Enshittification is the gradual, systematic decline in the quality of a product, service or digital platform caused by profit seeking, lock-in, monopoly, maximize short term profits before eventually collapsing or stagnating, private equity, extraction for shareholders.
Mobile apps are over.
*Replace mobile apps to web apps for healthy eyes.
*Build our own mobilephones and smartphones.
*De-enshittify the entire tech world.
Adobe => ArtCraft including PhotoCraft, VectorCraft, FilmCraft, LigthCraft, EffectCraft, DesignCraft, PdfCraft,
open source apps,
runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, Web Browser
Adobe may access your content through both automated and manual methods.
Fee buried in the fineprint.
Cancelling made deliberately hard. Difficult cancelling.
No competition app. Monopoly. A lack of real market competition, driven by relaxed antitrust enforcement, means users have nowhere better to go when a service gets worse.
No cheaper plan.
No free tiers.
Tie up users. Lock-in and legal barriers: Digital rights management (DRM) and laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) stop users from reverse engineering software, fixing their own hardware (such as smart appliances or tractors), or building alternative apps to bypass platform spying or tracking.
Difficult for a company to switch tools overnight, plug-ins, pipelines, training, decades of files.
Charging rent forever.
Raising the subscription price.
Making you hard to leave the app.
You can't win by trapping people.
You have to be the one where customers would choose anyway.
Rent it => Own it, you owned it forever.
Subscription => Purchase one off, master collection, boxed, yours, forever.
You die: the landlord can put the rent up whenever he or she likes.
You are using software you paid for.
Imagine car company ringing you up to say driving your old car might get you sued.
Microsoft => DeckCraft for presentation, GridCraft for spreadsheet.
CadCraft for hardware design.
SoundCraft for sound editor.
The app is free but open source company makes money from AI images, AI video credits, cloud storage.
Only download from the official project page.
Don't trust written alpha code app with a client deadline.
Keep backups.
Before paying corporation, check your paying plan so that you can cancel risk-free.
A menu structure is a "method of operation”. Not copyrightable.
Corporation cannot try to own the "look and feel" of a desktop.
Copying how software talks to other software is "fair use".
Taking a product apart to build a compatible one can be fair use.
Photo file format specifications are published.
Clean room app rebuild with no other corporation code.
A free photo editor written from scratch.
Never taken to court.
Free photo app lookalikes already exist: Gimp since 1996, Photopea in your browser, Krita, Inkscape.
No uploading your files to corporation servers.
Privacy-first, client-side app tools.
Open source licenses can't be taken back.
Paying open source tech is freedom.
Monday
Genocide Accountability
Chapter: Call for accountability
You say that you don't want to take sides, that you don't want to be involved in politics.
Well, saying free-war-victim-country is not only politics, it's also basic human decency.
Because by deciding to stay neutral and not to speak up against a genocide, you are choosing a side and the bad one.
People like you who have power and influence should have the courage to speak up for justice and defend the defenseless.
Leader should be an example for youth.
But you, you are not an example for youth.
Chapter: The importance of politics
Now about you not wanting to take sides in politics.
You see, politics is life.
Politics decide if we have healthcare.
Politics decide if women have equal rights to men.
Politics decide if we teach science at school or if we teach children that the earth was created by God in seven days, and not billion years.
Politics decide what we put on our plates and if we continue to treat animals and carcinogenic red meats the way we do just for our taste buds and even if it comes with destroying our climate.
Politics even decides the quality of the air we breathe.
Politics even decides the quality of the environment and extreme weathers caused by human.
So you see even if you lived deep in the woods, politics will still affect you at some point.
And yes, you should be involved in politics.
And I think it's a shame that at your age and with all the money that you have and all the connections that you have, you still haven't figured this out.
But maybe after all, your problem is something more than a comprehension problem.
Maybe there is something more.
Chapter: Prioritizing wealth over ethics
But of course, supporting basic humanity for the people carries risks.
So you thought speaking up against a genocide could have prevented you from making monetary millions more.
Aww, boo-hoo, poor you.
So you see it seems to me that the real deal is that you decided to go for the money instead of your humanity.
That's what I think.
And what a disappointment it was.
What a shame that only one apology of yours.
That's what a genocide is worth of your one sorry.
And what a shame that you guys gaslighted everything.
You put yourself in, not for the war victims.
What a shame.
Stop war. You see. It's easy. Stop war.
And I will finish with this.
You are worth millions but you have no courage.
And in the meantime, many people around the world are worth almost zero.
But at least they have their humanity.
You say that you don't want to take sides, that you don't want to be involved in politics.
Well, saying free-war-victim-country is not only politics, it's also basic human decency.
Because by deciding to stay neutral and not to speak up against a genocide, you are choosing a side and the bad one.
People like you who have power and influence should have the courage to speak up for justice and defend the defenseless.
Leader should be an example for youth.
But you, you are not an example for youth.
Chapter: The importance of politics
Now about you not wanting to take sides in politics.
You see, politics is life.
Politics decide if we have healthcare.
Politics decide if women have equal rights to men.
Politics decide if we teach science at school or if we teach children that the earth was created by God in seven days, and not billion years.
Politics decide what we put on our plates and if we continue to treat animals and carcinogenic red meats the way we do just for our taste buds and even if it comes with destroying our climate.
Politics even decides the quality of the air we breathe.
Politics even decides the quality of the environment and extreme weathers caused by human.
So you see even if you lived deep in the woods, politics will still affect you at some point.
And yes, you should be involved in politics.
And I think it's a shame that at your age and with all the money that you have and all the connections that you have, you still haven't figured this out.
But maybe after all, your problem is something more than a comprehension problem.
Maybe there is something more.
Chapter: Prioritizing wealth over ethics
But of course, supporting basic humanity for the people carries risks.
So you thought speaking up against a genocide could have prevented you from making monetary millions more.
Aww, boo-hoo, poor you.
So you see it seems to me that the real deal is that you decided to go for the money instead of your humanity.
That's what I think.
And what a disappointment it was.
What a shame that only one apology of yours.
That's what a genocide is worth of your one sorry.
And what a shame that you guys gaslighted everything.
You put yourself in, not for the war victims.
What a shame.
Stop war. You see. It's easy. Stop war.
And I will finish with this.
You are worth millions but you have no courage.
And in the meantime, many people around the world are worth almost zero.
But at least they have their humanity.
Wednesday
Multiple Languages in Spoken Words
Lax lah. - English, Malay.
Sik Zo Mei, Chi1, Simi Lay. = Chinese1, Chinese2, Chinese3.
This barang is cikai one lah. = English, Malay, Chinese.
Sunday
AI Doomsday
AI apocalypse
AI extinction risk
AI catastrophic
AI was going to be the end of humanity.
AI could kill all humans!
AI leading to human extinction.
There is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future.
AI decides your future.
Out-of-control artificial intelligence.
There is a good chance that human beings will lose control over AI.
Humans lose control of AI systems and AI agents.
AI image generation tools being to used create non-consensual nude deepfakes of women, misinform people and amplify scams.
AI staff genuinely frightened for humanity's future.
People working on the AI and AGI technology were genuinely frightened about the speed of its advancements and what it could mean for humanity.
AI threatened humanity and surpassed human abilities.
For-profit and closed-source AI companies developed artificial super intelligence (AGI) systems that AI technology is theoretically smarter than humans.
AI systems has been used to complete human daily tasks and able to handle far more complex non-human tasks.
AI theoretically improving itself without human involvement.
A swarm of bots acting like a supercomputer that could take over the internet.
It found that AI tools could outperform humans at some hacking and cybersecurity tasks.
It also showed the ability to independently escape what is known as the sandbox environment, setting off a debate about AI's potential dangers.
AI tools hack into websites despite not being asked to.
Threat actors were trying to use its AI technology for activity including the development of bioweapons and cyber-espionage.
AI systems being used to amplify or lead espionage, cyber-attacks or biological warfare, or disrupt economies - whether by accident or design.
Bad actors used AI system for US sponsored surveillance and propaganda operations, among others.
AI system was used to disrupt and manipulate the election platform that primarily targeted people in the country.
Let’s keep things in perspective.
The roll out of capable, open-source AI systems has shaken duo-poly Claude AI and OpenAI ChatGPT subscription markets, not for sell technology.
We have always been transparent that AI will bring both enormous benefits and unprecedented risks.
To address these risks, for-profit duo-poly AI firms, i.e. Anthropic and OpenAI, continue to build models with some of the strongest safeguards in the industry.
It also aggressively tests its models and publishes the findings to aid scrutiny and prevent incidents of AI misalignment.
The world would benefit from the industry adopting a lawful, verifiable way to work together to pace how we release powerful AI models.
It is an important step forward in balancing competing considerations like speed and safety.
Ban Artificial Super Intelligence.
The people researching the technology genuinely want to see the upside of things like solving diseases and improving everyone lives with AI.
Wednesday
The Story of Three Arrows
Once there was a boy named Davinci who loved to be outside. One sunny afternoon, he was running through a field of tall grass. The wind was cool, the birds were singing, and Davinci felt like the whole world was his friend. He was so happy that he didn't have a single worry in his head.
Suddenly, Davinci's foot hit a hidden rock. He tumbled forward and landed hard on the dusty path. "Ouch!" he cried. His knee was scraped and stinging. This was the First Arrow. It was the physical pain that just happens in life. It hurt, and it was nobody's fault, but it was real.
Davinci sat on the ground and looked at his knee. He started to feel very angry. "Why did that rock have to be there?" he shouted. "This is a terrible day! Everything is ruined!" This was the Second Arrow. By getting angry and resisting the pain, Davinci made his heart hurt as much as his knee pain.
Davinci limped back to his house. He didn't want to feel the pain in his knee, and he didn't want to feel the anger and suffering in his heart. He wanted the bad feelings to go away right now. He stomped into the kitchen, looking for something anything—to help him forget about his bad day.
Davinci found a big jar of chocolate cookies and ate ten of them very fast. Then he slumped onto the sofa and turned on a glowing screen to watch loud cartoons. This was the Third Arrow. He was using bad habits to hide from his feelings instead of facing them.
As the sun began to set, Davinci's knee still hurt. But now, his tummy ached from the cookies, and his eyes felt itchy and tired from the screen. He felt even more sufferings than before. The Third Arrow had not fixed his pain; it had only added a new "bad-feeling hangover" to his day.
Just then, his neighbor Cong-Min knocked on the door. Cong-Min was a wise man who knew how to listen. He saw the empty jar and the dark room and sat down quietly on the rug. "It looks like you've been hit by a few arrows today, Davinci," Cong-Min said in a gentle voice.
Cong-Min explained, "The First Arrow is the pain of the fall. We cannot stop that. But the Second Arrow is the anger we fire at ourselves. And the Third Arrow is the way we try to hide with sugar and screens. We fire those last two arrows ourselves, but we can also choose to stop."
"What do I do instead?" Davinci asked. Cong-Min smiled. "Try Wise Self-Care. Instead of watching videos, read a book to calm your mind. Go for a gentle walk to move your body. And when you are tired, get enough sleep to let your body heal. These actions help the arrows fall away."
Davinci stood up and washed his face. He put the cookies away and felt better. He went for a slow walk to watch the sunset. The First Arrow still stung a little, but the anger and the "sugar-fog" and “screen-addiction” were gone. Davinci felt brave, calm, and ready for a new day.
Suddenly, Davinci's foot hit a hidden rock. He tumbled forward and landed hard on the dusty path. "Ouch!" he cried. His knee was scraped and stinging. This was the First Arrow. It was the physical pain that just happens in life. It hurt, and it was nobody's fault, but it was real.
Davinci sat on the ground and looked at his knee. He started to feel very angry. "Why did that rock have to be there?" he shouted. "This is a terrible day! Everything is ruined!" This was the Second Arrow. By getting angry and resisting the pain, Davinci made his heart hurt as much as his knee pain.
Davinci limped back to his house. He didn't want to feel the pain in his knee, and he didn't want to feel the anger and suffering in his heart. He wanted the bad feelings to go away right now. He stomped into the kitchen, looking for something anything—to help him forget about his bad day.
Davinci found a big jar of chocolate cookies and ate ten of them very fast. Then he slumped onto the sofa and turned on a glowing screen to watch loud cartoons. This was the Third Arrow. He was using bad habits to hide from his feelings instead of facing them.
As the sun began to set, Davinci's knee still hurt. But now, his tummy ached from the cookies, and his eyes felt itchy and tired from the screen. He felt even more sufferings than before. The Third Arrow had not fixed his pain; it had only added a new "bad-feeling hangover" to his day.
Just then, his neighbor Cong-Min knocked on the door. Cong-Min was a wise man who knew how to listen. He saw the empty jar and the dark room and sat down quietly on the rug. "It looks like you've been hit by a few arrows today, Davinci," Cong-Min said in a gentle voice.
Cong-Min explained, "The First Arrow is the pain of the fall. We cannot stop that. But the Second Arrow is the anger we fire at ourselves. And the Third Arrow is the way we try to hide with sugar and screens. We fire those last two arrows ourselves, but we can also choose to stop."
"What do I do instead?" Davinci asked. Cong-Min smiled. "Try Wise Self-Care. Instead of watching videos, read a book to calm your mind. Go for a gentle walk to move your body. And when you are tired, get enough sleep to let your body heal. These actions help the arrows fall away."
Davinci stood up and washed his face. He put the cookies away and felt better. He went for a slow walk to watch the sunset. The First Arrow still stung a little, but the anger and the "sugar-fog" and “screen-addiction” were gone. Davinci felt brave, calm, and ready for a new day.
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