Notes

News recently broke that Apple is forcing Patreon to pay its 30% App Store tax for every subscription done through its iOS app or get removed from the App Store. Essentially, this means that either subscribers or creators have to swallow the costs and I suspect most creators won’t be willing to sacrifice any of the little amount most of them earn from their creative work.

While I don’t have a Patreon account (anymore) and have never had a subscriber, I can imagine the frustration that most of these people are probably feeling. Heck, it frustrates me to no end even though I don’t rely on it for an income.

I suspect this won’t go well for Apple in the EU, as the App Store has already been designated a “gatekeeper” in the Digital Markets Act and Patreon already has the right to use or link to an alternative payment system, but elsewhere, like in the US, they are fully at Apple’s mercy.

I used to be a big Apple fan, but lately, I’ve started to lose interest in the company as it keeps acting in ways that rub me the wrong way. This is just the latest example. Unfortunately, the quality of their products is still better than most which makes switching to something else difficult for me. Windows has made major improvements over the years and I dabbled with Linux for a while too, but macOS is still my favorite OS and the quality of hardware is nearly impossible to find elsewhere.

In the smartphone and tablet market, the only real alternative is Android and since I dislike Google even more, so there is nowhere else to go.

In any case, I hope the anti-trust regulators have a heyday with this and Apple is forced to place nice.

Original announcement by Patreon: https://news.patreon.com/articles/understanding-apple-requirements-for-patreon

Last month, I was reading through the posts on one of my favorite nerdy blogs, OSnews, and came across something that interested me enough that I felt the need to share it on my own blog: most websites use dark patterns to manipulate their users to perform actions desirable for the website owner, but generally not for the user.

A global internet sweep that examined the websites and mobile apps of 642 traders has found that 75,7% of them employed at least one dark pattern, and 66,8% of them employed two or more dark patterns.

Dark patterns are defined as practices commonly found in online user interfaces and that steer, deceive, coerce, or manipulate consumers into making choices that often are not in their best interests.

ICPEN

As I said, I originally read it on OSnews, so here is the link to the post there. I couldn’t agree more with what the author wrote about it there. Having to deal with cookie banners is annoying enough, but then having to click through a hundred different popups just to get to the actual content of the website is really off-putting.

In fact, I make it a point to never sign up for anything I have to close in order to access a website’s content. Want me to sign up for your newsletter? You’d better damn well not make me deal with it before I’ve had a chance to even see what your site has to offer. Want me to not block ads on your website? Maybe you’d be better off letting me see the content on your website first before I make that decision.

It’s frustrating and leads to the worst user experience you can have. Marketers and business people may not understand that, but it doesn’t take a lot of common sense to see why such dark patterns are so utterly obnoxious.

Sources

• https://www.osnews.com/story/140203/majority-of-websites-and-mobile-apps-use-dark-patterns/
• https://icpen.org/news/1360

I don’t often post memes or other images I find on the internet because I prefer original content. However, sometimes I stumble upon one that really just hits the nail on the head and this is one of them.

I love computers and programming, but I somehow hate them at the same time. Sometimes I really do wish I could retreat to a cabin in the woods and never have to use any computer or derivative (i.e. smartphone, table, etc) ever again.

For me, that’s usually a sign that I’m tired, burnt out, and ready for a break. At that point, it’s time to take a vacation and leave most of my technology at home. Afterward, I come back feeling refreshed and ready to dive into programming once again.

“Notes” is a new category on my blog where I am going to post small, interesting things I stumble upon. It might be links or images or tidbits of information. I really don’t know what all I will post here, but I have a ton of ideas and inspiration and feel like I need a spot to post small things without much comment.

And this is that place.

Is it really though?

There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this topic other than that PHP is still the stalwart of the internet. New languages come and go, get popular and fade, but PHP still remains dominant.

I used to use PHP for all of my personal projects, but have since moved on to TypeScript/Node.js for most the most part. That is primarily due to being able to share code between frontend frameworks such as React and the backend which makes maintainability and development much easier for a single developer.

I do, however, still maintain several WordPress websites that each have their own custom themes and/or plugins which I’ve programmed in PHP and it really isn’t all that bad.

As terrible as a lot of people find PHP, a language with that sort of staying power and robustness can’t be as bad as some people make it out to be. That might be a controversial statement for a lot of developers, but I would argue it wouldn’t be so widespread otherwise.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. This post really had no point other than to share the graphic.

I found an ingenious solution for people who do not like End User License Agreements (EULAs).

A friend of mine sent me a bunch of interesting photos by photographer Jean Yves Lemuan. Some of them are really quite interesting. The group of photos that stood out to me consists of these:

Graffiti

Molotov Cocktail

Nazi Salute

Ignoring Poverty

The whole point of the series it seems to me is a visualization of the blackness that drives people to do things such as graffiti or giving the Nazi-salute. The one that really stood out in the series for me though was this one:

Praying

The photographer here is portraying that the same blackness the drives people to give the Nazi salute or to throw a Molotov cocktail or to spray paint graffiti or to ignore poverty, drives people to pray and to religion in general. I really like Jean Yves Lemuan’s portrayal of that concept.

You can find other photos from him here.

Reuters is reporting a very strange story about an Indian girl who married a dog apparently to ward off spirits or something. Here is what Reuters has to say about it:

Jan 26 – In India’s eastern Jharkhand, villagers ‘married’ off a young girl to a stray dog to ward off an evil spirit.

The locals at Munda Dhanda village performed the ceremony as they believe it will overcome any curse that might fall on the family.

Interestingly, the girl is free to get married later in life to a man without even seeking a divorce.
Superstitions are widespread in India, especially in rural areas where literacy is scarce.

Reuters is reporting that Nigerian police have arrested a coat on suspicion of armed robbery. They claim that a man who tried to steal a Mazada 323 ran from the police and turned himself into a goat using black magic. They think this goat is him. I’m speechless.

Bahhh

LAGOS (Reuters) – Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

“The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,” Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

“We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,” he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

This would make it difficult to get away:

We all know that gas prices are getting out of hand with the cost per barrel for oil setting new records almost daily. Everyone is looking for ways to go about cutting fuel costs, but I think this man has the best solution.

He has decided to start riding his horse instead of driving everywhere just like most people did a century ago. I think that is a wise idea and if I had a horse, I would probably do the same.

You can see the video about it on CNN’s website.

Some miscellaneous Mark Twain quotes that I found amusing:

“Whenever I feel the urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away”

“Familiarity breeds contempt — and children”

“The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes”

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

“None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.”