The UX used to be better by a country mile. The liquid glass update was a genuinely serious regression. Is Windows or Android now better? At least those operating systems don't have constant contrast issues and flickering. At this point they probably have more consistency.

MacOS reliability has slowly gotten worse and worse, but the UX drop with liquid glass was profound.

I don't agree with the whining about liquid glass. Sure, it isn't the design you like. But usability really isn't that different.

No, it's objectively bad in terms of usability. There is also the matter of taste, but I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about UX, not style. UX is about functionality and usability.

Contrast is an objective measure. There are well studied and known levels where you can have trouble reading, or an easy time reading. Similarly, things like drag regions not even aligning with visual elements are literally indefensible. This stuff is so basic you'd fail a UX 101 course with it.

Things like spotlight defaulting to the newest item so that when you hit enter and it changes your selected item the millisecond before you hit enter. I'm not even sure how you'd try to defend UI elements literally flickering as either style or not affecting usability.

It's objectively bad by a great many widely agreed upon and studied standards.

You're still reacting to the early beta, I think.

Contrast was bad in the first couple bets, but now it’s very similar to iOS 18.

I agree. MacOS became completely unusable with Liquid Glass, it totally feels like one of those amateur custom themes for Linux.

I hope the new leadership will bring back better software. As of now, macOS 26 is disgusting.

Wealth concentration has been happening for a century. You don't need AI for that.

The power grids of US states are similarly linked. Very dirty.

Except for Texas, which decided as a state that avoiding federal regulation was worth people dying every winter from power outages.

I'm not a fan of Texan electrical isolationism, but "people dying every winter from power outages" is stretching it a bit...

Every winter is a stretch, yes.

But they did get a big warning shot in 1989 and 2011, and ignored those lessons for cost reasons. A couple hundred people died.

> But they did get a big warning shot in 1989 and 2011, and ignored those lessons for cost reasons.

Cost is always a valid reason!

> A couple hundred people died.

Looks like about a thousand people in the US die of hypothermia every year, on average. So this happens frequently in states that aren't in its own interconnection, too.

> Looks like about a thousand people in the US die of hypothermia every year, on average.

In their powerless homes?

I don't doubt people get lost in the woods. But that's not some systemic failure.

Which actually works out to rather more than one person per winter, when averaged out.

Like all the Canadians who die every winter in the Halifax explosion of 1917.

Ya, it was just one winter where people actually died, it was recent though.

The only dirty secret is that humans are happy to kill future generations as the effects of the oil economy will only minimally affect the people alive today.

Funny, the last time there was a blackout, I still had power due to my solar, while all the gas people sat in the dark and pouted.

That's exactly what's going on in africa, people are installing solar panels in order to avoid having their power be out half the time.

The difference, of course, is that they can inspect the source, and should the US try to use it as leverage they can just fork and continue on.

There is no ANC that can block those, both because of volume and also because ANC only blocks constant noises like hums. It's terrible and sudden noises like alarms and honking.

With all the road noise and now noise makers required even for silent EVs, noise cancelling headphones are the last resort for people to get some relief from the constant noise pollution in cities.

And now you want to take that away too? No thanks. I get safety is important, but so is relief from noise pollution. Noise pollution is very damaging to your health. There needs to be a balance, and currently the safety police are weighing the scales inappropriately low.

It's pretty easy to run a pi on a battery.

If a parent can buy their kid a computer, they can pay 1 euro a month for a CDN in the rare case they need it. This is a bad argument.

I had trouble explaining to my parents what a BBS was. I wouldn't want to explain what a CDN is.

I think the point is that many HNer’s had parents who couldn’t or wouldn’t do “computer things”

Pay 1 Euro a month... or 1000s if their kid fucks up.