Alejandro Martinez @imavca@mastodon.technology
iOS/Mac developer and Beatles fan
Joined Apr 2017
Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.
Facebook doesn’t want to tell us how its systems work. Amazon doesn’t want to tell us how its systems work. These companies are data mining us, sometimes in concert, to make uncomfortably accurate connections but also erroneous assumptions. They don’t want to tell us how they do it, suggesting they know it’s become too invasive to reveal. Thank god for leakers and lawsuits https://gizmodo.com/amazon-and-facebook-reportedly-had-a-secret-data-sharin-1831192148
Alejandro Martinez
boosted
I never thought I'd see Microsoft throw in the towel on their browser engine. Or that, by the time it happened, I'd see that as a bad thing. Monoculture is still a problem, no matter who runs it. Firefox is going to be even more important in the future.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome-browser-windows-10-edge-chromium
@pnathan indeed he does
Facebook failed for me, because instead of making me feel social, it left me anti-social. I was anxious about my own life, and jealous of other lives, even though I didn’t care about things that others put value on. I mean, how can you be jealous of your friends and family?
A growing body of work is taking the algorithms of social media to task for optimizing for addiction and despair. Whipping its users into the highest possible state of frenzy, anxiety, and envy. Because that’s the deepest well of engagement to draw from.
The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
I'm pretty sure Hurricane Michael is a marketing ploy for the new Halloween movie.
Alejandro Martinez
boosted
take me down to parallax city where the back moves slow and the front moves quickly
Alejandro Martinez
boosted
Better Blocker for iOS 12 is now live.
Two weeks ago, I wrote that we wanted to radically simplify Better and widen its reach (https://ar.al/2018/08/27/better-blocker-two-year-review-and-thoughts-on-the-future/). With this release, we took the first steps towards that goal. We distilled the app to its essentials (taking it from 44MB to 11MB in the process) & lowered the price to the lowest tier on the App Store ($0.99/£0.99/€1.09).
Details: https://ar.al/2018/09/14/better-simpler-and-more-affordable/
Here’s to bringing the Better web to more people.
If you find yourself having a strong emotional response to something you see on the net, take a step back and remember there’s a good chance you’re being programmed. You don’t have to take the bait. And you shouldn’t accept emotional appeals at face value.
Alejandro Martinez
boosted
#Mozilla begrudgingly implements tracking protection by default, after being shamed into it yet again by Safari, the DuckDuckGo browser, and Gnome Web (just the ones I know who implemented it first) and talks a good talk while still having Google as its default search engine and continuing to get hundreds of millions from Google/Alphabet, Inc. – the largest surveillance capitalist in the world. (Mozilla Corp is ~entirely funded by surveillance capitalism.)
Hyprocrites.
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/08/30/changing-our-approach-to-anti-tracking/
Alejandro Martinez
boosted
I'm now accepting commissions! ✨ Currently only for Twitch Emotes and Sub Badges since I'm a busy child, but if you're interested you can check out my prices and info here: https://trello.com/b/r1dG5mUb/commissions Here's some examples of Twitch Emotes I've done before ↓ ↓ ↓
Alejandro Martinez
boosted
@imavca My thoughts are we live under surveillance capitalism and if we can safely use the PR efforts of surveillance capitalists (like open source tools) against their interests, we should. Turn off telemetry. Use it. Build something that makes Microsoft irrelevant in some way 😎
@aral simply inspiring, thanks!!
@aral I’m currently using Atom as my text editor, but I’ve been following your posts about VSCode and I want to try it! I just want to know your thoughts about using a Microsoft app as your main editor (maybe it’s just the anti-Microsoft in me overthinking it)
Keep that in mind today, or the next time you see someone say something stupid on Facebook or get hit with a breaking news alert. Taking offense solves nothing. It only makes you miserable. Don’t take offense, take control of your perceptions and wield them properly. It is the only way forward.
iOS/Mac developer and Beatles fan
Joined Apr 2017
