593 karma · joined December 25, 2008
That's the question that's been nagging me since the day I read about this particular mistake. I wonder if there are any active public subreddits of airline workers; somewhere where I could hear a first-hand account of what those scanners are checking.
The comic compares running McAfee Antivirus on a voting machine to a teacher wearing a condom to work every day; "Strictly speaking, it's better than the alternative--yet someone clearing is doing their job horribly wrong."
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
- CTRL+A, CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts work (as does CTRL+C as a BREAK command--it understands by the context of whether or not you have text selected)
- There are a bunch of new shortcuts[1]
- If you edit the properties of the Powershell terminal once, it should stay resizable (I think--correct me if I'm wrong, please)
- If you right-click on the Taskbar and edit the properties, you can make the Win+X menu replace its Command Prompt and Command Prompt (Admin) with Powershell Prompt and Powershell Prompt (Admin) [2]
- If the terminal isn't to your liking, you can try using the Powershell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) that comes with Windows. The Powershell ISE has debugging, syntax highlighting, and support for multiple tabs.
- Pretty much anything you see in a new Windows 8/8.1/10-style window (e.g. the Settings menu that has largely supplanted the Control Panel) is, under the hood, written in Powershell... So anything that they do, you can do with Powershell.
- You can make GUI applications relatively easily [3]
Most of the benefits of Powershell are the same benefits of any other CLI--you get repeatable, powerful commands that can run locally or remotely and that will function basically the same on any two given systems (assuming same version of Powershell and same Execution Policy setting).
Powershell is relatively verbose, but that means that everything is pretty clearly named to indicate its purpose and function. The commandlets have excellent documentation, complete with description, usage instructions, examples, and links to additional online resources/articles. Also, it has tab-autocompleting out the wazoo. And you can use wildcards with the Get-Help command--want a Powershell command for manipulating Services settings but don't know if such a thing even exists? `Get-Help service`. Want to see a list of every Powershell alias, commandlet, etc? `help *` (help is an alias of Get-Help).
If you're accustomed to BASH, you can enjoy the default aliases that Powershell makes for BASH commands (e.g. cd is mapped as an alias of the Powershell command Set-Location).
OH! And you can browse the registry as a filesystem! Try `cd HKLM:\` to access the Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Windows10GetsAFreshCommandProm...
[2] http://lifehacker.com/replace-powershell-with-the-command-pr...
[3] http://www.drdobbs.com/windows/building-gui-applications-in-...
I think the real standout was the time where they jammed the package into my vertical-style mailbox on a rainy day, leaving my auto insurance bill soaked beyond recognition. Thanks, USPS.
"Thank you for your tracking inquiry. Unfortunately, Lasership is unable to confirm control of your package at this time. So that you may be promptly assisted we are deeming this package as Lost by LaserShip. Please contact your Seller for further assistance."
On page https://engines.nanobox.io/languages/nodejs the link for Create Custom Engine leads to a 404 on https://nanobox.io/engine-dev
Watch out, though, for handling CSV files in Excel if you're using an encoding other than ANSI.
Excel for Windows does not correctly write UTF-8 files[1]
Excel for Mac lists 'UTF-8' as an import CSV encoding option but Excel for Mac does not import UTF-8 CSV files[2]
[1]Response from MS employee: "Unfortunately, not all applications can encode files in UTF-8 by default, and Microsoft Excel is one of them." http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_...
[2]Response from MS employee: "Excel for Mac does not currently support UTF-8" -- despite UTF-8 being an option in Excel for Mac http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-m...
{glances at this HN thread} Yes, clearly :)
I get that these changes are pain points for lots of people, and no one wants to be frustrated using the devices with which they have everyday, critical interactions.
> Who wants reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality? Um.... try everyone!
Sure we want that... and we also want newer, better things. That's a tug of war between comfort and progress. If all we did were laser-focus on reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality we never would have gotten the GUI or the mouse, right?
> A-B testing won't reveal how many people reluctantly embrace the change, rolled their eyes and cursed your service as they completed the task. A-B testing is not all-knowing. It's suitable for colder functional changes, not things such as key separators on a virtual keyboard.
I completely agree. My point was to home in on what you would characterize as change. Your response was very helpful to that end.
> None of this would be a problem if users are simply given choice and meticulous control over the changes and how or whether they're applied. Choice, control, options and user preferences - those should be the key features.
Yeah, it would be comforting if the gmail app let users toggle between "classic" and "material"... and it would also be contrary to that which is (seemingly) the driving force behind Material Design: defragmentation of UX in the Android space.
Choice is a double-edged sword. Several studies suggest that choice overload reduces happiness, increases stress, and leads to poorer decision-making.[1] On the other hand, one study found that choice overload caused all of those reactions but also positively affected their perceived quality of the brand.[2]
We HNers are a niche of tinkerers who enjoy poring through settings. As I understand it, our love of actively customizing and tweaking is not shared by the larger demographics.
Change bears risk, yes; but personally I would rather groan at questionable changes than ploddingly use an app that sacrifices the hope of exceptional change for the fear of bad change.
To each his own, I suppose.
-----
[1] For anyone interested in "choice overload":
* http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bad-good-ch... which refers to a dead link that I think was moved to http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.127.3.27...
* http://www.fastcompany.com/3031364/the-future-of-work/why-ha...
* http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/03/01/select-all
* http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/your-money/the-trap-of-too...
* http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/research-too-many-choic...
* https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better written by the author of a book that some of the other articles cite
[2] http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/when-customers-equate-c...
I agree that this can be a source of frustration. On the flip side, once you're used to it as a global UI pattern you might find certain buttons or indicators to be gratuitous. Now that I'm used to a global back button on Android, I feel totally lost on iOS when I want to go back/up. I'm no longer used to looking for a specific app button for that action because I'm used to it being a system-wide feature.
I'm wondering if this will become less confusing once the lion's share of Android phones and apps are using Material Design, as MD recommends that content is refreshed either a) automatically by sync or b) via the drag-to-refresh action.[1]
[1] http://www.google.com/design/spec/patterns/swipe-to-refresh....
I'm curious... when you say 'change' is there a contextual limit to what counts as a change? That is to say, am I taking you too literally if I consider an A/B test a change? Or is there a pervasiveness of rollout that you think is necessary to consider something as a change?
In either case, I wouldn't want to underestimate the value of studying reactions to a change--especially the negative reactions. There's a lot to be learned from mistakes.
[1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214326/en-us
EDIT: Apparently Wikipedia has a list of "quirks". I haven't vetted any of the citations, but the page claims issues with statistical function accuracy, failures with modulo operations, confusing use of numeric precisions, and an inability to open two identically-named files
[1] http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29/1320/
EDIT: Ah, here's the confusion. I'm pretty sure the 3.2% is ABW instead of the usual ABV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-alcohol_beer#Categories
I don't think I've ever seen a beer with an ABV above 1% and below 4%. What kinds/brands of beer are these?
All kidding aside I find the PA alcohol laws just ridiculous.
If I'm planning a party and want a few bottles of wine, a quarter keg of something simple, and a few six packs of something more interesting I have to go to three different stores--and at the last store I can only buy 192 ounces per purchase[1].
All of this insanity because of historical inertia and conclusions drawn from correlation confused for causation. How shocking that the Delaware Total Wine[2] parking lots are regularly packed with PA license plates.
[1] For those who haven't encountered this it's quite a sight. If I go to a bottle shop to buy two 12 packs I have to buy one 12 pack, walk it outside the door to the store, put it down, come back in, and buy the second 12 pack. However, if I go to a distributor I cannot buy a single 12 pack but I can buy 100 cases (24 packs) as easily 1 case.
[2] Total Wine sells beer, liquor, wine, and related supplies in a store the size of a supermarket.
They won my affection when they made a station devoted to the music of Breaking Bad to celebrate the start of the final season.
I had a teacher who employed "multiple multiple choice" questions on his exams. The question would have some number of choices (e.g. a,b,c,d,e) and you had to choose the correct answers. These questions were tricky because the answer choices could all be wrong (meaning you select none of the answer choices), could all be correct, and any combination of the answers could be correct. It made guessing go from a 1 in 5 situation to 1 in 32. I was not a fan.
"the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)"