XFCE is the last desktop standing — as I’ve noted before — that just works correctly.

I think about all of the user-hostile design out there very frequently, for a few reasons. One is that I use these aggressively terrible designs often now as I have no choice, and because the move to these antagonistic interfaces mirrors the increasing trend to authoritarianism in society.

There’s all of that, and I’m also interested in the rest of the sociological underpinnings and ramifications to this trend that started in around 2010.

What’s particularly interesting to me about all of the user-hostile design out there is that it’s “data-backed” but if you actually look at the data gathered — for instance by Mozilla, which I studied closely — it’s clear that they have no idea what data they should gather, how they should interpret the (poor) data they did gather, and how they were completely not in possession of any logical or considered model of what they should attempt to achieve with their, uh, analysis.

Gathering the data in Mozilla’s case, Microsoft’s case and nearly every other case out there is just an attempt to put a scientific-sounding patina on something the companies and/or their designers already wanted to do anyway.

Why? Money, sometimes, but a lot of the time I think it’s just about the thrill of power, especially in Mozilla’s case.

When you can disrupt 100 million people’s work flow and make them vassals to your will — for a nerdy, douchey programmer who has never had any real taste of power before and probably can’t partake any other way, this must be fucking intoxicating.