• 3 Posts
  • 78 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • That may be a good idea. However, people have had around 25 years of familiarity with all things centralised on the internet and the conveniences associated with it. If anything, we are doubling down on the centralised nature of the internet.

    It will take a great amount of time and effort to build a equivalently convenient decentralised alternatives, and to overcome the inertia to migrate to it.

    The latter I believe is only possible when something enormously drastic happens. We had a good number of drastic events happen in the last decade (Twitter poisoning, Meta privacy breaches, Reddit shenanigans), but none enough to convince people to move to alternatives.

    Another possibility is for regulations and/or governments to support the alternatives, but that may have unintended side effects of its own.


  • Call it the network effect, or the momentum of becoming a staple in the tech community, or whatever; GitHub is here to stay for a while, and the leaders in charge of it are well aware of this.

    GitHub has gained enough attention that it is almost impossible to ignore. Projects on GitHub tend to attract a level of engagement (code contributions, issue reports, and feedback) that other code forges do not enjoy.

    One unfortunate consequence of this, which I have experienced recently, is when recruiters ask for links to my past work or open-source contributions but refuse to accept links to relevant repositories on GitLab. The number of companies where this occurred was significant enough for me to set up mirror repositories on GitHub.

    Another frustrating but silly consequence was when I was questioned during one of the interviews why my activity graph on GitHub was empty: I had simply not enabled it.






  • lol.

    To rile you up a bit, I wish I could say it is a subjective thing but 4:3 is the better option for laptops.

    More vertical screen estate, given one would mostly be doing their reading, writing and browsing – activities that are traditionally vertically oriented.

    Even most websites just centre their content and leave behind swathes of white/empty space on both sides.

    Anything beyond those activities, one should be using a bigger screen (desktop or a TV)^^^.

    Jokes(?) apart, Framework laptops are the best option for folks like us as it ticks the most boxes. But it is not available in the country where I live, and I don’t want to import it as it would be meaningless without its broader ecosystem. FWIW, I have dropped them emails every year requesting them to expand their presence in more countries.

    Till then, old ThinkPads. They are cheap, have enough spare parts on the market even after almost 2 decades, and even come with the kind of keyboards and screens that I like. :-)


    ^^^This, unlike the text above it, is a subjective thing

    P.S.

    I always wanted to use superscript, subscript and horizontal line. Thanks to you, I got to use 2/3. :-)


  • The comic, to me, could have ended on the second panel, and I would have been satisfied with that.

    Joker is a decent movie, but it could have been a standalone film. Why use the characters and setting from DC but not utilise them fully or even properly?

    It seemed like the film was ashamed to admit it was a comic book movie while also needing the DC label to survive the studio pitch and succeed at the box office.

    I regretted seeing the movie based solely on strong word of mouth, rather than doing my own research. But at least it made me avoid the sequel which, according to word of mouth, crashed and burned, taking the apparent love and reverence for the first instalment along with it.


  • I see a few comments about self hosting stuff to escape the clutches of big tech, and while all that is effective to a high degree, it is beyond the abilities of the general populace.

    Besides, I am also of the opinion that not everything has to be digital or smart.

    I relish writing and receiving letters, it is tangible and indicates commitment. Fortunately, postal system isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

    I like reading newspapers and it was sad to see all shops in my neighbourhood stop selling them during or after COVID. It was equally sad to see a lot of magazines not survive that period.

    I miss my old TV that was simpler to use and started quicker than my newer smart TV. It does not matter if I disconnect the latter from the internet, it takes its time to load up. Besides, I don’t see any perceivable difference in picture quality from the distance I watch from.

    Older laptops, though heavier, were more repairable. In certain aspects, they are better than modern ones: more tactile keyboard, nicer screen ratio (4:3). Of course, the newer laptops decimate the old ones when it comes to performance and screen quality but that is just technology progressing.

    I could keep going on with a plethora of product categories. But across all my points, I wish some companies could continue offering such products, at least to a customer base that is willing to pay more just to support the existence of those products.