I joined SDF last year and was disappointed. I was willing to tolerate the limitations (eg. can't change your shell unless "validated"; can't even 'touch' a file...) in exchange for community but it's a ghost town. To make matters worse, IRC for new users is only available on a Sunday!
I would love to give it another shot but I don't understand what its value is in 2025.
It basically dates back to when having access to a Unix system meant that you needed to be at a university or a big employer or some such. These guys provided one for free.
Currently you can get some basic email, web hosting, etc. for a one time $1 donation. You can get more for a one time $36 donation.
They also have internal “forums” and chat and such as well as offering a bunch of related services like VPS, dial up, VPN, a Minecraft server, etc. Realistically, you can get a lot more for a lot less with modern hosts but between nostalgia and the limited environment having a particular kind of charm, it is kinda neat.
This seems overly-catastrophizing to me. I don't deny it rings true for many, but I think some of the statements here really depend on your team and company.
A bit of a false dichotomy. But in my own experience, the search is not very semantic. Director of Engineering that builds bridges is pretty different from a Director of Engineering that builds APIs. My experience with LinkedIn job search often conflates such things.
Not sure what you mean with the false dichotomy... The search is so extremely bad (and I don't remember it being this bad a month ago), that I considered they might have released a bug. It looks like it completely ignores my search query. Of course other explanations are also possible.
Environmental modification is one of my favorite emotional coping strategies. It.. feels like you're actually doing something! Cleaning up/tidying, "sacred space creation," light and color therapy all work way more effectively than you might believe.
Nature bathing is great. But it turns out that people in hospital beds facing windows recover faster when they face nature. And, in fact, it's not the nature at all! It can be fake and just as effective. In the end, basically, it's the green.
Color therapy or chromotherapy is incorporating specific colors into your environment to evoke desired emotional states. It blows my mind how well this works, and that's why you see peach colored walls in offices.
Light works similarly. Warm vs. cool, etc. You can use light exposure to regulate mood, particularly for conditions like seasonal affective disorder (SAD). All of this is culturally-dependent but it works way better than you'd think.
Therapeutic Use: Stimulates energy, increases heart rate, and can evoke strong emotions. Often used to combat fatigue or lethargy, but excessive use may lead to overstimulation or agitation.
Therapeutic Use: Promotes mental clarity, stimulates the nervous system, and enhances focus. However, too much yellow can lead to feelings of anxiety or frustration.
4. Green
Emotions: Balance, harmony, growth, renewal, calmness, peace, envy (in some contexts).
Therapeutic Use: Known for its calming and balancing effects, green is often used to reduce stress and promote relaxation. It is also associated with nature and healing.
5. Blue
Emotions: Calmness, serenity, trust, stability, sadness, coldness.
Therapeutic Use: Reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and promotes relaxation. Often used in spaces meant for rest or introspection. Darker shades can evoke feelings of sadness or detachment.
Therapeutic Use: Combines the calming effects of blue with the rejuvenating qualities of green. Often used to promote emotional balance and clear communication.
Although they are both forms of environmental modification, light therapy is different than color therapy. Light therapy uses e.g. daylight to boost affect. Color therapy uses e.g. silver paint to prime cognition.
That's not how colored light actually works. (That's the joke!)
There isn't a silver "color" of light, it's a visual phenomenon that warps and reflects the color of the environment around it.
So unfortunately there are no silver colored light bulbs (except for using a silver coating to block or reflect the light).
Maybe it's that shiny reflective things like disco balls are therapeutic, imparting modernity, sophistication, intuition, reflection, coldness, or disco fever.