ah, yes. superb execution. sublime

I’m learning with Java. I like that I don’t have to think about memory management compared with C or even Rust. I dislike how slow it is.

I’m also using HTML, CSS, and Go for a bunch of static websites I’m building with Hugo. I love HTML. I like CSS only in the context of Bootstrap. Otherwise I dislike the way my style-sheet documents turn out. And I haven’t really tried to understand Go’s whole “context” thing because I want to use Rust. This last comment is why I want to finish my current projects and then immediately leave Hugo for Zola.

I also just finished learning about and using R and the Tidyverse for a couple of statistics projects. I really dislike R… On the other hand, I love the Tidyverse with my whole heart. It’s been one of my favorite experiences with any language.

I like that this avoids the sometimes-problematic wisdom of the crowds. But at the same time, this solution empowers ‘wise’ users only. And, perhaps more importantly, reduces the burden of work on mods. Moderating is work that we can all help reduce, I think.

This is so relieving

I don’t know them by name, but I know there are forks brewing. To ‘name’ one, there’s the CookieMonster Engineer one that will get a new maintainer soon.

Ah. Thx for clarifying.

Hmm. Sorry, I’m having a bit of difficulty understanding what you’re saying. Do you mean that there were larger community efforts to first decide upon what to do and then act, but this maintainer ignored the community?

The maintainer created a poll to rename the project. 4Chan came up with Sneedacity. Apparently it’s a Simpson’s reference. It’s a silly name. The maintainer didn’t like it, and started saying things about 4Chan that others (see thread mentioned below) have characterized as exaggerated. 4Chan responded with threads full of mockery and bullying. The threads are available in the post where the ex-maintainer explains why they’re stepping down.

In summary, the 4Chan people who care care because they had an opportunity to do something silly and because they saw an opportunity to bully the maintainer.

Man I just spent too much time reading about this, going down the rabbit hole, and I’m just glad that I’m part of a community (Lemmy) that is so clear about how we’re supposed to treat each other. We not only care about each others’ experience, but we’re able to avoid reproducing tropes that reinforce awful ways of understanding and treating each other.

Others can claim that the ex-maintainer of the fork at hand fanned the flames, but the flames would have never been there to begin with in a more humane context.

What is this bullshit. Please leave our community.

When I went over there and liked Lemmy, a pop-up appeared that asked something like “Is this the alternative you prefer the most?”. So maybe my like appears as a single like in the sum of likes, but weighs more towards pushing that particular alternative up in the rank.

Conveniently, someone just asked for a Reddit alternative in /r/AlternativeTo. They would probably like to hear about this or something 😉

Y’all are amazing 🥲

What a coincidence! Just last night I started reading this book! https://pragprog.com/titles/bhhugo/build-websites-with-hugo/ I like that the chapters are short and that there are exercises :)

Perhaps ironically, Reddit. It just has so many people that there’s loads of novelty, serendipity, and people that can relate to what I post…

Stack Exchange. Sometimes it’s wacky, but most of the time it’s super interesting to see how people solve personal and professional problems. Also, I like seeing small slices of specialized fields. Like reading stuff about space or math or chemistry…

Do GitHub discussions for bugs I’m hoping will be fixed count as a forum? 😅

omg. my lifelong fear. thanks for calming down my nerves

This sounds like a good way of getting a better idea of who you’re talking to.

But I dislike the idea of things becoming parochial. For example, “He just joined the community two days ago! What is he talking about?” Or “Keep out of this community. If you’re not part of it don’t bring your uninformed opinion here!” In my case, I like the idea of pseudonimity being the only thing people know of me. Not even my karma is immediately visible to people. Just my pseudonym.

Similarly, sometimes I want to comment on something without up-voting it. The reason is that up-votes mean different things to me at different moments. Sometimes I up-vote because I like the content and I want to signal that.* Other times, I’m not particularly pumped by something but I think it’s important, as in it’s important for others to see. And yet other times, I am part of discussions and yet I actually down-vote the post because I think it’s not a topic that I’d like others to see (don’t worry, I didn’t do this with your post! Nor do I with the vast majority of posts). Other times I don’t do anything; I comment without touching votes.

But when I do vote, part of why I do it is because I know my vote will be aggregated. I trust that it’s kept private.

* Funnily enough, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a post I straight up dislike. I guess I’ve found them all interesting or haven’t bothered to down-vote? However, comments can sometimes be sour— those I do down-vote when I dislike them, mainly the style, not always the content.

This is a great space for FLOSS and federated software to fulfill a need.

What I mean is that Tinder and otherwise for-profit software uses drop feeds, so they deliberately give you only a bit of what you like in your feeds. How do they know what you like? The same way Facebook (via Facebook.com, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and all other for-profit social media companies do: they collect absurd amounts of data from you based on your behavior on the platforms. They then build predictive models to know what to show you, when to notify you, how to ask for money in the forms of “boosts” or “unlimited superlikes”. For example, “you found some attractive people today but didn’t kick it off with anyone just yet? Well, come back! Tomorrow we’ll send you a notification telling you someone liked you! Oh, you could also just boost your profile by paying.”

In effect, this keeps you on the verge of finding someone you would really kick off with quickly. This doesn’t have to be the case at all given what we know of how humans develop relationships and how algorithms can be used to arrive at clear-cut goals.

So FLOSS and federated software has the opportunity to actually define those algorithms in such a way as to satisfy people, either in a hookup-y sense or a relationship sense. That incentive, and not the one to maximize engagement and profits, is what could make stuff like Alovoa flourish.

I do think any FLOSS (and federated) dating app should leverage this as a marketing point: people are really kicking it off quickly.

He portrays himself as incredibly smart but also quirky and relatable. Given the monetary stakes, I don’t doubt for a second that he has a public relations team guiding him. He’s a living advertisement.

So I guess I sorta like the persona he embodies in the sense of being smart and relatable. But I also really distrust that image and dislike the fact that it’s in the service of guiding consumer (and perhaps regulatory and worker) behavior to maximize profits.

Because Lemmy does not have karma. If it did, and it was like Reddit, it would be based on the popularity of your posts and comments, with every vote being the same weight. This is different to Stack Exchange, where people who are already well established in the respective community are able to boost correct answers even more than with a single vote. This could sound like a recipe for parochialism, but in effect you end with a high probability for high quality answers.

This doesn’t mean that a reputation (and not “karma”) system couldn’t be implemented in Lemmy.