more and more as i try to help my mom deal with all the "new features" in her computer and phone that don't work for anyone with any sight, eye/hand, or skin chemistry issues, i'm back to this:
'no developer of any device software/OS that human beings use is allowed to touch a single line of code until they have spent 6 months doing user support at an assisted care facility'
@paul_ipv6@tychotithonus working for a national center on low-incidence disabilities over 20 years ago has forever changed my design and development. And that stemmed from very little user testing and observations. I don’t think it really takes much to see needs and make shifts. But one does have to be willing to spend at least some time working with users who have varying needs.
@feld@paul_ipv6@tychotithonus
"Those people" are a significant percent of the potential user base, and if they aren't a significant percent of the actual user base, gee, I wonder why
A quick check with a search engine informs me that 13% of the population is disabled. The number of people who will ever be disabled at some point in their lives is higher, around 25%. Those people are these people.
@feld@paul_ipv6@tychotithonus@hosford42 scrollbars were usable and disappearing scrollbars are unusable for a lot of people, it cost them more money to fuck over a bunch of people by changing it than just leave it alone
Back in 2010, I had issues with seniors whose fingerprints were so worn thin they couldn’t use the fingerprint scanners to clock in.
It’s fascinating and frustrating that people forget that, unless they’re unlucky, they too will be an old and have the coordination and physiological issues they disdain elders for having,
@Aphrodite@tychotithonus I wonder how much an issue this is with other jobs in which people tend to lose their fingerprints - ie. if you work with chemicals, losing your fingerprints due to accidents is considered expected. it also sometimes happens with construction jobs.
sure they eventually return (takes a few months) but it makes you wonder if anything was ever designed with that in mind.
@cakeisnotalie@Aphrodite@tychotithonus oh fully agreed. security stuff especially feels like it's been ivory towering itself to the point where the assumption is that the enemy is and always must be government agencies.
which fun fact - biometrics dont do shit against the men with guns who can arrest you and just force you to press it with your finger/hold the phone in front of your face. which they will do.
kinda feel like there should be more realistic security models being considered in these communities - far more likely problems than governments are: religious nutters, annoying relatives, exes and stalkers. very few of these people have infinite access to hacking tools, yet the actual lessons to prevent those kinds of people from going ballistic (or thinking of technical measures to prevent that problem) are being forgotten.
@cakeisnotalie@Aphrodite@tychotithonus like, just today, i discovered a super useful feature today on android called "app pinning"; it restricts phone usage to one app (+ it disables notifications) and you need to use your password to unlock the phone again for regular use.
for some reason this is disabled by default and hidden in the android settings page (and i only found it because an infosec person complained about it it by showing an android browser exploit to break parental controls). even though this alone would solve so many problems for people with security/privacy situations they're likely gonna encounter in real life.
like... who does this kinda shit and not turn this on as a big promotional feature by default? i don't fucking get it. you could promote so much off the back of this, people would love it. why disable it by default and hide it in a settings page.
@glitch@cakeisnotalie@Aphrodite@tychotithonus To be "fair", Google doesn't seem to have maintained that feature very well since they implemented it, and if you do app pinning and have gesture-nav set as the bottom nav system option (at least on Google's Android distro), there is actually no way I have found to end the app pinning other than restarting the phone! Which actually makes it kinda even more secure, accidentally, but shows the neglect that's been shown to this Android feature.
I juggle my daily driver. Thank you, Otterboxes and glass screen protectors.
I just don’t like having Goog that deep in my life. Already have them in way too much of it. Apple may not be not-evil, but they are less evil in a way that I can live with.
Plus the displays are really good on my eyes that are developing presbyopia.
@cakeisnotalie@glitch@keithzg@tychotithonus Current phone is an 11, it’s running well. Used to use a 6s because the DAC was amazing for audio recording but then the damned touch sensor went sideways (thanks Apple).
I’m hoping to use this phone as long as possible, just like I’m exploiting a 2015 iMac with a quad core i7 as long as possible.
@Aphrodite@cakeisnotalie@glitch@tychotithonus I'm similarly on a Pixel 4a XL for as long as I can manage, no security updates from Google anymore so I'll have to switch to LineageOS or such soon but that's one of the things that keeps me using Android, I can actually install other operating system distributions and am not just at the mercy of the megacorporation that sold it.
It's also far more possible even without that to not use Google on Android than it is to not interface with Apple for iOS—in fact F-Droid just got the ability to auto-update apps on any old Android device (that's running OS versions at least not too many years out of date). You could buy a phone right from Google and then proceed to never use or sign into any Google service, yet still have large catalogues of applications to run on it, and develop and run one's own software without paying anyone. I haven't gone a far de-Googling my phones myself, but that I can is something I can't bring myself to give up—much like how my Internet connection at home isn't fiber-optic because no ISP in Canada will give you such a connection without using their own router.
I really, really wish I could get away with something that's neither Android nor iOS for the computer that's always in my pocket. Alas, stuff like my banking app just ends up being too useful to give up, and it's hard to get a phone with a good AMOLED display and good cameras without going to one of the big corps and either Android or iOS. So for me, Android is the lesser evil of the only two I can entirely reasonably choose from. But oh, how I dabble in being irrational, and how nice it feels to just go out with, say, an old Sony Xperia running a Qt and Wayland and systemd . . .
@cakeisnotalie@Aphrodite@tychotithonus@glitch Oh yeah the ISPs all allow passthrough, it just philosophically bugs me that I still have to run their hardware, even bypassed (which in my experience at my work can sometimes glitch back on, but it's not even really for such a practical concern that I'm annoyed).
The real fundamental problem is that when the Trudeau admin got in originally, the Liberal party's historical chumminess with big eastern telecom companies meant they killed the fibre-resale rules. So the really good ISP I use, Teksavvy, hasn't ever gotten the chance to resell fibre, only cable or DSL. Funny enough I still get better pings on my old cable connection using Shaw's physical cable lines than the fibre-backed Shaw connection at my work! And I can still download even 4K videos faster than I could watch 'em, and live alone so I'm not sharing my bandwidth widely. So I haven't (yet) felt the desperate need to move on from cable, much like how my old a-series Pixel with a headphone jack has remained Good Enough for now...
it’s freaking annoying how bad our telecoms are here. i know i’m spoiled with my ftth, but that i lack good portability options makes that not as nice.
fwiw i’m considering running for parliament next year to do what i can from inside the halls of power to improve things for the everyday canadian.
@cakeisnotalie@Aphrodite@tychotithonus@glitch Yeah more than anything it’s (a) I just philosophically hate the idea of having to run extra useless hardware that is only working for me if it does nothing, and (b) Teksavvy is so much nicer than Telus or Shaw (now owned by Rogers) and I don’t wanna give ‘em up. (Like, if I’m having a problem I can call them up in the middle of the night and get a well-supported, non-script-reading person on the other end of the line helping me! Unfathomable from either of the big two or any other company of their ilk.)
Biometrics are literally who you are. That's identity.
They are not secret and can be duplicated for the most part.
Even when you see those palm/retina scanners in the movies that actually CAN verify the biometric and not just make a reasonable guess based on a hashed average (as any consumer device fingerprint sensor does), they are identifying the person, not authenticating their access.
Now postulate how soon we regulation changes, probably pushed by the US, that bars #videoIdentification given that #AI can already spoof you, it can certainly spoof you holding up your #ID card...
All those #fintech companies are fucked in 5, 4, 3....
There’s a distinct lack of ethical behaviour in big tech. Granted it’s a reflection of the general antiempathetic nature of corporate management and society, but it’s disheartening seeing people who at least claim to had suffered due to being geeks and nerds inflict pain on others instead of doing what they can to reduce pain.
@Aphrodite@cakeisnotalie@tychotithonus problem is that IT is that weird mix of "growing up in a scrappy situation yet being super invested" and "the most generic prestigious IT jobs are the ones at some of the most evil corporations you can think of". The latter especially makes it easy for people to forget their roots - Silicon Valley brainrot is a real thing that's making IT worse for everyone.
Sysadmin work isn't often seen as particularly glamorous, but I've always got way more respect for the sysadmin for a high school or a systems engineer for some hardware you've never heard of (usually industrial) than for the triple digit salaried GAFAM employee or the dude who is on his 50th startup after cashing out the previous 49 from some VC. The former two? Those two have dealt with their users directly. On a daily basis. They know what they need.
The latter two are breaking themselves to the bone to make money that anywhere outside of Silicon Valley would be considered early retirement and in Silicon Valley is "just enough to survive a year or two".
Despite my bona fides, the closest I have, career wise, to IT work was working at Free Geek Vancouver and helping folks who couldn’t find the any key learn how to get online safely.
At the same time, I can feel confident that I’ve left $25M on the table in my adult life by not working for SV companies, and if that’s the price of a good night’s sleep, so be it.
@cakeisnotalie@Aphrodite@tychotithonus I say this in the nicest way possible - I think you might have bitten the SV brainrot in the doomerism side. A lot of what Silicon Valley produces is hot air that people pretend is relevant because sometimes the farts whiff in their direction.
It is perfectly viable to ignore Silicon Valley; those AIs aren't there yet (and LLMs wouldn't be the tech to do that with anyway), plus last I checked, the quality of LLMs is rapidly devolving into sludge as they get trained onto more and more LLM output slop, people stop being interested in taking LLM output seriously and the big AI companies have to keep neutering the outputs to conform to societal standards. The only actual meaning it's taking on is that we've seen new inventive ways to send spam, a few small things with translation tech being more accessible/slight improvements to grammar and some funny legal gaffes in court.
The last fart SV had was convincing us that shitty autogenerated pictures of apes were worth real money and blockchain was somehow involved... let's just say that I'm not too concerned about what those idiots will do besides "knowing what the bullshit is when you smell it".
Meanwhile we're sending messages on a web platform drafted by several queer people, whose main implementation is written by a german guy and is most frequently hosted on VPS providers like Hetzner. All of which exists outside of the SV tech space and is not venture capitalism backed (said german guy has a patreon instead and a lot of the implementations get money from the EU through various grants). I think that alone proves that there exists a tech market outside of Silicon Valley. It's not as absurdly inflated financially as Silicon Valley, but in the words of a famous person whose name I forgot: "they are an outlier and shouldn't have been counted".
I sympathize with your personal problems but all I can comment on there is that the US healthcare system is a shithsow and I would suggest trying to leave, but I know such a comment would be hot air since I'm sure you know that already.
we can agree that there are significant issues with tech.
we can agree that tech is not neutral and that how it’s being used is often detrimental.
let’s not attack each other, though. we’ve got our own views and our own lives informed by the choices we’ve made. let’s focus on that which we agree on and not make those who want to divide us happier by doing their work for them. <3
I’m weird in that I’m at my happiest when I’m the one defending those who need my services to protect and standing between them and harm.
Helps that I’m an utterly nonviolent person.
You likely would not believe that is incredibly effective at deterring attackers since I refuse to give them any pretext to portray themselves the victim.
It’s a bit hardcore admittedly, but it works for me. :)
It’s messed up to me that we’ve had the answer key to the ethical issue for only as long as we’ve had history, yet every generation that seems to rediscover the base truth that choosing to not inflict pain on others and self and choosing to recognize the humanity of all humans is too much.
Some think it’s greed or power that is the cause, but both are just fig leaves to excuse inflicting pain.
Because frankly, and it feels really weird to say this, but I am in that group that has respect for all sentient beings, at least per the Buddhist definition.
As a species, we’re prosocial. We’re interdependent on each other for survival. We need each other, yet so much of the last century has been to render us atomic in nuclear families in a world where everything has a price tag.
this is a case where the perfect is being turned into the enemy of the good. that’s a tactic our adversaries often use to ensure static inertia never gets overcome with dynamic inertia.
there’s no perfect way to do things. doing them good enough is a starting place because once good enough becomes the baseline, it’s easier to improve from there.
@tychotithonus I don't want to trivialise what is a fairly serious accessibility issue and a lack of regard for it bordering on ableism, but modern scrollbars (on all platforms) are just so bad. For the love of God can we please just have proper scrollbars back? It would solve so many problems.
It often feels like product features are being dictated by the Wizard of Oz (from "The Wiz") who just makes arbitrary aesthetic changes that everyone is expected to conform to.
Regularly disrupting the UI gets in the way of people being ably to use their computers and phones.
Imagine if the dashboard on a car, or the controls on a stove or oven, or the buttons on a TV remote get reorganised every several months?
Imagine if the dashboard on a car, or the controls on a stove or oven, or the buttons on a TV remote get reorganised every several months?
Doesn't Tesla do this regularly (and if you've never been in one, there are almost no physical controls, just a large touchscreen in the center console)?
@tychotithonus@swelljoe "The users will have to change what they want to fit our poor interface choices" is never going to be a strong position, either.
@tychotithonus ARGH I have a trackball WITH a scroll wheel (Logitech M575!) and I STILL want scrollbars. Complete scrollbars WITH the arrow widgets that I can click on.
"Grandma" is being totally reasonable in her expectations and that answer is rubbish.
@yakkoj@tychotithonus
Agreed. I just "updated" to Windows 11 (I didn't want to) and one of the (many) things I hate about it is the disappearing scroll-bar arrow! So, Microsoft, to make the invisible arrow appear, you have to hover over it, so you have to find the right spot to hover over something that you can't see... unless you find the right spot when the arrow is invisible. Didn't think that through did you...
@SmartmanApps@yakkoj@tychotithonus Look in Settings → Accessibility → Visual effects → Always show scrollbars (wording might be slightly different, I don't have English Windows here, so I'm translating back). This'll make the scrollbars always visible.
@indigoparadox@alfredohno@tychotithonus i defo wouldnt call trackpad hostile but holy fuck trying to educate someone to use one input it already grating enough, especially if that's a senior we're talking about
@alfredohno@tychotithonus I think the answerer is assuming "ChromeOS ==> shitty laptop ==> has a trackpad". Even if they're correct, of course, recommending using a trackpad for anything is violence.
@tychotithonus "gold product expert" says ... suck it up
(mildly related, i remember trying to get my dad to work out how to use the Music app on an old iPhone I handed him down loaded with albums he used to listen to on vinyl...and failing miserably as Music is now all about secret swipes and things and is absolutely dreadfully confusing even to me sometimes. ended up with some basic 3rd party music player instead)
@tychotithonus 100% agreed about seniors, also want to add, this is big problem with UI design philosophy today. With scroll bars, just a few pixels on the side and you have a great visualization of how far down a page you are and even how big the page is. It's good info, with practically no downside, and it's so consistent the user will always know what it means. Why does UI designers try to hide stuff like that?
Hiding them is introducing a real problem to try to fix a fake problem.
@tychotithonus@drewdevault : what I find fascinating with this trend is that scrollbars had two goals: allowing the action of scrolling and allowing to get an idea on the size of the page and your current progress. It was brilliant design, intuitive, universal.
There is absolutely no reason to ever change it.
But too look cool during demo.
This is pure #enshitification because we started to call "UX designers" people who were only "graphic designers".
@tychotithonus At least trackballs with a scroll ring are a thing (I have one) but I could see some people not being able to use such a thing or having access to one, therefore the scrollbars should be kept.
@tychotithonus I love how it's the recommended answer not because the questioner found it helpful, but rather because some other member of the Kool aid Krew decided to mark it as such.
@tychotithonus I'm not old, but I'm old enough to have a hard time using computers that aren't mine. Websites with non-standard fiddly and tiny controls are also a problem. I hate where we are in terms of average usability. Everybody has to do things differently, making even common tasks a learning experience in every new app/site.
@tychotithonus also, I hate Kevin (Snails) Diamond Product Expert. Telling an old lady who uses a trackball to "scroll with two fingers gently on the touchpad". I will fight Kevin. It's on sight.
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