This recurring discussion is very "This is the year for Linux on the desktop" Nobody wants to register on some random weird site, and figure that sites navigation, let alone their privacy/data policies. Discord/Reddit/Slack/etc... are easy to use. People are comfortable using them. They provide a more uniform experience across different servers/subreddits/etc...
> Nobody wants to register on some random weird site
Definitely better than being forced to provide my cellphone number...I'll take registering on "some weird site" (weird way to talk about a projects community hub) over giving a dubious company that keeps escalating its hunger for new policies (usually just to grab more data) my number.
Just a couple of days ago, I signed in to a gmail account using the correct username and password. Gmail intercepted me and claimed to be worried that they couldn't recognize the device I was using. According to the flow, they wanted me to verify my identity in one of three ways: (1) I could verify the backup email address associated with the account; (2) if unable to do that, I could provide the 2FA code sent to tha…
How does that story have anything to do with being evil, by any stretch of the definition? Are you insinuating that Google has this convoluted verification flow to intentionally harm people in some way? Or even to intentionally harm privacy or further business goals at users' expense? Or are you just using "evil" to refer to anything you don't like?
> How does that story have anything to do with being evil
Google forcing you to enter a phone number is dishonest/hostile and has absolutely not the slightest to do with any desire to make your account more secure.
It's basically just Google holding your account hostage to get your phone number.
Classic forums never actually felt convenient. IMHO the best could be a StackExchange-like UI + HN-like hierarchical comments + allowance and convenience of repeating similar questions as the time passes (as the old answer may be inapplicable to a newer version or just not complete enough for a new person facing the same problem even why satisfactory for the previous one) + more permissive policy in regard of opinion…
Have you ever used a Discourse forum? I've found them to be by far the most convenient, and would rate above old Reddit.
Oh please do. This seems like the perfect time to bring this up: I had a piece of software that used Discord for support. They required that users be verified, which requires you to give you phone number to Discord. I gave them my Google Voice number, which is the only number I have, and they rejected it because they don't support VOIP numbers. I asked them if there was any other way to verify my identity. They told…
I constantly run into this problem, I've used my google voice number for everything for years (yeah it's not a great move but very hard to migrate away from) and a frustrating number of services recently have been rejecting it for verification. I end up having to take the sim out of my laptop and put it in my PinePhone. It's such a hassle. This whole "you're not a human unless you have a phone number" thing sucks. Sa…
Isn't it a shame how the world got Google Voice backwards? The savvy among us saw it as a way to present our one true phone number/identity to the world, and have options for different back end phones and services we could use. Cell phones, land lines, Hangouts, computer voicemail, all that. But the average schmoe sees Google Voice as a way to get multiple disposable numbers to sacrifice to spammers and bar hookups and commit minor fraud. So it became useless for its main purpose: being your phone identity.
Most forums I come across when searching for things (usually obscure problems in embedded software) are slow and they have very poor layout. Can someone recommend forum software that is fast and doesn't look terrible?
That seems like a direct consequence of the non efficient infinite scrolling that they implemented.
Their method seems really efficient to me. It infinitely scrolls, feels like it's actually native, and hijacks the shortcuts to make them work as if it was native. I really like their timeline scrollbar as well which lets you easily move through hundreds of posts very quickly and has become a pattern in many apps like Google Photos and Telegram.
What do you mean by "native" here? Is pagination non-native?
As discussed in a recent comment I made [0], I think the problem is that a good modern forum software simply does not exist yet. imo discourse doesn't cut it, feels almost as ephemeral as in slack/discord. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29016033
I've yet to see a forum software that works as well as vBulletin and the clones of that did in the early to mid 2000s. Everything today is this weird "conversation" view and comments/threads constantly move around based on the whims of a voting audience.
I’ve built a lightweight Discourse clone that you may be interested in checking out. We use it for the Nim programming language forum. https://github.com/nim-lang/nimforum