Notices by mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social), page 2

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.

Gentlemen if you - are at this exact second - dressed like you would blend invisibly into the Old Navy Kids' Department and you are reacting to a feminine-coded fashion product intruding into your precious computering like this maybe take a moment to look in the mirror and then much further inwards before the typing.

Like, "what if computer was also pleasing to carry around and appealing to look at" seems like a question we should have an answer for? And a variety of good and healthy answers to that question would be good? Maybe if computer can empower us it could also - at the same time, in no way diminishing the empowerment - express some sort of personal aesthetic choices in the process?

I mean, this industry is fast fashion all the way down, OOP, Extreme, TDD, Agile, React, DevOps, wait no DevSecOps, DORA, Crypto, Blockchain, AIOps, DevFooBarOps and, gentlemen, frankly most of you lived a career through that acronym salad and came out of it worse-dressed than a Victorian twelve year old.

FYI

This is interesting: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1559396/the-new-du-command-in-lib-cargo-bin-coreutils-outputs-wrong-sizes-in-ubun

… because I think the real question is, when it’s time to rewrite/rebuild, how do we approach (potentially) load-bearing mistakes?

I mean, at some point we need to make progress, but we also can’t keep pouring concrete over quicksand.

"You just point and click and drag everyone knows that" you spent hundreds of hours training to "just" point and click and drag, but you didn't call it training, you called it solitaire and minesweeper.

You practised.

Today, if we want a better user interface for any computing - and I think we do, and it's possible - we have two choices. Entirely 100% new - clean-break, fresh-start new - tech or to acknowledge and own that we're going to spend some time fighting reflexes honed over decades.

A little louder, a reminder:

"Good UX" mostly means "I've seen this before."

Have you ever seen an adult without your cultural baggage approach a doorknob for the first time? They'll start by pulling it, then pushing it. There's nothing "intuitive" about turning a round doorknob. But you've been trained, so you don't even notice.

"...but Apple, but the iphone", the iPhone was never "easy to use" or "intuitive". They bombarded TV with training videos disguised as ads for 6 months pre-release.