One day my side projects will be finished.
Interest and opinions on technology ethics, privacy, UX, big tech good and evil, methods, madness.
- > "you're circumventing the method of paying for content"
Because the payment method is a scam. Imagine if all car owners were charged the same price for fuel regardless of how much they used.
Likewise, imagine watching 10 videos and being charged the same as someone who watches 200 videos.
We should pay for what we watch. The end. Ad blocking is not piracy when the payment option is at best a blunt extraction of funds from my wallet, at worst a sleazy shakedown.
- It's a shame when resigning is the only way out. Before reaching that point, the usual strategies should be attempted:
It's a fine line between fostering a positive work environment in the face of misguided decisions, and being condescending or derisive towards other team members. There is no silver bullet, but a touch of self-deprecating humour never hurt. If you advice isn't taken, you'll have a non-snarky receipt. Any email written with an irritated tone, will look twice as bad months later.Picking your battles; Negotiate rather than fight; Be better at analytics and research than anyone else. So you have the data to measure or predict success about a particular feature or direction. Armed with your data, you must carefully communicate findings without shaming others. - The alternate strategy is loyalty to "the business" rather than any particular person.
When you're invested in the success of the business above all else, and you make that known, you'll carve out a position where you're valued.
Not because you went on a "carving out your importance" mission, but because your energy goes into your work, and the details and care for the long term business objectives. Also... you can then enjoy yourself more, which opens creativity which opens innovation. Sometimes this might mean disagreeing with managers or working on stuff nobody really knows you're working on right now.
> "So if you want to get something technical done in a tech company, you ought to wait for the appropriate wave"
No. That doesn't work. You have to start building it. Don't wait.
- I didn't notice at first but it's one of those "blog post ads", concluding with "it's time".
Time for what? To click the "open app" button? Okay, so I clicked.
It doesn't open app. A button labelled "open app" should do what's on the tin. Instead it prompts for sign-up with terms and conditions warnings. I'm out.
Just open the app without sign-in! Why not? Too hard? Too scary? You can haggle for sign-up later. Let's see what you have right now, under the button labelled with a promise that I expect you to keep. Lying to me on page one is not a good start.
Here's an example of a web app that does it right. The button "start using Photopea" isn't a lie: https://www.photopea.com/
- > "I spent 2 months designing and making an admin panel "
Why? It's easy and quick to code complicated things these days. It's nice having custom dashboards and functionality that fits exactly with what you need. Way more professional.
I'm sure Google Sheets are fine. But I've been seen truly ugly Google Sheets with way too many tabs and horizontal scrolling. Clunky cells that seem to expand and have their own scrolling universe with different laws to everything else. Why can't I simply click the cell to copy it all, nope, let's try double-clicking the cell, I just want to grab the contents to the clipboard, nope. Now it expands and I'm scrolling the whole sheet and have lost my place because Google Sheets tries to snap to rows or something. Damn I hate this memory of navigating someone's horrible Google sheet.
- Not to mention EDM festivals. Remote bush doofs where everyone is off their chops, escaping reality, dancing during the day, exposed in the light.
Being recorded in 4k from different angles including action cams on people's heads on the dance floor, is a far cry from the relative anonymity of festivals of old. I remember when the only people who'd see you all bright eyed and bushy tailed were other participants in the party mayhem, which is how it should be.
- > "I know my words sound harsh"
Your words sound unhinged. Like your anti-fascist label maker is unrolling a mini manifesto of regurgitated anti-Israel nuggets. You're harbouring an array of ideologies, all intersecting and spilling on the page. A diatribe of disturbance.
Meanwhile, my approach is grounded in a singular idea: That Hamas are the enemy in a war. It's a serious problem. Wars are like that.
Not just the enemy of Israel, but of any civilisation that values civil liberties without the punishing cloud of oppressive fundamentalism and stone-age brutality looming over every aspect of life.
Qatar is useless. After 2 years of "negotiating", a few drip-fed hostages including dead ones. Israel released more Palestinian prisoners than there are hostages. What a disgrace that hostages still remain in captivity. A disgrace that Qatar "hosts" the Hamas leaders, and that the Iranian regime funds the whole lot.
An unforgivable situation. Israel is responding to the threat. Obviously the eventual goal is peace. I won't click your links thanks anyway.
- Can you name one other genocide in history where the genociders supply millions of tonnes of aid to those they're genociding?
Protests in Israel would be maxed out if Israel were committing actual genocide. Israelis are good people, they wouldn't stand around while their defence force committed genocide. They don't want Hamas regrouping into Hamas 2.0, and who can blame them.
International Law experts can't go to their filing cabinets and pull out the file on "similar wars" to what is happening.
"Israel isn't doing it right"... says every armchair "free palestine" advocate without actually saying how they should do it.
Let Israel finish it, THEN if they don't leave and help rebuild, with Palestinians under new governance of their own (helped by international peace keepers or whatever) then hold Israel to account, but not before during the war, that's just flotilla levels of useless.
- > "genocide scholars"
Laughable role, given no access to the place you claim is a genocide, and that's an active war zone with terrorists running around delaying the inevitable and prolonging the suffering.
> restrictions on food and supplies entering the area1. Look at map of Gaza 2. Look at casualty stats, incident reports and statements released from the Hamas media office. (The same information cited by international media) 3. Look at carefully staged photos from journalists in Gaza who have contracts with Reuters but are nevertheless under Hamas who have strict control over the media landscape in Gaza and shape the narrative. 4. Declare "genocide".Yes, and people are suffering. We all know it and wish it wasn't so. But Israel can't just go home and hide in their bomb shelters. Millions of tonnes of aid including food, medical supplies, shelters, water and other resources HAVE made it through in thousands of trucks. Some of which gets looted, or blocked by hostile groups who seize the trucks.
- Israel isn't committing genocide except in the minds of pro-palestine activists, many of whom refer to Hamas terrorism as "resistance" more than the more suitable description, to use your words (and the words of the UN incidently) "unspeakable horror".
Meanwhile, the ones who say they would commit genocide if given any chance at all, are the ones Israel is at war with.
- > Hamas should be condemned
How does anyone not see that condemnation is not nearly enough? Hamas need eliminating, not merely "condemned".
Anyone arguing against the need to defeat Hamas in the place they launch attacks from and hold hostages in, is peddling a woefully broken, illogical argument. A war is happening. In war, you have enemies. "We should condemn our enemies" sounds like some kind of captain obvious baby talk.
- Dude, that quote is out of context. He said he prefers "sympathy" to "empathy" and went on to call out those who push selective empathy when it suits their political agenda. He was right.
In my country Australia, there's a backlash on self-destructive "empathy" decisions in criminal courts. Violent repeat offenders are granted bail or short sentences for violent crime, why? Because the judge empathises with their traumatised upbringing, for example when they come from a war-torn country. This pattern of "justice" has spiked crime rates including violent home invasions and stabbings.
- My 2 cents from Australia. At the very least he encouraged debate, and motivated others to challenge and vigorously discuss ideas, data, history, politics and perspectives. That's healthy, not dangerous. We're meant to defend the right of such activities.
I didn't agree with his religious convictions that underpin much of his arguments, but that's because I'm not religious. He presented other arguments on various social issues that sounded sensible. He also respected anyone who fronted his events, listening & engaging intellectually in a civil manner.
Apparently his last word spoken was "violence" (unconfirmed). Anyone celebrating his death is an extremist, and if that turns out to be a lot of people, then we have a bigger extremism problem than people care to admit. How to fix that? We need more bipartisan condemnation and unity across the floor - in my country too. Sounds like they couldn't even agree on a moment of silence without a shouting match. The division is fuel for extremism.
- > JS to persist the setting.
Yes, local storage is crucial functionality. I don't get people who disable JS, but I suppose if they have a bunch of sites they whitelist it's less painful... but then they must trust those sites all the time? How do they know if those sites haven't installed new scary scripts?
Perhaps one possible solution is for browsers to offer a setting to enable all the "safe" functionality of javascript such as button events for fancy carousels, but block the stuff that causes anxiety. I suppose then we'd all argue about what aspects are safe vs scary.
- > "I think it was a mistake to combine styling and layout"
Perhaps because we can have different styles of layout, it fits with CSS better than you say. Carefully designed padding, margins and negative space is both a style and layout consideration.
Containers contain styles, but the container's relationship with other containers may tie with presentation such as border thickness, colour, shadows, and let's not forget animation and interaction effects on containers. Maintaining control of these aspects in one place makes good sense to me.
- You've moved the posts from "watching youtube" to "searching youtube", then added something about my emotional state.
Doesn't surprise me you don't want to expand further, since you have nothing to expand. When the craftsperson makes a tutorial video, complete with close-up shots, and organised edited presentation, with more than one take on their side, it can be superior to going to their workshop. Both can be useful, but your argument that "youtube" is disqualified from offering value to those wanting to observe mastery, is a broken argument. Instead of running away, why not admit your error?
- I ended up asking Grok, which said:
"Routine inspections are common in many states but not universal. Some states, like California and Texas, explicitly allow periodic inspections with proper notice, while others may have stricter regulations limiting landlord access unless there's a specific reason (e.g., repairs or suspected lease violations)."
- > "mastery of video production"
If a master craftsperson records a video in their workshop demonstrating their craft and talking about their craft, you are observing mastery. This isn't some wild theory, this is a cold hard fact. Which leads us to the question, what the hell are you talking about?
- Because the process of "arranging" requires an end goal, according to the definition of the word. No assumptions needed.
I was replying to the person who suggested the universe might be consciously exploring itself (goal) via an arrangement of molecules into humans. For fun, maybe the arranging process is at the beginning and the end goal is some kind of cosmic party after which everything resets again, or something.
Everyone knows photos can be easily faked. The alarmist response serves no purpose. AI itself can be tasked to make and publish fake photos. Will you point pitchforks at the generators of the generators of the generators?
Fake content has a momentary fizz followed by a sharp drop-off and demotion to yesterday's sloppy meme. Fading to nothing more than a cartoon you don't like. Let's not, I hope, go after "cartoons" or their publishers.