#.net framework services

[ajmishra]

Top .NET Development Company | Custom .NET Solutions for Enterprises

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[sawontheboss4]

Why Businesses Trust .NET for High-Performance Apps

Introduction .NET has remained a developer favourite for over two decades, and it’s no surprise why. With its backwards solid compatibility, developers can continue using the same code and libraries, scaling and evolving applications smoothly without extensive rewrites.  But did you know that it’s not just developers who appreciate .NET? Businesses do, too—over 25% of enterprises rely on the…

[virtualcoders]

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[step2gen]

Creating efficient, scalable, and maintainable web APIs is crucial in the dynamic world of web development. Design patterns play a significant role in achieving these goals by providing standardized solutions to common problems. One such design pattern that stands out is REPR, which focuses on the representation of resources consistently and predictably. By adhering to the REPR design pattern, developers can create APIs that are not only easy to use but also robust and adaptable to future changes. Read more...

[techdirectarchive]

How to Restore Deleted Azure App Service Using PowerShell

In this post, I will briefly take you through how to restore deleted Azure App Service using PowerShell. Before I proceed, let’s talk about Azure App service in detail. Azure App Service is a managed platform created by Microsoft for hosting web applications, mobile backends, and RESTful APIs. You can easily deploy WordPress on Azure App Service. You also use Azure CLI to create App Service and…

[maveninfo979]

Building a Real-time Chat Application with Laravel Development and Pusher

Real-time chat applications are a popular feature for modern web applications, offering instant communication and engagement for users. Laravel development, a robust PHP framework, provides a powerful foundation for building such applications, and when paired with Pusher, a cloud-based real-time messaging service, developers can create dynamic and interactive chat experiences. In this blog post, we'll delve into the process of building a real-time chat application using the powerful combination of Laravel development and Pusher.

What is Pusher?

Pusher is a cloud-based service that allows you to add real-time functionality to your web applications. It provides a simple API that you can use to send and receive messages in real-time. Pusher also provides a number of features that make it easy to build real-time applications, such as:

Channels: Channels allow you to group users together and send messages to them in real-time.

Events: Events are used to trigger actions on the client-side, such as updating the chat interface.

Presence: Presence allows you to track which users are online and offline.

Prerequisites

Before you start building your chat application, you will need to make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

A Laravel 5.5 or later installation

A Pusher account

A basic understanding of Laravel and JavaScript

Setting Up Pusher

Setting the Stage for Real-time Communication: Pusher and Laravel Development

The first step in our journey involves configuring your Pusher account. Head over to the Pusher website and sign up for a free trial. Once you've completed the registration process, you'll need to create a dedicated app. This app will serve as the source for your API keys and secrets, which will become crucial ingredients in your Laravel development workflow. These credentials enable Laravel to connect and interact with Pusher's powerful real-time messaging infrastructure, paving the way for smooth and seamless communication within your chat application.

Next, you will need to install the Pusher PHP server package. You can do this by running the following command:

composer require pusher/pusher-php-server

Once the package is installed, you will need to configure it in your Laravel application. To do this, open the .env file and add the following lines:

PUSHER_APP_ID=your_app_id

PUSHER_APP_KEY=your_app_key

PUSHER_APP_SECRET=your_app_secret

PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER=your_app_cluster

Creating the Chat Interface

The next step is to create the chat interface. This will include the input field where users can type their messages, as well as the chat history. You can use any HTML and CSS that you want to create the chat interface, but it is important to make sure that it is responsive and easy to use.

Bringing Your Chat to Life: JavaScript and Pusher Integration

Once you've established the visual elements of your chat interface, it's time to inject interactivity through JavaScript. This code will leverage the Pusher API to establish a connection with the Pusher service and subscribe to relevant channels designated within your Laravel development framework. This ensures that your chat application remains responsive and updates automatically whenever a new message arrives. By strategically subscribing to specific channels, you can cater to individual user interactions and group conversations, fostering a dynamic and engaging communication experience.

Here is an illustration of how to send and get messages:

JavaScript

var pusher = new Pusher('your_app_key', {

    cluster: 'your_app_cluster'

});

var channel = pusher.subscribe('chat');

channel.bind('message', function(data) {

    // Update the chat history with the new message

});

$('#chat-form').submit(function(e) {

    e.preventDefault();

    var message = $('#chat-message').val();

    $.post('/chat', { message: message }, function(data) {

        $('#chat-message').val('');

    });

});

Use code with caution. Learn more

Deploying Your Chat Application

Once you have finished building your chat application, you will need to deploy it to a web server. You can deploy your application to any web server that supports PHP.

Conclusion

Building a real-time chat application with Laravel development and Pusher is a fantastic way to gain hands-on experience in the exciting realm of real-time web application development. This process not only provides you with valuable technical knowledge but also equips you with the skills to create a practical and engaging application that resonates with your users. Through Laravel development's robust framework combined with the power of Pusher's real-time messaging capabilities, you can build a dynamic chat experience that fosters user interaction and engagement. Let's embark on this journey to explore the construction of a real-time chat application using this potent combination!

[christyrdiaz]

Top 10 Reasons Why ASP.NET Will Speed Up Web Application Development

[inwizardssoftwaretechnology]

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[vervesystems]

Top 20 Important .NET Core Libraries That Every Web Developer Should Know

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[local-magpie]

oh to be clear - i didn't think you were talking about private insurance at all, it just occurred to me as one form that addressing the consequences could take (i.e. making such services public instead of private), and one that currently "exists" mostly privatized in the US ("exists"/mostly bc there ARE some efforts to create public health care coverage in the US, but its not universal and often lacking in important areas)

rereading my original post i didn't say that very well, sorry for the misunderstanding

i believe that trying to address a problem directly is basically never a good idea. you want to address root cause and consequences

[mariacallous]

More than 200,000 people in Southeast Asia have been forced to run online scams in recent years, often being enslaved and brutalized, as part of criminal enterprises that have netted billions in stolen funds. Such “pig butchering” operations have largely been concentrated in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, typically rooted in Chinese organized crime groups exploiting instability and poor governance in the region. Though they come at great humanitarian cost, pig butchering scams are undeniably lucrative and, perhaps inevitably, similar operations are now being uncovered on multiple continents and in numerous countries around the world.

A WIRED review of law enforcement and civil society action as well as interviews with numerous researchers show that pig butchering operations that are offshoots of the Southeast Asian activity have emerged in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa. Many of these expanded operations apparently have links to Chinese-speaking criminals or have evolved in parallel to Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investments, the country’s massive international infrastructure and development initiative.

In 2023, the FBI had reports of nearly $4 billion in losses from the scams, and some researchers put all-time total global losses at $75 billion or more. Beijing has made a concerted effort in recent months to crack down on pig butchering schemes and human trafficking to scamming centers in the Southeast Asian region, but the activity is proliferating around the world nonetheless.

“As all sorts of attackers learn that they can make serious money doing this, they’re going to make those pivots,” says Ronnie Tokazowski, a longtime pig butchering researcher and cofounder of the nonprofit Intelligence for Good. “So pig butchering is cropping up in more and more countries. Even with all the interventions researchers and law enforcement have done there is little to no sign of this stopping.”

Pig butchering emerged in the last five years and is a type of scam that involves building seemingly intimate relationships with victims. Attacks often start by texting potential targets out of the blue and getting them talking. Then attackers begin to build a rapport and introduce the idea of a special or unique investment opportunity. Finally, victims send funds—typically cryptocurrency—through a malicious platform meant to look like a legitimate money management service, and attackers must launder the money from there. All of this takes time and careful planning from a large workforce. Experts say people from more than 60 countries have been abducted and trafficked to Southeast Asian scamming compounds that typically operate with thousands of forced workers. And in recent months, scam centers have been detected around the world as well in different configurations and sizes, but with the same goal.

“Organized crime groups have basically taken advantage of a favorable situation, a favorable environment for them related to governance challenges, limited enforcement capacities, limited regulations and legislative frameworks,” says Benedikt Hofmann, the deputy head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Southeast Asia and Pacific office. “All these ingredients you also find in some other places of the world.”

“What we’ve seen is criminal groups who are invested in this region here, looking beyond this region for establishing similar operations,” Hofmann says of the international expansion.

The wealthy, authoritarian city of Dubai, within the United Arab Emirates, has emerged since 2021 as the largest epicenter of pig butchering outside Southeast Asia. According to the UN, international migrants comprise more than 88 percent of the UAE’s population, making a uniquely diverse, and potentially vulnerable, workforce readily available.

“Dubai is both a destination and also a transition country,” says Mina Chiang, the founder and director of Humanity Research Consultancy, a social enterprise focusing on human trafficking. “We can see lots of compounds that are actually operating in Dubai itself.”

In July, Humanity Research Consultancy identified at least six alleged scam compounds believed to be operating around Dubai. The research—based on testimony from forced laborers, data leaked from a cyberattack, and social media posts—identified potential compounds around industrial and investment parks. These operations “to the best of our knowledge are managed by Chinese-speaking criminals,” the research says, adding that they operate in a similar way to compounds in Southeast Asia.

“They call it a typing center. But a huge scam call center,” reads a one-star review left for a location in Dubai on Google Maps. Another says: “Mostly poor people from Africa working there and mosltly jailed in Dubai. No matter how much they offer you everything is scammed. Highly suggest never ever go there.”

Dubai’s police force did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about potential scam centers located in the city.

Pig butchering operations may have emerged in Dubai because of immigration and workforce dynamics, but in multiple African countries the activity has started to appear because of an existing culture of organized scamming.

In Nigeria, where digital scamming has been a prominent illicit industry for years across numerous platforms, it was all but inevitable that attackers would adopt the conceits and tactics of pig butchering. The scheme is mature enough that there are now readily available prefab cryptocurrency investment platforms, templates, and scripts available for sale online to anyone who wants to get started. A gang that is already used to carrying out romance scams or business email compromise schemes could easily adapt to the premise and cadence of pig butchering.

“If you look at West Africa’s history with social engineering stuff, it’s a potent mix,” says Sean Gallagher, senior threat researcher at Sophos. “You’ve got a lot of people who have seen this as a way to make a living, especially in Nigeria. And the technology is easily transferable. We’ve seen pig butchering packages for sale that include fake crypto sites and scripts that appear to be tailored to targeting African victims.”

Nigerian law enforcement have been increasingly pursuing cases and even securing convictions related specifically to pig butchering. Gallagher and Intelligence for Good’s Tokazowski also say that in studying and interacting with scammers, they have seen technical indicators that pig butchering attacks may be coming out of Ghana as well. The US Embassy in Ghana has warned about the potential for financial scams originating in the country.

Pig butchering has cropped up in other regions of Africa as well, with ties to Chinese-speaking criminals. In June, 88 people in Namibia were rescued from a scam center, which had links to Chinese nationals who were reportedly arrested. Meanwhile, local reports also indicated that 22 Chinese nationals were sentenced to jail time in Zambia for their links to local scam centers.

Stephanie Baroud, a criminal intelligence analyst in Interpol’s human trafficking unit, says the policing organization, which has been coordinating law enforcement actions, has seen an increase in international scam centers. Not all of them are linked to criminal groups from Asia.

“While sometimes we are noting a link to Asian groups, there are cases where there haven't been,” Baroud says. In some situations, she says, new pig butchering activity around the world seems to be an offshoot of Southeast Asian operations, but unrelated actors appear to be taking the model and adapting it to their resources and expertise.

The scams have emerged in Eastern Europe as well. At least two “fraudulent call centers” trying to con people into investing in cryptocurrency were uncovered by law enforcement in Georgia this month, with reports saying men from Taiwan were forced into working in the country. Local officials, who did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, have said in recent years they have prosecuted seven companies involved in call center operations.

Scam compounds have also been broken up in Peru and Sri Lanka. And there has even been alleged trafficking in truly unexpected places like the Isle of Man, a British territory where almost 100 people were working between 2022 and 2023 as part of a pig butchering operation, according to a BBC investigation from August.

“The People’s Republic of China–origin criminal groups that are behind these sophisticated forms of scamming are looking to build networks and hubs all around the globe simply because this is so lucrative,” says Jason Tower, the country director for Burma and a long-time security analyst covering China and Southeast Asia at the United States Institute of Peace.

Pig butchering scam centers rely upon multiple layers of criminality to operate, encompassing the recruitment of trafficked people, running scam centers on a day-to-day basis, the development of technology to scam thousands of people, and the sophisticated money laundering required to process billions of dollars. As Chinese authorities have cracked down on Chinese-speaking criminal organizations operating scam centers across Southeast Asia, the groups have likely continued to spread their operations, albeit at a smaller scale.

“I would say it was an intentional hedging strategy, seemingly to diversify the geographic basis of operation and ultimately ensure business continuity,” says John Wojcik, an organized crime analyst at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “But at the same time, I think it’s also an immediate reaction to mounting law enforcement pressure and regulatory tightening in this region.”

In addition to the geographic spread of pig butchering operations, researchers note that there has also been a shift in the people targeted by traffickers to “work” in scam compounds. “Over the past two years, the countries targeted for recruitment have gradually shifted westward,” says Eric Heintz, a global analyst at human rights organization International Justice Mission.

Many trafficking victims within the early years of pig butchering were based in Southeast Asian countries, but this soon shifted to South Asian nations such as India and Nepal, Heintz says. “We have since seen recruitment posts targeting East African nations like Kenya and Uganda, and then West African countries like Morocco, and then, most recently, we have seen posts targeting El Salvador.”

As always, the spread and evolution of pig butchering is driven by how profitable it can be. Researchers say that another alarming trend involves people from around the world choosing to go work in scam centers or even being liberated from forced labor and returning to keep working voluntarily. As long as the money keeps coming in, pig butchering will keep spreading around the world.

“Fraud is not being seen as a serious crime—not like drugs, not like terrorism,” Humanity Research Consultancy’s Chiang says. “Globally, we need to start shifting that idea, because it creates the same kind of damage, and maybe even more because the amount of money we're talking about is so huge. We are racing against time.”

[infinitemonkeytheory]

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3–2 to impose net neutrality rules today, restoring the common-carrier regulatory framework enforced during the Obama era and then abandoned while Trump was president.

The rules prohibit Internet service providers from blocking and throttling lawful content and ban paid prioritization. Cable and telecom companies plan to fight the rules in court, but they lost a similar battle during the Obama era when judges upheld the FCC's ability to regulate ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.

🥳

[step2gen]

In the world of software development, one of the key goals is to make our code run faster and more efficiently. This process involves understanding how different parts of our code perform and finding ways to optimize them. One of the tools we use for this is called benchmarking. Let's delve into the fascinating world of performance optimization in .NET, guided by data-driven benchmarking comparisons. Read more

[frtools]

As promised, I managed to get rhe flash sale tracking (and new item tracking) working on the new (hopefully cheaper) system.

The previous system I was running was called an Azure App Service. This is essentially a simple version of a full blown virtual machine server. I was not using most of its features that I was paying for because it's an all or nothing deal. Almost all the tools were running as so called webjobs on that server. This is extremely inefficient, but it is really easy to set up.

Now I am moving the tools that are capable of it to a thing called Azure Functions. Its basically the same thing but even more slimmed down and entirely on demand. It's essentially just the webjobs part without the web server side. This allows me to host timed functions, such as the flash sale tracking, without the overhead of an entire server above it. The major thing for Azure Functions is that there is a monthly free grant of 1 million requests or 400000 gigabyte of data consumption. I won't reach either of those limits on a monthly basis. I'll mostly just be paying for storage and database usage now, which will bring hosting cost down drastically!

This is not going to be compatible with things like the discord bot or the website itself for the skin tester. But I have ideas for that as well.

Another upside is that I was finally forced to update from .net framework 4.8 to netcore6. Once I rebuild other parts I have more options such as Linux hosting which is most commonly cheaper compared to windows hosting that I was required to use up to now.

Once I get more things working you will know 🫡

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End to End

In “End to End,” my new column for Locus Magazine, I propose a policy framework for a better internet: the “End to End” principle (E2E), a bedrock of the original design for the internet, updated for the modern, monopolized web, as a way of disenshittifying it:

https://locusmag.com/2023/03/commentary-cory-doctorow-end-to-end/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/07/disenshittification/#e2e

The original E2E marked the turning point from telco-based systems where power was gathered at the center, controlled by carriers, to the packet-switched internet, where power moved to the edges. Under the old model, only the network operator could add new features. If you wanted to create, say, Caller ID, you needed to convince the phone company to update its switches to support a new signaling system (and you probably had to rent a Caller ID box from the carrier, too).

But packet-switching made it possible for new services to be created by people at the edges of the network. Once your device was connected to the internet, it could exchange data with any other device on the internet. If someone set up a voice-calling system and you connected to it, they could add Caller ID to it without asking Ma Bell for permission.

End to end was the core ethic of this system: the idea that the telcos that sat beneath these systems should get out of the way of their users, serving only to deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers as quickly, efficiently and reliably as possible.

E2E was a powerful idea, one that truly treated the telcos as utilities — the plumbing that sat beneath the services, obliged to serve its subscribers by doing their bidding to the extent they could. If you chose to use a internet calling service instead of making phone calls, the carrier’s job was to shuttle those packets around, not to slow them down or block them to funnel you into its rival service.

There’s a powerful logic to this: no one rents a phone line because they want to make sure that the carrier’s shareholders are getting the highest possible return on their investment. The reason we buy network connections is to get to the services we value.

We have no duty to arrange our affairs to the benefit of a carrier’s shareholders. If those shareholders are so emotionally fragile that they can’t bear the thought of network users making their own choices on which services to use, they should get into a different line of work.

E2E wasn’t a law, it was a principle. Principles are useful! They can be embedded in laws (for example, the laws that establish most network providers as common carriers often include an E2E rule), but just as importantly, they can give us a vocabulary for critiquing or designing services: “Ugh, I won’t use that service, it’s not end to end,” or “How can we make this work in an end to end way?”

Principles can be integrated into professional codes of ethics, or procurement rules for public bodies (“Our university only buys end to end services”). Tech groups and publications can use principles to rank competing technologies (“Which network providers are end to end?”).

Network Neutrality is a way of operationalizing E2E: the idea of Net Neutrality is that carriers should be obliged to treat all traffic the same. If you request Youtube packets from Comcast, Comcast should deliver those packets as quickly and reliably as it can, even though its parent company, Universal, owns several competing services.

Net Neutrality can be treated as a principle (“This ISP sucks — it violates Net Neutrality”) or as a regulation (“The FCC is fining your ISP because it violated Net Neutrality”). As a regulation, Net Neutrality has a problem: it’s hard to administer, because it’s very difficult to detect Net Neutrality violations. The internet is a “best effort” network, with no service guarantees, so when your Youtube connection starts to jitter, it’s hard to prove that this is because Comcast is screwing with it, as opposed to regular network congestion.

Which brings me to my E2E proposal: end to end for services. Contemporary services have no E2E. If you search for a product on Amazon, Amazon often won’t show you that product until you’ve looked at five screens’ worth of other products that have paid Amazon to interrupt your search:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

If you hoist an email out of Gmail’s spam folder and add the sender to your address book, Gmail will still send that message to spam, or even block its server. It’s incredible that we had a Congressional debate about whether Gmail should mark politicians unsolicited fundraising emails as spam but not whether emails from your reps that you asked to receive should be delivered:

https://doctorow.medium.com/dead-letters-73924aa19f9d

Platform creators are workers whose boss is an algorithm that docks every paycheck to punish them for breaking rules they aren’t allowed to know about, because if the boss told you the rules, you’d learn how to violate them without him being able to punish you for it. Again, it’s wild that we’re arguing about “shadowbanning” (a service choosing not to send your work to people who never asked to see it), while ignoring the fact that platforms won’t deliver your posts to people who explicitly subscribed to your feed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone operators were young boys who entertained themselves by deliberately misconnecting calls, putting you in contact with people you never asked to talk to and refusing to connect you with the people you were trying to converse with.

As @brucesterling​ wrote in The Hacker Crackdown:

The boys were openly rude to customers. They talked back to subscribers, saucing off, uttering facetious remarks, and generally giving lip. The rascals took Saint Patrick’s Day off without permission. And worst of all they played clever tricks with the switchboard plugs: disconnecting calls, crossing lines so that customers found themselves talking to strangers, and so forth.

https://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html

Bell fired those kids. Even the original telecoms monopolist understood that the point of a telephone network was to connect willing speakers with willing listeners.

Today’s tech barons are much more interested in charging other people to interrupt your consensual communications with nonconsensual and often irrelevant nonsense and ads. This is part of the enshittification cycle: first, the platforms lock you in by giving you a good deal, including feeds that contain the things you ask to see and search boxes that return the thing you’re looking for.

Then, platforms take away your surplus and give it to business customers. They spy on you and use the data to help target you on behalf of advertisers, whom they charge low rates for ads that are reliably delivered. They insert performers’ and media companies’ posts into your feed, generating traffic funnels that result in clicks to off-platform sites. They offer low fees and even subsidies to platform sellers and creators who produce DRM media, like ebooks and audiobooks.

Users get locked into the platform — by the collective action problem of convincing their friends to leave, by the collapse of local retail that can’t match the investor-funded subsidies of would-be monopolists, by DRM that they are legally prohibited from removing, causing them to lose their investment if they quit the service.

Business customers also get locked to the platform: platform sellers have to sell where the buyers are; publishers and creators have to provide media where the audiences are; advertisers have to run ads on the services they’ve optimized for.

Once everyone is locked in, the platform can fully enshittify, harvesting surpluses from users and business customers for themselves. Platforms can hike fees, charge media companies and creators to reach their own subscribers, block posts with links off-site, insert ads into media (like Audible is doing with paid audiobooks!), and so on.

This is the cycle that E2E seeks to interrupt. E2E for services would dictate that platforms should connect willing speakers and willing listeners. The best match for your search should be at the top of the results — even if someone is willing to pay more to put a worse match there. Emails should be delivered to people you’ve told your provider you want to correspond with — not sent to a spam folder or blocked.

As with the original E2E, there’s lots of ways we can use this principle. It can simply be a term for criticizing platforms (“You aren’t sending my posts to the people who follow me — that’s a violation of the end to end principle!”). It can be a law (“It is a deceptive and unfair practice for ecommerce companies to deliberately return search results that are not the best match they can locate for the users’ query”). It can be a punishment (“The FTC settled with Google today and ordered the company to implement a Gmail feature that permits users to identify senders whose messages will never be blocked or sent to spam”).

Lots of people are pissed off about Big Tech and many have proposed that we could make it better by treating platforms as “utilities.” But I don’t want President DeSantis to run my email provider, or to decide what’s too “woke” for me to see (or post) on social media.

An E2E rule, on the other hand, creates a role for government that doesn’t determine who gets to speak or what they get to say — rather, it ensures that when people speak and to others who want to hear them, the message gets through.

Unlike Net Neutrality, E2E is easy to administer. If I claim that your emails are being sent to spam after I marked you as a sender I want to hear from, we don’t have to do a forensic investigation into Google’s mail servers to determine if I’m right. You just send me an email we observe where it lands.

Likewise for search: if I search Amazon for a specific product or model number, it’s easy to tell whether that product is at the top of the search results or not.

Same goes for delivery to subscribers: if we suspect that Twitter is shadowbanning posters — say, for including their Mastodon addresses in their bios, or linking to posts on Mastodon — we just send some test messages and see whether they are delivered.

Beyond administratability, E2E has another advantage: cheap compliance. Lots of the rules we’ve created or proposed for service providers are incredibly complex and expensive to comply with. Take rules about “lawful but awful” content, which require platforms to somehow determine whether a message constitutes harassment and block it if it does.

These rules require an army of expensive human moderators or a vast, expensive machine learning system, or both — so they guarantee that Big Tech will rule the internet forever, because no one else can afford to launch a new service with better community norms and better practices.

By contrast, E2E is cheap to comply with. Trusted-sender lists for email providers, search engines that put best results first, and content delivery algorithms that show you the things you asked to see in the order that they were posted are all solved problems:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/social-media-algorithms-twitter-meta-rss-reader/673282

This isn’t to say that platforms wouldn’t be allowed to offer algorithmic feeds and results. Think of how Tumblr does it: you can choose between a feed called “Following” (posts from people you follow) or “For You” (posts that Tumblr thinks you’ll enjoy). Forcing platforms to clearly label their recommendations and give you the choice of controlling your own feed is a powerful check against enshittification.

If you know when you’re in charge and when the platform is driving things, and if you can toggle away from platform-determined feeds to ones that you design, the platform has to be better than you at choosing what you see, or you won’t choose its recommendations.

Platform owners have hijacked the idea that “freedom of speech isn’t freedom of reach” to justify the now-ubiquitous practice of overriding users’ decisions about what they want to see:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

The Old Internet had lots to going for it. It wasn’t perfect, though. While it was easy to find the things you knew you liked, it could be hard to find things you didn’t know you liked. Recommendations, whether they come from an algorithm or a human editor, are a source of endless delights. But when a we find something we like through one of those recommendations, we need to know that we can find more from that source if we choose to.

Sometimes it’s nice to scroll an algorithmic feed and get a string of surprises. But we are forced to use those feeds, they will inevitably enshittify, to our detriment, and to the detriment of the people who make the things that please us.

As ever, the important thing about a technology isn’t what it does, it’s who it does it for and who it does it to. When we control our feeds, we can choose to let a recommender system do the driving. If we’re locked into a recommendation system, it drives us.

Today (Mar 7), I’m doing a remote talk for TU Wien.

On Mar 9, you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.

On Mar 10, Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.

Image: Felix Andrews (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elephant_side-view_Kruger.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A room full of telephone operators at a switchboard; their heads have been replaced with hacker-in-a-hoodie heads. On the wall behind them is a poster ad for Facebook with the slogan, 'Find Your Facebook Group.' Atop the switchboard stands a small elephant with a bite taken out of its back.]

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Devotional Hours Within the Bible

by James Russell Miller

The Call of the First Disciples (Luke 5:1-11)

The scene of this lesson is the Lake of Gennesaret. “Although God has created seven seas,” said the rabbis, “yet He has chosen this one as His special delight.” No body of water on the earth is so sacred to the hearts of Christians, as this little inland sea. Along its shores Jesus walked, wrought, and talked. At that time its shore was a garden, without break, covered with pleasant towns and villages. Desolation now reigns about it. In our Lord’s time, it was covered with fishing boats and vessels of all kinds. A great population then crowded its shores. Now the towns have disappeared, and the boats no longer sail on the beautiful waters. Yet everywhere in the sands, are the footprints of Him who came to save us. “It is the gem of Palestine, a sapphire fairly set in its framework of hills but more fairly set in the golden words and works of the Son of God.”

In the story of our passage, we have one of the experiences of our Master on this beautiful sea. The people thronged about Him to hear Him speak. The crowd became very great, and that He might speak to the people more satisfactorily, He entered one of the fishing boats that were moored by the shore. The fishermen had left their boats and were washing their nets. Using this fishing boat as a pulpit, Jesus spoke to the people. That little boat had done good service many times before in other ways. It had carried people across the lake, it had been used in fishing but it never had been put to such a use as it was that day, when the Lord preached from its deck, to the throngs on the beach.

We can find pulpits every day from which we can preach to the people about us. The boy can speak at school, or from his place of duty, or in the office where he works. The girl can find a pulpit among her friends, at her daily tasks, in the social group of which she is a member. No one ever yet lacked opportunities to speak for the Master. Often the little sermons we speak along the way, as we walk, or as we ride on the street cars or on the railroad train have more effect, a wider reach of influence, than if we stood up in a church pulpit and made a fine address.

After Jesus had spoken to the people, He asked Simon, the owner of the boat, to push out from the shore into the deep water, and to let down his nets. It seemed to Simon that there could be no use in doing this. He had spent the whole preceding night on the sea, dropping the nets and drawing them up again, each time empty. “We have toiled all night and have caught nothing,” was Simon’s discouraged answer. This is true of very much of the work that many of us do. We toil hard but come home weary and empty-handed. We drag our nets all night, and in the morning we have only weeds and a few bits of rubbish in our nets.

This is true of what we do in worldly business. The majority of men die poor, with nothing in their hands to show for their toil. Many do the same in their intellectual life. With countless opportunities for learning, they at last die in ignorance. Many people have the same experience in spiritual work. Pastors toil for years, and seem to have no souls in their nets. Teachers work with their classes, and seem to have no results. There is often a sad pathos in the Christian’s life and work. Many of us are like children trying to carry water, in buckets with holes. It runs out as fast as we scoop it up.

Peter’s obedience at this time was very noble and beautiful. According to the rules of fishing, nothing would come of the Master’s command. Yet Peter did not think of that. The word of Jesus had supreme authority with him. It was not his to ask why, or what good could come of casting the net again. No appeal against the Master’s word, was to be considered for a moment. So Peter answered without hesitation, “But because You say so I will let down the nets.” Many of the things our master calls us to do or to endure do not seem best to us at the time. Yet we may always say to Christ, whatever His bidding may be whatever He asks us to do or to suffer, into whatever mystery of trial or pain He leads us, “But because You say so I will let down the nets.” There need never be the smallest exception to this obedience. Though to our limited vision, it seems that only loss can come out of it, still we should heed the Voice that commands, assured that in spite of all seeming ill there must be good in the end.

The result of the obedience proved the wisdom of the command. “When they had done this, their nets were so full they began to tear!” Obeying the master, though it had seemed nothing could come of it, brought its rich reward. Not always do the results come so soon. But obedience to Christ’s word always brings good in the end .

We have here an illustration of two kinds of work that done without Christ’s direction; and that done in obedience to His word. The one came to nothing; the other yielded bountiful results. The disciples had toiled all night in their own effort and had caught nothing. Then they dropped their nets at the Master’s bidding and drew them up full. In a wider sense, all that we do without Christ’s direction, comes to nothing; while all that we do in His name, yields blessing. Some where and in some way, everything we do for Christ brings blessing. “Your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). “In due season we shall reap if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

The effect of this miracle on Peter was remarkable. He fell down at the feet of Jesus and said, “Depart from me! For I am a sinful man, O Lord!” This is a strange scene Peter imploring Jesus to leave his boat. Yet it was Peter’s very love for Jesus, that made him say this. In the miracle, he had had a glimpse of Christ’s power. A vision of divine glory always humbles a sincere heart.

A room may be filthy; floor, walls, and furniture stained; but in the darkness one does not see the foulness. Let the light flash in, and ever speck of stain is revealed. We are not conscious of the evil in our own hearts. But when the divine holiness is revealed and flashes its radiance upon us we see our condition, and loathe ourselves! We should seek to see God, for the vision will show us our unworthiness, and then will lead to the cleansing of our lives, to make them more worthy of Him. We never can enter heaven until heaven has first entered into us and filled our whole being with its holiness and purity.

Peter saw in these wonderful words of Christ, the unveiling of divine power. “He was astonished at the catch of fish.” Every day divine works are wrought before our eyes and we fail to be impressed.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning tells us that while some people see the glory of God in the burning bush and take off their shoes; that others only stand by and pick blackberries! We should teach ourselves to behold God in even the commonest events in our commonest days. Daily life is full of divine goodness, and the evidences of our Father’s thoughtfulness and care. He made the flowers, the hills, the trees, the fields, the rivers, the stars. Are there no manifestations of divine power in these works of God? Then, the life of the individual is full of love and power. No person can fail to see in everyday providence, the evidence of God’s presence and thought. He provides for us. He sends us countless blessings, and supplies all our needs. He brings friends to us with love, with sympathy, with comfort. In the life of each one of us there are frequent occurrences just as remarkable as the miraculous catch of fish! Yet, how few of us take off our shoes and fall down before Christ in wonder!

It is delightful to notice how the fishermen responded to the call of the Master. The call had reached their hearts, and they were not a moment in deciding. They had known Jesus for some time, and were most glad to go with Him. We do not know how much He told them of His plans, of what He wanted them to do. Jesus does not usually give us the details of the life to which He calls us. He only asks us to go with Him; and then, as we follow Him, He shows us the way, step by step. Each day prepares us for the next. One duty done, leads to another.

Jesus is always looking for men. The work of saving the world is still filing His heart and His thought. He wants men who will believe His message. He saw that day in these fishermen, just the kind of men He wanted to go with Him and be trained for the great work He had in hand. They had had a training in their old occupation, which had done much to prepare them for the new work to which they were now called. They had learned patience, persistence, quiet waiting, and diligence in their daily and nightly work on the sea and these qualities would be of use in waiting, watching, and fishing for men. The words of Jesus about fishing contain a little parable. The sea is the world, and men are the fish that are to be caught and taken from it.

The Master’s answer to Simon showed what we should do with our amazement and adoration. Instead of being paralyzed by the revealing of glory, Simon was to find in it a new call to service. “Fear not! From henceforth you shall catch men .” Idle wonder is profitless. Divine revealing should drive us to a fuller consecration and service. The one thing after feelings is to put them into acts. We should all want to catch men and to save them from their sin for eternal life and glory. We should all want to be fishers of men. The boys and girls should seek to draw their companions out of the black sea of sin that they may be saved for heaven.

The response of Simon and of his friends was instantaneous. “They forsook all and followed Him.” This is just what Jesus asked the rich young ruler to do and what he would not do. Christ may not ask us to give up all in the sense of leaving all; but He does ask us to give up all to Him. He does ask us to believe, to give up body, soul, and property, to go wherever He may send us and to do whatever He wants us to do. Nothing will be lost to us; however, for He will return to us, a hundredfold increase, all that we give up or lose in His cause.