Former Diaspora core team member, I work on various fediverse projects, and also spend my time making music and indie adventure games!

  • 5 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: November 29th, 2019

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  • Adderall. There are, of course, some trade-offs. Having gone so many years without any kind of medication, though, it’s a night and day difference.

    I feel like my memory recall is so, so much better with it. When I’m off meds, I often find myself in a mental fog, struggling to remember details spoken to me moments ago. It’s like I’m constantly trying to hold onto a thought, as it’s rapidly slipping out of my grasp.

    I still have to rely on the productivity methods that work for me. I obsessively take notes and make lists, because I would be totally lost without either. I’m slowly making lifestyle changes that are helping me overcome almost 20 years of clutter.


  • While I think shareholders can be a driving factor, I see it way more often with VC-funded companies. The “2.5x year over year” growth mantra that places like YCombinator stipulate have disastrous effects on small tech companies. Often, these startups have an incentive to keep taking additional funding rounds, which appears to tighten the grip the VC has over them.

    Try growing the next Microsoft or Google or Amazon out of that model. I’m not convinced that it’s possible. At least if you bootstrap your own company, you don’t have the same binding obligations…even if it takes way longer to get to a place that’s self-sustaining.


  • Honestly, this really resonated with me. Running an open source project on its own can be hard, running a popular one that gets used by tons of people and companies, while giving free labor, is extremely hard. Acting as free tech support to a large company, for nothing in return, is ass. Full stop.

    I’ve seen some people make the statement that “maintainers owe you nothing”, and I’ve seen people state that “your supporters owe you nothing.”

    While I believe there’s nothing wrong in a person willingly running a project on their own terms, just as there’s nothing wrong with refusing donations and doing the work out of some kind of passion… there’s only so many hours in the day, and developers need to feed themselves and pay rent.

    I think a lot of people would love to be able to work on open source full-time. I’d devote all of my energy and focus to it, if I could. But, that’s a reality only for a privileged few, and many of them still have to make compromises. The CEO and founder of Mastodon, for example, makes a pittance compared to what a corporate junior developer makes.