💾 Archived View for splint.rs › spoilt.gmi captured on 2024-07-09 at 00:15:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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"Getting Spoilt"

I get ratty and with other people’s set-up, and soon after, snobbish.

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We want to watch a film, and someone wanders to the computer.

“Does anyone have a Netflix logon?”
“Do Netflix still have it? I thought they took it down and put it on Amazon.”
“Does anyone have an Amazon account?”

I just want to click a key-chord, bring up my ‘watch stuff’ script, type in the name of what I want to watch, then hit Return.

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People are putting on YouTube videos while working. They want a playlist, but the YouTube playlist feature is janky, and my choice of video won’t show up, because one scene has women getting changed, and YouTube doesn’t allow naked women.

Youtubers come up, with a 5-minute thought pushed to an hour, because the algorithm dictates how they speak, and what we listen to, and currently it’s pushing long videos. It doesn’t matter if this would work better as a short video - people leave things on in the background, so the human-creators waffle on longer, and we respond by having to watch longer videos.

The video begins by complaining about the algorithm, but they don’t want to get rid of it - they want to fix it, and clearly don’t understand the algorithm isn’t broken, but simply demonetizes videos or entire channels as part of its job.

Having video bloggers self-censor because none of them understand exactly what might get them a ban is a feature, not a bug. Waiting for them to figure out the platform itself is the problem seems futile.

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Most of my work involves clicking on Google documents with repetitive actions. If I could work in plain text I’d work about two hours a day, and leave the rest to bash scripts. The entire system exists due to decision makers not understanding what computers can do.

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Every bloody time I log into a Windows machine - mine or another person’s - some pop-up announces a program needs updated. Libreoffice, VLC, torrenting programs - every single one nags the user once a week or so to their homework. I click on the ‘update’ prompt, and it opens a web page where I can download the .exe file. It’s a little like someone asking if you want a cup of tea, then saying ‘there’s the kitchen, go make one’.

The program gives no indication if the updates help with security, or just fix bugs the user hasn’t experienced and doesn’t care about.

They’re all so used to this, it stops annoying them. As far as they’re concerned, this is just how a computer works - you turn it on, and it nags you.