mke

joined 1 year ago
[–] mke@programming.dev 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Ironic. The translator and artist were the first ones to be killed, and now we got this bastardized AI "translation" that's actually an entirely different image, but worse.

This is why so many were confused about "personal," I believe it's a borrowed term in Brazil that popularly means personal trainer.

Not personnel, not HR, not personal assistant, nor an AI hallucination, even as some confidently claimed them, all because the original work was discarded for a shitty alternative, much like workers themselves.

[–] mke@programming.dev 32 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

Most people know this in some capacity, but it's not talked about enough: the shape of the platform massively shapes its culture. Every mechanism, intentional feature or not, is a factor in resulting user behavior and should be accounted for.

Reddit Karma was (shitty) reputation from the start, but Slashdot user IDs became one despite being mere sequential identifiers; negative user feedback such as downvotes can be harmful to communities (yet, users without an outlet may lash out in other ways e.g. reports); even how the platform communicates with users influences them; and so on.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be nice and incentivize others to do the same, but unless the system naturally leads to the desired behavior, you'll have a bad time in the long term because building culture by interactions doesn't scale. By the time you realize there's a shift, it's too late; interactions will compound and affect how the average user acts faster than you can try to course-correct.

I wish lemmy was more experimental, because by building a clone of reddit, we've copied too many of its faults. We've already got gatherings to complain about mods, and the one time devs considered changing a core component, discussion was killed by an onslaught of users. Problems with the current setup that were brought up then will likely never see that amount of people thinking about how to solve them.

Contrast with Mastodon, which gets crap for not being a faithful copy of twitter, but their reasoning for not including quote-reblogs is understandable. They're now putting a lot of thought into how to add them safely. Not ignoring functionality users want, but also not ignoring how it will affect culture, that's compromise.

I'd like it if we could talk more about how our platforms work and, particularly, how they affect us, because that's a big way we can build better platforms, right up there with being nice.

[–] mke@programming.dev 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Apparently the dump doesn't include media, though there's ongoing discussion within wikimedia about changing that. It also seems likely to me that AI scrapers don't care about externalizing costs onto others if it might mean a competitive advantage (e.g. most recent data, not having to spend time and resources developing dedicated ingestion systems for specific sites).

I want to stress this: it's not that "tech bros" are just stupid—even though a lot of them are revoltingly unappreciative of the giants whose sholders they stand on—it's that they don't care.

[–] mke@programming.dev 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

No one who uses Mozilla software wants more cloud shit or online services from Mozilla.

I don't think that's unanimous. I'd like to use Firefox Relay, myself, and I'm willing to give thundermail a chance.

Used to think I'd go full Proton eventually, but leaning more towards a diverse set of service providers, nowadays. It's also my hope that these services allow Mozilla to depend less on companies like Google, and more on the users they ought to serve, which would be healthier for the org and better for users.

[–] mke@programming.dev 12 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Yes, sort of. Thundermail addresses, apparently, or bring your own. From the linked article you're commenting on:

Users can send and receive email using new Thundermail accounts they sign up for. The service will also allow using your own custom domain (e.g. your.name@yourdomain.com).

[–] mke@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I should donate again. As someone who still depends on gmail, I keep forgetting how annoying it was to get ads every time I refreshed my inbox, before I switched to their app. Glad things seem to be working out.

[–] mke@programming.dev 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If they're user funded, their incentives are fundamentally different from Google's. Even thinking as a business, it makes no sense to enshittify the way Google does. It's a different choice, even if it's not the choice you wanted.

[–] mke@programming.dev 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They said it will be opt-in and are trying to make it local-first. Their provider(?) apparently allows fallback to nvidia cloud compute when the hardware can't handle it.

I'm not using AI to write my fucking emails, regardless. Just wanted to let people know.

p.s. Sorry, I'm dumb, skipped over quote in parent comment. Point is, there's more to the service than optional AI bullshit, and you shouldn't have to disable it.

[–] mke@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've seen news that tumblr has changed/is changing, and they're even implementing some form of activitypub (Fediverse) integration. I don't have stakes here, just curious: does that change your position any, as an ex-user now on fedi?

[–] mke@programming.dev 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Might be nicer if they just didn't care.

Check the comment section for the video version of this article by Niccolò, or the comment section of the post on r/browsers, or the replies whenever these issues are mentioned on Twitter, and so on, and you'll find a bunch of brave people saying stuff like:

you unintentionally just made me like brave over firefox. now i can switch to a chromium based browser and not even feel bad about it

Yes i am installing Brave after this advertisment!

Thanks to this video I deleted Brave then redownloaded it

These were taken directly from the video. They're on the mild side. Throw in also some "stop inserting politics (other than mine) into tech" comments, and a few homophobes not even trying to hide it. Rather than not caring, many of them like it a lot, especially the right-wing politics.

I don't think every Brave user is a cunt, but fucking hell, are loud cunts seemingly attracted to Brave.

To folks bothered by this: know that the lead developer of Ladybird is a big fan of Brendan Eich.

[–] mke@programming.dev 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

restricting the power of the rich comes with downsides

Say, if I don't believe there's a good reason for a person's wealth to reach Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk levels, if I say that's not healthy for society, that we ought to implement heavier progressive tax and that people like him must pay it properly, can you explain what the downside would be?

[–] mke@programming.dev 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

To some degree, I agree, including the tendency for infighting among leftists. It's why I've never liked this meme or its variations much. On the other hand, I've recently seen only one side actually mobilize to attack government buildings and harm people inside, and it wasn't the left.

Anecdotally, this week at work, I heard a self-identified rightist argue for banning gay marriage. Others sitting around their table agreed. I've also had the privilege of hearing we should get rid of social programs, and too many jokes about killing people they don't like. Last time I talked to a tankie and they defended oppressive policies saying the ends justify the means, folks around us made fun of them and moved on.

I think one of these groups might not be a real issue. At the very minimum, they're definitely not as dangerous as the other one, right now. So, is the meme a bit silly? Sure. Does that matter? I don't feel like it does.

Please don't reply re: proper tankie political classification. It's beside the point, I'm using them because it seems to be what most imagine when they think "far left."

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