mastodon - Link to source

Talk about a grotesque invasion of privacy:

"Smart TVs from Samsung and LG take screenshots of what you are watching even when you are using them to display images from a connected laptop or video game console"

newscientist.com/article/24491…

How can this possibly be legal?

Here's why: Congress isn't just indifferent to your privacy. It is actively complicit with big corporations -- and law enforcement -- in embedding surveillance into everything we do.

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Seirdy

akkoma - Link to source

Seirdy

ok I think I made a joke that was just for me.

Google’s technical writing in practice isn’t actually that bad. the things the style guide chooses to be opinionated and lax on are just a bit odd. very lax on ambiguous terminology but opinionated about using contractions.

the joke I was going for was that the official app icons give me that exact vibe. very ambiguous, very different styles, yet somehow too coherent. it’s actually a bit unsettling.

Meet, Chat, TV, even Calendar: all empty rainbow squares that look the same. Prioritizing similar aesthetics over uniqueness.

Yet most older apps with an existing brand not tied to their empty-rainbow-outline icon guidelines seem recognizable: Classroom, Earth, Voice, YouTube (different palettes, not empty shapes). But some of these will likely join the graveyard of abandoned Google products.

New silly conspiracy theory: Google sunsets old products so they can be replaced by products with icons conforming to its newest icon guidelines.

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Seirdy

sharkey - Link to source

Alice

I mean yeah, some icons are just bad

but e.g. from GNOME perspective that was absolutely the right move. At one point we had icons like this: 3.bp.blogspot.com/-UBhifwD1gzU…
Well, that's an idealistic lie. In reality, they were like this: news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/…
See, only about 3 people in the entire world knew how to draw icons in that specific style and it tooks weeks to make a single icon. Yeah, there were guidelines, but it's way too elaborate for anyone to bother, and so no one did. Every single third party app (except those jimmac/etc made an icon for personally) had crappy icons. I mean corebird on the second screenshot is actually a GNOME app.

So, we drastically simplified icons and made them very geometric, as well as got rid of all the 5 or 6 different sizes and just have a single svg per app. Result? Even the less polished apps have reasonable looking icons. I mean look at this: apps.gnome.org/ - there isn't a single app with a crappy icon there. (ok ok, being in circle already implies a baseline level of quality, but take a look at apps designed for gnome on flathub and it's same story there)

Same story for symbolics - some people were pissed that GNOME uses symbolic icons for apps instead of tango style, but like? I'm not an artist at all, and yet I managed to draw a bunch of these icons for highscore just fine. Previously I'd have to ask a designer.

And well - same for UI styles. Yeah, iOS 6 apps looked very very elaborate, but good luck doing that without an artist. The barrier of entry is so so much lower without an expectation that your app will use wood/leather textures (which were not a part of the platform btw! it was a custom thing in each app, unlike Mac OS X brushed metal)

in reply to Alice

akkoma - Link to source

Seirdy

@alice yeah i was thinking about like. official apps and components that progressively simplify the design at the expense of usability.

Apple honestly didn’t do nearly as badly here as MS did, but at least MS supports WHCM to put bring borders back so I can identify boundaries between components.

I’m biased. I really struggle with identifying boundaries without prominent borders or gradients, remembering icon purposes, etc. so I’ve mostly been noticing years of regressions that I’ve had to theme away.

@Alice

mastodon - Link to source

Russian law could ban the child-free lifestyle.

Russians who promote 'child-free movement' could soon face hefty fine, Putin says woman's purpose is to birth children and basically, being childless is a threat to national security and state longevity

They are trying to consolidate that the woman’s role boils down to exclusively bearing children

Now we know where JD Vance got his anti cat woman, pro birth woman talking points #USPol
nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-…

#uspol
This entry was edited (7 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Yeah, it's those #JustStopOil protesters trying to get your attention to the planetary catastrophe by throwing soup over the protective cases of paintings, who are the real problem, right? RIGHT?

#vangogh #fossilfuel #FossilFuelCriminals #FossilFuelMafia #BigOil #ClimateAction #stonehenge

#climateaction #bigoil #juststopoil #vangogh #fossilfuel #fossilfuelcriminals #fossilfuelmafia #Stonehenge

mastodon - Link to source

Hello Stroongers!
Here's part two of #StroongeCast where we answer some user comments about us as a couple, expound more upon the peeling of the orange, discuss our respective mother-in-laws, talk about whether hugging is more of a cultural thing perhaps, and get interrupted twice.

PS. Stick around until *after* the closing music for a little outtake...

For those who want to listen elsewhere, we're pleased to announce that we have an RSS feed so you can paste this into your podcatcher of choice, be that Apple Podcasts, downcast, Overcast etc.

Orange Responses (and then some) youtu.be/vfoXyuk-qmg
Download here: onj.me/media/stroongecast/02_-…
RSS feed: onj.me/media/stroongecast/inde…

#stroongecast

mastodon - Link to source

Long read but the TL;DR is basically that SaaS is the canary in the coalmine for the #growth fallacy. The arithmetic is so simple it boggles the mind how this mindset came to dominate in the first place: Growth stagnates for these megacorps because there's no more customers. Once you're on 95% of all PCs there's simply no remotely reasonable way to keep growing, let alone grow faster, yet that's what these supposed "business geniuses" expect.

wheresyoured.at/saaspocalypse-… #EdZitron #tech #business

#tech #business #growth #edzitron
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Ondřej Caletka

@ondrej ano, to samozřejmě vím, stejně jako Island a Lichtenštejnsko. Ale není to EU. Stejně tak není v EU Velká Británie, přesto ta zpráva (a naštěstí i ceny služeb) vypadají stejně.

Přitom by stačilo to zprávu formulovat třeba takto: "Užívej si v {země}. I tady, stejně jako v celé EU máš ceny jako doma…"

@Ondřej Surý
in reply to Leonieke

mastodon - Link to source

Hees Daman

Wat ik jammer - maar oplosbaar! - vind is dat er geen #kaart bestaat waarop je zelf met #fiets of #lopend een #route kan uitstippelen die je langs een aantal van deze #kunstwerken brengt.

Het dichtst wat daar bij komt is een kaart van #MapComplete.org waarop kunstwerken staan vermeld maar nu nog erg leeg is. Deze huisjes staan er bijvoorbeeld niet op. Het oplosbare bestaat eruit dat mensen ze wel zelf kunnen toevoegen. 😉 #DenHaag

mapcomplete.org/artwork.html?z…

#MapComplete #denhaag #kunstwerken #route #lopend #fiets #kaart

mastodon - Link to source

Today is a special day for the @libreoffice community.

14 years ago, we decided to take a bold step and create LibreOffice, the best open source office suite.

Since then, we've managed to take LibreOffice to the top of the open source community and release 29 versions with incredible features and match our interoperability in the market.

Congratulations to the LibreOffice Community of developers, marketers, documenters, advocates, managers and, above all, our loyal users.

@LibreOffice
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Matt Campbell

mastodon - Link to source

Nolan Lawson

@matt Yeah, I sort of feel this way about what I did with Pinafore. It was almost an experiment in making the most hyper-optimized SPA I could, a scorched-earth approach to perf optimizations. But it was also a one-man show, and bound to a particular framework, so it wasn't necessarily going to be maintainable long-term. I'm curious how Semaphore/Enafore have held up since then.

At the end of the day, perf is just one virtue among others, and has to be weighed accordingly.

@Matt Campbell

mastodon - Link to source

We know — and our rulers certainly know — that if we are to have any hope of preserving even a limited version of today’s complex modern society, greenhouse gas emissions MUST go down, swiftly and urgently.

But instead, emissions continue going up and up and up. It is literally suicidal.

So, WHY haven't we stopped burning fossil fuels?

Because there are profits to be made. Huge, massive, irresistibly tempting profits.

In a sane world, these actions would be seen as criminal.

Perpetrators like fossil fuel executives, their financiers, and the politicians who enable them, would be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted, with assets forfeited to pay for mitigation and reparations.

But we do not live in a sane world.

#Politics #Economics #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateJustice #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #Degrowth

Three US $100 bills in a pool of blood.
#politics #climatechange #environment #ClimateJustice #capitalism #climate #degrowth #businessasusual #economics
This entry was edited (7 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

#Tuvalu, likely first modern country to become uninhabitable, has new plan for keeping control of fishing rights even if its land disappears by #climatechange.

#LawOfTheSea treaty says sea territory, fishing rights only exist with reference to land territory, but is silent on what happens when land changes, disappears. Tuvalu has multi-pronged strategy to form intl consensus that sea borders remain if their land disappears.

reuters.com/investigations/sin… #geography @geography @geopolitics #ocean

#climatechange #ocean #tuvalu #lawofthesea #geography @geography group @geopolitics group
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