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Author here. I don't expect people to pay me for anything. My main motivation was (and still is) to just give back, since I profit from free information and software created by others as well. I fully expect this temporary increase in traffic to net exactly what it has netted before: almost nothing. And you know what? I'm fine with that. Donations are not the reason this little project exists.

What I am is struggling to make ends meet for some time. A new laptop is near the bottom of my priorities right now. Money will run out around the beginning of February. It makes me sad to read cynical comments like this. That's all I have to say.

May I recommend Berkeley Mono (https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/). It's a paid font but well worth it, given you're spending hours every day looking at it. I have found it to be excellent for the shell and editors.

If the TLD didn’t already somewhat give it away, the fact that one of the panoramas is titled „Buero of David Sarif“ is just so very “German” – confidently using the entirely wrong expression.

That’s what I meant with digital services being a decade behind here. I attribute it to extreme conservatism to preserve jobs that aren’t in fact necessary. Bureaucracy is incapable of seeing beyond itself, just like so many other areas are as well.

I believe the author’s point to be that due to no English translation available, the already involved process in Germany becomes unnecessarily hard for a non-native speaker. As a native speaker I can attest to lots of gobbledygook official documents I had to deal with in my lifetime. The amount of paper you have to deal with when running a business is truly staggering.

Bureaucracy is indeed a rampant runaway force in Germany. Every attempt at reducing it will inevitably create more of it, because, in the bureaucratic mind, you now have to create an oversight committee to control the adherence to the decree of reduction.

I believe this to be a universal constant: you cannot task bureaucracy to with making itself superfluous. Digital services are a decade behind here, since most bureaucrats fight tooth and nail against them, for fear of losing their job.

The caching vs. update issue could be trivially addressed by running a daily cronjob to update the static completion file.

I believe the main point to be the common thread of increasingly infantile behavior in all of society that appears to be amplified by Twitter’s “engagement” circus.

Is this intended as satire or actually a serious statement? I increasingly cannot seem to make a confident distinction nowadays.

I see. It appears to be yet another instance of Stallman being Stallman. I’m going to be very surprised if this goes anywhere at all.

”Chief moral officer” – is this some kind of weird in-joke or meant verbatim as stated? I don’t get it.

At this point this is the only explanation that makes any sense. Elon Musk may very well be a moron who has been incredibly lucky until now.

I thought we were discussing GitHub stars' correlation (or lack thereof) to donations. I don't see how usefulness for many people should be limited to software only. Anyway, I've said what I wanted to say.

One of it is, in fact, a static document, basically just a very large README.md file chock full of information. It could be a book.

You know, let them. Whatever I decide to share with the world, I do for reasons of giving back. If some grab, run and foul-mouth, that’s their issue.

The main idea of free culture is building on each other, not maximum extractive consumption. I believe the idea to be further ahead than our economic systems and accompanying incentives though.

What about those self-contained ones like mine?

I have done exactly this, after being fed up with GitHub. Surprising no one, if you set out to build the “social media but for code”, that’s what you get.

I’m using a combination of cgit, Gitolite and Nginx. Once set up, it’s easy to use and rock solid. Gitolite configures through a Git repository. I’m not going back.

About 14 days ago, on a post about Gitea incorporating, I shared my writeup of the install in case you’re interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33341191

Regarding your GitHub account, I suggest to simply replace the content you moved with a notice to the new URL and then archiving the repo, making interaction impossible. Even if you’re looking at deleting everything, maybe keep the account itself around, it’s free and you may need it later.

GitHub stars are a useless metric. It’s basically a bookmark count. If there was any correlation between them and donations, my combined projects of 35k+ stars should make me at least a couple of bucks each month.

Instead, lifetime total of ~7 years is ~300 EUR, which includes donations to a NGO I forwarded, which account for most of it.

Most people will not pay voluntarily for something they can get for free. That’s just how it is.

While it's certainly nice that those options exist, they are also entirely unsuitable for any kind of professional work. I assume the target user you're thinking of is looking to do some occasional, light-weight editing. And even this user will be frustrated with the irritating UI and workflow of software like (and in particular) The Gimp.

For me, it's close to unusable — and I am someone whose first computer was a TI44/4A. I'm a die-hard terminal shell user. Even Adobe Illustrator didn't really click for me. The Affinity suite made immediate sense.

There's value in usability.

There used to be a time when Apple hard- and software delighted me. It was expensive but the cost could be justified.

Today, Apple hardware gets ever more expensive while adding ever less value for me. With the recent push towards growing service revenue, I fear Apple is going to betray parts of their original DNA.

I usually never invoke this, but in this context it feels justified: this would have been impossible with Steve Jobs alive. He would have shut this shit down with a vengeance.

Despite being a capitalist with every fibre of his being, he knew where not to go, which line not to cross. If done anyway, in error, he reversed course immediately. I don’t see even a faint shadow of this in Tim Cook.

Thanks for the details, of which most I already figured. However, your response does not address the issue of solving content disappearing once the instance goes away. It doesn’t matter if the network itself is alive when the content itself can disappear at any time without warning.

If I am correct in this assessment, I can really see no upside besides minutiae regarding an illusion of control to established social media. In this regard, a website with a comment section would serve much the same purpose.

Regarding Mastodon, I really like the idea behind it but always hit a wall when thinking about starting an instance.

The alternatives appear to be

* paying around $9/month for a managed instance

* hosting it yourself (with all the costs and responsibilities that come with yet another self-hosted service)

* signing up at a public instance (and potentially lose everything connected to it once an operator loses interest)

None of them sound particularly inviting. I don’t see either me or anyone I know paying at the rate stated for this kind of social media access. I don’t see me hosting an instance for an extended time and offering it to friends, much less the public. Should I lose interest or lack the resources to look after it, all of it disappears in an instant. Same when you stop paying for a hosted service.

From an outsider point of view – and likely I’m missing something major here – Mastodon appears to be a typical solution for technically-inclined people and adjacent subgroups, libertarians and communities that would be immediately blocked everywhere else (and possibly are on several Mastodon instances).

For a technological solution to work, it needs to solve the issues people have in a useful way. Since I cannot seem to grasp what issue Mastodon solves in a useful way, I’d be grateful for any enlightenment that’s not centered around the tech.

Agreed, good distinction.

Equally destructive is the extremely conservative view of success and failure.

Once you’ve failed in a business venture, you’re burned for years before any investor will talk seriously or any bank will touch you. Tax authorities and chamber of commerce will also make your life quite difficult when you do.

I personally know several people who needed to incorporate a new company under their wive’s name after a bankruptcy, to even be able to start a new (successful) business.

I couldn’t make it all the way though the article. Its reasoning is baffling, confused and unsubstantiated, all while demonstrating very little understanding of the environment they’re criticizing. It betrays a very exclusive and elitist view of education.

If you build a society of elitist institutions, you will get elites. Not only that: if isolated, they will think of themselves as better than most, exceptional in fact. With exceptionality come the exceptions one carves out for oneself and a dismissive view of the common rabble.

Of course talented individuals should be fostered. But presenting a US-style university approach as laudable and somehow missing is irresponsible and short-sighted.

As another commenter wrote, Germany’s education system has plenty of issues but that’s not one of it.

I have just tested this and am so very happy that it finally works. Mosh is one of the few indispensable tools I constantly rely on and wouldn't know what to do without it.

A couple of days ago I tried Eternal Terminal as an alternative but it wasn't for me. Mosh's missing scrolling is still no problem for me as I just use tmux for that.

Energy isn't fungible and it isn't wasted if it's securing hundreds of billions of value for hundreds of millions of people.

Sadly, this echoes the kind of defective reasoning I have observed with a majority of “crypto” proponents.

Also, without a proper source for a claim, I can just as well state that research has shown that less than 1% of cryptocurrency proponents are aware enough to realize the hole they’ve dug themselves in.

Since the company incorporated in the EU, I don’t quite see how this is relevant.

While communication may not have been handled perfectly, this is an annoyed, entitled, entirely unnecessary tract.

Tellingly, it never appears to be the ones who do the actual work who throw such tantrums.

And how about just extending the benefit of the doubt instead of immediately feeding the outrage machine?

I say it’s not only “refreshing” to see a company like Signal taking a principled stand, it’s necessary.

It’s a powerful demonstration why critical infrastructure of any kind needs to be operated by public non-profit entities. At the very least that should include water, heat, electricity, communication, basic housing, essential agriculture, medical services.

When you’re serious about a community driven by common values, this is what you must do to stay resilient.

If you base critical parts of your infrastructure on profit, you get the tortured attempts we have today, to fit irreconcilable expectations through a single funnel – and the complex inconsistencies that go along with it.

While Apple Music is annoying to use, the Spotify app is even worse for me. Audio quality is also markedly worse — I have verified my hunch with a double-blind side-by-side test. Spotify is now way too expensive for what they offer and the only noteworthy integration they offer is Sonos.

I'm entirely with you that even if I was a Spotify subscriber, I don't want their podcasts and audiobooks. In separate apps, optimized for use-case, covered by the same subscription, maybe. Forcing all those fundamentally different media formats through one UI and funnel is just wrong.