calamityjanitor

joined 1 year ago
[–] calamityjanitor 6 points 5 days ago

RFA is expressly anti communist propaganda run by the USA government. Their source for this piece is "a guy told us".

It's hard to prove a negative, but I mean it does seem absolutely stupid.

[–] calamityjanitor 5 points 1 week ago

My 10 year old ITX NAS build with 4 HDDs used 40W at idle. Just upgraded to an Aoostart WTR Pro with the same 4 HDDs, uses 28W at idle. My power bill currently averages around US$0.13/kWh.

 

A collection of emails from the MIT mailing list UNIX-HATERS. Dates from 1987-1994, so mostly pre-linux. A fascinating read of very smart people frustrated with Unix and it's shortcomings compared to forgotten contemporaries like Lisp Machines and other proprietary OSes. Even back then there was a group of people fighting the narrative that Unix is amazing. Some things have improved, while most criticisms are as valid today as they were 30 years ago.

[–] calamityjanitor -1 points 1 week ago

I don't get the term 'technical debt'. Most people seem to use it to say "We took shortcuts previously, so now we need to go back and do things properly".

FIrst, it's a bad metaphor. You take on debt to invest in long term things that will provide future benefits. Telling the bean counters that you need to stop working on useful features to 'pay back technical debt' is not making things clearer to them.

Second, you write software, what the heck are you talking about? Compare to civil engineering. If an area gets busier and the existing narrow wood bridge is no longer suitible, engineers don't say "Wow what idiots built this road with no eye to future growth?" It was built with the needs and resources of the time. To improve it, the bridge needs to be closed, demolished, and rebuilt with planning, labour and materials.

Instead software is empherial. You don't need to demolish what's there. No need to build temporary alternative infrastructure. No need for new materials and disposal of the old. It's just planning and labour to redo a piece of software. It always seems so whiny when people complain about technical debt, as if switching to a different build system is anywhere close to the difficulty of fixing real life; replacing lead pipes with copper for an entire city, or removing asbestos from buildings.

[–] calamityjanitor -2 points 1 month ago

I've always just wiped my work laptop and installed Linux.

[–] calamityjanitor 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Well yeah, Hopoo sold the RoR franchise to gearbox 2 years ago.

Moving from a small indie studio to Valve they are giving up a lot of agency.

[–] calamityjanitor 16 points 1 month ago (4 children)

They're still at it, they bought Campo Santo (Firewatch Devs) in 2018 and now their game In The Valley of Gods is never gonna happen, they worked on Alyx instead.

They poached a bunch of folks from Hopoo Games recently too.

[–] calamityjanitor 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I didn't know about Until the End of the World (1991) till recently. Can't say it was worth watching, but bounty bear was amazing.

[–] calamityjanitor 2 points 1 month ago

The first time I opened an invite steam said I couldn't join, but on a whim I opened it a week later and it worked. I still live in a different city so don't know what happened.

[–] calamityjanitor 12 points 2 months ago
[–] calamityjanitor 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Another aspect is the social graph. It's targeted for normies to easily switch to.

Very few people want to install a communication app, open the compose screen for the first time, and be met by an empty list of who they can communicate with.

https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

By using phone numbers, you can message your friends without needing to have them all register usernames and tell them to you. It also means Signal doesn't need to keep a copy of your contact list on their servers, everyone has their local contact list.

This means private messages for loads of people, their goal.

Hey, we know this account sent this message and you have to give us everything you have about this account

It's a bit backwards, since your account is your phone number, the agency would be asking "give us everything you have from this number". They've already IDed you at that point.

[–] calamityjanitor 19 points 3 months ago (6 children)
280
Chad C4 (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by calamityjanitor to c/chevron7
 
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