Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

Hey, you know how when you gotta do something that's so jank it'll only run on windows, you set up a new windows box, what's the first thing you do?

You go into the settings in the file explorer and swear at it and go "Where the hell have they hidden it this time" until you find the option that shows the whole filenames, right? So you don't end up double-clicking on cutekitten.jpg.exe, right? So you can see what the hell's going on in the computer that you bought and that lives in your house? How the hell else are you supposed to use it, right?

Most people don't do that. Hardly anyone does that. You are an outlier for doing that. You are a tiny minority. If someone downloads a zip with file.html and file.css and file.jpg then they only see file, file and file. Most people never change any settings. Most people don't even know that there ARE settings. The joke about the writer who sighs and says "Sometimes I'm sad that I make art.txt not art.jpg," nobody gets that joke, except weirdo computer people like us.

I cannot express strenuously enough how different most peoples' experience of technology is, to how people talk about it on fedi, which is full of the one person in a hundred who fiddle with the settings. But which also seems to have lots of people who are trying earnestly to make Software That Will Change The World.

If you want your software to be liberating, if you want it to be an agent of positive change, then it has to be usable and understandable by a majority of people. Being frustrated at Clueless Users won't change anything, won't help anything, won't do anybody any good. I promise you, these people are just as frustrated at you as you are at them, and you're outnumbered a hundred to one.

Meet people where they are FFS.

Ⓐɴᴀʀᴄʜᴏ_ᴋʀᴀɴᴛ

Voor een radicale buitenparlementaire oppositie!
#PeterstormtNl

https://peterstormt.nl/2025/02/10/voor-een-radicale-buitenparlementaire-oppositie/

Duck duck fedi, how to become an airplane mechanic in Finland, best case for Finnair since that's like seven minutes by train from home?

Please don’t dismiss these free 10 minute webinars simply because they came from a makeup company.

I haven’t watched the one regarding what to do if YOU are being harassed, but the webinar about standing up to street harassment as a bystander is really good, it gives tips on how to stand up for people who are being harassed in ways that hopefully won’t escalate the situation to violence.

https://www.standup-international.com/us/en/training/landing

#SexualHarassment #StreetHarassment #ally #feminism

#AskFedi: For people who used Google Reader and who (still) lament its death: what was it about Google Reader that made it different from other RSS readers, for you?

It may feel unfair to many of you, but this is going to be the legacy of anybody who is still working in "AI". This is going to be the inheritance you leave to the future and nothing you do is likely to come close to offsetting it.

cuz he's such a fungi to hang around

Great news everyone! One of my co-founders put together a post on our company blog about seriousness in tech work:

https://www.hermit-tech.com/blog/data-engineers-and-bakers

It's the first thing he has written for us, so if you liked it, it'd be rad if you dropped him a message or something on LinkedIn (so sorry I'm asking you to go on LinkedIn)

I know I don't have any authority, but still:

This historian gives you explicit permission to delete and destroy each and every bit of data (pun intended) that can put you or others in danger.

Lives Saved >>> Historical Record Preserved

We can always work with incomplete records - and tbh:
I much prefer having Oral History from people who survived instead of documents from people who didn't.
(Our historical records are ever incomplete.)

New article alert! My hatred for all things AI forced me to consider the lovely drug that is cognitive dissonance once again.

In the article, I present a visual metaphor that explains cognitive dissonance clearly: the cognitive dissonance pyramid.

The metaphor comes from the book Mistakes Were Made.

#blog #tech #AI

https://www.maaikebrinkhof.nl/the-cognitive-dissonance-pyramid/

do you think the people who work at google have old google hidden away somewhere or are they also slogging through a mire of dog shit every time they try to search the internet

'D66 wil maatregelen om medicijnen aan te passen op vrouwenlichaam'

"Vrouwen krijgen vaak nog steeds geen medicijnen die zijn toegespitst op een vrouwenlichaam. Daardoor lopen ze een veel groter risico op ernstige bijwerkingen dan mannen en duurt het langer voordat ze hersteld zijn."
"Ook stoppen vrouwen vaker met hun geneesmiddelen dan mannen vanwege de heftige bijwerkingen."

"De D66-leider stelt onder meer voor dat medicijnfabrikanten verplicht gaan testen wat de werking en bijwerkingen van een nieuw geneesmiddel op vrouwen zijn."

"Ook moeten de bijsluiters van bestaande middelen een apart gebruiksadvies krijgen voor vrouwen. Daarnaast moet er meer onderzoek komen naar de juiste dosering van geneesmiddelen voor vrouwen."

https://www.skipr.nl/nieuws/d66-wil-maatregelen-om-medicijnen-aan-te-passen-op-vrouwenlichaam/

#gezondheid #vrouwen #bijwerkingen #politiek #D66 #Jetten

ai;dr (AI; Didn't Read)

This might seem silly, but please keep posting about nice things in your life! There are lots of terrible things out there, so knowing about people's projects, successes, relationships, hobbies, nice meals, quiet moments of joy, etc. are lovely! I like knowing people are experiencing nice things, especially in a world that doesnt support that well.

Just read the most infuriating blog post ever, where this person tries to equate alt text as a HOA, Homeowner association. Fuck you, and can someone make a block list of these jackasses so I can nuke them all in one place?

The first reasoning is also flawed. Maybe it's a screenshot of a different sentence than the one you have as a featured image on your blog. The point is, you know, we don't, and it sounds like this person is using his limited knowledge of screen readers to justify his individualistic brave stance online.

His second point deserves no rebuke.

But I've long since muted him. This also might shock you, but you're also using HOA wrong as well, if you really wanna get nit picky about it. Why don't you actually try learning what the HOA actually does offline to enact discrimination instead of using it incorrectly.

But I'm starting to see this kind of attitude all the time, and it always, always, comes from the mainstream internet, where everybody never had to think about others.

It's getting to the point where I mute/block everyone that uses the word, HOA, because these very Twitter people can't comprehend communities.

I've made it my personal mission to be blocked by these kinds of people by scolding them until they block me. Trust me, they won't be worth your feed.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/02/on-blocking-mastodon-hoa-edition/