Nov 10

Grating

The left’s and the right’s beliefs and stances on immigration are both equally stupid. The right’s actions, however, are more despicable so that does matter.

But this is quite true.

As I (and many others) have said repeatedly, if you prevent people from intelligently discussing the problems with mass immigration by tarring them all as “racists,” the only people who WILL deal with the immigration issue will be actual racists! And that’s what it has led to.

The Dems sure know how to self-own. It seems to be their specialty. These days you can be told you are racist if you don’t want the entire rest of the world to immigrate to the US at the same time. This is not a winning electoral strategy, to say the least.

Nov 10

Ascairt

I’m not working to get fit again because I’m scared of dying. That’s something I’m completely unafraid of. I’m doing so because I want more good years with my parter and I’m older than she is. This is the way to get those years.

I know a lot of people turn to fitness and to god depending on their inclinations because a fear of mortality. I have no such fear, which is why you really shouldn’t follow me home in the middle of the night.

Nov 10

Lead of Spite

Yep. I will use local software until it is absolutely impossible to do so any longer.

There is no getting around the speed of light. This will make anything that must talk to some distant “cloud” server somewhere inevitably far slower than local software. It’s one of the reasons I can’t stand webmail. Combine that with the fact that I have a high flicker rate for a human, and using cloud- or web-based anything is just agonizing for me.

If I am forced to, I will pay someone to write software that can be used locally as using anything else is just untenable.

Nov 10

Level 3

That most people are not very resistant to propagandistic mind viruses is what makes me reconsider the value and wisdom of free speech.

Nov 10

Missing the Point

This is fucking moronic. Which makes sense, because this is the fucking Microsoft moron who turned desktop Windows into a touch-centric interface — including the server version, which makes absolutely no sense at all. This dude is without a clue and no one should listen to him about anything. He is a full goddamn idiot. I hate this dud(e) almost as much as I hate Mozilla.

The problem is that tablets and phones are consumption devices. They will be hard-pressed to ever be more than that. Having lived through a few of these transitions, what Sinofsky is missing (other than a brain) here is that tablets and phones remove capabilities without adding anything. With a mouse *and* a keyboard, the keyboard was still there. Capabilities were added. Nothing was removed. Tablets and phones by definition remove capabilities and are less powerful by dint of this.

The maximum precision you can attain on a touch screen jabbing at it with a finger is about a 1/4 of an inch if you are very, very precise. On a real system designed for work, I can obtain pixel-level precision. (And that’s just one example of many.)

Don’t get me wrong. Tablets are great for some things. Casual consumption. Light work. Sending a quick email. Drawing, arguably. But for actual production of anything, no. Never will be. For the casual user they are great. They are nothing but guardrails with very little practical use. This is perfect for the people (about 60% of computer users) who can’t find their start menu even after using a Windows machine for two decades.

This dude is conflating two very different use cases is part of the problem: people who need to do work and people who are playing with some light work thrown in. These aren’t the same people.

I agree with Sinofsky that 80-90% can get by on a tablet because most people do very little.

But those aren’t all the people who use computers, and that’s what he’s missing.

Nov 10

Contained

Containers are kind of like if someone who didn’t understand much about computers designed something to function on what they thought a computer worked like.

It’s another example of choosing to do battle in the weak area instead of the strong one. Like high latency? Like poor security? Like opacity? Like ridiculous underuse of resources? Then containers are for you!

Nov 09

Confirmed

My partner cofirmed it: I am better than Google. I found something in my brain she couldn’t find with Google.

You’re going down, Google.

Nov 09

Design

Every single person at The Mozilla Foundation and who works on Firefox should read this.

The dumbing-down of what we (ironically) call smart technologies involves the oversimplification of their functionality. While the focus on usability has allowed users to achieve their goals more efficiently and with more satisfaction, the obsession over ease of use has restricted users’ choices to allegedly remove impractical barriers. We have replaced many user operated functions with automated functions, thus trading in a product’s flexibility for mass adoption.

Mozilla is a puzzling case because it chose to ignore and destroy its greatest strengths while competing in its weakest areas. As can be seen by its market share with with Firefox, this is not a winning strategy. (In fact, it is the stupidest strategy you can undertake in any arena unless you like losing.)

But if a system cannot perform complex actions while at the same time being simple, either we need two different products for different kinds of users or we risk losing the power user, who will gladly turn to lower-level interfaces.

Yep. If I were rich, I’d buy Mozilla and shitcan everyone there. That’s how much of a power user I want to be. Then I’d hire some real non-authoritarian developers and build a decent browser.

Mozilla’s main mistake is they bought into the notion that they needed to design a product that could be used by someone with the IQ of a rotting burrito. But in reality, that’s not and never was their market and this burrito person doesn’t much care about the product, anyway. Nearly anything is just as opaque to them.

Nov 09

Ram

Why are ceramic sinks so popular now? They are terrible — hard to clean, prone to breaking other dishes, and just in general look worse.

I’ll be glad when that type of sink is sunk.