I don’t blame you. I’m not quite at that point yet, but I’m not far off.

If they kill or nerf Old Reddit I’ll probably be done.

I think you’re on the right track, but I wouldn’t blame the iphone. The iphone was just a natural evolution of what came before it- Windows Mobile, PalmOS, etc. Even on those platforms we were starting to see things like gestural navigation. Iphone was just one of the first to trade a single-touch resistive touchscreen for a multi-touch capacitive touchscreen and go all in on gestural.

No, the problem is engagement algorithms. I blame Facebook for this most of all.

Go back quite a ways and Facebook wasn’t the mess it was today- you’d go there and see a simple time-ordered list of posts by your friends (and that’s it). I believe people still want that. But the problem is you can ‘catch up’ on that-- hit the end of new content, to what you’ve already seen last visit, and then you leave. Thus it’s generally no longer an option on any social site, you instead get a ‘feed’ of some friends’ content mixed with random crap the system thinks you’ll engage with (and it learns quickly). That was starting to be a thing on desktop- I’m reminded of this video from when Facebook started pushing ‘timeline’ feeds on people rather than just simple posts. Original iphone was only 2007.

THAT is the problem IMHO. Smartphones just happened to show up at the same time, so instead of being a time-suck on your desktop those algorithms became a central line IV to time-suck your brain all the time. Algorithms were the problem, smartphones were the force multiplier.

With that said- I don’t think smartphones are the problem today, but I do think that the overall ecosystem favors the time-suckers too much. For example I think every smartphone should have the option to deny Internet access to every app (BlackBerry had that back in the day). And if that screws up your ad supported business model too fucking bad, just make the app refuse to work without Internet and enjoy your 1 star reviews.

I think half the problem is platforms that entrap people. My partner for example (much less tech savvy than myself) has 1000s of photos in Facebook, because that used to be where it’s easiest to make and share albums. Getting those out of Facebook while keeping the album structure or the comments from others would be very difficult, and Meta wants it that way.
Same thing with Google- they make it real easy to upload all your photos (which has the fun side effect of giving Google a location graph of your entire travel history, and a social graph of everyone you know).

The other half is as you say, attention suckers. I don’t think the phone is itself designed for attention sucking (it’s just a little computer with a touchscreen and a wireless modem), but the apps sure as hell are.

Fixing the first is at least possible for technologists. Self-host, show people alternatives.

Fixing the attention problem is much, much, much harder. It starts with kids- kids grow up with ‘digital babysitter’ ipads, and if you see any of the kids ipad and video programming it might as well be brain-frying crack for kids (bright colors, playful music, quick scene changes). So kiddo’s brain is fried from 2-3yo on up. I know a few teachers and I can say parents DGAF about education anymore, when a kid does badly the teacher is more likely to get yelled at for giving a bad grade to their perfect little schnookums who tried as hard as he could. It’s now policy that kids who don’t pass will just be rubber stamped to the next grade- again and again. I read an article a few months ago that college professors are having to rework their curriculums because many of the college students can’t read (or are scoring at middle school level for reading comprehension).

You can pass a law banning phones in schools but what the hell difference does that make if the kid goes back on TikTok the second the bell rings and never cracks a book?

I don’t know what the answer there is. But I know it requires some serious societal-level rethinking, including accepting that it’s okay to be bored.

I have thought about this also. Especially when it comes to mobile technology. For most of my career I have been an advocate of mobile technology like smartphones, I have recommended it, I have set it up for people, and now I look at the world and honestly wonder if we wouldn’t be a better place without smartphones.

Thing is, we are iron mongers. We build tools. We give people tools. “It is not the tool that determines its work, it is the mind mind of the man who holds the tool that does.” (-Brannon LaBoeuf).

Does that absolve me of all responsibility? No not a chance. But it does offer s or a suggested path forward.

The harm that comes from computing for the most part, IMHO, doesn’t come from users. It comes from people who exploit the users and users who don’t realize they are being exploited. Meta, TikTok, Snap, Google, etc. these are the guys causing the problem.

So as technologists, we have an opportunity to change course. To show those who rely on us ways to use technology without being exploited. Yeah I realized to some degree it’s a drop in the ocean, trying to piss up a rope but there are little victories to be had.

In short, be the change.

I would love to be 100% Lemmy but there’s still a lot more users and discussions on Reddit. It’s getting better, but it’s not yet at critical mass for me

They’re gonna shut down old reddit

Day they do that is the day I never go back to Reddit.

Yes. You are always adding net energy to the system. That’s why a heater is a self-contained unit (turns energy into heat) while an air conditioner requires two units- one to suck up the heat outside, another to reject that heat outside. It’s not ‘creating cold’, it’s using energy to pump heat from the inside to the outside. The total amount of heat rejected outside is a net addition- it’s the heat sucked up from inside, plus the waste heat from the compressor.

The air conditioner (current design) works on the simple principle that the boiling point of a liquid changes based on ambient pressure, and that phase change (between liquid and gas) carries a lot of latent energy. To boil water with heat alone, it takes about 100 calories to heat a gram of water from just above freezing to just below boiling. But to boil it, to heat it less than one more degree and turn it into gas, takes another 433 calories. That means if you adjust its boiling point by pressurizing and depressurizing it, whenever it boils or condenses it’ll suck up or release a lot of heat at the same time.

Obviously we want colder than 100c, so we use a refrigerant like tetrafluoroethane with a boiling point of -26c.

This gadget uses a similar concept. Instead of using pressure to tweak the boiling point of a refrigerant, it uses a solid that heats or cools in response to pressure. Then water carries the heat around.

Yes but China, Russia, Iran, etc all have national-level firewalls in place. You can go in China and chances are your VPN won’t work, and if it does the whole country is fucking network-hostile (like I’ve seen reports of the USB charger ports in hotels trying to hack into phones).
UK, as far as I know, doesn’t have any kind of similar national level firewall. Nor does USA or most other ‘civilized’ nations.

And without that national firewall, all these laws are crap. Because unless you’re physically prevented by the firewall from downloading or using VPNs or similar tools, all the laws in the world are just a padlock on a cardboard box.

I have the same thought. I still use Reddit, 100% on Old Reddit and I think objectively you could say I contribute a lot in terms of comments and participation. If old Reddit goes away, I’m done.

The problem is that the internet is fucking global. As long as that is the case, it is simply not possible to fix this problem.

You can put whatever regulations you want on online content, and some provider from a different jurisdiction is going to say screw you I abide by the laws of my own jurisdiction. The restricted citizens will use that company.

It is like making drugs illegal when there is still an illegal drug dispenser in every home. It doesn’t work.

The most you can do is try to block this at the payment level, but that requires setting up a very intrusive payment blacklist or whitelist system. And then some VPN provider will just make themselves ad supported and you are back at square one.

And that doesn’t even touch the issue of torrents, p2p file sharing, and decentralized networks. Go back to the early to mid-200s and everybody used those things because most of the content they wanted wasn’t easily available legally. Then it became easily available and people started paying for it. But you throw enough roadblocks, make people subscribe to too many streaming services, require too much age verification type crap, and the world will sail the high seas once again.

I completely agree on corruption. And I would love a uniform mechanism for elected officials to be recalled.

That said, the rest of what you described I don’t think it is due to problems with the Constitution, but rather with the people in government. The executive branch has seized a huge amount of power not because the Constitution granted it but because the other branches let them have it and do not appropriately enforce their own checks and balances against the executive.

The dysfunction of Congress is a primary issue. But that is because the idiot voters keep electing the same assholes with no research until they literally die of old age. The result in Congress is too busy serving their own ends to really exert power over the executive or properly manage the courts. That is not a constitutional problem.

And the courts make rulings all the time that get ignored, but judicial doesn’t hold anyone’s feet to the fire. Also not a constitutional problem.

I think you could fix a lot of this pretty simply with an amendment or two. 1. Voting day is a paid national holiday. 2. Term limits in Congress. 3. Legal prohibition against gerrymandering. 4. An explicit process to recall any politician or judge in any federal position- 1. Need a petition signed by 5% of their constituency, or 1 million people if federal. 2. A majority vote 6 weeks after the petition is approved.

We come down to the same underlying problem that we have today- the people of the country are not actively engaged in the political process, not nearly to the same degree the Framers intended.

The difference between those people who wrote our constitution and the people we have today is those people recognized the importance of what they were doing. They were willing to stand up and fight and die if necessary to create a free society. Today the inheritors of that free society largely can’t even be bothered to vote, let alone put in an hour or two of research to figure out who to vote for.

So I will agree with you that the wording of the original document is imprecise, and a lot of what we now call constitutional law comes as much if not more from various Court decisions than from the document itself. But given the situation that we have currently, I am genuinely curious what you think could be improved? Knowing the players in question who would be writing the new constitution, knowing the amount of influence various people and groups and companies have over our political process, a. What do you think could or should be changed or improved, and b. How likely is it do you think that would actually happen without the process being corrupted?

The problem is-- who is going to re-write it? This is a serious question. Do you really think a consensus of those currently running the US government could do better than the Framers?

I don’t think the Constitution at all needs a rewrite. I think the ideals of the Framers are just as important and valid today as they were when they were put to paper. Our problems come not from inadequacies in the Constitution, but from our own inadequacy to follow its teachings.

Yeah the problem with espresso is once you have good espresso you really can’t go back to drip coffee. It just tastes like bitter colored water :(

But you also make a good point, Starbucks sells a ton of different drinks but the shot that goes into them is always the same. If you put in a little time to experiment and dial in it’s easy to find something that fits your taste even better.

I’d throw a couple more bucks at the grinder, but I’ve had moka pot coffee and it’s surprisingly good. Granted I’m only a low-level coffee snob but I’ve always been of the opinion do what works for you and screw the haters. And while someone might make fun of your setup, from where I sit you are getting a cup of coffee you like better than Starbucks for less than €1 per cup. Sounds like a win to me!

Look at the wording- ‘premium experience’. He’s not selling coffee, he’s thinking big picture of the whole experience from the moment you walk in the store. He’s not even wrong here. This is good business management- that he’s taking charge of everything about the store from the decor, the furniture, the colors, how the employee talks to you, etc. That’s all part of the experience.

What’s wrong is that people keep going. Most people don’t give a fuck about the experience, they just want a tasty coffee. Our economy is based on competition and free choice. If he makes his coffee cost $8 or $9 or $15 or $50 that’s his right and his company’s right. Just as it is your right to go elsewhere, which you should be doing anyway.

The thing is- IMHO, Starbucks coffee isn’t worth anywhere near $9. Here’s a challenge- go to Starbucks and order a double espresso shot. Now find a local artisan coffee place, like the type with a chalkboard that says where the beans they’re brewing today were grown. And get a double espresso from them also. Compare the two.
What you’ll notice about Starbucks is that it’s burnt. And that’s because it’s literally burnt- the typical Starbucks bean is roasted MUCH darker than average, so the resulting coffee flavor is dominated by a burned smoky bitter-ish flavor.
Compare that to your local artisan coffee place- you’ll notice it’s NOT burnt, the flavor is NOT dominated by smokiness, but you have a lot more layers of flavor. Then order whatever drink you want- better coffee in means better drink out.

Keep in mind also most of what Starbucks sells isn’t really coffee, it’s milky sugary drinks that incorporate a few drips of espresso. So you’re paying $9 for a sugary calorie bomb made from overly roasted coffee that just makes you fat.

Also- if you usually order the same thing at Starbucks- just learn to make it. Even if you throw $1000 at a nice fully automatic espresso machine, taking the per-coffee cost from $9 to $1 means you’ll break even on the machine in 125 coffees. For most people that’s less than a year. And you can do it yourself- next time you order, watch what the barista does. They are not wizards and nothing behind the counter is magic. An espresso machine and a blender will make like 95% of the menu. Here’s a guide

Google for ‘perfect fit content’. Spotify was and potentially still is aggressively pushing AI content in some of their curated playlists because it’s cheaper for them to play it

There’s stupid from top to bottom here.

The company is stupid for allowing an AI full root access to their entire setup.

The provider is stupid for only generating full-access API keys. They’re even stupider for storing backups with a volume, so deleting the volume (zero confirmation via API key) also insta-deletes the backups. And they’re stupidest for encouraging users to plug AIs into this full-trust mess.

And the company is absolute stupidest for having no backups other than the provider’s builtin versioning.

The problem is it’s not just ‘form a union’. In most cases unionizing means joining a much larger union that covers many hundreds of companies. And it will mean that all questions of compensation or discipline then have to go through a union contract. It means more paperwork and less flexibility.

If there is trust between workers and management, then workers often don’t see much benefit to going through all this. And that’s why the guy said every shop that went Union deserved it, because those shots all tried to save money by screwing their employees and so the employees fought back and unionized which ended up costing the company more than if they had just paid the workers correctly in the first place.

In most cases here unions are fairly large organizations where the larger union covers dozens or hundreds of companies. So it wouldn’t be like ‘Bob’s maintenance shop union’ it would be like ‘international brotherhood of machinists union chapter #1234’.

And when that is done, the relationship between the workers and the company changes. The union will negotiate a specific contract with the company which all workers and all jobs then are covered under. This provides a lot stronger protections for the workers, but can also be less flexible in some cases. And of course the worker has to pay dues to the union, it’s usually not that much but it’s not zero.

Point is, if the workers are happy and have good relations with management then they often see no reason to go through all this.

On the other hand when management starts turning the screws and tries to make more profit out of the worker compensation, then it’s absolutely time to unionize and workers are even more seeing that.