A protest.

That makes us about the same age then.

Yeah, I am not arguing “all symbols bad”, more than we are trying to push symbols where it could be questionable. Also these symbols still need to be learned: talking of my mother for instance, I absolutely remember having to teach her that the X was for closing the window, and having to do it multiple times. I don’t argue the usefulness of the X over a “quit” or “close” button btw. Just that this has to be learned too. That’s fine.

That’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation though. Would some settings not be useful to almost anyone, even if they all knew about it? Absolutely, so it should be harder to access. Are there features that would be better for a lot of users but barely anyone knows about because of this? Certainly true too. And that’s being charitable to companies, and assuming that they collect and present data as fairly as possible internally rather than use it in a way that makes a case for what they want to push… And yeah, we aren’t Microsoft target, but I’d argue most companies share this trend. Even some open source projects buy into that when not necessary (imo).

And yeah, there is a good amount of subjectivity here of course. I think we (probably?) both agree with saying that making things simpler is not inherently bad, it’s good even. I was trying to argue we are making a lot of things “simplistic” instead. As an aside, MS developing PowerShell is a form of admission that, for certain tasks, command line is better suited than graphical user interfaces. So yes, automatic jumps between paradigm could, and should, be argued on a case by case basis rather than blindly following it.

Well, apart from the fact that Win95 is not the “very beginning of visual operating systems”, and it’s not even close (it’s not even MS first, second or third OS with a GUI), I don’t think this is necessarily relevant?

You’ve chosen pretty much the only windows element that has been left unchanged since windows 95, when MS has tried to “simplify” a bunch of other stuff as time went on. For instance, the whole settings situation in Windows 10 and 11 just shows the various iterations of trying to make the settings more and more minimal, but all it’s managed to do is:

• Hide away other options, or straight up not making them available anymore
• Fragmenting the experience by having to keep other legacy settings and control panel…

Or, in windows 11, again in an effort to oversimplify things, by default the right click menu now has fewer options, symbols in lieu of text for common operations, and needs expanding to access other options. This is more work, and a hidden layer, instead of just laying out the options because it’d feel “cluttered” or something.

This is symptomatic of the issues I am arguing about: there is a trend of trying to lay out things flatly and “simply”, but all it does is:

• Reduce what is obvious to what the product people have decided is essential for the user;
• Remove conceptual boundaries that should exists between subsets of tools (when flat design + no “ugly” separators);
• Shove everything else in deep nested menus or a dump-all burger menu. It’s fine, now the clutter is hidden away and you have a “clean” UI.

The funny thing is, it’s still not successful at being user friendly. Phones and tablets are, but it makes the issues even worse. A lot of kids my partner teach only ever use phones and tablets so in IT lessons it’s apparent they don’t know what files are, and “where they go” for instance. Because on iPhone and Android, in an effort to keep the UI simple, the directory structure is pretty much hidden by default.

Computers are complex tools, users should be helped in learning them, not infantilised with a “we know best” attitude.

“But computers are so powerful these days, clock cycles are basically free”

I wish UI design had followed that kind of paradigm to be honest. My high school library had some Sun workstations running Solaris, instead of the shitty outdated Windows computers that would have been the norm then. I was in the minority enjoying it, but that’s how I got to use my first Unix system.

Yeah, I remember going from 98 to XP. My schoolmates and I used to joke that it looked like an OS made by playskool. But to be fair, iirc, that was kind of the trend then and not uniquely some MS bullshit. We were saying the same about the appearance of the GameCube controller (even though it’s objectively great to use).

Not allowing open-source software as a blanket policy sounds pretty unhinged. I feel for you.

You mean in the right upper corner.

Yes. It did. And?

Every modern design trend sucks. Overly minimalistic/simplistic UI harms usability and actively makes users dumber and helpless.

I don’t want rounded corners, transparency, shadows, animations, modern icons etc…

Give me boring panels with clear boundaries between conceptual sections, explicit text on buttons, and no theming. I don’t care if it’s a fugly Win95 grey, I’d rather it be usable than flashy.

I guess Elon won’t be needing gamers’ services to max out his characters anymore.

Fucking AI taking valuable jobs away again.

prove it!

I tried really hard but I think I may have stumbled into the inconsistency of arithmetics instead. Oopsie daisy.

I read your meme diagonally, so I’m not sure I got it all.

I am so scrombled it’s unreal.

Thanks a lot for the answer! Quite interesting that the Proto-Indo-European word could have been something close to wasp, only for English to go through the waps->wasp that you explained in your previous post.

Well, one fewer false “fact” to believe in, many more to go!

I thought “wasp” came from the Norman word “wespe” (French word guespe then later guêpe), but is that not true? Or do we just not know and these are possible explanations but there is no consensus?

I can’t help but think about 1984’s newspeak whenever I see something like the abominable “unalive”. I know the reasons are different for this particular one, but I agree that we seem to be moving into that kind of direction.

“To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.”

Lucky for Beethoven, he was deaf.

Is that a new kink or have you been turning cornflakes into frosties for a while now? Any other party tricks we should be aware of?

Failing basic human empathy, and a modicum of ethics, do people like this genuinely never open history books? That would certainly appeal to their selfish interests.

If he’s ever in charge, he better pray the tide never turns, lest he would like to lead by example.

The cultural fit in particular I like to use. This is often thrown around as a catch-all term by companies when they don’t want to hire you for a bunch of bullshit reasons they don’t want to disclose to you. It’s only fair you weaponise too.

Had to use it recently to reject an offer and to avoid saying: “the person who would be my manager seemed like a gigantic dickhead and I barely made it the hour without slamming my monitor against the wall”. Although part of me wish I had said that.

How the hell did I forget that that was a thing in Limbo?

I shall whip myself, and play three levels of Braid and five levels of super meat boy for penitence.