Notices by Feoh (feoh@oldbytes.space)

Partially blind guy here with an #a11y PSA:

I'm seing a trend away from "Text Size" sliders or old fashioned font dialogs and towards a few set choices "Default", "Large","Larger", etc.

This is a HUGE step backwards. Your 'larger' is *never* large enough for my crazy busted eyeballs when I'm using my 34" monitor.

If you must do this, please be sure to add "Largest" and even "ZOMG ARE YOU SERIOUS LARGE" options. Some of us REALLY need them, even if it seems insane to you.

@atomicpoet YESSSSS!

I feel like we've forgotten how to get people hooked on computing unless they're REALLY naturally drawn to it themselves.

Things like Hypercard were a natural evolution of where computing had been going since the 80s. The first machine I ever owned popped to a READY prompt when you turned it on.

Atari BASIC wasn't Hypercard, but it WAS an invitation to learn and grow and explore new worlds with this AMAZING tool the world had never before seen.

I miss that magic often, and look for that same spark in the modern day all the time. Sometimes I even find it :)

@alyssa Respectfully, I don't agree. LLMs are super at helping out when you can *know* without the tiniest sliver of doubt that the results are correct, and when you treat the results like a suggestion to be vetted, corrected and massaged and not a completed final deliverable.

@thomasfuchs I think that's true, but I also think downward pressure can inform crappy decisions.

Like the fact that Masto is now going to direct everyone to mastodon.social by default (I don't care personally, but that seems like a monoculture in the making and not in the spirit of what makes fedi great).

Anybody know anything about BlueSky social? I get Nostr, that's just Jack Dorsey, and Crypto Bros gonna Crypto, but why is BlueSky trying to create ANOTHER distributed social network when we already have one that WORKS GREAT and WITH OPEN STANDARDS UNGH! :)

I'm guessing this is about $#!@# money. Some idjit saw Twitter goes toes up and smelled an Opportunity?

#social #network #blueskysocial

@cujobyte It's pretty disgusting. The myth that you can work until a "reaosnable" age and then retire to enjoy the fruits of your labor is showing itself to be provably false for way too many people. I'd say #fuckcapitalism but I don't have any faith that #Communism or #Anarchy or anything else would be any better. ?

@feditips This is one of the biggest sticking points for new folks to fedi. While many of us who 'live' here see this as a vast improvement over how things used to be, they're used to the algorithmic monoculture so this feels hopelessly difficult to them, not in terms of mechanics but in. terms of activation energy, and I have no concept of how we'd even fix that.

@evan Really enjoyed your interview on @changelog ! It amazes me how many very technical astute people get bogged down in the Fediverse's current UX paper cuts.

I try to tell them that they're used to the algorithm force feeding them content like some kind of malevolent mama bird, and that they will reap dividends if they just put in a bit of effort and search out the content they want to engage with, but it doesn't usually 'stick'.

I *do* sympathize because I'm partially blind and am thus pretty sensitive to UX papercuts myself in other ways, but it's been such a delightful, entertaining and enlightening journey of discovery for me over the last few years that I find it hard to relate.

I'm excited by the possibilities the Fediverse opens up and inspired by the people and content I find here just about every single day.

@helene So the multiprocessing actor based capabilities of BEAM with the super easy Lua syntax?

Smells kinda like Elixir maybe?