This reminds me of shitty FTP sites with ratios when I was on dial-up. I used to push them files full of null characters with filenames that looked like actual content. The modem would compress the upload as it transmitted it which allowed me to upload the junk files at several times the rate of a normal file.

It’s ultimately driven by the lack of constraints in their market segment. Tech companies will screw over investors as well if they can get away with it.

But I was more talking about how the founder of Duolingo professed specific, world-bettering goals when he started the company that – if held sincerely – would make him ashamed of himself because most of what the company does isn’t in the service of them.

The tech world is rife with founders that ultimately met that exact same fate.

I’ve been using the free version almost exclusively for over a decade. It continually gets shittier all of the time.

The latest thing is you can’t even practice the language to earn more hearts to continue your lesson, you have to now watch ads. I think it’s rather emblematic of their approach overall… it’s not about learning it’s about more eyeballs for ads, unless you fork over a recurring payment for increasingly mediocre lessons.

Duolingo has enshittified so much over the last few years.

Even if I had the ability to become a millionaire tech founder, I don’t think I’d want to because every “I want to make learning new languages free and easy for everyone” becomes a “I have to drive 3% more ad revenue this quarter by charting my users’ every bowel movement”.

I suspect the reality of being a rich tech bro is watching your adult self slowly consume your own childhood dreams, aspirations, and soul.

It’s basically like saying “illegal immigrants” aren’t made up for Trump. Like, obviously people coming into the country illegally exist, but the dude was just making shit up when it came to the actual numbers.

Nautilus shows me that stuff next to each other out of box on Ubuntu. It just doesn’t have drive letters.

So much for Mike Rowes dirty jobs.

(Jk, those things were always a load of shit anyway.)

Many of them work without having to install anything. You could try a live boot USB and see what of them doesn’t work to get an idea how difficult it’ll be.

AKA all of your personal data, you know, just in case we need it

They didn’t “design a directory tree” either. They were designing screens for a thing that sits on top of a directory tree, and they didn’t understand the underlying concept.

It was likely because they’re used to the abstraction that iPhones and iPads provide, where the underlying directory structures are largely hidden from users.

They were designing functionality that contained directory trees and didn’t understand directory trees. How is it my responsibility that this person is not qualified to do their own job?

If I knew I was teaching remedial computers that day, I would’ve come with a lesson plan.

I’m going to stick with my initial conclusion that you love to blame the “teacher” even when they aren’t in any way a teacher.

Yeah, but you were still in a teaching position.

No, I was in a meeting with a supposedly technical person.

I’ve been in the industry for a while, and I’ve even mentored people. These gaps in basic computer knowledge are new and they’re also not my problem. I was not this person’s mentor nor supposed to be teaching them anything.

I’m not a teacher. I thought I was in a design meeting not teaching remedial computers to someone who is supposed to be producing designs.

Just going off of my life experience, I notice that people pretend up a set of credentials, have large gaps in knowledge, and won’t admit they don’t know things.

I tried to explain a directory tree to one of them (a supposedly technical resource) for twenty minutes and failed. They’re idiots. They were ruined by baby tech like iPhones, iPads, and now AI.

I’ve been on it for a few years now.

It’s different from Twitter and that’s fine. I have no real drive to join bluesky to see if it’s similar because Twitter felt deeply unhealthy anyway. Crack cocaine isn’t good for you.

Nobody needs to know about the existence of, for instance, “bean dad”.

As a user of both Mastodon and Lemmy, I think there are inherit differences between the formats that make Lemmy easily a capable replacement for Reddit, but Mastodon not at all a replacement for Twitter.

To get into specifics, Lemmy is more meme and news based, and as long as there are a few thousand users using it and some percentage of those posting content…it largely scratches the same itch.

Twitter was very much an active global conversation forum. It was nicknamed the hell site for a reason because if someone took issue with or was very amused by something you posted and you became “the main character” of Twitter for even an instant (something I experienced only very slightly) it was electrifying and even sort of scary at times.

In addition, the people that were active on there were very active, and it felt at times like you could talk to anyone who had been twitterized…which was a lot of people including prominent politicians, celebrities, and even experts of certain fields.

It was just an entirely different thing altogether. Mastodon is like many of the Twitter alternatives that have popped up from time to time. It’s largely kinda the same with regards to functionality (though not having quote tweets is completely ridiculous IMO) but the engagement of it is very low, and the place largely feels very inactive. It feels like you’re talking to dead feeds posted in syndication and there’s nobody on the other end (and in many cases I don’t doubt that is literally the case).

It’s not the same as Twitter, and I doubt that Bluesky will even be the same as Twitter. Honestly, maybe all of that’s a good thing. But the virality and the engagement and the discovery and everything on Mastodon is way turned down versus Twitter. Twitter was like the crack cocaine of social media…fast, cheap, addictive, and terrible for you. Mastodon is like a cup of tea by comparison.

Do you find food valuable? Clothing? Shelter?

Some things are valuable because we’re frail creatures who need stuff in order to survive. I don’t believe in gatekeeping those vital things behind a monopolistic mega-corporation but my country sure as hell does. The monopolistic mega-corporations that provide human necessities become inherently valuable by proxy.

Are you asking if collecting taxes in the currency is the “necessary but not sufficient” condition for a currency to have value? Sure.

The second thing I wrote about (military consequences) is another thing altogether. Obviously, things are slightly more complicated in modern economies and with global capitalism so they aren’t the only factors that matter, but they’re important. In addition, prior to Trump part two, there was also the dominance over global capitalism using soft power, but I think we’ve begun the process of “uncentering” ourselves in that system.

Expectation of stock value, sure, but also inherently valuable in that the services or products they provide are things that people value. For instance, a utility company that owns electrical plants and produces electricity and distributes it provides an inherently valuable service. Who pays for that is a separate concern, as is the stock price, but the service itself is valuable.