generated

script artifacts/script-altVO.txt

@@ -1,13 +1,17 @@
-But then the great mistake was made, which was: well if people react to computers as though they're people, we have to put the faces of people on computers. Which in my opinion is exactly the incorrect reaction. If people are going to react to computers as though they're humans, the one thing you don't have to do is anthropomorphize them, because they're already using that part of the brain. Clippy was a program based on the research that Nass and Reeves did, and it was a tragic misinterpretation of their work."
+never half-ass 2 things. Whole-ass 1 thing.
-"i don't provide the weather, only help with the documentation"
+"oh, whoops!" "whoopsie!"
-It's time to stop!
 keyboards are obsolete, just talk.
 `/bb|[^b]{2}/`.
 people are bad at regexes, so regexes are bad.
 duck off
 you piece or spit
+your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they never asked if they should
+But then the great mistake was made, which was: well if people react to computers as though they're people, we have to put the faces of people on computers. Which in my opinion is exactly the incorrect reaction. If people are going to react to computers as though they're humans, the one thing you don't have to do is anthropomorphize them, because they're already using that part of the brain. Clippy was a program based on the research that Nass and Reeves did, and it was a tragic misinterpretation of their work."
+"i don't provide the weather, only help with the documentation"
+It's time to stop!
+won't somebody please think of the shareholders!
 something to the effect of "i just work on my config"
-"oh, whoops!" "whoopsie!"
 coming back to this now that windows 11 is out...  imagine being able to move the taskbar.  we had no idea how good we had it back then.
 we're trying to make great products for people!
 the quote is very long
+Avoid anti-features

script artifacts/script-primaryVO.txt

@@ -4,39 +4,52 @@ ready? Are you all prepared to take notes?
 **Get out of the user's fucking way.**
 Thank you for attending my ted talk, video over.
 
-...no alright, I'll elaborate. There is, or could be, technology that exists to be a means to an end. Instead, software in $CurrentYear is entirely an exercise in being an obstacle.
+...no alright, I'll elaborate. There is, or could be, technology that exists to be a means to an end. Instead, software in $CurrentYear is entirely an exercise in being an obstacle. I'll break it down to some rules.
+
+Software is a means to an end. But app developers think they're crafting an ℯ𝓍𝓅ℯ𝓇𝒾ℯ𝓃𝒸ℯ. 
+They want to *increase* the time spent in an app. I assume this is favorable for ad revenue metrics. For those of us who actually do things, an app is a tool, and a tool is better when it *decreases* the time it takes to get shit done.
+
+take for example, Discord. They've given themselves loads of work to produce features other than real time chat, to justify asking you for money. Meanwhile it only exists in the first place because skype was bloated full of junk, and it only persists because their userbase refuses to use Matrix.
+
+Notice how every search company realizes that every website is overladen with trash, so they offer an "ai summary". If the accuracy ever gets good (it won't), that would be a great way to pull information out of a website without being told to sign in with google so that I can waive my privacy protections for their absolutely unnecessary cookies to then decline to sign up for their newsletter and then tell their chatbot to go find somewhere else to be useless.
+
+The entire world of technology is mislabeled. the definition of technology is about applying knowledge to achieve practical goals. It's far more profitable to hide the fact that your only actual goal is extracting value from the people who ostensibly should be your customers. 
+That's why the only practical goal to achieve at the moment is adversarial APIs. We don't need yet another skin on your phone's built in music player, we need the possibility for your phone to install new audio codecs and an ecosystem of it.
+
+Accursed Farms has inspiration on how to build better UIs.
+
+let's learn the lesson that clippy's project managers didn't: we already anthropomorphize our technology, computers don't need to pretend to be human. how would we change our bad assistant into a good one?
 
 
-You know what finally tipped me over the edge to give up on windows, even if that meant PC gaming went with it?
-I was playing warframe, and then windows 10 popped up a full screen ad - on a monitor I couldn't see at the time - that told me "you said you'd sign up for a trial of our cloud bullshit now." I couldn't figure out why the game had ostensibly frozen until I walked around my apartment to sit back at my desk and read this ad, and as ever communicate one of the microsoft-sanctioned responses of "yes I would love to right now" or "yes I would love to but not right now".
-No flavor of linux has ever pulled a stunt like that. 
 
-there's a joke about how microsoft shoved windows 11 (and also 10) down everyone's throats, then popped up a window in their way to ask if they would recommend windows to a friend? the joke for socially well-adjusted, normal people is: "I need you to understand that people don't recommend each other operating systems." That applies, for them. But for nerds who are currently staring at several screens running several different flavors of linux... People do. But the people who do... understand how terrible windows is, and the myriad of ways it's only getting worse. 
+Do what you can, and no less.
-One wonders if this is some kind of bet between an engineer and his delusional project manager.
+
+This one is a well known one from our predecessors, graybeards from before even myself - they said that The Linux Way is to do only one thing, and do it well.
+Or, as the world's favorite libertarian would say: 
 
 
-have you heard the tale of Clippy?
+GPS.
-Way back, in the before times, some cutting-edge psychological research was done that demonstrated people anthropomorphize their computers.
+you know why people put up with google's tracking? because for as much dumb bullshit as waze is laden with, for as wrong as apple is, and for as much as google maps is a thinly veiled excuse for google to catalog your gps position down to the meter and second... 
-So some cufflink-wearing motherfucker said "great, people will emotionally attach to their computer more if we anthropomorphize them." 
+those 3 are the only apps that 
-So now you start up your word processor and it jumps in the way to say hi and chat about how it can interfere.
+offer driving directions and 
-Fortunately, clippy was killed off pretty quickly. As long as people are projecting a personality onto their computer, we hated clippy as intensely as we'd hate any other pest. And of course there are some people who felt the opposite, I'll leave a link in the show notes to an erotic fan fiction starring clippy that you can actually buy.
+understand the concept of a road.
-
+again, what is the function of a GPS app? To tell you where you are and how to get somewhere. So the concept of a street map and navigation app that doesn't understand the concept of a street and therefore is virtually unable to navigate it is absurd.
-Microsoft eventually came to their senses and euthanized clippy. Then a few years later, they bought Halo. Once that story concluded, some idiot at microsoft figured they could try again to make clippy happen, as Cortana. The arms race between users trying to disable cortana and microsoft "accidentally" reenabling her could be its own video.
-years pass, the most glorified markov chain in the world, chatGPT, conqueres society.
-Cortana is dead. 
-Now, microsoft will make you love Copilot. 
-Remember how they tripped over their own dick right out of the gate by starting at step 1 with a feature that automatically screenshots your credit card details and passwords? 
-hah, good times.
-
-at the risk of making yet another complaining-about-Ai video... indulge me one last tangent.
-openweathermap.org has a chatbot. 
-FUCKING... WHY? so that I can look past the weather forecast and ask it to tell me?
-...let's try it.
-THE PERFUNCTORY CHATBOT ON THE WEATHER SITE DOESN'T EVEN TELL YOU THE GOD. DAMNED. WEATHER.
 
 
-as bad as desktop interfaces are, phones are the worst. 100% of interactions with phones are miserable and infuriating. And I don't mean interactions with people on social media, I mean the hardware and the apps. 
+there's a joke that millenials (and gen-z-ers) have to teach boomers how to open a PDF. But apple-loyalty is most rampant among these generations - I dare you to try this exercise.  Bring up your preferred communications-with-strangers app (e.g., X). 
-But let's not retread who and why, let's focus on the what it is about phones that makes you wish for a real computer.
+Dismiss the patch notes. Find an image you'd like to interact with later. Maybe you want to draw on it. maybe you just want to send it as is. Download it. where is it?
+
+fuck knows. So good luck finding it to bring into your editor. For the sake of lip-service to the concept of security, much work has been done to ensure apps aren't allowed to share files.
+In exchange for the twin downsides of "virtually every app is pointless" and "a truly useful app is prevented from existing", we have accomplished nothing in the way of privacy.
+
+conversely, how often do you need to find something on your phone? I bet if you have any kind of vehicle, you have to have insurance, and the insurance company wants you to get the app. 
+Theoretically the benefit to you is that you can pull up your documents. If we assume you *will* have your phone on you, which is a pretty safe assumption, not having to carry paper documents is more efficient.
+the problem then becomes how long it takes to get to your documents. If you have to go through the app, you have to find it, start it up, dismiss its patch notes, wait for it to phone home, dismiss all the "urgent" notifications, find where the latest unnecessary redesign moved the button you're looking for, then let it re-download your documents.
+
+Or, since the thing you're looking for should just be a file... why not just keep the file around? maybe you could have a pdf. Or just snap a photo of the paper documents.
+but rather than the much more sane desktop paradigm, phones don't like files. One does not browse files, which the OS will launch an app to handle; the OS launches an app, and then that app keeps track of the data it owns. 
+
+so again, the function that *should* be filled is retrieving a file. But design philosophy on phones fails to achieve that.
 
 
 typing on a phone, need I say more? 
@@ -49,48 +62,77 @@ Yeah? Spell this regex:
 I think you mean chatGPT is bad at regexes. If you apply some effort to understand them, they're great.
 
 
-but don't worry, it's not just phones. my laptop, much like every single other laptop I have ever seen within the last 15 years, is the least-bad design I could find. Laptop keyboards are universally moronic. looking at mine, the place where too many years of muscle memory have trained me to hit the ctrl key, there’s an "fn" key instead, and the ctrl key is moved over to where the windows key is. fn + s is screenshot. apparently, if you design a laptop keyboard, a prerequisite is some kind of brain damage that makes you think people want all kinds bullshit instead of the keys on a keyboard. often, device manuals *advertise* that the f-keys don’t do the f-key function. Fortunately, mine was able to be set once to let the keys do what they’re supposed to. However, on my black keyboard illuminated by my mostly black screen with a couple of points of extremely bright LEDs, I can see the unnecessary functions' white labels, and the actual f key labels have a dark blue one. I get the impression including the real labels was a begrudging concession. 
+this is because yet again, the some idiot thought he had a better idea for an already solved problem.
+The function of a keyboard is to be a sort of *board* of *keys* so that you can type. Apple said they have a new idea, therefore the entire world switched to on screen keyboards. But they suck. So Apple also decided we should just dictate, which *still* is not fulfilling the function of a keyboard.
+yet again, 100% of interactions with phones are miserable and infuriating. And I don't mean other people on social media, I mean smartphones themselves.
 
 
-GPS.
+ai investors might tell us that an assistant that can make use of autonomy is better than one that can't. In a vacuum, that's true. But no chatbot is useful, yet. What we have instead, is an "ai" that insists on being in charge of tasks that it isn't capable of. 
-you know why people put up with google's tracking? because for as much dumb bullshit as waze is laden with, for as wrong as apple is, and for as much as google maps is a thinly veiled excuse for google to catalog your gps position down to the meter and second... those 3 are the only apps that offer driving directions and understand the concept of a road.
+A recurring problem is that as a user, i haven't gained functionality, but I have lost options. Given a human assistant, I would expect it to be able to admit when it isn't capable of something. (that might also be asking too much, but let's stick to technology.) Taking the initiative doesn't count if you screw up.
+Imagine you had a coworker, and when you try to do something, he gets in your way and does it (badly). now you have to spend twice as long because you also have to clean up after your predecessor.
 
 
-the vast majority of apps do not need to give notifications. Honestly the vast majority of mobile apps don't need to exist at all, but I can only argue that case-by-case.
+Do what you can, and no more.
-//TODO: examples. obviously I get rid of apps that pull this shit, stat.
+
+again, focus on your function. whole-ass 1 thing. Confucious said, to go beyond is as wrong as to fall short. Or if you prefer, Dr Ian Malcolm said:
+
+so, ask. Should you?
+
+
+
+my laptop, much like every single other laptop I have ever seen within the last 15 years, is the least-bad design I could find. Laptop keyboards are universally moronic. 
+as a person who understands the concept of a file, I habitually save often.
+looking at my keyboard, the place where many years of muscle memory have trained me to hit the ctrl key, there’s an "fn" key instead, and the ctrl key is moved over to where i expect the windows key. fn + s is screenshot. Cinnamon's screenshot app has a cute white flash effect. That's why I flashbang myself *often*.
+apparently, if you design a laptop keyboard, a prerequisite is some kind of brain damage that makes you think people want all kinds of bullshit instead of the keys on a keyboard. Fortunately, mine was able to be set once to let the keys do what they’re supposed to. However, on my black keyboard illuminated by my mostly black screen with a couple of points of extremely bright LEDs, I can see the unnecessary functions' white labels, and the actual f key labels have a dark blue one. I get the impression including the real labels of what the keys are supposed to do was a begrudging concession. 
+
+
+no one wants to chat with your "AI".
+
+the current state of the art of quote-unquote AI manages to both not do what it should, and do so much more stuff rather than what it should. But it's *such* a problem it deserves its own section. Even though it's been covered a million times in a million forms already.
+
+
+Microsoft, being so large that they have so much money that they taught us you're allowed to just *buy* a nuclear power plant, of course is sinking all of their money (and none of their brainpower) into the current thing everyone hates.
+have you heard the tale of Clippy?
+Way back, some cutting-edge psychological research was done that demonstrated people anthropomorphize their computers, and hate them like they would hate a person.
+So some cufflink-wearing motherfucker said "great, people will emotionally connect with their computer more favorably if we anthropomorphize it." 
+Now you start up your word processor and it jumps in the way to say hi and chat about how it can interfere.
+Fortunately, clippy was killed off pretty quickly. As long as people are projecting a personality onto their computer, we hated clippy as intensely as we'd hate any other pest. And of course there are some people who felt the opposite. I'll leave a link in the show notes to an erotic fan fiction starring clippy that you can actually buy.
+
+Microsoft eventually came to their senses and euthanized clippy. Then a few years later, they bought Halo. Once that story concluded, some idiot at microsoft figured they could try again to make clippy happen, as Cortana. The arms race between users trying to disable cortana and microsoft "accidentally" reenabling her could be its own video.
+years pass, the most glorified markov chain in the world, chatGPT, conqueres society.
+Cortana is dead. 
+Now, microsoft will make you love Copilot. 
+Remember how they tripped over their own dick right out of the gate by starting at step 1 with a feature that automatically screenshots your credit card details and passwords? 
+hah, good times.
+Recently they're preparing to roll it out again, this time assuring us it's opt-in-only. Given their track record of accidentally forgetting that a user didn't opt in, I don't think anyone's going to be surprised when that happens again.
+
+
+indulge me one last tangent to complain about AI.
+openweathermap.org has a chatbot. 
+FUCKING... WHY? 
+so that I can look past the weather forecast to ask it to tell me?
+...let's try it.
+THE PERFUNCTORY CHATBOT ON THE WEATHER SITE DOESN'T EVEN TELL YOU THE GOD. DAMNED. WEATHER!!!
+
+
+Work *with* the user
+
+as opposed to *against* the user. Honestly it's amazing how much is out there working *against* the user, but still has users.
+The dominant social networks are all infamous for messing with your timeline. The timeline is their whole function. 
+but I've already complained about that.
 
 
 question: how do you automate your phone? if you try and do some research online, both sides of the walled gardens have a *plethora* of stupid ways to decrease your productivity of automating *other* stuff *from* your phone. But since your phone is the nexus of your security and identity, you aren't allowed to let anything go poking around in it.
 So there is almost *no* concept of "automating a phone".
 And therefore you'll have to pull up DAVx and hit refresh, manually.
-You're begrudgingly allowed to install apps without google's blessing through 3rd party app stores, but you may not automatically update them.
+You're begrudgingly allowed to install apps without google's blessing through 3rd party app stores,
-Worst of all: companies have fully embraced the trend that while they aren't capable of crafting a concise UI with the benefit of a full size screen... surely they'll get it right this time in a harder environment? So companies tend to tell you not to use their website, but instead to use their mobile app.
+but you may not automatically update them.
 
 
-Debugging.
+because no one likes ads, if you're a professional Marketer, you market *yourself* on the grounds that you can make a stronger impression. Which means making your ads more intrusive.
-I mentioned my DAVx problem a second ago. Clearly something is wrong with my installation. What, though? fuck knows.
+Everyone hates ads. Everyone hates pop-up ads **much** more, because they pop-up.
-Apple says phones "just work", so the world keeps the faith. When something doesn't work, if there are logs, good luck finding them. On a real computer, if the whole thing is completely fucked, you can reformat and start from scratch. If your emacs configuration is out of control, you can do the same - "declare emacs bankruptcy". 
+So in the extremely rare event that a person actually googles something, and the even more rare event that they find a good result, they might read the web page.
-But if your phone appears to be haunted?
+imagine the *audacity* it takes to *stop them from reading* to ask them to sign up for a newsletter. You know, in case they like this experience so much they want to come back for more of it. Your function is to be read, putting junk in the way of the text is the opposite of that.
-Throw it in the trash and buy a new one.
-
-
-there's a joke that millenials (and gen-z-ers) have to teach boomers how to open a PDF. But apple-loyalty is most rampant among them - I dare you to try this exercise.  Bring up your preferred communications-with-strangers app (e.g., X). 
-Dismiss the patch notes. Find an image you'd like to interact with later. Maybe you want to draw on it. maybe you just want to send it as is. Download it. where is it?
-
-fuck knows. So good luck finding it to bring into your editor. For the sake of lip-service to the concept of security, much work has been done to ensure apps aren't allowed to share files.
-In exchange for the twin downsides of "virtually every app is pointless" and "a truly useful app is prevented from existing", we have accomplished nothing in the way of privacy.
-
-Ogg Vorbis *continues* to be superior to mp3. More fidelity. More efficient compression. But apple says mp3 is fine, so, rest in peace OGG. 
-you were the OG.
-...G.
-Don't worry, there's a million billion music player apps for mobile. The only problem is that none of them matter. You know what *would* be great? if you could download an audio codec on the play store, and whatever music player app you like could use it. 
-But that would require apps to work on the old paradigm - where they read and write files, and interact with each other. The modern strategy is not to let the user control their files. that way when the platform owner decides they want to sell your data, they already got it from you.
-
-
-you know why people put up with google dictating your experience to maximize your diet of ads? because here's the alternative.
-Firefox on the desktop is the last web browser that was a Great Thing. largely, for the most part, they're trying to preserve at least some of that.
-Firefox on mobile is absolutely not making any such attempt.  It does what all the other mobile apps are doing: once a day it abuses its notification privileges to advertise to you; "hey come back and run the app again". It frequently updates its UI (to feed its progress addiction), it collects user data. Worst of all, they *had* and then **removed** plugin support. If an adblocker is necessary to browse the web, it's even more necessary to browse the web on mobile. We should all think less of the mozilla foundation for the 2020 change. 
-(fortunately they were sufficiently pressured to walk back their mistake.)
 
 
 The worst UX antipattern emerged a while ago.
@@ -100,64 +142,80 @@ the Floating. Action. Button.
 it's a software screen notch.
 
 
-because no one likes ads, if you're a professional Marketer, you market *yourself* on the grounds that you can make a stronger impression. Which means making your ads more intrusive.
+I keep complaining about having to dismiss phone apps various patch notes on startup...
-Everyone hates ads. Everyone hates pop-up ads **much** more, because they pop-up.
+Admittedly there's no *good* time, to bring up the patch notes. Startup is the worst time, it's when you're trying to *do* something.
-No one has ever googled something, read a random blog's page, and signed up for its newsletter.
+No one has ever opened their phone's music player or GPS app and read the patch notes - and I say that as someone who did read the patch notes for skullgirls, and always reads EULAs. It's almost funny that they're audacious enough to jump in the way and ask to to read two thousand words about the changes they're very proud of getting 2/3rds of the way done before release, that 2/3rds of their users don't want and 2/3rds don't understand. you're trying to *do* something, if there was ever a time you would read their patch notes, it's not at startup - the user is trying to accomplish a task, but instead you want them to go through a sort of onboarding for your new version.
-No one has ever opened their phone's music player or GPS app and read the patch notes - and I say that as someone who did read the patch notes for skullgirls, and always reads EULAs. It's almost funny that they're audacious enough to jump in the way and ask to to read two thousand words about the changes they're very proud of getting 2/3rds of the way done before release, that 2/3rds of their users don't want and 2/3rds don't understand. you're trying to *do* something, if there was ever a time you would read their patch notes, it's not at startup.
 
 
-These apps don't think they're a means to an end. They think they're an ℯ𝓍𝓅ℯ𝓇𝒾ℯ𝓃𝒸ℯ. 
+At best, onboarding can be a necessary evil. Typically, it's unnecessary, and just exists to ensure you immediately sink some effort cost. A mind game to manipulate you into sticking around. 
-They want to *increase* the time spent in an app. I assume this is favorable for ad revenue metrics. For those of us who actually do things, an app is a tool, and a tool is better when it *decreases* the time it takes to get shit done.
+Discord servers are notorious for spiraling out of control. 
+I once joined a server that had, no joke, over 100 channels. People were great, but I can't pretend that I'll ever keep up with it.
+Discord users started forming a pattern - you join, and most channels are hidden, then some bot assigns you appropriate roles to see some. That's neat technology, but the wrong approach - the right answer is to accept that your server is overengineered. 
+What's worse is that discord itself is enshrining this as a built-in feature - so now every time discord updates their app unnecessarily, and it forgets you, you have to go through the much slower version of the same process. 
+meanwhile the entire reason discord exists is that it allows you to get your dumbest, least tech-savvy friends on a voice call for game chat with minimum friction.
 
-take for example, Discord. They've given themselves loads of work to produce features other than real time chat, to justify asking you for money. Meanwhile it only exists in the first place because skype was bloated full of junk, and it only persists because their userbase refuses to use Matrix.
+Let me pick on DAVx again.
-
+It *cannot* remember that I've gone through onboarding. The app exists to sync contacts, calendars, and task lists, because god forbid those exist as files. But the automatic syncing app isn't automatic enough, so I occasionally have to start it up and run it automatically. but before I do that, I have to go through screens of onboarding, that are just there to beg for money. Don't get me wrong, programming is a job, rent is expensive, and DAVx solves a problem - but if you've been ignoring me when I say "don't remind me for 6 months", I assume you're still going to beg for donations just the same whether or not I donate. 
-Notice how every search company realizes that every website is overladen with trash, so they offer an "ai summary". If the accuracy ever gets good (it won't), that would be a great way to pull information out of a website without being told to sign in with google so that I can waive my privacy protections for their absolutely unnecessary cookies to then decline to sign up for their newsletter and then tell their chatbot to go find somewhere else to be useless.
-
-The entire world of technology is mislabeled. the definition of technology is about applying knowledge to achieve practical goals. It's far more profitable to hide the fact that your only actual goal is extracting value from the people who ostensibly should be your customers. 
-That's why the only practical goal to achieve at the moment is adversarial APIs. We don't need yet another skin on your phone's built in music player, we need the ability for your phone to install new audio codecs. we don't need yet another social network to give our images to, we need to be allowed to use FTP.
-
-
-Accursed Farms has inspiration on how to build better UIs.
-
-let's learn the lesson that clippy's project managers didn't: we already anthropomorphize our technology, computers don't need to pretend to be human. But to make the language easier, let's still compare your computer to a human assistant. The Alfred to our Batman, as it were.
-how would we change our bad assistant into a good one?
 
 
 
-ai investors might tell us that an assistant that can make use of autonomy is better than one that can't. In a vacuum, that's true. But no chatbot is useful, yet. What we have instead, is an "ai" that insists on being in charge of tasks that it isn't capable of. 
+The digital markets act of 2022 in the EU granted advertising corporations the right to view the data they've generated, the right to take their data to other platforms. In other words, big tech gatekeepers don't get to lay claim to advertisers and treat them like property. It demonstrates we all know interoperability is great and enclosure is bad, 
-A recurring problem is that as a user, i haven't gained functionality, but I have lost options. Given a human assistant, I would expect it to be able to admit when it isn't capable of something. (that might also be asking too much, but let's stick to technology.) Taking the initiative doesn't count if you screw up.
+but because first and foremost it's about the shareholders, people don't get the same. 
-Imagine you had a coworker, and when you try to do something, it gets in your way and does it (badly). now you have to spend twice as long because you also have to clean up after your predecesor. 
+However, when making a useful tool, interoperability is the most important thing. Before praising AI, before praising the iPhone, society loved that the internet connected everyone together. We had a futurist optimism that ideas and communication could flow, making the world a better place and building Great Things.
-
-Limit your autonomy to tasks you can handle.
-
-
-
-Above, I complained about DAVx failing mysteriously. I complained about how a file is downloaded to some mysterious location. Hidden information is bad. You should have observability for yourself during development, and you might as well provide that same observability to your users while you're at it.
-
-Be transparent.
-
-
-There's a comment on that accursed farms video from before...
-Why can't you move the taskbar in windows 11? because now it looks like OSX. What is the only rationalization that apple investors have been giving for apple's success? That apple has good taste in interface design. Apple insists that their UX is good because of the decisions they've made for it.
-And when apple says something dumb, the rest of the technology world agrees. so customization options are viewed as less and less important.
-not to mention, if you're stopped from modding in some armor for your horse, now it's something that can be sold to you instead.
-Companies love to dumb everything down, and in response to criticism, blame it on a hypothetical group of lowest-common-denominator people. But the whole premise that customization is unimportant is bad. Just ask the air force.
-
-when the user tries to customize, let them.
-
-
-The digital markets act of 2022 in the EU granted advertising corporations with the right to view the data they've generated, the right to take their data to other platforms. In other words, big tech gatekeepers don't get to lay claim to advertisers and treat them like property. It demonstrates we all know interoperability is great and enclosure is bad, but because first and foremost we all have to sacrifice for the shareholders, people don't get the same. 
-However, when making a useful tool, interoperability is the most important thing. Before praising AI, before praising the iPhone, society loved that the internet connected everyone together. We had a futurist optimism that ideas and communication could flow, making the world a better place and building great things.
 That didn't happen, though. 
-Now when you try to migrate between technologies, they do what they can to inhibit you.
+Now when you try to get two technologies to work together, they do what they can to inhibit you.
+GMail does not like when you try to use a different mail client - perhaps one with a working spam filter.
+Cars used to be forced to use a standard headlight - but naturally that was lobbied to death.
 
-don't enclose the commons.
 
+Be Transparent.
+
+They say knowledge is power, which explains why businesses obfuscate as much as possible from their users. Ask any doctor how much anything costs, they don't know. Ask any mechanic how much something would cost, they don't know. Yet they expect you to agree to be on the hook to pay an amount they'll decide later. 
+
+Hidden information is bad. 
+Software should have observability for itself during development, and you might as well provide that same observability to your users while you're at it.
+
+
+Clearly something is wrong with my DAVx. What, though? fuck knows.
+Apple says phones "just work", so the world keeps the faith. When something doesn't work, if there are logs, good luck finding them. On a real computer, if the whole thing is completely fucked, you can reformat and start from scratch. If your emacs configuration is out of control, you can do the same - "declare emacs bankruptcy". 
+But if your phone appears to be haunted?
+Shrug, throw it in the trash and buy a new one.
+
+Surprisingly, there's an example of this getting better: vehicles!
+for years, a "check engine" light meant "take it into the dealer and just pay whatever they demand". But nowadays, you can buy a decoder for that signal relatively affordably, and actually see what the error code is - possibly even fix the problem yourself!
+
+
+Security theater has a lot of overlap with other problems. Most often, quote-unquote security is the excuse for user-hostility.
+
+Surely I don't have to remind you that flying is a nightmare, almost entirely for 1 reason: the TSA. this section could overtake the rest of the video so let's limit our griping as much as possible:
+The TSA is security theater. 
+One dude tried and failed to bring explosives in in his shoes, so now the TSA demands that americans remove their shoes. 
+That's very rare, most other countries don't do this.
+For example Israel - they're very good at this. rather than spending money on shiny new toys they train their workers to do their jobs, well. the greatest emphasis is interviewing passengers. From that article, they're quoting Isaac Yeffet: 
+> In 2002, we had Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. This man gave the security people all the suspicious signs that any passenger could show. The man got a British passport in Belgium, not in England. Number Two: he flew to Paris, he bought a one-way ticket from Paris to Florida. He paid cash. He came to the airport with no luggage. What else do I need to know that this passenger is suspicious?
+> What did we learn from this? Just to tell the passenger from now on, you take off your shoes when you come to the airport? This I call a patch on top of a patch.
+Meanwhile in the US, for all the effort they put into telling you that what they're doing to you is for your protection, they miss 70% of test weapons.
+..hey, remember in 2008 when the TSA felt entitled to more respect so they switched their uniforms to make them look exactly like police officers?
+hahhh.
+anyway. 
+It takes forever to get through security, which of course is a problem airports are happy to exacerbate so they can sell you some other horrible product that only exists to violate your privacy to sell your data, doesn't make you more secure, and expects you to pay for the privilege. I think the present fad is something called CLEAR.
+ok, NSA tangent over, back to nerd shit.
+
+Websites are afraid of DDoS attacks. A web server is a fallible thing that can only deliver so much. But that isn't why a disgusting number of websites block VPNs.
+VPN services are almost the greatest business around right now - excellent in purpose, excellent in conception, pretty good in execution, but they're losing the arms race, so no points for effect.
+Imgur, for example, sees an IP that doesn't look residential, and I guess as a service to the world where they prevent bots being trained on the least intelligent community's proud tradition of selfies and reposts, they throw up an error.
+oh here's a whole forum for the particular make and model of my motorcycle - blank white page, and http error 406. Which is the wrong error message, btw - you can't pretend I asked you for a format you can't provide, when you provided my stock web browser with valid HTML.
+Here's some ideologues, who theoretically *want* to propagate their ideas into as many minds, maybe even neural networks, as possible? Mysterious connection timeout.
+unfortunately that's where the manual for emacs is hosted; in my case that means that my attempts to self-indoctrinate need me to look elsewhere.
+
+
+conform to known paradigms.
 
 You know how a save icon is a floppy disk? A type of storage media so old, I bet if you're listening to this you physically can't use it. But the association has stuck.
 You know how on mobile, the menu of all your options is probably 3 parallel, horizontal lines, a.k.a. the hamburger menu? another association that everyone just went with.
-In life, this extends much further. Red light means stop, green light means go. So when you have an action that could be destructive, you color-code it red, and when something is constructive, you color-code it green.
+In life, this extends much further. Red light means stop, green light means go. 
-These associations are abritrary. But since they're there, we keep them.
+So when you have an action that could be destructive, you color-code it red, and when something is constructive, you color-code it green.
+These associations are arbitrary. But since they're there, we keep them.
 Can you touch type? imagine I presented you with a blank keyboard. You'd still be able to type, due to a lifetime of training.
 Suppose you came across a binder full of papers, and only one of them had a border that was diagonal lines of alternating yellow and black. I can safely assume that you would get the impression that one sheet is providing you cautionary information.
 
@@ -166,12 +224,38 @@ right, discord? surely no one would do that. Right? discord? right?
 
 let's look at a pure html static page with a text field. If a user holds shift, and then navigates, they can highlight text. I've seen this far too many times, let's pick on pinterest. if you hit shift+home, that means highlight the whole field. You have to go through effort to break that, and you shouldn't. You don't have a valid reason to do this, rather than nothing.
 
-conform to known paradigms.
+
+companies have fully embraced the trend that while they aren't capable of crafting a concise UI with the benefit of a full size screen... surely they'll get it right this time in a harder environment? So companies tend to tell you not to use their website, but instead to use their mobile app.
+Cellphones have web browsers. If you are "a website", for example Reddit... that's how the user will connect with you. There's no (valid) reason to pretend you're different.
+especially given the majority of apps are just skins on chrome that stick to one website.
+
+
+It's no secret that mobile web browsers overall are just skins on chrome. This is how google dictates your experience to maximize your diet of ads.
+Firefox on the desktop was the last web browser that was truly Great. Up until recently, they were trying to preserve at least some of that.
+Given recent events though, RIP firefox. librewolf is my new best friend.
+Firefox on mobile is absolutely not making any such attempts at greatness.
+It frequently updates its UI (to feed its progress addiction), thus giving them another reason to jump in your way and onboard people.
+Unforgivably, however: they *had* and then **removed** plugin support. If an adblocker is necessary to browse the web, it's even more necessary to browse the web on mobile. We should all think less of the mozilla foundation for the 2020 change. 
+(fortunately they were sufficiently pressured to walk back their mistake.)
+
+
+Allow customization.
+
+There's a wise comment on that accursed farms video:
+Why can't you move the taskbar in windows 11? so that it can look like OSX. What is the only rationalization that apple investors have been giving for apple's success? That apple has good taste in interface design. Apple insists that their UX is good because of the decisions they've made for it.
+When apple speaks, the rest of the world obeys. so customization options are viewed as less and less important.
+not to mention, if you're stopped from customization, for example modding in some armor for your horse... now it's something that can be sold to you instead.
+Companies love to dumb everything down, and in response to criticism, blame it on a hypothetical group of lowest-common-denominator people. But the whole premise that customization is unimportant is bad. Just ask the air force.
+
+
 
 
 and finally, a short list of features that you know goddamn well no one wants.
 no one wants to sign up for your newsletter - you aren't interesting enough to fill one out. Just get the stupid notification out of the way.
 no one wants to chat with your chatbot - if anyone wants to have a conversation, it's with a person, because your technology doesn't work. Get the notification out of the way.
+scrolling is not an ℯ𝓍𝓅ℯ𝓇𝒾ℯ𝓃𝒸ℯ, every vehicle website ever.
+If you want to "customize my experience" before I'm allowed to have one, the answer to all of your questions is "whatever gets you to go fuck yourself".
+