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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • From the Wikipedia article:

    Doctorow argues that new platforms offer useful products and services at a loss, as a way to gain new users. Once users are locked in, the platform then offers access to the userbase to suppliers at a loss; once suppliers are locked in, the platform shifts surpluses to shareholders.[11] Once the platform is fundamentally focused on the shareholders, and the users and vendors are locked in, the platform no longer has any incentive to maintain quality.

    And when discussing the solution:

    The second is the right of exit, which holds that users of a platform can easily go elsewhere if they are dissatisfied with it. For social media, this requires interoperability, countering the network effects that “lock in” users and prevent market competition between platforms.

    It’s a made up word that was defined by a specific article by the person who made it up. So yeah, it is.


  • No, we don’t: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification.

    Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

    A key component to this is being locked in, which didn’t happen here as most of these games are still available elsewhere. No one is stuck with a games subscription where the quality of games is dropping. This is just a business realizing it’s not viable and paring back their offerings.

    People on Lemmy seem to have a tendency to overuse enshittification, which sucks because it refers to something real and also actionable. If you dilute the meaning, you make the solution less likely. Lemmings should be among the forefront of people familiar with the real meaning, since Doctorow’s suggested solution is open standards for interoperability, like ActivityPub/Lemmy.


  • Not an expert by any means, but I’d guess that has to do with the distinction between being on top of something, and having boarded something. You are on top of a (small) boat or motorcycle, but within a car. These examples refer to position. You can be both in or on a bus, plane, or yacht, because you have boarded the bus, plane, or yacht, and thus are “on” it, but are located physically within the vehicle and so are also “in” it (in the case of a yacht, that may depend on whether you’re inside it or on top of it). These examples refer to both position and state of existence.

    This is totally conjecture so I’d be very curious to hear from an actual expert.





  • Lol this is hilarious. This paragraph is my fave:

    We identified that color is a way to connect with people across all divides (and we have research that people respond positively to it) — it is a universal language that transcends the boundaries of our diverse verbal languages. And we chose “Colorways” rather than “themes” to show we are branching out from our language of “browser” to speak the language of everyday life and everyday users. This is about more than just installing a new “theme,” which really doesn’t have much meaning to most people.

    On a completely unrelated note (your username), I just started reading a couple Asimov novels! Any recommendation for which ones I should pick up next? I’ve already done I, Robot and Caves of Steel. Thinking maybe I start Foundation soon (but just started the TV show).










  • Maybe controversial, but the fish shell. I know it’s not strictly bash syntax, but the OOTB features are just so user-friendly. The most helpful features for learning: the autocomplete (with descriptions of subcommands and flags!) and the fuzzy history search.

    I write bash scripts all the time, and am significantly more knowledgeable than anyone else on my team (admittedly frontend) because I got comfortable in fish.