do your kids know how to use a command line?
if so, at what age did they learn?
@drahardja it shouldn’t be prerequisite, sure. but it’s desirable. so UIs should invite it, encourage it, enable it even unconsciously.
when URLs are there, you see them and learn things about them, maybe even copy and paste them to form links, without even knowing you are making an effort. when they are not there, you don’t.
@drahardja when I was my kids’ age, i knew a lot about how computers work, because to do the cool stuff computers let you do you had to learn a bit. it was, in that sense, prerequisite. with touchscreens and GUIs that don’t expose a hierarchical file system even as folder icons in a finder, my kid knows none of that. i have to work to make the most basic things visible beneath the slickness, not magic. 1/
@drahardja computers (maybe masquerading as “phones” and other devices) are ever more essential now, shape our world so much more, and to most people they will always be just magic, with choices made that constrain and guide, of which they cannot be aware let alone resist. 2/
@drahardja that is what it means to infantilize. when very few people have agency within and sometimes against our technical infrastructure, we are collectively infantilized, disenfranchised.
not everybody will understand the web, sure, and that’s okay.
but if it’s one in ten and everyone has reasonably adept friends, or one in a thousand paid by and so often ideologically captured by a corporate employer, makes a big difference to the character of our society. /fin
@drahardja the reason to show URLs is not so people can examine them for scams.
the reason to show URLs is so people can know what a URL is, what it means to be at a location on the web, can see and maybe begin to think about a host and a path and a protocol, and different ways paths that are not intentional dark patterns get constructed. 1/
@drahardja most people should not be web “consumers”. the web is not a product. it is a public space. as much as possible we want citizens there who actively participate, not passive recipients of other peoples’ products.
or perhaps it’s on this we disagree. /fin
@drahardja how do you find it? how do you even know to look? where?
perhaps you think my phrasing was descriptively “infantilizing”, but i am obviously not infantilizing people in the sense of placing them in a position where they are left largely at the mercy of more powerful or knowledgeable actors, the sense i mean, the sense that so much contemporary software excels at.
front page of nytimes.com right now. remarkable.
Image of nytimes.com front page. It's 10:46 pm EDT Thursday 4/18/2024. NPR confirmed at 10:00 pm that Israel is bombing targets in Iran in retaliation for Iran's weekend (also retaliatory) strike. Financial markets clearly reflected this by 9:30 pm. The nytimes.com front page has nothing about it.
@drahardja how do novice users become advanced users? that’s the issue. the web at its start was explicitly designed to invite even casual users to learn and explore. newer practices hide every next step. you either choose to “become a web developer” or you stay at the surface.
that’s bad, ethically. the original ethos, rendering transparent the tools needed to incrementally grow into knowledge and creative capacity was good. 1/
@drahardja if you want, like firefox, to highlight the hostname for novice users, great. but if novices can only learn more by going into conplicated browser settings, you’ve created a cliff. 2/
@drahardja you can’t “empower” users. as soon as you say that, you’ve lied to yourself. users can only empower themselves. the commodity they are increasingly depleted of is agency. you can tell them more or less clearly security related information. that’s fine, and more clearly is better. but if you want an ethical web, made of participants and citizens rather than users and consumers, then you want an infrastructure that instructs and unfurls as people spend time. /fin
@djc apartment communities sometimes offer lower intro rates to new tenants, then increase at renewal. (this idea only really makes sense for apartment communities, where there are standard, pretty much apples-to-apples floor plans.) basically the proposed reg wld prevent that practice, either give renewals at the intro rates or prevent straight up intro rates. (landlords might substitute with “first two months free” for new tenants, but that at least makes clear the longer term resident price.)
@ben of course most users don’t understand URLs. most users don’t view source either. the point is that deeper information should be more accessible, and becoming more deeply informed should always be encouraged. if “broad adoption” is your *sole* lodestar, then whatever. this is ultimately an ethical stance, consistent with broad adoption, but not remotely motivated by it.
@khleedril URLs are more elementary than request and response headers. one should learn how to share a link, even without a little button. familiarity with URLs is not mostly about observing "nasty shit". it's understanding the most basic physics of the information systems that structure our world.
Rather than the vague, anecdotal path he favors, the right approach is to collectively lobby the government to conduct rigorous trials of what would become an inexpensive, public domain remedy. https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1780131552615420189
@mark the mobile form factor is generally harder to invite agency within. but people should try! it’d be great if when clicking into a URL in a mobile browser, for example, an editable box wrapping the whole URL appeared, rather than just a narrow truncation that is hard both to see and edit.
@mark every bad idea can be smuggled through as a safety feature. destroying people’s capacity to replace parts in the products they purchase and own, or use whatever ink cartridge they choose, is for “safety”. a world of people completely incapable of understanding or exercising agency with the most basic elements of their world is the least safe kind of world, even if individual withdrawals of agency are in some narrow sense protective.
@mark there are thoughtful ways to balance safety and encouragements to agency, eg https://z0ne.social/notes/9s8x1hzmu3
@mark you don’t have to be a nerd. but things should teach you about them if you are open to learning. hermetic sealing is a bad heuristic for “user friendliness”. cars are more user friendly when you can open their hoods and replace their parts. they are becoming far less user friendly now. preserving handcranks would teach nothing, relative to electronic ignition, which is better. things should get better. but they shouldn’t be hidden just for the sake of hiding.
“Greene also submitted an amendment to the Israel funding package, calling for using proposed funds for ‘the development of space laser technology’ on the US-Mexico border.” https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/04/18/7451819/ ht @SocraticEthics
the practice many browsers have adopted of truncating URLs in the address bar to the hostname is emblematic of the decline and commercially driven infantilization of the web.
understanding URLs — their roles and the ways and whys of how they are constructed — was an elementary skill of the original view-source web.
hiding complete URLs encourages people to become ignorant consumers of mysterious information services, rather than informed participants in a public forum.
Would it be a good or bad regulation if landlords were required to offer continuing residents the same rates they offer new residents?
@Alon @BenRossTransit So far the one success I think Biden really deserves credit for so far is mostly preventing a broader conflict. I hope that behind the scenes the “take the win” line is being more forcefully prosecuted than it is in public.
@Alon @BenRossTransit Not for the first time, I think you are both caricaturing and underestimating the unhappiness with Israel among many Americans.