Because it’s not simply “distributing” the load; it’s actively hiding an instance as if it doesn’t exist. So what do they do when the next instance gets “too big” for their liking? Hide it, along side LW? And the next?

Re-read my comment — specifically the second half where I offer a potential solution that would actually distribute the load more fairly without having to hide anything.

Honestly, it’s a short-sighted move made with hubris by the developer’s personal ideology. Both @nutomic@lemmy.ml and @dessalines@lemmy.ml admit in the PR that it’s not a good solution, but yet they continue any way — probably because it’s an easy “solution”, despite alienating 41% of their active user base.

It’s a terrible trend in a lot of programming circles that programmers think because it is easy and it “works” (in that one circumstance) that it must be correct. This can be evidenced by browsing StackOverflow and reading the accepted answers for a lot of questions (SSL errors in software and disabling hostname verification or cert checks comes to mind).

In my 18+ years of experience, if I find an “easy” solution to a complex problem, I keep looking for the correct solution. What is “easy” now will most likely lead to more complex problems down the line. And as they say, “if you can’t find the time to fix it right the first time, where are you going to find the time to fix it again?”

Look, I get Lemmy is meant to be decentralized. Hiding away your biggest instance looks shady to outside users not in the know. The real solution is to “go door to door” to app makers and ask them to not default to any one instance of Lemmy (side note: randomizing a default server is not much better). If anything, add a link to join-lemmy where people can browse the list of ALL instances (yes, ALL of them) and let them make a genuinely-informed decision on their own. As a convenience, and API should be provided (assuming one does not already exist) so that apps can query a pageable/searchable list of existing/active instances (maybe also provide a link to their homepage too).

Hell, if it makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, the default sorting of returned values can be weighted by percentage of active users (i.e., higher percentages get lower weights to help promote smaller instances). This would help to round out the number of signups without excluding instances.

But whatever developers do (not just Lemmy devs), do NOT overly dictate how people use your software “because I don’t like it”; lest you piss your user base off.

/two-cents

Edit: clarified a few points.

This sickens me to no end. I’ve been searching for any sort of recourse for judges who do not uphold their oath or follow the rules of being a judge. There doesn’t seem to be any.

Not only that, the so-called rules use l gauge such as “You SHOULD…”, which to me suggests there is wiggle room to not follow the rule. On top of that, there seems to be something called Absolute Immunity (look in the section titled Notable judges involved in misconduct allegations), which is a doctrine made by judges to protect judges.

This is bullshit. How the hell could the judicial system skirt any sort of accountability, but the executive and congressional branches do not? I mean all three branches pretty much get away with everything anyway, but at least there is a slim possibility that the other two can be punished. Not judges though. They are untouchable. No wonder Alito and Thomas are so brazen in their snubbing the “rules”.

I’m fucking disgusted and need to get off the internet for the night.

Replace the vase of flowers with a tub of Vaseline or moisturizer.

I usually lead with, “That’s out of my control,” or “that’s above my pay grade.” Most of the time people get it.

I appreciate both your and @acosmichippo@lemmy.world’s responses. I certainly was not aware of the expanded set of results that DDG use. Nor was I aware that they anonymized the queries they send to their search partners.

I’ve noticed this too. Not only what you stated, but how the search terms aren’t always respected; ie they do similar terms, even if the term or phrase is in quotes (the quotes should mean exact matches only). They also do a lot of filtering of the results if they feel I shouldn’t be seeing them. I can take my same search query from DDG to Google and most of the time find what I’m looking for.

If I understand DDG correctly, they use Microsoft Bing as their backend for search results. So while they may be branded DDG, the results are in fact out of DDG’a control. It also means we are more subject to Microsoft’s privacy policy than we are to DDG’s.

I’ve been wanting to move away from DDG because of these reasons, but have been unable to find good alternatives. Hopefully someone here can make good suggestions.

I have a question: what is the FHF? Searching that acronym without context leads to what appears to be unrelated organizations.

You obviously did not read or comprehend the post, and are attempting to troll in Bad Faith.

If you had read and comprehended this post, you’d have found that they updated the by-laws to include language to prohibit animal abuse. You’d have also read their reasoning for what they did in their post-mortem to Rooki’s actions.

Do better.

Personally, I like this idea. But it can be equally abused if two admins colluded to agree with each other. But, I think it’s at least better than nothing.

I would imagine this would need to be done at the software level to be most effective. You should request this sort of feature from the Lemmy team to integrate into both the backend and the UI.

If you do create issues for this request, you should post back here (or whatever related community) so people can upvote the issues to show the devs we really want the feature.

Kamala Harris is a non-white, non-GOP woman. Period.

I’m pretty sure house and car are two of the three most expensive expenses a person has. Pay them off immediately and you won’t need much else to survive.

I would imagine that it would be equally devastating to Putin to cut the cables as it would be to anybody else. I want to believe that he’s bluffing, trolling everybody to get their attention and reactions.

How ya going to download anything from servers outside of your country if the connection was cut?

A used one that he still needs to pay to activate.

I firmly believe I could live comfortably for the rest of my life if I had $2-3 million.

If CrowdStrike has taught us anything, it’s that blindly trusting automation can be equally (if not more) disastrous.

It’s one thing to ask me to update, but give me options; including to not update. There are machines out there in the world that still run Windows 95. They are vital to manufacturing processes, and cannot be updated because they run software that is no longer updated and there is no inexpensive alternative. It happens.

While that may not be the case in this circumstance, the point is that it’s up to the operator to determine when it’s time to update, not Microsoft.

Anecdotally, the only reason Microsoft does this is because people historically do not update their software regularly. Why? Because it’s burdensome and problematic. Whose fault is that? I’ll give you three guesses; the first two don’t count.

Hey thanks. I’ve starred the repo for later reference.

Is there not a registry setting you could use to disable it?

I just realized that. My apologies.