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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Excellent analysis. Especially this part:

    It will be much more productive to try to solve this with the handful of Browser vendors than trying to regulate each and every consent banner.

    Early cookie banners were a bad experience but they were manageable. But now thing have transitioned into content-blocking modals, dark patterns, forced individual consent/rejection for each and every one of the 943 partners they’re selling your data to, sites that refuse to serve content if you reject tracking and other ways to frustrate the end user.

    I’m done with every piece of shit predatory actor inventing their own way of malicious compliance with the GDPR. You either implement the user-friendly consent API or you get no more tracking at all. Paywall your shit for all I care, at least then you’ll have a sustainable business model.



  • Yeah I believe this to be a fallacy. If all your contacts use WhatsApp, they still haven’t grasped the concept of installing two applications side-by-side. Or they don’t fully understand why people are using signal over WhatsApp. If you fail both of those, congratulations, you’ve failed to be a self-aware tech user and you’re now demoted to a braindead consumer.

    I know, mind blowing right? Point is, society in general should not accept others forcing you to keep the WhatsApp monopoly in tact, which is exactly what’s happening here.

    It will take some time but eventually adoption will spread, even among your contacts. It’s just a matter of critical mass, and there are some pretty compelling features within Signal that make it a worthy replacement.




  • I have no idea why they’re even remotely interested in Windows as a product anymore. Surely they can’t expect that much revenue from integrated AI services when most of the general public’s needs can be covered by web services that will severely outmatch Microsoft’s development speed (y’know because of juggling legacy code and all).

    Considering the fact that they gain most of their revenue by far from their Azure cloud services and enterprise customers, it just seems like a stupid business decision to invest this much into all kinds of random features for their desktop OS aimed at consumers.

    In proper systems architectecture theory, we generally try to avoid mixing up functionality this much because a modular design allows your system to evolve without too much pain. Why build all this crap into Windows when you can just opt-in by installing an application for it?

    I really don’t get it…


  • Apple’s whole modern “it’s reliable and just works” cult following exists because they found a fix for situations where the problem was between keyboard and chair.

    Both Windows and Linux-based operating systems are plenty reliable if you actually know what you’re doing and you know how things work. Apple started a culture where you don’t need to know how things work because you have no influence over your own devices. Which lets people do the simple tasks without adressing the problem that your userbase will not amass any computing knowledge whatsoever.

    And when Apple devices do fail (and trust me, they do), they fail catastrophically without a way to fix the problem yourself (which is by design).

    The distinction is larger for computers than it is for mobile devices, but yeah in general Apple devices are for simpletons. But the biggest issue is that Apple’s design philosophy actively creates these simpletons.


  • It’s strange to me that the differences are so vast between different continents.

    I know litteraly no one who actually uses iMessage. Never once (in recent years) seen some communicate through a channel that isn’t WhatsApp, Signal or something similar. The whole “ew, green bubbles” drama just isn’t a thing here. (Though the existence of iPhone users still harms society in different ways)

    Though I do agree with many commenters that the EU caving to the lobbyists is a bad thing. Having the law only apply to “problems that are big enough to care about” is still a loss for the consumer in the end. I’m all for standardisation and free choice, which means any commercial messaging service should comply. Exceptions only for open source projects funded by non-profit organisations.



  • It crazy how worked up non-customers get over this stuff. It’s not like rabid apple fans are grabbing their pitchforks.

    See, here is where we disagree. The amount of revenue Apple generates, makes them an example for other companies, and you see them start making the same dumb choices.

    I want this trend of tech enshittification to stop and the brain-dead Apple fans are to blame. Because they allow themselves to get milked for revenue, the whole consumer space has to deal with companies trying hard to nudge the boundaries with every new product. All aimed at extracting just a little more money than they did before.

    So no, in addition to not buying their shit devices and services, it actually helps to make others stop buying their shit as well. I am done allowing people to take the easy way out and to stay ignorant about the consequences of their choices. If you praise Apple to me, you’re going to get an earful.






  • For this to become a serious issue a couple of conditions need to be met:

    • there has to be enough second hand supply to meet demand and keep prices low.
    • …which means lots of people need to circulate their games.
    • …which means they didn’t like your game enough to want to keep it in their collection for replayability
    • …which means you made an unremarkable game

    Now, given the fact that I have full confidence in your ability to create something worthwhile (because you would do so from passion), this cycle will likely be broken at some point.

    There’s also the other option where people will circulate their second hand games with the knowledge they’ll be able to buy back another copy somewhere down the road.

    But yes, you’re right that this will bring a new factor to the gaming industry that everyone has to take into account. Keep in mind that your financial security in the indie gaming sector is fully dependant on wether you develop something worthwhile. You are in no way entitled to be able to make a living from publishing games regardless of their quality. Which is the beauty of the indie games segment: the more love and care you put into your game, the bigger the chances are that it’ll be a success.




  • Sounds like it’s not really SQL as a query language but rather the whole database paradigm that’s the problem here.

    Look into noSQL databases and their respective drivers. They often use JSON-like syntax and are more likely to be seamlessly integrated with whatever programming language you’re using.

    If a search engine won’t point you in the right direction I’d suggest having a look at MongoDB, which is well documented and fairly accessible to mess around with.


  • Regular companies have an obligation to deposit their annual accounts with the chamber of commerce, but social enterprises tend to go above and beyond because their focus is not on economic gain, but on socio-economic gain.

    There is no legal obligation to do anything special when you call yourself a social enterprise, that I know of. But using the description for bragging rights does put your company under increased scrutiny from the community and from researchers.

    All kinds of modeling methods have been invented to make social-economic impact part of the businessmodel. Some of those methods are even similar to Alex Osterwalder’s widely used Business Model Canvas.

    Some social enterpreneurs also make use of specific constructions using certain legal forms to prevent shareholders from steering the company away from its original goal. For example: some will opt to make a “stichting” (foundation) the majority shareholder of the main company. The stichting having auditing and course correction as their main purpose.

    If you would like to know more about social enterprises, the dutch chamber of commerce has published a great article (in english) on the subject.