Notices by Ian Z (soviut@hachyderm.io), page 4

@thomasfuchs Were any of those apps a social network? heh.

I agree that it can be made fast, but social graphs can be notoriously difficult to optimize.

I'm mostly just giving them the benefit of the doubt.

@thomasfuchs "no reason" is a bit of an over statement. For example, I'm in Canada and my server is across the ocean, so even getting the initial assets can slow things for me.

Next, these are running on community run instances that could be a laptop hard drive for all we know.

Those instances do more than just serve content, they collate, manage accounts, etc.

Those servers are running a rails app so there's some overhead built in.

That rails app is getting older and maintained by a small team.

The frontend code is starting to get archaic and has had pushback on switching to a framework like React. So fewer people can easily contribute to it.

Things like privacy and moderation tools have been a high priority for a while; performance less so. The small team's time is limited.

etc.

All of these things are solvable, but it's a problem of time and/or money. Something that is is short supply when it comes to Mastodon.

@thomasfuchs move that research to Canada. We love breakthroughs like Insulin and can actually keep our drug costs reasonable.

@thomasfuchs that’s a real bummer.

@thomasfuchs I'm not sure many people are very happy with the summaries. Even non-technical people I know are frustrated with how far down you have to scroll to get to a real result link.

@thomasfuchs "...and we're naming the last one Icarus"

@inthehands May this sinking ship be composed entirely of rats.

@skinnylatte ah okay. I've generally had pretty good interactions with people who are just looking for a good bar nearby and I'm not going to direct them to Jack Astors or some chain restaurant. They tend to just be looking for something they'd only be able to find in Toronto and I'm happy to direct them.

The only thing that grates on me is when someone asks for "the best" of something. That's some lazy food blog BS.

@skinnylatte Maybe I'm misinterpreting the tone, but this seems weirdly hostile towards people who are looking for more genuine experiences when they travel.

I give way more credit to someone willing to ask a local than someone who uses a generic tourist guide or travel blog.

@inthehands I joked about this to @nixCraft. They said LLMs are technical debt generating machines. I replied saying that sounded like a lot of job security for human developers.

@skinnylatte And the only reason it takes 18 hours is because driving has been prioritized.

In Europe they literally have RailJet where it's faster than flying when you consider all the waiting, check-in, baggage claim, traveling to and from the airport, etc.

@molly0xfff I hear if you edit his name three time you summon him.

@thomasfuchs I mean, it's mostly security theatre.

For example, see how ridiculously easy it is to use an SQL injection attack to gain to an airport CASS database which says which crew members can bypass security checks and even gain access to airplane cockpits.

https://ian.sh/tsa

@thomasfuchs And all it took was destroying a country's economy and standing with the EU.

@thomasfuchs let's ask the royal family how well things are going after only iterating on their own genetic data for several generations.