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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Good point, and we should probably tease apart that distinction between funding models and project intent/scope. For me, I’ve always seen apps like Boost, Sync, Infinity, and Jerboa as being “indie passion projects” regardless of how they pay their devs because of things like the project’s scope, the dev team size, and their community involvement. They just don’t strike me as the kind of apps you build for their “explosive growth and profit potential,” you know? So by extension, I’ve got to assume anyone who builds one is doing it because they love lemmy, wish it was better, and happen to have a little coding knowledge to do something about it. That’s a mission I can get behind.

    Funding, on the other hand, is something that everyone needs but no one has actually figured out. So as long as it looks like a dev is experimenting with their options in good faith and honestly engaging with the community to figure out what’s best, I can’t really fault them for going with one model over another. I’ve got my own preference for open-source community-funded projects of course, but I’m not going to begrudge a dev for seeing it differently.

    With Boost, there’s an ad-free and privacy-respecting option, and then there’s an Admob version. Those are the two most common funding methods out there, and I’m not surprised in the slightest by any dev who reaches for them as off-the-shelf answers. Lemmy has an open-source vibe, sure, but Boost started as a reddit app. Go with what you know. I might be wrong, but it doesn’t feel like the ad supported one is being built to harvest data - it’s just a drop-in advertising space like websites have used since the beginning of time. And if I’m really that concerned about it, I can pay for ad-free. Do I wish that it was open-source, patreon supported, and community built? Sure. But this ticks enough of my boxes to say “sure, why not,” and then casually watch how the conversation about funding plays out in the comments. Who knows, maybe the dev will open things up or add a donation-ware version based on feedback, and I can upvote the Lemmings who suggest it.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that the project feels genuine and in a spirit that I can support. The foundation is solid. Everything else is just details, and I’ll happily tag along for the ride as the developer, the community, and Lemmy as a platform figure out what that means.


  • Look, I get where you’re coming from, but there’s a difference between a $965B corporation whose sole purpose is to harvest your personal info for ads, and a solo dev who just wants to make their (and your) Lemmy browsing a bit less painful. They’re putting in a hellofa lot of time and effort into this thing, which means a hellofa lot of time not spent making money at a regular job. I’m more than happy to kick a few bucks here and there to keep something like that afloat, especially given how apps like Boost and Sync make me actually want to spend time on Lemmy. Encouraging fediverse adoption is a win for the whole ecosystem. You don’t have to use Boost, and if you do choose to install it, you don’t have to pay. There’s an inexpensive ad-free version alongside the ad-supported one for exactly that reason. But complaining about Boost because you hate “social media apps” is like yelling “Fuck Nestle” at the 12-year-old selling lemonade from their driveway. Different scale, different purpose.

    It’s fine to not pay, but I’m glad that some people do support indie devs when they can. The world would be a lot bleaker without little passion projects like this dotting the landscape and filling in the gaps to help bigger projects like Lemmy take off.




  • Sounds like a pretty good excuse to me. The code is viewable, which speaks to the privacy and accountability crowd. He allows personal modification, which appeases the tinkerers. The only group it doesn't benefit are the ones trying to make money off of his work by degrading the user experience with ads. Are there better licenses he could have picked to accomplish his goal? Yes. Am I going to go on a Lemmy rant over a dev's choice of license when he's already done so much right? Hell no. It's a win. Take the W and uninstall later if he changes his tune, just like with any other app whether open or closed.

    I do agree that true open source is better for everyone as it allows the community to truly own, improve, and evolve the app into the best version of itself. But this is the Privacy group, not the FOSS one. As far as my money is concerned, it ticks the boxes and earned my install. We'll see where it goes from here.


  • When?

    Congress ran up a dinner tab, ate the food, drank the drinks, and then Kevin Karen refused to pay the server when his bill was due. I get being worried about what next year's dinner might cost, but don't scream at the hostess and refuse to pay for what was already eaten. The staff needs that cash Congress owes them to buy groceries and pay the bank, or real people are going to starve and the bank is going to jack up everyone's rates permanently since Karen keeps dining here and pulling this bullshit.

    The "working with Democrats" that you're talking about is when the manager was forced to give Karen a meal voucher in exchange for his signed promise to come in the next morning with a check. But instead of paying his bill - the one he asked to negotiate even though he already ate the food - the twerp went back on his own promise again and pitched another fit in the morning. Again, the staff almost didn't get paid and again the restaurant's creditors almost raised the country's rent, until Karen threw a $20 bill on the table and said "I'll be back later".

    At which point his friends in the GOP tossed him to the curb not because he was being an ass, but because they actually wanted the country to default, food stamps to stop, and the whole system they represent to grind to a halt.

    McKaren didn't "work with Democrats," he refused to pay the country's bills (which the House had already signed into law and spent), held that payment hostage to force concessions, and then refused to honor his own deal. The debt limit still hasn't been raised, and you think the guy with a track record two times over of skipping out on his own tab and breaking his own deals is the one to trust?

    Just because Jordan is worse doesn't mean McCarthy is trustworthy. It sure as hell doesn't mean he "can be worked with when push comes to shove." McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus were the ones doing the shoving.


  • Makes sense. From your earlier post it sounded like there were only two levels needed: "deal with right now" and "deal with at end of day," in which case "silence" works as a poor-man's snooze for me because I don't pick up my phone and deal with them unless it vibrates or I'm at home going through the backlog. But now that you're talking about four different priority tiers, having them be device-specific sounds like a good plan. Best I can do without a separate tier from smartwatch/KDE Connect/ChromeOS is notify, snooze, and silent - 3 tiers. Pretty sure there are a few apps offering custom ringtones or vibration patterns per app or per notification keyword for further granularity on the phone itself, but for those who already wear a smartwatch (like me) having the separate device do that heavy lifting is a great way to go.





  • I can see the logic there, but why not vote based on relevance rather than agreement? That way comments that are on-topic and further the conversation rise to the top, regardless of whether they align with the Lemmy hive-mind. Some of the best threads are the long ones with a spirited back and forth between ideological opposites, and those would go away (or be pushed to the bottom) if both sides simply down-voted each other back to net-zero.

    As a weird byproduct, we also get fun stuff like Hanlon's Law, which states that the fastest way to find the correct answer to something online is to confidently state the wrong one on Reddit/Lemmy and wait for your comment and the actual answer to float to the top. After all, people love to correct one another, and we often come to Lemmy to learn about other points of view and have our own views challenged. As long as everyone is debating in good faith and trying to add value to the conversation (which should be enforced by downvote), differing opinions are a good thing.


  • I can think of two benefits to an adjustable desk:

    1. Better chairs at a lower cost. Most office chairs (and chairs in general) are designed for table-height desks, so you'll find a greater variety of multi-point-adjustable ergonomic options that'll improve your posture while seated. From a corporate perspective, these chairs are also more versatile when the office changes size or layout because they'll work just as well around the conference table as in the cubicle.
    2. This one's purely a business reason, but also the main reason an office manager will have on their mind: the employee they hire to replace you might be a different height. Cynical, I know, but an adjustable height desk means they can accommodate anyone they hire now or in the future, and they've got to justify office expenses on a multi-year timescale

    For you, an existing employee who already has a desk and chair you like, the adjustable desk will probably be a downgrade. For the office, it's a smart business decision that also means comfier chairs for everyone.


  • This might be the best choice

    There are lots of choices that could be made. Off the top of my head, there's the choice to form a consensus government of the middle half so that the essential functions of government are taken care of, like paying for services they've already signed into law, approving military leadership appointments for the hundreds of vacancies in our armed forces, and ensuring that pregnant women and disabled veterans on food stamps don't starve when the "Freedom Caucus" tries to intentionally shut down the government (again) even though the GOP already agreed to spending levels. Because remember, the Senate and White House are both controlled by Democrats, so the only way they can sign something into law is with a consensus involving the other side, and there's actual work to be done.

    Your premise that a divided GOP is required to rely on themselves alone is something they did to themselves by choice over and over again.


  • I don't know that I'd go that far when characterizing his record.

    Yes, he ultimately ended up certifying the election, but he also signed the Texas v Pennsylvania amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to help throw out millions of votes (despite the suit lacking any sort of standing, and being "constitutionally, legally[,] and factually wrong about Georgia" in the words of Georgia's AG, which rings pretty true when you read the brief). When he did finally vote to certify, the GOP letter he signed very clearly implies things would have gone differently if he had been allowed to vote for the slate of obvious fraudsters that were stopped before they made it to Congress. There was a long line of fundamental safeguards that prevented the illegal toppling of the government, every one of which was stressed to its breaking point (mostly with Austin Scott's help), and any of which could have tipped the scales, but Scott wasn't exactly on the side pushing for Democracy. That said, you're right. At least he did better than Jordan, I guess?

    For the record, Scott's other political stances are:

    • Life begins at conception so abortion at any stage for any reason is murder
    • Pro death penalty
    • Anti gun control
    • Anti same-sex marriage, let alone the raft of other LGBT issues

    So… several decades and a few million voters removed from where the actual American population stands, and farther to the right than even mainstream fiscal conservatives, but that's par for the course these days.


  • I migrated my daily driver from Ubuntu > Kubuntu > Nobara (based on Fedora), and I understand that fear of switching away from Debian after investing years into its ecosystem. Even still, Nobara has been wonderful and you might end up enjoying it (or another Fedora distro) just as much as I do. Like with Ubuntu/Debian, most apps are pre-packaged for Fedora, and the switch from one to the other is often as simple as trading sudo apt install for sudo dnf install.

    If your shoes, the thing I'd be more worried about is the transition from Kubuntu (with its built-in tweaks that smooth out the rough edges of Linux and offer an "it just works" experience) to bare-bones Debian. Love 'em or hate 'em, Canonical put a lot of work into their distro and it became the go-to for a reason. That's actually how I found myself on Nobara - the promise of pre-applied usability tweaks. I'm not a gamer, but I love that media players, graphics packages, OBS Studio (which I use for Zoom meetings at work), and my condenser microphone all work out of the box. And then there's the gaming stuff as a cherry on top.


  • I'm on KDE as well, but you've got to admit that the way Gnome's overview, virtual desktops, app menu, and search interface all work so seamlessly and logically together is a thing of beauty. Tap "Meta" one time and you can see all of your running programs, drag them between desktops, scroll to switch desktops, start typing to open apps and files… it just works. Meanwhile on KDE, it's a relative pain to remap the "Meta" key and moving windows between desktops still feels clunky even in the overview.

    All of that said, I still prefer KDE. Plasma 6 is set to integrate many of the Gnome features above, and KDE's design philosophy as a whole is much more flexible. For example, I use two side-by-side monitors and it makes logical sense to imagine my virtual desktops as being sets of monitors directly above/below my physical ones that I can vertically scroll between. On KDE, it's easy to set my grid of virtual spaces to be one column with many rows and be done with it, or for someone else to pick the opposite, or for them to go with a full grid of spaces if they so choose. But on Gnome, even though the vertical layout used to be the default, their newly dogmatic insistence that we only slide sideways means I'm dealing with multiple plugins that often glitch or conflict with other parts of the UI.

    Both systems have their merits and deserve a place. (But I'll gladly fight with anyone who denies that KDE is the obvious king)



  • The clipboard history app is great, but I still wish it let you pin/bookmark things you don’t want it to auto-delete. There was a pull request to add it in a while ago, but it was nixed because it would make the tool “too competent” and app-like. Except that it’s a pretty standard feature of clipboard managers, wouldn’t make things any more complicated for those who feel like ignoring it, and none of the alternative apps work with global shortcuts on Wayland!