mastodon - Link to source
As the person who designed and fought for this app, I am a bit sad about the change.
The native app was by no means perfect, but it felt like a real productivity tool that was trying to be respectful of it's environment.
I've come to the conclusion that native desktop apps are just not viable from large companies, even if there is headcount.


WhatsApp native app replaced with web wrapper news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…

Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com
in reply to Drew Mochak

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

The problem is coordination cost.
If you want to launch new features and experiments here, there and everywhere, then the coordination complexity increases nonlinearly with the number of platforms.
If you can sustain a more deliberate, low churn pace of development then it's workable. Features can be well defined and then implemented by the platform team as they see fit. But if you want a more fast-paced, "just in time" style of development, you need to coordinate with every team for every change... wouldn't it be nice to just write web code and be done?
Even Microsoft are building this way these days.
This is why ironically small companies seem more able to support native apps than large ones. The more "stuff" that's being worked on concurrently, the harder it is to support multiple platforms.
in reply to Drew Mochak

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

The developer makes a highly optimized native app that is a hit with the user. Now that it's a hit, the developer is now big company. And big company needs telemetry, A/B experiments, fast iteration. They can't just sit around waiting for the original developer to spend more years crafting another masterpiece. Due to tech, sign-ins, or what have you the app is also a kind of monopoly. Since it's a monopoly, quality doesn't matter. It can be a bloated electron thing and nobody can do anything about it other than suck it.
in reply to Drew Mochak

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

V8 reserves memory in chunks of 256MB using virtualalloc with MEM_RESERVE on Windows (I think). It has to do that for each isolated process where an isolate is a tab, webview, worker, etc. A page that's built up from 4 isolated processes will reserve 1GB of RAM. That's only virtual alloc though, so other OS processes can take the memory if they really need it.
There is essentially no way to tell if a JS app is using a lot of memory just by looking at what the process has reserved. There's loads of things that end up in that space - cached pages, cached compiled code, cached bitmaps of rendered pages, etc.
The task monitor tells you what Chrome or Chromium (e.g. Electron) is doing, not what the web app is doing.
in reply to Drew Mochak

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

You're absolutely right that the issue is the coordination cost. So then the question becomes, is this coordination cost worth it and how much are we willing to "spend". It seems the cost is worth it for Android and iOS since the native app experience on those platforms is so much better.
The macOS app is just a tweaked iOS app so it's also easy to justify.
But what about Windows? The Microsoft provided APIs are a disaster that keeps getting rewritten every half decade, and even Microsoft barely uses them. Just look at the 2 context menus on Windows Explorer, they can't even get the sizes and colors between them right.
in reply to Drew Mochak

mastodon - Link to source

Talon

@matt I guess the real question is... does WhatsApp really need to move fast, or can it focus on doing chat very well and deliberate over features to consider them worth implementing? I use WhatsApp. I live in Europe, it's very hard to not use it around here. But realistically the times I have used it and thought man, this needs some speedy rapid quick fast reckless silicon valley style innovation are... basically 0. I understand that it's probably about not making much money or whatever I don't know. But it worked. It worked well. I somehow never found myself in a situation where messaging, the thing it's supposed to do, didn't work in a way I wanted. You type a message into a single or group chat, you press send, and it sends. You paste a file in a single or group chat, and it sends. It just... didn't need much to happen to it that wasn't already happening. I don't mind web apps so I'll probably get used to this one too, even if it does somehow just feel slower overall to use. Or maybe I'll just stop using it on PC and go back to using it on the phone where it's still good. But very few of those arguments make any sense to me at all.
@Matt Campbell

reshared this

in reply to Talon

mastodon - Link to source

Talon

@matt I guess it wasn't really targetted at me though. I never use statuses. I don't use many communities; although the ones I do actually use seem to work OK enough. I mostly use Discord for that kind of thing. OK... maybe I see the problem after all. But like... at least in my mind, they're completely separate apps trying to do different things. I rarely if ever use Discord for DM's. It' sjust not convenient for that the way WhatsApp is. So I guess my main worry is that WhatsApp will stop being good at that thing, and then... yeah I honestly don't know.
@Matt Campbell

Jonathan reshared this.

in reply to aaron

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

@fireborn @talon @matt I very much understand where you're coming from with this, as someone who never uses statuses and channels. However we have hundreds of millions of people who do use statuses and channels, and a whole lot of other things. If I was them, I would expect our desktop app to at least keep pace with what's already available on other platforms.
@Talon @Matt Campbell @aaron
in reply to aaron

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

I mean, if it was my app, I would never have thought something like Statuses needed to be there, but they are. I also wouldn't think we need a biz app. Or AI. And now I don't even have an app because I didn't think of how to make it sustainable and I had to shut it all down due to the hosting cost. I shouldn't be trusted to make an app that scales to three billion, is what I am saying.

@talon @matt

@Talon @Matt Campbell
in reply to Talon

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

@talon @matt I think what the post is getting at is that the nature of large companies necessitates making financially motivated decisions over what may be preferable from a technical standpoint. In this case, someone saw that the app was "stagnating," IE not keeping up with the pace of feature development on other platforms. This was seen as a problem, with a solution. It's not the only one, but when you are a mobile app with one team that knows c# and another team that knows JS, you're gonna make your C# devs migrate to JS, not the other way around. JS is easier to hire for, easier to build for and works crossplatform.

A smaller company could say, "we want a simple native app experience so just go to the phone for the other stuff," and deal with the churn, but that's not an option when growth is prioritized by upper management and you have already grown huge.

@Talon @Matt Campbell
in reply to Talon

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@talon @matt Personally, I'm not that phased by the switch to a web app in and of itself. However, it raises the question: are they going to invest in improving the accessibility of said web app? I have a Greasemonkey script to compensate for a bunch of accessibility inefficiency in the web app, so I'm personally fine, but I shouldn't need that and nor should anyone else. As usual, they've jumped on the web app train without actually investing in making said web app elegantly accessible.
@Talon @Matt Campbell

Dennis reshared this.

in reply to Drew Mochak

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

I think few people are using the Win32 APIs directly and Microsoft has been shifting their stuff a bunch.
WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation ) had been the recommendation a while back, but then Microsoft started pushing UWP (Universal Windows Platform). Both of those have been succeeded by WinUI 3. UWP has been deprecated. WPF is alive, but more in a maintenance mode while WinUI 3 takes over the future. Oh, and WinForms were popular, but now not.
There's definitely been a lot of shifting and I think that's caused a lot of annoyance in the developer community - especially as Microsoft ships JS/WebView2 based apps instead of dogfooding their own stuff. If you hang out in the dotnet subreddit enough, you'll definitely see Windows devs annoyed at Microsoft's mercurial attitude toward their desktop frameworks and seeming lack of direction/interest - as their big new things are JS/WebView2.
in reply to Drew Mochak

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

Microsoft: "We offer GREAT backwards compatibility! The best in the business!"
Also Microsoft: "Man, doing things the old way is so hard. What if we had a clean break with the past?!?!"
Microsoft, some time later: "Man, making a clean break from the past is so hard. Let's just ship what we've done so far and think about finishing up the rest later. What? Windows Explorer is broken, and you refuse to let us ship!? Fine, we'll hack something in and not tell anyone."
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

aaron

@WeirdWriter @talon @matt This only works so long as there's an accessible alternative to whatever you want to use that is actually good. Yes, alternatives to everything usually exist, but the problem is they usually don't have the same level of polish. Sure for people into technology they can work, but try getting someone who just doesn't care and just wants to send messages to use maytrix or delta chat or whatever. not going to happen.
@Talon @Matt Campbell @Robert Kingett

mastodon - Link to source

Koumbit now offers a turnkey shared Nextcloud hosting service starting at 50GB.

NextCloud is a suite of online collaboration tools. It offers file storage and sharing (similar to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive).

You are tired to rely on the GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) who steal your personal information and then sell them to the american orange monster? Here is your opportunity to escape!
For more details, see: koumbit.org/en/content/shared-…

#nextcloud

A view of Koumbit's Nextcloud shared hosting login page

Shared Nextcloud Hosting

The Shared Nextcloud Hosting service is for clients who wants a space to hold and edit their files collectively. It includes updates twice a year to ensure the safety and performance of the service.
Koumbit.org
#nextcloud
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

If your school or workplace uses Exchange for email, accessing it with Thunderbird just got easier! Our blog post has all the details on getting connected. Additional features, like calendar and address book, are in the works!

#Thunderbird #Exchange

blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/t…


Thunderbird Adds Native Microsoft Exchange Email Support - The Thunderbird Blog

Thunderbird Exchange support has finally landed for email in the latest monthly release. Find out what's in, out, and still on the way.
Heather Ellsworth (The Thunderbird Blog)
#thunderbird #exchange

mastodon - Link to source

First MR merged in the currently happening GNOME Calendar livestream: gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-c…

It's already available in the current nightly flatpak version. It is so nice to be able to use the new event quick-add popover, with no extra swirly pages etc. to pick the target calendar. Very efficient! 😌

Thanks to @TheEvilSkeleton for their patience and sisyphean rebasing of that much awaited merge request over the past 2 years 🫡

4 tickets have been closed as a result!

#GNOMECalendar #GNOME #UX

Screenshot of GNOME Calendar's new quick-add event creation popover, where the calendars list picker has been merged in an elegant way into the main popover, so there is only a single page. Various other issues were also fixed as part of that branch.

quick-add-popover: Port to libadwaita widgets and merge stack pages (!362) · Merge requests · GNOME / gnome-calendar · GitLab

Both stack pages are merged into one, to avoid additional clicks. Mnemonics were added to accommodate keyboard users as well. Closes
GitLab
#gnome #UX #gnomecalendar @TheEvilSkeleton 🇮🇳 🏳️‍⚧️
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

✨I used Google's new Gemini 3.0 AI to make Android apps and fine-tune my workouts

Gemini 3.0 Pro brings big improvements to reasoning and coding. I put the new model to the test by asking it 9 complex questions.

Here's how it went👇

🔗 androidauthority.com/how-good-…

I tested Google's new Gemini 3 AI chatbot and I was blown away

Google just released its smartest AI chatbot yet, Gemini 3 Pro, so I had it answer 9 challenging problems. Here's how it went.
Mishaal Rahman (Android Authority)

mastodon - Link to source

Okay, that's it, I'm turning off all notifications and badges for the Google Play Store. It's nothing but spam now, with what appears to be no way to only get functional notifications.

Edit: I provisionally take it back, there is a config section after you expand, titled " payments, deals, and recommendations". I'll report back in a few days whether this works or not.

Notification icon in the upper right hand corner of the Google Play Store app, a little line drawing of a bell, with a badge count of six.
The first three unread "alerts" in the Google Play Store app. Titles: "tap into this month's game picks", "43 updates need approval", "find a new favorite app on play". There's also a pop-up at the top with the title "get updates faster", with the text " receive special offers, Early Access to new features and updates. Stay informed with notifications and emails."
The rest the of the "alerts", titled "your favorite anime", "multiplayer fun with friends or foes" and "offline fun you can have anywhere".
The notification settings area (at the Android level) for the Google Play app. The only categories enabled are "updates available" and "maintenance". Notice that neither of these seem to really cover "spam me about game crap".
This entry was edited (3 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Dear #GetFediHired,

Despite “my” contract ending with the end of the year, but the company being a side in that contract decided to kick out some people, including me, earlier. So their Christmas present for me is the lack of a job.

So I'm looking for opportunities for a jack of all trades #Linux sysadmin, with broad, 10y+ experience in system and applications administration. Preferred location would be #Strasbourg.

Please boost 🔁

#linux #getfedihired #strasbourg

mastodon - Link to source
🕓Z #NowPlaying #Live at top of hour join Chrissie Cochrane, Chris Gray, Kelly Sapergia. and the gang for a friendly #chat on All Sorts! Imagine you're in a comfortable room chatting with friends about this and that; playing a bit of music, and keeping the children amuzed as well. That's what it's all about. Live Chat with Us theglobalvoice.info/chatroom find the link to Zoom with us here: theglobalvoice.info/gallery.ph… and Listen at theglobalvoice.info:8443/broad… #TGVRadio 👥📺🗣️🗣💬💁

Chatroom - The Global Voice Internet Radio

The Global Voice's Chat Room Welcome to The Global Voice's text-based chat room, where you can communicate with DJs and other listeners live! Rules We ask that you please keep the following rules in mind: Keep the discussion family friendly.
The Global Voice
#chat #nowplaying #live #tgvradio

mastodon - Link to source
I am sure you Jazz enthusiasts will appreciate this. This is Super Mario, but if it were all done in that classic Ghusion Japanese 80's style.
youtube.com/watch?v=pqsDHPAgRm…

Super Mario 64 but it's Japanese Jazz Fusion

Continuing our reimagining series, this mix revisits the soundtrack of Super Mario 64 (1996), composed by Koji Kondo, whose writing shaped the identity of 3D...
YouTube

mastodon - Link to source

VST companies are gonna hate this... I made a FREE Bitwig preset that lets you "steal" the settings from any compressor VST just by looking at it. In Bitwig :D

👉 youtu.be/zl96tpZYjNo

#bitwig #musodon #musicproduction

I Built an 'X-Ray' for Compressors in Bitwig (And It's FREE)

In today's video, I'm sharing a special Bitwig Studio preset I built called the 'Compressor Analyzer.' It's a unique tool, made entirely with stock Bitwig de...
YouTube
#musicproduction #musodon #bitwig

mastodon - Link to source

Exchange/Microsoft365 account support built into Thunderbird now!

Thunderbird users have asked us for this for years and now it is here. Enjoy.

For nerds: the architecture built for this opens the door for JMAP support.

blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/t…


Thunderbird Adds Native Microsoft Exchange Email Support - The Thunderbird Blog

Thunderbird Exchange support has finally landed for email in the latest monthly release. Find out what's in, out, and still on the way.
Heather Ellsworth (The Thunderbird Blog)
in reply to vampirdaddy

pleroma - Link to source

feld

this is just normal internet business. When I worked at a smaller ISP/datacenter we had contracts with customers promising uptime and if we failed even because our own upstream providers had outages, we had to refund/credit based on the contracts.

Now the place I work for has huge contracts with Amazon and CloudFlare. I am not sure about the CloudFlare situation, but Amazon has refunded us hundreds of thousands of dollars for outages.

So it goes.

mastodon - Link to source
A new travel description podcast from JJ Hunt, I’ve just launched a new travel description podcast called Describe Away. I captured description-rich audio of whale watching in Newfoundland, cabin time in Nova Scotia, and sunsets on Vancouver Island, using feedback and tips gleaned from the described walking tours and live events I’ve done within the Blind community. Search for Describe Away on your favourite podcast player, or click this link and go to describeaway.buzzsprout.com/

Describe Away

Travelling the world through vivid description and soundscape audio.
Buzzsprout

mastodon - Link to source
Looking forward to it, especially as I'm going to experiment with some interactive methods of teaching screenreader use that might be useful in future trainings I'll be giving... front-end.social/@dnikub/11556…

Daniela Kubesch (@dnikub@front-end.social)

Attached: 1 image Alert: #web #accessibility talk and workshop coming up! Join me at d*sign week, the festival for experimental and independent design practices happening from the 24th to the 30th of November in Linz, Austria 🤓 🎙️ I'll be giving …
Daniela Kubesch (Front-End Social)
in reply to Piper Thunstrom

gotosocial - Link to source

Sven Slootweg 🔜 eth0 ("still kinky and horny anyway")

anecdote (in agreement) about keeping out fascists

Sensitive content

mastodon - Link to source

#natuur #Biesbosch #natuurfotografie #vogelfotografie #vogels #nederland #dutch #netherlands #naturephotography #nature #wildlife #birds #birdsphotography #sonyalpha #sonyalpha7rv #DXO #birdwatching

Vledder (DR)
Glanskop
Marsh tit

Sonty A1II, 70-200

#dutch #wildlife #nature #birds #naturephotography #netherlands #birdwatching #nederland #birdsphotography #natuur #biesbosch #natuurfotografie #vogelfotografie #vogels #sonyalpha #sonyalpha7rv #dxo

mastodon - Link to source

Gestern ein bisschen spontan den Umzug von Gmail zu @Tutanota vollzogen. Abgesehen von den Herzschlagmomenten beim Umzug der Domain samt DNS-Einstellungen, war das initial ganz erfolgreich.
Nicht ganz so geschmeidig ist der Workflow - Tuta reagiert an allen Ecken und Enden behäbiger, der Spam-Filter sortiert gerne echte Mails aus, aber belässt massig Spam im Posteingang. Und auch die Farbgebung ist nicht ganz meine…

Aber vielleicht gewöhnt man sich aneinander und alles wird gut 🌈☀️

@Tuta

mastodon - Link to source

I had a cheeky comment prepared for today, saying that you shouldn't rely on Cloudflare if you can afford it, and that you don't truly self-host when you use it, but I could not post it because one of the services I don't self-host —my Mastodon instance— depends on #Cloudflare, too. 😅

#selfHosting #selfhost

#selfhost #cloudflare #selfhosting
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Not every open source software project can or should live on forever: priorities change, technologies evolve, and interests shift over time. From a corporate perspective, you don’t want to have neglected or abandoned open source projects with security vulnerabilities owned by your organization. However, responsibly sunsetting an open source project is more than just clicking the archive button on your repository. The CHAOSS Practitioner Guide: Getting Started with Sunsetting an Open Source Project can help you with this process. fastwonderblog.com/2025/11/18/…

Responsibly Sunsetting OSS Projects: A Guide for OSPOs | Fast Wonder

fastwonderblog.com
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