hotsauceror

I fully agree with this take. I don't think of a monitor / desktop as a tool that I interact with like I would a hammer; there is nothing intuitive about "open this high-definition representation of a day planner by clicking a button with your thumb on this little round plastic box somewhere else." I simply do not understand the appeal of skeumorphism, frankly I think these things look tacky but that is just my preference.

My interactions are with content, generally as strings of text but often as picture/video/audio. I prefer that my 'desktop' apply the principles you've mentioned, to the problem of tastefully and comfortably arranging, displaying, and manipulating that content, and little else. Some types of controls that lean skeuomorphic, like sliders or switches, may be useful and even intuitive in that endeavor; others, like an analog knob or dial, aren't. If I want to watch a video, display it in a minimal, tasteful frame; I do not need a representation of an old 1970s wooden TV or something.

The smartest minds in all of tech worked overtime to finally give computers the ability to lie to us. Excelsior!

This seems very much in the wheelhouse of clandestine agencies like the CIA and the FSB. Use front companies to modify the perceptions of reality by doing things like shifting the Overton window of currently discussed topics, preparing custom datasets for future LLM training that bake in desired assumptions, manipulating or publishing public opinion polls and prediction markets.

What are some of the add-ons that you run on the server? We run ours in a pretty bare-bones manner so I'm interested to hear what you're doing.

Thanks! And in case anyone ELSE is still following this thread, I should have mentioned these guys from the outset. They're from Finland, naturally...

Turmion Katilot

Holy shit, this is great. VAND3ST is beastly. Finishing Move too. Thank you so much.

“System Overload” is a banger. If that had some Nile-style double bass drum programming, that’s where my head is heading.

A friend at work got me into EC recently. I’m into it, they’ve got good sensibilities. Celldweller, is another group I have in mind. Less purely mechanical than Ministry or Fear Factory.

Thanks! ‘Die By My Hand’ is close to what I have in mind.

I've got a particular itch that's difficult to scratch, and I'm not seeing anything on this site that reflects the genre.

I've heard it as 'metalstep' but I'm sure there are other names for it. Very aggressive cross between metal and EDM. More of a metal sensibility than hardcore EDM; more of an EDM / trance sensibility than, say, Fear Factory. The drum tracks have more of a death metal vibe to them. It's probably easy to blend into other genres.

I'm thinking stuff like Invocation Array, Rave The Requivm, Follow the Cipher, even stuff like The Algorithm and Neurotech. I suppose Fear Factory would count here as well.

Very true, the act of unsubscribing itself signifies that the email is still live; more bad faith. As to why not sell it to a new vendor, because that would allow them to check a box that says “we offer a feature that allows users to opt out of data sharing agreement with the partners defined in the TOS and onboarding process.”

I refuse to believe that “someone just forgot” to implement a user-friendly feature whose omission coincidentally benefits their company. It is not a coincidence, and it was not done unintentionally. The same way that it is not a coincidence that the “unsubscribe” link is always in six-point font the same color as the rest of the email footer. Code does not happen in a vacuum. Code does not get pushed to production without vetting and approval. As I say, the assumption of bad faith is baked in.

Agreed. Any time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email, that takes me to a site where I have to provide my email or indeed, do anything more than click “confirm,” I leave. I assume it either resets some kind of consent trigger or sells my data to a new third-party vendor. The assumption of bad faith is now baked into my interaction with almost every corporate entity.