QHC

@BeHereNow you can also set the default feed to be from your subscriptions instead of all in your profile settings.

Clicking the list icon doesn't do anything for me (Firefox on Windows). Hovering on that icon shows a little dropdown where I can access different versions of the front page feed, but not my personal list of subscriptions.

Thanks for that link! I have the same question but didn't even find that option.

Now we just need the "top bar" feature to show our subscriptions instead of most popular or whatever its showing now.

I still don't see how this is not in line with the ideals and values of the Fediverse. If other instances don't want to take on the extra moderation you are referring to, they can simplify defederate from Beehaw, too.

Every instance can do whatever it wants, and if other instances don't like that then they can both go their own ways.

Users on Beehaw would not see anything from Lemmy.world. If it's still federated with Kbin, then they would see that content.

Likewise, anyone on Lemmy.world would not see content or be able to access communities from Beehaw.

I don't think it's fair to blame the entire Fediverse for one person's explanation that oversimplified things in a way you don't appreciate. The quoted advice makes sense if you are trying to get less techincally savvy people to join. If you wanted to know more about how federation between instances work, you can certainly do additional research.

I posted my full story elsewhere, but my origin as a coder also starts with a game before I realized that coding was more interesting. In my case it was C&C: Red Alert, which was the first video game I got for Christmas.

I have been working as a web developer, now a manager and less of a coder, for over 20 years.

Whenever I get the chance to tell this story, I always credit the game Command and Conquer: Red Alert for beginning my journey into coding and web development. This was long before auto matchmaking, so to play with other people you had to know their IP address in order to connect directly. To help with this, there was a chat app that came with the game called Westwood Online. While at first it was used for the intended purpose, I also met my first "Internet girlfriend" in those chat rooms, back when such a thing was confusing and scandalous to my parents. Eventually I joined a Star Wars RPG "guild", and of course we needed a way to document to other guilds how amazing our imaginary spaceship collection was, so I volunteered to make a website. I wish I still had it, but just imagine a Geocites website with clunky frames and lots of pictures of different Star Destroyers or X-Wings.

After that I was absolutely hooked. Video games moved to the background and most of my solo free time was spent on various coding projects. I was fortunate enough to be in the first wave of "webmasters", starting with free hosting platforms like Geocities, Angelfire and Tripod. Anyone else remember web rings?? I don't remember now how I found it, but my first "real" coding experience was after joining a forum called NeoPages. I had to write an application and be interviewed first, but eventually was given FTP access to my very own website, no ads or limitations! That's really when my journey as a developer began. (I ended up being one of the primary administrators when I got older and the owner didn't have time, now in retrospect I can see how that was a very important learning experience.)

I started working at a local web design company in high school and continued working there part-time during the semester and full-time in the summers throughout college. I almost burned out from that due to an insanely manipulative and verbally abusive boss, but lucked into an even better job when I had a lunch with the former co-partner to the bad boss. I was really just looking for some advice as I got ready to graduate but I left that lunch with a job offer!

Fast forward to the 2008 financial crisis and the small business he was running, of which I was employee #3 for after his sister, ends up falling apart. Most of our business came from a marketing agency that was literally down the street, so they snatched up me and another developer to maintain the dozen sites we had built for them in the last few years. That place was chaotic at first, but the leadership at the top was smart enough to invest in digital before many of our competitors, letting things grow and then knowing when to pull back and focus on the business side of the process, too. (Fun story, the very first meeting I was part of after moving to the agency, still on contract and not a FTE yet, the owner of the whole agency comes in and tells us the last project was 300% over budget. I can't even imagine that happening now, at worst we would have realized something was wrong by the time we ended the first sprint!)

I've now been at that agency for 14 years as of last week! I never thought I would stay in one place or enjoy being a manager, but I've come to love the mentoring side of my job more than the technical side. Now that I am nearing my 40s, it's also nice to have a stable employer in a region that does not have many similar opportunities--most of our clients are out of state, so before the rise of remote working I would have had to moved away from my entire family to find an equivalent job (both in terms of the kind and quality of work we do and financially). I'm still learning new things all of the time, too, even if I am not necessarily the one writing code myself.

Mind sharing what you use for presence detection? Is that part of the switches you recommend?

Laundry notifications are absolutely critical for me, too. I live alone and my laundry room is in the basement, which I may not have a need to visit for many days. I was tired of forgetting to put wet clothes into the dryer and needing to re-wash.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to set up a reliable way to detect when the dryer cycle finishes. I ended up buying a cheap webcam and pointing it at the dryer so I can at least check the status remotely.

Love the cat one! That's a unique take on home automation that I have never encountered before.

The ones I use the most are:

• Turning on lights and setting specific scenes when I turn on TVs in my bedroom, living room and theater room.
• Brighten lights whenever Plex is paused or finishes playing, which is great in a dedicated home theater where the lighting is very dark when watching a movie. This has actually helped improve many hang out nights with friends because the moment after a movie finishes is less awkward, leading more naturally into a nice conversation before every heads home.
• Reminder notifications for when washing machine or dryer cycles finish, or when my garage door has been open for more than 15 minutes (unless I override that with a toggle on my dashboard).
• Turning off all of my lights and switches when I leave the house, unless a boolean variable is flipped (e.g. if someone else is at my house w/o me, which is unusual since I live alone). Well, not quite everything, there are a few devices like a couple power monitoring smart pugs that always remain on.