#Budgeting for Developers

[codehunger]

Unlocking Success: A Guide on How to Hire a Developer for Your Project

Embarking on a new project is both exciting and challenging, and finding the right developer can significantly impact its success. Whether you’re launching a website, developing a mobile app, or working on a software solution, the process of hiring a developer is a critical step. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the key considerations and steps to ensure you make the right choice when…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

Late Friday afternoon, the Trump administration released the details of its 2026 budget request. The 1,223-page document proposes slashing around $163 billion in non-defense spending. That isn't nearly enough to offset the trillions in tax cuts the administration is simultaneously seeking in the reconciliation bill. But the spending cuts would have severe consequences for the most vulnerable Americans, especially poor children. For example, the Trump administration is reducing funding that helps pregnant women, children, and breastfeeding mothers who are nutritionally at risk afford fruits and vegetables. Approximately 6.7 million people currently benefit from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), including 1.5 million pregnant and post-partum mothers, 1.5 million infants, and 3.7 million children under the age of five. To qualify, a beneficiary must live in a household with an income at or below 185% of the federal poverty line and be deemed nutritionally at risk by a healthcare professional or other expert.

Research has shown that the program reduces healthcare costs, leads to improved academic achievement, and results in "fewer infant deaths, premature births, and low birthweight infants." The current fruit and vegetable benefit is modest, and only covers about half of the cost of the recommended daily servings of fruit and vegetables for mothers and young children. Nevertheless, the Trump budget would cut the monthly benefit for fruits and vegetables for pregnant mothers from $54 to $13. Young children living in poor families would see their monthly fruit and vegetable benefit reduced from $27 to $10. The administration's budget document provides no justification for these cuts. Trump has justified other reductions in social safety net programs as a way to encourage beneficiaries to work or eliminate waste and fraud. But this cut impacts millions of infants and children under five. Previously, WIC has enjoyed bipartisan support. In the 50 years since the program was started, its funding has never been reduced.

[...]

Kicking kids out of their homes

One of the deepest cuts in the Trump budget targets the rental assistance programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including Housing Choice Vouchers and Section 8 assistance. The Trump budget cuts these programs by $26.72 billion, which is a 42% reduction. There are currently 10.1 million people who rely on these programs to keep a roof over their heads. Of that total, 5.6 million beneficiaries are in families with children. (Most of the rest are seniors or people with disabilities.)

The drastic cuts mean that millions of families with children will no longer be able to afford a place to live. The reason why many families cannot afford housing without federal assistance is not due to a lack of employment. "60% of non-disabled, working-age American households receiving Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance include at least one worker," according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The problem is that since 2001, median rent has increased by 23%, but the median income of a renter household has increased by just 5%. These households do not benefit from the two largest federal housing subsidies — the mortgage interest deduction and the capital gains exemption for the sale of a principal residence.

[...]

Taking an ax to pre-K

Preschool Development Grants is a federal program that helps states improve their early-childhood educational systems for children up to age five. States compete for a portion of the grant funding available — $315 million in fiscal year 2024. The money is used to help states offer "high-quality early education to more working families." The funding "helps millions of children have access to safe, quality child care and early learning that can help set them on a strong path for their futures." States use the money for various purposes. Kansas, for example, used some funding "to identify and reduce regulatory burdens associated with operating state child care businesses." Maryland provided training to early education providers to "improve quality among programs for infants and toddlers as well as preschool-age children." Ohio's grant funded "partnerships between early childhood providers and businesses to increase wages and improve recruitment and retention."

The Trump Regime’s FY 2026 budget request includes items that would harm poor children, such as cuts to WIC and housing assistance.

[hotarufutaba]

kay oh bee dee

[goddessinnerglow]

Become Your Best Version Before 2025 - Day 13

Financial Planning and Budgeting

Hello Goddesses! I know that talking about money, can feel scary or boring, but after working on our stress management tools yesterday, it's perfect timing to address something that's often a huge source of stress for many of us: finances.

First things first: if thinking about money makes you want to hide under your blanket, you're not alone. But taking control of your finances isn't about becoming a math genius or never buying another coffee again. It's about making friends with your money so it can help you live your best life.

Let's break this down into bite-sized pieces that won't give you a headache:

Start Where You Are

Remember when you first learned to ride a bike? You didn't start by doing tricks, you started with training wheels. Money management is the same way! First step: just look at your current situation. Open those banking apps you've been avoiding. Take a deep breath and look at your statements. Knowledge is power, even if it's a bit scary at first.

The Money Map Exercise

Grab a piece of paper (or open your notes app) and let's do something simple:

Write down all your income sources

List your regular monthly expenses (yes, including those sneaky subscriptions!)

Don't forget those irregular expenses like annual fees or seasonal costs

Look at what's left (or what's missing)

Congratulations! You've just created your first basic budget outline.

The 50/30/20 Guideline

Here's a popular way to think about your money:

50% for needs (rent, groceries, utilities)

30% for wants (fun stuff, shopping, entertainment)

20% for future you (savings, debt payment, investments)

These numbers might not work for everyone, especially depending on where you live. The important thing is to have some kind of plan that works for YOU.

Smart Money Habits You Can Start Today

The 24-Hour Rule: For non-essential purchases over a certain amount (you decide the number!), wait 24 hours before buying. You'd be surprised how many "must-haves" become "maybe nots" overnight!

Bill Calendar: Set up a simple calendar with all your bill due dates. Future you will be so grateful!

Automate Your Savings: Even if it's just $5 a week, set up automatic transfers to a savings account. It's like hiding money from yourself!

Track Your Spending: For just one week, write down every single purchase. No judging, just observing. You might find some surprising patterns!

The Emergency Fund Challenge

Let's start building that safety net! Even $500 in savings can make a huge difference in an emergency. Start with a goal of saving just $25 this week. Too much? Start with $10. Too little? Make it $50. The amount isn't as important as getting started.

Money Goals That Make Sense

Instead of vague goals like "save more," try specific ones like:

Save enough for three months of basic expenses by December 2025

Pay off one credit card by summer

Create a "fun fund" for that hobby you've been wanting to try

Your financial journey is exactly that, YOURS. You don't need to compare yourself to anyone else. The person on Instagram showing off their investment portfolio might still be paying off massive debt. Focus on your own path!

Your mission for today:

Look at your bank statement (I know, scary, but you can do it!)

Pick ONE money habit from this post to try this week

Set ONE specific financial goal for 2025

See you tomorrow for Day 14! Remember, every financial decision you make today is a gift to your future self.

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

just watched the new doctor who and I think the most accurate word to describe how I feel about this episode is frustration. I think the smaller seasons are really starting to show the cracks because I should not be annoyed to have an entire other doctor lite episode centered on ruby sunday. I LOVE ruby to fucking bits. but there's only 8 episodes! you can't make a backdoor unit pilot that barely even has the doctor or belinda in it when there's already so little real estate to get to know those two with! and it's not that the episode is bad. it's actually quite good. it's just that the whole time I'm watching it I'm thinking, "now there's one less episode with the doctor and belinda."

[aropride]

caffeine addiction is so fucking funny. every morning for years i have woken up and had a similar type of drink with a similar amount of a substance in it and then i am comforted knowing i will not endure a headache or excessive sleepiness. it makes my hands shake sometimes but i've found that to be not worth worrying about. if i don't have it i'm tired and in pain for a few days, but otherwise it doesnt interfere with my life. i tell people this and they go "ok cool." being chemically addicted to this one specific substance is completely fine societally. nobody told me to, like, keep a strong watch over myself and my self-control when i had my first monster, i figured out myself that i need to keep my caffeine consumption at or under a certain level and it's literally fine.

HOWEVER the first time i had WEED my friends who dont have weed were like "oh... please be careful..... make sure to limit yourself... its addictive and youre mentally unwell... wdym you have it between once a month and a few times a week thats a lot... you dont want an addiction....." Like between these two substances, if i dont have caffeine for a day i get a pounding headache and im fairly irritable for a few days. i have to make sure i never run out of caffeinated beverages to avoid that. if i dont have weed for a few days in a row it literally doesnt register as a problem. because every week there are several days in a row where i dont have weed. whereas if i have it too many days in a row i go "oh this is starting to feel kind of meh. i'll cut back a bit so my tolerance doesnt start rising". and its literally fine. like out of all the substances i consume on a semi regular basis one of them i need to function and the other one is like, ok theres nothing to do and im bored time to have the candy that makes me silly

[deadrocks]

It is wild to me that DA2, the (former?) black sheep of the Dragon Age series, significantly outsold Veilguard. This article gives the actual numbers and links directly back to its reference, an EA quarterly financial report which states that by May 4, 2011, Dragon Age 2 had sold over two million copies -- just under two months after it released. Conversely, in its first two months after release Veilguard "reached 1.5 million players," with no breakdown of how many players bought the game vs how many played via subscription service. The gap is even more stark when you factor in that Veilguard was on significant discount going into North America's biggest gift-giving holiday, while DA2 released in March. Since EA did put Veilguard on EA Play Pro from day one, they may have never expected it to hit 2 million in sales, and instead were banking on it bringing in new Pro subscribers who would come for Veilguard and stay for months to come based on the rest of the Pro library. But at 1.5 million total players, that almost certainly didn't happen, and a new subscriber would have to stay subscribed for four months to generate EA as much revenue as one sale. Love the game or hate it, this is a big blow for Bioware.

[alpaca-clouds]

Media Production in a Solarpunk Future Better World

Next week I am going to talk once more about stuff outside of Solarpunk, but let me end this a bit with some more utopianism about a topic I care about a lot as some of you know. Media production. No matter the type of media. Books, movies, shows, animated, live action, audio plays, music, games.

I wish it was not news when I told people, that media production has been in trouble for a long time. People who follow one industry or another might know - but yeah. Issues are the same for the most part.

To make it short: No matter what type of media you make, you are constantly competing with a lot of other folks not just for budget, but also for the ability to publish it. Sure, some stuff can be published independently easier, but even then it is often an issue to monetize it. You can totally publish movies and shows on Youtube, yeah, but monetizing it properly is hard at times. Same goes with audio stuff. Yeah, you can put music and podcasts on a lot of platforms like Spotify - but good luck to see a dime from it. Also, if you publish it yourself, you do need to do the marketing yourself, making you very depedent on the algorithm liking you.

Sure, there is some stuff that is a bit easier to do independently. Getting a book out is fairly easy - but that makes the market also overrun with slob and makes it hard to stand out in terms of marketing. And if you are doing games... Well, Steam makes it fairly easy by now to publish indie games and monetize them, but again: Marketing is fucking hard.

And that is without getting to the other problem: You need a budget to begin with. Like, sure, this is somewhat easier with books or if you are an artist yourself comics. It will eat up your free time, but a lot of folks have written books in their free time, as most people who publish books and comics never get rich with it. Yeah, most of us writers and also the comic book artists will burn out on it, but... it is possible to do.

However, you cannot do a movie on your own. You cannot do a series on your own. No matter if it is animated or live action. You will at least need a couple of actors and a couple of people to do the technical stuff. You also need sets for life action, and licenses for animation software for animation and so on and so forth.

And yeah, sure, you can make an indie game with a fairly small team and some even managed to make games on their lonesome, but... it is hard, you might well burn out, and also: Either you have some money to do it full-time, or it will probably take you ages.

Which basically is why Kickstarter exists.

This is not just a curse that afflicts small creators - even though those tend to be affected a whole lot more - but even bigger names in each industry. Especially these days.

See, when it comes to especially movie and tv production, the tendency has been more and more to make either super cheap stuff (like game shows and such) or super expensive stuff (blockbuster) with fairly few things falling in between. Basically it tends to eb: "Go big, or go home."

And as anyone who is obsessing about any piece of media: No matter how much budget there theoretically is, there is crunch. Meaning: At some point in the production people are working 14+ hours a day seven days a week. Often towards the end of the production, when the deadline is around the corner and stuff needs to be finished, because whoever gives the money, wants to put out the finished product.

Sure, if you are indie, you technically do not have deadlines of others to meet, but chances are, that at some point there will be crunch to finish a project.

And, oh boy, once your thing gets released, it will just get even more chaotic, because we are living in an online world, where anything can happen.

Now, let me get this straight: Yes, there are people who are making media with bad intentions (just look at those Daily Wire freaks). But most of the people tend to make their media with innocent enough intentions.

Does not matter. Chances exist always that someone will feel attacked by it. Oh, you have a Black main character? Great, now the right wingers will spend hours upon hours crying about it. You have a gay character who is not nice? Well, now some radical queers will complain about it how it is bad representation (does not matter that you are gay yourself and it is kinda autobiographic). You have made an adaption? Great, someone will complain it is not close enough to whatever source material it is - not understanding that you cannot translate a piece of media into another medium without changing stuff. And so on and so forth.

Of course, some things can be viable critcisms. But in these days, chances are that you will get insulted on social media, if not hounded by death threats.

Unless of course there are people who really love your stuff, in which case you will likely experience another sort of harassment. Especially if you are an actor or a musician or someone else who puts their face out there.

I hope I do not need to continue this.

And here is the thing: Humans are evolved monkey, who mainly involved to sit around and tell stories and do art. I am not even exaggerating here. From all we know our brains did in fact evolve to do that, which is why so many people do dream of doing something in the creative industries. It is literally there in our genes.

Why did we evolve that? I don't fucking know. I guess telling stories somehow gave us an evolutionary advantage.

So, basically for the most part humanity right now can be seperated into three groups. The people who actually do not want to be creative. The people who want to be but do not get the chance and are miserable because of it. And the people who did get the chance, and are likely burning themselves out, as they do. Hooray. This is working great.

Oh, by the way, even if what you do gets somehow super successful... If you are not indie, someone else will snatch most of the money your thing did away from you. Sorry.

However, here is some facts:

We absolutely do have the technology for most things that are needed to keep society running to be at least partially automated. A lot of jobs that are right now getting paid are Bullshit Jobs, that just exist to exhaust people.

We also could absolutely build a system in which everyone was taken care off in terms of basic needs (housing, education, food, medicine) without needing to work. Again, we are already there.

Not every movie or game or whatever needs to be high budget with amazing graphics and special effects. Yes, some people will glaim this, but in the end, storytelling is a lot more important I would argue.

We absolutely could take away the control from the people who right now create artificial bottlenecks in regards to what does and does not get released.

Same goes for stuff like shelf-space and concert halls, that often by now gets to be dictated by a few companies. This does not need to be that way.

Also, we could greatly overhaul the copyright system, putting copyright down from up to 100 years as it is right now, to like 5 to 10 years.

If everyone's basic needs were taken care of, people could just take some time of to do their creative projects without having to burn themselves out doing basically two jobs, one of which might in fact be a bullshit job.

If we produced cheaper media, a lot mroe people would get to do it - and the conditions for it would largely improve. After all, it is the fact that a lot of stuff costs hundreds of millions that make the investors now push for specific dates. (Well, also the fact that investors tend to be shitty people, but that's a topic for another day.) It could help to reduce crunch at the very least.

If we removed the endlessness of copyright, media power would be less concentrated in a couple of companies - who mainly hold that power because of the IP they own. If the IP becomes public domain after 10 years, everyone could do fun stuff with it. And if you are opposed to this, remember: It is highly unlikely to become a millionaire with a piece of media - especially more than 10 years after the initial release. Either it takes of fairly quickly or barely at all. If it takes of initially, wonderful, you can make the money during those first few years. If it doesn't: Well it is not as if you are loosing out of much. Right now the endless copyright mostly profits big companies like Disney, Warner and so on.

Also, if movies and such were smaller, there simply would be a lot less incentive to create an outcry, because there would be more of it.

Right now (especially post-pandemic, which has harmed the media industry a lot) we get maybe 10-15 blockbuster movies a year, a handful of blockbuster TV seasons, and probably around 6-12 AAA gaming titles. So, whenever one of those comes out, the internet will talk about these, because advertisement will give you FOMO if you do not talk about it. Which obviously inspires folks to have a lot stronger opinions on everything. Which then creates the toxic online discourse. Sure, you might also get toxic online discourse over some indie stuff - because there is just indie stuff that will break containment for one reason or another. But mainly it will be stuff with a lot of money behind it. Only that of course, while officially everyone is angry then at Disney or Ubisoft or whatever, they will usually then harass the actors or some other person who was in the main creative team. (Just remember how much people bullied the Korean actress in The Last Jedi. Like, not to mention that I loved that movie, but even if you hated it and if you hated her role, it was not her fault that role existed and was written like that. Same goes for example for the guy who played Jar Jar Binks back in the day, who was nearly driven to suicide for playing a character in movie.)

Having smaller budgets also would kinda stop making some people into those big stars, who then get the whole celebrity treatment which almost certainly will be a horror for anyone's mental health - no matter in which direction it goes.

I love media. I love storytelling. I love art. But right now there is just so much going wrong, which in turn leads to heaps and heaps of abuse of workers in any of the respective industry. And I think that does not have to be that way.

Most people I know who do creative work for a living love their jobs. But they also tend to struggle a lot with some aspects of it.

I personally got the chance to visit a mid-budget Hollywood movie shoot when I was just two years out of high school, and while I wanted to do this until that point, it was a very, very crunchy shoot. People were crying. People were angry and exhausted. And I stood there: "Yeah, okay, if I ended up in this situation, I would absolutely break under the pressure." And decided to not further pursue any professional creative stuff outside of storywriting.

Still. We could so so much better.

[yrsonpurpose]

CHARLES LECLERC C² Challenge | Marshmallow Spaghetti Towers

[mad-scientist-clown]

I FUCKING LOVE DS9 FAR BEYOND THE STARS IS SUCH A GOOD GODDAMN EPISODE AVERY BROOKS PERFORMANCE SLAPS SO HARD OH MY GOD THEY DID A UCH A GOOD JOB OF A PERIOD DRAMA I LOVED THIS EPISODE SO MUCH

I FUCKING LOVE DS9 WE STAN A SERIES THAT CAN ACTUALLY DISCUSS SOCIAL INEQUALITIES AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN DEPTH SUCH A REAL MOVE HONESTLY

[bitchthefuck1]

Who would you cast as Kaz? How about all the Crows?

You're going to be disappointed in this answer, but my preference would be to go with a cast of unknown/newer actors, which inherently means that I can't give you a cast list :/ idk I just feel like that would be the best choice for the story practically and thematically.

That being said, I honestly feel like the best way to adapt soc would be in animation. I know that would literally never happen, but in general when it comes to stories with very vibey worlds and magic systems I feel like animation is almost always the best way to go. It's really easy for the sets and costumes to look cheap or super generic in live action, and that's even more true for any effects for the magic system. Soc has such a unique flavor and atmosphere that even if an adaptation had, like, game of thones money and an insane powerhouse creative team, it's just really hard for me to see it getting done right in live action.

[epicqtefail]

I’m gonna be perfectly honest— this is THE BEST representation of the expression of disbelief I have EVER seen and I laughed at this panel alone for a solid 4 minutes much to my wife’s annoyance.

THANK YOU FOR THINKING SO!!!!! and sorry to your wife <3

i struggled so hard with his face here he accidentally turned out kinda uwu-ified :''D so if that's where the effect is coming from then i can't even take credit, it's a happy consequence of me fighting for my life (trying to draw a picture)

Connor: my foolproof delivery method is i've been giving your mail to your dog for weeks so he will bring it to you. it cost sixty five miiiiiillion dollars to make me btw

Hank:

[lagunapoint]

It took me a long time to realize that absolutely ALL NPCs in Veilguard are standing. No one in the game is walking. No one except Rook and the companions. And mobs. Maybe cats. The world is completely frozen :o

[rubylarkspur22]

Neurodivergent Volteer: A Headcanon

So, I've been chatting with a friend about Legend of Spyro. And the first time we(and our friend group), watched the cutscenes together, we all actually suggested Volteer is ADHD/Autistic coded. So now it's a headcanon. As a note, all of us are either officially diagnosed as neurodivergent, or peer-reviewed neurodivergent.

Why do we say this? Personal experience! Half the group is officially diagnosed with one or both of the two. To put it simply, Volteer, albeit probably not intentionally, exhibits at least a couple neurodivergent behaviours, such as:

Rapid fire yapping: When neurodivergent folks get excited, at least in my experience, we talk a lot and we talk fast until we are actively told to stop. I literally yapped about Demon Slayer for 8 hours one time! I sometimes talk faster than I can think, and lose track of myself as a result! And Volteer is a notorious babbler!

Getting guided back to the topic: If you're neurodivergent, you've probably had a multitude of instances where you talk about one topic, but shift to another because of something slightly related to it, rinse and repeat until you lose the plot completely? Well, after Dante's Freezer, one of the first things said is "Yes, Volteer, it's good to see you too. But we don't have time to waste on sentiment. BACK to Cynder. She was doing what to you?" This implies they were discussing what Cynder was doing, then Volteer got caught up in greeting his old friend, and Ignitus indulged before pushing the conversation back to the more pressing topic.

Not everyone understands your special interest terms: It's a running joke that not everyone fully understands Volteer's rambling. Yes, it's technically because he uses more complex terminology, but I definitely feel that. I have had multiple conversations with people(particularly family) outside the circles of my special interests, and have had those people pause the conversation because they had to remind me they don't necessarily know the words I'm using in the context of the conversation. Maybe Volteer just really likes reading thesauruses in his spare time.

TL;DR Volteer is giving Neurospicy, as reviewed by a small group of Neurospicies, and he's a favourite of ours among the Guardians.

[askagamedev]

Wait a minute..."indie" means you dont need a publisher, right? Wouldn't that technically mean inhouse Nintendo games are indie? 🤔

"Indie" today primarily refers to budget size more than any relationship to a publisher. Many indie games get assistance from small publishers who provide independent studios with marketing, logistic, and funding support. A smaller-scoped game like Unravel (EA), Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Ubisoft), or Animal Well (Sony) feels a lot more like an indie game than Star Citizen, Baldur's Gate 3, or Cyberpunk 2077 with their >$100 million budgets. When people use "indie" as a descriptor, they are usually talking about the game's budget.

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[mafermette]

Underconsumption, minimalism, budgeting... It's all the same!