• 3 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • Completely agree on the notion of the community needing “good faith” over “kindness”.

    A discussion forum loses much of its value when even a modest percentage of its userbase isn’t participating in a free exchange of ideas, but rather evangelising their favorite ideas or beliefs by abusing the tools provided by the forum in bad faith to promote or suppress ideas that respectively support or contradict their ideology.

    It’s one thing to present your contradictory/minority beliefs with supporting evidence to the forum in the hopes it stands on its own, and quite another to coordinate w/ others or create alt accounts to invade that forum and create an illusion of consensus through voting/commenting accordingly.

    It doesn’t matter whether the ideology is white supremacy, communism, or even something apolitical like preferring Linux over Windows – astroturfing and bad faith interactions of any allegiance are toxic to a discussion forum.



  • h14h@midwest.socialtoMemes@lemmy.mlLTT, now sponsored by BP
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    11 months ago

    LMG (Linus Media Group) was making careless mistakes and publishing a lot of inaccurate data, sometimes going as far to not recommend or label a product as “bad” after misusing it. This was likely due to an unnecessarily rushed pace of video releases that came from prioritizing sponsor revenue over accuracy, which many feel is a pretty massive ethics breach for a news outlet that is marketing itself as a home for highly objective, data driven content (LTT Labs).

    Gamers Nexus called out this behavior in a 40 minute video which kicked off all the drama, and Linus posted a kneejerk response on the LTT forum where he largely defended his behavior and conclusions and badmouthed Gamers Nexus for going public with these criticisms instead of sharing them privately.

    A few days later, LTT put out a video that was almost entirely LTT leaders other than Linus admitting how bad everything was, sharing some details on their processes, and committing to being more transparent & taking a week off uploading videos to rework things. But the video also included some tone deaf moments, like a plug for merch and Linus talking for a bit where he sort of apologized but didn’t really talk for long enough to acknowledge all of his fuck ups. He did say “I’m sorry” at one point which was pretty meme worthy.

    The video was also monetized when it went up and the description had links to their merch store in it, which people called out as slimy and LTT subsequently removed.

    Different people have different conclusions – some think it was a total non-apology, but I personally am satisfied. To me all their issues were the result of bad processes/automation run amok, so their commitment to reworking their processes and being more transparent about them with the community is exactly what I wanted to see.

    But that’s just me – I think there are many valid conclusions that can be drawn from this.

    Edit: There was also a reddit post on Reddit made by a former employee, Madison, that made allegations of sexual harassment. If true, these would be extremely damning, and to my knowledge LMG has not spoken on them yet. I also am just learning about this, so I don’t know whether these statements have been corroborated by anyone.





  • h14h@midwest.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.orgThe Problem with LMG
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    11 months ago

    I really hope stepping down as CEO leads to Linus surrounding himself with people he trusts to call him out when he’s missing something.

    He strikes me as the kind of person who is susceptible to a few certain mental traps you kinda don’t want to see in a leader of a large influential organization:

    1. Taking an “ends justifies the means” mindset (e.g. stepping on the “growth” gas pedal and accepting sloppiness because it will get better later with Labs)
    2. Letting “objective facts” justify big subjective decisions w/o much consideration (e.g. thinking the Billet Labs video didn’t need to be re-shot because the “objectively” product rec conclusion wouldn’t have been different)
    3. Substituting actual solutions to problems w/ commitments to solving them (e.g. implementing “Accuracy KPIs” instead of slowing the pace of video releases)

    None of these constitute outright malice, IMO, but boy can they lead to a problematic working environment.

    I’m sure there will be quite the flame war as a result of this, which I think is a bummer. Linus strikes me as someone who’s acting in good faith, but has an unshakable habit of making rushed decisions without considering the full scope of their impact, and is (or has been) lacking the appropriate feedback structure to help him learn to either a) make more thoughtful decisions, or b) fully delegating those decisions to folks who are better equipped to make them.

    Here’s hoping this leads to positive change.


  • I try to structure my commits in a way that minimizes their blast radius, which usually likes trying to reduce the number of files In touch per commit.

    For example, my commit history would look like this:

    • Add new method to service class
    • Use new service class method in worker

    And then as I continue working, all changes will be git commit --fixuped to one of those two commit’s hashes depending on where they occur.

    And when it’s time to rebase in full, I can do a git rebase master --interactive --autosquash.






  • I never really had problems with Biagi when I heard her talk, or explain her goals for CDOT, but it was abundantly clear that her department wasn’t doing enough to prioritize transit modes other than the car. That’s a failure, no matter how you slice it – either Biagi was less than transparent about her goals/motives regarding pedestrian safety, she fundamentally misunderstood the problems that arise from car-centric design or she was unable to affect significant systemic change in her department.

    Here’s hoping whoever replaces her is willing to acknowledge de-prioritizing the car-centric transportation model as their #1 priority, and has a clear plan on how to move the city in that direction.



  • Most of the comments here are talking about the x% of time Linux gets messed up it can be really intimidating for new users and getting the right help can be a challenge, or simply more time than it’s worth.

    I think this is true, but I think there’s another thing that irks people:

    Software Compatibility

    The general public primarily interacts with their computers through established applications that commonly aren’t available on Linux w/o intimidating work around (if at all).

    A noob who switches to Linux isn’t going to know the limitations up front, and the second they decide they want to learn Adobe Premier for work, they’re kinda fucked. They’ll either spend hours/days of online research trying to figure out if it’s even possible, or they’ll ask for help only to have someone tell them they’re wrong for trying and to use some FOSS alternative because Adobe is an evil megacorp.

    It’s a recipe for frustration.