deweydecibel

It’s a good read, but as with absolutely any discussion around high school on platforms like this, it heavily shaded with the cynicism of the adult that looks back on their high school days bitterly and thinks little of the teenagers who don’t hate it as much as they did/do.

The whole comment is based on the assumption there’s some kind of FOMO-esc pressure to make prom incredible, where kids feel like they “must” go big or they’ll miss out.

But it sidesteps the simpler explanation: maybe some teenagers just genuinely enjoy making prom a blowout. Going big has been part of the tradition for a long time, and maybe it’s not pressure those teens are feeling, but simply excitement.

The basic notion of prom is that it is the night to go big. It is the last high school dance. It seems incredibly reductive to assume teenagers would not look forward to making it a special occasion if it weren’t for outside pressure.

I mean, important? Not especially, no. But will never see again? I’d argue that’s true. The whole idea with prom is that it’s meant to be like the last big school event before graduation. Yeah, at some point in their adult lives they’ll get over dressed to dance badly, but this is the last time to do it and teenagers, with other teenagers.

Will they grow up wrong if they miss it, or if it isn’t the biggest, most likely expensive prom ever? No, of course not.

But what does it actually hurt?

Feels like the tradition isn’t just prom but also to make prom a big deal. And frankly, why not? Let the kids dress up and have fun. They will grow up, but it doesn’t have to be tonight.

Also curious where you have a prom coming up in late June?

Do I trust them? Sure, I guess, when it comes to privacy from other entities.

Do I trust that I will have privacy from Apple? Hell no. What does “local” even mean on an iCloud connected iOS device anymore? Because there’s nothing on that phone Apple can’t access remotely if they want to, and if any of the AI cache is backed up on iCloud, that’s not local anymore.

Do I trust them with the data they’re absolutely gathering? No, but I don’t trust anyone with it. But I also think that data would be relatively safer with Apple than their competitors.

If Apple announced Recall? Apple wouldn’t announce Recall, that’s the whole point. Apple wouldn’t be so brazen and stupid to push a tool that is so obviously invasive and so poorly implemented. Apple earned its trust by not making those mistakes.

But if they did decide to say fuck it and implement something like Recall, of course people would trust them. That’s what trust means: consumers take them at their word. But if it’s as bad as Microsoft’s Recall, Apple would burn all that trust when people found out.

People don’t believe Microsoft because they have long since burned any trust and good will for most of their consumers. They have proven time and time again they don’t give a shit about users’ wants or needs, and users have felt that. So when they announce Recall, they have no earned trust. No one believes their assurances. There’s no good faith to cushion this. And it turns out everyone was right not to grant them that trust.

Does that mean I’d ever use an Apple device? Hell no. I value my privacy, but I value it on my terms, not Apple’s, and I will never use a device that creates privacy through taking power from the user.

I don’t want to dismiss the facts. There are terrible things going on but overall we’re living our best lives at the same time.

You are dismissing the facts, then.

You could only truly believe this if you’re a financially stable, healthy, gainfully employed, cis white man. Because for everyone else in the States at least, life is getting harder. You can cite all the statistics you like about the globe, but that’s not relevant to what people experience in their own lives.

And more importantly, the things that people are depressed about are the things that are getting worse, and on track to keep getting worse. A video about statistics in 2007 isn’t accounting for what we know in 2024 is coming in the future. The outlook is far more grim now.

People have been saying this about social media and the news for a long long time, and every single time they fail to take the context into account. People said this in 2016, too. “Your anxiety is just the media riling you up”. Then the anxiety ended up being a very accurate thing to feel, and in the years after, the real world events caused negative effects on people’s lives.

The world is not a TV show. What happens in the news, what people talk about on social media, no matter how negative it skews, those things happen in real life, not a vacuum. Many of them affect you in ways you can’t even comprehend, and many of them affect you in very obvious ways that some people just seem to want to overlook.

That doesn’t invalidate the negative news, though. I mean, what good news do you think they’re not reporting that makes up for the actual shit going on in the world that has a real, tangible effect on people’s lives?

"Your future is completely fucked, from finances, to freedoms, to democracy, to the damn climate itself.

But, hey, the bees are coming back. For now, at least."

Every time I see people try to blame the media on this, I look at my medical bills, I look at my bank account, I look at the temperature, I look at the cost of housing, I look at the vacant seats where my coworkers sat before they were let go, I look at the election results, I look at my sister who had her right to an abortion stolen, I look at the hateful people that vandalized my trans partner’s car…

And I think, damn…the media sure has some real reach, don’t they? They’re really going all out to make me miserable. I mean, this is some impressive commitment to a narrative. One day I’m gonna break free and live in this reality where “Everything is fine, actually” with the rest of you but first I gotta figure out how the media has me in the Truman Show situation.

To offer the counterpoint:

Local and private communities, if they remain only for meta content, is fine. But if they are used for other content, because they don’t want other instances seeing or interacting with it, it can permit an instance to isolate itself and its content from the rest of the fediverse, while still being able to enjoy all the shared content from other instances. I.e. show me yours, but I won’t show you mine.

Then, if these local only communities are the only places where people on that instance are sharing certain content, it’s breaking the whole idea that it shouldn’t matter what instance you’re on. If instances can remain insular, it starts making more instances attractive based on their size. “If you want to enjoy this content, come join our instance.”

Also safer spaces for groups targeted by bigots

Then they need to ban the bigots. Why should only the people on that instance have access to the safe space? Why is someone from another instance instantly judged as making the safe space less safe? It’s basically saying “come join our instance”, which is, again, going to cause unintended consequences.

Like how there was a damn good reason for the start menu button to be on the button right: you could fling your mouse the lower left and no matter if you did it too far or fast, it would always hit the corner, and be at the start button. You never had to “target” the start button, you simply went all the way down to the left. Didn’t even have to look.

So obviously, they must of had an equally smart, thoughtful reason to put it in the middle, right? That’s a decision born from utility, not aesthetics. Clearly not making a painfully obvious attempt at copying their main competitor.

Honestly? Any of them except the last one. My preference would be 2005-2015, but any of them is better than what came after. Late 2010s was alright, but around 2020 you can really tell UI designers got their marching orders.

It’s all so damn boring and lifeless. Rounded corners on literally everything for no reason other than trend chasing, wasted space and needless gaps between elements, white OR black - rarely anything else, lest it interfere with whatever systemwide adaptive coloring thing is running (even if there isn’t one), boring and lifeless icons/logos, an obsession with “clean” and “streamlined” that effectively equates to the removal of usability for aesthetics, etc. All of it copy and pasted to every single piece of software or app or site.

Its ironic you put Corporate Memphis images next to it in the 2015-2024 section, because that is effectively what this trend in design aesthetic will be remembered as.

Bland, lifeless, safe, focus-grouped garbage, implemented by companies that have reached a point where the innovation is dead, corporate consolidation has effectively destroyed any room for something new and original to enter the space, and the only thing they do anymore is trend chase. Even the slightest bit of originality or doing something different from the market leader may risk the potential loss of a sliver of shareholder profit, and that simply must never be done.

And I swear to God, if I hear one more focus group generated argument about how rounded corners are more inviting or human, I am going to break into your home, and personally change every last single doorway into a hobbit hole, and every window into a port hole.

I think they’re talking about the designs, not the whole decade.

No, you can actually block them from adding additional devices. Once they add a TOTP device, they can not add or change to another without admin approval.

But more to the point, if the admin requires the management of the authentication software, I.e. Bitwarden or authy or whatever, then they clearly have concerns about the security of the MFA on the user’s device. If text messages are no longer considered secure then we move to the TOTP apps, but now if we’re just summarily deciding the apps are no longer considered secure, we’re demanding a secure app controlled by the admin must be used for MFA.

Can we not see where this is going next? Are we really under the delusion that because we have this magical Microsoft Authentication app now, MFA need never become more secure? This is the end of the road, nothing else will be asked of the user ever again?

If the concern is for the security of MFA on the user’s side of that equation, then trying to manage that security on a device that company does not own is a waste of time. Eventually this is not going to be enough.

So let’s just skip this step entirely and move on to fully controlled company devices used for MFA.

The apps work in air plane mode

They’re talking about Microsoft Authenticator, not any MFA. It doesn’t work on airplane mode if they require number matching.

also want to bet more than half the users that complain about this use the companies free WiFi.

…and? The wifi isn’t installed on their phone, the fuck does that matter?

There’s no “battle” here. It’s their phone, end of discussion. They don’t need to justify to you or anyone what they do and do not want on it.

What you don’t understand is that a worker does not need your permission or approval to exercise their right to control their personal property, and that right far exceeds any concerns about how easy the IT admin’s job is.

You don’t need the Intune app to use the authenticator.

The app will enforce a lock screen.

Or tell your IT department to think ahead and skip the part where we use personal devices to ensure the security of company devices and data. That will eventually change, and we’re going to look back on it the same way we look back on letting users receive work emails on any device with nothing but a password.

If you want security, use company devices. It’s really simple.

This is what it’s heading to eventually. This “authentication using a personal device that the IT department can’t control” crap will eventually evolve into “they must control the device”. Which means they just need to quit being cheap and buy devices they can manage for this purpose.

For now.

The point is, the patterns in software security are pretty clear. People will keep finding ways around the authenticator, eventually someone will get their account compromised, and at some point it will get more restrictive.

It doesn’t matter how it works now, because once it’s normalized that this Microsoft app must be on your phone so you can work, and it must operate exactly as it wishes to, Microsoft will be able to start pushing more restrictions.

At a certain point, the device simply has to be verified as secure in and of itself before it can keep another device secure. Meaning your phone will be brought under your workplace’s security policies.

Unless you are going to take the time to reverse engineer the app and show why the company shouldn’t pick it, you’re just being a whiny pain in the arse.

You’re god damn right they are, and they have every right to be. I’m in It too and I’m absolutely sick of the condescending attitude and downright laziness of people in the field who constantly act like what the users want doesn’t matter. If they don’t want it on their personal device, they don’t need a damn reason.

This job is getting easier all the time, complaining because users don’t want Microsoft trash on their phone might make marginally more work for you is exactly as whiny.

Or, throw a fit and have the joys of dealing with two phones. Trust me, after a year or so of that, the MS Authenticator app on your personal phone will feel like a hell of a lot better idea.

I see this all the time and it’s downright hysterical. Who the hell can’t handle having to have two devices on them?

“Oh yeah you’ll regret asking for this! Just wait till you have to pull out that other thing in your bag occasionally! You’ll be sorry you ever spoke up!”

Also, develop some pattern recognition. If you can’t see how Microsoft makes this substantially worse once other methods have been choked out, you haven’t learned a thing about them in the last 30 years.

Ever notice that TOTP can be backed up and restored to a new device? If it can be transferred, then the device no longer counts for the “something you have” second factor in my threat model.

The administrator can restrict this.