I never seen long-running problems in big server-federations like DALNet. Our local "big" IRC servers were generally down for 10 minutes at most. They were not empty either.
Simple services recover faster. Federated infrastructure is much more resilient. We had slower computers, more considerate coders, and simpler software; so everything was snappier, even with 56K modems.
For example, navigate to https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/. No scripts, pure HTML. running on a single server. Served instantly.
This is possible. We, as in the world, just ignore it for shinier stones.
Now, a small VPS in an AWS server lapses for 5 seconds, and half of internet is toast. Centralization for the PWN!
Personally I don't envy an "high-end" car (RR, McLaren, Ferrari, Porsche, etc.), or a big mansion which needs a horde of people to run.
I personally developed a feeling for things which are at the edge of "diminishing returns" curve. I get the things which are high-end enough, but not in the "pay 3x more to get 1% more" region.
I agree, but will say that having a well-built house in a great area is extremely expensive, especially if you happen to like walkable cities along the southern California coast.
A well built house doesn't have to be big, needs multiple staff on payroll, or come with a pool.
Buying high quality things is a thing, but buying things just because they are high end and flashy is something else.
If I failed to convey what I tried to say in my first comment, let me give another examples.
Personally, I'll pay pretty penny for a bass guitar, if its build quality and features is worth it, not because of hype or it's a signature model of someone else's.
I'll buy a high end computer or a car with all (meaningful) options installed, not because I want to show off but I'll need the features or processing power.
I buy high end audio gear (for listening or recording), not because to brag about it but to use it.
And when I buy these things, I use them until they run out of steam, not until they're out of fashion.
Considering StackOverflow is now providing a ground truth for AI training, I believe the ban is more about not poisoning the well rather than keeping the StackOverflow or StackExchange human-friendly.
That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins and verbal harassment.
> That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins
Where there are certainly strong examples of this, a lot of people mistake enforcing the rules as zealotry. Part of the point of SO was that if things don't change then there is a completed state for SO too - no need to ask duplicate questions like on platforms where a post is less long-lived. Unfortunately people take things like “this is a dup”, “provide more information as we can't help”, “this isn't a complete answer”, and so forth, as deeply personal attacks…
One of the good things about LLMs is that they've drawn off all the simple already-answered questions! Unfortunately the more complex ones, or the ones for new solutions, are also going there so SO and its family of sites is ceasing to grow even in the ways it wants to.
> and verbal harassment.
Again, that did/does happen, but a lot less than some people report it. The most abusive people I've seen on there are those who have been given one of the responses I listed above.
You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back.
Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges.
Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1], too. Also, 2023 doesn't look better: 45.63% of participants said no [2].
Maybe I'm off because I wasn't there for community, I don't really do the online community thing. I was one of the biggest contributors in terms of answers to a couple of the areas (SU, SF, DBA) in the early days and I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends.
I also don't get on with remote work because I don't feel connected to names and faces on screens in remotely the same way as I do to people in the same room, so like I say maybe my personality missed that part of the problem as it doesn't properly appreciate when things are apparently the other way. Or maybe people were looking for the wrong thing in a technical Q&A site that wasn't, as far as I felt, trying to be a social media site.
For technical questions and to help out with similar answers I'd go to SO, SF, SU, DBA, ... For community: the local, the running club, martial arts, or even sometimes DayJob.
> I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends.
SO was not structured to make friends, and I didn't expect anything similar to that end. However, I expected a more friendly (or neutral) conversation, like between colleagues or two people who just met in a conference.
Being put down for programming style, language choices or other nitpick is just bad. I have seen enough flamewars and rude people in my life. I wanted to ask a questions and I got low-key insults or "duplicate!" warnings for things not duplicate, in fact.
I also like learning and helping people, but I don't like to be bullied. I endured that thing enough (5+ years if anybody wonders). I neither want more, nor have time for that, nor young enough to don't care for that.
So, I reverted to consulting documents and finding my own path. At worst, the code doesn't work and/or compiler shows what I did wrong. Even GCC 4 is more polite than some of the people in SO or SE.
Yep, the first killer app for AI was, "hey, I'm having this problem and I'm not sure what's going on, can you help me figure it out?", and being told "sure!" instead of "this is a dupe, use the search function you idiot" or "this is not the right kind of thing to ask here". SO has always been incredibly useful and incredibly frustrating at the same time.
The fun part was not searching before asking. I always did that. Also, not being told to ask better questions. We need to ask good questions and read ESR's guide on that.
The fun(!) part is spending an hour searching the site and meticulously crafting a question which ticks all the SO guideline boxes, and being yeeted out for a "duplicate question which even doesn't meet the guidelines".
At least give a link to the well-aged question, so I can see what I missed. Of course the answer is no, because there's no such question and/or answer.
1. Ask a stupid question online and be called an idiot in your public record.
2. Go through the hassle of creating the nth throwaway account and get called an idiot in public, if you are allowed to post with a new account at all.
3. Ask ChatGPT and get told you are completely right.
> You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back.
The SO population decline started before LLMs, too.
People also always bring up the "fake XY problem" thing on SO as a sign of toxicity or whatever, but I’ve had many, many results where it was a XY problem, and the actual problem Y was solved, yet I landed there searching for a solution to X :/
It's the deletionism that effectively ended my participation in stack exchange networks. Violated the rules with your question? Closed. Alright, I can deal with it. But they didn't stop, they just had to go and delete the goddamn post, along with all the useful comments and links that had built up on it, for literally no reason. There was actual content in there.
Seriously, fuck that. Went all in on my own website after that. Can't delete my stuff now.
I personally give away free software, and actually don't get bothered by comments as much. The catch? I write the software to fulfill my needs, and may or may not take anyone's suggestions at heart.
If they are so inclined, they can fork it and patch it. It's out there after all. As long as they obey the terms of the license I put forth, it's all fair.
The idea is to have genuine compassion without any agenda, actually. Or on a deeper level, just acknowledge people exist, and let them know that their existence is noticed.
Given the way the guy who "ported" Notepad++ to macOS is behaving, it's hard to think of any actual altruistic reasons to do any of this. If Don Ho wanted to port Notepad++ to macOS with LLMs, he could have just as easily done it himself and arguably achieved a superior result.
This whole endeavour on aletik's part seems like vanity at best and probably just a malware vector down the line regardless.
Worse, self-hosted version broke one of the updates by botching a migration and giving no error about it. Installation broke in mysterious and subtle ways, causing us to scratch heads for days.
The next update warned us about the problem, so we ran the repair commands to put things in order again. This is a very small server with ~10 users and ~50 repos at most.
Rust does not hate GNU, and I'm not sure why anyone would have that misconception. It would be like saying that C hates GNU because the BSDs aren't GNU. The fact that there is less GNU-licensed Rust software than MIT-licensed Rust software is attributable to the simple fact that, in general, GNU has been ceding ground to MIT for more than 20 years.
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