Notices by mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)

A number of people replied to my first post to say "but my objections to Bluesky are governance-related, not technical!". IE, the "what if Bluesky turns evil" argument.

But say someone doesn't like Mastodon. They don't like the UX. Or they don't like the ~vibe~. If you tell them, someday Bluesky will enshittify! Well. That will not be a convincing argument if, from their perspective, Mastodon is *already* shit. Those folks want a site they enjoy *now*. "Will I enjoy it later?" is secondary.

Note: I don't know if I specifically agree with this argument but I think it is very, very interesting

https://mastodon.social/@WAHa_06x36/113529737516750973

There is a lot of Bluesky negativity on Mastodon and like, I am actually pretty negative on Bluesky?, but sometimes the negativity expands into attacking *Bluesky users* for making a Bad and Wrong decision, and not only is this mean¹, I feel like almost all of *those* critiques are deeply failing at empathetic imagination. You have to consider the Bluesky user's choice from *their perspective*.

¹ Sometimes being mean to a person is an ineffective way of convincing them to change their mind.

@hyc @ireneista The thing that would worry me is I can believe someone who really knew what they were doing with Linux could do this but I also believe there a lot of people who aren't that good with linux but think they're that good with linux and what if one of them designed the stick

I know that there are "USB condoms" that ensure no data is transferred over the wire, only power.

Does there exist a "USB data condom" which is specifically designed for removable storage and allows a drive to be mounted through it but bans *other* types of data transfer, IE, it prevents a plugged in device from pretending to be a keyboard or hacking my PCI bus via Thunderbolt or whatever the fuck?

Could such a USB data condom exist?

I think 1000 lines of code is the perfect length for a computer program

@david42 a large system made of many interacting components, each of which is no more than 1000 lines, could be very satisfying to work with.

@david42 if the library provides a complete enough encapsulation layer you don't have to think about it, it's a win. if i wound up forking the library and submitting bugfixes and feature improvements, it's still a win because i can think in a simpler model at the toplevel 1000-line program but less of one.

@evan The verbs are not the same and the communities are not the same. When I am publishing, I post subtly different streams based on the differing interests of my friends on the two sites, and I word things differently based on perceived attention spans and Mastodon's improved support for longform content (longer posts, bluesky UI fails on threads longer than 3 posts). On bluesky I post less stuff and the stuff I do post is simplified.

@evan Oh. No, I just installed both apps.

@evan I do not think the bridge matches my model of how I use either website

I like having Bluesky because it is a non-Twitter, non-Facebook space where I can hear from all my friends who are unable or unwilling to use Mastodon (a site with real barriers to entry). I haven't talked to a lot of those folks much since 2022 and I missed them.

I have intricate arguments why Bluesky is the wrong technical model for a distributed social network. But if a person has already decided *for nontechnical reasons* that they aren't using Mastodon, those arguments mean nothing to them

Do you ever see a line in a piece of documentation that just makes you angry

A thought I have had over and over for the last six months is "I wish instead of getting a 'job' I could just do work and get paid for it". When I have this thought I consider posting it but I'm afraid people will think it's a joke

I will never stop being angry about the fact that the web browsers shipped WebAudio, allowed me to create eight separate web applications based on it, then changed the WebAudio standard such that anything written before that date was permanently muted with no way for the user to unmute it

The reason I will never stop being angry about this is I keep running into new situations where I am harmed by it

@0xabad1dea I don't know if I'm saying something you already know or something that will shock you but this is actually safe on Windows now (for drives classed as removable media)

A question I don't expect to get an answer to:

Say I am in Tokyo, Japan, I want to get a rolly suitcase which is "too big to carry on, just not too big to be checked luggage", I would like to buy something that lasts years and will pay more to get it, and I have enough time budget from this I could subway somewhere from Ikebukuro happily.

Where's good to go?

I know Don Quixote luggage is crap that falls apart. Is Muji luggage good?

Customs official who sits at the border of dreams and decides which ideas you're allowed to bring back out to the waking world

But if the rubber ducks can find the problems in the code by themselves then why do we need to pay the programmers

Was completely convinced that the image was AI generated but no it turns out mushrooms just look like that