I mean, I can't speak to OP in particular, but there were definitely lots of years where people made shit for free, sold nothing, and didn't consider it a job.

Like, there was no real mechanism for stick figure martial arts animations to make any money at all. Newgrounds or Ebaum's World must have made some money from ads, but I don't think any of that was profit-shared with the creators back in those days. Some of the creators were straight up anonymous because they didn't even think to put their names on their stuff.

Obviously celebrities and ads and stuff still existed on the earth at the time, but it didn't spread to the internet in a big way until later.

At least that's how I remember it...

I don't know about this particular title, but I feel like Kickstarter games get a bit of a bad rap for taking a long time or not making it to release. But that's because the whole point of a Kickstarter game is that we, the public, are acting as the publisher. Putting up money in advance, making an investment, hoping for a great game.

And just like with traditional publishers, sometimes games take years and years to make, and some of your investments crumble and don't make it.

It's just that we the public rarely hear about a traditionally published game until it's already been in development for a while. Until it seems likely to succeed. We're not used to taking pitches while a game studio figures their shit out. And even then, some traditionally published games crash and burn too!

And that's all ignoring the fact that a bunch of crowdfunded games are typically by greener devs who maybe don't know how things are done. But what I'm saying is that even the normal game industry has long lead times and has some burn outs, it's just that normally an entire community hasn't built up around them, because they haven't even been announced yet.

I guess is what I'm saying is that publishing is hard and risky, and crowdfunding is collective publishing, not advanced purchasing. That doesn't immediately mean that anyone who tries and fails is a scam artist. Most of them probably spent that money trying their best for as long as they could, and nothing great came out the other side. That's just what business ventures look like, unfortunately.

As a cyclist in a city that's building bike lanes (don't know if it's yours), there's sometimes issues with cycle lanes that aren't obvious to people who don't use them. The most common is that they don't connect to each other. So a driver may feel like there's bike lanes here and there and everywhere but they don't see people using them. But actually there's a bike lane for 2 blocks over here, then nothing for 3 blocks, then that street over there has a bike lane, but it doesn't make it all the way to the intersection with this street. So it ends up being less like a network and more like a loose bag, and if I'm going to have to be up and down off the sidewalk anyway, I may as well stay up there.

But! There's a magic tipping point! At some point there's enough lane that it actually connects to something. Then that connection becomes a path, and then soon that path becomes a route! And now suddenly you can actually get somewhere entirely in those bike lanes. I've seen the number of people biking, and using the bike lanes, shoot up after this inflection point, because now it's a real option.

Either that or the "bike lane" is just a white line next to high speed traffic. Those don't make anyone feel safe, and most people would prefer having the curb there for their safety, so they mount the sidewalk for protection.

Actually, that Hertha Ayrton quote at the end? About the cats or whatever? That was actually me. I said that.

Forth

I'm not sure I understand. I have an ergodox moonlander and while it's true there is no dedicated button for Function keys, that's what the layers are for. It's kind of the point of a configurable customizable keyboard.

So for me I have all my special symbols under my left hand while my right hand holds a special key. Takes some getting used to, but once I had practiced the special keys are actually closer than before because they're all the normal keys. Similarly I have arrow keys under the keys labeled 'hjkl' when another key is held. My Function Keys are all accessible with special key and the number keys.

It takes some tweaking and tuning to figure out the layouts you want, but the whole point of a keyboard like this is that you can tune it to be whatever you need it to be. Now, if you don't like to tinker and just want something out of the box, I get that, but even the default config has function keys, I think. Maybe you just didn't read about how it works?

Could they just integrate with rclone? That would at least handle some of the layers.

I totally agree in principle, but to give this particular article the benefit of the doubt, I feel they're specifically trying to directly counter right wing talking points. So rather than saying "being a man is meaningless" to a bunch of people who feel strongly about male identity, they're instead saying "there's more than one way to man. Here's a good male role model now!" to try and reach some middle dudes who are conflicted and getting preyed upon.

I agree that in the fullness of time we shouldn't focus on this stuff, but I'm a bit worried about perfect being the enemy of good, and continuing to preach to our choir while 40% of dudes fall into a belief that women are the enemy and need to be controlled and shit.

I already responded somewhere else, but I have more response that doesn't make sense in that context.

First, about deepening conversation. I don't know about this guy, so I'll talk about myself. I have things I'm interested in, let's call them "interests", and I like to talk about them. And the only thing that stops me from talking about them constantly to everyone is the social understanding that they don't want to hear about my interests.

So all it takes to have me talk about stuff is enough questions to demonstrate you really want to know.

"What do you like about blah blah blah?" will probably get a short answer because he's used to people not really wanting to know more, so he's giving the smallest answer that answers the question. But then, you ask a question about his answer. "Huh, how is that different than blah blah?"

Now maybe longer answer, you listen and ask based on that, and if you can manage it you could also circle back to a previous answer to connect some dots. That's now a discussion! Now, of course, you do have to listen. Unsure if that's a skill of yours or not.

As for the asking out, I think you should do it. But if you don't trust yourself to deliver the speech live, you could write it down / print it out. Just make sure it contains escape hatches for him that assure him it's okay if he doesn't share your feelings, and that he can just tell you if that's the case, and probably ends by saying he doesn't need to necessarily give you an answer now and you're just happy you could get it off your chest. I think going for something casual is better than something heartfelt and romantic, but I don't know the two of you. The most important thing is that he knows, and the second most important thing is that you don't want it to wreck things if feelings aren't mutual.

And if you don't want to awkwardly read it, you could just hand it to him and let him read it at his own pace. This lets you watch his face while reading, if he makes facial expressions and if you can read them.

I would recommend against an email or a text, though. It feels like, from the bits of your personality I've picked up here, the time between when you send it to whenever he responds is going to be absolute torture for you. Whereas he might just be busy and not have even seen it yet, you'll already be inventing bad scenarios and deciding which new city you should move to since you obviously can't stay here, etc, etc 😉

So probably best to deliver it in person, maybe at the end of a hangout, so you can be sure he received it and read it. And I know you may be scared, but don't tell him to read it after you're gone, because that's now email territory where you can't ever know if he's read it yet! Just have him read it, assure him it's okay if he doesn't agree, and let him respond. And even if he doesn't have an answer now, you know it's done.

Good luck!

I'm a man, my wife made the first move, and I'm very glad she did! Taking the step from friend (or even just acquaintances) to more is risky for anyone. But, and maybe I'm biased here, I think it's currently even more risky for guys. Word can get around, and you're more likely to not just lose the one friendship, but to be labeled "creepy" generally if you're wrong. Of course it's possible for that to happen to a woman, but it's way less likely for a woman to be perceived as a creep in general, and also men don't talk amongst themselves the way women tend to.

Anyway, I knew my wife from a social space, and I didn't want to be the guy who poisoned the environment and made it an uncomfortable location for women by pursuing any of them. So I was friendly and tried to be as non threatening as possible, which meant no asking out. So I was very relieved when she made a move!

Don't know if your situation is anything like that, I'm just unsure of your source that says "active woman means short term". I mean, think of all the dudes hitting on strangers in bars which either turns into a one night stand or a short fling. The averages have got to be better than that, right?

Yeah, I think the image for concrete plates in the app is from the wiki, and is kinda unclear because it's some rectangles of concrete. And I'm looking down and what I'm seeing is a series of rectangles made of concrete. I agree, though, with that in mind I feel like the app could benefit from some guidance there to say "concrete, perhaps with joints, such as for sidewalks" or "concrete plates, precast elsewhere and installed. Rarely used" or something. Just a bit of a nudge in the right direction.

Yeah, my original interpretation of lit matched that. I have seen bus shelters with lights in my life, and this isn't one of those.

But the wiki makes it sound a bit more vague, even saying a footway lit by the glow of a nearby billboard is lit. But at that seems a bit... useless to me? Since basically anything within a city that isn't a forest will be lit by some kind of glow.

So that's what made me wonder if this tag really is effectively meant to indicate full darkness, essentially?

Right, okay, that's the way I interpreted it too. Thanks!

Yeah basically! There's a reason most romantic comedies end with them starting to date. It's because that's the zany exciting bit. After that part, the next 40 years or whatever is a roommate who lives in your home with you, and you do taxes together, and you eat dinner together, and you go to your shared friend's homes to hang out, and maybe you teach weird little gremlins how to be humans, and you talk after work about how your day went, and what you're planning to do in the future.

And that stuff can be great! But looking like a model doesn't make that stuff much better. Even people who live with models probably "get over it" pretty quick. You can't be in awe 18 hours a day every day for 15 years. But, having a shared foundation of experiences and mutual respect does make those things easier. Liking each other's friends does too.

You can learn to love someone, and you can learn to find an attractive person unattractive through interaction.

One thing you could try, if you haven't, is dating someone you connect with, and have a fun time with, even without "romantic spark". Attraction can be important in a relationship, but in a long term relationship spark often doesn't last anyway, and it's other things that actually keep people together. Getting along well, working well together, handling stress in complementary ways, etc, are all more valuable long term.

So just as an experiment you could try dating someone for something "long", but not actually that long in the grand scheme of things. Maybe 3 months, roughly one season. Even if you're not physically attracted to them, try dating them anyway. If it doesn't work, you haven't actually lost anything. Just a bit of time. And you will have officially "had a girlfriend", and gained some amount of relationship experience, even if it wasn't the best.

And if it just so happens that you're just not an "early term" guy, buf you're actually a pretty good "mid-term" guy, then that's great! Keep going! You haven't got a lot to lose, in a sense, so you're available for experimentation.

I'm not 100% sure it's being used correctly here, but entrapment in general is when a police officer convinces or coerces a person into committing a crime, and then arresting them for that crime. So, if a police office is standing somewhere and you walk up to them and ask to buy drugs, they can arrest you for that. But if they are like "hey man, want to buy some drugs? Come on, it's only $10. You know what, for you, first time is free. Just take them", and then you take them, that is entrapment.

The reason entrapment is problematic is because it's hard to tell if you would have committed a crime, had the officer not pushed you into it. Maybe you were just feeling pressured and wanted the uncomfortable situation to go away, etc.

As for not exposing entrapped people, there is this moral dilemma in general that often gets dramaticized in cop shows and movies, which is that the person we know is guilty gets away on a technicality or procedural issue. And at first blush that looks like a flaw. But actually it's more like the lesser evil of a bad situation. Because what we don't want is police using powers that erode the freedoms of the innocent people, like breaking into people's homes and going through their stuff, or wire tapping, or torture, or whatever. Things we don't want police to do to innocent people.

If doing these things were "frowned upon", but we still used the information we gained from it anyway, then it would be a viable police strategy. It's a cost of doing business, but it gets the job done. Even if a single officer got fired for it, they could choose to matryr themselves to do the bad thing and get the guy. But we don't want cops doing these things, because anything they do against a person they think might be guilty is something they could be doing to a person that's actually innocent. So we kinda have to make the rule be that any information, no matter how good, that was gotten in a bad way becomes bad information that we all agree never to use. Because that's the only way to make sure the police don't want to do the bad things.

It may let some guilty people go free, when the police screw up, but in theory it protects all of us against an escalating police state.

Honestly, it's not as bad as I expected. It's one of those ones with a big angel on top, and then a bunch of scenes around the base, and I'm assuming the problematic bits are just among the scenes somewhere.

I'm not saying it should be restored, but it's not like it's a statue of only the bad stuff. I could see how someone who doesn't really care could look at the picture from afar and go "what!? They took down a commemorative grave monument? Sacrilege!"

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not like they necessarily voted to put up a big statue of a slave, they voted to put up a statue with many figures, including a slave in it somewhere. Still probably best to leave it gone, though.

I don't normally do this, but I see this from time to time, so just so you know:

wary: feeling or showing caution about possible dangers or problems.

leery: cautious or wary due to realistic suspicions

weary: feeling or showing tiredness, especially as a result of excessive exertion or lack of sleep

I'm sorry if this was annoying rather than helpful!

Groceries, in particular, are more of an effect than a cause. Lots of people live without cars in New York City, or London, or Paris, or Toronto, or Tokyo, and they manage to eat. The reason you need to buy 7 days worth of food for two people all at once is because you live in a field far away from everything. "Getting Groceries" becomes a special trip, because, while driving, leaving the highway, stopping and parking are inconvenient.

As a pedestrian in a city, I was going to walk past 5 food stores on my way between work and home anyway, and it's really not problem to walk in and buy only what I ran out of yesterday, or some special item I wanted for tonight's dinner. It's simple to shop for 5 or 10 minutes, five times a week, rather than one hour once a week, and never need more than a single bag of groceries at a time. And rather than being inconvenient, it's actually great because I'm only buying what I need right now, the things I'm going to use as soon as I get home, so it's very simple.

Allergies could be tricky, yeah. If you're lucky the local shop, by nature of being smaller and more local, actually knows you and knows you need this stuff and stocks it because they know you'll buy it from them. But that's not a guarantee, for sure. That having been said, if the only people driving were people with corn allergies, the roads would be a much safer place!

Some tips:

• Unless the code is very small, or your feature is very big, try to put blinders on, and focus only on the code you absolutely need to to get your feature built. Use search tools to comb through the code to find the relevant methods while reading as little surrounding code as possible, tweak those methods to be different, and call that a first draft. If the maintainer wants the code refactored or differently arranged, they can help with that as part of the review process
• Being unable to build sucks, it really does. But if the software is released for your platform, it means someone out there is able to build it. And these days that someone is often an automated build tool that runs per release. See if you can figure out how this tool works. What build steps it uses, what environment it runs in, etc. If you can't figure that out, try contacting the person who releases the builds
• If the software is in apt (if you're on a Debian-based system), you can use apt build-dep, apt source, and debuild to try and recreate the native apt build process. These tools will give you the source that built the system package, and its dependencies, and allow you to build a deb yourself out of it. Test the build to make sure it's working as-is. If it is, and if the software's dependencies haven't changed too much, you can even use apt to fetch the old version that's in the repos, update the code to reflect the upstream release, and then test the build there to see if it still builds. If so, now you have something you can start working off.
• If you aren't on an apt system, but do have a package manager, I assume there's an equivalent to the workflow mentioned above
• If your change is subtle enough that you think it's pretty low-risk, you could just edit the code even though you can't build it. This might be sufficient for bug-fixes where you just need to check something is greater than zero, or features where you pass a true instead of a false in certain conditions or something. You should probably mention this in your PR / MR / Patch so the reviewer knows to test building it before merging.
• This one is a bit wild, but let's say you're on a Mac or Windows machine, and the build instructions only work for Linux. You can just run a virtual machine that's got Ubuntu or something running on it, and use it as your build environment. These days you can probably be in a simpler situation with Docker or something more lightweight, but as a worst-case scenario, a full virtual machine is there for you if you need it
• And finally, if the tool isn't a crazy popular or busy tool, it's possible the maintainer or other people in the community are more approachable than you think. If they are looking for contributions, then getting a willing contributor's build environment setup is a benefit to the project. Improving their build docs helps not just you, but potential future contributors as well. A project will usually be more helpful towards someone who says "I'm trying to build this feature, but I'm running into trouble" compared to someone saying "why doesn't your tool do X". You may need to be a bit patient, they're probably doing this on volunteer hours, but they might be happy to help you get your stuff sorted out

Good luck out there, and try not to be discouraged!