Irritability is not bad temper. Nor is bad temper irritability. Bad temper carries the heart into it. The bad tempered man really does delight to vex and torture. Irritability flames and is gone. But both ruin happiness.
—Charles Buxton in Notes of Thought
Again, this is not simply partisan. Zuckerberg was a villain ten years ago, and he's a villain today.
Yes, he's been philanthropic, and he's pledged to donate 99% of his Facebook shares to charity. That is genuinely amazing, and it deserves genuine praise. To be sure, it's a hell of a lot more money than I'll ever donate to charity. Still, what does it matter if he destroys the world in the process? Will his philanthropy even begin to clean up the mess he's created? Surely not. He's done far more than $200 billion worth of harm to society. Try putting a dollar amount on political extremism, a problem his company has massively exacerbated.
Mark Zuckerberg is a villain, and like all villains, he thinks he's doing good for the world. He's not.
Lina Khan's departure as chair of the FTC is a huge loss. I don't intend for that to sound the least bit partisan. She is so intelligent, so well spoken, and has such a deep understanding of the complex issues in the tech industry today. During her time at the FTC, the agency went after tech monopolies, data brokers, deceptive advertising, surprise fees, resort fees, fake reviews, enshittification, and so much other bullshit. So much could be done if only she were to remain in her role, and we desperately need it. I truly hope she leads the organization again very soon.
Those who struggle with computers should play Myst. The unusual computer game, one of my favorites, is something of a boot camp in situational awareness. Don't know what you're doing? Great! You're on the right track.
The game drops the player onto an island with little explanation. No checklist is provided. No advice is broadcasted. Even the objective is unexplained. Only through exploration and experimentation do the story and plan begin to form. You're on your own, and yet, somehow, you figure it out.
Not sure how to print a document or sign up for a new service? Look for clues. Keep an eye out for anything that seems related. Press buttons and see what happens. Progress one step at a time, and don't be afraid to retreat from dead ends. Somehow, you'll get there, and you'll learn a great deal along the way. Made a mistake? Those can be undone. Rest assured, you won't be trapped in a book for eternity.
Everyone should play Stimulation Clicker, which is simultaneously hilarious, impressive, and educational.
In Passkey technology is elegant, but it’s most definitely not usable security, Dan Goodin makes the case that passkeys are too difficult to use, despite their tremendous promise as easy-to-use security tools. He points out that platforms like iCloud, Google, and 1Password are constantly stepping over each other, fighting to be the platform that stores one's passkey, causing a mess of popups and “recommendations” that leave users confused. Imagine if several pieces of furniture in your house battled over the right to store your car keys. Would you ever be able to find them? That's what we have here.
This doesn't just happen with passkeys, I'm afraid. It's everywhere. For instance, my mom often has trouble finding her spreadsheets and Word documents. She uses an iMac, but OneDrive unceremoniously slurps them up, not even listing them as files on her filesystem, then charges her for the privilege when her OneDrive account runs out of space. The Google Photos app on iOS does something similar in a particularly egregious and slimy tactic that has left me warning friends and family never to install it. Then there's the frantic demands from browsers, search engines, and more: “USE ME! USE ME! USE ME!” It's awful, and it causes so much confusion, as people end up using platforms they never intended to.
This seems like yet another case where Congress could and should pass some reasonable legislation to address a problem everyone faces, along with making read-only social media accounts easier to use without temptation and requiring that tech companies collaborate on databases of phishing sites.
Last year, I bought copies of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now and donated them to Little Free Libraries in the late fall, hoping to inspire people to quit social media as a New Year's resolution. This year, I decided to do it again. That makes it a tradition!
New paperback copies are cheap on Amazon, and I was able to buy 9 before they cut me off. That's right, they won't let me buy any more. I thought about asking the publisher for a bulk discount or even a donation, but I'd rather vote with my money and send a signal to the market: publish more books like this!
Extremists fuel extremists.
“As a Facebook user, I want to have my personal information stored and utilized in very specific ways so that I can be manipulated into attempting to dismantle democracy.”
For those who don't get the joke, user stories are used in software development to describe features that should be added to applications. They describe the features concisely, but they are also supposed to be written from the point of view of someone who would want that feature (“As a… I want… so that…”). In practice, many user stories are written based on some mandate from management, even though no reasonable human being would ever want such a thing. In those cases, the user stories sound extremely awkward. Another example might be something like, “As a user, I want to pay more for the software so that the company can make it better over time.” That's the basis of the “Shit User Story” humor. It's funny because it's all to easy to imagine some product manager at Facebook actually writing this.
User stories come from Agile Software Development—a method of developing software that originally intended to empower developers, reward craftsmanship, and improve customer interaction. It saddens me that Agile has become yet another tool of bullshit corporate control, yet another half-assed, top-down process that engineers are forced to follow after the concept has been twisted and mutilated, often past the point of utility. That's been going on for years, though. I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a thousand times already. I suppose it could now be called the enshittification of Agile.
Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times.
—Jaron Lanier in Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now