RE: https://mastodon.bit.nl/@msjl/115803758810561486

Leuke mensen:

Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about things, small minds talk about other people. -Hyman Rickover

#quotes #hymanrickover

Linking to this article that has been making the rounds this morning:

"20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple"

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

I really feel for this guy. This was me 10 years ago: having my entire digital life wrapped up around #Apple's feckless and capricious "tender mercies." I wasn't an author or dev or anything, and I never encountered anything quite that disastrous, but it could have happened at any time.

The process of removing Apple's many tendrils from my digital life was long and somewhat painful, although accelerated by 1) Apple abandoning my MacBook after only four years of OS updates, 2) Apple abandoning my mom's iMac after 7 years (not as egregious), 3) accidentally spilling tea on my beloved 2014 MBA in 2019,and 4) not being able to afford to replace all that hardware 😄, 5) and buying an old #Thinkpad in 2019 ("just for writing!") that became my gateway drug to using Linux and other FOSS OSes full-time. :)

P.S., Maybe don't link to his blog post if your toot contains 0% compassion for the guy. People aren't object lessons, they're people.

Dear OSS community on Mastodon,

Every day I scroll through my feed and I see proud announcements like:

“First Alpha Relase of HyperTurboWidget available"

or

“Version 2.7.1 now with improved glorb handlers!”

or

“Flux Capacitor version 4.5 is out”

… and I sit there wondering if I should be excited, terrified, or calling a licensed electrician.

Don’t get me wrong, I love open source. I just have no idea what three quarters of these projects actually do. Are we talking about a web server? A file system? A middleware thingy that keeps the flux from overflowing into the space–time continuum?

So, dear OSS developers of the world: When you announce a new release, please give us (your adoring but slightly confused audience) just a tiny bit of context.

• Tell us what your software does.
• Tell us why this release is cool.
• Tell us what it requires to work.

Example:

We are proud to announce Flux Capacitor version 4.5 is now avalaible. While it creates a nice wormhole to 1955, it requires an underlying gigawatt stack 1.21 to work reliably.

Because nobody wants to cheer enthusiastically for “v2.7.1” while secretly Googling “what is a glorb and why does it need handling”.

Yours truly,

Someone who wants to celebrate your achievements

Don't offer a lecture to a person who needs a hug.

masterxdanx

#quotes