FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was people asking me for tech support help and me having to slowly, patiently explain to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.

But that's not true anymore.

User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.

My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.

#HCI #UX #UI #okdoomer

inside .git https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/01/26/inside-git/

C23, C2Y, and.... defer ?!

https://www.tiktok.com/@__phantomderp/video/7328442337095339307

The AI Paradox:

You're forced to add "AI "to your product in order to appear to stay relevant…

…but that makes your product worse, thereby hastening its decent into irrelevancy and possibly an ultimate demise.

The only companies who will be left standing at the end of the day are the ones who hold the line and care about genuine customer experience above all else. That's always been true, but it's more true now than ever.

@hazelweakly I wish I could figure out a good way to monetize managing and mitigating tech debt. At my last job I built something that *freaking worked* and I hear they are still using it with great effect.

New definition of tech debt: work that is considered so unvalued by the company that you can get fired for doing it

As I watch X openly support Nazis, Google search displaying explicitly incorrect information and misinformation, and the continued march towards a lack of foresight or accountability in tech I must reiterate that technology is and forever will be a political force.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the Studio 2.0 program to make Lego figures and I was having fun creating this. It's a little Anubis chest, and it's functional! It can be opened!
#LEGO #Anubis #Kemetic

As we were talking about NeXT cubes, do you know that they fit nicely in an Ikea(r) Kallax, the unit of vintage computer storage?

There comes a point where "counterfeit product" transforms into "the last surviving record"
copy that floppy
write that poem

So it turns out Unicode has separate characters for 🛈 and ⓘ

NASA stated that the Ingenuity helicopter has officially taken its last flight. 72 out of 5 planned flights is pretty darn good.

H/t to @CubeApril

Had my young son watch The Matrix with me and he said "what if that 'real world' that keanu's group is fighting in is actually just another level of the matrix they built to keep rebels busy and preoccupied" and these children are maybe not ok after all but my god are they sharp

Man goes to Windows. Says thing is not working. Says he's getting a strange error. Says he feels lost and unsure what to do. Windows says, "Solution is simple. Administrator is in the office today. Go and see him. He should know the answer." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But Windows... I am Administrator!"

Repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result can also be training, practice… that’s how we learn

When a tv show says it contains "adult themes" I'm expecting it to be about stuff like hurting your back, having indigestion, going for a nice nap

I wonder what the upper limit on battery density is, not from an electrochemical/physics perspective, but on a simple practical level based on collateral damage?

Like, we're already at the point where your cellphone battery isn't more than a few orders of magnitude away from the energy density of a hand grenade, making a tesla catching on fire a minor crisis for a fire department.

At what point do batteries stop getting more dense, to limit the damage when they fail?

Confirming what we already know, higher hood heights kill more pedestrians / cyclists:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212012224000017

I have always wanted passenger vehicles to standardize on bumper, headlight, and hood heights along with a max curb weight.

Anything that goes bigger would require a different class of drivers license, with additional driver testing and more insurance.