Hi, I’m Shauna! I’m a 37 year old transgender woman from Ontario, Canada. I’m also a Linux enthusiast, and a Web Developer by trade. Huge Star Trek fan, huge Soulsborne fan, and all-around huge nerd.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I haven’t seen anyone mention it yet, but a reason might be that providing an API is cheaper than web scraping.

    If people really want access to your data, they can just scrape your website, but that requires loading all the data through the website itself which requires loading millions or billions of video thumbnails, comments, descriptions, recommendations, etc. It’s much cheaper for them to send a JSON through an API, even though they might know that some people are trying to undermine them by using that data to circumvent their advertising.





  • My steps in engaging in polite conversation on the internet are:

    Explain my point as clearly and concisely as possible.

    Try to be respectful of differing opinions and keep an open mind.

    Realize that mistakes happen, apologize for my mistakes and admit when I’m wrong. Also, be forgiving of the mistakes of others, point out any mistakes but do so as gently as possible.

    Ignore people that are either intentionally misunderstanding you or aren’t making an effort to understand you.

    I think the first two points are obvious and most people follow them, it’s the last two that a lot of people struggle with, even myself at times, but I’m working on it. I think the worst thing you can do on the internet is trash someone’s entire idea just because they made one tiny mistake. And putting in effort with trolls will quickly exhaust you, so you need to learn to identify and ignore them.





  • I doubt that there’s any real benefit to walking barefoot. There seems to be very little science to support it that I can find, but I’d be interested to see if anyone can find some.

    I question the benefits mostly because it’s well known by historians that before the invention of modern shoes, most people walked very differently than we do now. Heel-to-toe walking basically didn’t exist until modern thick-soled shoes became commonplace, and instead toe-to-heel or rather ball-of-the-foot-to-heel was the norm.

    If you’re going to walk barefoot, make sure you learn how to walk barefoot safely. Here’s a pretty good video about how to do it correctly: https://pi.ggtyler.dev/watch?v=3iLJ0frWE9E






  • It’s not exactly a misconception that I’ve ever really held, but I absolutely hate the lazy writing trope in TV/film where hitting someone over the head and knocking them out is used so commonly and casually and there are never any repercussions.

    In reality, if you get hit on the head hard enough that you lose consciousness for any length of time, you’re almost certainly going to suffer very serious brain damage. If you wake up at all - yes, it’s quite possible you’d die from this - then you’re going to have a major concussion, a huge headache, and probably a fracture in your skull and your brain will be swelling up inside your skull. It’s a VERY serious injury, and yet it’s just played off as this casual thing on TV and I think it’s incredibly dangerous how casually it’s depicted.



  • My biggest concern with Epic is their insistence on kernel level anti-cheat which is just ridiculous overkill and probably being used as spyware let’s be honest. They have many ties to China’s Tencent which has a 40% stake in the company and is known to basically just be an extension of the Chinese government.

    There’s also the very odd fact that just having the Epic Games Store open in the background will deplete your laptops battery life by up to 20%. Is it just horribly optimized and uses all that battery even when idling, or is it doing something nefarious in the background? We don’t know.

    As for exclusives, they have bought exclusives that were mostly crowd funded from the start which is quite the kick in the teeth to the early investors that helped get the project off the ground. And there were even some exclusives that were already listed for pre-order through Steam, forcing everyone to need to get a refund.

    Plus, any good will that they’ve purchased so far is just in service of making a good name for themselves. They’ve been losing around $400 million per year since 2019 just to bring in new users. They’re going to suddenly turn around and start being cut-throat as soon as they think they can.

    They are not consumer friendly, they want to dictate trends in gaming. Valve is already the king of that throne and they’re fairly benevolent and have pushed trends that are good for gaming and consumers overall. I have serious doubt that Epic would be anywhere near as good for gaming as Valve has been if they should actually become profitable, and an industry leader. Especially when it’s projected that they won’t be profitable until 2027, which means they’ll need to recoup their investment of nearly $3.2 billion since 2019.