I admin the.coolest.zone, the coolest site on the net for online social engagement.
Agreed. Instances always have the option to defederate with Threads should it prove spammy or ad-filled or socially awful, but I’m cautiously optimistic that Threads will pave the way for a more open social media paradigm in general. Decentralization is a core tenet of Web3, and everyone started focusing on the block chain and Bitcoins and whatnot but there’s so much more to decentralization than that.
It’s the style right now. Personally, I’m hoping for a “retro beige case that can hold modern hardware” era because I have terrible taste.
We already exist in a cyberpunk world, and people are just beginning to wake up to it. Implants that go obsolete, corporations controlling everything, the general sense of despair because you can’t change the system, only rebel in hopes of improving the immediate life of yourself and those around you…
A fascinating take on it. I’m still wary about Threads interoperating with the rest of the Fediverse, and how that may change the culture as well as the system over time (Meta would have the power and money to throw around regarding changes to ActivityPub implementation), but I also see it similar to email. And I’ve spoken about this before to the point I sound like a broken record …
But people understand the basics of email. They understand they can sign up for a Gmail account and send an email to anyone else. Maybe Threads will be our Gmail here, and introduce people into the idea of a wider open social media concept in a more familiar way to them, and they can branch out as needed or just choose to stay on Threads.
In any case, any given instance can choose to block Threads if they so choose.
Re: this section:
As a technical writer, you should stay close to the teams whose work you are documenting. Listen out for any code, SDK, or product changes that may require action. When you hear that a tool may be deprecated, start communicating.
It just assumes that nobody will ever proactively reach out to the technical writer about deprecations, which is entirely true in practice, but just feels so sad to acknowledge. Please keep your content and document management team(s) in the loop!
@ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone Let me know if you need rehab.
But seriously… yeah, I get it. Especially this part about the workplace:
Nevertheless, [addicted programmers] can also pose significant risks, especially because they frequently deviate from the planned course. They follow their own agenda, introducing challenges where none were necessary, or dedicating hours to minor, tangential aspects of a project. In the process, they diverge from the project plan, programming what they believe is necessary rather than what the project itself requires.
I have been that person before, and now I’m in a position where I have to keep those folks on a tight leash and remind them “our goal is to deliver a product right now, and we can enhance it in future sprints. Let’s just focus on what our primary goal was right now.” It’s easy to fall down rabbit holes, and that’s where having proper planning and a ticketing system to backlog and prioritize future enhancements is so critical.
people working at the San Francisco-based startup “look down on what they consider legacy companies” and “see themselves as innovators who are radically changing the world.”
With the rumors that the ethics board was worried about OpenAI and Altman moving too fast to truly consider ethics… This checks out. Startups are truly a different beast to larger “legacy companies”, who move slower because they have checks and balances and a reputation to maintain.
I do think Microsoft would have given them a lot of leeway though, given the gold mine they were about to be sitting on. Staying at the front of the copilot race is critically important right now, and as Microsoft continues to move all its Office 365 services to the web and cross-connect them, it’s even more important for them to have a copilot for Enterprise clients that spans and can pull data from all those services.
On the other side, as someone younger it’s hard to date people much older, as they start casually talking about what they did during various wars, or comparing the COVID pandemic to the black plague, and I’ve just got zero frame of reference to connect.
Everyone much older I’ve met has been just delightful (I assume the rude ones eventually get murdered by their local townsfolk) but it’s just so hard to make that genuine connection when your life experiences are so different, you know?
This is Windows-based and mutes your microphone globally, but if you’re concerned about leaking video/audio accidentally I’ve found it very helpful:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/video-conference-mute
This is part of PowerToys. It says “legacy mode” because they were gonna deprecate it now that they’re trying to build the functionality into W11, but relented and are keeping it based on the outcry from W10 users.
This happened to me. I got a very angry call from someone asking why I was spamming them and had to explain that someone was spoofing my phone number to call similar phone numbers, and that it could be happening to his number or anyone else’s as well. I look forward to being globally blocked. :(
Now that I have a Kindle, digital all the way. It’s so nice to just throw that tiny thing in a bag and read somewhere, and if you finish your book there are a bunch more on your device. I like that the Kindles allow you to email ebooks to your address to be downloaded so you’re not locked into the Amazon store.
As we’ve been tracking, Google is now beginning to roll out “Profile discovery” in Messages for Android to establish your name and photo across the RCS app and others.
This is part of “Profile discovery,” which appears in Messages Settings > Advanced once rolled out to your phone. It is a Google Account-level setting that you can turn on/off. Google notes what phone number is associated with your name and profile image, with the ability to change things.
Ok, so good things:
Thoughts:
Hopefully this is some secret ongoing messaging solution cleanup plan by Google. I won’t hold my breath, but a small part of me still longs for the return of a Hangouts-esque combined system.
Azure AD is now Entra ID. Please do not deadname the Microsoft cloud offering (even if we all think it chose kind of a dumb sounding new name 🤫).
And Microsoft is heavily pushing their cloud services of course, but you can still set up on-prem AD as an option as well as other on-prem services.
It’s just that all their cross service interoperability stuff won’t work as well if it’s not all in the cloud. Like, all their stuff is designed to work together in the cloud and keep you entrenched in the ecosystem, like any company I guess, except I actually like using Teams/Office/SharePoint combo, it’s executed well.
Looks like I’ll be part of the family soon! The Vivosmart does look like what I’m after - small activity tracker for small wrist that provides me all my bodily metrics for my weird metrics-loving self so I can cross reference it with MyFitnessPal (calories and macros) and Daylio (mood).
So… let me get this straight. Google sucks and Pixels are only sold in some countries, so their solution is to reduce Fitbit devices to those same countries?
This is foreboding. Could this be the start of either a rebrand of Fitbit or, worse, a culling of the line in favor of Pixel smartwatches?
Google, I swear if you fuck with my Fitbit I’m adding it to The List (right under Play Music and Inbox). I don’t want a smartwatch, I never wanted a smartwatch. I want my compact little step tracker that gives me a ton of metrics data.
This is almost certainly totally out of date.
Today, the confusing, intimidating pile of Google Messaging services is bigger than it has ever been, with Google Chat, Google Messages/RCS, Google Voice/Project Fi, and separate messaging services in Photos, Messages, Pay, Assistant, Stadia, Maps, and Phone.
Welp, never mind, not that out of date.
These clowns want to push a messaging standard. Jump to RCS, Google says. Hey, Google. How about you standardize your shit first. Nearly all of these could be collapsed into a single messaging platform with little integrations into your other services via the Messages app (aka sent as links and displayed as integrations in compatible devices).
Bob, short for Bobert. So that every time he has to say his full name to anyone on the phone or fill out forms somewhere, he has to repeatedly explain that, no, it’s not Robert, it’s Bobert.
Oh, fascinating! I wonder if it’s more concerns about the size of the blockchain itself then. I had assumed, clearly incorrectly, that it was a platform limitation itself. This makes the ways NFTs have been implemented even dumber. 🙃
The thing about the jpg ones is that the jpgs can’t be stored in the blockchain, so what is actually stored is a URL to some server (and that URL endpoint could be redirected elsewhere, the server could go offline, etc).
The other major use case I see touted is “own your game objects and bring your objects to different games” but 1) why would a company spend resources supporting an object they did not sell you and 2) could this not be handled more simply on e.g. Steam? (yes, locked into a service, but that’s just the way the industry is and I don’t see why it’s worth the time and effort for them to change that)
I do see how potentially a blockchain that stored actual data, e.g. some JSON, could be of more use. However, I struggle to find cases where just a regular database wouldn’t be more practical. I guess it would be limited to cases where auditability and visibility of changes are topmost concerns, and where it’s important that anyone can have a local backup copy at any time.
If you have some examples of where this technology could be one of the best solutions, I’d love to hear them. The blockchain does fascinate me but I feel like it’s often a solution in search of a problem rather than the other way around.
Is it actually a Mandela Effect if you’ve just forgotten what a guy’s name is? I always thought it was more about mass confabulations.