I just got my first ARM Mac to replace my work Win machine (what has MS done to Windows!?!? :'()
Used to be I could type "display" and Id get right to display settings in settings. Now it shows thousands of useless links to who knows what. Instead I have to type "settings" and then, within settings, type "display"
Still better than the Windows shit show.
Honestly, a well setup Linux machine has better user experience than anything on the market today.
Even if the degradation of the user interfaces is noticed especially by older people, I doubt that this has anything to do with them being old and I believe that it is caused only by them being more experienced, i.e. having seen more alternatives for user interfaces.
For several decades, I have used hundreds of different computers, from IBM mainframes, DEC minicomputers and early PCs with Intel 8080 or Motorola MC6800 until the latest computers with AMD Zen 5 or Intel Arrow Lake. I have used a variety of operating systems and user interfaces.
During the first decades, there has been a continuous and obvious improvement in user interfaces, so I never had any hesitation to switch to a new program with a completely different user interface for the same application, even every year or every few months, whenever such a change resulted in better results and productivity.
Nevertheless, an optimum seems to have been reached around 20 years ago, and since then more often than not I see only worse interfaces that make harder to do what was simpler previously, so there is no incentive for an "upgrade".
Therefore I indeed customize my GUIs in Linux to a mode that resembles much more older Windows or MacOS than their recent versions and which prioritizes instant responses and minimum distractions over the coolest look.
In the rare occasions when I find a program that does something in a better way than what I am using, I still switch immediately to it, no matter how different it may be in comparison with what I am familiar, so conservatism has nothing to do with preferring the older GUIs.
> Nevertheless, an optimum seems to have been reached around 20 years ago, and since then more often than not I see only worse interfaces that make harder
A consequence of having "UI designers" paid on salary instead of individual contract jobs that expire when the specific fix is complete. In order to preserve their continuing salary, the UI designers have to continue making changes for changes sake (so that the accounting dept. does not begin asking: "why are we paying salary for all these UI designers if they are not creating any output"). So combining reaching an optimum 20 years ago with the fact that the UI designers must make changes for the sake of change, results in the changes being sub-optimal.
> Nevertheless, an optimum seems to have been reached around 20 years ago, and since then more often than not I see only worse interfaces that make harder to do what was simpler previously, so there is no incentive for an "upgrade".
“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Because of Linux's Fragmentation there are so many different UI being created right now and so much more experimentation.
There is KDE with endless customization, Gnome for the people who are okay with a more opinionated UI, Cosmic the completely new Desktop Environment and of course the good old lxde. I have to use Windows at work these day and every single one of these makes the Windows feel like it's more suited for Old People because of how slow it can be.
Yes but most people just fire up the distro, UI, and settings that they’re most comfortable with for their daily driver. People can and often keep things the same
Yeah, i am one of those people who uses vanilla gnome with 2 or 3 extension. My reply was for the to the comment which said linux ux hasn't changed and it's for Old people. Vanilla gnome the default desktop on Ubuntu and Fedora is such a huge departure from standard Desktop UX.
Or, and bear with me hear, there is a problem even if you aren't experiencing it.
I've been using spotlight since it was introduced for... everything.
In Tahoe it has been absolutely terrible. Unusable.
Always indexing.
Never showing me applications which is the main thing I use it for (yes, it is configured to show applications!).
They broke something.
> solutions written in dynamic programming languages like PHP and Python are always woefully slow
True as it may be that they are slow, I doubt it's caused by the use of dynamic programming languages.
> The money should be secured immediately that cannot be touched by the upcoming governments. It should increase taxes. Independence has a price. We as Europeans should be ready to pay it.
You do you, but increasing taxes to build products to replace products built by private enterprise sounds like a 180 degree opposite of what Europe needs to prosper.
This is pre MAGA thinking.
Investing in strategic industries that otherwise pose systemic risk to European economies wouldn’t be our first choice, but it’s now necessary.
Yes, but apparently the biggest players now abuse their comparative advantage positions. So, we are back to mercantilism to the detriment of all humanity.
Hard imagining well designed web app bottlenecked by server-side processing that is not offloaded to database, or done via bindings to libraries written in compiled languages.
I would first blame the programmers, the design and lack of specialty offloading before blaming any programming language. Well designed web calls scale nearly linearly with usage and usually poor design or programming is the source of slowness. You can always trade language complexity for speed but assuming it is the cause of all perceived slowness is a poor man's view.
It is the same story every time again, first it was java, which has so many large scale projects most people won't even know it's running things they use, now it's apparently python who is to blame for all slowness on the web. When the next JIT or scripted language comes along which is not someone's favourite pet that will get the blame.
Python is slow, though, and so was java compared to other compiled languages of its time. Sure, it might not matter much if you're mostly doing database calls. If you're not, though, then yes, it's the languages fault if your app is slow. You can try to make it faster, but it's gonna be marginal gains. Or, you could just switch to another language and get a 100x speedup for free.
I also denounce the notion that trading language complexity for slowness is the case. Python is already complex, and there's some language and frameworks that are actually quite a bit easier to use for web backends. Like java, or dotnet. It just makes no sense to use python for this usecase, even if you ignore the slowness.
But that's not completely true, there is one very good reason to use python. Your devs know it. But, that doesnt say anything about the language itself.
Is this not a discussion about a web application? Order of magnitude matters. If Python is slower than Rust by 2 orders, but faster than IO by another 2 orders, are you not haggling just to shave off a few dimes on your 100 dollar bill?
> You do you, but increasing taxes to build products to replace products built by private enterprise sounds like a 180 degree opposite of what Europe needs to prosper.
Shhh, don't tell them.
(Kidding, of course.)
The best solution is skin-in-the-game, for-profit enterprise coupled with rigorous antitrust enforcement.
Companies will go a million times faster than open source. They're greedy and will tear the skin off of inefficiencies and eat them for lunch. That's what they do. Let the system of capitalism work for you. It's an optimization algorithm. One of the very best.
But when companies get too big and start starving off competition, that's when you need to declaw them and restore evolutionary pressure. Even lions should have to work hard to hunt, and they should starve and die with old age to keep the ecosystem thriving.
> The best solution is skin-in-the-game, for-profit enterprise coupled with rigorous antitrust enforcement.
Don't we have enough examples showing that this simply cannot work long-term, because the for-profit enterprises will _inevitably_ grow larger than the government can handle through antitrust? And once they reach that size, they become impossible to rein in. Just look at all the stupid large american corporations who can't be broken up anymore because the corporation has the lobbying power and media budget to make any attempt to enforce antitrust a carrier killer for a politician.
I think it's very myopic to say that corporate structure is the "best solution".
It seems like you have an unfalsifiable belief. If one side raises more money and wins, it because of the money. If one side raises more money and loses, it is still the money because the other side spend it more effectively.
And the fact that a 3rd party supports an opponent does not kill any politician's career. Biden retired by himself, following his own party's pressure. And Harris is still around, I believe.
Interesting. I agree with most items on this page as overrated, but with an L5-S1 disc herniation, the Aeron is about the only chair I can sit in for an extended period of time without hurting. Then again, I haven't tried dozens of office chairs, but at least for me it was worth the purchase cost.
IMO they’re great - if you get it secondhand for cheap.
I have one I got from a coworker for $100 when he was moving. 13 years later it’s as good as it’s always been, and I don’t even know how old it was when I got it.
Not an Aeron chair, but I bought a used Steelcase Leap 2 for $500. I've had it for 15 years and all the hardware is still like new. A year ago the reupholstered fabric on the seat started to rip revealing the original fabric which was stained but in one piece.
I don't think you would get the same mileage with an Ikea office chair.
I never understood the appeal of these. Last time I went chair shopping I sat in a ton of different chairs including these and they were middle of the road in comfort and at the top end in price.
I don't think there is one chair at a fifth of the price or even half the price that is as adjustable. Please post one if true, as I'd love to have such a discounted feature.
I can’t really get you specifics. Three years ago when my wife and I were chair shopping after an office deco/design change, I came across a number of highly adjustable chairs in the “less than $600” price point that we were shopping during that time (We share the office and were buying two). What was important to us was they fit a specific design aesthetic (Aerons did not), that they were the same chair (for design symmetry), and that they were comfortable and adjustable to our individual needs. We ended up with 6-way adjustable chairs that met our needs and came in around $550 each. Because of our criteria, it took the better part of a mo th of active shopping to find our unicorn.
Google tells me Aerons have 8-ways of adjustability. The missing adjustability I don’t have are arm height and tilt. I don’t miss it. And if I did, it’s not worth the extra grand it would take to get it.
Can't they get out and kill the Ubers already instead of sitting in the lot?
(half-serious, but I have been wondering what are the reasons they don't just push the price towards zero during low hours?)
It's just aging. If you were aware of tech climate in the 2010s, means you are past 30 years old and getting jaded. Young people are very enthusiastic about the AI.
It is always enlightening when people criticizing "virtue signaling" accidentally reveal that the problem they have is not the signaling, it's the having virtue.
There was a time when one of the virtues was not to brag about how virtuous you were. I think that's why a lot of folks have a problem with virtue signalling. In their minds if you're signalling by doing something publicly it karmically negates what you're doing and almost alchemically turns it into something resembling vice.
I'm merely trying to explain how it is that people can have a problem with virtue signalling and to them it doesn't really contradict what is to them true virtue where you do something good and stay quiet about it.
This comment feels like it was made outside the context of the existing conversation. The comment I replied to was calling all charity virtue signaling and not just vocal giving.
But either way, I personally don’t think a library is any less valuable to a community just because it has Carnegie’s name above the entrance.
Society providing incentives for rich people to give money to charitable causes is good actually. An evil person doing good things for selfish reasons is still doing good things.
The real problem comes when you look up what charity actually does with the money.
It is hard to not get the feeling that outside of the local food bank, most charities are a type of money making scam when you dig into what they do with the money.
It's not virtue signally if you're tangible helping people. Like if I give away food, maybe I have the intent of signalling something, but I'm also giving away food. That actually happened.
The world would be a much better place if rich people virtue signalled much more and thereby donated more.
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