Twitter is currently dying.  It was force-purchased by a megalomaniacal troll who is focused on changing its entire essence and burning it to the ground in the process.  Here are some highlights: 

• Timeline.  They changed the timeline view from a reverse chronological list of Tweets posted by people you follow, to a randomized list of Tweets that have achieved some degree of virality (maybe) interspersed with some Tweets from some of the people you follow.
• Verification.  They removed the core functionality of verification and replaced it with a paid subscription.  Admittedly, the verification system was sort of spotty and often came down to knowing a person who worked for Twitter.  But in the past, you could generally depend on a verified person being relatively noteworthy.
• Ads.  There are now sooooo many ads on the timeline, as well as in individual Tweets.
• Bots.  I was told one of the things Elon wanted to fix was the bot problem, but since he's taken over there are an innumerable number of bots, most of them porn-related which brings a nice touch of elegance (this is sarcasm).
• Boosting.  Tweets and replies from verified users a.k.a. "blue checks" are now boosted to the top of the timeline and single Tweets, regardless of relevance or importance.
• Name.  In a final act of breathtaking stupidity, the name "Twitter" no longer exists and what was once Twitter.com is now X.com, which is completely irrelevant and meaningless.

At least part of the appeal of Twitter was the level of access afforded to everyday people interacting with notable people.  You could, in theory, tag or comment with actors, athletes, even the president, and perhaps get a reply.  It's silly, but there has historically been no greater equalizer of access to people in power.  You weren't dealing with a press secretary or a public relations representative.  You were accessing the person or the company or the CEO directly.  Now that's all gone. 

One of the reasons for the hostile takeover had to do with conservatives feeling like their voices were being suppressed, which they weren't.  They were being suppressed because they were spreading racism and hate and promoting insurrections.  But now that any old schmuck can buy a blue check mark, all the worst voices are being equally amplified.  Twitter is just noisy static now, plus porn bots. 

Perhaps the weirdest and worst part is the rename.  It's just so arbitrary and dimwitted.  You don't need to be a business major or brand manager to know you don't change the name of a successful product.  Twitter is a brand name internet property.  It's also become a verb, like Google or FaceTime.  Speaking of Google, they sort of changed their name recently, and so did Facebook.  But in reality, they changed the name of their parent companies, shifting "Google" and "Facebook" into their portfolio of products.  If X.com is a parent company, you don't remove the name "Twitter" unless you're an idiot.  Or unless you're trying to eliminate the legal liability associated with the name Twitter, which is a neat little conspiracy theory. 

Actually my favorite conspiracy theory regarding this whole thing is that Elon lost his government security clearance when he smoked pot on the Joe Rogan podcast.  This jeopardized his ability to do business as a rocket launch provider for spy satellites for the military and intelligence communities.  At the same time, the military and politicians around the world were getting uncomfortable with how easy it was to use Twitter to organize mass protests and uprisings.  So they blackmailed Elon into buying Twitter (something he had said he wanted to do) to retain his government contracts, knowing he'd reduce Twitter to smoldering ruins because he's an idiot and a troll.  And here we are. #technology

I feel like there's a pretty strong delineation between major internet places and what their primary purpose is, so it's always weird to see people wildly breaking my internal, made-up rules. 

• Facebook is for posting pictures of your family vacations, pets, and kids.
• Twitter is for anonymous shitposting.
• Reddit is for connecting with other nerds who share your weird hobbies and opinions.
• Instagram is for posting pictures of your workout, your coffee, or your ass.
• LinkedIn is for following your employer's social media to appear engaged.

What's weird is when people shitpost on Facebook or LinkedIn using their actual names.  Or when people post an entire blog entry on Twitter one sentence at a time.  It's like watching a monkey use a typewriter.  Like, yeah you can do that, but that's absolutely not what it's for. #technology

From On the Media's interview with former Buzzfeed person Ben Smith, concerning the current state of social media:

I think the late social media world gives you this illusion of a debate and of seeing all perspectives, but really what it's doing is it's a machine for elevating the dumbest version of the argument you hate and showing it to you constantly and convincing you that people who you disagree with are just utter morons all the time.

This is fine. #technology

Oh hi there, I just completely redesigned my website from the ground up.  When I originally wrote the backend for this website over a decade ago, I pretty much just cobbled together some things I found on the internet and hastily added functionality as I saw fit.  It was pretty messy code with almost no comments, and there was markup mixed in with logic.  Miraculously, this served my needs for quite a number of years with really no issues.  But during that time, if I wanted to add functionality, it was a bit messy.  And the same goes for visual design.  If I want to change how things looked, I had to wade through a bunch of code to find the relevant bits of HTML markup.  Also, all the code was written in an old version of PHP which my web host has been charging me extra to support.  So I decided to embark on a little project. 

I rewrote the entire backend in Python, from scratch.  I chose this language for a couple reasons, the main one being that I've been using it at work and I like the idea of dual-purpose things.  And I said "from scratch" because this wasn't a simple "translate from one programming language to another" thing.  The two languages operate very differently, and I've gotten better at writing code, so I wanted this to be written well.  Modules instead of single files, markup separate from code, testable functions and documentation throughout.  The other reason I wrote it from scratch was because my web host (and a few others I tried) had major problems installing anything, including frameworks like Django and Flask. 

This led to my next major change:  Switching web hosts.  My longstanding prior web host used a fairly old version of Python.  Basic functions that are included in all modern versions of Python were nonexistent.  So I looked around and experimented with a few until I settled on DreamHost, which I originally migrated away from after an unfortunate billing incident.  I also switched to them as my domain registrar, which took a ridiculous amount of time and headache to complete. 

The final major change is that I adopted the Bootstrap framework to hopefully make design and layout easier and more accessible.  I've always "designed" my website my hand, which isn't saying much because I tend to stick with black text on a white background.  But I've always had trouble with sizing and spacing on different screen sizes, so hopefully this will alleviate that. 

All in all, this was a year-plus effort (not full time) and an interesting excursion for me.  I'm still tinkering with things, so there is some missing functionality and broken links, and the layout on mobile looks atrocious.  It's a work in progress. #technology

I like when I can use something for two purposes.  My job requires me to write code, and Python is one of the languages I've been using lately, which is great because I also use that in my personal time.  Similarly, YAML is a "data serialization language" that works well with things like Python, but it also has the added benefit of being human-readable, so I've been using it for note-taking and whatnot. #technology

Microsoft really needs to implement a feature that speeds up the process of logging into a public computer as a guest.  I literally cannot even begin to estimate the amount of human working hours spent watching a projected view of the conference room computer as it finishes setting up a new user account and establishing all the settings and preferences that go along with that.  Like seriously, all I ever want to do is show a stupid PowerPoint presentation.  It's a simple concept, and it's not an uncommon task.  I will likely never log onto this computer ever again, for all eternity.  I don't need a user account, I don't need access to any special stuff, I just need to open this one file that's located on our network drive. #technology

I keep running into these issues where some minuscule problem gets in the way of something, and all progress stops and everyone gives up.  I tried to plug my computer into a different division's network at work, and I wasn't allowed.  I needed to plug in to do my job, and this roadblock prevented me from working.  This is a solvable problem.  I didn't need a new computer; I didn't need someone to run wiring to a new location; I didn't need someone to invent the concept of computer networking to allow me to accomplish my task.  I just needed someone to modify their network security to allow me to plug in.  Obviously this didn't happen because I work for a bloated, bureaucratic behemoth.  So instead of doing work, I just didn't do work.  That's fine.  But this could've been easily prevented if people could comprehend the scale of the problems they routinely encounter, and simply realize that many of them are inherently and readily solvable. #technology

Crazy people have always existed.  Lots of people have crackpot theories and racist views.  Some of them would even form a club (Flat Earth Society, the KKK) to join together with other people who shared their terrible opinions. 

The success of social media is that it connects people.  Friends from childhood, relatives of relatives, and even people who live on opposite sides of the world but share the same interests. 

The problem with social media is that it connects people.  Connection is good, but certain ideas that used to be relegated to hushed conversations in dark basements are now championed and amplified by social media's ability to bring people together and give them a voice.  It's not really social media's fault.  It's the users, i.e. us.  Social media just made it easier. #technology

I've been using Google Chrome as my main web browser for a few years now.  It just feels cleaner, neater, and faster than the competition.  Plus the syncing is top-notch -- bookmarks, history, extensions, etc.  It's a no-brainer. 

But my employer recently changed some security policy which disabled all syncing, which was bad enough.  But it also disable extensions, and by extensions I really only mean THE extension:  an adblocker.  I've been using an adblocker for so long, I don't even know what the actual internet is like.  When I'm forced to look at somebody's phone for a YouTube video and see a commercial, or when I have to momentarily use Internet Explorer to check something and am bombarded with 90s-era pop-ups and pop-unders and pop-overs and blinking text and autoplaying video, it's like walking in someone else's shoes which are a little small but manageable.  Like, I can do it, but it's really unenjoyable, and I'll probably just stop after a while because I have better things to do. 

Anyway, I switched over to Firefox, which for whatever reason still had extensions (add-ons) and syncing enabled.  What I very quickly realized is why I stopped using Firefox in the first place:  It's fucking slow.  Like literally Amazon.com is unusable.  It's clunky.  Why I have to keep clicking through security exception notifications or whatever is completely beyond me.  And the overall kicker is the memory usage.  I remember experiencing memory issues with Firefox in two-thousand-fucking-six.  I guess they still haven't fixed that problem. 

In looking for workarounds, I eventually found a way to sort of bypass the security policy by using a slightly different version of Chrome.  When I started that first Chrome window and got all my bookmarks synced and my extensions working, I was beyond happy.  Good-bye Firefox, and good riddance. #technology

A problem I think the tech world needs to address is the timeliness of search results.  For example, I just searched for something about an Android app, and the first search result was from 8 years ago.  And that's searching for relatively modern technology.  It's sometimes completely useless trying to get pertinent information about topics that have existed in some form for quite a while.  Ooh someone else had the same problem with their dishwasher?  Just kidding that website was last updated in 1997.  Oh my favorite band is playing nearby?  Just kidding that band no longer exists, and the venue burned down last century. 

I'd say the primary purpose of the internet is the accessibility of information.  That's why search is such a fundamental part of it.  But when search results are crowded out by obsolete information from eons past, it dilutes the functionality of search, which dilutes the entire internet.  Yes, I know I can sort by date.  But that's not always ideal, and can be easily gamed by nefarious people trying to get pageviews. 

Please, internet, figure out a way to deal with your own aging. #technology