Post B0YUPFh1ImfJJAvT3Q by jackyan@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by jackyan@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #B0YDXfigihWb7p8RY8 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-23T22:24:21Z
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Lithium ion batteries can be a fire risk, yes. But cheap ones in household devices (phones, charging packs, *toys*) are much riskier than the ones in EVs, according to Colin Peacock;https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=0fc8e854-476a-4b94-a849-ecfac17b8e35Lithium ion EV batteries are probably no riskier than a tank of extremely explosive fuel. Certainly not risky enough to justify a regressive crusade against EVs in general, which these days may have nonexplosive sodium ion batteries.#podcasts #RNZ #MediaWatch #EVs #batteries #SodiumIon
(DIR) Post #B0YEEdrJVxKJo1ewqm by tim@union.place
2025-11-23T22:32:36Z
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@strypey unless the EV is a Jeep 4xe in which case apparently they pop off like nobody's business.
(DIR) Post #B0YI1BWtvjbHzpwyy8 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-23T23:15:02Z
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Me:> Lithium ion EV batteries are probably no riskier than a tank of extremely explosive fuelI stand corrected;"... we're talking about more than an order of magnitude less risk, so at least 20 times less risk associated with EVs than conventional cars."#DrTroyBailsden, Co-President, NZ Association of Scientists, 2025https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=0fc8e854-476a-4b94-a849-ecfac17b8e35@tim
(DIR) Post #B0YOLABxDIGJMc3uvA by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T00:25:53Z
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"If you go to Google and type in 'seabirds affected by light pollution', 3 or 4 years ago you would have been directed to our site with an organic link.Today you get presented with an AI answer that occupies the top thirds of the page, the rest is sponsored links. There might be 1 or 2 organic links at the bottom, or else you're on page 2. And tell me the last time anyone clicked on page 2 of Google." #JamesFrankham, publisher, #NZGeographic, 2025 https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=0fc8e854-476a-4b94-a849-ecfac17b8e35(1/?)#Google
(DIR) Post #B0YOoS7TdZiTMbvz4C by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T00:31:11Z
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It's been at well over a decade since I stopped using Goggle for web search, for reasons of principle. Everything I've heard about its enshittification since has supported that decision. But this description of the horrifying UX facing people these days takes the cake.(2/?)
(DIR) Post #B0YPYiXWv4fhbwBHqy by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T00:39:32Z
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A platform that respond to keywords with "AI" slop and advertising is not a search engine; a neutral tool for sifting through an index of web pages. Which is what Goggle Search offered to build its initial reputation and userbase (myself included), before pivoting to helping fill the web with ad bait.It's misleading to market misinformation and promotion engines like 2025 Goggle Search as "search engines". They should be regulated as the marketing businesses they are.(3/?)#PolicyNZ
(DIR) Post #B0YQCXSxVj3Gqk200m by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T00:46:44Z
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Speaking of filling the web with ad bait, it's worth noting that Goggle justified many of its early enshittifications of search by pitching them as solutions to problems caused *by them*.Once people realised they could make passive income by whacking up a no effort website and plastering it with Goggle ads, they did. In huge numbers. I remember a friend running a bunch of these around the turn of the Millennium.(4/?)
(DIR) Post #B0YQhB7id70aX4hrgu by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T00:52:15Z
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These web weeds made more money if they could get more traffic, so that kicked off the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) gold rush. Which quickly became an arms race.SEO consultants were hired by businesses trying to promote their products and services via these newfangled website things. Prompting the people propagating ad bait weed sites to come up with new SEO hacks, to keep their passive income rolling in.(5/?)
(DIR) Post #B0YRTrKV0mTTKftgcC by BruceMirken@mas.to
2025-11-24T01:01:00Z
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@strypey Google is a hellhole. I almost never use it.
(DIR) Post #B0YRYnJLNdN0Jhi5IW by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T01:01:58Z
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Goggle performatively scratched its head and said 'how on earth did this happen'. Then proceeded to enshittify its search portal. Charging businesses for more prominent mentions, on the basis that this was cheaper than paying for SEO. Which I'm sure it was ... at first.It wasn't as obvious at the time, but what Goggle did to search was every bit as shifty as what Melon Husk did to Xitter, by privileging posts by accounts that pay for blue checkmarks. It really is time to abandon both.(6/6)
(DIR) Post #B0YUDp3rycfRWjACjg by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T01:31:41Z
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@strypey James is spot on. I said over 20 years ago now that you have to occupy multiple media if you are to make a go of publishing, because online-only is not going to work. And that was when I first observed the advertising market becoming enshittified (not that that word was coined). I hate to say it but you could extrapolate those trends even then and get to where we are, sans LLMs.
(DIR) Post #B0YUMUtsIyLJbWcoqm by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T01:33:19Z
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@strypey Fifteen years for me. Every now and then I use it to test it as too many people are wedded to it and I need to see how we are performing. And in 2024 I used it a lot to monitor the disinformation being written about me, as Google is very good at indexing disinformation (ahead of legitimate content). But in normal circumstances, it hasn’t been my default since 2010.
(DIR) Post #B0YUPFh1ImfJJAvT3Q by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T01:33:48Z
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@strypey Now I like where this is going. We should regulate the shit out of them. We should also tax the shit out of them.
(DIR) Post #B0YUcLEO1SEmFVm49o by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T01:36:11Z
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@strypey I saw more than my fair share last year with the disinformation sites. Ever since Google began funding them when they acquired Blogger and allowed any moron to feature ads, we have been on this slippery slope. Before Google, ad networks used to check both advertiser and website. They made errors, yes, but on the whole they kept the standards high and we earned an OK amount. Not enough to cover wages but more than enough to cover hosting and some other basics.
(DIR) Post #B0YVUvFoJ25dbsSzC4 by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T01:46:02Z
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@strypey SEO has been one of the worst things to affect the web, especially as 99 per cent of practitioners are con artists, and the tools are BS as well. You may have followed some of my Semrush saga last year. Semrush claims to tell users what the trending keywords are. I got them to admit (publicly) that it guesses them. Google could have got ahead of all of these but it chooses not to, because of the need to show page views that influences its share price (as found in discovery).
(DIR) Post #B0YVZdjKt1D0i0Wgkq by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T01:46:54Z
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@strypey Google has, unfortunately, been pay to play for some years now … I’m quite happy to see it vanish as we would all find alternatives overnight (if we haven’t already).
(DIR) Post #B0YyHynA1ivxa17ldw by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T07:08:41Z
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(1/2)@jackyan> But in normal circumstances, it hasn’t been my default since 2010I don't have a clear date in memory I when I abandoned Goggle Search as I do for FarceBook, because I wrote a blog post about that at the time. But it was probably around that same time, not long after. I remember noticing the enshittification start to kick in hard around the time Goggle turned off federation in GChat and replaced it with Hangouts, which was in 2013;https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-standards-instant-messaging
(DIR) Post #B0Yyb9RedvDK7dCshE by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T07:12:09Z
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(2/2)It was around this time that the Data Liberation Front team seemed to have been frozen in carbonite and handed over to Boba Fett. They still exist, but they seemed to become mostly inactive as Goggle transitioned from an engineer-driven company to a capital-driven, rent-seeking leviathan.
(DIR) Post #B0ZPKhlUUE1oP2rpOC by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T12:09:33Z
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@strypey I had some Duck Duck Go posts in 2010, which was how I could place the date, though I began de-Googling the year before. I remember having Google Buzz forced on us, not sure what year that was without looking it up. But that was another sign of Google enshittification.
(DIR) Post #B0aK1pKJqJEtjyISPo by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-24T22:46:58Z
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@jackyan> I remember having Google Buzz forced on usBuzz or Goggle+? I remember thinking the One Ring to Rule Them All approach G+ involved was profoundly regressive step, pretty obviously done to ape FarceBook.
(DIR) Post #B0aKXuXXzkeLAymbg0 by va2lam@mastodon.nz
2025-11-24T22:52:45Z
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@strypey Cars do sometimes just randomly burst into fire. Happened to a flatmate of mine once at like 2am.
(DIR) Post #B0aPkuRcA50EPm1djd by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-24T23:51:06Z
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@strypey Definitely Buzz, 2011.https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-2025/
(DIR) Post #B0aTKFRQO3ojX8TlAW by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-25T00:31:08Z
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@jackyan> Definitely Buzz, 2011I think we're talking about the same thing using different nouns.Goggle+ was their attempt to compete with FarceBook (primarily), and doing that involved aping the way they combined all their features under a single login. The integration of Buzz and every other Goggle app that existed at that time was all part of that strategy, and 2011 was when it all rolled out.
(DIR) Post #B0abBCmvgIz0KdjjkW by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-25T01:57:57Z
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@strypey Plus was a few months later but definitely part of the same mess and enshittification:https://jackyan.com/blog/2011/07/google-organized-the-web-facebook-our-social-networks-what-does-plus-do/
(DIR) Post #B0cQVlVXatticn7m6q by hamiller@hub.hubzilla.hu
2025-11-25T07:52:31Z
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@Strypey I remember Google Buzz being more similar to Google Wave than to Google+.
(DIR) Post #B0cQVmgDEi1oGB7oNk by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-25T23:08:57Z
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@hamiller> I remember Google Buzz being more similar to Google Wave than to Google+Buzz was an unremarkable Titter clone. Wave was a set of extension on top of XMPP, intended to create a 21st century collaboration tool. It was way ahead of its time. It was passed off to Apache, but apparently the last maintainers stepped down in 2018;https://incubator.apache.org/projects/wave.htmlNeither was much like to the G+ app. but G+ describes not only the app but the centralisation of Goggle accounts that came with it.
(DIR) Post #B0cSSJxzjbZuFNv26y by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-25T23:30:51Z
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@jackyan> Plus was a few months laterWe're both splitting hairs at this point, but as I remember it (and I was following developments pretty closely), G+ was *both* the centralisation of Goggle all accounts, *and* the app of the same name, formally launched as that transition was completed.
(DIR) Post #B0cVYCwb3aRu4DlP9M by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-26T00:05:27Z
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@strypey It was. All I am saying is Buzz happened before Plus’s release. But the connections in Buzz were ported over to Plus, IIRC.
(DIR) Post #B0cW7nKdlARr3byktc by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-26T00:11:57Z
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@jackyan yes. This is also what I'm saying. Consensus! : )
(DIR) Post #B0cn7Pk99zEF7SJVtg by jackyan@mastodon.social
2025-11-26T03:22:18Z
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@strypey 👍😁
(DIR) Post #B0gtZmjYeUSSt9n0ee by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-28T02:53:34Z
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@va2lam> Cars do sometimes just randomly burst into fireOk, but if Dr Bailsden is right, roughly 20 ICE cars spontaneously combust for every EV it happens to.
(DIR) Post #B0gtv7LtBmd2urtHwO by va2lam@mastodon.nz
2025-11-28T02:57:22Z
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@strypey normalization of deviance
(DIR) Post #B0hei5Akg3NuEly3PM by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-28T11:41:43Z
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@va2lam> normalization of devianceHuh?
(DIR) Post #B0hh1cJdsJ7sRLZJFw by va2lam@mastodon.nz
2025-11-28T12:07:36Z
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@strypey normalization of deviance is where humans observe that they got lucky doing something risky and so they'll continue to get lucky. In this case, having a car that might randomly catch on fire.
(DIR) Post #B0ipbNwLnJ1F4TCUYS by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-29T01:18:28Z
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@va2lamOk. I'm still not sure what point you're maing in relation to the point of the thread. Are you commenting on people being blind to the inherent spontaneous combustion risks of ICE cars because they're not new?
(DIR) Post #B0ivJZbOIQV7kiHphI by va2lam@mastodon.nz
2025-11-29T02:22:23Z
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@strypey yes, that
(DIR) Post #B0ivb37lmotuEklU1Y by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-11-29T02:25:38Z
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@va2lam> yes, thatGotcha : ) I didn't want to jump to that conclusion, because after our discussion about electronic driver tracking and "user pays" road charges, I don't assume we're always on the same page.