bittermang

4,500 is larger than a lot of cities in the Midwest, and Census data shows that in many of those communities, everyone is under the poverty line.

You seem to be running under the assumption that all or any of those 4,500 users even have any money to give you.

I think we need to force the reckoning to the forefront, for the sake of the unsavvy. This affects us all, and we need to get out in front of it, before it bulldozes everything.

If it hasn't already.

I rolled with the Badger for a while, but I've moved away from it and toward a more network wide approach. Can't install plugins on my devices, and I don't want thirteen different browsers on my tablet. And my Xbox is stuck with Internet Explo-- I mean Microsoft Edge -- so I need a more comprehensive solution. And this article only points out more reasons why that is becoming necessary.

But my stack is ugly and kludgy and not fit for regular human consumption. We need a comprehensive community effort to make it sexy and easy.

Somewhat off topic, but anyone else think it's kinda weird that an article about data privacy has so many third party tracking scripts?

I know it's sitewide on every article from the mothership, Gizmodo, but still...

We need a concentrated effort to move solutions like Ghostery and Ad Block Plus up the chain, from the browser in to the router. And we need to make it user friendly and sexy.

And for what it's worth, I don't like in Ghostery, a plugin I run to try and stem the tide of tracking, how many times it begs me to send usage data and create an account. That's literally the opposite of why I downloaded you, Ghostery.

And that is the point when my entire foot will go through the screen.

I don't shop for TVs anymore. I buy really large monitors.

Do you? Does anyone?

We sit on high and talk about the kids and perceptions of cool. But the elephant in the room is never discussing what people are actually doing with the app.

And to me, that is where the divide comes in. There is the Snapchat that is presented, the stories tab, and Snapcode links in Pepsi commercials. Then there is the Snapchat that is, how people are actually using it out in the wild.

Snapchat is and always has been a way for me to connect with my drug dealer, and trade nudes with open minded individuals in my social circles.

Because of this, I have been utterly fascinated by Snapchat's continued existence, partnerships with major media brands, and being publicly traded. It boggles my mind that the app I use to buy weed and see titty has such a large footprint. It always feels like reality will catch up to Snapchat, and the ecosystem will come crashing down once everyone else realizes the Emperor is not wearing any clothes, and he's using the app to send pictures of his unclothed behind to everyone else.

Because the human form is the most beautiful thing you're ever going to see.

Can you imagine the courage of a young Hugh Hefner? What if there was a new kind of gentleman's lifestyle magazine? With best in class reporting, editorials, interviews, fashion and accessory coverage. And two to three pictorials of totally nude babes. But even those would be of the highest quality, with concern to the art, and the presentation. It wasn't ever smut, it was always ever art, with the level of care and attention to detail at every level of the magazine.

Even today, it's outrageous to suggest I'm going to start a new venture featuring nude pictorials, because you're immediately thrown in to the Internet porn category. Your pictorials can't be shared on Facebook. You're immediately banned from entire countries for syndication because of nipples.

But Hugh had a vision, and he stuck to his guns with his idea. Playboy and the Bunny logo are inseparable parts of popular culture and American history, now. Hopefully, forever.

God bless you, Hugh Hefner, for what you did for art, expression, and freedom of speech. May you rest in peace.

This guy gets it.

I've spent too much time in basements. Leaky walls. Mold. Stuffy air. It's no way to live.

I'm not going to recant my entire life story here. But programming career advice IS life advice.

If I were 17, I would've focused less on my programming career, and more on life itself.

But that's the rub. No take backs. No retrys, no continues, no replays, no New Game+.

So I feel the best I can do, if they're asking, and I've been there, is to tell it how it is in my heart.

I was 17 once. I could code once.

What's the best way to spend your time? Basking in the sun. Finding a scam to score some schnapps or beer or weed. Telling somebody you love them, and just going for it. Recklessly driving a car at a high rate of speed down an old country road. Learn how to play a bass guitar. Spend your waning hours getting your hands dirty while there's still time, and before the world judges you too harshly for wanting to live in it.

And if you've done all that, and you're bored with it, maybe it's just not for you, or whatever. Then work on projects that interest you. I spent a lot of time perfecting photo galleries, and was able to stretch that in to a modest career and a house that went in to foreclosure. Linux could use a lot of things still: there isn't one good kick ass music player to rule them all like iTunes on the Mac. There just isn't anything for organizing photos like iPhoto. There's gaps in the Linux user experience that need filled with good competent software that isn't a maze of checkboxes and sad UI/UX. And if Linux isn't your bag, well, fucking learn some of that then. When I'm not a programmer, I'm a Linux server administrator, because when one don't pay the bills, the other one will.

But my stone cold honest advice: Live. Live well.

I find it all to be the same. Email spam. Robocalls. Phone scammers. The entire online advertising industry. It's all a vile poison that wastes time, effort, and money.

But worst of all, there's no incentive to fix it.

Most cases of bad actors on platforms are already a violation of the terms of service. But until it starts to affect the platform provider financially, everyone will keep funneling money in to the problem. The bad actors pay for the ads, they pay for the phone numbers, they pay for Internet access, and thus it's too easy to look the other way.

Then the providers come to us, the victims of the crimes whose time is wasted, whose lives are scammed. They say it's too big a problem, and gosh darn it they just can't do anything. They have their pockets turned inside out and shrug at us like we're supposed to believe them. But it doesn't affect them, it affects us, and they've never cared about us, just our money.

Now if we can just teach the Internet how to unlearn.

Go ahead, search with your favorite web crawler. Something simple like "command line ip address".

It will tell you to use ifconfig -a.

Ha ha ha,

Which account registered the "fraudulent * " clicks? That account receives $X per click, which we've determined, and no you can't see our math. Proprietary information, don't'cha'kno.

*Advertising host admits no wrong-doing, has investigated itself, and found itself not at fault. Offer subject to limitations. See Attorney General for details.

Human benefit? The trash bags full of money being thrown around the room, while we fight over the scraps?

Or we can talk about the purposeful obfuscation of the industry. How you have no way of verifying clicks, or views, or anything. How Cost Per Click is just an arbitrary number you and unknown others compete against, all for the pursuit of fake traffic and the hope of winning the advertising lottery.

It is more worth your time to play Three Card Monty on the street corner, because at least all parties agree that game is fixed.

When the online advertising bubble pops, it's going to go off like a fucking bomb, and we'll all be lucky to survive it.

I was some of the human time and productivity lost due to ads.

Getting them to admit any wrong, from a technical issue, to anything, is like pulling teeth from a live dinosaur.

Good. Hopefully they take their refund and invest it in something useful. But knowing the industry, the refund was in the form of an account credit, and that money is already lost to the system regardless.

"Finding the balance between searchable and memorable is quite the task."

While I agree, the name Neo is crap, unfortunately.

It's like how many things are named Fuse or Fusion in open source, or new projects that start up with names that are clearly already dominated by something else. It just doesn't work, doesn't do anyone any good in the long run.

It's worth it to go back to the drawing board for a minute, and just come up with a name. Especially since so much thought and care has gone in to the rest of the app so far. Calling it Neo works like an internal project name, just to fill in the blank and get something started. But as a name that can ship, Neo is never going to work.

Unless it does, and becomes the new defacto Neo. Which could happen. But it's a pipe dream. I think it's better to start off on the right foot with a good name.

"Windows 8/10 only at the mo, sorry."

Well... why? I get, like, macOS requiring a Mac for Xcode to ship an .app bundle. But wha'bout that Linux?

The parent comment reminds me of a recent "every Stackoverflow question" post which I cannot locate right now.

Yeah, you could emacs, or whatever. Or a regular human person could just use this app and really enjoy the User Experience out of the box without any fuss.

Not that I'm aware of. I'll typically start with Ubuntu Server and add a DE to it, but this time I did a clean Kubuntu install. I'm looking at my resource monitor right now and it's been sitting around 200 all day for Plasma. Perhaps if you add up all the rest of the KDE background services like KDE Connect, klauncher, etc, you'll have a grand total above 300. But I have the hardware, so I don't mind.

I feel this way a lot about Gnome, and even Ubuntu's attempt at "Unity".

It wants to be Mac. It wants to be Windows. In the end it's like all of the worst parts of both, made in to a mutant of dis-congeniality. They want the familiarity and user experience of both, and in the end capture neither.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check out Neon.

I was really liking Cinnamon, but I don't know. Something just felt incomplete, and I was having odd issues that seemed to be exclusive to running Cinnamon. I switched to Plasma, and have really liked it, very much, a lot so far.

200 currently. But I have 16gb. And I like how it looks and works. Jiggily windows when I move them. A centering crosshair when moving windows. The way they'll shuffle behind and in front of each other with a cute and quick animation when changing focus. All plugins you can choose to use or not, and even tweak.

And to "SmellyGeekBoy"s point: that's the thing that makes Linux so Linux-y. I can choose that. Or not. Or a raw command line only. Or have Plasma, Neon, Gnome, Cinnamon, LXDE, Lubuntu Next, and XFCE all installed AT THE SAME TIME. It's what you want. It's what you like. It's YOUR machine. Your desktop environment. You choose and tweak the one that suits you. No one should be able to hate or discriminate against that, it's not their desktop. So fuck'em.

Because KDE is the Holy Grail, and all non-believers must perish at the end of that sword.

But in all honesty, I use KDE Plasma with a healthy mix of Gnome apps, because I can't stand Kmail and others.

I'm talking North Dakota weather. Three inches of ice on the roads, but fuck it they plowed, and that's the weather of the city and nobody gives a fuck and no businesses are closing. Not like Dallas where a quarter of an inch of just slushy snow could shut down the entire Metroplex, I'm talking harsh Winter.

I know about tolerance. From my personal experience I actually very much enjoy actively smoking a blunt while I'm driving down the highway or interstate. But it's still impairment. I am still not of my regular faculties while driving. Even if my regular faculties are wrecked with anxiety and more likely to get me in to an accident. Regardless, if, for whatever reason, anything should so happen and I wreck, it automatically becomes my fault. No ifs ands or buts about it in the face of the current law. And I can't readily defend against that, I think that's the right call.

And for that matter. You know that scene at the end of Big Hero 6 where he goes through the portal? And the surreal bleeding colors of the infinite void?

I know -- KNOW -- whoever worked on the Environment Art for that scene has done mushrooms, LSD, or both. Because that's the only way you truly know what that sensation looks like, IMHO. And the way they were able to capture it in 3D animation was spectacular. Big Hero 6 is just Pixar showing off art ability, if you ask me, since it was a licensed IP and they didn't have to work too hard on characters and plot.

But I digress.

A skinny kid is looking at a few weeks for the joint they smoked to leave their system. An overweight person is looking at roughly 30 days. Obesity takes you in to ??? mark mode, as many as 90 days is plausible from what I've seen. That's just casual use, habitual users skew the math wildly. Why? THC metabolizes in to your fat cells, and sticks around.

Alcohol? Since it's typically just a urine test, you can expect the traces to be gone within hours. If they're doing a liver enzymes test, they can detect alcoholism or heavy alcohol use in a wider window, but it still doesn't compare to the time weed stays in you.

Further, alcohol abuse can generally be explained away because it's accepted by society. As long as you're not obviously drunk when talking with them about it, you can get a pass. Weed is the devil's herb, cause of all manner of calamity and reefer-madness, don't'cha'kno. There's no explaining testing positive for marijuana away.