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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • … Or pay them for it!

    There’s a prolific open-source dev that makes many plugins and themes for a widely-used OSS platform. He’s quite open when asked for new features if it’s something he’s already planning on doing anyway (with no guaranteed timeline) or if it’s not. But if it’s a reasonable ask, he’ll always mention that he can prioritise its development if they fund it. He even posts his current contractor rate; it’s quite transparent.

    I think more OSS devs should be more open like that. “Yes, I can do that feature request. Sounds like about 2-3 hours work. My hourly is $120 for contract work. Email me here if you’re interested and I’ll send a contract.”





  • The text is only fucked the the way that The Onion sticks are fucked: this is only labeled satire because of the tone of the article. The content is as true as “real” news.

    The actual “fucked” content is that the author was correct, and that the wealthy benefit from hunger and the threat of starvation to maintain access to abundant cheap labour.


  • Wireless game streaming is another reason to upgrade WiFi. I couldn’t stream anything from my wired desktop to my Steam Deck on WiFi from the ISP-supplied router. I just finished upgrading to a WiFi mesh network partly because of that… but I haven’t tested game streaming yet.

    I expect it should do great, though. My Fire Stick used to occasionally buffer even with ~1.5GB/hr content, but I just tried a 1080p remux at 15GB/hr and it worked great.


  • Yes, that’s why I specified above that “home schooling” usually comes with lots of extra funding.

    In my jurisdiction, an autistic student gets ~$30K of funding, half of which is earmarked for education specifically. In a public school, that gets maybe 45 min of EA time + being on a learning support teacher’s caseload. With “home schooling”, that $15K can pay for enrollment in a specialized small-group part-time program for academics.

    The other $15K funding can pay for respite workers, if parents need more time for work, or lots of other things.

    Also, parents are much better equipped to follow their children’s interests with authentic experiential learning than any public school can be. Schools can’t afford 1-to-1 attention, and parents know their children best. With academic support covered, parents can focus on following their children’s interests.

    These students are also followed by a teacher (like me) and a learning support teacher to help coordinate resources, support workers, and other planning. There are layers of support.

    It’s an incredibly effective educational model.

    I don’t know if something similar is available in the US. I imagine it varies by state, and I would not expect Red states to support programming like this.


  • The nice thing is that the education system has an answer for that: home schooling! At least in my jurisdiction, the autism funding parents get is enough to send autistic students to specialized small-class tutoring services during the day (using public funds), so the burden on parents isn’t that high. Parents then get to focus on experiential learning with their kiddos outside of tutoring time, following their interests (and regulation).

    Regardless, cell phones in the classroom are a problem for everyone, but especially for AuDHD/ADHD students.





  • Not parent poster, but I’m going to see if I can come up with some.

    0: If you get banned from Steam, you lose hundreds or thousands of games.

    0.1: You can’t use credit card chargeback protection since you will get your account banned.

    0.5: If you’re blocked by VAC anti-cheat, you’re locked out of all your games that use VAC.

    1: Steam requiring other storefronts to sell at the same gross price instead of the same price net fees. This means nobody can compete with their 30% cut… On the other hand, they take 0% for activating games sold elsewhere, which kinda balances it. Still, this is probably the biggest barrier that’s maintaining their 30% cut.

    2: Discoverability since they stopped curating the games list. (Maybe? Not sure if this is a problem, tbh.)

    3: Normalizing the concept of games requiring a launcher to run/DRM.

    4: Offline play functionality is inconsistent, so sometimes it breaks when people are traveling with no Internet access.

    5: Porn games can be seen easily my minors/people who find it offensive.

    6: Region-locked censorship, like gore in Germany.

    7: Some people would say region-adjusted pricing, but I disagree. Still, might be a valid reason for some.

    (Numbering is wonky because I thought of actual real problems later.)

    I think I did pretty well! It’s hard to find things to fault. It’s a pretty great platform.


  • I’m really liking Logseq. I started on it instead of Obsidian since Logseq is FOSS. I understand it’s not too hard to switch over since they both use markdown files, granted some scripts need to be run to convert markdown differences between the two.

    Logseq’s business model is to charge $5/mo for syncing on their (fully encrypted with a private key) server, but you can use a FOSS syncing solution (or a property one) if you prefer. I pay to support the project and to simplify sync on work devices I don’t have administrator rights on (so most other sync solutions wouldn’t work well.)


  • Yeah, Terraria is a great example of a game where the grind is integral to the game. Needing to get 20 drops from a particular creature encourages you to explore the specific zone deeply enough to really enjoy it. There’s no story to progress through, it’s just exploration and grinding to get different materials.

    Similarly for Minecraft. Is it “grinding” to mine diamonds at z-level 11, or is that the game?

    JRPGs and MMOs are the ones who generally don’t respect your time with their XP grind systems.