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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 20m

To be fair to React: it makes a lot of things very easy. Want to make a toast that covers your nav bar, with a glacial 2 second fade duration? That's just one line of React JSX.

A good dev can crank out dozens of terrible UI features an hour. A team of 10 could make something as bad as FB in a week

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 33m

React was made by Facebook, for Facebook.

Facebook is probably the heaviest, jankiest website that everybody knows. Basic stuff like scrolling and text in buttons Just Doesn't Work.

People look at it and say 🤪maybe we should use this framework too🤪 and it just blows my mind

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 50m

Github rewrote their frontend in React, and now it flickers and janks, data in tables no longer line up, and they even wrote a blog about how they're stoked it's only renders five times slower. It is absolutely wild what's going on in web-dev.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 2h

This just came out from Paul Barlow, haven't had time to watch it yet but he's always on the ball www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6-2...

Why would the Hard Right Candidates be worried about democratic outcomes 🤷🏼‍♂️

YouTube video by Paul… The Other One

www.youtube.com

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 2h

It might be around DemocracyNZ kicking off about someone having a sign with rather too much Te Reo on it near a ballot box

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 11h

No cookers out there, just the klansmen

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 12h

The self described ‘Trump of the North’ is convening a public-excluded emergency meeting the KKKaipara District Council over the Regional Council’s Māori Ward referendum

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 12h

A Body Corporate is just what happens when a group of capitalists agree the solution to their shared problem is communism.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 12h

I guess that’s still Ubuntu or Mint, but I don’t know. I don’t dabble in Linux for the masses bc I’m not of the masses. I don’t have strong opinions on distros, if I had to recommend one it‘d be “whatever your mate uses”, and *not* what I use.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 13h

I have a 2014 Mac Mini, famously the worst Mac ever made (before they started making one of *those* every year). It couldn’t run macOS when it was new. Linux flies on it. Also have a 2005 eMac, but that’s just a pet.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 14h

Using free & open systems actually feels like you're doing crime. The power to say "no, thank you, I think I'll do this my way", and the tech overlords can't do a thing about it.

One day it probably will be crime.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 14h

It takes effort. When it rains, you get wet, and people sprinkle carpet tacks on the path to try and give you flat tyres.

But if you want to ride down a staircase to the subway, nobody's going to stop you.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 14h

Jobs said the Mac is a "bicycle for the mind". That vision of the Mac is now buried deeper than he is, but I suppose Linux is something akin to being a cyclist.

Everybody knows you're getting there in half the time they are, and for free, but they'll be fucked if they're ever trying it.

Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 16h

I am not going to tell you to use Linux, but what I am going to tell is you is it is *very* satisfying being your computer's boss and not the other way around.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 15h

AI Forecasts customised for your preferences of sunshine or show are coming this fall

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 16h

also, Linux can be very annoying because community is a real mixed bag of people trying to make it better and help, and maliciously literal Internet Forum scolds who really just want to write you a 500 word essay on why your question sucks and you should probably use Windows if you're so stupid.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 16h

I am not going to tell you to use Linux, but what I am going to tell is you is it is *very* satisfying being your computer's boss and not the other way around.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 16h

this is *not* a counterpoint to the quoted post. There are many reasons why Linux can't work for everyone, but right now hardly anybody knows what they are beyond "it's just a nerd's OS and it's hard"

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 16h

another controversial opinion: if we hadn't unleashed computers on the population at large saying "have fun this with thing, don't worry, you can expend ZERO effort in learning anything about it, it is actually quite uncool to know things" we probably wouldn't be in the mess we are.

Byron C Clark @byroncclark.bsky.social · 17h

Controversial opinion in some circles I run in, but I don't think switching to Linux on their computer that can't update to Windows 11 is going to be a viable option for most people

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 1d

I moved city recently and honestly it's the best thing. I mean, the old place was really getting me down, but I didn't realise how much until I got out of it.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 1d

Here's what 46.8% comes to in NewstalkZB listener dollars:

"Steven Gaskell: Democracy Strikes Back - 66% of New Zealanders say "No" to Māori wards"

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 1d

#ifdef INT_MAX_PREMIUM

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 1d

every software project has this One Guy who combs the code looking for opportunities to enforce arbitrary limits based on their own lived experience.

Anil Dash @anildash.com · 2d

It is unfashionable to me that, after all these years, there is still a limit to the number of cities that you can have in the iOS weather app. I promise there’s enough storage on here to keep a list of… as many as 25 cities.

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 1d

that's just punishing the victims of this ill-conceived legislation. We're not talking McDonalds or Progressive Enterprises here, these are smaller businesses who are just trying to recoup a new cost being passed to them. They're not the enemy here.

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Reposted by Ben Torkington

tef @tef.bsky.social · 2d

it's kinda weird that all the software i am expected to use for work are all written by distributed teams, go, python, postgres, linux, chrome, k8s etc

and despite being told "the best teams work in an office together" i don't know of any software i use that's actually written that way

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Ben Torkington @bentorkington.bsky.social · 3d

quite likely four times that

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