• 4 Posts
  • 319 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • Sure, alone doesn’t == loneliness for some people. Life the life that you want to live, there’s nobody keeping score, everyone’s too busy living their own lives to care much about what you do or don’t do, within reasonable societal norms - just idle judging as you’re doing about them.

    This isn’t some new thing btw, I’m 55 and only had two people I would consider good friends. I married one, and the other died in his 40s. People come into our lives and leave, but I doubt I’ll make more real friends. I’m fine with that, partly because of the reasons you mention.











  • Good question.

    26 years ago I was a volunteer community manager for a (at the time) huge fps for a big online gaming community. That involved effectively recruiting and managing a group of admins, developing a system of monitoring and anticheat reporting. In hindsight I put way too much time into that but I have difficulty limiting.

    It was tiring. 4/5 hours every night after work. No social life. All my choice.

    I don’t regret it. I did good, I think. With the team, we stopped a lot of really nasty racism and other abuse. Really helped inform and prevent aimbotting and similar cheating (went down a whole other rabbit hole and ended up writing several guides on the subject). Generally made the servers a nicer place to play. I was offered a job with the company, but I couldn’t take it - and they’ve since closed doors.

    Downsides: Death threats, doxxing attempts, a long running issue with another admin who didn’t like me firing him. The charismatic cheaters who think they can charm their way around a ban with begging and promises. The entitled players who’ve never been told “No” before and get ridiculously angry. It can be a lot.

    Now I try to help around the edges rather than be the main guy. I do manage a biggish facebook group, but it doesn’t need a lot of input.



  • A lot of the replies so far focus on fixing the problem yourself, which is awesome if you’re a coder.

    But even reporting problems is a big help to all projects. Found a bug? Report it - give the right information and be cordial.

    Also, contribute sensible suggestions. Some smaller projects suffer from a single owner not understanding how others might use their work because they don’t have that perspective (certainly an issue for me). Plus, getting involved and contributing this way can be a huge motivator to these small projects. It can be pretty disheartening to work hard on a passion project and not hear anything back from users.


  • It’s a lot of work, but if you’re feeling tired or overhwelmed and thinking negative thoughts about these releases - then don’t. It’s a good thing.

    These are bugs that already exist and, in some cases, are almost certainly being actively exploited by criminals and government-backed organistions both.

    Whilst we might ask that some are a little more responsible with their disclosures, overall this is a massive boost to computer security once we get over this hill of information.