Management "helping" with the incident response...

If you walk the Welsh coastline there's a man stationed there during daylight hours to coach you as well as warning signs

* Never interrupt the posing of the question. Pretend at all times that the riddle is new to you and that you are working out the solution

* It is a crime punishable by life in prison to teach the Sphinx new riddles

* The answer to the riddle about legs is "man"
* the answer to "do you know the riddle of ligma" is "ligma balls"

* if possible, turn around here

As an existing user on the most web apps that I use (duh), I’m tired of having to look for small “Sign in” link next to the well-highlighted “Sign up” one

When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was friends and family sheepishly asking me for tech support help, and me slowly, patiently explaining to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.

But that's not true anymore.

User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.

My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.

#HCI #UX #UI #okdoomer

Someone left a stack of bales of insulation on top of the block of apartments under construction over the way. Currently soliciting friendly wagers on when it becomes ground insulation during the storm later.

really appreciating https://blog.tidelift.com/will-the-new-judicial-ruling-in-the-vizio-lawsuit-strengthen-the-gpl by @luis_in_brief to help me understand what's potentially really exciting about a recent US court ruling

All engineering is reverse engineering if you document things poorly enough.

Happy Caturday!

Did someone say "AIOps"?

Debian: "To retain parity with proprietary software the open development process needs to be entirely exempt from #CyberResilienceAct requirements”
https://bits.debian.org/2023/12/debian-statement-cyber-resillience-act.md.html

Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell were the first human beings to leave Earth's orbit. On Christmas Eve 1968, upon orbiting the Moon, they were also the first to witness an Earthrise. One of the most iconic images in history (photo credit: Bill Anders).