Faraday, after demonstrating how moving a magnet through a coiled wire induced a current in the wire was asked by a visiting statesman what was the use of this.
Faraday responded, “In twenty years, you will be taxing it”
Similarly, at a demonstration of hot air balloons in France, Benjamin Franklin was asked “Of what use is this?”
Franklin replied, “Of what use is a newborn baby?”
What’s the point of smartphone colors that will get completely covered by the phone case? And don’t tell me phone cases are not necessary, I’ve accidentally dropped my phone enough times!
(I’m on my 4th smartphone in about 12 years, and I’ve never scratched or cracked a screen)
Users have somehow been trained to ignore and dismiss error messages. Probably from getting too many ad pop-ups.
My own pet peeve is UI components whose associated action is divorced from the components interaction feedback.
For example, a button that seems visibly pressed (even lights up! Maybe there’s even audio or haptic feedback!) but once you release, nothing actually happens because you were supposed to press it or hold it down for slightly longer.
This even happens with physical controls: in some elevators you can press a floor button such that it lights up momentarily, and even beeps, and yet the elevator doesn’t register the command and you have to press again, longer.
I’ve been “collecting” content for many years now. I learned most of what I needed to know about ripping and transcoding over the years, such that each time I need to deal with a new video format, or a new application, it’s not too hard, because I’m building on everything I’ve already learned.
And each time I was learning new things, it’s not like there was a risk that all my previous content might suddenly become unusable or inaccessible.
Meanwhile, a couple years ago I was finally able to build myself a proper NAS. While I know my way around Linux somewhat, I never kept a Linux-based daily driver because most of the apps I use regularly are on Windows, and I’m not confident about running them stably in Linux, nor am I confident about equivalent native Linux apps. And I’m not confident about setting up and administering my own server. My past experiences have shown me that whenever you need to do anything complex and specific, it involves a lot of work.
So at a coworker’s suggestion, I got a Synology NAS that turned out to be a breeze to setup. And then I figured out how to get Plex server on there (not available in the Synology package manager, but the “manual” process turned out to be simple enough)
And it just WORKS! it’s not perfect, but it’s mostly painless to use. I was happy paying for the lifetime Plex pass at the beginning, because it handles all the routing and discovery that needs to happen to allow me to stream to my phone, or to my parents’ TV when I’m visiting them.
My next NAS might not be by Synology due to their recent announcement about supported hard drives, but I’ll probably be looking for something that “just works” because I can’t be bothered to learn how to be a sysadmin, and risk losing my stuff because I’m making the kinds of mistakes one makes as they’re learning.
Just like, if I owned a car, I wouldn’t be digging under the hood to “tweak the timing” or replacing brake discs. I’d be happy paying someone I trust to do that work, leaving me with a car that “just works”.
I heard countertop banana stand owners tend to also own banana hammocks.
Then you don’t know what Roku is either. Because it’s definitely a steaming service, too.
For example, they got the exclusive on Weird Al Yankovic’s “Weird”. I watched that on Roku. The first time. But I found the ads so grating that I pirated it so I could rewatch it without the annoyance.
Much of the province of Québec is already boycotting them since January, after they closed all their warehouses here to prevent them from unionizing.
Only if you bring your own house with you.
Just rent a nice French bomb, and blow up Mar-a-Lago
I refer to it as Singles Awareness Day. For the obvious reason.
Outside of the White House and Capitol (and maybe adjoining buildings) I would not want to do too much damage to the rest of Washington DC, as I think we could find lots of allies there.
Florida, on the other hand…
Are One Direction even still together?
We have everything needed right now, apart from adequate solar shielding. But that won’t be a problem if we do it at night.
Programmed obsolescence?
Where do I put in my request for that bluesky money I’m owed, then?
What’s funny to me is, the agile approach seems like it’s a much better fit for open-source, non-commercial software development.
The corporate world and is management practices based around quarters and deadlines can’t seem to see how anything could get done without deadlines, but that’s usually less of a factor with open-source. People laugh at “scrum masters” because in a corporate environment, all the scrum stuff tends to be mostly performative. But it seems to me that open-source projects with multiple contributors already kind of work in an agile manner.
Sometimes, the developers also being the users helps, as in your example. Sometimes, it’s a hindrance, where the developer will just create UI that makes sense to them, but not to others.
In a recent by-election I voted in, the ballots were 2-3 feet long with 91 candidates on them. This was in Canada, where we only have paper ballots. The majority of the candidates only registered as part of a protest to get the govt. to reconsider other voting methods than FPTP.
That’s not realistic. They’d never use real names like “Bobby”.