole thing works, do you?
Um... side projects aren't "jobs to qualify experience" when talking to HR.
Sure it does - your resume can specifically state "I also implemented $buzzword as an early adopter to provide $somethingOfGoodValue to the company." It gives you the provable experience you can point to.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty certain that Facebook (and Intel, Apple, Microsoft, whatever) have formed legally independent entities from which to operate in Germany. Worst that could happen is that Facebook GmbH (the German subsidiary) gets nuked, leaving Facebook (US) untouched.
(...and vice-versa - for instance, Solarworld is the biggest Solar panel maker in Germany, but their independent subsidiary, Solarworld USA, is legally separate, with its own C-level, its own financial and tax structure, its own distinct set of contracts with various vendors, etc.)
The parent and subsidiaries are structured to keep things separate, but have no qualms (or obstacles) to shipping money between them through various (And fully legal) mechanisms.
To be fair, different cultures/governments hold speech in differing regards. Germany doesn't hold it in as high regard as the UK does, and the UK doesn't fully enshrine it as a near-holy and near-inviolable law like the US does.
To be fair, the company, like nearly any sane/competent company on the planet, will avoid making any public comment, and instead save it for the courtroom.
HR could end up costing the company money as well...
A few years back, my wife was in-and-out of the hospital for what turned out to be a rare congenital disorder (currently under control and in remission of sorts). When it began, I filed ADA paperwork with HR to the effect that, as her de-facto caretaker, I would occasionally have to work remotely or take off from work on occasion for her doc appointments. HR and my manager were understanding and quite fine with it; I just had to occasionally work odd hours to ensure that it never affected my performance.
If Mr. Davis filed similar paperwork (he really should have, even before starting work there), the company may well end up eating a big judgement.
I'm mostly curious as to why they didn't try to make it a straight commodity to be traded against first... they'd have an easier time of it in Chicago than they would in New York. Of course it'd be a bitch to get a certified and unassailable benchmark of value that the SEC would put up with, but still...
I suspect that Mr. Trump has approximately nothing to do with British civil courts, let alone this particular lawsuit.
Seriously dude, let it go. Not everything in the news is orange-tinted...
Depends... from what I hear, a lot of the Fleet Street periodicals each have a massive cash stockpile that's earmarked for nothing but libel suits (they tend to attract 'em, as you might have guessed). Maybe she got a piece of that dosh from her employer? Not entirely sure, though - it would depend on whether or not she was posting in her capacity as a columnist or not. If not, then she's likely fscked.
Gad - some of us actually *want* some actual real-estate on the screen. :/
In the 1950s they made it illegal to pay DJs to play music. A day later the job of 'program director' was invented. It has never been illegal to give massive free prizes like money, cars, vacation packages, and concert tickets to play music.
FTFY. ;)
It's a lot more subtle these days, and rarely if ever involves giving money directly to a station (or rather, a syndicate of stations). Instead, the studios give them high-ticket items and/or money in the form of 'contest prizes' (with of course a small percentage to the station as a 'handling fee' to pay for 'advertising' the 'contest'), in exchange for pushing a coterie of favored 'hits' from that studio up on the playlist, often over time as they come out.
The contests/giveaways are then used to drive listener loyalty, which in turns drives up advertising dollars. The stations*cough*syndicates*cough* still get paid, just indirectly, and clear enough of payola laws to stay out of a courtroom.
I mean seriously - it's not like a radio station can afford to give away a free vacation for four to Hawaii every month off of its own budget...
Autotuned voices, corporate-created-idols (usually some pretty teenaged kid with a previous 'career' as a Disney 'talent employee'), new stars with a pre-baked 'image' (naturally built/provided by the studio), lyrics that are focus-group-tested and written by someone else, a catchy tune usually ripped-off from some unknown who got paid a pittance for it...
Most *music* these days is fucking garbage. Okay, some of that may be the 'get off my lawn' syndrome on my part, but honestly, in the past the musician and/or band usually had to come up with everything themselves: lyrics, chords, composition, image, vision, etc. Even as late as the 1990s or so, there were still artists who did it themselves, and the quality tended to show through more readily. Yes there were pre-baked 'stars' in the past as well, but their appeal tended to die off pretty quickly, or their star faded long before their second album... much like, well, today. It's just that the signal-to-noise ratio went to hell of late.
Nowadays, it all seems, I don't know... not crafted, so much as assembled. Disposable talent would be a good way to put it, I think. Nowadays, to find the good stuff, you have to cast a really wide net, to local up-and-coming independent artists (pre-contract), obscure bands in Europe, Asia, etc.
Don't get me wrong entirely, though - some of it, intentionally assembled (e.g. Electronica) can be pretty damned good; but then, underneath it, you find independent artists who carefully crafted what they themselves produced.
I can't be the only one who thinks this...
Nota Bene: Microsoft is making a *Linux* version of MS SQL Server... so yes, you're correct in that Microsoft can adapt as needed.
That said, it still brings up GP's point: Eventually a tipping point will be reached, where people start asking "why bother buying Windows when all my stuff either runs on a web browser or it runs on {something with a Linux kernel under it}?
We'll know when that tipping point is reached when OEMs start defaulting their consumer devices to ChromeOS (or whatever), instead of defaulting to Windows.
OS/2 had license fees too... how'd that turn out for 'em? ;)
I guess the point is, license fees haven't much to do with the future viability of a given OS.
1) Government workers and government worker unions are apples/oranges compared to private-sector unions. They operate under vastly different environments, parameters, and conditions.
2) You're misrepresenting the argument: the actual reason for busting the public school employee unions (and not the NEA or AFT, which are national teacher unions) was to remove forced-membership requirements and the massive fraud/waste/abuse (and not a little political abuse) that had sprung from its membership and leadership.
Fun fact: Most of the "1%" got there recently - as in, within 1 or 2 generations at most. Split inheritances and a higher-than-normal crop of dumbass offspring tend to blow away most fortunes, and severely decrease others to the point where they individually fall out of that "1%" designation. There are of course a few exceptions, but in reality they are barely a quorum, let alone anything approaching a majority.
If the vast majority of humanity becomes unemployed (which is what this apocalyptic scenario implies), then no one will be buying the products that these robots make. Without customers and the money/purchasing they bring, businesses tend to collapse fairly quickly. You could counter with "well, the rich will just buy stuff from each other", but 1) the scale won't be there to justify the automation in most cases, and 2) in economics, just like in biology, when the genetic pool gets too small for a species, the result eventually becomes extinction.
Look, I get it, but honestly, this is the same argument that was being advanced 100 years ago when electricity was automating things (and 'OMG that Westinghouse guy is going to have more money than a god while the rest of us starve!'), 200 years ago when steam was automating things, etc etc. People have always adapted, shifted their career focus, and created new industries which are not as easily automated. Unless someone can come up with an argument showing how this time will be different (hint: it probably won't), then this is just a rehash of an old argument.
Wait, doesn't the UK require some minimum level of literacy before you can get a driver's license?
Yeah - gotta agree with sibling... 10 years' salary on a mortgage is friggin' insane, doubly so when you get a nice place outside of California for only 2 years' salary.
Not to mention that the figure also changes depending on how close you are to retirement. If you're younger and doing well, maybe get one priced at 3-5x annual salary, but once you get past 40, you may want to lower the sights a bit and be realistic.. that 30-year fixed is (barring early payoff) still going to be there demanding cash out of you for another decade when you turn 60.
Example? No problem - my wife and I just bought our new we're-retiring-here-dammit log cabin on six acres, in a gorgeous part of the Oregon Coastal Range. I paid exactly 2 years' salary to get it from the previous owner. Glopping a bit of extra principal on the mortgage payments will have the place entirely paid off in 10 years, leaving me a nice cushion of time before I retire for good... and by the way, the missus no longer has to work. Meanwhile, I still have a decent amount of extra dosh each month after the bills to put towards, well, anything. That's why you get realistic about it (besides, what the hell was I going to do with a 4-bdrm Victorian-style monster, what with the kids all grown up?)
You can say that I'm in no particular hurry to go get a $1.3m house that would cost me a mint in taxes, upkeep, labor, etc... the Joneses can go fsck themselves. YMMV, though.
Apple has always allowed you to disable it (in a very easy-to-find spot with admin credentials) in OSX/MacOS, and they've had it in place for like 17 years - and for the entire decade or so that the App Store has existed. Pretty sure that they're in no hurry to lock your laptop/desktop down to the App Store if they haven't done it by now.
Google is also perfectly okay with what they refer to as side-loading... and have allowed that with just an easy click or two since Android and ChromeOS have respectively existed.
What's different here is that Microsoft has a nasty history of trying to lock down the consumer when they think the rubes aren't looking. Time will tell, obviously, but I have no trust for 'em. (Personally, I think they're just looking to put PC-Matic and similar app-whitelisting products out of business since it's kind of embarrassing to have a whole industry built off of your flagship product's well-deserved reputation for flaws and crap security...)
Actually, by default it restricts installation to the App Store and "Identified Developers" (e.g. established 3rd-party developers like Adobe). IIRC, you can also type in the admin account user/pass in the prompt to bypass it. Only the really out-there stuff requires going into System Preferences and explicitly allowing it.
That one TV-advertised product PC-Matic mimics this behavior in Windows if memory serves, which makes me think that Microsoft just wants to bump that company off, perhaps?
If even true. The cost of a full solar setup is far far far over the claimed $30,000 that supposedly did the land, well, septic, home, and all.
Not really - 280 Wp panels can be had online for $300 each - 20 of them for $6k, which will give you 5.6 kW peak, an obscene amount of potential juice for a typical household that accounts for cloudy days.
Overall cost for a luxury rig if you do it yourself is maybe $12k, maximum (including the inverter gear, battery bank, a small shed to park the battery bank in, etc). You'll have to replace the batteries every 5-10 years (depending on brand/quality., where you live, how much you use it, etc), but otherwise it's quite doable, and you'll pay way more than $16k in power bills over the 25-year expected lifetime of the panels ($150/mo. average power bill over 25 years = $45k...)
Lmfao. No. No 50,000. No internet in stix. No jobs in stix. Also need car. You do not live on minimum wage.
I live in "stix"... the nearest town to me is 20 miles away, and it has a population of 2000. Population density out here is 14 / sq. mi. The nearest city is 50 miles east of me.
I have Internet (I recently got 14mbps DSL, and still have 25mbps Satellite Internet as backup to it.) I work remotely most days, but the hour-long commute on the days I do go (downtown PDX) in is actually faster (and way more pleasant) than the commute of some of my co-workers who live in some PDX 'burbs.
A car? Hell, my commuter vehicle, a cheap-but-damned-reliable 2000-ish vintage minivan, cost me a mere $2,500. I do not live on minimum wage, but once the house/land is paid off (10 years hence - I'm paying it down fast/early), I could *very* easily do so.
--
My neighbors? Many of them live and work at astoundingly low income (a substantial portion on a fixed retirement income), and do just fine.
Gotta agree with sibling, and can drill down even further...
There's a reason I still support and read our local paper, printed in the town nearest my house; this is a town that has barely 2,000 souls in it, mind. Oh, and the "local" TV news around here covers and centers on Portland, OR - which is 50 miles away.
The NYT isn't going to tell me the school board minutes, the city council minutes, or the local budget/tax/bond stuff. I don't expect the NYT to print a picture of my kid making the winning score at the last high school basketball game, or remind me when stuff like the Friendship Jamboree is coming up. No coupons for the local grocery store are going to be found in the NYT, either.
--
Also, there is a hazard in consolidation, one we can already see. The US (and UK, and etc) have a grand tradition of slanted/yellow journalism that is present even today, denials be damned. Only difference is back then, the papers proudly proclaimed their slants up-front (today? Not so much - you usually get denials from 'em). The best way to counterbalance that bias was to have competing outlets with different slants, then you could compare/contrast to get the actual truth of a given matter if you wanted it.
Besides, do you really want to go back to the days (1970's-1990s or so) where a select few outlets were the literal 'gatekeepers of truth'? Personally, well, fuck that. Let the marketplace win out - webhosting is cheap, the code for it is free of cost, and it doesn't take much more than a 10th grade education these days to set up a working bit of homegrown journalism. The market can (and in my opinion will) choose the winners and losers from the lot (see also The Drudge Report --love it or hate it-- as an example of a local gossip rag/site that exploded and went international.)
[...] was turned down as I had not been actively using Puppet in the previous few months. Sometimes the job requirements are strict.
There's a massive diff between Puppet 3.x and 4.x (or 2016-x), which likely explains why if they indeed gave you that reason (for example, roles and profiles are dead, and R10k became something entirely different along the way). It's a bullshit reason, but maybe they had a candidate who had demonstrated a more current and complex grasp of it?
In my experience, that is completely different. If you interview for a DevOps role, you will be asked a laundry list of programs like Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Bamboo, Jenkins, TeamCity, Vagrant, Terraform, Saltstack, Kubernates, Katello, Foreman, and Rake. If you don't know one of those programs (say you know the ins and outs of GitHub Enterprise, but not BitBucket), the interview stops -right there-, you are shown the door, and they call for the next candidate.
*sigh* - it's a troll, but I'm currently waiting for something, so...
I can count only a few companies that interview that way, and you're right... the interview would stop right there, because *I* would walk out of it, telling them in so many kind words to go fuck themselves on my way out. What you described is a laundry-lister, and any company which still (in this century!) interviews like that is either going to hire an incompetent or a liar.
Let me explain for the studio audience why your premise is bullshit and pick through a few of these: Puppet/Chef(or cfengine)/Salt are similar enough that finding experience in one means you can quickly train your candidate in the others at very little cost if they have the skills/drive to learn them. Bamboo/Jenkins/TeamCity? Same-same (though SCM tasks are more and more being automated into oblivion, handed off to the dev teams to do their own housekeeping, or still run by a dedicated team as a service to the devs). Few folks use Foreman anymore (you get what you pay for, no?), Kubernetes (- note proper spelling) is primarily for Docker (which curiously you did not mention), and Fleet (which you also did not list) still competes with it. You only list one language of sorts, and it's an extension set to Ruby, which you did not list. You also left out service discovery (e.g. Consul), process security (e.g. Vault, also a Hashicorp product), and totally left out deployment methodologies (though you did casually mention CI/CD), which is fucking *primary* if you want to fit into a new company (e.g. a company that is still religious about gitflow isn't going to cotton so well towards the GitHub feature/master branching model). Also left out are process methodologies, which often are akin to religion in the dev world.
TL;DR, you have no idea how this whole thing works, do you?
Um... side projects aren't "jobs to qualify experience" when talking to HR.
Sure it does - your resume can specifically state "I also implemented $buzzword as an early adopter to provide $somethingOfGoodValue to the company." It gives you the provable experience you can point to.