A hobbyist game dev, professional software engineer, and incremental connoisseur. I’m the creator of Profectus. He/him

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I totally agree. I’m optimistic about technology once we escape capitalism. Under socialism automation and technology make everyone’s lives easier. e.g. the classic example of a technology that allows workers to be 2x more productive would mean the workers all keep their jobs and pay, but work half as much under socialism, but under capitalism half lose their job and the rest work just as much for the same pay.

    That said, things like sustainability, social responsibility, and the other pieces of the “demoralization campaign” should absolutely be considered. They’re important.




  • Fwiw, I think using a self hosted home automation setup (shout out to home assistant) paired with smart devices that don’t use internet (e.g. zigbee, zwave, or matter once it comes out) can allow you to have a smart home without these kinds of fears.

    That said, I would definitely agree to using mechanical locks. Although a monitored smart security system is probably still a good idea - you’re letting a company virtually enter your house, but you can’t rely on a self hosted solution to notify you when your power goes out, for example.


  • I’m not sure I understand the overall goal of this project. If it’s only serving a single user, why put it online in the first place? It sounds like what they’re specifically trying to offer via kitten and domain is a portfolio site, but it feels like they’re hiding that fact behind a lot of language about how they’re taking a stand against the “big web”. I’m obviously all for federated services over centralized ones, but this just seems to wear loftier goals than what it’s actually capable of. And if it is a portfolio site, then they should have spent a lot more time talking about discoverability, the obvious issue with small independent portfolio sites whose inherent goal is to get seen by others.


  • Older rural areas are actually typically much more walkable than American cities. Keep in mind, rural towns were very common before cars existed. They’re typically structured to have a small center, sometimes basically just a “main street”, with all the places you need to regularly visit, and houses surrounding them, and the farmland surrounding that. This way the people are all relatively close, and the farmland is not between you and others. These towns are all about self sufficiency within the community, but ofc if you keep a car for when you need to travel somewhere else that’s fine, and no one is begrudging you for using gas powered farm equipment on your farm. The main point is you don’t have a daily commute that requires a car, because it’s either your farm or one of the lose shops that are close to everyone.

    And for what it’s worth, a lot of train networks used to go to these rural towns as well, and it’d be awesome to see those return for Intercity travel.




  • Keep in mind America was bulldozed for the car - there is precedent for large areas being massively transformed, and suburbs can absolutely be redesigned to be more walkable. A big issue with most suburbs is zoning that prohibits anything but single family residences. That means corner stores are literally illegal to build, alongside mixed use buildings, and other things that enable communities to be nicer to exist in, more friendly, and more convenient.

    In addition to zoning laws, roads can be redesigned to be safer and more friendly to other modes of transit - and roads already need to be replaced every couple of decades, so theoretically within that time span every road could be improved in this way. More lanes have never reduced traffic in the long-term, but building infrastructure for denser modes of transit like busses or bikes or pedestrians does.





  • I’d really really love for matrix to take off and to effectively replace discord, with continued development so things like stickers are supported in more clients, and to let servers be leaner.

    However, if the friends and communities I want to talk to are all on discord, it’s hard to pioneer the alternative chat.

    I’ll keep my matrix account and use it when I can, but discord will have to be on all my devices for the foreseeable future