Seems there's a reason @GoogleCloud's market share trails behind Microsoft's @Azure and is nowhere near Amazon's @AWSCloud.  It's just insanely difficult to get up and running.

First is the error that I need to enable the Google Cloud service in my Admin Console, but Google Cloud is not even listed there.  The specific error is "Google Cloud Platform service has been disabled. Please contact your administrator to restore service in G Suite Admin console."



Have to contact support (which itself is a puzzle to avoid having to pay for a support plan). Enabling Google Cloud turns out to be tied to enabling Developer Console (how is anyone supposed to know that?).  They say it's a recent issue with migrations, but this StackOverflow thread shows this has been an issue for over a year at least.


Now that the service is enabled for my account, I try to spin up an instance.  If you use GPUs in your project, it then turns out you need to increase your global GPU quota (starts at zero).  Makes no sense because all of the specific non-global GPU settings already start at 1.


I try again to spin up instances, but now I keep getting "not have enough resources available to fulfill the request. Try a different zone, or try again later." Tried 6 different zones all with the same results.


Contacted support again, who suggest I not put all my instances in one zone.  I tell them this is my only instance.  And the response to that seems to basically acknowledge you can't really spin up instances at this time?


Very bizarre and frustrating experience.  It just seems like no one is even testing Google Cloud to make sure anyone can actually use it.  Or that they care if anyone can figure out how to use it.

If you're trying to use the GPUs Azure VMs for actual graphics like in game development, DirectX, or other things where the GPU has to be detected, you need to set the Tesla GPUs to WDDM mode.  By default they are in TCC, which doesn't let them be detected by the system in RDP and has graphics disabled.  Not even Nvidia control panel will see the card.

Solution is pretty quick - just a command line entry.  It can just be done in Command Prompt, no additional software needed.  Credits to the comments on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cloudygamer/comments/7twmiq/problem_with_azure_nv6_and_nvidia_tesla_m60/

(Make sure you first have the Nvidia drivers installed, either by starting the VM with an image that has them or installing manually.)


Once you're done, you'll notice Nvidia control panel will now detect the card.  DirectX applications will see it as well, etc.

Very interesting article that sounds a lot like the ideas portrayed in @MNightShyamalan's @SplitMovie
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/magazine/placebo-effect-medicine.html

Would love to be shown wrong here, but as far as I've found, money on @Patreon is taxed for both patron and creator. In any other situation, only the giver or receiver is taxed, not both. Donations to non-profits are deductible, salaries of employees are deductible expense for the employer, even traditional non-Patreon patron/sponsorship arrangements are at least some form of write-off/expense for the sponsor.  But for Patreon, unless you go through the excessive effort of establishing yourself as a company with an elaborate case for how giving to artists is business-related or straight up start a non-profit organization yourself, the money you give on Patreon is going to be from income you paid taxes on, and then that creator also pays taxes on it as their income.

This is a simplification of the math but just to illustrate: If you made $100k this year and wanted to give away half to artists on Patreon, you literally can't because $50k is owed to taxes and you actually only...[More]

Guess that's my cue to finally leave SF... (esp with the asbestos exposed)
https://abc7news.com/fire-burns-multiple-floors-of-san-francisco-high-rise/4538088/

Tired of having my words reinterpreted to mean different things. People are too busy looking for what they want to hear and not thinking about what someone else is actually trying to say.

Typical investor/businessman thinking: If I could just find a genius smart enough to make me a million dollars but too dumb to do it unless I tell him to...

Somewhere out there right now is someone seeing light from a distant planet Earth and assuming there is no intelligent life because it is light from thousands of years ago.