Grumbledour

While I get the intention behind simplifying the web and the way we author documents on it, just like gemini this misses the mark by simplifying to a degree that gives as less capabilities we have now in the medium of html/text.

For one thing, I think common mark is really the worst form of markdown and especially considering the whole angle of hacker culture and DIY these kind of projects clearly aim at, I am always baffled that something more feature rich and easy to interoperate with like pandoc flavored markdown is not chosen.

And tables are optional? That does not sound great for many Text documents to be honest. I would rather argue, forcing browsers to not only implement tables but sortable and filterable tables would give such a standard an immediate leg up over the existing web and browsers and is absolutely something people working with text documents would gain benefit from.

But to this point, I always fell a way back to a more text focused web should also have even more a focus on hypertext than the original web did. The real value besides having it run in simpler browsers would be to offer features that were never realized on the web but could revolutionize how we work with text. I like to see more inspired be Engelbart or Nelson and really bring forward a new, more useful sort of web. Of course, that adds complexity and that has to be careful managed, but besides the community around it, gemini, and looking at it also this, are mostly not more featured than swapping text files over ftp, and I feel this is really a shame.

I walked into this trap yesterday as well. The reason being, they also changed many of my settings regarding application handling. While before that change, it was "Always ask" across the board, after the update, many file types were set to "Save File". So in addition to the about:config setting you should also check what is set for specific file types and revert that to "Always Ask".

This is the kind of change, if there were competition, I would have stopped using Firefox for good.

Markor + Syncthing are the way!

It feels really good to hear that the expensive models have mostly the same flaws as the cheap ones. So the people who tell me it must be my 40€ anker models, because theirs always work fine probably just don't use them as much, but at the same time, spending more money would not have given me better functionality (except noise canceling).

I guess the real thing to take away is, that cable is still the most reliable option (and also saves a lot on battery!)

I also had the Hangouts/sms combined app on my Google Nexus. But as you said, after annoying everyone because the sms app was suddenly gone, they annoyed everyone again because it was suddenly back. And then the annoyed everyone with several new messengers, though I am not sure who still payed attention at that time. Leaving out how annoying the death of google talk before all that was.

Google has messengers on every android phone preinstalled and nobody uses them, because they create them, never significantly update them and then abandon them. It's completely their fault they don't even get a mention when people talk about messaging apps.

Windows 10 pro also did that. Not sure if it still does, because after it happened to me once I waded into the policy editor and disabled all that shite. However, there was at least one forced update that happened to me after that. No idea why.

But windows is also weird. People always talk about ads or having candy crush forcefully reinstalled after updates. I strongly suspect these things vary by region, because those two at least I never noticed.

People posting their PI on their own in public is however not something the GDPR really covers and so would not affect a forum operator. Leaking users email addresses is another thing of course, but was undesirable before there was GDPR. (Though it might be totally possible to run a forum without requiring email if one is really worried)

You are not wrong though that running forums or any website with user generated content is becoming increasingly difficult for individuals, though the real culprits here on EU level are the recent copyright reform which requires you to remove infringing content quickly and the upcoming Anti-Terror regulation which requires removing content in one hour. Though it might be true, that many of these laws might be toothless against individuals or non-profits, even though they do not specially exclude them. But it really seems lawmakers don't think much of the internet beyond facebook, twitter and google.

Indeed. I also switched to Kitty a long time ago. While I personally would like a tty with less features overall, this one was absolutely a deal breaker for me.

While I am not in the "forums are dead camp" per se, I just yesterday searched for forums on vintage/retro computers and found some that didn't look very active. Granted, they had far to many subfora, so maybe I just missed the active corners, but there was very much a "last post 3 months ago" vibe, including threads about the question if the scene was dying.

Though really, the main problem with good forums is actually finding them in the first place. If no one points you at one, google might just be no help at all. Of course, discourse invitations seem even more obscure these days, so its probably just the way things are now?

For me, it is also Avatars. I often just don't read the name before the comment, maybe after, if I found it interesting. When people had little pictures it was just so easy to recognize them when just scanning the conversation.

I am always amazed people liked g+ circles so much. I often found them rather clumsy and isolating. Maybe I just don't get what people want out of these platforms?

I was always more of a forum type and also more reader than participant. Looking at circles specifically, I often saw patterns of "Everyone tell me what you want to read about so I can put you in the right circle" which meant you had to manually subscribe and unsubscribe by private message and could often see nothing at all if you didn't want to contact that person. This is of course nice for privacy and getting to personally know people, but I found it really hindering to discussion and a having a usable archive of a community.

Of course, google+, like most modern social media, was also people-centric instead of topic centric, which always annoyed me, but many people seem to like? It still was a network where I read many cool things and had interesting discussion, but I felt like it was a watered down replacement of forums even back then.

I always suspect modern php makes the language nicer but actually reduces it's core feature, the ease of use.

Don't get me wrong, I would not like to use older php these days. But just throwing 2 files onto an ftp was always php's biggest strength. It somewhat retains that for "installing" php, which still is often just "copy to server" which makes it really nice for users. But I feel it mostly lost that ease of use for people learning to program.

Now, it is still a solid language considering performance and such. It has proven itself to be. But without the easy way from zero to programmer, I am also not sure it is a better choice than anything else. Especially since it always had so many terrible footguns and at least in my opinion is also atrocious to look at.

>> Does the fediverse make the server you join irrelevant? In theory, but in the beginning, an instance aligned with your interests will make it easier to find like-minded people to follow. The instances may also have different rules how you should behave. And you can run into problems when your instance admin bans another instance with which you would like to communicate, or you instance gets banned by them. Just the perils of online drama in small communities I guess. Running your own instance could help here, though.

>> Has SDF got an instance? https://mastodon.sdf.org/

I like the idea of a mix between working and cafe, in the sense that I would expect such a place to be nicer to work in than any random coffee shop while still having the same amenities. But I do wonder if this is not more expensive in the end. And just as some people may get anxious because they feel they would have to order something again at a normal coffee shop, I would get really anxious there just by time passing.

Yes, thank you. Not being from the UK and having heard about it mainly from youtube I could not remember the name.

This narrative reminds me of the similar program in the UK to teach a whole generation computer literacy which I think the country still benefits from. It is somewhat comforting to see what long lasting consequences such programs can have if you really put in the effort, if only for a few years.

Maybe this also hits a bit close to home when my own government constantly declares how they want to make us the next center of [insert current buzzowrd] and of course always fails because it's just an excuse to pump a few billion into the private sector. But looking at these kind of stories, hope is not lost and I wish to see these kind of experiments again soon.

Oh, sorry for the misspelling.

I would not say I am really well versed in his work, but the Zooming Interface Paradigm was what really stuck in my head from The Humane Interface and these canvas based UIs discussed in the article seem to be pretty much this.

Of course something like the Canon Cat takes an entirely different direction, but then I am also not sure that the line between GUI and Console Interfaces should be drawn this sharply. I think there are many examples were they blur together and can augment each other instead of being opposing concepts.

"Task: Earn $100 in BTC - Write a review of this post." Am I the only one who finds that incredibly alienating? What is this dystopian hellscape of a website?

The article itself presents really interesting thoughts of course. While not really new, I feel spatial software is really not studied enough. Simply rearranging videos in only conferencing would make the experience so much more pleasant. I really dislike it if I need to rejoin jitsi for example (which sadly happens far to often) and suddenly everyone in the call has switched places.

I was a bit surprised not to see Jeff Raskin mentioned though when so many examples are ZUIs.

I am looking forward to check out Nototo. I have often thought of this kind of interface for a filesystem might be an interesting experiment.

Thanks! It's great to hear quantrix is this similar to improv. I will take a look at it!

I did this a few days ago and was really surprised by the copying and untaring not having progress bars. I know this thing is old, but as it is heralded so often as a really great system, this little detail struck me as really user unfriendly and I would have not expected to find something like this there.

I have to admit, setting this up was kind of a pain in general and I am not sure if it is worth the trouble. Maybe someone can give some examples while it might be? I personally wanted to take a look at Lotus Improv, but could after setting it all up not find a version for intel. I guess there never was one?

Just a few months ago they renamed and moved around items in the context menu (view image and undo closed tab) and even crippled the functionality of the first one for no reason. I personally have not yet recovered from that change and search for these items every time I need them. Those are just the two I noticed because I use them regularly, I am sure there was more.

And the non breaking changes seem just as annoying, when elements move around or change their appearance, need more/less space etc. The thing is, the browser has been looking nice for years. There is just no need for constant redesigns that change things just for the sake of change.

I wasn't even aware / was for quick search. I always used Ctrl+F, which is incidentally much easier on my localized keyboard. But trying it right now, I notice that / and Ctrl+F opens different dialogs? One is called "Quick Find", the other "Find in Page", with the latter offering additional options, even though both seem to do the same thing? What is up with that?

I read an article a few years back (Though I am unable to find it now) that complained about diners taking longer and longer to order these days, especially because they play around with their phones instead of perusing the menu. (I think this conclusion was based on surveillance tapes)

I do wonder if having the menu on your phone could actually be more engaging to these kind of diners (or at least prevent them from doing anything else), so that the whole ordering food process is sped up?

They probably would like to. Using stock photos of apple products on desks seems to be a trend for years and nobody seems to care. What of it if the adjacent indispensable coffee cup has the logo of a big coffee chain on it? Makes it so much more authentic!

Well, in theory. One could write an app for that I guess. But the whole complex android stack does not really appeal to me. Simplicity I think, would also be really important. And I think openness goes hand in hand with that.

But should a more modern, digital paper, not enhance the human intellect? Why should I not be able to jot down a math formula that the computer then solves for me? Why cant I draw a triangle and let it compute the sides? Why not write a letter to a friend and send it directly to them and also read their answer on the same device?

This would be enhancing paper for me. Combining the at this point pretty natural way of writing on paper with many of the modern computers amenities. Sure, you might not need all these, but paper is also cents if you really need "Not features". Minimalism and focus on core features is fine, but artificially limitations in this way does not seem to help remarkable to deliver good software. So what does it achieve?

Let me just add that I am not talking about a powerful all purpose computing device, because I think we pretty much have this with modern tablets/laptops.

But I do feel the computing part could be much more utilized to make taking notes and reading text better. I am thinking of Hypertext, drawing tools like sketchpad, simple programming tools etc.

Not a device that does as much as possible badly, but one that could really push forward computing and text to get something more akin to digital paper we have seen for years in science fiction.

I don't begrudge people who like the extremely limited use case it has today, I personally just don't really get it why I should spend hundreds of dollars on something that I can pretty much get with a notebook and my smartphone camera.

On the other hand, this is a general problem these days that hampers innovation. As hard as hardware seems to be, it is obviously much easier than software, which is why so many devices these days fall short.

I always think of the remarkable as a really odd device. Hardware wise, it looks great, but I seldom hear good things about the software, only that it is "improving" for years now.

Also, while I think the form factor would be great for a text and graphics based computing device, they seem to invest as much energy as possible in playing down the computing angle, so that instead of having something great to do technical sketching, email or even interactive notebooks like Jupiter on, you get a really over engineered piece of paper.

Now, it's pretty open, which is great, but I am not that convinced it will necessary remain so, and at that price, buying it only in the hopes of some people making better software in their free time always seems like a bigger gamble I like to take. I accept that for me ~120€ ereader, but for 5 times the price?

I really wish they would embrace mobile computing. Combining an e-ink tablet optimized for text with a moldable operating system like on the old xerox machines could be so incredibly good.

By the way, does the hardware allow connecting an external keyboard?

While I don't think it is often as bad as some people here try to make it out to be, it's also sad that comments pointing it or mostly dead, which is why I vouched for you. Because there are to many dead comments that did not deserve that status.

This looks really interesting. But Typescript and "Git uses a restrictive license" give me pause. Maybe it's a cultural thing. I'll be hesitantly optimistic I guess.