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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Alan Dix’s book (aptly named “Human Computer Interaction”) is quite good, even if somewhat old by now. HCI is an actual academic discipline with, yes, tons of theoretical and empirical results that govern what a good UI should be. Many of which are indeed grounded in psychology, others in physiology, etc (what we call Human Factors). There is a whole special interest group of the ACM just about it: SIGCHI.

    Do not confuse this with fashion/trends/taste. These change, resulting in widely different possible flavors of UI over the years. But the underlying principles are the same.

    Another thing to remember is that the fact that Apple, Google, or someone else implemented an UI in a certain way doesn’t mean they are following best practices and guidelines. Novelty sells, even if at the end of the day it does a worse job of things…

    Edit: added link to SIGCHI






  • That makes total sense. Still, it removes the pressure of choosing a server, since migration and use of several servers becomes seamless. As it is right now, there’s the resilience and future lifespan of an instance to consider, plus fragmentation of your identify as defined not by your username but by your actual “online persona” constructed from your posts, etc. (unless you’re really going for alts, of course). You can create other identities on other instances but they are separate, you “lose” your posts, etc. if something happens. if I understood correctly, that becomes less of an issue with nomadic identity?





  • 99% Invisible - An excellent design/architecture podcast

    20k Hz (“twenty thousand hertz”) - great show about the audio that pervades our daily lives, from notification sounds to movie special effects, passing through game sounds, sound history,etc.

    Imaginary Worlds - in their own words, “ a podcast about science fiction, fantasy and other genres of speculative fiction”.

    All three are done by professionals in their respective fields, exceedingly well researched, and with superb production values.


  • The problem is that the concept of “user of a site” is still a thing. There should just be “fediverse users”. Everything gets federated, why not user credentials? Then it would not matter if you register on site X or Y. It would be the same. What we need is a federated identity service. It would still be completely decentralized, dependent on no single server, and much more resilient to server shutdown, defederation, etc.

    Edit: typos



  • This takes many forms. A recurrent one is for the take place right out of college (or while still in it!), taking advantage of the naïveté of those just entering the job market, and often as a precondition to access any kind of paid job some months later. The employer gets free qualified labor, the intern eat lots of ramen… families put up with it as a natural extension of paying for college, for a few more months… it’s exploitation pure and simple.

    A “joke” I’ve heard several times over the years (not recently, though) summarizes the level of assholery that’s going on (warning: some may find this offensive)

    “joke”

    “it is better to have an intern than a slave, because you don’t need to feed, house our clothe the intern”…