arrrg

Is that actually something that is in any way relevant?

Stuff Apple sherlocks nowadays are either OS things that have been painfully missed forever and where third party software was a workaround or they implement a baby version of the third party software.

I think their baby versions – while plenty for many – may serve more to prove a market and wet appetite for more than truly making third party software obsolete. Apple doesn’t do niche nerdy stuff but their new features will – and that‘s my hypothesis – often nudge people in the direction of wanting more.

I feel full, I sometimes even feel awful after binge eating, but I feel full after maybe 5000-6000 calories. That‘s just too much.

This is such a weird ahistorical view.

Overlapping and freely resizable windows is the Mac paradigm. In my estimation they don’t add snapping mostly due to pride.

Maximized windows is an intruder. Something that was big on Windows but never really a thing (and just not possible at all) on the Mac at all until a couple of years ago. The implementation of fullscreen mode is clunky and slow.

Given that Apple has been throwing different window management paradigms at the Mac (Exposé later retitled Mission Control which was the original new OS X approach, Spaces in different implementations, sticky windows resizing, Stage Manager, full screen mode, full screen mode with split view) it is truly weird that this grab bag does not include snapping windows. And, I still think that is just down to hurt pride and ego.

What you say is all true and I actually completely agree with you (and like how you articulate those points – great to read it distilled that way) but at the same time probably not a good idea at all to do in most circumstances.

It is alright to decide that in certain cases you can act with imperfect information.

But to be clear, I actually think there may be situations where pouring a lot of effort into really understanding confusion is confusion. It‘s just very context dependent. (And I think you consistently underrate that progress you can make in understanding confusion or any other thing impacting conversion and use by using qualitative methods.)

I think you are really missing the forest for the trees.

Everything you say is completely correct. But useful? Or worthwhile? Or even efficient?

The goal is not to find out why some users are disoriented and some are not. Well, I guess indirectly it is. But getting there with rigor is a nightmare and to my mind not worthwhile in most cases. The hypothesis developed from the usability test would be “some users are disoriented during checkout”. That to me would be enough evidence to actually tackle that problem of disorientation, especially since to me 3/5 would indicate a relatively strong signal (not in terms of telling me the percentage of users affected by this problem, just that it’s likely the problem affects more than just a couple people).

The more mysterious question to me would actually be whether that disorientation also leads to people not ordering. Which is a plausible assumption – but not trivially answerable for sure. (Usability testing can provide some hints toward answering that question – but task based usability testing is always a bit artificial in its setup.)

Operationalizing “user is disoriented” is a nightmare and not something I would recommend at all (at least not as the first step) if you are reasonably sure that disorientation is a problem (because some users mention it during usability testing) and you can offer plausible solutions (a new design based on best practices and what users told you they think makes them feel disoriented).

Operationalizing something like disorientation is much more fraught with danger (and just operationalizing it in the completely wrong way without even knowing) than identifying a problem and based on reasonableness arguments implementing a potential solution and seeing whether the desired metric improves.

I agree that it would be an awesome research project to actually operationalize disorientation. But worthwhile when supporting actual product teams? Doubtful …

In practice you often cannot test that in a quantitative way. Especially since it’s about a state of mind.

However, you should not dismiss qualitative results out of hand.

If you do usability testing of the checkout flow with five participants and three actually verbalize the hypothesis during checkout (“hm, I’m not sure how to get to the next step here”, “I don’t see the button to continue”, after searching for 30s: “ah, there it is!” – after all of which a good moderater would also ask follow up questions to better understand why they think it was hard for them to find the way to the next step and what their expectations were) then that‘s plenty of evidence for the first part of the hypothesis, allowing you to move on to testing the second part. It would be madness to quantitatively verify the first part. A total waste of resources.

To be honest: with (hypothetical) evidence as clear as that from user research I would probably skip the A/B testing and go straight to implementing a solution if the problem is obvious enough and there are best practice examples. Only if designers are unsure about whether their proposed solution to the problem actually works would I consider testing that.

Also: quantitative studies are not the savior you want them to be. Especially if it’s about details in the perception of users … and that’s coming from me, a user researcher who loves to do quantitative product evaluation and isn’t even all that firm in all qualitative methods.

Ads are someone being paid to write/publish about something. Are you claiming that’s happening here?

Also, I’m pretty sure a lot of the original photos are simply blurry (from motion) or slightly out of focus. Some of the other previews are much sharper.

Check out the beard: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/as07-04-1596

Luckily photos don’t have to tack sharp to be great. In fact, many awesome photos (on or off planet) aren’t sharp at all. I don’t care at all about the obvious motion blur in this great photo, it even seems fitting: https://www.apolloremastered.com/shop/p/as11-36-5390

(Though I would agree, you picked one that would be greatly helped by being tack sharp and where it being out of focus detracts from it. I still think the composition is great and that’s probably why it made it in.)

That’s an absurd view if we are talking about real estate that probably has never been true (in complex societies but maybe also beyond) and probably cannot ever be true if we are talking about non-dystopian societies.

That makes no logical sense at all. Why go for $10m if there is no need to because you have already adjusted your own pricing upwards.

Also, what things are priced at is not what they cost …

That was the model in the past, yeah. Is there something wrong with it?

Expecting lifetime updates with your lifetime license seems weird to me. That‘s not a realistic expectation.

That was just a vocabulary issue, sorry. I’m not a native speaker. I meant heating with gas vs. heat pump, obviously not cooking with a heat pump, that‘s absurd.

Gas from the ground can never be clean. Electricity can. That’s why electrification is key to getting where we want to get. We need to both electrify and get electricity generation carbon emissions to zero.

Also: electrification additionally offers efficiency gains in many places. Heat pumps and EVs, for example, are both (in general) more efficient than gas stoves and ICE cars.

In my mind G-Shock is a brand of watch and there are many different ones.

So the statement “Casio releases a G-Shock watch with fitness features” makes sense. “Casio adds fitness features to G-Shock digital watch” also makes sense. The “original” is a bit confusing to me. And judging by the comments here others, too.

I get why it’s in the headline. This fitness watch is sort of styled like the very first (= “original”, though given the plethora of G-Shock watches and their enormous diversity that seems like a weird way of framing it) G-Shock watch from 1983.

Maybe “Casio releases 40th anniversary G-Shock watch with fitness features”.

Those lotteries generally do have a relatively high likelihood of getting you a spot. Paying $10 for a fifty percent chance of a permit vs. paying $100 in an auction does make a difference.

I really don’t understand where your claim that poor people wouldn’t enter the lottery is coming from. That seems like a nonsensical conclusion to me.

To me a lottery seems like the perfect solution, it‘s just that some of the current implementation details suck.

The fee to enter should be quite low, its only function to reduce gambling the system (besides having policies in place that also do that). It should not be possible to enter multiple times.

The service provider of the lottery should not be paid proportional or in relation to how many people enter the lottery. At least not in any kind of directly coupled way. All income from the lottery should first go to the parks and then they pay the service provider from that income.

And that‘s the problem solved.

Lotteries are fair, at least if you can’t enter multiple times and if the chance of getting a permit is still somewhat decent.

That evidence is utterly unconvincing.

Please pull yourself out of this mirage and away from falling prey to disinformation.

I don’t think you get the point.

That UFOs always are outside the identifiable camera range even as that range expands suggests that they are nothing special. It’s actual good (indirect) evidence for UFOs being nothing special.

I’m really not too worried about that.

The biggest issue I can see developing is a Gmail-ification of Mastodon (with a lot of people being on a single instance).

That would be a pity – but in terms of freedom e-mail is still pretty great.

You don’t need to make it that complicated, really not.

Mastodon can already be a drop-in replacement for Twitter for many use cases. The biggest hurdle are, as ever, network effects. Not infrastructure, not features.

For me personally most of the people I care about already are on Mastodon. It was a smooth transition for me personally and I don’t miss a thing. All that needs to happen is for that to be also true for you and Mastodon is a drop in replacement.

Germany in particular has been handling this crisis extremely well, showing itself to be much more adaptable than many feared.

I’m very proud of that and I think cutting dependency on Russian gas – while we might not have necessarily wished for it to go this fast – is just plain good policy, making Germany more resilient in the future. Obviously there have been some short term bad consequences, that‘s pretty much unavoidable with any such drastic shift. But consequences have been far from catastrophic or existential for us. Germans and Europeans are going through some times that are a bit tougher – the people suffering, however, are in Ukraine.

I see Germany and Europe coming out of this more resilient and safer, especially if we make sure Putin cannot win this war.

Ok, so you agree that the US couldn’t have done anything to prevent Putin from invading Ukraine. That‘s great.

Could you then explain why it would be in the interest of European countries not to react to Russia invading countries on their doorstep? It seems inconceivable to me that European countries wouldn’t have reacted with sanctions and arms for Ukraine even if the US had kept completely out of it.

It seems crystal clear to me that making sure that Russia cannot win this war is both in the interest of the US but also and especially the interest of European countries. You don’t want a dictator that invades neighbors and is successful at that at your doorstep.

How do you want to achieve that? What path do you see for such a solution?

What you are suggesting ist just not realistic in any way. It’s pure fantasy.

How can the US withdraw from Ukraine given that they are not fighting there? How can the US negotiate a cease fire in Ukraine over the head of Ukraine? Can you tell me how that is even supposed to be possible? That makes no sense.

What are you talking about?

I’ve been struggling with obesity throughout my whole life (BMI of 46 at my high point which is damn high) and never been particularly fit, strong, or into sports.

I don’t have a car (though I could afford one) and go nearly everywhere by bike. Non-electric bike. My hometown (Dresden, Germany) is relatively – but not totally – flat in all the places you might want to get to. That certainly helps. (Though the nearly non-existent biking infrastructure – except for painted lines – certainly doesn’t. But Dresden is not terminally car-centric, so it’s alright to drive there by bike.)

I mean, just for moving around the city (usually around ten kilometer roundtrips, maybe the odd twenty kilometer roundtrip on the odd day where a more distant destination is where I want to get to) that just works for me without any problems, no matter how heavy I was. That doesn’t mean I go places at 30 km/h, in fact I might only go 15 km/h – but that’s still several times faster than walking and actually pretty competitive with cars and public transport.

And while walking got harder as I got heavier (mainly just in terms of causing pain after relatively short distances), while climbing stairs got much harder as I got heavier, biking (and swimming!) honestly never felt that way to me, at least not for normal roundtrip distances around ten kilometers or so.

I use bikes to get to places, to move throughout the world, not for sports. And for that you don’t need to that fit. And with an e-bike? That required fitness drops even lower. (Unfit seniors getting stuck somewhere in the alps with their rented e-bikes is a real classic …)

Just to be clear: Russia invaded Ukraine. I’m not sure why you are both-sidesing this.

Also, who are you talking about when you say "both sides"?Are you talking about Ukraine and Russia? Withdraw to where? Agreement with whom?

Please be specific.

We need to get to zero. Burning gas doesn’t get us to zero. That’s the issue.

Given the lifetime of gas furnaces and what we know about climate change it is madness to even consider using them in brand new construction now.

Gas was and is the right tech for transitioning. But you seem to be stuck in the 90s or early 2000s when that kind of policy would have made sense. It’s too late and getting later.

Everyone (to a close approximation) is already reliant on their government for survival. Taking yourself out of society and its interdependencies is already basically impossible. (This is not an argument against all points you are making, I just wanted to say something to that aspect of your comment.)

We need to go to zero and gas furnaces cannot. (Horribly inefficient synthetic fuels excluded.)

In that context current electricity generation does not matter. It‘s an infrastructure change that allows for future zero emissions. Just like EVs.

Criminal proceedings for ex heads of state or government aren’t at all uncommon in perfectly functioning democracies. It seems to me that the US is more of an outlier in this regard, so this seems to me a positive sign of the US moving in the right direction.

That app is not at all a password manager.

It‘s a view and editor for all kinds of stored keys. I don’t think its target audience ever were intended to be some random macOS users. That’s just not the target group. It‘s about power users that need to access or store all kinds of keys.

Is this you arguing that it‘s not buried?

Having to access something via a search incantation (or, alternatively, a ton of clicks) is not at all easily accessible. It’s buried alright.

Obviously you can find pretty much anything on macOS and iOS via search. That‘s how it‘s should be. But that doesn’t make things accessible or even just visible.