Notices by Peter O'Shaughnessy (peter@toot.cafe)

So Mapillary, the "Street View" part of OpenStreetMap (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapillary), based on crowdsourcing people's photos for their "open data" project.... has been bought by Facebook 🙄

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jesolem/diary/393358

A quarter of people now say they don't understand new tech.

A third of people now say tech makes life more complicated.

(Hat tip @stopsatgreen@birdsite)

Seems like missing out the 'No' button is the hot new UX trend now

"New research estimates that a worldwide tree planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”". Let's get planting! 🌳🌳🌳
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions

In today's #BlackMirrorReality news...

"Amazon, Apple and Google all employ staff who listen to customer voice recordings...

Some of the reviewers told Bloomberg that they shared amusing voice clips with one another in an internal chat room.

They also described hearing distressing clips such as a potential [trigger warning redaction - article linked below if you'd like to read it]. However, they were told by colleagues that it was not Amazon's job to intervene."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47893082

When websites say "use our app, it's much better", they mean better for them, not you.

I kinda 😍 this JS syntax as it's really useful for default properties. But also kinda 😱 as I totally didn't get the `= {}` bit at first & I still find it unintuitive! 😄
https://simonsmith.io/destructuring-objects-as-function-parameters-in-es6/#allowing-the-configuration-object-to-be-optional

"It is now possible to capture images from the ground at visible wavelengths that are sharper than those from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope... To compensate for the blurring effect of the Earth’s atmosphere, four brilliant lasers project columns of intense orange light into the sky, creating artificial 'Laser Guide Stars'. Adaptive optics systems use the light from these “stars” to determine the turbulence and calculate corrections 1000 times per second." 🔭 https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1824/

Everyone's free to toot as they like, within the guidance set by their instance, and we're all free to follow or not! But I think there's a lot of us here who appreciate that Mastodon can feel less angry & negative than other social spaces. So if you post mostly angry, negative stuff, without using CWs, you might find some of your followers drop off. (This toot risks sounding negative now though, so I'm going to sign off with kittens & sunshine! 🐱🌞)

Today I'm mostly thinking about how 12 years ago I was one of those Facebook enthusiasts who encouraged friends to sign up. And about how, as techies and early adopter types, we are like Pied Pipers, with responsibility to consider where we lead others.

Reminder: please keep an eye out for Mastodon newbies - e.g. on the introduction/introductions hashtags - and give them a fave/boost/friendly reply to welcome them. Thanks! 👍 #FriendlyFediverse