Snippet: Tales o’ Tech: Suffering Fools ☇

Jeffrey Zeldman:

At the time of the initial conversation, I believed most people involved in the creation of websites were motivated by altruism, aesthetics, and the desire to create a fairer world. And of course many are. Many, but far from all.

I did not see how quickly fascism was infiltrating our trade. Perhaps infiltrating is the wrong word. Perhaps there had always been a Dark Side.

For a long time, I had been guilty of assuming that many people in tech just want to mess around with computers for the enjoyment of it. Maybe they were awkward, outcasts, the square-peg-in-the-round-hole and this was a place that accepted them. That was too naïve and maybe my formative corner of the world (Apple and Web 2.0 in the early 2000s) was more of an empathetic, creative echo chamber.

Today, that assumption has been long-gone, but I’d often give people the benefit of the doubt or try to see things from their perspective. However, in the last few years, and the last two weeks especially, an often-paraphrased Maya Angelou quote has never been more applicable:

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Snippet: I Don’t Have a Smartphone ☇

Ploum:

“I don’t have a smartphone,” is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows me to cut the crap about companies insisting that I install their app or restaurants wishing that I scan a QR code to access their menu on a small screen.

“I don’t have a smartphone” is, according to my experience, the easiest explanation, the shortest way to force people to get their shit together and take the required actions to allow me to live without being glued to a small screen dependent on a huge American megacorporation.

I think I might start using this more myself even if it is untrue. With apologies to Herman Melville, the world we’re in seems to ignore polite refusal way too often. There have been countless times that I’ve been nudged to download an app or join a loyalty program and a simple refusal leads to follow-up questions. I still don’t want to make someone’s day worse by being a jerk or overly aggressive, but I’m a little tired of having to explain myself—being incapable of using an app shuts that conversation down right away.

I think the only time this might not work well is if I happen to take my phone out after the ruse, but at that point, the interaction is long over?

Review: Afterglow

Every once in awhile something comes along that is completely unnecessary, accomplishes nothing, but is too delightful to not check out. Since the earliest builds of Mac OS X, modern macOS has featured built-in screen savers and there are plenty of excellent ones (I prefer Flurry myself.) In the days of classic Mac OS, there wasn’t a built-in option and After Dark by Berkeley Systems was a popular choice with numerous sequels, spin-offs, and reboots. Jeff Halter found a way to bridge the gap with Afterglow, a free app and screen saver that lets you run old After Dark modules on modern Macs…

Snippet: Walmart, Sam’s Club to Accept Contactless Payments ☇

Walmart PR:

We want customers and members to have choice in how they pay, so they can check out in the way that works best for them. Now, beginning Aug. 24, we will be adding Tap to Pay to our payment options at select Walmart stores and Sam’s Club locations, with plans to roll it out to all U.S. stores and clubs by the end of 2026 and to fuel stations by mid-2027.

Tap to Pay gives customers and members another familiar and convenient way to pay at checkout using contactless payment methods. Whether picking up groceries, gifts or everyday essentials, they can check out using eligible contactless card, phone, or smartwatch. Customers and members can also add their eligible Walmart, Sam’s Club and OnePay cards to their digital wallets, giving them another convenient way to use their cards.

Better late than never?

Snippet: MacStories is Back on X?! ☇

John Voorhees for MacStories on December 16, 2022:

We’re not closing down our Twitter accounts (yet), but as you may have noticed, they haven’t been active lately and won’t be going forward. That’s because we’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the company is heading. If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, I highly recommend Casey Newton’s recent piece on Platformer. Casey’s perspective and reasons for winding down his personal and business presence on Twitter are very close to our own.

Federico Viticci on X earlier this week:

Hi! It’s been a while.

Over the last two years, I’ve fundamentally changed as a creator. I’m still a writer and podcaster, but I guess I’m also a new kind of “builder”. Today, I need to find new readers, listeners, and developers, wherever they may be…

I know there are times where I probably end up playing the role of curmudgeon—I try to have principles and while nothing is perfectly ethical, there are plenty of instances where things cross a certain threshold for me. I won’t go near Meta products, but I also don’t want to be that person who scolds family/friends about it all the time. I got off of Twitter X when the direction it was going was clear and stand by that.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, there was an exodus because many people started to realize that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t a visionary genius and a nerd’s nerd. Musk seemed to relish the cruelty of the initial layoffs. The tone shifted when he unbanned problematic accounts. Users stuck around because it was still a place where something familiar existed, be it friends, celebrities, journalists, sports, and so on. Plenty of people use X every day for small communities of things they love and don’t think twice about who owns and controls the venue. Can one supply content and give attention to a place, yet still ignore the misogyny, racism, fascism, transphobia, and any other combination of ‑isms or ‑phobias? In at least a small way, participating is still co-signing that behavior, as attention makes the service money. Paying for X Premium makes it worse.

MacStories left the site before advertisers got sued, before whatever Musk’s involvement was in the 2024 election, before the DOGE circus, before the xAI data center saga in Memphis, and before Grok undressed people. With the misadventures of the man behind it during the last four years, it doesn’t seem like the direction of X has gone in a more comfortable direction.

Everyone talks about hating on the various Musk-associated properties, but too many times I’ve heard someone make an exception somewhere. There’s no other EV quite like a Tesla! Starlink is the only viable ISP option in rural areas! AI is the future and as such, we need to be familiar with Grok! We can’t leave X because people won’t be able to find us! I get it, we all have lines in the sand and if you cut out everything that is slimy in some way, you might as well go live in a cabin in the woods. I get that’s not feasible for most, especially with so many industries consolidating down to two or three major players. Perhaps we should reject the worst offenders or at the very least work on an exit strategy? You can’t get rid of everything, but how about less? Drop some completely and reduce others.

I let this post sit for the past couple of days, mulling over if I should hit publish. I didn’t want it to turn into personal attacks or cheap shots. However, the initial situation didn’t sit well with me and it seems like I wasn’t the only one. I respect the work that the MacStories crew has done over the years and want to believe they’re decent people just trying to keep doing what they love, but made some questionable judgment calls. Still, it’s disappointing to see them proclaim that they’re leaving a toxic platform and then quietly come back when the platform really hasn’t gotten any less toxic.

Update: On Friday, August 21, Viticci posted “An Explanation” separate from MacStories. For me, it’s not just that they went back to X, but how everything transpired and the cowardice that the explanation can’t even be found on the site. It feels like an attempt to mollify critics, yet I’m not quite sure one can really separate X from Musk.