Notices by Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net), page 15

It may also be the case that I just don't know how to hack things anymore. Maybe I've spent so much time working on code that needs to be production quality that it's actually easier for me to work within those constraints than without them.

I'm sort of sold on typescript for large projects as well. It has taken a long time for me to get on board. I can't stand all of the cost and headache that comes with going all in on typescript. It has to come with a lot of benefit in order for it to be net positive. The way I understand that benefit today is different from the way people usually describe it. Maybe I'll find a way to talk about that soon.

Oh, I'll add my favorite hot take too. Observables were a mistake. It's way too complicated in practice. And the costs outweigh the supposed benefits in my experience. It's the only thing I really dislike about the Angular ecosystem.

I know signals are the new hotness. I haven't really looked into it yet. But it feels like everybody else basically started to realize Observables are not great.

The company that made 90% of their revenue through advertising made a web browser and y'all were like "I'm sure it'll work out".

I mean there's nothing wrong with this message. But if you can't trust Google with your data today, you couldn't trust them yesterday either. If you wait until the abuse is obvious, it's already too late.
https://mastodon.social/@dangillmor/111717782381752829

Nothing has changed about Google or how they make money. The thing that has changed is that advertising is getting out of hand again and starting to make the web trash. That's ultimately bad for business for a company like Google. We've been here before. But I don't believe this is tied to whether Google can or can't be trusted with your data though. It's an important issue, but a separate one.

If you haven't checked in a while, Firefox is good. Like really good. If you're tired of Chrome taking literally all of your ram and CPU, you should try switching.

I use http://masto.host/ for my account. It's my own personal instance, and I was paying $6/mo for it. But I also do a lot of searching on social media. Mostly trying to find my own previous posts. Masto charges an extra $5/mo for search. I just turned it on, and it works as advertised. But the decentralized web is getting more expensive by the day.

@tob Tom I don't think I asked for this conversation. What's the point of this response?

@tob no. It's fine. It was a little annoying. But mostly I ended up being curious what your actual goals were. Your responses didn't really feel connected to what I was talking about. So they must be coming from somewhere else.

It feels like a reaction. Like you think if you don't fight with me in this thread then quoted posts are gonna be forced on you when you don't want them.

@tob I see. That makes sense. But I don't think I said that quoting caused the toxicity. I did infer that may be part of the reason mastodon avoided the feature. I understand why you would want to discuss the nuance there. But it's not what I said and it's not what I was talking about. So it felt pretty frustrating as a response.

FWIW, features are never "responsible" for toxicity or any other behavior. It's just a shorthand for talking about affordances. Which I do think matters.

@tob I'm not talking about convenience. I'm saying that there are valuable conversations that are missing from this ecosystem. Because it's not possible to present them with the right context and affordances.

Many people are informing me that quoted posts are on the official roadmap for mastodon. (I would've liked to just quote one of those people, but alas...)

https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap

Given a tool like quoting, I think most people are going to use it for hot takes. And that has progressed to the point where people assume any quote tweet is *meant* be a hot take. Rather than something that is thoughtful and considered.

But I think these kinds of assumptions are also a part of what drives toxic behavior. People often respond to what they see based on their own assumptions, even when it has little to do with what you actually said.

So mastodon doesn't do quoted posts. I think I understand the goal of avoiding that feature. People have decided that "dunking" is the overriding usage of quoting and that we should avoid the inherent toxicity.

But quoted posts are also the foundation of true discourse in a medium like this. It is the primary way to start *new* conversation that is an offshoot of an existing conversation rather than a direct response.

I'm finding it hard to do that on here. And the result is I just don't post.

@Gargron it's really slow. Seems to get confused a lot when trying to load data from various servers.

So this was my first time really trying to use mastodon to have discussions. It was rough. The official app is pretty bad. I've heard there are lots of other apps that provide better experiences. And I'm capable of finding them, so this isn't a request for recommendations. More so I'm thinking about how likely it is that mastodon will keep growing. The friction is still very high.

I would like to watch a documentary about how tech communities died as a result of the pandemic. I've talked to lots of people, and confirmed that it's not just me feeling this way. Things have changed a lot. Where is everybody?

The slow death of Twitter is not the cause of this. But I do think that is bringing it into sharp relief for everybody. Twitter used to still be a place to stay loosely connected to your community. At least you know people you like were still around. Now that's less and less a thing.

I'm just starting to rebuild my online presence after deciding to divest from Twitter. I'm gonna try hanging around mastodon for talking about tech stuff. For better or worse, I chose to make my own separate instance instead of joining a popular server. I'm sure that won't help the feeling of isolation. But here we are.