Jan Erik Moström

Under året har Datavetenskap firat 30 år och den 4 december var det lite speciellt. Anställda och före detta anställda bjöds in till ett litet event på eftermiddagen följt av en kombinerad jul- och 30 år middag.

Eftermiddagens event var att fyra personer berättade om sina erfarenheter från att ha jobbat/studerat vid institutionen. Christina Igasto berättade om hur gått från att vara student/doktorand i Umeå, till att nu vara chef på en stor myndighet i Australien. Bosse, Lennart och Erik gav en översikt om institutionens historia.

För mig var det intressant att höra hur programmen skapades. Jag pluggade/jobbade i Luleå under samma tid och där var (är?) historieskrivningen rätt annorlunda. Mitt intryck, jag har egentligen inga insikter, var att Luleå tyckte att det fanns en informell överenskommelse mellan vilka program som skulle erbjudas i Luleå och vilka som skulle ges i Umeå. Sedan så bestämmer sig Umeå för att gå in på områden som Luleå ansåg vara deras. Jag uppfattade det som att det var många i Luleå som var rätt upprörda.

Sigh, just discovered a few things that’s going to cost me some money.

I have a couple of flashes that I used to use a lot, this meant that I had a fair number of AA batteries. About 1.5 year ago I bought a Godox flash with a special battery (+ one extra battery) and I’ve been using that flash exclusively since then. This means that my AA batteries have been left unused since then … and uncharged.

Yesterday, I decided to try a camera that I haven’t used in a long time, so I put the camera batteries in the charger, and also started to charge my AA batteries. And … very sad face … it seems like all my AA batteries are dead, I’ve tried several different chargers but the batteries don’t take any charge at all.

Even worse is that the camera batteries doesn’t seem to charge either, when I put the first one into the camera - after charging it - I got a message “This battery can’t be used”.

In short: look after your batteries!!

I logged into Instagram and it was fantastic. I scrolled through photos uploaded by friends or photographers that I followed, there were no ads, no recommendations, nothing, just the photos I wanted to see.

And yes, this actually happened.

Let me explain, over time, Instagram has become less and less interesting/useful to. This is, of course, by design, it’s exactly how Meta has planned it. So, I used it less and less. About a year ago, Meta required that users in the EU either agree to being tracked and shown too many ads, or pay a ridiculous expensive subscription. So, I stopped using Instagram. I still had access to Instagram through an organisation, so I could see how the feed looked like … and to be honest, it was both amusing and crazy to see how many ads and “recommendations” that were shown.

Anyway, a few days ago, I decided to see if I could log into Instagram and check a few things. I could log in without problems, I checked what I wanted to check, and then I thought “ok, since I’m already logged in, I might as well check my feed”.

I did and after 20–30 seconds, I realised that there was some was something strange going on. It took me a few seconds before it hit me, there were no ads, and no “recommendations”. Just photos from the people I followed, and it was really, really nice. I could just scroll and see updates from friends, etc.

This made me realise that the basic idea behind Instagram is great, and the implementation is also good (let’s forget about the bloat, etc.). In short, Instagram is wonderful … without the ads, and the “recommendations”.

Of course, this was a temporary thing. The next time I opened the app, I was met with “ads or pay” choice, so I closed the app and will not be opening it again for the foreseeable future.

But Instagram is very enjoyable, and I would actually be willing to pay for it, but not the amount of money Meta wants. There is of course one additional reason not to use Instagram. I have zero trust in Meta, and even if they introduced a reasonable subscription fee, I wouldn’t subscribe. I would expect Meta to do all kind of shady stuff … and when they are discovered doing this, they would just say “opps, there was a bug in the app. We’ll fix it” and then we start over.