2023 Reddit Refugee

On Decentralization:

“We no longer have choice. We no longer have voice. And what is left when you have no choice and no voice? Exit.” - Andreas Antonopoulos

  • 2 Posts
  • 57 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Happy cake day @ruud@lemmy.world ! Appreciate you hosting all us Reddit Refugees when the Reddit Third-Party API Exodus happened one year ago! And big shout out to you and the other volunteer mods and admins, across multiple instances, that put in their free time to stabilize Lemmy World during the massive uptick in user registration, handling the codebase, the upgrade challenges, the creepy CSAM bad actors last year, and saw us through all the intermittent downtimes we had periodically. Lemmy World has been super stable and reliable since then.

    Reminder to all reading this: if you can, chip in and help with server costs for this valuable service. Decentralization FTW






  • I bought one of these masks for the novelty, as well as the influence to buy it during the Great Lockdown when not much was known about Covid and we were wiping down our groceries. By the time the product launched, we already knew how Covid spread and had a vaccine. Despite the advertising saying that it has N95 filters, it was clear that this was not an N95 product. Razer generically stated that it is not a certified N95 mask, but the advertising and product pages were certainly misleading and the FTC’s fine is valid and justified to protect the health and safety of consumers. I would not have used the Zephyr in place of my actual certified N95 masks.

    The Zephyr was heavy, but overall quite comfortable, but I never took it outside and wore it for something like a grocery trip (since I knew it was not an N95 mask, and masks were very divisive where I live in a Red State. The last thing I wanted was to potentially be attacked by an anti-vax/mask Freedom Lover). It was heavy, and the fans were loud - very loud. What was disappointing was that the production version did not come with the two features I wanted that were initially advertised: the sanitising case, and the voice amplifier. Imagine how much more fines Razer would face if they advertised an included UV case that came with blue lights rather than UV lights!

    I didn’t end up keeping the Zephyr, although I wish I did just to keep a small, unique memory of an uncertain and dangerous time. I do wonder if they could have launched this product sooner and certified it as an N95 mask, if gaming culture could make wearing masks when you’re sick popular. Selfish people might put aside their “freedoms” if they could look cool with gamer RGB and get attention from others (the motivation for selfishness). Of course the Zephyr would need to go through several years of revisions until it became culture.








  • Nice start, this is very nostalgic! If you ever had an old Geocities, Tripod, or even MySpace back in the day, check out the Way Back Machine and look for that old URL for some inspiration.

    I recommend the following suggestions to build upon this better:

    • Good if you can make this an HTTP site rather than HTTPS, although I’m not sure if that’s possible on Neocities.
    • Fix the font choice - back then in CSS you would list a series of fonts that would render - Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Verdana, Times New Roman. It’s too legible, so switch it to a color pink that is a bit harder to discern from the background. You need black rectangle backgrounds for some of the text.
    • The framerate on the GIFs is too high. More pixels and less frames - preferably no more than 15 FPS if possible. I used Macromedia Fireworks back in the day and some other Macromedia animation program, good if you could have terrible color profiles on some of the GIFs).
    • Affiliates sidebar linking some sites. It may be good to link to other retro 90s-inspired sites. They’re out there, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
    • Include some fake banner ads and sidebar ads - not pop up ads as those were the bane of existence. Maybe old banner ads for Rack Nine web hosting, or something similar (and of course they shouldn’t link anywhere).
    • “Jump to Top” anchor hyperlinks.
    • You need a low quality midi that plays in the background automatically - no user choice.
    • Add a Favicon.
    • Plenty of links on the page that don’t go anywhere. And more under construction signs.
    • Adjust the resolution of the background tile - it’s too big and too high quality. Get it to something like 128x128 or 250x250.
    • Add a Shoutbox. Remember those? Although I’m not sure how to keep it secure.
    • A link to “Bookmark this site”.
    • You need a fan art page that only has 4 fan arts, says “under construction”, and possibly steal other people’s fan art and credits them so it looks like there is actually content on the page while hiding the fact that you have no time to work on this web site but you’re hoping a million visitors will one day come here.
    • I already see marquees which is great. Good if you can another marquee that has text moving in a wave/ripple pattern as it slowly (and keyword: very, very slowly) moves across the screen. I don’t remember if you could have alternating color text as part of it, my old HTML, PHP, and CSS knowledge escapes me from 20 years ago.
    • A link to your PHPBB or Invision Power forum that, when clicked, only takes you to a blank white screen with the typical MySQL error. The hyperlink should have a badly inserted text next to it that says “This is currently down, we will fix it with a new Forum software after Finals Week!”, the more ASCII art the better. I recommend something like the below.
    General Error
    SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]
    
    Table './that90ssite/phpbb_sessions' is marked as crashed and should be repaired [145]
    
    An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists.