It's not often I phlog while drunk, especially while it's sunny outside.
I've been drinking coffee-infused vodka which I made the other day.
Here's a recipe:

Fill a jar 1/4 full with plunger-ground coffee
Fill the rest of the jar with vodka
       (A neutral middle-shelf vodka like Stolichnaya is best)
Leave in the fridge for two days
Drink as shots, lightly chilled

I'm on record as having said, "The Internet is kinda lame." I think A's
response was, "I can't believe you said that." I still stand by it.
Although I spend a lot of time on the Internet I often don't like it
very much, although mostly when I step away from it.

I think most of my complaints are about the Web. These sentiments will
be familiar to most anyone on Gopher these days. (For a nice
distillation of these viewpoints, read anything solderpunk[1] wrote in
May Twenty Seventeen, or other phlog entries primarily on the SDF from
around that time.) In brief summary, most modern (i.e., late 2010s)
websites aren't very good. They aren't very good at conveying
information (see also [2]) and they aren't very good at giving users
what's good for them. They ~are~ good at giving users what they ~like~,
because that's what drives people to use websites more, which is what
drives advertising revenue. Addictive websites make money. Social Media
Sites are especially culpable here.

Apparently everyone loves social media in the same way they love
cocaine. Shout out to Yip Yip Studios[3].

There's a bit of a groundswell against this, certainly on Gopher and a
little bit on Mastodon as well, in particular against the ideas of
corporate control and centralisation and censorship and nefarious use of
"information we collect".

Tag recently quoted an Internet security expert as saying, "The question
isn't 'Are you too paranoid?' it's 'Are you paranoid enough?'" I mostly
(80%?) agree with this.

I do think that the average user of the Web isn't paranoid enough, in
the sense that they aren't aware of the amount of information that
companies take from them and do use. {This isn't users 'giving'
information, or companies 'collecting' information, it's simply taking.}

See also psztrnk[4].

I don't like, though, the school of thought that suggests that users of
a technology have a responsibility to be informed enough to protect
themselves when using that technology. Technologies are produced by
people and it should be these people who are responsible for ensuring
that users are reasonably safe.

I think this applies to anything. I understand that 'users' are
responsible to a certain degree when using, say, a motor vehicle, but it
should be the producers who are responsible for making sure the brakes
aren't prone to failing.

Unlike my company's Ford Fiesta. Their slogan, "Go Further," becomes
painfully ironic.

The 20% I don't agree with is where I use technologies that I know are
insecure. Someone could probably hack my laptop, but I simply don't have
anything on it that would be worth the effort. I don't really care if
someone reads what my phone company charges or what's in the LEENOX ISO I
downloaded. I estimated the other night that the cost involved in
hacking my Internet banking is higher that the amount of money an
adversary would gain access to (most of my fungible assets aren't in my
bank account anyway).

As for "when I step away from it", I do feel the addiction of the
Internet and this is when I notice it. I feel the addiction of my
computer. Especially when it's asking me something.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]:

Yes.

There's something addictive about the glow of the screen. It must be
something to do with the early human draw to the glow of the fire in the
middle of the cave, but I feel that analogy is overdone.

There really is something to be said for dark terminals and dark
websites, though. psztrnk explains[4]. There's also something to be said
for the dark web, but I'll leave that for another sunny day.

[1] gopher://sdf.org/1/users/solderpunk/phlog
[2] gopher://tellus.strangled.net/0/phlog/this-post-information-era
[3] https://yipyipstudios.com/
[4] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/psztrnk/log/20180109.txt
[5] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/psztrnk/log/20180102.txt

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