Honestly, yes.
More information available at once, more fine user control, less chance of fucking up. If you’re going to be spending big, at least make sure what you’re doing is the thing you wanted. Desktop sites are still superior in that regard. Until the mobile-first trend turns everything into an enshittified mess, that’s the way I’ll keep doing things.
Excellent analysis. Especially this part:
It will be much more productive to try to solve this with the handful of Browser vendors than trying to regulate each and every consent banner.
Early cookie banners were a bad experience but they were manageable. But now thing have transitioned into content-blocking modals, dark patterns, forced individual consent/rejection for each and every one of the 943 partners they’re selling your data to, sites that refuse to serve content if you reject tracking and other ways to frustrate the end user.
I’m done with every piece of shit predatory actor inventing their own way of malicious compliance with the GDPR. You either implement the user-friendly consent API or you get no more tracking at all. Paywall your shit for all I care, at least then you’ll have a sustainable business model.
I work in IT, and different definitions of what SaaS means are starting to wreak real havoc on the architecture as a whole.
We are better served just quitting the acronyms and taking the time to talk about a more detailed description of what the service actually adds in terms of value.
Amazon Prime is a subscription for shipping, video streaming, gaming benefits and more. Since software is not the primary goal, but a means of delivery for these other services, I will not consider Amazon Prime SaaS.
Yeah I believe this to be a fallacy. If all your contacts use WhatsApp, they still haven’t grasped the concept of installing two applications side-by-side. Or they don’t fully understand why people are using signal over WhatsApp. If you fail both of those, congratulations, you’ve failed to be a self-aware tech user and you’re now demoted to a braindead consumer.
I know, mind blowing right? Point is, society in general should not accept others forcing you to keep the WhatsApp monopoly in tact, which is exactly what’s happening here.
It will take some time but eventually adoption will spread, even among your contacts. It’s just a matter of critical mass, and there are some pretty compelling features within Signal that make it a worthy replacement.
Yeah that’s the thing. Users stick to reddit because they have ties with the individual communities, not so much the platform itself.
People used to use Facebook for similar reasons. “Because all my friends are there”. Not because Facebook was so great.
It can be difficult to leave communities behind that you feel a part of, even if you just lurk most of the time. The fact that reddit was turned into a corporate dystopic shitshow does bother users, but it hasn’t outweighed their needs to still be part of their respective communities.
But seeing as official reddit sources claim that “they’re still in the early stages of user monetization”, it might not be long before we see what’s left of the platform turn into the biggest dumpster fire the internet has ever seen.
Yeah, though that should only be an issue if the link you’re copying needs to show query results instead of a more permanent page such as a product listing or a video on YouTube.
In general, the conventions and standards are followed. But yeah, linking to search results without tracking bullshit is kind of challenging.
To be honest it should not be that hard to write a browser extension that just strips away all query parameters. That’s just a simple string match for the question mark and deleting everything after it.
The problems begin when sites start implementing other URL shenanigans like your /ref=XXXX? example.
The workable solution there would be to have the extension match user defined patterns for different sites.
Exactly what I was thinking. The whole AI hype has been cringe so far and this just confirms it. Seems that the ratio between legitimate use cases and fucking around is kinda skewed towards the meme side of things.
Or it might just signify our population has a HUGE lonelyness problem (for a myriad of reasons).
Especially Germans, and your cousins who live in the swamp next door.
We can’t help the fact our languages just arent’t that elegant, no need to apologize for it.
From personal experience working in a Microsoft ecosystem, it’s mostly a matter of being able to hire the right people.
There is a near-infinite source of IT workers that have some expertise with Microsoft software and services. And those kinds of numbers simply don’t exist for the Linux world, especially with all the different configurations out there.
Medium-sized organizations have to employ a strategy of throwing enough idiots at a problem in order to keep things running. This also creates some of the issues they need the idiots for because no one has detailed knowledge of how things work.
My attempts at proposing a linux-based application server have been met with all sorts of “but our domain policy”, “we can’t guarantee continuity”, “none of my people know how to admin this stuff” type responses.
It definitely is a matter of mindset, but there is also a big commitment to make if switching systems to Linux. And that is a choice managers will only make if the benefits are clearly illustrated in a businesscase.
While I’m not exactly an expert user of AutoCAD (my background is architecture, industrial design and full stack development), I know enough about the software where I can tell it’s based on a lot of legacy spaghetti code.
It’s the same for Solidworks, which I know through and through, including the shitty VBA scripting environment. My CAD teachers always used to say the software is built like a wooden playhouse, which has been extended over the years to include a second story, a slide, a swingset and a roof extension. But underneath it all, it is still the same “don’t fix it if it aint broke” codebase that Dassault has taken their chances on since the '90s.
The second someone invests any kind of money into an open source alternative, the way Blender has done for the mesh modeling industries, both Autodesk and Dassault systemes stand to lose their respective monopolies on 2D and 3D CAD.
But the trend is not limited to CAD software only, it is also highly prevalent in software providers for governmental tasks. Most of which sell the same products for years without iteration on their codebase. The result is that government organisations have to deal with shitty software that requires their individual users to connect to the database (yes, you heard that right, every user has to manually input database credentials that include all grants on all of the relevant datasets). Most of these cronies are reselling badly thought out software, where they’ve outsourced the development to third-world shitholes. Is is a goddamn miracle that there aren’t more major incidents with government organisations.
The only solution for this kind of bullshit is open standards that encourage an open source approach to these kinds of critical applications. Where more parties are actually encouraged to build their own software and where the businessmodel is built around being a service provider and not a magical black box salesman.
If you’re able to stop worrying about generating revenue based on your intellectual property and focus on generating revenue from the service you provide, surrounding your product… you’ll automatically build a better product.
Not sure if you’re going to like the route they’ll be taking.
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/autocad-webassembly
I bet AutoCAD will collapse either way if Microsoft decided to purge legacy components from the OS. Feel like the codebase hasn’t changed since the early days and it probably depends on some APIs that have been there since Windows ME.
Definitely nothing wrong with that. People have spent way more outrageous amounts of money on other hobbies so just go for it.
If the expense is worth it to you, there is no reason not to. And you’ll likely find other uses for the secondary phone too.
If you ever want to do more serious surveying, look into what people are doing with RTK antennas and their smartphones. There are definitely some interesting options for very serious centimeter-accurate surveying that can be done with just a smartphone and an external RTK antenna.
I haven’t dabbled that much in PCB design but I have seen some good things in KiCAD. All my electro engineer homies assure me Altium’s the way to go for now though. Most of them also happen to be big F(L)OSS nerds so I’m curious to see where KiCAD goes in the future.
FreeCAD is an awesome attempt at building a parametric CAD modeler, though it will need a lot of polish to be usable. Especially on the UX side of things the software could do with a lot of improvement. As far as I know the most difficult part to program for parametric modelers is the actual geometry kernel, which is why so many modelers are based on Parasolid, including the recent hybrid modeler Plasticity. For a F(L)OSS parametric CAD modeler to truly succeed some genius needs to build an open geometry kernel that performs at least close to on par with Parasolid. But that takes a special kind of autistic in order to achieve. Either that or the engineering world needs to collectively decide this needs to happen.
As much as I hope FreeCAD becomes the open source alternative everyone is looking for, it is trying to be everything at once and that might be too ambitious for the current state of the project. I’m secretly hoping we also get a new project sometime soon with a smaller scope.
The problem is mostly a lack of competition in specific fields. And the companies that own the monopoly in their respective niches make it so that any form of competition is either…
Most of these applications have codebases that are FUCKING ANCIENT. Let’s take a look at Solidworks for example, which is the industry standard for Computer Aided Design for the manufacturing industry. Under the hood, it’s still the same software from the 1990’s. And there is no incentive for Dassault Systemes to rewrite the codebase.
Lots of these giant monopolistic software products have turned into frankenstein-esque monstrosities over the years. I often tell people they are built like backyard playhouses that have been expanded over the years by building an extra story on top, adding a swingset, adding a slide, extending the roof and attaching a rope ladder to the side.
All of this makes for more functionality, but they haven’t really thought about the structural integrity of the original playhouse. In a direct parallel many of these programs have unmaintainable code that no one dares touch because “hey it works, and we need to keep it that way because if we break it we’re no longer getting payed”.
These companies unintentionally hold their businessmodel hostage by choosing profits over innovation and investment in an adaptable codebase.
Which is why it is near impossible for them to support technologies that are different from their original install base. And this is also why they have incentives to make sure they stay in the lead becuase they know damn well that open source movements that get some support and take flight are dangerous to their market share, and by extension their profits.
Blender is probably one of the best examples of what good open source software will do to an industry. The day someone develops a parametric CAD solution that’s platform agnostic and based on open standards we’ll see a lot of engineers ditch Windows for Linux.
You’re getting ratio’d but you’re right. Core parts of the user experience are steaming piles of dogshit while people praise MacOS for its many gimmicks.
And I feel like none of these are unreasonable. I like using the right tools for the right jobs, which is why I run Windows for heavy productivity and engineering work. Desktop Linux has come a long way but it just doesn’t (yet) have the required toolset to support engineering workflows. While programming of any kind and getting more complex data wrangling done is best done using Linux. My server needs are also best covered by Linux as most distributions can be run without all the bloat that Windows comes with. And I am sure as shit not paying for Windows Server.
I just can’t find a valid reason for using MacOS. It seems to combine the worst of both worlds into an OS that’s like a trial experience of actually using a computer to get things done.
If anything, torrents have a region boost. Provided no one has servers or seedboxes set up, you’re going to benefit hugely from seeders near your location.
That was awesome, thanks for sharing.
I fully get what you’re saying and I think I know a thing or two about how lifestyle branding consumes people’s lives to the point where they’re fully absorbed.
Social media platforms seem to be by far the worst offenders of stimulating this kind of addiction (let’s just name it for what it is).
Coming from a background of designing products, as opposed to selling them I tend to be focused on product representation, rather than selling an idea. Which is not actually the route to making stupid amounts of money.
You’ve convinced me that marketing is definitely part of the problem. Here in the Netherlands they’ve recently (about two years ago) relaxed some legislation on online gambling (gambling itself is legal, just the ads weren’t) and since we’ve seen a surge of ads on television and social media featuring sports icons and influencers. The result has been a giant increase in profits, which directly corelates to figures of increased debt, prevalent mostly in young adults. I firmly believe this is toxic and needs to be fixed asap.
If you do decide to host a Q&A I’ll be sure to have a look for more cool insights.
Interesting take, mind if I dig a little deeper?
The key part of Apple’s success is that they make idiotproof devices for people who want something to “just work” (insert linux desktop memes here). The way I’ve come to understand it in the last couple years (having relatives who’ve drank the cool-aid and are starting to spot the cracks in the facade), is that they have been pulled in by values way up high in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. They are locked into the ecosystem, believing that their current solution is somehow ideal and they seem most of all afraid that anything else will completely turn their world upside down. The weird part is that Apple manages somehow to convince people they are the only ones capable of providing an experience that will cover those needs.
The thing is: Being convinced that there is no greener grass elsewhere puts up a barrier to entry into the unknown. I really do wonder if the solution there is cracking down on marketing, as it would require broad sweeping legislation that would likely defeat the purpose.
Sure, companies will put forth the occasional blatant lie, misrepresenting their product, but oftentimes the heavy lifting is done by the established brand image. I would not know where to begin preventing such an image from forming in the first place without community pushback.
And that is where my original point comes in: If we push back by ridiculing the userbase we’ll have a culture war on our hands. The trick is to be smarter than that and actually show them that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Every time the consumer gets fucked over by corporate greed, it is because we’ve let it happen by accepting the slippery slope brought upon us. (Publicly traded) companies will only listen to financial consequences from their actions, which means we have the power to stop their bullshit by not buying into it. Doing so requires a large enough group of people to start spending money elsewhere.
Problem is: The current market is affected by Apple’s shenanigans (though examples of the same pattern are also found in other industries). Which means other manufacturers are copying all the anti-consumer design decisions and you’re not left with much of a choice.
This is where legislation comes in. By providing basic consumer protections like in the proposed right to repair bills, we can at least be sure to have the option of choosing our own repair provider.
Though I’m curious if there is an additional angle we need to explore as consumers. Having said all the above, would you still disagree that educating our peers in a respectful manner will lead to people changing their behaviour, and if so, why?
To be fair, the people at the cutting edge of modern computing are statistically very likely to be Linux users. Therefore it’s not entirely unreasonable to have some prejudice against Linux users.
But as a sweeping measure these anti-cheat measures are absolutely unacceptable. The only other explanation is that they just don’t want to bother with the market share still being low compared to Windows.
Personally, if a game requires anti-cheat, it’s probably not a game I’d enjoy playing. Not a big fan of competitive gameplay. But for those that are, this needs to stop. Especially with all the new bullshit Microsoft has been pulling in Windows lately.