willie @willie@mastodon.social

Before today, I knew: the reason Twitter was originally limited to 140 characters was so it could be transmitted over SMS (which was limited to 1120 bits, or 160 7-bit characters).

TIL: the reason SMS is limited to 160 7-bit characters is because Friedhelm Hillebrand, who was the chairman of the non-voice services committee within the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), found that a) the average sentence was <160 characters, and b) that matched the average postcard.

Internet culture as such a weird combination of "everything is flawlessly recorded forever" and "you just had to be there". Everything is simultaneously permanent and ephemeral. We're drowning in records that have no context, and context that has no records

I've been saying since the leaks in June suggested that the new Apple Watch display would be "15% larger" that it meant it would be square, not a larger rectangle.

Now I'll prove it to you.

The red rectangle is the existing Apple Watch's display. The green rectangle is a square that's exactly 15% larger (by diagonal measurement) than the red one.

And for good measure I slapped that leaked new face onto it.

QED

I think it's weird that anyone's block list is anyone else's business. I've blocked people because I didn't like their profile photo, or because they reminded me of the kid who hit me in the 8th grade, or because they're a family member and I wanted to keep those worlds separate. And I'm sure I've been blocked for similarly capricious reasons. Who cares? Blocking is just someone managing their inputs. It has nothing to do with you. Move on.

In 1947 Bell Labs invented the transistor. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The thing that pisses me off the most about this Wil Wheaton thing is that there is a bunch of us who were talking about essential community management tools and techniques a fucking decade or more ago, and we were all ignored. And now what we see is that the lessons we all learnt and discussed back then have not just not been learnt by today's admins, but the scale of the problem has been allowed to get out of hand. And now it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

For mastodon.social users:

Dogpiling and harassment are off-limits no matter how justified you think you are. The rules are for everyone.

Strongly considering adding screenshot-dunking to the code of conduct as well. We don't need that culture here.

@eli They don't have any gamers in leadership positions, so all they have to go on are numbers, and the numbers look great!
Of course, that logic wouldn't fly for any of Apple's core competencies. But because they don't get gaming, they don't see past the numbers.

Pro tip: unfollow anyone that makes your blood boil. Silence, block, whatever, and move on with your life.

Stop making the rest of us miserable, we're sick of hearing about celebrities ruining the internet.

They're just people, ya'll are the ones making them celebrities. If they're not the sort of person you enjoy interacting with, THEN STOP INTERACTING WITH THEM.

That is all.

I love @pinafore. It has a simple and uncluttered UI, it is *absurdly* fast, and yet it retains all the main features of Mastodon. Also, the golden standard for webapps: it does not break the back button in the browser. What a beautiful piece of software you created here, @nolan, thank you!

@willie Sounds like a good idea for a b0rk zine