whofearsthenight @ whofearsthenight @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

I think there are certain aspects of the modern internet that make it a worse place, even for all of the massive benefit and improvement from the early days. I'm mostly going to stick with social media, because initially it was a really interesting thing that quickly turned toxic and tbh I think when historians look back at this period, they'll probably be able to point to a significant amount of societal damaged caused by it.

Like in the early days of myspace and even Facebook, it was a legit helpful way to connect with friends and catch up with people. Where I think it goes off of the rails is when you get to algorithmic timelines. Facebook in particular I think is very nearly directly responsible for a lot of the political divide we see today because of this. If you poll just about any issue, you'll find that the US is trends about 70% left/progressive. Most people want universal healthcare, reasonable gun legislation, etc. But on Facebook, which probably has more of a representative sample of Americans than anyone else, you would frequently find that 7-10 out of the top posts were conservative wack jobs. One of the things that drove me to stop using the site entirely around 15-16 was that my friend group of mostly lefties somehow led to half or more of my TL being the small fraction of family or work acquaintances with right wing fringe nonsense takes.

You can kind of see this happening with reddit in real time right now. In 2010, you stared with the subs you wanted to see, things were democratically upvoted, and there was no algo outside of the users to speak of. Reddit has slowly been moving away from that, often surfacing things that you have no interest in because "engagement." I have a pretty strong suspicion this was one of the driving factors in killing third party clients - they still mostly presented content the old way without shoving a bunch of crap in your face. Twitter went through the same. People used to complain about twitter being a cesspool, and I never had that because I always used a third party client and just followed people who's stuff I wanted to see. And if they ventured too far into the sort of lunatic fringe, pruning them was easy and I could continue seeing the type of content I wanted. Now with no third party clients, there is just no way to not see this kind of nonsense on twitter, hence I haven't for many months now.

Now, this is just not the way most people are going to engage with things on the internet. Like, just look at most people's phones for fuck's sake. A zillion notifications and badges for things that no one should care about. It doesn't occur to most people that you can even avoid this kind of thing.

Anyway, lots of cool things about the modern internet, the type of social media most are using ain't it though.

You need crimes to have a trial? Theoretically cops are supposed to have reasonable, articulable suspicion of specific crime before even detaining someone. You might be looking for something like congressional review, but most of the things that have been reported on Thomas for example, aren't chargeable under current law. If our politics wasn't so incredibly fucked right now, theoretically they would impeach, but that's just about the only mechanism for dealing with justices. Even then, that's edit: continent contingent mostly on logical inference of this line in the constitution:

The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour

which assumes that "bad behavior" means they can be removed, which translates in modern society as "if there is political will crime is legal." See also: Donald Trump, who very obviously should have been removed several times over, is basically exactly what the framers had in mind when designing mechanisms around impeachment/removal/emoluments, etc. for bad actors, but republicans just didn't feel like it? And much like Trump, even if congress did investigate and find say, normie crimes like embezzlement or insider trading or something, we face the possibility that you end up with a Justice in prison still ruling in much the same way the Republican front-runner for president is very obviously a raping, treasonous, insurrectionist. Like, that's why those bad-actor clauses are there, but again, that requires a congress that can function (lol Republicans can't even get a house speaker) and actually have the will to do so. As it is, I'm guessing half of the country is probably just like they were with Trump evading taxes and thinks that Thomas taking advantage means he's "smart" and he's actively advancing a bunch of the fucked up shit they want, just like the rest of the corrupt, illegitimate court.

arrest them

I don't know how to tell you this, but it seems like based on what is known publicly they have committed no crimes. Have they committed things that should be crimes? Oh, for sure.

Also, we might as well wish for personal unicorns for all citizens than an actual constitutional amendment. Anything less is subject to judicial review (a made up power the supreme court gave itself?) so even if a law got passed, it would be subject to the people it's supposed to regulate allowing it.

Precisely. Tbh I would be comfortable paying more but only if it went to artists. At some point there will come a time when I go back to the 7 seas for music (especially given hdd sizes and the ease of streaming from your own library) but I feel pretty far from that at the moment especially as it's the free tiers mostly that have been getting enshittified. But I think that's roughly the lessons of the 2010's - free products on the internet are either a loss leader to get you subscribing, or they're probably selling your data to everyone.

Even then, the free versions of Spotify/Pandora are miles ahead of radio when I was a kid. Pick one of three stations that caters entirely to mainstream normies and then have a third of your time spent listening to ads and shitty DJs.

Just having the freedom for literally anything. I have a stable, boring job that sucks, but it keeps a roof over my head (barely) while also leaving little time for anything else. I’m nearing 40 now and I definitely wish I’d gone back in my 20s and taken a lot more risk before I had responsibilities. Even then, I don’t want to be a wandering hippy, but a 30 hr work week with 3 weeks mandatory vacation? Sign me the fuck up.

When I was a kid, I would go buy a CD basically every paycheck/allowance, for probably around $15-$20 of '03 money. 12ish tracks. I would add basically about 30 tracks to my collection per month for $30-$40. And even though I owned those (as long as my little brother didn't fuck up the disc), I could only access the handful that I could carry with me. If you told 15-17 year old me, that for $11 a month I could access basically any music I could think of instantly, anywhere, I would've been like "sure, and then we'll listen in our flying cars, right?"

There are lots of things that absolutely suck about modern life and the enshittification presented here, but music fans have it pretty good.

Every tech company right now?

If you know that the sword can't hurt people that aren't evil, then stabbing randoms is by definition not evil because you can't hurt them.

I mean, yeah it's meta gaming hard and lots of folks wouldn't want this at their table, so chalk it up as a learning moment as a DM and figure out a good way to take it from them. The obvious one in this case is that the sword damages evil creatures, not destroys. Have our little meta-gaming pally stab a guy twice his level and get wrecked so he rethinks the practice. "Welp you've stabbed the bbeg, they've stripped you and the party of their possessions and locked you in a dungeon, boy you're lucky he had somewhere to be or you'd be dead." Like this is only a clever meta-game if you're in a video game where you know the level of the zone you're in and you know the full meta.

And even then, a simple "hey we're a RP table and we try to keep meta to a minimum, so please reconsider this practice" or "hey before you go stabbing everyone, do you know what the level of each of the characters are? something to think about..." is the polite thing to do before you ruin their game based on the DM's mistake.

Wormhole extreme?

For the first few, but there is a point at which it stops being feasible. "Hi, I'm interested in your one bedroom in Bumfuck, ID, how much is rent?" "Well, I own 17 properties so it's $93,000 a month."

I mean, true, but this does sound like a Michael Scott quote lol

Fundamentally microblogs are different than all of those things. RSS is too nerdy for regularly people, who are already struggling just with the idea that they have to pick a server on mastodon, and RSS readers are not at all designed for short-form content like it. Email newsletters are roughly the same, and I really don't want every tweet in the form of an email, that would get real, real annoying. Then you toss in that both are one-way communications. And finally, you have to go seeking all of those things in a significantly different way than when you than just saying "I'll search twitter for GE, I'll bet I'll find them there, and they're going to likely be more responsive than any other channel because it's all in public."

Generally speaking, I really hope that outfits like NPR and the brands and such don't all just go to Threads and instead choose to really own their identity and self-host on federated services.

What double sucks about this is that every time I've seen something like it, it's some middle manager who fights tooth and nail to try to get their team anything and is given a budget of $6.37 and whatever they can find in the break room for 100 people. I have unfortunately been that guy a few too many times and had to explain to absolutely clueless managers that doing nothing instead is preferable.

I think you're right. I didn't get too specific but that was the part I intended in the "small subset" comment I made, along with others like FairPhone, who I assume offer this.

It will cost them money, but I'd guess they did the math on whether it was worth it to stop fighting this one and potentially have a bill go through that cost them even more. There are also some things that seem to be carve outs that feel practically written by Apple's lawyers.

Anyway, I will defend Apple against some of the absolute dogshit takes people have about them here, but Apple's stance on repairability and right to repair is absolutely dumb. They spent a not inconsiderable amount of time on the action they're taking to fight climate change and getting the Apple Watch to carbon neutral in the last big keynote and I couldn't help thinking the entire time that if they just made it so that anyone with opposable thumbs could replace the back plate, screen, and battery in 20 minutes or less using tools you can find in any junk drawer, it would do far more than any recycling program or charging during off hours or whatever else.

Ditto for just basic support and software lockouts. Apple is generally pretty good keeping software support (5 years is entirely common) but the arbitrary cut offs are fucking dumb. I have an Apple Watch 3, and they cut software support for that last year which is fine. The form factor has aged out, it was bordering on under-powered a year or two after it launched, and it was time. But I also have a 2015 5k iMac that is just humming along running just fine and that a group of volunteers can get running the latest, no problem. I have no doubt that if that Apple Watch wasn't locked down to hell and back, someone would figure out how to get it running debian or something so it isn't just landfill fodder.

I'd really, really like to see legislation that addresses this. When I pay off a phone at a carrier, I can unlock it and take it where I want. When a manufacturer gives up on supporting that device, they should be required to at minimum unlock it, if not provide source for at least base level of user-space.

For apple basically every smartphone maker except a small subset with the marketshare that is basically a rounding error that focus on openness, the iPhone smartphone is like DRM for their software and you buy the license to use iOS and not hardware. 😅

Just because Android is more customizable and has worse security practices that allow jailbreak/root easier doesn't mean that it's an intended feature or that most don't actively fight against it. The default for virtually all phones sold is lock you into their App Store and extract revenue from using their services. As much as I love the convenience of smartphones, it's frankly a mistake the entire consumer market made in allowing the default be that you can't fully control your device 100%, whether that's running root or just repairing them easily.

Right, the customers who pay them to make the products they buy don't care. Why would they put the immense amount of effort and money into building something for people who are not their customers? Apple isn't a non-profit or a government program paid for by taxes.

Yes, Google's messengers were available everywhere because that's their business model. Google sells your eyeballs and is an advertising company. They're not messaging, they're not video, they're not even search - those are just products to support their actual business which is to sell ads. Ad companies by default benefit from being anywhere that people who have eyes are.

Apple is not an ad company, they sell hardware. They gain nothing from making something for free for other platforms. They make stuff that enhances their products and provide them a competitive advantage. Like, basically every company ever. They do make things occasionally for other platforms, but only when it actually makes sense. The iPod, for example, launched as a Mac-only product, because at launch they thought this was an accessory that would sell Macs. When it turned out the iPod was a runaway success, they built iTunes and the iTunes Store for Windows and opened up compatibility. In modern times, AppleTV+ or Apple Music launched as Apple-only services. Then they decided to move to other things, so you can now watch AppleTV+ on a Fire Stick or Vizio TV, and Music is on Android...

Apple on the other hand is known to intentionally make things incompatible with other brands.

This is simply false. Not making something for everyone is not the same as making it deliberately incompatible. Even the only actual examples of Apple choosing something deliberately incompatible is often a trade-off that where Apple (and usually their customers) decide the trade-off is worth losing compatibility. The largest example is Lightning, and when it was invented it was the best connector available. Even now, I'd make a lot of argument it's the best connector available, but the drop off to USB-C is no longer worth the trade-off of incompatibility. MagSafe (the MacBook kind) is another such, where Apple tried to drop their proprietary charger early in favor of USB-C and there was enough customer outcry they had to bring it back because it offers something USB-C does not.

Outside of these few rare examples, Apple actually has had to put in a large amount of effort in order to ensure compatibility. Most obvious example is things like working with Microsoft so Office would run on Macs, who actually do a lot of the things you claim about Apple. Through the 90s-2000s, MS couldn't even be counted on to keep compatibility between it's own Office versions so you'd be forced into buying a new license.

More relevant to today, Apple is the major reason why the web hasn't developed into just Google Chrome, and other standards-based browsers like Firefox can still exist. Fortunately Apple is large enough that as long as they continue to run their own browser and engine (Webkit, which they contribute heavily to open-source) the web can't simply fall into Google's hands. Which, is another example of actual deliberate incompatibility, as Chrome/Chromium tends to only follow standards when it feels like it. Or even more simply, just run Firefox and see how Google's products perform compared to just changing your user-agent. Or many other "chrome only" web apps. MS gave up and now runs Chromium, pretty much every other goddamn browser is Chromium based (Brave, Vivaldi, Arc, etc) and Firefox is now not relevant enough to stem the tide of Google. It's just Apple and the few billion iOS devices that are keeping the open web, well, open. Because as previously described, Apple is not an ad company, and their benefit comes in continuing to sell devices that their customers like, which means a good web browser that isn't spying on them.

Anyway, I'm out after this one. You can not like Apple or Google or whoever all you want, but best to stick to factual reasons that kind of make sense, at least. It's like, I have another tab open where people are trying to argue with a straight face that Google should basically just make Youtube, which costs billions a year to operate, totally free with no ads and no fees. I obviously am not a fan of Google (I actually kinda hope they took the advice, Google dying would be a good thing for the web and privacy in general) but do people not understand that companies exist to make money and are by definition not charities?

Honesty, kinda? There are challenges to the connector when you introduce more connections than just tip-ring-sleeve, but the general vibe of it is pretty close.

The only reason why people use SMS in the US seems to be Apple. They didn’t make SMS worse than they were (which would be hard to achieve), but they basically force people to keep using them.

I can't explain why, but the default in the US is still to exchange phone numbers, and that means SMS. We have all of the same options, but moving to another messaging service just didn't happen here. Even adjusting for time frame - iMessage had little power until at least 2013-14, which I'm by that time was probably long enough to move on in the EU and quite a lot of the rest of the world, and we were still using phone numbers.

Only between Apple and Apple, and Apple and Android.

This isn't a standard that can be enshrined in law. I want to create NightOS on the NightPhone (which honestly sounds rad) this basically locks me out of doing that.

They don’t have to handle the data between Android phones if they support some form of federation.

Again, "support" doing a lot of work. You don't just "support" a billion users. Huge time, attention, cost, even if you're not storing the data.

Still, very malicious behavior.

"Malicious" implies intent. You can not like it, my post doesn't even indicate that I like it (back to the original, I highlight a business case that makes sense for Apple to open this up) but just saying "I don't feel like supporting your OS" is not malicious. Companies do it all. the. time. Any modern iOS device is many times more powerful than a Nintendo Switch or a Playstation 4, is every developer that doesn't support iOS "malicious?" Even just regular people do this all of the time - me being on some social media but not others is not malicious, it's just because I decide where my attention goes. We're all making trade offs. The game companies don't support Apple because the effort to profit ratio is too low. I don't go on Facebook or reddit because as trivial, my ad impressions are actual money and I don't want to support those companies. Apple so far hasn't put iMessage on Android because it just doesn't make sense for them to do it.

Your basic supposition comes down to "Apple should do a lot of work for less than free."

I actually think that a big part of the problem isn't reversibility or symmetricality, it's that that the ports themselves are not designed in a way that easily accepts the cable blind, and I think the best example of the way it should be is probably the SCOMP link. Or for those of that aren't super nerds, the star wars connector that R2 uses to stop the trash compactor, amongst other things.

Look at that thing. R2 could be stumbling around drunk after a weekend droid bender and still find the target. Now, I'm not saying that it should be that large, but imagine fi the receiving port had a 1-2mm meniscus like curve that allowed you to find the target more easily, especially combined with a modern cable like USB-C. If we just look at the physical shape of the connectors, I think Lightning actually got this more correct than just about anyone else - look at a Lightning connector, and the male end has a very small curve on the sides of the connector to make it easier to actually get into the port. The female end also has a very subtle version of the thing I'm talking about.

I think a real life connector should have a slightly more prominent version of this, especially if it's going to be the one connector for literally everything. Like, plugging into the back of a monitor or PC you can't quite reach or TV or something should be an easy no-look operation. I've ton tech support for decades, and there is basically no connector that doesn't absolutely suck shit to try to plug in if you can't actually see it. I want to be able to throw it from across the room and still have it stick though.

For more on this topic, buy a coffee in a DT in a place that has to hold the reader out for you. Your dumb meat body is holding the card and moving slightly, the dumb meat body of the person taking the payment is moving slightly, so you end up try to jam the chip in a way that makes you both feel like you have a stack of learning disabilities. It's just bad design.