Forum Log

Yes. I think this is a useful model. Particularly the word "automatically". Relatedly, excerpts from an article I read today: --- In less than two years France has gone through five prime ministers ... The cost of servicing national debt this year is estimated to be €67 billion - it now consumes more money than all government departments except education and defence. Forecasts suggest that by the end of the decade it will outstrip even them, reaching €100 billion a year. ... According to Françoise Fressoz of Le Monde newspaper, "We have all become totally addicted to public spending. It's been the method used by every government for half a century – of left and right – to put out the fires of discontent and buy social peace. "Everyone can sense now that this system has run its course. We're at the end of the old welfare state. But no one wants to pay the price or face up to the reforms which need to be made." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9n6vr2eyo

https://hashatar.io/ Hashatar is an experimental project to represent information, such as bank numbers and crypto addresses, as small, easily comparable images for quick visual validation. A hashatar could be printed on an invoice, displayed in a banking app, or integrated into a crypto wallet to represent critical information. Like a hash, it doesn't reveal the underlying information, which could be sensitive, but it changes radically when small changes are made to the input. This shows mistakes in circumstances when data must be reproduced faithfully either by copy-pasting, or by entering data manually. The inspiration came from a recent attack on an NPM package, which substituted any crypto addresses it found for visually similar ones, attempting to trick users into sending crypto to the attacker's address. I see Hashatar as a new standard for sensitive data entry.

" These are the last days of social media as we know it. ... Social media was built on the romance of authenticity. Early platforms sold themselves as conduits for genuine connection: stuff you wanted to see, like your friend’s wedding and your cousin’s dog. Even influencer culture, for all its artifice, promised that behind the ring‑light stood an actual person. But the attention economy, and more recently, the generative AI-fueled late attention economy, have broken whatever social contract underpinned that illusion. The feed no longer feels crowded with people but crowded with content. ... The difference between human and synthetic content is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. Earlier this year, CEO Steve Huffman pledged to “keep Reddit human,” a tacit admission that floodwaters were already lapping at the last high ground. " https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media

I recently analysed the UI/UX design of Lloyds Bank's website. Video: https://youtu.be/gmABVFNIAJA - Key takeaways: 1. Use images to evoke emotions associated with the outcome you’re selling. E.g., mortgage with _home_. - 2. Align images with target demographic. Relatable but aspirational. E.g, young, optimistic people in appealing settings. - 3. Signal reliability with symbols and font choice. E.g., Lloyds’ logo, serif font = authority, stability, trustworthiness. - 4. Use colour psychology. E.g., green = stability, growth, and tranquillity. - 5. Good rhetoric in text. Focus on outcomes as the products. Conversational language humanizes the sales pitch. E.g., home, comfort, belonging; your, you. - 6. Show scope and successes to establish credibility E.g., list services, show customer numbers. - 7. Embed helpfulness in design E.g., prominent support sections, friendly icons, showcasing app interface - 8. No surprises E.g, rounded buttons, arrows, one main CTA

Millennials came of age just as the old promises began to be broken. Millennials were told that they were special, that the world was their oyster, and that they were entitled to success. Millennials are upset that the promises are not coming true. They despise religion and foster resentment towards the institutions. A German would say that this is nothing compared to losing everything in the war, experiencing the division of one´s country, years of famine, war crimes committed by Russian soldiers, and building from scratch. Germans do not believe that anyone is entitled to anything apart from human dignity. Disappointment is a normal response and can be worked through. Entitlement is a prideful belief that one is owed something.