Gemini* and Gopher

• Technology and Free Software

  • Why Doesn't Windows Have an "Expert" Mode? [Ed: clseiboldc continues to trash-talk Linux while boosting .NET and pretending Windows became widespread for any reason other than anticompetitive conduct, sabotage etc. ]

    Unfortunately, Windows has also gone to crap now, so people have to choose between three evils. But at least Windows doesn't come with the constant smug pretentiousness of Linux and macOS users.

  • you can never not be the product

    "If you're not the customer, you're the product" is an adage as old as Web 2.0, probably older. It's something I see a lot of people online say when they want to sound smart, and/or when they want to justify the fact that they purchased the "premium" tier of a "freemium" service.

    "Even if you are the customer, you're still the product" is something else I see a lot of people online say when they want to sound smarter, and/or when they're resigned to the strip mining of their very identities for oligarchical profit.

    Both stances have come to a partial realization of how online advertising and data mining work. Both have some piece of the truth. If you don't pay to remove ads, your attention (however fleeting) to advertising is being mined; it's a "product." Even if you do pay to remove ads, your interaction with a product or service is being mined; it's also a "product."

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Leaving Gemini/smolweb

      I feel Gemini protects/insulates me from the real world, I can go entire days without even going on the www.

      While that should be a good thing, the www isn't going away anytime soon and it is still where life happens. So I have to go back, back to "civilisation", back to learning to "live" again.

    • Mastodon Migrations

      My first foray into Mastodon didn't really take. It was back in 2018 or so, when I noticed a certain Influential Personage in my profession (systems librarian) had a Mastodon handle tacked onto his Twitter bio. I was curious, and after a bit of internet research decided I should get one too. After all, it was only right and proper that I be Influenced by the Influential Personage.

      However, after I signed up (on octodon.social IIRC) and lurked around for a bit, I realized that while many of the hep geeks in my professional circles had Mastodon accounts, they rarely used them. They were all still tweeting away like crazed sparrows. I tooted one picture of a cat (not even my then-current cat) following which my octodon.social account languished like so many others.

      Fast forward to the spring of 2022. I was getting pretty fed up with Twitter, which, it seemed to me, had grown entirely too full of crypto ads and People Who Were Wrong on the Internet. When news came of an impending change of ownership that seemed on balance not likely to improve the quality of discourse, I decided to abandon the site forever and, because I couldn't quite kick the social media habit altogether, give Mastodon another try.