Maybe someday

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I don't think you can localize to a language. You localize to a region, you translate to a language. Localization goes beyond mere translation, they are different concepts.

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Not to tech bros, they were to hungover from their sketchy frat bro ragers full of men hoping to get lucky and commit sexual assault to pay attention in that one humanities class they took freshman year.

Language studies are an obsolete profession to them, the future they have built is bullshit all the way down, there is nothing left to study other than the language of utter incompetency and proud willful ignorance.

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The obscurity and social complexity is the whole reason I'm here haha. My hope is that even if/when fedi apps become the standard, we'll still have ways to curate ourselves into small corners as that's just way nicer.

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It's a bit akward to respond to that, since I did a Master's in CompSci, lol. At least I can distance myself from that massive burn a little by saying that I was the akward virgin type and didn't like the machine learning courses I had to take.

Language studies seem fascinating to me, I always found the stuff my sister was doing in her studies pretty interesting. A friend of hers was even trying to become an interpreter, that sounds so difficult.

CodexArcanum

Not that I disagree with the sentiment but in most software systems localization does not just mean translation either. Localization as a practice includes date, time, and number formats, preferred units of measure, language and dialect, and sometimes a few other things. I'm not saying localization or translation are done well, or that the Big Tech companies give any shits about it at all, but its not as though computer professionals are all entirely ignorant of these distinctions.

Victor

That's why I subscribe not to topics, but to interests. It doesn't solve the problem but it puts me with more interesting content and like-minded people, hopefully. Then again I don't want to be in a bias bubble...

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I mean I take your point but again you are just describing the technical details of localization. The little fiddly bits that can be automated and neatly dealt with by a computer or person with an accountant's mindset for making sure little things plug neatly and cleanly into other little things. Any concept of "localization" that does not include careful consideration of the vast territory of nuance that surrounds the much easier technical details seems useless to me in the context of solving any actual real world problem.

When it comes to the actual hard parts about localization I am fairly certain almost every computer professional I have ever met or talked to does not understand them. The more successful a computer person is in their career the more they tend to think everything in the world functions like computers and thus they don't need to try to understand alternate systems or phenomena that don't adhere to their narrow tool belt of critical thinking strategies that can't handle even a homeopathic amount of ambiguity or subjective nuance.

These types of people spend all day thinking in programs and then go home and play factorio and they think they are the smartest people in the entire universe, and they are idiots. Very very skilled idiots.

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For what it is worth I am not trying to dunk on being awkward, introverted or neurodivergent in a way that makes it hard to be confident in "normal" social situations (i.e. a normal defined by people with a brain entirely unlike yours).

The thing is, there are plenty of hot people who would think you are hot for being exactly that precise kind of nerd, or artist, or just different person with a different brain it's just that interesting and different people are usually shy because of how people treat them for being interesting and different and so it is hard to actually find that other hot cool weirdo and get into a conversation with them. Once you do, you are off to the races into some weird kind of sexy nerdy wonderous relationship and all this incel nonsense collapses in one moment of looking into their eyes.

The losers I am talking about never get to that point because they are never nice enough to a woman long enough to have them gaze into their eyes like that after they truly get to know them.

The people I am attacking are the people who never are too narrow minded to understand that the reason nobody they are attracted to wants to talk to them is the way they treat the people they are attracted to both in moment to moment social interactions and also in political ideology and values.

Computers are cool as fuck, computer people are great, we just need more cool people to dilute and displace the toxicity of this kind of ingrown toxic male masculinity that permeates a lot of video game and computer circles. It isn't just bad for women, it actually erodes the capacity of the men in these circles to critically think, in otherwords this shit is brainworms.

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I swear some people think Westerners expressing any interest in anything Asian at all ever, or thinking an Asian country does something better than their own, is orientalism.

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We call both localization, because what you're doing is branching out controls, formats, and such to a locale, which is not necessarily a location or a region. You could have en-us, en-ca, en-us, en-uk, en-au, en-sp, or you just have en to translate it to English and call it a day

CodexArcanum

Very very skilled idiots.

On that--and as a highly skilled idiot myself--we fully agree!

The adage "social problems don't have purely technological solutions" is something I've known for years yet must continuously remind myself of and reintegrate it for new issues.

It's a shame the old vision of computer specialists integrated into empowered teams building bespoke solutions never really came to pass. Not enough profit in that model, when mass market slop is so lucrative.

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You should try this new messenger app.

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I think that it was less: let's find alternatives, than it was _fuck you government TikTok isn't Chinese enough _. It was a direct answer to the government telling us which social media apps we were allowed to use. Also, 100% avoidable if they'd passed data protection instead. It really felt like the government enforcing private interests on its citizens.

Americans typically don't like the government telling us what to do. It's all fine if Facebook buys all the competition, but it's another thing when the government makes the competition illegal because they won't sell to zuck or musk.

Honestly, Redbook was sort of neat. I doubt it has much staying power as it was really just a protest, but it was sort of a historical feeling moment.

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power users/businesses: "you can't go VIRAL on mastodon"

Regular Users: "yOu HaVe To PiCk A sErVeR?????"

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Sadly, yes

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Great point

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That's some lacking imagination you've got there, then.

To me 'normie' has always been a little bit of an insult on top of just describing the 'average person'.

When is this insult useful, though? In this post's context, talking about users one wishes would join their platform, insulting them isn't the most inviting of ideas. Can't help but laugh every time I see a fedi user say stuff like, "Why aren't normies coming to Mastodon? You gotta be stupid to think Bluesky is any better than Twitter."

"Normie" is for when you're describing people that clutch their pearls and their bible when a goth walks past.

I doubt your definition is the common interpretation. For any particular context, there are probably countless better ways to (insultingly) refer to people. Fascist fucks? Folks have been workshopping names since the 30s. Religious nuts? Ask an atheism community, they'll give you lists bigger than the goddamn bible.

Doesn't have the same vibes though.

It might be subjective, but I agree with OP: those vibes reek of 4chan.

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I'd love to see the list of communities followed by each of the people who downvoted me. I have some pretty strong suspicions about what they'd look like.

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Yeah honestly it's not that serious for me. Personally I've never I've visited the front page of 4chan. It's a word that's been around since long before social media too, as far as I know. One other place I've seen it used is autism communities when someone is describing their feelings about fitting in, or not.

I feel like 4chan is a US-centric thing. And a niche one at that. So it's a very US-centric thing to assume about random strangers on the world wide web. And a niche one at that. For a word that a lot of people probably use differently.

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what y'all don't seem to get is it's a way to other someone who othering you. to describe a person who hasnt been through it and lacks the experience and context to understand a joke or perspective or struggle.

you sit here and say it "reeks of 4chan" like everyone who uses 4chan should be ashamed of it. You are othering an entire community. assuming that someone lacks imagination for using a word you don't like is you othering them.

it's no wonder you don't like the word.