Notices by Dinah 🕊🇺🇦 (metagrrrl@mastodon.social)

This Tom Scott piece from 2012 is meshing alarmingly well with my 2026 technology concerns about extractive capitalism, corporate tech, and AI (and particularly chatbots with their psychological impacts on the user) being shoved into every interface.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

#Dystopia #Technology #SpeculativeFiction

@Gargron Design is utterly fantastic. Such an action moment getting out of the way of that failwhale! 💖 (this is a comment on the design and on what you did)

@jeridansky There's an intentionality and lack of history with Apple's Human Interface Guidelines to the changes around Liquid Glass, so I'm hopeful too that the next version will be better.

Just had a fantastic support experience from Apple chasing down a quirky problem in Music app, so I'm feeling much better about the regular staffers now. Also took the chance when praising the support to voice my unhappiness about Apple as a company not standing up for immigrants and LGBTQIA+ folks more.

@jeridansky That's exactly what I did for several days until the upgrade on the Mac.

I shouldn't have said anything. Now music isn't playing and my Safari windows in the doc aren't showing a mini version of the main tab (so they're easy to tell apart).

Did Apple lay off a bunch of QA people or rush Tahoe out or something? This is just sloppy stuff.

@jeridansky Unfortunately when I brought my phone to the latest version it wouldn't let me connect to back up and sync until I brought the Macbook up to date.

That could be mostly a 'me and my non-cloud music library' thing though.

Tahoe is definitely a step backwards—Bruce Tognazzini and Susan Kare would be fully justified showing up and slapping some folks—but it's not sandpaper on my senses the way the iOS changes are.

@jeridansky For security during an upcoming trip I bit the bullet and upgraded to the latest iOS and MacOS software. I hate the Liquid Glass look in iOS and the options to make it less ugly help, but not as much as I'd like. It's tolerable but visually displeasing and less intuitive on the phone than it was before upgrading the phone.

Not having the same feeling on my Mac going with Dark appearance and icon/widget style, and Tinted Liquid Glass. Tahoe is not bugging me. 🤷

@jeridansky Seems like that's right?

I just took this opportunity to get those old jotted down recommendations into the place I actually look when I'm in used bookstores. 😆

To protect myself from their new easy-doxxing handling of wishlists, I logged into my Amazon account (retained because sometimes now it's the only way to get stuff) , copied my items into a note I keep on my devices*, and deleted all my wishlists. And then I went into my other old Amazon accounts to make sure they didn't have wishlists.

*mostly into the 'old books' section for when I'm at libraries and used bookstores.

#Amazon #Privacy

@jeridansky I've gone a step farther than that with the accessibility settings Reduce Transparency. Helps a lot, but things are distinctly still uglier since the upgrade regardless of settings.

In the interest of device security during an upcoming trip I finally relented and updated my phone and holy crap is "liquid glass" awful. Visual representation of Apple's decline (and the irritation reminds me of their political bootlicking too).

Unfortunately the alternative seems to be "take on a new part-time job learning how to be your own sysadmin so you can then have the part-time job of figuring out OS migration after a quarter-century of Mac use".

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/116137460475754133

Amazon just notified folks with wishlists: "Starting March 25, 2026, we will remove the option to restrict purchases from third-party sellers for list items. When this change takes effect, gift purchasers will be able to purchase items sold by third-party sellers from your lists and your delivery address will be shared with the seller for fulfillment."

#Creators #Wishlists

@jeridansky New behavior and no updates of Safari. I'm baffled, but also, it's not that big a deal. Big font, sure, but not a big deal. 😆

(Totally puzzled over why my Mastodon tab in Safari switches back to a zoomed in view with giant fonts even after selecting view actual size. Is this a known bug? Restarting browser, clearing cookies, refreshing page, and fiddling with preferences has not resolved it and it's only my Mastodon tab.)

Thanks, @anildash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZCk7VCdW5I

@Gargron Thank you for everything, Eugen! Including modeling self-care and sharing leadership.

Looking forward to your pictures when you feel like sharing as you take a good rest. Put down that heavy pack and breathe. Ya done good.

RE: https://sfba.social/@jeridansky/115544708093263371

Attention: @anildash

@ai6yr Some brands are definitely way better. Coats & Clark pretty reliable, as is Guttermann.

Also thread can get old and its quality can worsen, so any random stuff you acquire/inherit should go for a test drive.

Learn your machine's tolerances, and most of all, get in the habit of cleaning the machine. Evelyn Wood has a great video for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IoYIRnQang

What @violetblue said:

"Whatever you do: stay safe out there. The US is a powder keg, and Covid is surging with a new variant – it’s hitting some places so hard right now that countries are changing up their Covid strategies. Just this weekend, Taiwan shortened the time between Covid boosters to two months, to better match waning antibodies – it’s about time, as we’ve known the boosters fade dramatically after two months, but it’s a sign that Covid’s new variants are bad."

@anildash What if it appeared in the margin, not as an interruption but an option?

I'm a fan of your writing, and email subscriptions, but not of mid-stream-of-thought insertions.

@Wevah @anildash Yes, but it has to be clear that that's not the end of the page. If the section winds up in too satisfying a way, it's easy not to scroll over the subscribe blurb to see that there's more article. That's why I like it on the side. In a bigger view it can be the whole blurb, and on a phone, just a little protruding tab that moves out when touched, maybe with the text wrapping around its space a little to make it intriguing.