We’re watching Microsoft ruin another company. Its like if EA or IBM buys something, its enshittified and rent seeking occurs for shareholders.
Once this Windows monopoly has passed due to the abysmal quality it will hopefully be over, and hopefully AI helps remove barriers to file portability to hasten their demise.
I think that’s how a lot of the internet is dying right now because buying an IP then wringing every drop of value out of its dying corpse before dropping it is a good way to make money right now. This is very much a thing that happens outside of the internet too, and happened long before the internet existed. I think one of the cool things about the internet is how quickly word can spread about this kind of compromised company / product / whatever thing, though I think we need to get better at it. I’m not exactly sure how to accomplish that, it seems like an overwhelming problem, but I think about it a lot.
If I use my phone (not android Auto), I can no longer say, “Navigate to <place>”. It flat out does not work.
Navigate to Local Bakery Xyz.
I’m sorry I can’t do that.
(It tries to open the non-existent app for the local bakery).
If I’m in the car that has android auto, it refuses to let me type while in drive (fair enough) and it recognizes the “Navigate to…” Instructions, but if I click on the Maps nav bar for voice and say my destination (it literally says, no text while driving speak your destination)… It tries to open the app.
This shit used to work, it’s getting actively dumber.
I once tried to ask my phone to set an alarm. It said it did.
I checked the app. No alarm set.
I tried again, but with a timer. It said it was set.
Again, nothing.
I gave up on digital assistants after that. They took them out back and shot them, and what we see now is their rotted corpse puppeted by Shareholder Value™️ gone wrong. This was 2022.
“Users will completely understand the increased outages if we just eliminate the point-and-click UI that we’ve spent the last 30+ years getting them used to and instead give them a chat bot that they have to repeatedly type detailed instructions to for marginal results at best.”
It never occurred to me before now but from here on out, there will probably always be some old part of the internet, crumbling and sparse, moldering and broken, populated by far fewer denizens than it was designed for.
I wonder if that’ll just be the ever-fading “old folks” internet.
Oh sure, there will always be museums and monuments with little slices of the internet that was, but for the most part, the urge to repurpose old resources to new endeavors means that some parts of the internet will always fade away. I don’t know if we’ll ever start preserving it perfectly but we certainly aren’t there yet.
We’re watching the old internet fall apart.
We’re watching Microsoft ruin another company. Its like if EA or IBM buys something, its enshittified and rent seeking occurs for shareholders.
Once this Windows monopoly has passed due to the abysmal quality it will hopefully be over, and hopefully AI helps remove barriers to file portability to hasten their demise.
I think that’s how a lot of the internet is dying right now because buying an IP then wringing every drop of value out of its dying corpse before dropping it is a good way to make money right now. This is very much a thing that happens outside of the internet too, and happened long before the internet existed. I think one of the cool things about the internet is how quickly word can spread about this kind of compromised company / product / whatever thing, though I think we need to get better at it. I’m not exactly sure how to accomplish that, it seems like an overwhelming problem, but I think about it a lot.
I REALLY hope MS crashes and burns. They’re a shitstain company, and the shit Gates did as CEO was atrocious.
We are Flowers for Algernoning our technology.
If I use my phone (not android Auto), I can no longer say, “Navigate to <place>”. It flat out does not work.
Navigate to Local Bakery Xyz.
(It tries to open the non-existent app for the local bakery).
If I’m in the car that has android auto, it refuses to let me type while in drive (fair enough) and it recognizes the “Navigate to…” Instructions, but if I click on the Maps nav bar for voice and say my destination (it literally says, no text while driving speak your destination)… It tries to open the app.
This shit used to work, it’s getting actively dumber.
This morning I got fed up and asked,
“Can I use you to navigate somewhere?”
“Dutch Bros”
(Opens the Dutch Bros app)
I once tried to ask my phone to set an alarm. It said it did.
I checked the app. No alarm set.
I tried again, but with a timer. It said it was set.
Again, nothing.
I gave up on digital assistants after that. They took them out back and shot them, and what we see now is their rotted corpse puppeted by Shareholder Value™️ gone wrong. This was 2022.
It’s like all companies forgot that reliability is a core feature…
“Users will completely understand the increased outages if we just eliminate the point-and-click UI that we’ve spent the last 30+ years getting them used to and instead give them a chat bot that they have to repeatedly type detailed instructions to for marginal results at best.”
– Vibe CEO’s Everywhere
It never occurred to me before now but from here on out, there will probably always be some old part of the internet, crumbling and sparse, moldering and broken, populated by far fewer denizens than it was designed for.
I wonder if that’ll just be the ever-fading “old folks” internet.
You mean sourceforge?
https://www.spacejam.com/1996/
Oh sure, there will always be museums and monuments with little slices of the internet that was, but for the most part, the urge to repurpose old resources to new endeavors means that some parts of the internet will always fade away. I don’t know if we’ll ever start preserving it perfectly but we certainly aren’t there yet.