What’s the difference between an application and a program?
The original Macintosh had an Applications folder. App is what I use to cut through tech speak for people at work because the shortcut is less daunting. They have apps on their phone. They must not be scary like Programs and Applications.
Historically, an app is something with very limited uses, and a program is more powerful.
Adobe PhotoShop is a program. Apple Photos is an app.
I’d say it gets a little different with command line utilities — maybe “utility” is the appropriate term here, but I’d call something like
grepa program, not an application (again — “utility” also works).To be sure,
grepis extremely powerful, but its scope is limited.
I powered on my computer, my app started, which started my main app, which started my essential apps, which started my app that I use to open my other app, which I use to go to my other app that I use to watch other apps being used by otgher people.
You will get an invisible candy if you can correctly decode this.
I’ll bite: I powered on my computer. My bios started which started my init process, which started my daemons, which started my login manager (maybe slim), which started my DE (maybe gnome), which I use to go to my browser in order to watch other people stream video games.
I’m dicey on what the browser is being used for - maybe security software? - but I feel like it’s plausible.
It’s worse if you have ever worked in food service. “App” is short for “appetizer”.
::cries in very specific form of confusion::
Double plus good!
The meme is good and all, but seeing it makes me feel irrationally annoyed because the first place I saw it was a rascist pleroma (fediverse software; mastodon but rasict) instance that had it embedded in the frontend. This just reminds me of it.
I miss when game had content patches instead of dlc
They trying the Algorithm to AI nowdays.
Yes but imo patch is now update
Patch is now Paid DLC
I also hate the way “algorithm” has taken over the public consciousness. You can find people unironically saying “I don’t want any algorithm in my social media feed”, which is a nonsensical statement.
If you walk with algorithm, you won’t attract the worm.
Holy shit, I just realized that’s a dune reference.
I was actually referencing Fatboy Slim referencing Dune.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’ve listened to that song countless times, and just now realized it’s a dune reference.
I guess Bootsy Collins was wrong … sometimes you do learn.
I think it’s the same concept as when people say that they don’t want any chemicals in their food. You know what they mean, but in a technical sense the statement is nonsensical.
Something, something, dihydrogen monoxide, something.
Yeah, I don’t like that one, either.
People are onto something though - there’s been a noticeable shift from social media just showing you your feed in a chronological manner to it showing you personally tailored content that shuffles on each refresh and aims to hook you into endless doomscrolling. I understand perfectly well what’s an algorithm, but good luck explaining to people that it’s not that specific thing.
Some people actively desire this kind of algorithm because they find it easier to find content they like this way. I’m not sure if they are immune to doomscrolling and actually have gotten it to work in a way that serves them and doesn’t involve doomscrolling, or if they are doomscrolling and okay with it. But for me, I really wish I could go back to the chronological feed era.
Some people actively desire this kind of algorithm because they find it easier to find content they like this way.
Raw chronological order tends to overweight the frequent posters. If you follow someone who posts 10 times a day, and 99 people who post once a week, your feed will be dominated by 1% of the users representing 40% of the posts you see.
One simple algorithm that is almost always better for user experiences is to retrieve the most recent X posts from each of the followed accounts and then sort that by chronological order. Once you’re doing that, though, you’re probably thinking about ways to optimize the experience in other ways. What should the value of X be? Do you want to hide posts the user has already seen, unless there’s been a lot of comment/followup activity? Do you want to prioritize posts in which the user was specifically tagged in a comment? Or the post itself? If so, how much?
It’s a non-trivial problem that would require thoughtful design, even for a zero advertising, zero profit motive service.
Letting the user decide? If the user decided that they liked fly fishing 8 stars and mother-in-law 0 stars, then the algorithm would show mother-in-law once a week at best and fly fishing 8x out of 10 posts.
Yeah, you’re describing an algorithm that incorporates data about the user’s previous likes. I’m saying that any decent user experience will include prioritization and weight of different posts, on a user by user basis, so the provider has no choice but to put together a ranking/recommendation algorithm that does more than simply sorts all available elements in chronological order.
If we had one public social media platform that would be the best way. It would force people to filter and learn how to interact with technology. But in our world people are lazy and a platform that picks the best value of X automatically for the most people will win. Even if it’s not actually how people want to see things.
Losing content of one poster and getting double content of others isn’t a solution though.
It tends to be hit or miss.
When I started using Odysee instead of YouTube, my page was full of “women vs men”, woke culture and onlyfans-esque videos.
I realised, subscribing to a creator actually made a big difference in this case, to get them on you page, because it’s not a feed (controlled by an algo), but a simple, categorised list, with the “Following” on top.In contrast to that, the YouTube’s algorithm tended to create relations between videos (using who knows how many criteria) and showed them along with videos from the subscribed and more-often-viewed channels. It used to show some pretty useful results and it would be a crime for me to downplay its usefulness.
Sadly, by the time I left YouTube, it had started putting the doomscroll content on my page, which is probably another reason for why I stopped using it.
I would call it: Another great mechanism, ruined by capitalism.
Other day me and my mom was talking about how TV has all shifted to be nothing but reality TV… and then she said even youtube is becoming the same way… im like uh… thats because thats because you are watching it thus it is giving you more…
So what should we call the thing that we don’t want in our social media feeds that controls what we see?
Manipulation
Engagement based personalized recommendations.
Catchy. Can’t imagine why “algorithm” caught on instead.
It’s because Al Gore invented the internet, so they are known as Al Gore Rhythms.
Jazz hands.
An algorhythm
Let’s not tell them that by definition both a shopping list and a recipe are algorithms.
Isn’t a shopping list more like a data structure? A recipe would be an algorithm. I don’t know, I could be wrong.
Can you put some milk on the algorithm please?
Seems like a pretty reasonable semantic shift to me.
Depends how broad your definition of algorithm is. Is sort by upvotes an algorithm? I say no but sort by hot is.
So it is possible by this definition to have a feed without any algorithm.
Is sort by upvotes an algorithm?
Any sorting at all can only happen through one of the following:
- luck
- magic
- divine intervention
- an algorithm
This is (theoretically) a programmer forum. I use the programmer definition. By that definition, not having an algorithm is nonsense.
What if it uses a neural network to recommend posts?
So how does that neural network perform that task? There I can see only two possible options:
- magic
- an algorithm
A heuristic
So garbage in garbage out.
Dont’ worry, the kids will learn about real algorythms when they grow up
What I hate even more, is that the morons who can’t read more than two syllables decided to shorten “application” to “app”, but now I only ever hear people reading that as “ay pee pee”! What was the fucking point?
I’ve literally never heard anyone call it A.P.P. (and I mean that literally literally, not figuratively literally)
Is this a specific cultural thing? A generational thing? Geography based slang? Why would anyone do this.
I might be biased from speaking with so many Chinese people. Who I can forgive not knowing the origin of the abbreviation. Still pisses me off to no end D:<
It’s an idiot thing is what it is
This, 100% It’s like how people started saying “PC” because personal computer was too long for them, but now I exclusively hear people taking up to a minute on each letter! (peeeeeeee-seeeeeeee)
I mean, I’m pretty sure this is extremely widespread in China, so I’d say it’s more cultural than anything else. In fact, since there are so many Chinese, that probably means more people call it A.P.P. than app. But I honestly have no clue, and it doesn’t matter to me either way. Words change. It’s nothing to get bent out of shape about.
Chinese phonology doesn’t allow for the pronunciation of “app”, for example. I see a lot of Chinese people spelling it as “APP”, and pronouncing it accordingly. It’s kinda funny to me, since the Mandarin word “yingyong” is only two syllables. “APP” just seems more cumbersome by all account, yet it has become inexplicably popular.
Yingyong sounds cool. It’s got yoyo vibes
It literally means “to apply”, funnily.
But of course the majority of Chinese people are not English speakers, so they see “app” but can’t know it’s the same meaning.Eh, that kinda works out.
Ping pong
Then: Books, Movies, Videos, Blogs, Articles Now: C O N T E N T
Man, I hate the word content.
I’m content with it
Me too. Ever since I read Richard Stallman’s words to avoid article. I kinda wish I hadn’t read it now lmao.
I’ll definitely read it start to end when I have the time later, for now this is my favourite part of the article (Of the parts I skimmed through):
“Bullshit generators” is a suitable term for large language models (“LLMs”) such as ChatGPT, that generate smooth-sounding verbiage that appears to assert things about the world, without understanding that verbiage semantically.
Man, what a nice read
Product is a word I hate.
I have a warehouse full of product.
I mean unless you’re a drug smuggler… Then that’s fine. But using it for random lawn mower parts is dumb I think.
Haha thank you for that.
Yeah, me too. What the fuck is content? Content means contained in something. Contained in what?
Also, “content creator” = OnlyFans
Contained in the app you use, video you watch, article you read, page of a book, sentence in a paragraph, etc.
It’s not the word, it’s the reductionism.
We used to call all those media except people naturally didn’t want to lump them all together.
Then: Fire, Rocks
The script is compiled to a program which is then executed by the OS.
->
The app is appified to an app which is then apped by the app.
Damnit.
Why use many word?
I call everything a script. Makes the Java devs real mad. Makes the PM’s super confused.
A million-line project spread over a hundred files
It’s a script!
sqlite is technically just one C source file, so that’s definitely a script.
The compiled binary being another script.
Just in a different language.Being one source file is the definition of a script?
The definition of a script is something the computer executes (if it’s a computer script, of course). Everything else people shove into it is extraneous.
Wait, so the
bashscript that I broke down into multiple files because I was unable to create and use functions properly, could not be considered a script?It’s now just a bash
Guess, I’ll be
bashing my way to completion.
GNU Autotools: yes.
They hate to hear it.
In a sense it is, before it gets compiled. And yes I’m using the term loosely, please don’t @ me people
See also the client camera movement guide:
This is ridiculous. There’s no way a client calls a dolly a “pan”.
That’s obviously zooming.
I’ll have one zoom sideways to the left, please!
I met a guy who would say “pan forward” and “pan it in an angle”.
We will zoom out towards the top
A Pan-o-rama
Interesting.
The word ‘pan’, came to me from using 3D CAD software and I considered the Jib and Truck actions as ‘pan’ and the original Pan would be camera rotation, which might be ‘turn’ (didn’t use it as much so don’t remember) which was less favourable than using ‘orbit’.
Good to know the word origin.Oh and btw, Dolly would not be zoom, but ‘walk’.
Client cameras love everyone!
The word app has been around forever, first appearing in the 1970s (according to some dictionaries I just googled). Pendulum swung towards “programs” and we have since swung back to the correct term.
