Notices by Ben S. (hunterz@mastodon.sdf.org), page 3

@reidrac why would it be a good thing for even 20% of Chrome users to switch to Firefox? What would this materially accomplish?

Also, would Mozilla remain solvent if Google decided to stop funding them? If not, how can Mozilla actually be trusted to remain completely free of even unconscious Google influence?

Stupid TIL regarding Microsoft Outlook: Header matching rules can cover most cases, and work both more consistently and more efficiently than use case specific rules. WTF?

@thomasfuchs @lkundrak oh wow I didn't notice that lol. I guess this explains why you could find even 486 motherboards with 8-bit ISA slots.

Loudly unsubscribed from two issues in two GitHub projects - one of which was an issue I wrote - because bots applied a "stale" label to both and threatened to close them if nobody replied.

These bots are passive aggressive and make your project user hostile, period. If you don't plan to actually work an issue then just freaking close it. If you do plan to work it then don't close it.

@williampietri @thomasfuchs and another. I know as soon as I read it that people would be lining up to post bad faith replies.

@mos_8502 yeah, it's filed right next to the one for "I wrote a 3 line message and they still only read the first line before asking questions already answered by the other 2."

@voltagex @thomasfuchs both Apple and Mozilla accept large sums of money from Google to promote their search engine.

And personally I wouldn't touch Brave with a ten foot pole.

@mos_8502 I've seen that "you're not really part of labor" BS from some extreme leftists. I don't understand what they're trying to accomplish by driving wedges between factions of oppressed/exploited people, but I'm convinced it's nothing good.

The best part about a sufficiently old C++ codebase is that it probably defines a common base class for everything, and you can modify that class' header and launch a build to get a break from work whenever you want.

Air quality is so bad here from wildfire smoke that you can look directly at the naked red sun.

Things I miss on Twitter because you can't do them on Mastodon (no, you really can't, and don't bother arguing about it):

1. Building a long-running thread of boosts with a similar theme. I used to have a collection of "proof we're living in a dystopia" posts.

2. When I think of a s***posty thing to say, searching for it and instead showing everyone else who thought of it first.

3. Causing companies to s*** bricks by complaining about them where they can see that their customers can see it.

If you want me to stop using Chromium-based browsers, yell at Mozilla to stop making garbage decisions regarding Firefox development. I got off that bus a couple years ago, and it's been refreshing not having to constantly worry about what they're going to break next, or if/when they're even going to fix what they already broke.

If you're yelling at people to switch to Firefox, you're way behind the curve; the browser wars are over, and Blink/Webkit have decisively won. Gecko/Quantum is effectively a dead end at this point, even if nobody wants to admit it.

The meaningful battle lines are now drawn along forks, not engines, and Google is betting we'll use theirs mostly because we're lazy / it's good enough / other browsers have annoying quirks - and they're right about all of these.

@thomasfuchs get off my lawn, kid!

I think it's funny that Mastodon polls consistently underestimate the age of the userbase when presenting age ranges. The userbase is clearly dominated by people in their 30s-50s; it's not a trendy platform for teens and young adults to hang out on (but cheers and welcome if you're an exception).

@thomasfuchs yeah I have no doubt that having to understand federation up front is a huge point of friction (and those who say that's a good thing can f*** right off). Moving servers isn't a perfect answer either though - people get frustrated/confused by that process too, and your posts don't go with you - but maybe improving the migration experience is a better place to put effort than on figuring out how to get new users onto a "forever server" up front.

@thomasfuchs this is a mixed bag but probably the least-worst option. I've heard that a lot of people don't like the user experience on mastodon.social, yet many people won't even know that switching instances is even a thing. I'm pretty sure that a ton of people don't realize that mastodon.social and Mastodon the social media platform are two distinct things.

The annoying thing about Mastodon not supporting quote toots is that people try to do it anyway, and if I want the context of what they're commenting on, I'm forced into a garbage click-through experience. Not to mention that the quoted account gets no visibility into that having happened, let alone any ability to discourage dog piling by, say, blocking the quoting account. This design choice thus tends to feel a bit more like a dodge based on technical limitations than on safety concerns.