Ivan Pepelnjak

I do many things, but not subtlety.

Welcome to Stwipe

Suppose that once a week, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay £1. The sixth would pay £3. The seventh would pay £7. The eighth would pay £12. The ninth would pay £18. And the tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.　 So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every week and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until, one day, the owner caused them a little problem. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your weekly beer by £20.” Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free but what about the other six men? The paying customers? How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realized that £20 divided by six is £3.33, but if they subtracted that from everybody’s share then not only would the first four men still be drinking for free but the fifth and sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.　 So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fairer to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage. They decided to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay. And so, the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (a 100% saving). The sixth man now paid £2 instead of £3 (a 33% saving). The seventh man now paid £5 instead of £7 (a 28% saving). The eighth man now paid £9 instead of £12 (a 25% saving). The ninth man now paid £14 instead of £18 (a 22% saving). And the tenth man now paid £49 instead of £59 (a 16% saving).　 Each of the last six was better off than before with the first four continuing to drink for free.　 But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got £1 out of the £20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got £10!“　 “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a £1 too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”　 “That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get £10 back, when I only got £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”　 “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.　 The next week the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important – they didn’t have enough money between all of them to pay for even half of the bill!　 And that’s how it works. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy and they just might not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.　 For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

@FlySWISS Thanks a million for fast response and your kindness. After numerous failed retries, the stars finally aligned, and I got a rep who managed to rebook my flight. Still, it was a nerve-wracking journey that tars my decades-long excellent experience with Swiss 😢

@ioshints Hi Ivan, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. Please provide your booking reference via private message so we can assist you accordingly. Kind regards, Angie.

Congratulation, @FlySWISS, I cannot rebook my flight online, your AI assistant is useless or claims "it's experiencing turbulences", your live assistant drops the chat, and the phone support is not available for rebooking. You managed to reach the support level of United 🤬

The Internet has become little more than a perpetual meeting of the Dunning-Kruger club. It is … exhausting.

🔨 Let's standardize on a hammer -- said no carpenter ever 🤷‍♂️ So why do we do this in #technology? @ioshints joined the podcast to peel back the layers of perception VS reality. I really enjoyed this conversation! @SharpNetwork @packetpushers #NetworkEngineering #DevOps

AI image generation is becoming scarily good 🥹

As promised earlier, I wrote a blog post explaining the WordPress to Hugo/CloudFlare migration process at a high level. recurseit.com/post/2025/03/m… I hope it helps! /cc @ioshints @juangolbez #hugo #wordpress #cloudflare #developer #html #markdown #git #github #code #repository

After a grueling experience, many fights against Hugo, my raspberry pi, GitHub, git, wordpress, cloudflare, and of course, my blatant ignorance in the matter... I managed to migrate my blog away from wordpress and to publish it in cloudflare using Hugo, GitHub and markdown.

"If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does" Incredible things happening on the Linux Kernel Mailing List

Well well, hello my old friend! podcast.feedspot.com/network_engine… Software Gone Wild is in the Feedspot top 10 of network engineering podcasts! W00t! /cc @ioshints @forwardingplane

. @Grammarly happily changed "family inet" in Junos configuration to "family incest" 🤦‍♂️ Is there any chance they would ever recognize the Markdown code blocks?

i’ve personally met tech influencers w certifications that imply high level networking knowledge, who literally could not tell you what ARP is or how it works. could not describe the OSI model or the difference between routing & switching. & they’re gearing up to sell you things.

@TracketPacer 🤦‍♂️😂

making fun of tiktok aside—VLAN IDs are part of the 802.1q standard. they’re values inserted into an ethernet frame, which means they exist at layer 2. this person is prob confused bc u can assign an IP to a VLAN interface to allow routing between VLANs

@ritamdas Did you ask for four or five candles?

@ioshints Chatgpt. It is all about right prompt

Another bit in the "AI is a sloppy intern" saga (this time using Microsoft Copilot). I asked it to draw a lovely birthday cake with four candles. This is what I got:

OK, not exactly what I was looking for, but going in the right direction, so I said "I need just the picture of the cake" and got this. Seriously?

@overunderlay @networkservice @ostinato Thank you, will fix.

@networkservice @ioshints @ostinato The one thing in netlab install doc is "vagrant plugin install libvirt --plugin-version=0.12.2" Should be "vagrant-libvirt" instead Other than that, netlab itself works fine

Great to hear Ostinato is working seamlessly with Containerlab! 🎉 We're glad you're loving both the product and the price point. 😊 Thanks for the awesome feedback, and feel free to reach out if you need any help! #CustomerFeedback #Ostinato #Networking