Deimos's recent activity

  1. Comment on People expect technology to suck because it actually sucks: so much of our usage involves dealing with a constant stream of minor annoyances in ~tech

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    On the open-source end, I think that's true in some ways but not others. I feel like a lot of open-source software is actually worse for minor annoyances because people don't really enjoy working...

    On the open-source end, I think that's true in some ways but not others. I feel like a lot of open-source software is actually worse for minor annoyances because people don't really enjoy working on or worrying about all those tiny issues, especially if they're not personally affected by them.

    So you'll have someone add a feature they want or fix something that bothers them, but their change might cause issues for other people that they don't care about fixing. They also won't generally stick around and be responsible for fixing any future bugs or conflicts that come up with their addition, so it adds more future maintenance burden to the project overall. That's one of the reasons why "just add everything people want" doesn't work out too well in practice.

    17 votes

  4. Comment on On the infestation of small-souled bugmen in ~life

    Deimos
    (edited )
    Link
    From a quick skim through a few of the recent posts on this article's author's blog, he's writing about things like the pandemic being a hoax ("millions are getting paid to skip work by pretending...

    From a quick skim through a few of the recent posts on this article's author's blog, he's writing about things like the pandemic being a hoax ("millions are getting paid to skip work by pretending to be scared of the flu"), the whole concept of "experts who understand science" being a lie, and so on, with repeated references to online alt-right garbage like "clown world". All indications point to this being a person with far more issues than insight.

    I didn't read it in-depth, but the submitted article doesn't seem much better. What did you find compelling about it, and how did you come across it almost 3 years after it was written?

    (@userexec: it's definitely a duck)

    20 votes

  5. Comment on Distinguish "voted" state better? in ~tildes

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    Sorry, this will be a little bit annoying, but your comments reminded me that I was meaning to add a -color suffix to all the custom properties. I've done that now, so they'll need to be changed...

    Sorry, this will be a little bit annoying, but your comments reminded me that I was meaning to add a -color suffix to all the custom properties. I've done that now, so they'll need to be changed from --button to --button-color and so on.

    4 votes

  10. Comment on Tildes Census Deep Dive - What do you dislike about tildes? in ~tildes

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    Agreed, there should probably also be a clarification along the lines of "your comment being removed was basically collateral damage, not because you personally did anything wrong."

    Agreed, there should probably also be a clarification along the lines of "your comment being removed was basically collateral damage, not because you personally did anything wrong."

    3 votes

  11. Comment on Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400% in ~tech

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    Drifting a little off-topic, but I wanted to note that MEC, which is one of the largest Canadian co-ops (#12 by revenue on the government site you linked), is now being acquired by a private...

    Drifting a little off-topic, but I wanted to note that MEC, which is one of the largest Canadian co-ops (#12 by revenue on the government site you linked), is now being acquired by a private equity firm from the US. That article calls it "Canada's largest consumer co-operative".

    It's not a worker-owned one, but even being a co-op doesn't make you immune to acquisitions and similar profit-centric business behavior.

    8 votes

  12. Comment on Mike Morhaime founds new games company, Dreamhaven in ~games

    Deimos
    Link
    I'm excited about this, hopefully they can get back to an environment similar to pre-acquisition Blizzard, where the priorities are more about high-quality cohesive games. There's an article on...

    I'm excited about this, hopefully they can get back to an environment similar to pre-acquisition Blizzard, where the priorities are more about high-quality cohesive games.

    There's an article on Venturebeat that includes some more statements from an interview with Morhaime, as well as a fair amount of other details: Blizzard cofounder Mike Morhaime launches new gaming endeavor Dreamhaven

    Here's the announcement post on their official site too: Dreamhaven Announcement

    5 votes

  13. Comment on Tildes Census Deep Dive - What do you dislike about tildes? in ~tildes

    Deimos
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    You had a single comment removed because you replied to someone that was being an asshole (who's had multiple warnings about that kind of behavior), and I removed the whole chain that their...

    You had a single comment removed because you replied to someone that was being an asshole (who's had multiple warnings about that kind of behavior), and I removed the whole chain that their comment started. Your comment was even telling them they were behaving badly, and multiple other users expressed the same thing through Malice labels instead of replying.

    Describing that as some kind of inexplicable "whirlwind of moderation" is quite disingenuous.

    3 votes

  16. Comment on What does Exemplary mean? in ~tildes

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    It means that a user used an Exemplary label on the comment, indicating that they think it's an exceptionally good comment. Please see the docs for information about site mechanics:...

    It means that a user used an Exemplary label on the comment, indicating that they think it's an exceptionally good comment.

    Please see the docs for information about site mechanics: https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/commenting-on-tildes#exemplary-label

  17. Comment on The elusive peril of space junk - Millions of human artifacts circle the Earth. Can we clean them up before they cause a disaster? in ~space

    Deimos
    Link
    Some bonus details posted by the author on Twitter:

    Some bonus details posted by the author on Twitter:

    One cool thing I learned is that the US military keeps careful track of orbital debris, carefully maintains a catalogue of every machined object in space it can monitor. It is called the "NORAD catalogue" (because, in the 80s, the Space Computational Center, was under NORAD)...

    Anyone can look through the catalogue online, at http://space-track.org. I had a lot of fun doing that, discovering some odd things. I mention some my finds in the piece. I'm adding a few extras here...

    OBJECT 192: a Midas 4 satellite, designed to place hundreds of millions of copper needles into orbit, to create a reflective belt for radio waves. The needles failed to deploy. In a second attempt, they deployed, but in clumps. Many of the clumps are still circling Earth.

    OBJECT 4966: The Soviets never sent cosmonauts to the moon, but they tested a lander (“a museum piece,” NASA called it) in space. By the time it smashed into the Atlantic, the Cold War was over, and for the first time Russia and America shared data on debris re-entry.

    OBJECT 16013: In 1985, during a mission to deploy three communications satellites, and to repair another, crew members of the Space Shuttle Discovery lost control of a screwdriver, which zoomed around Earth for half a year.

    OBJECT 29677: As the NASA astronaut Sunita Williams fixed a solar array on the I.S.S., she lost track of a camera. Mission Control watched her via video as she work “Uh, Suni, your camera is behind you,” Houston said. “I hope it’s tethered.” It wasn’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgff89XxBUo

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Does anyone here feel like talking about how social media sites are probably used for way too many different purposes at once right now? in ~talk

    Deimos
    Link Parent
    Yeah, that's a great post. I'm subscribed to Nicholas Carr's blog and read it when he published it in January. I've read a couple of his books too, definitely recommended.

    Yeah, that's a great post. I'm subscribed to Nicholas Carr's blog and read it when he published it in January. I've read a couple of his books too, definitely recommended.

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Should we talk about voting again? in ~tildes

    Deimos
    (edited )
    Link
    To try to head off a little bit of the arguing that I'm sure this will turn into: keep in mind that this is a decision that doesn't have a correct answer. Everything works fine and can be used for...
    • Exemplary

    To try to head off a little bit of the arguing that I'm sure this will turn into: keep in mind that this is a decision that doesn't have a correct answer. Everything works fine and can be used for great communities:

    • having vote scores visible with only upvotes works (Tildes)
    • visible with up and down votes works (Reddit)
    • vote scores only visible to the poster works (Hacker News)
    • individual up and down vote counts works, even if the numbers barely resemble reality (Reddit until 2014 with RES)
    • no voting at all works (newsgroups, forums, etc.)

    Everything works, but none of them are "correct"—there are different effects (both positive and negative) from each of them, and it's difficult or even impossible to get a good understanding of how those effects influence people using the site. Different people are going to have different preferences because they put a different value on the benefits and drawbacks of each one.

    There's no right answer, and there's no way to prove that any of them are better or worse than any of the others. In the end it's just a choice that will have some good aspects and some bad ones.

    28 votes