I would say that what ruins the experience is things not working. If it was an animation or some add on that threw an exception to console and did nothing, it would be fine, but designers and their tool makers want everything to be a giant conversation between microservices, which breaks for odd, undefinable, nonlinear reasons, and requires expensive help.
This is only an idea, but how about a Summarize button that does use AI to write a very concise blurb of the comment. Then if it looks stupid enough at first glance, just read the summary and move on.
We already have a problem with people refusing to engage with the content and only commenting on comments or the title. The last thing we need is to discourage people from reading the article even more than they already don't.
I hate software tools now. I really do. A hammer would never ask you to think about it constantly. If you think about your hammer it’s because something is wrong with it.
It's not just tools. Pretty much all software is like that.
The problem is, is that it works, if you assume "working" means the software sellers get wealthy.
There's a reason that most waitstaff wear black. They should blend into the background, and not be what the folks at the table are talking about. In rare instances, restaurants exist, where the waitstaff is the service.
In software, though, you're being served by a waiter wearing a clown suit, screaming slogans at you, and serving you lukewarm, pre-chewed goo.
My favorite new-to-me cathartic feature is Safari’s hide distracting items.
Probably easier with an ad blocker or just Reader view. But I really enjoy tapping on all the overlays and moving ads and videos and see them evaporate one by one, leaving just the text I wanted to read.
The default state of the page is much like the restaurant you describe.
I use OpenBSD as a daily driver (but could use Alpine or VoidLinux too) and my setup is pretty much silent. No notifications, no rainbows of colors, no glitz. Let’s take mail. I use a combination of mutt hto directly connect via imap) and fdm/mu4e (to have them locally). I”m not interested in having counters or notifications for any of those.
The “calm technology” book has an handful of advices, but one of the best example is the xbiff program. It switches picture when you have new mail on your local spool.
The main load is during the day when the sun shines anyway, and then the seasonally changing periods before and after, basically ramping when people are getting up, then dropping off while people are going to bed. On the west side of a continent, the power for the ramp can come from the east because the sun shines earlier there; on the west the sun shines later and the east can get power. At night, there are still nuclear and other plants, and it is very foreseeable that installations of ground battery technology will have been in place well before twentieth century plants are retired.
High load in the day during sunlight is mostly true for summer heat, but in the winter you have cold evenings which requires base load or storage, combined with solar angle/efficiency being worse in the winter.
Actually, the US uses more power during the day in the summer - there is a dropoff in the night for both summer and winter. Night time use is somewhat similar. [1]
Cooling takes more energy than warming, so the summer daytime use is higher. Summer = warm evenings. I'm from Indiana - it was almost always cooler at 10am than 7pm, even in the winter. It takes time to heat up or cool down. I'll also mention that nights and weekends use less power because business and industry tend to shut down during these times.
Which would somewhat logically mean that despite the efficiency being worse during winter, it isn't as much of a strain because power demands are less.
Cooling doesn't really take more energy than warming, because cooling is warming if you have a heat pump. Are you not just observing here the usage of fossil fuels for heating, which is extremely common?
How common are heat pumps in the states now - and is this something your average worker can afford? I looked into it some time before I moved - and before they were as popular - and installation costs were prohibitive. Moved to Norway over a decade ago. Heat pumps are popular but most homes don't have them here, especially in the cities. I can't imagine that rentals are upgrading, considering its rare to even update insulation in the cheapest rentals.
Are heat pumps common for factories and offices, which account for a lot of energy usage during the week?
Anywhere they aren't common, cooling generally is going to require more traditional methods and the energy cost is greater than just heating. If it were the other way around, poor folks would use a window air conditioner to heat. Cooling pretty much always creates warming - which is the reason it is vented outside.
The energy use I linked to doesn't actually consider where the energy comes from - just the use itself. These methods aren't going to use more or less energy depending on where the energy comes from. Heat pumps would make less usage due to efficiency.
Heat pumps are in most new construction in major cities now - Seattle's required them for years, other cities do too. They aren't significantly more expensive than any other method now, especially with a lot of local utility rebates.
According to this study[1] "With good water quality, roughly 80% of water withdrawal is evaporated and considered “consumption"" with the rest being discharged to wastewater facilities.
Apparently in a closed loop cooling system they do, but in areas where water just runs off the mountains they use evaporation and it reenters the water cycle.
I had to say I was wondering why basic non polluting water use would need special attention like this. Apparently it’s a PR meme to divert attention from real problems.
It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier. Much more likely that they have control over the machines and use them for impromptu advertising, to keep calorie per dollar lower, and to starve out local ice cream shops as needed.
This is patently untrue, give a craftsman terrible tools, and they'll still produce a decent end result. That said, defaults matter, and astro is going to be significantly more friendly out-of-the-box to low-end clients
> Just because something is a proverb, doesn't mean it's automatically true for all cases.
A professional woodcarver armed with only a metal spoon will still make a nicer woodcarving than I can given a full wood shop. Similarly, if you only give me notepad.exe, I can still make a pretty nice website.
Does using the right tools make our lives easier? For sure. Using mildly-wrong tools (react, in this case) isn't going to hold us back very much though.
How good are you at hammering nails with a screwdriver? Tools are important. We have a more apropos saying in our industry: use the right tool for the job. Don't let your brain get fried by the 'poor workman' adage, it's talking about the difference between an expensive tool and a cheap tool of the same kind, not two tools of different kinds entirely.
Someone with no money must survive with short term thinking: hunt and kill a wombat on the savanna or something. From there you work your way away from short term thinking; you might have enough to get through the week already, so the threat of starvation is more long term. Eventually with enough in the bank you have nearly no urgency; you could conceivably mishandle your bonds when they mature in twenty years or something. But with enough money, literally the only risk is short term thinking and immediacy. Bending over to pick up a penny is not going to even be considered.
If my ship ever really comes in and docks at the harbor I’m going to remember to keep my wallet full of cash, so I can stop and get that strawberry ice cream cone without worrying about the long term consequences, which are all I would have left.
reply