AnAmericanPotato

I agree. Of all the UI crimes committed by Microsoft, this one wouldn't crack the top 100. But I sure wouldn't call it great.

I can't remember the last time I used the start menu to put my laptop to sleep. However, Windows Vista was released 20 years ago. At that time, most Windows users were not on laptops. Windows laptops were pretty much garbage until the Intel Core series, which launched a year later. In my offices, laptops were still the exception until the 2010s.

Google as an organization is simply dysfunctional. Everything they make is either some cowboy bullshit with no direction, or else it's death by committee à la Microsoft.

Google has always had a problem with incentives internally, where the only way to get promoted or get any recognition was to make something new. So their most talented devs would make some cool new thing, and then it would immediately stagnate and eventually die of neglect as they either got their promotion or moved on to another flashy new thing. If you've ever wondered why Google kills so many products (even well-loved ones), this is why. There's no glory in maintaining someone else's work.

But now I think Google has entered a new phase, and they are simply the new Microsoft -- too successful for their own good, and bloated as a result, with too many levels of management trying to justify their existence. I keep thinking of this article by a Microsoft engineer around the time Vista came out, about how something like 40 people were involved in redesigning the power options in the start menu, how it took over a year, and how it was an absolute shitshow. It's an eye-opening read: https://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

This is really cool! I like the idea of pen and paper as a supported UI. I've never found handwriting on a touchscreen to be an effective or enjoyable experience, across the myriad devices I've tried it on (including an iPad with an Apple Pencil). And app-based form entry is often a drag. By the time I've even opened the app and clicked the "new entry" button, I often could've been done already with a simple pen and paper.

What this expression refers to is a pervasive false equivalence: the idea that anything that isn't perfect isn't worth bothering with, or that doing something small somehow hampers a greater task (even if when it actually contributes to that greater task). It is a statement against apathy and binary thinking.

This comes up in politics and activism all the fucking time. Like "Why should I care about car emissions when freight ships produce more emissions than all the cars in the world?" The answer is simple: because you can. Do what you can, even if it's small. That doesn't mean forgetting about the big polluters.

some sort of labor movement, a geopolitical shock, a massive strike, etc

If anybody is avoiding Amazon as an alternative to those things, then I agree that they need a kick in the pants. But I doubt there's anyone out there thinking to themselves "I don't need to take part in the revolution because I bought my cat food at CVS instead of Amazon".

I affect a British accent

Lower-effort life hack: wear a Canadian maple leaf prominently. Put a patch on your bags, get a baseball cap, wear a t-shirt. Project "Canadian" any way you can.

Disgusting and unsurprising.

Most web admins do not care. I've lost count of how many sites make me jump through CAPTCHAS or outright block me in private browsing or on VPN. Most of these sites have no sensitive information, or already know exactly who I am because I am already authenticating with my username and password. It's not something the actual site admins even think about. They click the button, say "it works on my machine!" and will happily blame any user whose client is not dead-center average.

Enter username, but first pass this CAPTCHA.

Enter password, but first pass this second CAPTCHA.

Here's another CAPTCHA because lol why not?

Some sites even have their RSS feed behind Cloudflare. And guess what that means? It means you can't fucking load it in a typical RSS reader. Good job!

The web is broken. JavaScript was a mistake. Return to ~~monke~~ gopher.

Fuck Cloudflare.

Almost certainly, yes.

People on Mastodon are not happy about those statements, and called Proton out on it relentlessly with every post Proton made. This is Proton running away with their tail between their legs, back to platforms where they have more control and/or are already full of right-wing nutjobs.

If anyone's looking for secure email, look at tuta.com instead. The email service is very similar in terms of UX and offers better encryption. They don't offer the rest of Proton's suite, but...maybe that's a good thing? I mean, do you want to get locked into an ecosystem?

If someone was uninformed and misinformed enough to think voting for Trump was even remotely in their own self-interest in the first place, then there is almost no disaster Trump can cause that will not be instantly reframed as "just imagine how much worse it would be under Dems!"

Dying of COVID? Well at least you're not dying from forced vaccination!

Layoffs due to tariffs? LOL what's a tariff?

Can't get benefits you need to survive? Well clearly the Welfare Queens left him no choice! It's their fault!

It's no coincidence that Trump in particular and Republicans in general relentlessly attack education and free information. They've already brainwashed enough of the population to win elections, and they want to make sure the general population has no way out of that hole. This is why they're attacking Wikipedia and Internet Archive. This is why Project 2025's first order of business is to eliminate the Department of Education. This is why Musk bought fucking Twitter in the first place, most likely. This is why they're now trying to repeal Section 230 (with the help of some Judas Dems), so they can bully any web site into taking down any information they don't like.

The information apocalypse is upon us.