Excursions

Don’t want to brag, but I really find the discover section on Micro.threads helpful. There was otherwise no way I could catch up on posts missed and being discussed on overnight. I wish though I could fetch more posts using API than I can now, a bit limited currently.

I believe “all data is anonymised” has to be the biggest lie all these data hoarding and advertising companies tell its customers. With the amount of data they have, they can build an extremely accurate profile of any user, doesn’t matter if individual data point is anonymised.

Due 3.0 looks nice. Rich custom snooze in notifications is a good addition in itself. Options earlier were too limited. Black theme, well not much interested.

This is one app I use a lot, but mostly in the background. Doesn’t matter what theme it drapes itself in.

So now we have this “Olivery - world’s first smart olive oil bottle”, wtf?

Can we be smart ourselves first and stop making everything out there smart? This trend is crazy - have we not learnt anything from the Juicero episode?

This is such a fascinating read — I don’t think it is a stretch to think there would be teens who would be overwhelmed by the burden of being social digitally. The below excerpt made be really ponder how a generation older behaves might me affecting the generation next.

The fact that Gen Z have had their every move documented online since before they could walk, talk, or even control their bowels helps explain their antipathy to social media: it makes sense for them to strive for privacy, as soon as they reach the age when they have a choice over their online image.

“I’ve seen parents post pictures of their child’s first potty online,” says Amy Binns of the University of Central Lancashire. “You think: ’Why are you doing this to your child? They wouldn’t want this to be public.”

This article has left me with so questions to mull over.

I read this. And then I read this again. I checked the source to make sure it isn’t from The Onion. It wasn’t.

We know that people want a relevant Twitter timeline. One way to do this is by unfollowing people they don’t engage with regularly. We ran an incredibly limited test to surface accounts that people were not engaging with to check if they’d like to unfollow them

If a platform has to tell its users to not follow some of its other users, you have to think something is inherent wrong with how they running it. I find it fascinating that Twitter will suggest “good” citizens of its platform to unfollow some who aren’t. But they would not grow a spine and just bar those problematic users from engaging on their platform. Crazy.

There was a reason I stopped reading news throughout the day, I just didn’t want a constant stream of negativity clouding my mind. I would just visit the tech portals occasionally. Now stream of political sewage is spreading there too - if nothing else, I’d hate Trump for that.

We need a directory of people who are active microbloggers. It needs to group them by interests, geographies and few other aspects. I had started working on one, and then I had stopped - but gained few opinions.

Here are some thoughts on how such a directory should work.

A culture canvased on the wall.

One thing that Google’s scattered focus - multiple start-ups inside, than a cohesive company with multiple products - and culture allows is to steal mindshare from the tech news portal. Just access any and there is always some Google news being discussed. Win-win for both.

Today I decided to remove the Micro.blog app from the dock to a folder on the home screen. Screen Time showed I was hitting the limit for the social media usage almost everyday. Dock makes the access to an app way too easier.

As much as I love the community on the platform, I don’t think accessing the app out of habit, just to check what new things people are talking about since the last 10 mins, is healthy. I would want to use any app on my schedule, not just subconsciously dip in as my mind wanders.

We need a directory of microbloggers. This fact is clear from the sheer number of discussions that happen on the Micro.blog platform asking for recommendations on users by interests, or geography or something else.

I just wanted to put down my thoughts on what such a directory would need to have for it to be helpful and not polluted with mess.

1. Directory needs to have a vouch mechanism. A user mentions some information about himself, his followers vouch for that. And the vouch’s what matters. Without such a mechanism, the system is prone to abuse, where people can pollute it with catchy tags without nothing to back it up with. We know how such systems are gamed. SEO. App Store tag words.
2. Other users should be able to associate more information about a person, an extension of vouch. They only get shown if the concerned person accepts.
3. Group types need to be limited. Possible options for groups need to be predefined. So geography - possibly timezones or countries, interests - sports or tech or writing etc, current events followed. Without this, it’s again prone to abuse. This may also make aggregation/interface easier to manage. Tagmoji is already a good example.
4. As Brad Enslen opined, may be it should not be limited to micro.blog platform. One should be able to provide other details too. May be via IndieAuth signin?
5. An option to add to directory directly from a post would be handy. It may also allow building metadata for the vouch system, if needed.
6. A person’s interests, geography, isn’t it an extension of one’s identity? Can it not be captured as part of one’s h-card?

Can such a directory exist outside of Micro.blog? Sure (I even had basic one running on Micro.threads dev). But for it to be helpful it would need a significant number of users adding their information to such a service. I believe it fits best with the platform, as the list of users is already available. With some metadata added, a directory page, just like there are Tagmoji pages for posts, can be enabled for users. This will avoid creating a parallel user list, which will always be lesser than what would exists with the platform.

Directory can be made as tricky as it can get. But it is sure one is required as the number of microbloggers grow. Blogrolls, personal directories on individual blogs are good starts. We need a place where that can be brought all together. And displayed easily on demand.

More Tagmojis are supported now, so few proposed ones striked from @burk’s list. Hurrah!

That also means more recommendations from the community to be explored - so Micro.threads Explore section is updated with these too.

I won’t disagree with this poster at a Barbeque place nearby.

Reminiscences of the days gone by, when sales were not what these drove.

Rakshabandhan - the celebration of one of the funnest and purest relationships, of a brother and a sister.

So Amazon Echo devices are losing market share to Google Home now? All these devices look to be placeholders for now. Things they do are trivial, they need lot of tricky tweaking to make them helpful.

Post initial few days of newness, they just become music players with voice.

Why do Linode services and offerings look so .. dated? As if people behind just didn’t look around, look what the competition was offering, especially Digital Ocean. DO has really upped the game in hosted VPS with one-click apps and far better integrations.

Puzzle time with daughter - assembling beauty, a piece at a time.

Every time there’s a story around ads, I grumble knowing that so much talent is wasted on such trivial a thing as advertising — our AI overloads must be happy us humans are busy fighting away our intelligence.

It’s time to catch up on all the lost sleep last week working late on the hobby projects — so much was done, but so much more of the health was lost. Eyes’re burning hot, cursing me to go to sleep.

So a good 10 hours sleep now, followed by a walk to get some work done close-by.

The biggest struggle for me while using Mastodon is the fact that it does not recognise Markdown. Like Twitter, statuses are plain text with no understanding of html - no formatting, no hyperlinking. I’ve been “ruined” by Markdown - if an editor doesn’t support it, it’s broken.

Me. Words. And Chai ☕️

Apparently, 23andMe had an API that “developers of health apps, weight loss services and quantified self tests” could use to build “services” over anonymized data sets of user’s DNA. They no longer do. But seriously, did no one see what all could go wrong here? Facebook.. uhmm?

Aha, I had no idea Jason Mraz has a new album out - Know. Time to put him crooning in the background, stringing his guitar, get some positive vibes. 🎶