duncesplayed

I don't think "greed" is quite the right word. "Greed" would be the right word if they were trying to make themselves more profitable. But they're not: they're trying to make themselves profitable at all. That's not about greed, but about surviving. You can't survive unless you stop hemorrhaging money at some point.

Maybe the question is "Why do investors invest so many hundred of billions of dollars into companies that cannot be profitable without becoming super-shitty? And why do users join them knowing that they're going to become super-shitty one day?"

just assume everything actually costs 20% more and tip.

And by "everything", you mean "not actually everything, but you'd need a 400 page manual to describe what gets tipped and what doesn't".

Before getting home Internet access, my "online" world was BBSes. Local BBSes, of course, because we couldn't dial long distance without repercussions. My favourite demogroup was Future Crew and I hated that it took months (or sometimes never) to get their releases on our local BBSes. Even with Fidonet, a lot of BBSes would only sync with remote nodes a couple times a month to save money, so it was slow going.

I remember a few days after we got home Internet access, I was eating breakfast and I suddenly had a thought. Wait...doesn't Future Crew's BBS run an FTP server? I think I saw them mention that in one of their nfo files. If they have an FTP server, I could just...connect to it. Like, directly, myself, from my house.

The implications of this were so strong that I started shaking. I couldn't finish my breakfast.

I ran downstairs and booted up the computer and typed in ftp.mpoli.fi and...there it was. Future Crew's home BBS was just available for anyone in the world to connect to. I navigated around a little bit and found a song I hadn't seen before on any of the local BBSes. I started the download, and it worked, and a blazing 3kB/s. I remember I just started crying at the implications of what a worldwide network meant.

I think we're going to see a lot of strong reactions to progress. I mean we're already seeing some of that. Neo-Luddites (are Neo-Amish next?), TradWives, dumb phone culture, etc. I think it's going to pick up. Some good and some bad.

Okay, so what are the good ones? I think we'll become more family-oriented. I think we'll re-realize that meaning in life comes largely from our relationships, and our families will become a bigger part of that.

A spin-off of that is I think family dynamics will be generally better. Fewer people overall will have children, as those who aren't really into it won't feel pressured to do it (they can still have nieces and nephews and whatnot). But those who do have children will be more deliberate and passionate about it. I think parenting quality overall will improve, and parent-child relationships will be better.

I think our economic system is going to get a major upgrade. Every year that passes, it becomes more and more obvious that the rules we have in place aren't sustainable. The rich-poor divide is growing. Mental health is worsening. Climate change is worsening. Owning a home is now a luxury of the top 10%, and will probably be a luxury of the top 1% very soon. Eventually it's going to get so bad that nobody can deny it needs major changes. And it will change.

I know some tankies on Lemmy would love to jump in and say "so finally we'll smarten up and embrace socialism", but I don't think we're quite that stupid. But we're going to fix some of the rules and corruptions.

Now I'm imagining Linus sitting in his basement and suddenly some nerd just pops into existence behind him. "Don't mind me. I'm just going to watch over your shoulder."

Yeah Windows compatibility is both amazingly impressive and complete garbage.

Need to run something from 1992? Sure! No problem!

Need to run something from 2021? Sorry, no compatibility for that old API.

Just set your tab width to 1. No more argument now.

The problem isn't losing 99% of your wealth. The problem is losing 101% of your wealth (or more), which is entirely possible.

If it helps you to visualize, one somewhat common/popular form of personal knowledgment management is a wiki. Like Wikipedia, except it's personal (or for a small team). You can keep track of references and also make notes about things, but it's also about connecting ideas together. Just like on Wikipedia, you can have a page about, let's say LLMs, which includes all the software and approaches you've tried, results, sample snippets, references to repos, but as you're writing about what you've tried and what worked, you might also have links to other wiki pages, like programming languages, build tools, test tools, etc. As you document more and build more knowledge, your articles all get meshed together in one well-organized network. Ideally it should be easy to navigate if you come back to a technology later and need to get back up to speed.

It's a big question and I don't think I can give an answer that will cover everything. A lot of it will depend on what they want to do, too. As long as we can have a real discussion about things beforehand, I don't think there are many technologies or services that I would flat-out ban.

I've realized lately that a lot of the problems I have with how society at large uses technology is it's not deliberate/intentional or thoughtful. I think if you're going to buy a smartphone, or download an app, and click "Accept" on all the permissions, you should at least have a goal in mind before you use it. What specifically are you intending to accomplish with it? If it's to stay in touch with your friend, that's fine, just have that goal in mind when you're using it. If it's to follow the goings-on of your favourite celebrity, okay, as long as that's your intention. But I think too often, people buy something or download and install something just because of FOMO or without any idea or understanding of what it's going to do. It puts you in a passive position of allowing a large tech company to decide your use and your experience for you, and that might not be what's best for you. That kind of passive exploratory attitude I think worked well up until the introduction of "dark patterns", but it's a bit dangerous now.

The other major thing is I want is to introduce them to community-developed technology first. Before they get to the point where they have to decide if they want to install Instagram, I think they should have experienced the Fediverse first, that kind of thing. I think they should understand that there is still technology out there which is completely good (by which I mean free/open source software and community services are sometimes useless, sometimes buggy, sometimes lacking in features, sometimes cumbersome to use, but they're never antagonistic or evil or deceptive). At the very least they should know all of what kind of technology is out there for them.

Ideally I would also like them to understand how things work. My oldest is 4 now and can read a little bit. Not complete sentences or even long words, but enough that I know it's not going to be too many more months before she's capable of reading properly, and maybe typing, and maybe even some programming. A fair amount of software depends upon ignorance (remember when SnapChat claimed your pictures/videos "disappeared"?) and I think understanding of technology can help navigate bullshit a lot easier. But, a lot of that will depend on her and what interests her....

Nobody is forcing you.

That is not really true, I mean depending on your definition of "forcing". Okay, it's true, nobody is holding a gun to your head.

But depending on where you live, it may be impossible to use a taxi. It would be impossible to work at a lot of workplaces. I work at a university where thankfully faculty are not required to own a smartphone, but students are (if you do not check in for attendance with the university's app, you automatically fail the course). Soon here it might be impossible to have a bank account without a smartphone app. Any event that requires tickets, forget about it. We're also getting closer to it being a requirement to see a doctor (some doctor's offices here already do not allow any patients that haven't installed their app, and the number is growing).

There's a lot of soft pressure, too. The supermarket by us doesn't require you to install their app. You can pay cash without a smartphone...if you're willing to pay 2x the usual amount for groceries (which are already quite expensive).

I agree with your assessment. I have a lot to say about this, and I'm glad to have found this article, as I've been having some serious inner turmoil about this lately, and this makes me feel a bit like I'm not totally alone or crazy. (But also I can't find a link to the original survey, which makes it hard to trust, as I can't find any description of the methodology or the exact wording of the questions)

I'm an older Millenial (sometimes consider Gen X, depending on the terminology used) with young kids. It's true that I would rather have them brought up 30 years ago than today. Sometimes when I see posts about parents letting their young kids (like let's say 10) have their own smartphone and then complain about, people get snarky like "You're the parent. If you don't like it, just take their smartphone away."

But it is a tightrope to walk. I don't want them expose them something like Instagram, which gives them eating disorders, depression, anxiety, chips away at their sense of privacy, etc. But I also don't want them to be "the weird kid" who can't relate to any of their peers. When I was growing up, I remember "the weird kid"s who weren't allowed to watch TV, weren't to play video games, etc. I can recognize that in many ways they probably benefited from not sitting in front of the TV for hours each day, but I can also recognize they probably didn't benefit from not being able to talk to any of the rest of us about the latest episode of Fresh Prince. I do see it as a balancing act between teaching them that there's a lot about their generation that sucks, but also letting them experience enough of it to see for themselves, and relate to the other kids around them.