Notices by mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)

@prettygood I set up a thing where I just run dmesg perpetually on tty11, so I can always watch stuff like that happen.

@prettygood Anxiety and triple checking every single time.

Businesses create their customers, and the perfect customer for any ad-revenue-driven company is somebody impulsive, angry, frightened and just tired enough that they keep clicking the things making them impulsive, angry, frightened and tired.

Ad blockers and filters aren't just basic information security hygiene, they're also practical psychological self-defense.

https://www.salon.com/2025/11/17/dont-blame-women-for-mens-loneliness-blame-capitalism/

And I mean, he’s not wrong. It’s amazing that some dev environments will dump pages and pages of baffling error messages on you when you type f(); {…} instead of f(){…} - a “halt on first error if it’s a common novice error” checkbox would be a major quality of life improvement, imo.

"Oh, the many indignities of programming." - My son after putting a semicolon in the wrong place.

How many of you have ever held a phone that looked like this? When did any video calling system _ever_ look like this?

But now that everything is just one undifferentiated glowing rectangle what else are you going to do?

People say "do you feel old" here, but damn y'all where's our new iconography gonna come from if everything is a goddamn glass rectangle?

https://23.social/@leyrer/115559137012685196

Sometimes I like to remember that in 2013 Larry Page said that over 300 million people were using Google+ [300 million people were _clearly_not_ using Google+] and when that whole clownshow was over we all learned that 'using' meant 'what does that button do?' and the average duration of a Google+ session was exactly as long as it took people to see what that button did and then find the back button.

If something has a lot of very bad externalities, and just the ones we know about cause major damage to important physical, social and informational ecosystems, then “lots of people want it” just isn’t a compelling argument.

Millions of people in a contracting job market have had their livelihoods threatened if they don't use it. Millions of people are being measured by how much they use it whether it benefits them or works or not, millions use it to generate material to appease algorithms controlled by the same companies controlling the AI, and even these numbers are reported by the companies invested in their going up forever, who cannot be trusted at all to tell us a real truth.

Where is the human want, here?

@Gargron Thank you - I knew I could filter out notifications from non-followers or people I don't follow, but I think what I'm after here is something like a "cozy feed" bailout option lack of some better term. Maybe a third column after "all" and "mentions" that's just "mutuals", for those times when mastodon gets to be A Bit Much.

That said, also I don't think the Mastodon Prime web interface needs to be all things to all people.

Is there a Masto client out there that gives you a followers-only notifications list?

From an unrepostable follower:

"The light inside is broken, but I still work" - a sign taped to a vending machine, spotted by a Twitter user. (originally "the light inside has broken".)

@JessTheUnstill I think my favorite part of that is that there's a Professor Of Political Science Francis Wilhoit out there to whom this is frequently misattributed, when in fact it comes from Ohio Cellist, Composer And Occasional Internet Commenter Frank Wilhoit in a 2018 Crooked Timber thread.

"I will face god and walk backwards into hell" - a Dril tweet about yelling at zoo animals.

"You cannot kill me in a way that matters." - a Tumblr shitpost about mushrooms.

"Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created?" - Spy Kids 2, the children's movie.

And now:

"Babies are born worshipping unknown gods." - a Dwarf Fortress bug report.

Any other good candidates?

Filing this one beside "I will face god and walk backwards into hell" and "you cannot kill me in a way that matters" on the list of Impossibly Powerful Phrases With Baffling Origin Stories.

https://toot.cat/@pup_hime/115531963842950277

Wash your hands.

https://www.wiz.io/blog/forbes-ai-50-leaking-secrets

The sign:

In 2011 after Dennis Ritchie died, I wondered if we should start retiring usernames on unix systems as an honorific, in the same way sports teams will retire the numbers of great players.

I frequently wonder what building a deeper cultural history into the functioning of the common codebase would look like, and what that would mean and maybe gain over time.

You can't wear 99 in the NHL now, or 6 in the NBA. Maybe you shouldn't be able to log in as dmr for the same reasons.

Kinda odd seeing people upset that a portable & wearable computer company might make a fashion product. Odd and sort of joyless.