the most infuriating combination of address and search boxes

From a UX perspective, those are both ways to start a navigation to a new page, and it’s almost always clear from context which is intended (is the string formatted as a URL? Treat it as such. Otherwise, treat it as a search string). The only hiccup is when actually searching for strings that look like a URL (no whitespace, includes periods), but that happens rarely enough that I’m perfectly happy to manually go to a search engine for those cases. Otherwise, Cmd+L-“type my thoughts”-Enter works smoothly for me in both cases (on Firefox for personal laptop, or Chrome for work one).

What are the issues that you experience with this combined flow?

Mastodon is to Twitter as Lemmy is to Reddit.

“A man crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was supposed to be a comedy!”

pay-once-cry-once situation

I’ve never heard this phrase, and I’m struggling to figure it out from context. Does it mean that you regret the purchase after finding out it’s not as good as you thought, but then don’t replace it with something better because you don’t want to spend more?

Every day this place becomes more like Reddit

Appreciate the feedback, thanks!

That came across my recommendation queue the other day - despite my dislike for horror, it looks interesting enough that I might check it out!

They’re not inherently insulting - there are ways to use those phrases appropriately, but they can be (and often are) used sarcastically, when the speaker had been clear in the first place.

Do a multitude of automated posts without comments and conversation really count as activity?

Yes, absolutely. Posts are activity just as much as comments - arguably even more so, since Lemmy is not immune to Reddit’s flaw of having a hundred comments saying essentially the same thing. Some subreddits have insightful comments that are worthwhile in-and-of themselves - but they are few and far between.

I very much appreciate the perspective, thank you!

Respectfully (truly - not the shitty Internet trolling version of it), it is very confusing to me that the right to bear arms would be a factor in this decision. My perception is that 2A rights are prized precisely because they offer protection against a government that is overstepping bounds or acting dishonestly/aggressively. In this hypothetical situation where you’re moving to a country where the government is acting in a way that you approve of so much that you want to immigrate there - why do you need a gun? Is it as a safety net in case the government changes, or as a symbolic exercise of a right that you value even without practical applications, or for some other reason?

Genuine question, I would love to understand this viewpoint (which is, to me, very foreign - I’ve never been under any illusion that my ownership of a gun would have any effect if the government seriously decided to do something to me)

TIL where the name of the Unsleeping City character came from…

My friend, that’s positively milquetoast in comparison to Stewart Lee.

This, gentlesir. Le this.

That’s not the case. The following two statements can be simultaneously true:

• a sufficiently-good product would sell through word-of-mouth
• corporate executives are not satisfied with the small amount of purchases this would generate, because they want more profit.

Advertising is a way to generate morepurchases (and so more profit), but it might be increasing from a non-zero amount.

I don’t think that the person you’re replying to is entirely correct (some products or markets really do require advertising to make consumers aware), but they’re closer to right than they are to wrong on a level playing field. But if the other side is using advertising, you basically have to do the same in order to remain competitive.

All but the last four were new to me, so thank you!

I would love to know more! Feel free to vent.

In my first couple months, I broke Amazon so that no-one in Europe could buy video for a few hours. On a Friday, right before going on a week’s vacation.

The way that the ensuing investigation and response was carried out - 100% blame-free, and focused on “how did these tools let him down? How can we make sure no-one ever makes that same mistake again?” - gave me a career-long interest in Software Resiliency and Incident Management.

I think you’re thinking of JavaScript, not Python. The closest thing Python has to a ternary operator is foo if condition else bar.

Introduce them to the wonderful world of No Hello!