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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Explaining my job is trivial compared to the insanity I cook up in my spare time.

    Oh, so you like gaming? No, I’m actually not playing the game. I’m building a mod for it. Erm, okay, so this is for other players then? No, I’m mostly building it for myself. Ah, so you haven’t put a lot of time into it yet? Roughly 12 years. What? So what does the mod do then? It plays the game for me, and publishes in-game metrics to a monitoring application, so that I can see the progress of the game in an abstract form while I’m on the couch, thinking about how to optimize the automation further.

    Regular fun stuff.



  • I get that, I really do, and I honestly believe you have exactly the right idea.

    But on the other hand, you have to realize that not all of the money purely goes to enabling knowledge sharing with Wikimedia. This is not an election, it’s a company, non-profit or for-profit doesn’t really matter. There are still people paying off business expenses from your donations.

    I fully understand the necessity of this, but you might just feel better if your $5 literally bought someone a meal or if it paid for a fraction of a business flight to promote Wikimedia.


  • I do give in small streams and I do large annual contributions. I’m entirely not opposed to sharing.

    I prefer to keep the small donations to individuals who also prefer a reliable stream of goodwill. Larger organizations also prefer reliable streams, but they also receive millions in donations overall, usually with significant large donors.

    If you look long enough, you’ll find enough material to not want to contribute to Wikimedia. If your contribution was only a drop in the pool to begin with, maybe this is one of the expenses that is not for you to carry.



  • Makes sense. If you’re contributing less than $1000 monthly to anything, you’re not making a difference. If you want dedicated people to be on the receiving end, who also do a great job, every single person will cost thousands each month. Wikimedia is literally spending millions each year.

    Honestly, don’t try to hunt for the “best” spot to contribute your exact amount of spare money to, with the hope of having the largest possible impact. It won’t happen. Treat a good friend to some food instead.

    If you really feel like you already got some value out of a service in the past, give what you can, without limiting yourself financially in the process. If you feel like you don’t have the $1 to spend for Wikipedia, don’t spend it. Don’t guilt trip yourself into donations ever. Your donation today will not prevent a service from turning into shit tomorrow. Pay for what you got


  • I’ve been a funding member of the Wikimedia Foundation for over a decade. I have looked at their finances several times before and during financing them.

    As with a lot of similar non-profits, a considerable amount of donations does not go into “running the servers”. You have to judge this by yourself, but they don’t embezzle any money and there is a reasonable bottom line. Wikipedia continuously helps tons of people, and the people who run the operation enable that.

    You can download a full dump of Wikipedia any day. Compared to other lying companies, they have been true on their promises for some time.

    Of all the $1 I could spend in a year, the one I give to Wikipedia is probably the least wrong invested, and that $1 actually already makes a difference





  • He’s lying. 42 is a secret code that refers to letters of the alphabet. It’s the fourth and second letter: DB

    DB is a hidden operation in Germany. It’s a large secret society that moves huge metal objects of unknown purpose through the country. Some people have created schedules that indicate where in the country the vessels are expected to be seen - but when you arrive on site, nothing ever happens.

    At this point nobody is sure what goal DB is after, but many people assume it’s to confuse and frustrate Germans to death.

    I’m not making this up. DB is on Wikipedia.




  • I wasn’t actively aware of this for most of my life until I recently visited a clients office. Buying someone a cup of coffee is an entire thing. There’s no free coffee. You have to purchase every single cup. And you first have to walk several minutes to the place where they sell the coffee. It blew my mind. I’m used to drinking one cup after the other without even giving it any thought. Coffee machine right next to me or around the corner. There, coffee incurs friction and cost.

    So when you invite someone for a cup of free coffee, this can open doors for you. I’m not kidding. People get all excited when you offer them a coffee break on your dime. And there’s levels to it too. There’s the regular coffee, and there’s the premium one. For the premium you have to walk longer and wait in line until the barista serves you.

    It’s a key component in office politics when coffee access is regulated.

    Why anyone would restrict access to legal stimulants in the office is unclear to me though. Put espresso machines on every desk!


  • I can’t answer this with confidence, but I was thinking the link in the email opened in the default browser, which wasn’t Tor in their case. Or something in the email client perhaps. Ultimately, I have no idea what happened and I was just speculating