honestcoyote

>I have no idea how you know what your downvoters think about Tumblr.

Because Tumblr is brought up here and on Reddit frequently as this hellhole of idiotic far leftist thought. All I can think is: "have you actually looked at Tumblr beyond following some link at /r/tumblrinaction?" because there's so, so much more than that.

>Reddit is leaking...

Well, one thing you can count on from Reddit (or at least the vocal people in the defaults and conservative subs) is a fear and loathing of Tumblr, as well as considering SRS to be the root of all evil. Any time someone wants to panic about the threat of "SJWs", Tumblr is not far behind in the fear factor.

Hence, "reddit is leaking.." which was a joking way of referring to "tumblr is leaking".

But I still defend Reddit to my friends who are dismissive of it. Reddit contains a lot more than the awful stuff it's well known for. The defaults might be a hive of scum and villainy but there's a ton of great stuff in the smaller subs.

My point about Tumblr is that it's a huge site containing a lot of blogs. Seems like half (or over half) is porn. Most of the other half seems dedicated to rabid fanbases of various bits of pop culture. There's some politics like everywhere else on the net, but I have no idea why so many people here, including my downvoters, think it's this despicable bastion of frothy far leftism when that's only a small part of it. Hell, there's a dedicated base of white power blogging on Tumblr but no one ever mentions that.

It's like saying Reddit is nothing but Red Pill / MRA / gamergate types, or HN is nothing more than clueless Valley types. Or that Twitter is nothing but people sending each other 140 character descriptions of lunch. I really hate lazy stereotypes of complex interactions, especially on a place like HN where people should be "native" enough to digital culture to know better.

Apparently Reddit is leaking. Tumblr: the scapegoat for everything they don't like.

Thank you!

What you want is Space Engine [en.spaceengine.org/]. Also a sandbox. Allows you to fly from star to star, galaxy to galaxy, with billions of planets, nebulae, black holes, clusters, etc. to choose from.

As an example: tonight I had a few minutes to kill so I visited a small desert (Mars-like) planet with a thin ring located in an orbit around dual stars located in a globular cluster. By day, one sun rose and then another. Absolutely scorching the broad plains and distant mountains. Night eventually fell and the sky was burning with the crimson light of the thousands of red giants in the cluster and the brilliant white light of the galactic center. The light was broken slightly by the silhouette of the rings' arc overhead. Was quite beautiful.

You're correct. News and Observer (nando.net I think) was a daily visit for me back in the mid 90's. It was the first one I found which provided a full newspaper without being hidden in a walled garden and without needing monthly fees. AP & Reuters were available online but locked behind a very expensive paywall.

Nando was the first time I read of breaking news online. The story on the Oklahoma City bombing jolted me awake one morning. Reading Nando over coffee on my tiny 12 inch screen of a Macintosh LC.

I've often wondered if they could have leveraged their very early lead into something else.

A few years ago I remembered the name of the MUD I played in college. Found it was still online. Couldn't remember my old pw so I created a new character and 'finger'-ed my old character, the one who almost caused me to flunk a semester, and there she was. Still had the same .plan file. Seemed like the correct level and titles too. "Last logged in: 19 years ago". I did the same for my old friends. The most recent was 17 years ago.

I don't get nostalgic often or easily, but I felt this amazing sadness for a minute. All those people who were so close to me. All gone half a lifetime ago but they're still here in a way. Memorialized as bits on a German university server which very few still visit.

And what's wrong with that? As long as the attention-seeking is not hurting anyone, then this is probably a great way to find and meet like-minded people. He's not hurting anyone. If he truly enjoys the Newton, then he's not even hurting himself.

The universe is terribly lonely as is. I'm not going to fault anyone for their harmless attempts to reduce the loneliness.

I've always thought if the DRM can be easily removed, then it's the same as not having DRM at all.

Every purchase I've made from Amazon has the DRM stripped and the files placed in a personal backup. On occasion, I'll send an ebook I purchased to a friend if they expressed an interest. It feels like ownership to me.

Even though in legal terms I have the right of resale of all my physical books, in practical terms there's almost no reason to bother. Outside of a few collectibles, it's not worth much. Therefore, lack of resale on the ebooks doesn't feel much more punishing than the practical lack of resale of the physical books.

We were in a crunch to get version 2.0 out. Had the weekly progress meeting with the director. He had received some feedback from our remote sales team and he read one out loud that he thought was particularly funny. And it was, at least at first. Sounded like a old person flailing around with computers. But, then it hit me. This teacher was describing an edge case where a certain sequence of buttons would cause the whole program to lock up.

It was funny in part because the sequence wasn't something any of us would consider logical. So we had never tested for it. But I was able to duplicate the crash on my system and fixed it.

That was the epiphany. I convinced the director to push out the release date and we went through the backlog of ramblings and rants. Over half of them ended up being very useful.

I think you're on to something huge and important.

Some years ago I was working for an educational software company. We sold directly to schools. As expected, we'd get a lot of feedback from teachers using the product. For a while, everyone from the execs on down would ignore this feedback with a laugh. The majority of teachers we dealt with were absolutely clueless about anything involving software. Their reports reflected this ineptness.

One day, I had an epiphany that maybe, just maybe, these people were worth listening to. We went over the written feedback, translated their ramblings into something approximating proper bug reports, and it turned out they were doing a wonderful job of pointing out many of the problems (especially UI) hiding in our blind spots.

We had dismissed them because of a perceived cluelessness, and probably because of some internalized ageism & sexism (most of these teachers were middle aged+ women and most of my team was not). And yet when we finally listened to them, we put out an update which led to several accolades, a sudden drop-off in complaints, and probably our best selling product.

No one is outraged because Adobe makes money. That's quite a ridiculous assertion.

What some people want is pay once and be done with it. Ownership vs. Rental. When a consumer can afford to own but is forced into rental, then there's going to be resentment. If Adobe had offered a choice, then the number of complaints would be minuscule.

My work is a perfect example. I paid for InDesign years ago. Since I only use it for very occasional jobs, and semi-occasional hobby stuff, I don't need the constant upgrade cycle. Because I bought it, I don't have the sinking feeling of my wallet being opened every time I decide to start a new personal project.

When I had a brief interest in Buddhism, I looked into the local zen center. Which had a convenient list of prices. Quite high prices as I remember.

The Cards Against Humanity people are selling nothingness at a comparative bargain. Could almost be one of those old zen stories:

"Give me 5 dollars and you'll get nothing."

"Ok! 5 bucks right here. Wait! Why are you walking away? Where is it?"

"Your money was always surrounded by nothing. You gave me the money and nothing remained."

At that moment, the mark was enlightened.

Because Putin doesn't want to see tensions rise and have the situation go out of his control. There's nothing for him to gain by blaming Turkey or be pushed into a direct confrontation with NATO. I mean, he seems to enjoy pushing NATO & the EU's buttons. But he tends to do so when he feels like he has control over the situation.

Blaming the rebels would bolster his plans in Syria and probably make it an easier sell. Might have been best for Turkey to also allow the rebels to be blamed. The Kremlin would still get Turkey's message loud and clear, but there wouldn't be any public conflict with unpredictable consequences.