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diablerouge

137 karma · joined April 9, 2018

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diablerouge··on Let's make the indie web easier
Tiddlywiki is a lot (exactly?) like this.
diablerouge··on The HTML review is an annual journal of literature made to exist on the web
This was also my exact reaction when I first came across a couple months ago. I promptly forgot about it until now, because I can't save it in my feed reader...
diablerouge··on To Understand the Past, Pick Up an Old Magazine
Definitely - searching for bespoke shoes yields quite a fair number. Before the reddit blackout, /r/goodyearwelt was the place to discuss fine men's footwear across the price spectrum.

They tend to be dress shoes or workboots nearly exclusively, and as styles have changed, there's little growth in the industry.

diablerouge··on The history and role of fashion in the software industry
I made a uniform of my own - same set of black tshirts, black jeans, one or two slightly different pairs of shoes.

It was great for a bit! I felt more well dressed, I was always comfortable, and it was incredibly functional.

Now I realize I like fun clothes too much to stick to the uniform always. But it's nice to have it around to fall back on.

diablerouge··on Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
Everyone says "users need to pay" but there's a second alternative that is, imo, much better: technical folk run servers for their friends and families.

This is how the fediverse works, and it's _vastly_ better than any subscription service (not least because it means that anyone, regardless of financial situation, can find a server to be a part of.)

There's a fedi version of Reddit (lemmy) but it seems to have been a bit of a half-cooked design, rather than something that could truly take over for Reddit anytime soon.

diablerouge··on Was modern art a CIA psy-op? (2020)
My guess is that OP did indeed mean "knocking boots" as a reference to Operation Paperclip, where the US government granted amnesty to a bunch of Nazi scientists in return for pivoting their research to US national security purposes.

edit: source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

diablerouge··on The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point
Yeah, I'm also surprised that folks here seem so pessimistic about building a community that supports each other. It's not a political stance, to help your neighbor.

Maybe "the library" concept reeks too much of socialism for the average individualistic American.

But the tool library near me is a group of old guys who volunteer to run it out of a church basement. No faceless Other, just a community of people who want to work with others and put in the work to keep it going.

diablerouge··on The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point
Tool lending libraries exist and function perfectly well - there are 3 or 4 in my city (the nearest is a... oh wait, 15 minute walk from my house.) They have tool maintenance and repair nights every month - I've attended and it's a great group of volunteers who donate time and work to build a community of people dedicated to helping others.

I also live in a city with one of the highest-rated public transit systems in the US. The buses don't smell and they're affordable and provide great jobs to thousands of city residents while making it possible to cross the city for $2.50 (or $5 for the entire day.)

And lastly, no one is talking about "forcing" you to do anything. You're welcome to own your own set of tools if you don't want to use the libraries (I own a set of my own, but it can be much smaller because I can always pop by the library for something I don't own.) The commons are opt-in, aside from the rare cases where they need to be protected from people who refuse to be a part of the community that cares for the commons.

diablerouge··on How To Get Started In Soldering
I've had a $100 Weller and a $25 Yihua soldering station and found them pretty comparable to each-other.

What's most important is that you get an electronics soldering _station_ of some type and not a basic plumbing/electricians iron that is just a pen on a cord. Those are extremely frustrating for working on a PCB.

diablerouge··on Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
It seems you are out of touch with the liveaboard boat market. It's totally feasible to pick up a boat suitable for coastal cruising for a couple of people for $2,000. Budget another $2,000 for upgrades and you're good to go.
diablerouge··on World’s longest journey by pumpkin boat
maybe closer to fois gras?
diablerouge··on Ask HN: What'd you do while HN was down?
Yrvind is such a legend - he has had me on a micro-cruiser kick for quite a while now. He has a youtube channel that's worth checking out - he's a character that's fun to listen to as well.

Other interesting boat designers (this is sort of my obsession):

You might check out Matt Layden's designs for similar micro-cruisers.

A totally different but equally iconoclastic designer is Dave Zeiger, of TRILOBOATs. Those are great big liveaboard boats sailed up in Alaska, but they tend to be built on the cheap and breaking all the rules of traditional boat design.

The late Phil Bolger influenced Dave Zeiger, if you want to go even deeper. Well known for his "brick boats" and pioneering the "instant boat building" techniques that leverage plywood and epoxy.

There's also James Wharram, who pioneered Polynesian-style catamaran designs and making them at home, and is pretty much single-handedly responsible for the boom in catamaran designs we've seen over the last ~50+ years of yacht design.

OK, infodump over.

diablerouge··on Remembering Apple’s Newton, 30 years on
I'm a lefty and have found cursive very comfortable (and I'm also both an underwriter and an overwriter.) Perhaps if you're a sidewriter you get the worse experience of pushing a pen.

I definitely find writing a nicer experience with a pencil, a fountain pen, or a felt-tipped pen - ballpoints require too much pressure to be comfortable.

diablerouge··on XP for Gold: How It Works
Well, I would probably put WotC somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, but that's still pretty different from the old-school style of play that XP-for-gold really shines for.

WotC also isn't really pushing narrative play mechanically, but instead culturally aligning itself on the sort of role-play-heavy style that's growing because of the broad success of Critical Role and others. Because of those shows, most people's conception of D&D includes lots of talking in character and extensive character backgrounds and long story arcs carefully planned by the GM, which are all pretty narrative in my book.

The real big difference between 2011-2012 and now (in my, albeit biased, opinion) is the popularity of the OSR (old-school renaissance.) The OSR has gone mainstream (I can find OSR material at my local game store now!) So while the narrative indie scene keeps developing and the OSR scene does as well, WotC is sort of caught in the middle, and players fall anywhere along the spectrum (even when ostensibly all playing D&D 5E, which has hacks and optional rules to push it one way or the other.) But imo most are pushed to the narrative side because that's what most people are exposed to in the form of Critical Role.

diablerouge··on XP for Gold: How It Works
IME the xp-for-loot system works really well for a very particular type of game, a type largely ignored by mainstream TTRPG media. One much pulpier and closer to the classic sword-and-sorcery source material like that written by Fritz Lieber. I use it in my games and really like it - it was a huge shift in the feel of my games, and I also think it leads to a game that fits more neatly with my own preferences for fantasy games (I love the aforementioned sword and sorcery materials.)

The author here seems to be someone still interested in the sort of narrative game evangelized by Wizards Of The Coast and popular D&D media like Critical role, which XP for gold would be a bit of an odd match for.

Additionally, one of the problems they encountered (players looting too much and leveling too fast) was of their own making, when they reduced the leveling thresholds by a factor of 10. Players won't worry about looting mundane objects worth 10gp if they know they need to get 6000 to level up - that effort is better spent on finding bigger hauls of treasure.

diablerouge··on GitHub will require 2FA by the end of 2023
The organizational control is already the case :) I had to set it up when I was added to my work's GitHub org.
diablerouge··on Monorepos done right
This isn't that very different from having a "deploy-state" branch that runs alongside your master branch too, bringing it even closer to a true monorepo.
diablerouge··on Show HN: Initiative.sh, an in-browser command line for D&D
If you want an alternative to GM (I can see why you might want to, but I'd be curious to know how many people see it as a problem), "referee" works well. Has an old-school flavor, and because it's an old term it won't really raise any eyebrows or "why don't you just use game master?" questions.
diablerouge··on How America Bankrupted its Cities [video]
Where I live (one of the most liberal cities in the US), it seems that most taxes get passed - even the poorly structured or regressive ones. It's frankly frustrating to see our profoundly mismanaged school district get yet another 10 million dollar bond (generated from property tax) passed every 4 years.
diablerouge··on Ask HN: Any luck negotiating better terms for on-call?
This right here is a great example of why unions are essential. They're the only bargaining chip employees really have.
diablerouge··on One Year of Excalidraw
Super happy to see they're doing well and growing - so far the best collaborative whiteboard tool I've come across.

A few reasons:

1. No account needed, just send a link.

2. Speedier than alternatives.

3. Some kind of magic making it so that quickly drawn curves come out smooth and nice looking rather than jagged.

4. Open source!

5. A good UI, when so many other projects manage to screw it up.

diablerouge··on I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
I use a tiling window manager configured to work alongside XFCE, which provides many of those things you listed, with maybe the exception of hot plugging an external display and the keybindings for volume/brightness. It means I get a preconfigured panel, a set of small GUI utilities designed to work together, and also the ease/comfort of the window management scheme that I prefer.
diablerouge··on “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
I graduated from a CS program 6 months ago, and encountered red black trees in just one of my courses, so your experience isn't too different I think.
diablerouge··on To Help Kids Find Their Passion, Give Them Free Time
Happy to see a mention of democratic schooling [0]. In my opinion, as someone who not too long ago left the American public school system (but was also 'unschooled' [1] for the early years of my education), so many of the problems that arise in school are due to a lack of self-direction. We teach children to rely exclusively on authority figures for motivation, and then get discipline them when:

1) they don't submit to their teachers and follow directions. 2) they aren't able to direct themselves to complete tasks on their own.

Finally, at least in my experience, teaching students something they aren't interested in or motivated to learn is basically futile. Maybe they learn enough to pass the test, but it's quickly forgotten.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_education [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

diablerouge··on Ask HN: What RSS Reader do you use?
Fraidyc.at!

It's an extension by kickscondor, with some great opinionated UI choices.

https://fraidyc.at/

diablerouge··on Mon Valley communities test “time credits”, a new form of currency
I got here a touch late, but this seems inspired by or at least a descendant of the Cincinatti Time Store[0], which at the time (1827) was the most popular mercantile endeavor in Cincinatti.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Time_Store

diablerouge··on Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
I wish I could push this post higher - I have worked a few customer service positions (tutor while in university, cashier at a little natural foods store) and I found both of those positions really flexed my social skills and have made my life much easier in myriad ways (job interviews, to pick a big one.)
diablerouge··on Drivers who keep their windows down are exposed to 80 percent more air pollution
As someone who lives in a neighborhood full of stop signs (just about every other street is signed), I find that it actually does exactly what you're saying, i.e. shape drivers' natural behaviors.

Almost everyone elects to drive on one of the nearby "thoroughfares" rather than stop and start all the way through the neighborhood. So I see stop signs as the perfect solution.

I'd agree this wouldn't probably work on a road that sees heavy traffic already though.

diablerouge··on The code I’m still ashamed of (2016)
I was really thankful that I had the same opportunity, and I personally loved my CS ethics course - unfortunately, it seemed like the value and necessity of such a course was lost on a fair number of classmates, who vigorously argued that the CS ethics course shouldn't be required.
diablerouge··on Designing a New Old Home: Part 1
> I know density is the way to go in urban development, but... I feel like developers have lost the plot.

This is exactly true! A lot of the time, the increased size doesn't even result in increased density - most McMansions are single-family homes. Plus, because the extra space is weirdly proportioned and placed, it doesn't provide much benefit to the inhabitants - it only serves to inflate the listed price.

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