Notices by Ben Ford :grinchsmile: (binford2k@hachyderm.io)

@inthehands @mathaetaes @homelessjun @MisuseCase @mekkaokereke here in Portland too

@GeePawHill my LUG webserver at university got slashdotted, hit Reddit, and hacker news at the same time in 2008 or so. Oh, and k5 too, RIP. It was a bog standard off the shelf PC tucked away in an office, running drupal on postgresql. We consumed 99.9% of the university’s traffic and got a nice little visit from IT the next day.

And the machine did indeed slow down a little bit. I mean, if you were looking for it.

I think about that experience a lot these days when people talk about scale.

@sepi1enfwb @990000 @inthehands @saper or they’re written by excellent tech writers who know little about the context or use cases, starting from reference materials generated by devs explaining the minutiae about all the details.

@inthehands I find that this is true with community engagement too. Some of our biggest and dumbest bugs got released when we didn’t take user advice first.

@gerrymcgovern I think this take goes too far. The pen didn’t “add value.” The typewriter didn’t add value. The word processor didn’t add value. But what they did do is reduce friction for the things that DID add value. The tech world today would do well to remember that difference. Because better technology CAN improve learning as long as we realize that it’s not some kind of end goal in itself.