Hey everyone,

We have a few pieces of news we're very excited to share with everyone today. Apologies for the long post, but there's a lot to cover!

First, as some of you might have already seen, we just launched the "subscribed" tab in the devRant app on iOS and Android. This feature shows you a feed of the most recent rant posts, likes, and comments from all of the people you subscribe to. This activity feed is updated in real-time (although you have to manually refresh it right now), so you can quickly see the latest activity. Additionally, the feed also shows recommended users (based on your tastes) that you might want to subscribe to. We think both of these aspects of the feed will greatly improve the devRant content discovery experience.

This new feature leads directly into this next announcement. Tim (@trogus) and I just launched a public SaaS API service that powers the features above (and can power many more use-cases across recommendations and activity feeds, with more to come). The service is called Pipeless (https://pipeless.io) and it is currently live (beta), and we encourage everyone to check it out. All feedback is greatly appreciated. It is called Pipeless because it removes the need to create complicated pipelines to power features/algorithms, by instead utilizing the flexibility of graph databases.

Pipeless was born out of the years of experience Tim and I have had working on devRant and from the desire we've seen from the community to have more insight into our technology. One of my favorite (and earliest) devRant memories is from around when we launched, and we instantly had many questions from the community about what tech stack we were using. That interest is what encouraged us to create the "about" page in the app that gives an overview of what technologies we use for devRant.

Since launch, the biggest technology powering devRant has always been our graph database. It's been fun discussing that technology with many of you. Now, we're excited to bring this technology to everyone in the form of a very simple REST API that you can use to quickly build projects that include real-time recommendations and activity feeds. Tim and I are really looking forward to hopefully seeing members of the community make really cool and unique things with the API.

Pipeless has a free plan where you get 75,000 API calls/month and 75,000 items stored. We think this is a solid amount of calls/storage to test out and even build cool projects/features with the API. Additionally, as a thanks for continued support, for devRant++ subscribers who were subscribed before this announcement was posted, we will give some bonus calls/data storage. If you'd like that special bonus, you can just let me know in the comments (as long as your devRant email is the same as Pipeless account email) or feel free to email me (david@hexicallabs.com).

Lastly, and also related, we think Pipeless is going to help us fulfill one of the biggest pieces of feedback we’ve heard from the community. Now, it is going to be our goal to open source the various components of devRant. Although there’s been a few reasons stated in the past for why we haven’t done that, one of the biggest reasons was always the highly proprietary and complicated nature of our backend storage systems. But now, with Pipeless, it will allow us to start moving data there, and then everyone has access to the same system/technology that is powering the devRant backend. The first step for this transition was building the new “subscribed” feed completely on top of Pipeless. We will be following up with more details about this open sourcing effort soon, and we’re very excited for it and we think the community will be too.

Anyway, thank you for reading this and we are really looking forward to everyone’s feedback and seeing what members of the community create with the service. If you’re looking for a very simple way to get started, we have a full sample dataset (1 click to import!) with a tutorial that Tim put together (https://docs.pipeless.io/docs/...) and a full dev portal/documentation (https://docs.pipeless.io).

Let us know if you have any questions and thanks everyone!
- David & Tim (@dfox & @trogus)

People didn't find me cool enough when I said I develop websites,
So I ran https://github.com/svenstaro/genact as a screen saver.

Big tech hates Apple for introducing Anti-Tracking features into IOS14.5,

https://gizmodo.com/how-to-block-ap...

But...... this isn't what I expected to fall through after that happened.

Google is introducing a similar feature into Android 12 😱

https://gizmodo.com/google-will-let...

I hate those questions like "where do you see yourself on five years?" Or "tell me a time when you had to [insert leadership activity here]" where the obvious answers are something inane and managerial.

I also hate those questions that come up a lot when I say I know SQL where they ask me to do some inane, unnatural SQL thing in a statement rather than a procedure or a function.

Also see these: https://devrant.io/rants/136331/...

https://devrant.io/rants/132198/...

🚀 Stay Active with @ttshivhula/stay-online!

Tired of auto screen locks or your system assuming you're idle? Look no further:

• Simulate Mouse Movement (either linear or circular)
• Simulate Keyboard Activity
• Set Random Activity Intervals
• Pick your mode: mouse, keyboard, or both!

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Are you willing to share details of your salary, or for contractors your daily/hourly rate? If you're not, that's interesting to know too.

Interesting to know;
- Currency (hopefully obviously)
- Location of work (or if remote, primary location of employer?)
- Contract type (FT/PT employee, contractor/freelancer)
- Job title (or general activity for contractors)
- Number of years in role/contracting
- Whether or not you would or have shared your salary with a co-worker (perhaps you're willing to share here but not with a co-worker)
- Gender

The 'Why is it soooo taboo to ask co-workers salary?' question made me think about this (https://devrant.com/rants/1557306/...)

https://news.mit.edu/2022/...

"Based on the patterns of brain activity that were observed, the group could tell whether someone was evaluating a piece of code involving a loop or a branch. The researchers could also tell whether the code related to words or mathematical symbols, and whether someone was reading actual code or merely a written description of that code."