umlautsuser123's recent activity
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Comment on From Tildes to Reddit to Mastodon - the current state of "Text Rich" social networks on the Interwebs in ~tech
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Comment on Jack Dorsey quits Bluesky board and urges users to stay on Elon Musk's X in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Linkhttps://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solana I think this has come out recently. I managed to read it before I experienced a paywall but have to reference from memory now....https://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solana I think this has come out recently. I managed to read it before I experienced a paywall but have to reference from memory now.
IIRC, he basically says Bluesky was meant to be a decentralized protocol that Twitter could use so that they could get out of the business of entertaining censorship requests. If they didn't own the data, they couldn't meaningfully honor such a request. But after Twitter was sold / went through an utter shit show, the person he got to found it worked increasingly independently, to the point of talking to VCs and (iirc) trying to secure funding.
They also rolled out recent changes that basically allowed for moderation, which was exactly what he didn't want. Although it's true that your data doesn't need to disappear, Dorsey is correct to point out that an app built on Bluesky's protocol will still be able to honor exactly the same requests that he was hoping Twitter would avoid. I have no clue how to really circumvent that, though, even with a blockchain. There's the frontend, the hosting, and the domain ownership that can always be theoretically used to penalize a website, right?
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Comment on Jack Dorsey quits Bluesky board and urges users to stay on Elon Musk's X in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentHis story now (idk what it was before) was that he didn't like doing censorship and felt a decentralized protocol was the only way to get Twitter's hands clean. Basically "How could I ban <random...His story now (idk what it was before) was that he didn't like doing censorship and felt a decentralized protocol was the only way to get Twitter's hands clean. Basically "How could I ban <random user>, I don't control the protocol?"
This article came out pretty recently I think (somehow managed to read it free then got paywalled, even after using a private tab).
https://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solanaBluesky is also more than the actual app (the actual app bores me). The underlying protocol has a lot of thought put into it. His criticisms on their protocol were kind of correct though.
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Comment on What are three things you're feeling positively about today? in ~talk
umlautsuser123 LinkFor me, my 3: It is a beautiful spring day! I was dogsitting for a bit and am happy to have the weekend mostly to myself now. It is cool going on a lot of walks and worrying about someone else's...For me, my 3:
- It is a beautiful spring day!
- I was dogsitting for a bit and am happy to have the weekend mostly to myself now. It is cool going on a lot of walks and worrying about someone else's pooping habits but I'm glad to have the quiet to get in the flow.
- I've been reading a lot of newsletters and got tired of it so did round #2384 of trying to find a Google Reader replacement that hit the right note with me. I am trying Feeeed. Both this and Reeder (which I may try next) seem to have really cool engineers behind them, I'm encouraged by their apparent commitment to privacy. In the case of Feeeed, you can see the Arc mindset in some of the things the dev tried (like putting birthdays in your feed, and being anti-doomscroll). I've been thinking about one day making my own little app and I like that these people have.
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What are three things you're feeling positively about today?
I try to do this exercise with myself sometimes and then... forget. But thought it'd be a fun thread. (Also, obligatory reminder that Tildes is also public and all comments are available without...
I try to do this exercise with myself sometimes and then... forget. But thought it'd be a fun thread.
(Also, obligatory reminder that Tildes is also public and all comments are available without login, so keep things uh, vague enough.)
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Comment on I'm curious how people on here stay politically engaged and aware while maintaining mental health? in ~life
umlautsuser123 Link ParentI was going to say this. I stumbled upon some sad, person-specific news about someone in Gaza. It didn't change my feelings on the situation at hand. It made me sad, and then overwhelmed as it was...I was going to say this. I stumbled upon some sad, person-specific news about someone in Gaza. It didn't change my feelings on the situation at hand. It made me sad, and then overwhelmed as it was not the first I'd seen, and I knew there were more such stories than I could comprehend.
I would say if you already know your feelings going in and it's not a situation where new facts would change your understanding (e.g. following a very public legal trial, for instance), then I think not consuming such news is fair.
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Comment on How are you dealing with inflation regarding everyday enjoyment? in ~life
umlautsuser123 (edited )LinkLiving in a big city in the US, the prices were already ridiculous, so inflation is... kind of just another reason. Habit-wise, I was already trying to be conscious of spending money on anything I...So I'm wondering, how are you dealing with inflation? Are you affected in a different way? Or not at all? Any advice on how I could realistically get out of this seemingly endlessly depressing spiral?
Living in a big city in the US, the prices were already ridiculous, so inflation is... kind of just another reason. Habit-wise, I was already trying to be conscious of spending money on anything I didn't outright love. Biggest changes:
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Leaning more into coffee or breakfast vs. dinner or drinks
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Outright losing interest in dinner. Eating out doesn't make as much sense for health or WFH-lifestyle. However, inflation has impacted restaurants, leading to "cheap eats" feeling increasingly overpriced and increasingly expensive eats sometimes feeling a little dismissive (e.g. being gently nudged out after ~90 minutes, even if you say, bought a bottle). I still do it sometimes for social reasons, but it's rare for me to look up a new restaurant and eat as it's just not a fun or engaging experience.
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Outright losing interest in travel. Part of it was generally losing interest and wanting to develop more thought, excitement, and research before another trip. Another is that Americans have been able to travel more in part due to favorable currency conversions. But it also means you're surrounded by Americans and part of an economy that locals may outright detest. And the more cities I visited, the more I recognized the emergence of some weird international culture where businesses care more about appealing to expats than locals. I feel weird about it.
edit: typo, locals -> Americans
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Comment on How are you dealing with inflation regarding everyday enjoyment? in ~life
umlautsuser123 Link ParentHome-made seitan is probably the biggest budget-changer for me! I do this recipe. I make it pretty blandly so taste-wise it's okay, but for effort, time, and food cost it's pretty life-changing.Less fake-meats or only at Costco where they're steeply discounted. I cook with them less.
Home-made seitan is probably the biggest budget-changer for me! I do this recipe. I make it pretty blandly so taste-wise it's okay, but for effort, time, and food cost it's pretty life-changing.
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Comment on ‘The science isn’t there’: do dating apps really help us find our soulmate? in ~life
umlautsuser123 LinkThis is an interesting effort. If I can take the stereotypes of what apps do to the extreme-- which is optimize for engagement instead of outcomes-- I wonder what larger effects this has on...Bruch and University of Michigan psychologist Amie Gordon will roll out their free app this summer, to the local student population to begin with, and they hope to have preliminary findings by December.
Their collaboration grew out of conversations that made it clear to them that psychologists and sociologists were addressing different parts of the problem. Gordon, who is interested in what keeps couples together, pointed to psychological research showing no correlation between a couple being well-matched in age, ethnic identity or level of education, and long-term compatibility. Bruch laughed when she heard that. “That’s because people have already selected for those things by the time they get together,” she says.
Sociologists had shown that similarity on those measures counts in the early stages of a relationship. Compared with the population as a whole, therefore, couples do score highly for similarity.
This is an interesting effort. If I can take the stereotypes of what apps do to the extreme-- which is optimize for engagement instead of outcomes-- I wonder what larger effects this has on society / government. For example, how many people live alone instead of a partner? How many people are paying for egg freezing instead of freezing fertilized eggs or having kids? How many people are paying 2x the rent to live alone? (And how many are then occupying an apartment that could then go to another couple?) More dramatically, if states made their own apps, I wonder what traits they would match on for greater social outcomes? (I am not advocating for this-- just thinking about it from a Dune or Koi to Uso perspective.)
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Comment on ‘The science isn’t there’: do dating apps really help us find our soulmate? in ~life
umlautsuser123 Link ParentI also got some semblance of OG OKC-- literally had a date-turned-friend from ~10 years ago message me after something I posted on LinkedIn recently. It's crazy how those connections had some...I also got some semblance of OG OKC-- literally had a date-turned-friend from ~10 years ago message me after something I posted on LinkedIn recently. It's crazy how those connections had some staying power.
I have a friend who was looking for someone during quarantine, she really had a rough time of it on the apps.
I spent a lot of it not on the apps (for obvious reasons) but I agree it's gotten worse.
I was on apps for a really long time overall. Single for most of it. Part of it was me, but towards the end, I really think your outcomes on the app were as good as the people on it-- not in terms of quality (everyone's gotten more attractive!) but just from a respect / expectations standpoint. It might just be my own changing attitudes towards what one deserves. At the same time, the whole internet seems much more connected (in that there are so many prominent "social" platforms) but less fun-quirky-weird.
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Comment on The man who killed Google Search in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentActually, if you're mentioning Angular, their tech-tech is actually really successful / at least well-known (Golang, Kubernetes, Transformers / LLMs / whatever that stuff is). So the issue is...Actually, if you're mentioning Angular, their tech-tech is actually really successful / at least well-known (Golang, Kubernetes, Transformers / LLMs / whatever that stuff is). So the issue is probably that they used their prominence in Search to try and be more user-facing, rather than sticking to engineering issues and letting Search be an advertisement of their quality. They probably still would have made shitty, ad-ridden search, but I also think an image based on engineering (versus being like, the face of the internet that everyone and their grandparents sees) might have changed the overall outcome.
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentI appreciate it! Especially hearing from someone else who worked in it. (I saw your other post about "I felt like I was working on nothing" and many of the engineers I worked with felt the same--...Apologies ahead for the wall of text ahead — brevity is not my strong trait.
I appreciate it! Especially hearing from someone else who worked in it. (I saw your other post about "I felt like I was working on nothing" and many of the engineers I worked with felt the same-- though it was more a consequence of the leadership.)
(now that I say it, maybe that’s what killed the whole thing: simultaneously trying to both change the fundamental blocks, and desperately find a business model to sell ahead of time)
This is kind of what inspired the whole thread for me. At the same time, I would like to be convinced otherwise.
Setting aside the argument on whether web3 actually could deliver on its promises if it were "properly" adopted, it's simply that implementing web3 demands unreasonable upfront investment for too vague or too little a potential value.
I agree with this.
Web3 as an alternative simply cannot propose a good value+risk+cost formula at bigger scales, or in places that are outside the technobubble of the rich first-world countries (where they can at least afford to spend resources to play around with the concept without redirecting too much from more pressing problems)
I think it actually makes sense for people in developing countries in cases where centralization fails them (bad instability in government, high inflation). Sometimes I wonder what it would look like if every person who owned BTC (27M addresses, so let's say 10M people) could vote on collective actions, and what the national makeup of that group would be. But I agree that a lot of the use cases I saw working in web3 seemed to be about helping companies sell "collectibles" (and when I brought up localization for people in developing countries where crypto adoption is growing, my coworkers seemed to not care).
I think I understand the more philosophical undertone of the "sometimes people have to be nudged towards what's better for them long-term, but the capitalist market is not optimized for that".
To be clear, it's not my POV (although I kind of get it). I'm not totally sure what it is beyond "blockchain is just a technology, and the simple pursuit of technology is 99% of the time good." (I reserve 1% for like, clearly violent tech) And I'm sympathetic to centralization because our larger world is simply centralized. We went from tribes, to major religions, to the modern state, to superpowers, to the UN as it exists today. Any software we build that seeks to impact the larger world is inevitably colored by the centralization of the world itself.
In Web2, there's no reason everything isn't built on Bluesky or ActivityPub. There's no reason we don't require setting up your own server to be a prerequisite to adulthood akin to driving. There's no reason companies can't offer a lifetime-valid physical object when you purchase a movie online. There's no reason companies can't stop collecting data and selling data and bucketing people into profiles. So I think blockchain as realistically implemented will shift some of the paradigm but will probably be implemented to fit in our existing system. What that looks like, I don't truly know. (I think that contributes to my excitement about it.)
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentCan you give me something good to search for ENS and the shift to centralization? I don't think I'm getting the right links. I'm pretty interested in this as I thought ENS and asymmetric...Can you give me something good to search for ENS and the shift to centralization? I don't think I'm getting the right links. I'm pretty interested in this as I thought ENS and asymmetric cryptography + self-issued certs could invalidate the need for centralized certificate authorities (at least when doing TLS). My impression of ENS is that it doesn't want to really augment DNS, though.
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentPublic beta is no joke! Just wanted to say congrats: it's great that you're making something in the space and doing it outside of the VC / typical investor paradigm. I think it's the only way to...I’m building a project that is simply NOT VC-fundable. It’s a public good (non-profit). I could have decided to walk away, but instead I harnessed the energy in the blockchain community to make it work. Now we are in public beta. Many other creators in blockchain are like me - non-VC backable. I find energy in being around people with similar struggles.
Public beta is no joke! Just wanted to say congrats: it's great that you're making something in the space and doing it outside of the VC / typical investor paradigm. I think it's the only way to move the needle for an early technology and indie hacker types really inspire me.
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentIf I had to guess… I think Tildes probably optimises for skeptical, utility-oriented people. The bar to justify a new technology is high. (I’ve also noticed similar, though not as passionate...If I had to guess… I think Tildes probably optimises for skeptical, utility-oriented people. The bar to justify a new technology is high. (I’ve also noticed similar, though not as passionate dismissals on like, pet projects people share on Hackernews— a lot of people just asking "why bother?") Plus, I think crypto probably does attract the kind of people I don’t like to interact with in tech (hype-chasers and scammy types). I assume it’s the same for everyone else.
As far as the general polarization (not Tildes specifically), I am thinking it’s such a broad category that people champion what they’ve gathered from others but like, but don’t necessarily learn much afterwards (not unreasonably if they’re wary of the scam potential). For me, I remember having to rethink how I thought about trust and had to look past NFT monkeys before I could appreciate the vision of what people try to craft when they design a blockchain protocol or L2. And although I’m interested in it today, it’s such a big space that I still struggle to fully engage in all topics around it— so I think it’s hard to passively develop an opinion. You really have to sit down, read about it, and contextualize it in the way assets and identity work and function today. Then you have to ground yourself and ask whether centralization is desirable / inherent or not for the use case in mind. It’s hard!
What are your thoughts on it?
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Comment on Is Tildes failing to thrive? in ~tildes
umlautsuser123 LinkI thought it was by design tbh. A slow website for people who aren't terminally online and who aren't looking to get upset. It would be nice to be a little busier. But I'm also a bit afraid of...I thought it was by design tbh. A slow website for people who aren't terminally online and who aren't looking to get upset.
It would be nice to be a little busier. But I'm also a bit afraid of what that looks like, lol.
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentI have to admit this thread was a little tougher than I expected lol. I agree with this. A lot of crypto stuff makes me cringe (the users / sexism and some of the applications). It's also really...I don’t usually talk about web3 online because I get a lot of hate when I do.
I have to admit this thread was a little tougher than I expected lol.
95% of stuff IS a scam or illegal or gambling. So I don’t recommend it to others. But the 5% that is legit is extremely interesting.
I agree with this. A lot of crypto stuff makes me cringe (the users / sexism and some of the applications). It's also really interesting to think about the potential even when I don't always know how to get there. To work in blockchain feels like being early to a change that has yet to happen. And for better and for worse, there are no true rules or norms.
This is different from your direct relationship interest. However, I've noticed a lot of people are (reasonably) skeptical of how the valuation capabilities make it easy to turn it into another finance clusterfudge. I feel like it's kind of inevitable, and that everything already has a value we don't see or pay. It'd be interesting to me if most of our interactions could be modeled as transactions with publicly verifiable code. (Of course, it also sounds a bit dystopian that everything can be ascribed a value. And we'd all need to learn how to manage different identities, unless we want to get social engineered to hell and back.)
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentYeah, this was exactly my experience too. I'm bullish on it eventually finding a solid niche because it's an interesting technology, I'm bearish on it getting the mainstream adoption people...To summarize it without going into details, web3 tech fails to address the web2 problems to an adequate level, while adding a whole new set of unique problems that we simply don't have good ways to mitigate due to their nature. In a way, you're forced to combine the worst of both worlds if you want to make it adoptable in the real use-cases, and for most of those use-cases this is simply way above the tolerable risk threshold.
Yeah, this was exactly my experience too. I'm bullish on it eventually finding a solid niche because it's an interesting technology, I'm bearish on it getting the mainstream adoption people imagine due to the paradigm shift expected of both the general public (who is used to the comforts of centralization) and the degens (who tend to be more focused on philosophical purity, even if it might compromise comprehensibility or adoption). But without mainstream adoption, many startups will fail, especially in this market.
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentMaybe I'm wrong, but everything you can do in C++, you could do in Assembly, right? Same with cars and horses. Yes, they get you there faster, but we also already had a means to do it, and were...Maybe I'm wrong, but everything you can do in C++, you could do in Assembly, right? Same with cars and horses. Yes, they get you there faster, but we also already had a means to do it, and were already solved. It wasn't like cars were just in the wild either, people had to put in the time and research to figure out how to make them, mass produce them, and make them accessible to refuel after mass production.
My point was just that a lot of problems were "already solved" but people still work on them and sometimes have breakthroughs (or the conditions that made them solved were changed, and now we have new problems). Maybe the number of relational database implementations would be a better example.
The only "advantage" that web3 solutions have over already-existing solutions is that they make it easier to financialize just about anything, turning it into a vehicle for speculation.
I just viewed this as an inevitability with or without a blockchain, to be honest. I guess in my head, while it's not "better," it's no worse.
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Comment on For those involved / interested in Web3, what do you make of the near and long term future for it? in ~tech
umlautsuser123 Link ParentI think I'm too far outside of my element tbh to address these claims well without more detail. I did want to say though that I appreciated your answers throughout the thread despite you saying...I think I'm too far outside of my element tbh to address these claims well without more detail. I did want to say though that I appreciated your answers throughout the thread despite you saying you weren't a fan (and it's really what I was hoping for out of Tildes).
I'd actually add Substack and Wordpress to that list. This past week I've found a lot of good reads on Substack / realized how much was coming from Substack. The comment sections can be really good. I think the difference between these blogs and Reddit or Hackernews or similar is that anyone who bothers reading a blog 1) likes text a lot and 2) shares a baseline level of respect for the person's ideas. On Reddit, you may simply stumble upon things you really disagree with, or attract a troll or several trolls who swoop in for the day. Bigger blogs also sometimes have open topic posts where you can post and discuss whatever in the thread.