Deimos's recent activity

  1. Comment on We Need An Alternative To Medium, And It’s Not Wordpress in ~tech

    Deimos
    Link
    Medium is pretty much the epitome of the "too good to be true" dynamic that happens when sites/services are built up using a lot of venture capital without having a feasible business model. When...

    Medium is pretty much the epitome of the "too good to be true" dynamic that happens when sites/services are built up using a lot of venture capital without having a feasible business model. When they started out, their focus was "the best reading experience", and they built a site that legitimately was quite good, which is why they got a lot of adoption.

    But then over the years it's become obvious that doing that wasn't going to make the site worth billions of dollars to get a return for the investors that have put 132 million dollars into it. So they've had to constantly make the reading experience worse by adding popups and "dickbars" and all sorts of annoying shit all over the site to try to keep pushing up their numbers for user signups and "engagement" and so on. This is a good timeline of a lot of the statements and changes of the site over the years (the format's a bit confusing, but just keep scrolling down, it's very long): The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium, 2012–present

    As a side note, those performance/tech/etc. tools you used at the start generally aren't very useful for making any judgements (not really these specific ones, it's a general problem). They tend to measure the wrong things or are inaccurate. For example, that GTmetrix one seems to be giving Tildes a "C" entirely because I'm not combining images into CSS sprites. That's a performance trick that's been obsolete for years. I was originally doing it on Tildes and specifically stopped doing it because it makes performance worse now that HTTP/2 is widespread.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Humble Builder Bundle - featuring Portal Knights, Bridge Constructor Portal, and others in ~games

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    Nah, I think posting deals is good. I'd love to have a dedicated group for it eventually, /r/GameDeals is one of the main reasons I still visit reddit often. I'm not sure if we should go with...

    Nah, I think posting deals is good. I'd love to have a dedicated group for it eventually, /r/GameDeals is one of the main reasons I still visit reddit often. I'm not sure if we should go with "deals" or "sales" or something else for the tag/name, it doesn't look like there's been much of a standard so far.

    More on-topic, the only game I've played in this bundle is SEUM. I don't know that it fits into this bundle very well since I think the level-building is a pretty minor feature in it, but it was fun. It's a first-person speed-running-ish game where you have to run through fairly short levels as quickly as possible, and ends up with quite a few interesting abilities and obstacles. Finding all the hidden beers was a challenge too. I've never gone back to it after I got through it initially, but I enjoyed it.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on WeWork's parent company is expected to postpone its IPO in ~finance

    Deimos
    Link
    Matt Levine wrote about this in his newsletter today with his thoughts about the postponement (okay, he's been writing about WeWork almost every day, but today's is good): WeWork's IPO Doesn't...

    Matt Levine wrote about this in his newsletter today with his thoughts about the postponement (okay, he's been writing about WeWork almost every day, but today's is good): WeWork's IPO Doesn't Work Yet

    WSJ has a follow-up article as well: WeWork's Back is Against a Wall

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Richard M. Stallman resigns as president of the Free Software Foundation in ~tech

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    That's true, but I think the discussion on both will tend to end up covering almost identical ground, so we probably might as well merge them. I'll lock/remove this one for now and convert the...

    That's true, but I think the discussion on both will tend to end up covering almost identical ground, so we probably might as well merge them. I'll lock/remove this one for now and convert the other over as soon as possible (should just be a few minutes).

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Richard M. Stallman resigns as president of the Free Software Foundation in ~tech

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    I can edit it for you if you'd like. It's an unusual change (and I'd have to do it manually, but it's not difficult), but would you like me to turn the other one into a text post so you can put...

    I can edit it for you if you'd like. It's an unusual change (and I'd have to do it manually, but it's not difficult), but would you like me to turn the other one into a text post so you can put both of the links and/or some other information in the topic itself?

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Alexis Kennedy of Weather Factory (formerly Failbetter) responds to the abuse allegations made toward him three weeks ago in ~games

    Deimos
    Link
    Lottie Bevans, his fiancee and co-founder of Weather Factory made her own post about the situation today too: Blood sport: Call-out culture from the other side

    Lottie Bevans, his fiancee and co-founder of Weather Factory made her own post about the situation today too: Blood sport: Call-out culture from the other side

    7 votes

  13. Comment on Netflix acquires global streaming rights to Seinfeld for five years, starting in 2021 in ~tv

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    That's gross profit, but it doesn't account for the money they're spending on original content (which is a ton), because those are considered long-term investments. Looking at Free Cash Flow is a...

    That's gross profit, but it doesn't account for the money they're spending on original content (which is a ton), because those are considered long-term investments. Looking at Free Cash Flow is a better measure of revenue vs. spending because it includes those costs, and from their Q2 2019 Shareholder Letter (PDF):

    Net cash used in operating activities in Q2’19 was -$544 million vs. -$518 million in the prior year period. Free cash flow (FCF) totaled -$594 million vs. -$559 million in Q2’18. We’re still forecasting FCF of approximately -$3.5 billion for the full year 2019 and expect improvement in 2020. From there, we’ll continue to reduce our free cash flow deficit as we intend to continue growing our member base, revenues, and operating margin, which provides a clear path towards positive FCF.

    From that perspective, they're expecting to lose $3.5 billion in 2019. Here's an article about it from earlier this year, including that they have over $10 billion in debt now: Netflix now expects to burn through $3.5 billion in cash this year. That's about $500 million more than it previously forecast

    4 votes

  15. Comment on Coil, Mozilla, and Creative Commons have launched Grant for the Web, a $100 million fund to invest in reshaping the economics of the web in ~tech

    Deimos
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I'm not sure about that—Tildes doesn't really have anything to do with getting content-creators paid, which seems to be their primary goal. I definitely need to read more about it though, and will...

    I'm not sure about that—Tildes doesn't really have anything to do with getting content-creators paid, which seems to be their primary goal. I definitely need to read more about it though, and will absolutely apply if it seems like I could have a chance.

    5 votes

  17. Comment on Netflix acquires global streaming rights to Seinfeld for five years, starting in 2021 in ~tv

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    I have no idea what the current state of it is, but one of my friends used to use a plugin for Kodi that created a bunch of fake, customizable "channels" from your media library that you could...

    I have no idea what the current state of it is, but one of my friends used to use a plugin for XBMC Kodi that created a bunch of fake, customizable "channels" from your media library that you could surf around through like traditional TV. It was pretty neat for that "just put something random on" type of usage.

    It looks like it was probably "PseudoTV", here's a random, old, shaky demo of it I found on YouTube, jumped to the spot at the end where he looks through the "program guide" (the whole video before that seems to be going through each channel individually). Looks like some kind of development is still happening on it too.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Netflix acquires global streaming rights to Seinfeld for five years, starting in 2021 in ~tv

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    I don't understand it at all either. The price of a Netflix subscription varies between countries, but if you take $10 USD/month as a reasonable average, and even if you assume they paid $500M...

    I don't understand it at all either. The price of a Netflix subscription varies between countries, but if you take $10 USD/month as a reasonable average, and even if you assume they paid $500M (which seems to be on the low end), will the presence of Seinfeld really be solely responsible for over 50 million additional subscriber-months?

    That seems ridiculous to me, like will 25 million people all subscribe for two months longer than they otherwise would have, entirely because Seinfeld is there? I highly doubt that, and I think it's deals like this that will keep Netflix unprofitable.

    1 vote