Every time I think about it, it just boggles my mind that computers are actually substantially worse and less usable than they were a decade ago.
Month: July 2018
Not Easyware
I know I’ve written this already, but I am getting rid of all my Apple hardware, except my iPhone. (As that ages, I will get rid of it, too.)
Without subpixel AA, there is no reason to have such expensive gear because the practical advantage of it is lost. Even at 5K resolution, sans subpixel AA the fonts look no better than they would on a monitor half that resolution. So bye-bye Apple hardware. I will use an OS where the fonts don’t look like dog vomit. Right now, the only choice left is Linux.
I dread selling this hardware but there’s no reason at all to have such premium gear when now I can get the exact same appearance (and better performance) on gear that literally costs 1/5 the price.
Fuck you, Apple.
It’s All Fucked
Literally everything in the computing world and on the internet works worse — far worse — than it did 10 years ago. Even something so simple as bookmark sync is basically non-functional these days because no on really wants you to bookmark anything — they want you to search.
I can no longer have decent fonts due to smartphones, I can’t have any privacy nor security, while at the same time I can’t get into roughly 25% of my accounts ever again because I can’t remember some phone number or don’t have access to some email address from a decade ago.
In a lot of ways, I regret getting into IT because this stuff is my life, not just a hobby or some casual interest.
Whatcha
It’s funny when people tell me I can’t see differences in font drawing and on-screen text that I can easily see.
Just because your eyes are broken don’t mean mine are. Fucking hell, people, I used to be a proofreader for a living (for a little while, anyway) so I can tell when there’s an em-dash vs. an en-dash and when people have used a backtick vs. a single opening quote mark.
Also, stupids, I don’t care if the removal of sub-pixel anti-aliasing means the glyphs look “truer” to their actual shape.
I CARE ABOUT HOW GOOD IT LOOKS ON THE SCREEN MOTHERFUCKERS
And removing sub-pixel AA means it looks worse on the screen — which should be anyone’s true consideration when it comes to the average user experience.
Smartphone Hatred
One of the reasons I utterly detest smartphones is that if smartphones didn’t exist, my screen would not now be ruined, and I would not have to attempt to offload thousands and thousands of dollars of now-useless Apple hardware.
The only reason Apple is removing sub-pixel anti-aliasing is that it is not supported in iOS, and they are bringing in a bunch of iOS code to MacOS. Thus, they have to kill the only reason many people even use MacOS.
Unbelievable. I cannot believe the only real reason I stay on MacOS is now gone.
Push It
Wow, it turns out that I can do a lot more pushups when I am extremely, extremely angry.
Hulking out works, my friends.
All the Time
It really sucks that everything in the computing world is getting worse all the time.
Since there is no chance that Apple will go back on this destructive font change, I’ve decided to get rid of all my Apple equipment while it still has the most value. I will be selling it all soon since there is no point of having it with its major advantage (excellent fonts) being removed.
I will likely never buy another piece of Apple hardware again due to this.
Mojave
I installed the Mojave beta on my Macbook Pro as some user on Hacker News claimed that the destructive font change as implemented in Mojave was “not the same” as toggling this setting in High Sierra.
Like most people on Hacker News, he (?) was wrong and the fonts appear identically atrocious and foul in Mojave as toggling that setting in High Sierra.
Damn, it is going to bite ass selling all this crap.
Pub
That $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a paper goes 100% to the publisher, 0% to the authors. If you just email us to ask for our papers, we are allowed to send them to you for free, and we will be genuinely delighted to do so. https://t.co/NHEfiOMLfG
— Dr. Holly Witteman (@hwitteman) July 6, 2018
Indeed. Before there were other sources, I emailed quite a few scientists and researchers asking for copies of papers in the late 1990s up until 2010 or so. Every single one sent me a copy that I otherwise would’ve had to spend $35+ to read.
Not a Good Night
Apple just totally fucked me over.
This means that fonts will look atrocious even on Retina displays. What the fuck. Why would they do this? This makes me so fucking angry considering how much money I’ve spent on Apple hardware over the last few years. Fuck me. This removes the entire reason to even have a 5K display, which still requires sub-pixel anti-aliasing to look good.
By the way, yes I know how it will look as this is the same change as going to System Preferences-->General-->Use LCD Font Smoothing When Available.
I am not sure what this means for me exactly as far my computing environment goes. In the short term, I just won’t upgrade to Mojave. In the medium term, it means that I will eventually get rid of all my Apple hardware and move either to Linux (most likely) or Windows just because it’s also shitty but much cheaper to run.
I am indescribably angry right now. That’s about $15,000 down the fucking toilet.
Fuck you, Apple. Fuck you very much.
(In the medium term, I will be selling three 5K iMacs and an older (late 2013) MacBook Pro within the next year or so, if anyone is interested.)
Not so clever either
I really loathe smartphones with the sort of deep and ample hatred that usually only accompanies revenge scenes in movies.
There’s a show called Counterpart where our world splits, and one side of this cosmic divide does not have smartphones. Can I go live there?
All flavor, no substance
Why I Don’t Love Gödel, Escher, Bach.
This person merely doesn’t love it. I, however, detest that turd of a book. I read it once and read parts of it again because I couldn’t believe anyone could treat such lightweight twaddle so reverentially.
The book is written like I would’ve written a similar book when I was 9, and with about the same intellectual heft. It’s a pamphlet that ballooned into a doorstop.
This also particularly bothered me about the work.
This sort of cursory engagement with the cultural features of the book ends up undermining one of the book’s major selling points: I had originally seen it as the work of a polymath effortlessly weaving fields together into a multifaceted but uniform whole, but in reality, areas that are more than a step or two outside Hofstadter’s areas of expertise (computer science, formal logic, some of the more mathematically rigorous bits of cognitive science) are at best shallow, and at worst are “…heaping scorn…” on things Hofstadter doesn’t understand and doesn’t appear to want to understand.
Hofstadter reminds me of people who aren’t really all that smart but drop “well, actually” into every conversation. In terms of one of my favorite movies, Hof is a Caleb who thinks he is a Nathan. He was also a precursor to and a progenitor of people like Jonah Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell, and that is bad enough in itself.
Numericity
Empiricists assure us that the world can be solved with math. But you can’t even solve math with math.
That’s being a little unfair as Gödel’s findings have little to no consequence for the real world. But all the goobers spouting about how philosophy is unnecessary and then go on to build an algorithm that they didn’t “mean to” discriminate against black people but does show just why philosophy is necessary.
Manic
I don’t really have any desire to learn German and I don’t want to live in Germany, but if I were really ridiculously rich my one absurd indulgence that everyone in the press would pillory me for is that I’d have pastries and bread flown in from Germany on the fastest flight available twice a week.
Hell, I’d go so far as to buy some decommed supersonic jet to get those vital comestibles here faster. I feel so sad when I drive by all the interminable doughnut shops in the US, and all the other just atrocious “bakeries” and think about what’s available in Germany (and other Euro countries) and how wonderful it tastes.
How do Americans tolerate such terrible food? I cannot understand it.
Credited
We are in another housing bubble and a credit bubble in general — at the household and corporate level.
Sure, things like this can run longer than seems possible, and everyone says you’re crazy when you say, “This time is not different.”
But: this time is not different. One day the music will stop and most people will be left without chairs. And I’ll make sure to have cash to buy stuff at fire sale prices.
Didn’t have to be, but (mostly) the coming disaster was a fait accompli of Obama’s policies — his legacy, if you will.