Notices by Joseph Kohlmann (jkohlmann@mastodon.social)

Yesterday the cofounder of Airbnb posted some word vomit confessing his MAGA allegiance, and the Airbnb Design account thanked him. A few things:

• Fuck them

• It’s gonna be so “funny” watching these dipshits narrate their deeper descent into white supremacy

• We will Remember This

Fuck Zuck, fuck Boz, fuck Facebook, fuck Instagram, fuck Threads, fuck Oculus, fuck Meta

Fuck WhatsApp too, but thank goodness they at least did enabled-by-default end-to-end encryption, in spite of their parent company’s most craven interests

@AasaMariaHedberg @dalias Here you go: https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24338471/meta-hate-speech-hateful-conduct-policy-moderation#:~:text=We%20do%20allow%20allegations%20of%20mental%20illness%20or%20abnormality%20when%20based%20on%20gender%20or%20sexual%20orientation%2C%20given%20political%20and%20religious%20discourse%20about%20transgenderism%20and%20homosexuality%20and%20common%20non%2Dserious%20usage%20of%20words%20like%20%E2%80%9Cweird.%E2%80%9D

@demarko Regarding the latter: I completely gave up on Music.app for local library management this year. I now use Doppler, a Walkman NW-ZX707, and a big ol‘ Micro SD card.

It is funny as hell to me that Apple “killed” the Walkman, then actually killed the iPod, and now offers truly mediocre, slapdash music products in the aftermath.

@aud Hell no, it’s very noticeable IMO! I can’t tell if the Lossless Audio setting is implicated here (I have that enabled in all scenarios), but also:

1. I’m not going to spend my time diagnosing a bug in software from the richest company on Earth

2. If they can’t offer a high quality playback experience when streaming lossless audio, maybe they shouldn’t have shipped that setting???

Love (hate!) how Apple Music skips a beat in the first few seconds when streaming a track. Tell me you despise music, without telling me you despise music. Ugh.

@jalefkowit What an ongoing dumpster fire, ugh

@thomasfuchs But have you considered whether the hammer might be our new god

@thomasfuchs @paninid @jalcine @rotopenguin Yeah, no…that’d be a scary new form of eye strain, I bet 🙃

@thomasfuchs @paninid @jalcine @rotopenguin Yup, which is just as well if you ask me

@thomasfuchs @paninid @jalcine @rotopenguin Yup. If there’s ever a version of this technology that is compelling, it will require an entirely different form factor, like standard-size eyeglasses (not fucking Oakleys) or a Focus (a small temple-mounted holoprojector)

@jalcine @rotopenguin @thomasfuchs Seriously. Look, VR’s cool, but it’s going to be a tablet-like also-ran interface paradigm at best, not a paradigm shift like personal desktop computers or smartphones. Also, the fact that you can’t gather ’round a screen or hold up a phone to someone else isn’t lost on me here; the form factor itself is directly antisocial and isolating

@paninid @jalcine @rotopenguin @thomasfuchs Yes and no: I agree with you that it explains a lot. It also shows how the people funding and promoting the concept are doing so in spite of itself

@paninid @jalcine @rotopenguin @thomasfuchs I personally find the latter to be inexplicable. Maybe this works out in retrospect, i.e. Apple Vision Pro ends up being a hulking Apple Lisa of a commercial prototype, but it’ll take a few years, possibly even a decade to become something other than a doofy “helmet computer”

@rotopenguin @thomasfuchs And don’t you want to answer emails in it?!

Seriously, I find the general work productivity angle of this device and its software to be boring, predictable, and quite perverse

@rotopenguin @thomasfuchs Like, no, I want to use a physical keyboard and feel the afternoon sun on my face from outside my window. If I have to write a fucking email, at least give me that

@ryanhoulihan Hyperloop. See also:

• Tunnels
• Holes in the Earth
• Money Pits

@ryanhoulihan His one and only act of good

@thomasfuchs At some point, it becomes either implicitly or explicitly the goal to *avoid* addressing moderation by way of technical discussions like this.

@adamconover Hell yeah