neuralex

Ailantd , 4 months ago to random

We should turn all cargo ships into sailboats again. Almost zero emissions plus having to wait a month for your amazon order would incentive local business.

But above all that: Just imagine the amazing look of that beasts.

neuralex , 5 months ago to random

When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was friends and family sheepishly asking me for tech support help, and me slowly, patiently explaining to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.

But that's not true anymore.

User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.

My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.

#HCI #UX #UI #okdoomer

neuralex , 5 months ago to random

I keep trying to tell folks that “literally” is just the latest in a long line of words that initially meant “in actual fact, no hyperbole” but soon became hyperbolic intensifiers but it’s really, truly, very hard for them to accept ;-)

...

because I'm a #linguistics word nerd, after I wrote that quip, I went and checked the history of all four of those really-not-really intensifiers:

very: Meaning "greatly, extremely" is first recorded mid-15c

really: The general sense is from early 15c. Purely emphatic use dates from c. 1600

truly: from Old English treowlice "faithful, trustworthy", The sense of "consistent with fact" is recorded from c. 1200; it's hard to tell when it became a generic intensifier but "Yours truly" is from 1833 so it's probably around or before then

literally: Since late 17c. it has been used in metaphors, hyperbole, etc

So not only are snoots wrong that the unforgiveable degradation of "literally" is recent, they are also wrong that it is unprecedented. It seems to be a natural effect in #English, and maybe in every other human language -- let's call it the Hyperbolic Treadmill, like the Euphemism Treadmill ; other suggestions welcome in comments