In my experience, discord was better than the previous options for a few reasons.

A) it's free, as opposed to a vent or TS server, which while they are not expensive, it's still a barrier to setting one up.

B) the free tier has quite a lot of functionality without paying for servers, even for a lot of players (like a World of Warcraft guild).

C) it merged voice Comms with a community hub where people could communicate and share things relevant to their game (to use the WoW scenario again, raid organising, upcoming patch discussion, guides and other helpful information) in an organised and central location.

I recognise there is a bunch of issues with discord, I've had it have complete melt downs when the voice systems have broken, it can be a real resource hog, and don't get me started on the security and privacy (it's not great), however because of the additional functionality I still think it's a great bit of software.

I'm so glad I don't have to be in Warcraft guild Facebook groups anymore!

Oh I don't disagree with you!

My purpose was not to suggest you were wrong, just present my experience and thoughts about why it's become so widely used _despite_ the issues you've raised.

I think people overcome the awkward UI because of the perceived benefits of the platform verses alternatives. That has certainly been my experience, which I appreciate is a single data point.

> I think people overcome the awkward UI because of the perceived benefits of the platform verses alternatives.

I'm sure you're right! The robustness of Discord's call quality definitely seems to be much better than average (though a lot of this comes down to people's local networking hardware).

In my experience of Red and Brown switches, Gateron ones have always been more pleasant to use than Cherry ones. On my desk at home I have a Cherry MX Brown board (Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro L) that I am seriously considering taking apart in order to replace the switches because a cheap mech I got years ago with Gateron browns is probably the most plesant switch I have ever used.

Edit: Having said that - I admit my sample size is small and I did enjoy the two Cherry MX Blue boards I have used.

I'm pretty impressed with Gateron's switches, at least in the form of the Healios switch that they manufacture. Very smooth. Very quiet. Tighter tolerances than the Kailh switches I've used.

I'm saving up for an Ergodox split keyboard with Kailh Copper switches. Now I'm wondering if I should try to find Gateron switches instead.

The Ergodox EZ has "hot-swappable" switches; you just pull them out and snap new ones in. So you can get the keyboard now and experiment with switches forever.

Edit to add: I have two EZs. I also ordered my first one with Kailh's copper speed switches and found them TERRIBLE. Speed switches are very hard to type on. (Imagine pressing Enter when you mean Backspace. It's stressful!) The hair-trigger on the switches combined with not knowing where backspace was on that keyboard made learning a very difficult experience. I now run Healios (linear) and Box Navy (clicky) on my Ergodoxen.

I would also recommend getting comfy with QMK before your keyboard arrives. Install the build tools, make a Github fork for your configuration, and make sure you can build images easily. You will want to tweak stuff extensively when you are just getting started, as the default layout is pretty garbage. (So are the online configuration tools.)

good to know, thank you for saving me from a lot of potential hassle!

From the switches I have used it does appear that Gateron QC is more consistent than Outemu or Kailh - but I have handled 10 different mechs at most so the sample size certainly isn't large enough to draw any meaningful conclusions!

Really? I'm the opposite thought I'm not comparing apples-to-apples. I have both a Gateron Brown (one of those Kickstarter Keychron keyboards), and a regular mx-browns on an Drop Alt. The Keychron with Gateron's feel like I'm playing with Fischer Price toys. I'm not sure if it's the switches or plastic base vs aluminum, but I prefer my MX browns on my other keyboard Any thoughts on this? (I'd happily get a keychron with browns on an al base if I can expect the typing experience to be better.

Well I have a KC60 with Gateron Browns which I have used with both a plastic case and an alu one, and whilst this does change the typing experience quite a lot I do enjoy both. The feeling is consistently a nice, clean and snappy typing experience.

One thing which could contribute to why I don't enjoy the Cooler Master board is that the switches sit on a plastic plate which does cause the keypresses to feel a little mushy. That and the fact that the keypresses themself feel coarse, so the combination of the coarse feel of the brown switch and the flex in the plate ruin the experience. Perhaps if I had MX Browns in a different board I would feel differently but I must admit the experience has put me off, moreso considering the premium you often pay for Cherry. I would probably want to spend a week using any MX Brown mech in future before committing to a purchase (which I probably should have done before buying the CM mech, but it can be hard to find shops near me to experience a wide range of mechs).

I say all of this knowing that I could disassemble the MX Brown switches and lube them, as well as changing the springs. However the 1 Gateron Brown and two Gateron Red mechs have been really enjoyable to use 'out of the box'.

Blue and green fan, and I agree, prefer Gateron's blues and greens over Cherry, although my keyboard atm uses 'official cherrys' because it isn't a 'budget' keyboard :/

I am by no means an expert on this area of the law, but I think this is a really interesting topic that I tried to explore in a recent dissertation.

I think the issues come from the fact that copyright law really fails to represent the realities of creativity in humans. As you point out, the laws don't really address the fact that often the things we create are based on all of our experiences and consumption of creative works, yet a machine which can produce the same process may fall foul of the exclusive rights of reproduction and adaptation. Is it merely the fact that humans have consciousness which means that we are able to do this without violating copyright law?

At least in the US there is more flexibility around derivitive works, which give creators of derivitive works some avenue to enforce exclusive rights over their creations, or at least avoid claims from original rights holders. Here in the UK we really lack such a flexibility, with the only exceptions along the same lines being 'fair dealing' which is not really a fair comparison because it requires the derivative creator to jump through a bunch of hoops.

Having said that, I'm not sure derivative works are really a suitable legal definition for AI created works, but until we can have a conversation about the role of originality and creativity and the role of consciousness in those proesses, this imperfect definition will probably continue to be applied to those works.

Lawrence Lessig writes a lot about this sort of thing, if you are interested.

EDIT: Also the academic Omri Rachum-Twaig recently wrote a book called 'Copyright Law and Derivative Works: Regulating Creativity' which also covers a lot of issues that are interesting, such as the disconnect between the psychology of creativity and the structure of copyright law.

I feel that electoral law needs major reform in the direction of transparency and openness. It is not equipped to deal with the digital age, and asking platforms to turn down cash and refuse to publish political advertisements is the wrong way to go about addressing this issue.

Peter Oborne wrote a good article [1] discussing the issues of relying on unnamed government sources to print stories. I think it has been a continuous source of highly questionable information and we really have no way of holding anyone to account.

Also, appears there's lots of dead cats being thrown around. I often find myself wondering how we have got to a place that feels so nuts. Nobody is talking to other people with whom they disagree, they are just screaming at them.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/british-jou...

For those who don't know, Peter Oborne is a life long right wing commentator, working on a couple ofright wing newspaper (The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail)

For him to raise the concerns he has shows that there is something seriously wrong.

It's not necessarily about wrongful convictions, though they are included, but I'd recommend reading a book called 'The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken'[1] if you were interested in some of the issues in the criminal justice system in the UK. Things have got so bad recently that criminal justice practitioners have actually been on strike a few times.

[1] https://thesecretbarrister.com/

I was sceptical at first - but the windows key + shift + s shortcut really made it work for me! (I know I could have mapped Snipping Tool to a macro easily enough but... I didn't)

EDIT: Oh, also the fact that it automatically copies the snip'd area to your clipboard is nice.

I have a CoolerMaster Masterkey Pro L with Cherry MX Browns - Its a nice keyboard, well built and not too showy. I got it for the office and I didn't want something that was very 'gamer-ey'. Only criticism is that the Cherry Browns are nowehere near as nice as the Gateron Browns I have in another keyboard (although I suppose you can't put this on CM). Oh, and maybe the ABS keycaps, they aren't great and the PBT Keycap 'upgrade kit' that CM sell isn't really a direct replacement. I'll probably pick up a separate PBT Double-shot set, but that's optional. I have recommended the CM Masterkeys Pro L to a bunch of people. I had a Corsair K70 (trampstamp edition) a few years ago, and the quality was good but the non-standard bottom row got on my nerves because it severely limited keycap replacement options.

Fellow T1D in the UK Here. I'm coming towards the end of my 'trial period' with my FreeStyle Libra and I am shocked at how much I have been able to take control of my glucose levels. I have never had particularly bad control - but finger pricking 4 times a day is like using your phone light in a pitch-black forest. There are so few data points that it is nearly impossible to identify patterns. The sheer amount of data that you have access to with the sensor is amazing. You've gone from 4 data points a day to a minimum of 96 (if you are scanning once every 8 hours). Within a few weeks I had adjusted my basal insulin dose resulting in much more stable blood sugar during sleep which has gone a long way to improve my general health and wellbeing.

One other aspect of the FreeStyle Libre that I was not expecting was a feeling of accountability. When I was just finger-pricking I could essentially hide high blood sugars. Say I had eaten some sweets or something, and forgotten to take my insulin, I could sort of hide from the responsibility of that high reading by just taking my insulin when I remembered and testing in a few hours - my Consultant would never know. However, now I am aware that my sensor is going to read that high sugar, and that makes me feel accountable for it - so I have seen my insulin taking get more consistent, and this has resulted in less hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia (as a result of mistiming the insulin and whatever I have eaten).

On your point about accuracy - I have found it to be a little out in the extreme highs or lows - for example there have been a number of times when my sensor has given me a reading of, say, 2.4. However when finger-pricking I might be 3.9 or 4. Now this could be because the reading is about 15 minutes behind, and since that moment my liver has pumped out some glycogen. But I have had similar accuracy issues when high - say above 18. Having said that, to me this is not a problem, and the accuracy between 4 and 18 is pretty spot on (apart from one sensor that went bananas and was reading at least 15 above what I was for about a week).

I'm not sure if this breaks the rules by not being a substantive comment - but I'd just like to thank you for writing this out. As somebody who is trying to move into a very competitive field (and finding out just how competitive it is the hard way), this kind of insight is really valuable.