I couldn't do it for work, at least not right away, but I'm contemplating leaving the web. Despite best efforts of those who are trying to save it, the web sucks. I almost think that that if was once worth saving, it's not anymore. It's too hostile an environment for gentle people, and I don't want to be anywhere where I have to grow a thick skin or have to dismiss the garbage that pops and tries to distract me from whatever I set out to do.
There's cozy corners of the web, but the people in those cozy corners only ever talk about how cozy it is there. They never talk about plants or swimming or lovemaking or settling disputes. It's only just about how great their corner of the web is. Boring.
Butterflies, yes!
I'm actually thinking of leaving computing (outside of work) but that would be a big sacrifice, since a lot of wondrous things (movies, TV shows, music, trying to meet possible mates) require a computer these days.
I mean, it's embarrassing right? We have this thing that we almost universally think is awesome, the web, but we have to have a Swiss Army Knife of extensions to install and tweak just to have a tolerable experience? Sites that tell you to turn off the extension that you installed to hide ads, to show the ads, so that you can read the article?
It's astonishing that you have to add software (browser extensions) to simplify things. "Oh yeah, just get an ad blocker." What? I have to add complexity so that I can get simplicity?
If you have a website, if you don't have a WAF (web application firewall), you've basically committed malpractice. But that's incredible, right? Automated traffic can just take down your website or crawl it and duplicate it and easily re-publish it, which is actually better than when it brings down websites. Again, you now have to add software to keep things running.
I have a long-running support case with the support team WhoSampled, recently purchased by Spotify, about being blocked after visiting the site once. It's necessary to have a firewall these days, but because of the aggressiveness of automated visitors, website owners have to be overly protective. My work IP is banned from Wikipedia because it's behind a "VPN". (Technically, yeah. But the "Get a VPN" advice is now no longer a guaranteed way to see content on the web.) I wish I could prove my humanity if not once and for all, but for the next, say, 5 years, and then renew my validation. I want 5 years of not having to prove I'm a human being. Make me have to show up to a post office if it comes to it. Assuming those are still around in 5 years.
This is why I think there are multiple webs, not just one. Allegedly "open" by default ("the open web" is a redundancy like how "PIN number" and "ATM machine" are), there's the "behind a paywall web" and the "filled with ads and redirects web" and the "blocked because you don't live in the right region web" or the "blocked because your intense web use flagged you as an automated agent web", and so on. There's also the cozy web (where one only talks about how cozy their web is). This is why I want to leave the web: Every time I get it to a "Goldilocks"/just right web, something knocks it out of whack.
the web is broken. needing WAPs, Fastly's javascript challenge, etc. Static websites are the solution not :-) ?!?
the computer "profession" :-) i have worked in for over 40 years is 100% embarrassing. Layers of sand built on sand (just one example, the 1000s of C and C++ libraries that almost all software uses full of vulnerabilities because they are built on 1970s tech that is fundamentally insecure). and yet somehow computers and the developers who run the computers, run the world without any oversight