IBM bought the Weather Underground. It had a set of developer APIs that allowed small-scale apps to make use of their data. As soon as IBM bought them the APIs were changed and replaced with a set priced to be affordable only to other mega-corporations.

It killed a tiny little free app I had built around it. The real irony is that I took a deep breath, looked around, and adapted the app to use the Dark Skies API instead. A few years later Apple bought Dark Skies and killed off its API too. {heavy sigh}

Too many universities have transformed what used to be broad liberal arts programs with technical majors into narrow vocational programs. The focus now is on training to get a job and make lots of money. Interest in anything outside of that is discouraged in all kinds of ways.

I think some of this is the result of conservative attempts to eliminate critical thinking skills from the educational system. More of it is a side-effect of the more limited opportunities offered by our late-stage capitalist economy.

I have a computer science degree, but I studied anthropolgy, literature, and history as well. It pains me to see all of that devalued and ignored.

This disaster did not come about by accident. The whole country has allowed our public schools to decline, but the conservatives have been actively working to destroy them since the 80's. They have been leveraging racism, fundamentalism, and other prejudice-based fears to undermine the curriculum. Meanwhile, they have cut school funding, made teaching a terrible job, and downplayed the value of formal education. Educated people are much harder to manipulate. A minority trying to hold onto power needs a public that is poorly educated and without critical thinking skills.

Broader than a brand, but I think it fits here...

Everyone hates banks. Credit Unions are better in every possible way.

I had heard of that, but was just too discouraged to try it at the time. Now that I've had some time to recover I should give it a look. Adapting my code to use it doesn't look like it would take much effort.

Thanks!

Yes, they did. And yes, it does.

This is my personal experience. Feel free to skip it.

I was lucky in a number of ways. I started college about two years before the first computer boom hit, but I was already an experienced (if self-trained) programmer. Instead of spacing the programming courses out over four years I took them all in two semesters. That left me with a lot of elective hours to fill.

I had been an avid reader since kindergarten, with major interests in science fiction and fantasy. That lead me to take courses in history and medieval literature. Those lead me to anthropology, which was a world-changing experience for me.

The professors I studied under, outside of my major, were generally pleased, if a little puzzled, to have a technical geek in their classes. To everyone's surprise, I turned out to be a very good student in those areas. After the first few classes I was encouraged to take graduate level seminars, which I really enjoyed. I was still treated as a bit of an oddity, but I got a lot of support.

By the time I graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science, I had also earned minors in Anthropology, English, and Medieval Studies. If I could have stayed for another semester I would have had Anthropology as major and added History as a minor.

That was one of the best times of my life. And it certainly expanded my perception of the world. In retrospect, my Computer Science classes were probably the least important thing I did in college. Studying multiple disciplines forced me to understand different ways of thinking and different sets of values. That has served me very well in the years since, both professionally and personally. I am also happier because of it.

I wish everyone had the opportunities I did. I think we short-change students by feeding them bulk information and telling them that is what an education should be. The most important thing anyone can get from an education is the ability to continue to learn.

As has been said, I expect those will fill in before too long. The wave of fledditors (including me) are still finding our way around and creating new communities that we miss. In a few months the landscape will look a lot more solid.

Reddit was fun.

People like you cause unrest. I respect that.

One of the "editing" icons under the post/comment window will allow you to upload images directly to Lemmy. I suspect it would accept a GIF, but I haven't tried that. It does not currently support videos directly, but they can be done by linking to another source, as was already said.

I had never thought about this. (Of course, I'm a rightie.) It's fascinating how many things like this we take for granted.

I think "reasoning" may be too strong a word for what is currently going on among reddit's upper management.

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics. That is especially true of social media.

That was a lovely eulogy.

You have excellent taste. :-)

0.5mm seems to be almost everyone's favorite. I've been experimenting with 0.3mm, but I will never abandon 0.5mm entirely.

The Rotring 600 and 800 may be the best-looking mechanical pencils on the market. I have a black 600 in 0.3mm, but I keep wishing they would make an 800 in that size too.

I enthusiastically agree! As a recent fledditor I really did not expect to find a usable mobile client for Lemmy. I put Jerboa on my phone and it has been serving me very well.

Thank you so much for all your work!

I recently switched to Orbi. My house had near dead spots in several places before. The coverage is now very solid.

That makes sense. In typical American fashion I was thinking about my local situation. :-}

Taking anthropology courses in college made a significant change to the way I view the world. I don't necessarily know or understand anyone else's way of thinking about things, but I am always aware that alternatives exist. It made me more accepting of differences and more open to new ideas. There are an infinite number of "right ways" to do things. (Although there are still wrong ways too.)

Those are neat little knives. The blade shape is very strange, but it seems to work well.