Mastodon Feed: Posts

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

You know who pushed back on all of it? The JS-industrial-complex, and it's enablers. Ryan included.

So they want to tell me "what doesn't work?"

That nonsense can get in the sea.

Johnny-come-lately despair at a culture that feels no shame for doing a terrible job for users is exactly as self-serving as it looks.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

And there's an embedded truth to this: telling *just* engineers that things are broken doesn't work. So I sat with executives. Showed them what was going on. Worked quietly to consult across the industry on large sites and apps to raise consciousness. All the stuff Ryan (and others) claim "someone" should do in lieu of telling developers to stop making bad choices.

I worked to develop metrics, and even proposed browser-level interventions to depersonalise attribution:

https://github.com/slightlyoff/never_slow_mode

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

BUT ALSO, Ryan seems to suggest that my first move isn't also to educate. This ignores a decade of attempts at just that. It was only when it failed that I began to ring the alarms. By that point it was too late.

But you know who was happy to stay silent about the agency that developers have, and can use positively to put users first?

The JS-industrial-complex. And Ryan has sure done his bit to tone police those of us that understood the scale of the damage (e.g., this very tweet).

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

I don't check Twitter much, and never post, but this deserves a response.

First, a decade of what, specifically? Name it, Ryan. What we've suffered is a decade of indifference to users, incompetent technical product management, and yes, selfishness on the part of developers.

What is your theory of change? That by never, ever, creating cognitive dissonance that people will magically shake themselves awake?

Grow up.

Attachments:

• Ryan Carnito X'd: "It isn't just about 100kb, this continues to propagate. I generally focus on education. And I've seen enough @slightlylate posts/articles to know that blaming devs doesn't work. OTOH after a decade of this, at some point people gotta wake up." (remote)

Reblogged by kornel ("Kornel"):

blinry@chaos.social wrote:

Super happy with my Framework laptop by the way!

The module system is great. I printed a snack drawer today! Now I can always take three peanuts with me!

Attachments:

• A tiny green 3d-printed drawer next to a silver notebook. (remote)

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

Sumo is mind-boggling to watch. Two 300+ lbs men jump towards each other and their skulls meet with a cracking sound, they bout for a few seconds with no clear advantage to either, but then one *lifts the other bodily and throws him out of the ring*!

Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):

MEGarber@wandering.shop ("M. E. Garber") wrote:

I don’t know about you, but I can use some simple beauty today. Here’s a hibiscus bloom I shot 2 days ago #bloomscrolling #gardening #flowers #photography

Attachments:

• Closeup of a vibrant golden-orange hibiscus flower. Some edges are a bit grilled with darker re-orange, the throat is an odd salmon that ‘sounds’ bad but really works! And the anther juts out, a pale buff-orange tipped with golden yellow pollen filled anthers (remote)

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

domain names parked, incorporation paperwork nearly complete, virtual server for website & initial middleware + emailboxes rental happening monday… this should be an amusing trip

Attachments:

• 1af80cbcd8d208cd.jpeg (remote)

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

The great Hotdog Question, unanswered.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/03/16/i-could-have-told-her-that-would-never-work/

Attachments:

• a hotdog (remote)

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

Fortyfour (44).

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/03/16/44-shhhhh/

Attachments:

• 6fcb09caf1928808.jpg (remote)

Reblogged by rmrenner ("The Old Gay Gristle Fest"):

dosnostalgic ("Anatoly Shashkin💾") wrote:

Attachments:

• 02304ba6473feeb4.jpg

Reblogged by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):

archaeohistories@ohai.social ("Archaeo-Histories") wrote:

Upside-down fig tree in Bacoli, Italy. "No one is quite sure how the tree ended up there or how it survived, but year after year it continues to grow downwards and bear figs."

#archaeohistories

Attachments:

• 9ab0fa7c780579a4.jpg (remote)

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):

JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange ("Jess👾") wrote:

A lot of people don't know that the reason there's not a "rating system" for books like there is for movies, video games, music, etc. is an intentional and explicit stance of librarians. Librarian associations have long, and correctly, insisted that categorizing books into specific ratings or age categories is censorship. The decision of an outside group of people about whether a book is or is not appropriate for someone of a certain age is censoring content to them.

As we've seen with the right's attacks on libraries for LGBT content in books, they would LOVE if some outside party had already done the work of classifying books into a particular category, and they could simply lobby that one central body into insisting that any mention of gay people means it's Adults Only. Then in one fell swoop they could brand the entire debate as "we just want to make sure that our libraries only carry age appropriate books" without having to have the debate on a case by case basis on each individual book across each individual library and across each individual library patron.

After all, does it even make sense that literally the diary of a tween/teenage girl is not appropriate for a tween/teenage kid to read? If you ask conservatives, the uncensored Diary of Anne Frank should be Adults Only. Despite it being written by a teenage girl and having real historical value in humanizing the victims of the Holocaust. But if they could do that fight once, centrally, at a ratings board, they could get it banned from all libraries in one fell swoop.

Reblogged by collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth"):

fullfathomfive@aus.social wrote:

The Inaccessibility Cycle

#disability #ableism #accessibility

Attachments:

• An infographic showing The Inaccessibility Cycle. There is a circle of arrows, showing a cycle as follows: > Inaccessibility > Disabled people unable to participate > Disabled people not visible in public > Disabled people seen as outlier/rarity > "So there's little/no need to consider them." The last arrow points back to "Inaccessibility", completing the cycle. The original infographic is by Pacing Pixie, redesigned by Siuman. (remote)

Reblogged by collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth"):

lonekorean@front-end.social ("Will Boyd") wrote:

Got back into my wordpress-export-to-markdown project after a 3 (!) year hiatus. Made a ton of improvements already. Feels good.

Might do some proper blogging about it later.

Meanwhile, if you're thinking of migrating from WordPress to a static site generator (*cough* @eleventy *cough*) then maybe give it a try!

https://github.com/lonekorean/wordpress-export-to-markdown

Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):

Mecrisp@chaos.social wrote:

I am happy to announce the 1.1.0 release of Mecrisp-Quintus, an optimising #Forth compiler capable of generating native code with constant folding and register allocation which is now also available for 64 bit #riscv RV64IM and RV64IMC targets in addition to RV32I(M)(C) and MIPS M4K.

https://mecrisp.sourceforge.net

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

I'm still pluggin' away. Trying to show up everyday even if I don't necessarily feel it. I'm hitting a bit of a plateau, but the only way through it is to keep at it.

#doodle #yaombaaa

Attachments:

• Sketch of an armadillo standing on its hind legs to get a better view of its surroundings. (remote)
• A doodle of a long necked dinosaur with a couple of bird friends perched on its head and back. (remote)
• Just a doodle of a humanoid robot with an oversized head. There is a question mark near its head written in a font reminiscent of segmented displays associated with the computer age. (remote)
• Doodle of a head of a troll. It's wearing a long knitted cap with a pom pom on the end. Apparently it's head is cold. He should've tucked his pointed ears under the hat. Silly troll. (remote)

Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤"):

ophiocephalic@kolektiva.social ("ophiocephalic 🐍") wrote:

"The TikTok bill can ban apps with as few as one million monthly users, which is roughly the size of tiny apps like Mastodon."

Remember folks, if the TikTok ban passes, it's the Democrats who will have enabled it for the next president

https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-bill-could-get-lot-apps-banned-1851337755

Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤"):

ophiocephalic@kolektiva.social ("ophiocephalic 🐍") wrote:

@NanoBookReview
You're right that TikTok is a malignant, privacy-invasive operation. However, this isn't privacy legislation and won't preserve anyone's privacy online. Suggestion to not imagine a silver lining to this bill.

The government has no interest in comprehensive privacy legislation, and in fact, an active interest in not pursuing it. The security services buy data from private dataminers for surveilling the populace, and politicians need invasive data practices to run their election campaigns. They don't like TikTok because they can't gain access to the output of ByteDance's surveillance of its users.

The previous attempt at legislatively pressuring ByteDance attempted to extort a price from TikTok in exchange for allowing it continued operation in the country - its conversion into a domestic mass surveillance tool under the control of state security and military agencies:

https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-cfius-draft-agreement-shows-spying-requests-1850759715

Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤"):

reichenstein ("Oliver Reichenstein") wrote:

"Banning TikTok, rather than passing comprehensive federal privacy legislation, is nothing but xenophobic theater. China can (and does) already buy a ton of data on Americans because we refuse to pass any regulation regarding data brokers who make this data available..." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/14/once-more-with-feeling-banning-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-wont-do-shit-to-deal-with-any-actual-threats/

Reblogged by kornel ("Kornel"):

rail_@bark.lgbt ("rail :neofox_flag_nb: 🌿") wrote:

At last

Fast charging

Attachments:

• 3-phase high power electric plug with a thin USB-C cable coming out of the other end (remote)

Reblogged by kornel ("Kornel"):

bright_helpings@mspsocial.net ("Erik") wrote:

Hey how's work/life/anything going, Erik?

Attachments:

• An infographic showing The Inaccessibility Cycle. There is a circle of arrows, showing a cycle as follows: > Inaccessibility > Disabled people unable to participate > Disabled people not visible in public > Disabled people seen as outlier/rarity > "So there's little/no need to consider them." The last arrow points back to "Inaccessibility", completing the cycle. The original infographic is by Pacing Pixie, redesigned by Siuman. (remote)

xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:

I'm at the @tailscale booth at SCaLE today! Come by and say hi! 🐧

collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth") wrote:

There are a lot of reasons renaming Twitter to X was really stupid, and this doesn't even crack the top 10, but: in a list, it just looks like a typo. It doesn't fit in at all.

Typographically, I want to just say "Twitter" to actually balance it with the others, instead of having one item with a single character awkwardly dangling there.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤") wrote:

The amount of meta employees, meta-affiliated lobbyists, and venture capitalist with dubious ties to Meta running around Mastodon undetected is WILD.

I'm sure the average Mastadonian isn't aware, but there is zero chance that Fediverse and Indie Web leaders don't know the extent in which we are being nudged on this app.

In my opinion, it's a huge breach of trust and and an abuse of influence to allow this to continue.

Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤"):

jdp23@blahaj.zone ("Jon") wrote:

@carnage4life@mas.to It's also interesting how little discussion there is of the #Meta's played in this by hiring Republican lobbyists to attack #TikTok https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤"):

MisuseCase@twit.social ("Misuse Case") wrote:

@carnage4life Gridr’s sale put its data in the hands of folks who can now blackmail its users. This is not theoretical: it’s happened!

https://time.com/6083323/bishop-pillar-grindr-data/

I think people who believe that selling TikTok to someone in the U.S. will make it safer for U.S. users have a really screwed up threat model.

Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤"):

evangreer@mastodon.online ("Evan Greer 🏳️‍⚧️") wrote:

Ban facial recognition, not TikTok

Reblogged by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):

ghibli@mstdn.social ("Daily Ghibli :verified:") wrote:

Did you know there are another incredible Chinese versions of Studio Ghibli posters?

🇨🇳

The artwork is stunning and adds a whole new layer to these beloved films. Check them out and let me know which one is your favorite!

#ghibli #studioghibli #スタジオジブリ #poster #anime #hayaomiyazaki #ChineseCinema #Artsy

Attachments:

• e8584705226f551e.jpg (remote)
• d75256203a926d09.jpg (remote)
• 929867a4c0a69298.jpg (remote)
• 4d5f650d4db5e784.jpg (remote)

Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤"):

Alkaris@meow.social ("Alkaris :verified_trans: :verified:") wrote:

Gumroad is banning NSFW content, and everybody has 1 day to remove all of their NSFW content.

#gumroad

Attachments:

• Adult content on Gumroad The TL;DR In accordance with the policies of our payment processing partners, including Stripe and PayPal, we do not allow sales of the sexually explicit content. What is sexually explicit Sexually explicit content is media that is created for the primary purpose of sexual gratification - fetish content, media with characters depicted in sexual situations, or content that is clearly produced for titillation. If your products can be understood as being primarily for sexual purposes, then they are not eligible to be sold on Gumroad. To be clear, this includes all types of media: photography, videos, animations, illustrations, written media, audio books, and audio products. This can include but is not limited to: o Avatars in compromising or sexual positions or avatars that advertise NSFW uses or explicit modifications like "breast expansions” o Animated pornographic videos o Fetish-driven content « Financial domination content o Sketches/artwork where the content's focus is sexual gratification « Videos with lingerie or nudity « Audio-erotica or role-play audio o Adult comics with nudity or sexual acts » Cosplay/boudoir/lewd photography that's focused on sexual activity (remote)