computers-R-stupid

discogs hall proctor watch

Comments Off on discogs hall proctor watch

Occasionally, for self-torture, it's fun to look at the Discogs forum and see what the hall proctors are debating.
In the screenshot below, venetian-guy asks why LolH has given him a EI (Entirely Incorrect) vote for some information he added to the database, and LolH replies:

lolH

Since Discogs uses fixed, hard-coded forms for data entry, ambiguities arise which drive the proctors -- unpaid "power users" who act as unpaid staffers -- into a frenzy. Individual egos and preferences vie in determining "what's best for the database." Proctors smugly quote the guidelines and claim to have a definitive interpretation. In the exchange above, the weighty issues to be decided are (i) whether "Lacquer Cut at" should precede "Pressed at" in a release's "labels" section, and (ii) how to accomplish that manually, since the software doesn't allow reordering.
As for "Lacquer Cut at" -- that feels like a fad but it's taken deadly seriously. Mastering has two meanings in the audio world: (i) the physical process of cutting the acetate or "lacquer" used to make a stamp for pressing records (or "glass mastering" in the case of a CD), and (ii) the non-physical process of compressing and adjusting audio levels on a tape or digital file. Many older vinyl records say "Mastered at (or by)," which could mean (i) or (ii) or a combination of both but was generally understood for decades to mean the physical process. Discogs proctors have begun substituting "Lacquer Cut at" for "Mastered at" in vinyl descriptions, when the markings in the vinyl "deadwax" show a particular, known cutting engineer. Whereas if the record sleeve says "Mastered at" and there is no indication of a lacquer-cutter on the disc itself, then the description is left as-is. The proctors are gradually changing thousands of releases, one entry at a time, and expect everyone to understand the reasoning behind the changes. Mastering and pressing can involve several steps and even different locations, and deadwax markings can be sloppy and hard-to-read, so arguments erupt all the time about who handled which mastering chore. It's quite possible that eventually some anti-"lacquer cut by" consensus might emerge and force everyone to change it all back to what it says on the actual release.

Update, Oct. 2021: As I spend more time on Discogs my assumptions about the site change. The paragraphs above have been revised to be more accurate.

failed infantilization

Comments Off on failed infantilization

sensitive

screenshot from twitter, 7/24/18

Twitter is protecting me from seeing a picture of a sleeping snowy owl. Even more f***ed up, my settings are actually configured not to hide so-called sensitive content.
Twitter is the number one content source for US journalism today, and yet, it doesn't work.

Update: On second look, my twitter settings are configured not to hide so-called sensitive content but that only applies to "search." There is a second checkbox (see below) that shields my innocent eyes from "media." What about tweets that aren't media, e.g., text? Can I not be protected from people's icky words when surfing around twitter?

twitterinfantilization2

dark infantilization patterns

Comments Off on dark infantilization patterns

addcontent

This is too trivial to qualify as a dark pattern but it is annoying.
The designer (this is from Feedly.com) doesn't think it's enough to have a big white-on-green plus sign telling you where to add an RSS feed ("content") to your list of feeds.
No, like a small baby you need a pulsating crib toy to draw your eye down to that part of the page.

All EFF'd UP

Comments Off on All EFF'd UP

Surveillance Valley author Yasha Levine has a piece in the Baffler this week about the Electronic Frontier Foundation, titled All EFF'd Up. He wonders why this advocacy group has been largely silent regarding the Facebook (lack of) privacy scandal, which blew up after the so-called Cambridge Analytica revelations (so-called because everyone already knew Facebook was a privacy ogre). He concludes that EFF (i) isn't really an advocacy group but simply a Silicon Valley lobbyist and (ii) is more concerned with government bad behavior than corporate. He contrasts the zeal with which EFF pursued the SOPA/PIPA anti-copyright legislation (which threatened to hurt the business model of the big search and social companies) and its lackadaisical efforts re: consumer privacy. Noting that EFF is heavily funded by tech giants, he adds that:

[t]he reason for EFF’s silence on the Facebook surveillance and influence scandal goes deeper -- into the business model of the internet itself, which from the outset has framed user privacy as being threatened by ever-imminent government censorship, as opposed to the protection of users and their data from wanton commercial intrusion and exploitation. Put simply, the lords of the internet care very little about user privacy -- what they want to preserve, at the end of the day, is their own commercial license against the specter of government regulation of any kind.

EFF wasn't always silent on Facebook (lack of) privacy. See for example, an article on Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline. But that was eight years ago.