25+ yr Java/JS dev
Linux novice - running Ubuntu (no windows/mac)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 14th, 2024

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  • For the most part that is my preference, but there needs to be some mechanism for discovery. Timeline isn’t bad, but I tend to avoid it once I have enough subs. For example, I probably don’t visit /all in Lemmy but maybe once a year at this point. I’m sure there are new communities I’d have interest in that I miss. Probably a bunch.

    So yeah. It’s good to have a good discovery algorithm, but it’s also addictive. So it’s good not to have an algorithm, but then it gets difficult to hit critical mass for both creators and consumers.

    Shrug.






  • The algorithm at really good at presenting people who were relevant to my interests. People I wouldn’t have any idea I would like. Like Mr. Global for insight into oil markets. Stoobs and Kit Lazer for movie reviews. The autistic stats guy for analyzing truth behind headlines. Some guy for Dr Doom facts and anarchist POV on current events.

    Like there were people that if you described them to me, I’d be like… pass. And yet I found them educational and interesting. I don’t know how another platform offers that algorithm, even if the other features are great. It’s not a knock on anyone else. I have zero interest in YouTube shorts, for example.

    That’s nothing against loops.video. I might like it if I tried it.




  • I couldn’t call either a favorite, but there are two that have stuck with me my whole life. Edit to fix formatting.

    The Second Coming — W. B. Yeats (1919)

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again; but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    It feels as relevant to our time as it was for WW1.


    Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — Dylan Thomas

    Do not go gentle into that good night,
    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
    Because their words had forked no lightning they
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
    Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
    And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
    Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    And you, my father, there on the sad height,
    Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.




  • I’m not trying to defend that guy but I work for who is hiring when I’m out of work. I’ve spent 11 out of the last 40 months unemployed, and as a result I have no retirement savings to speak of — I can’t afford to turn down work. I’ve worked for Ford, Home Depot, Autozone, Uline (honestly felt so relieved to get laid off, that place was fucking scummy), the Army, and a shit ton of places you’ve never heard of. I had to turn down working for an insurance company — and I think they are pretty shitty — because they wanted to pay 1/3 what I’m making today. And I make fucking nothing compared to Silicon Valley.

    engineers work for the company, not for users.

    On the other hand I’ve never made any bones about the fact that I work to develop good products and if someone can make money on that good for them, but I fight for the best design for end users I can. I have mostly developed internal software, though, and no one but me cares about internal users. You can tell because everywhere you go, front line workers are bitching about garbage software.

    I might be wrong about the best solution, but I refuse to be evil. Even at Uline, I worked to make better software for the workers. But what a bunch of assholes.