Monthly Archives: January 2021

Article note: I can't encourage people who spend a lot of time at a computer (...which is everyone these days) to be mindful, try things, and customize their computing environment enough. I have a rather large (...and kind of expensive) collection of input devices I've bought or built over the years, and while I don't regularly use many of them, I've learned things about how to interact with computers and use my hands from every single one, and do use a couple essentially every day. I _personally_ don't generally like modal (layered) keyboards for the same reasons I don't like modality in software (hidden state = cognitive load), and I don't love alternative layouts on standard keyboards for the same reasons I don't do super-botique software environments (you'll have to deal with qwerty and WIMP enough to keep it in your fingers anyway)... but I know people who are so settled in that I don't think another human being could operate their computers without extended instructions because they've built something that is so much an extension of themselves. ...but I do really like my split keyboards (lately an UltraErgo Wireless and trackball (usually an Logitech M570) for not constantly re-contorting my wrists. Likewise, I have a VESA-arm mounted to the hutch of my desk to get a monitor positioned exactly where I want it without giving up any desk space.

Article note: I love the idea of the "pocket workstation," and I've never been as happy with a mobile device as I was with my n810 which was sort of the missing link between the UMPC and Smartphone (ran Linux with some mobile affordances, slider keyboard that was comfortable for thumb typing), and I want to have that again... but every time I look I don't think these mini laptops quite make it in to the niche. I have my little 12" carryin' around laptop that has a decent keyboard for touch-typing and an OS that does what I ask of it, but I need to have a bag to carry and a surface or seat to use, and my smartphone that fits in a pocket and I can use on the go, but whose human I/O and coercive environment make me rage most of the time I try to do anything nontrivial on it. These mini-laptops are a little to big to pocket comfortably, and a little too small to operate comfortably. ... The Gibsonian cyberdeck of the Sprawl books had HMDs and gloves or straight up neural interfaces because it was obvious by the mid 90s that the problem was the human interface. I want to see some innovation on that front. HMDs that are comfortable for text. Software that works with e-ink displays (even just wide-spread support for pgup/pgdn events to paginate and scroll without a bunch of unnecessary refreshes, lookin' at you Android). Key-gloves or Chorders you can use clipped to a pants pocket or wrapped around the back/edges of a handheld device. These aren't new ideas, just once that need to be refined into something serviceable. Get away from the fondleslab appliance that uses half of its expensive, power-hungry touchscreen to present an awkward gimped keyboard that only works as well as its prediction estimates and re-flows your content as it pops in and out paradigm.

Article note: This (and every article like it) reads to me as basically "Wayland presents a really bad abstraction for the problem(s) it is supposed to solve." I wish it weren't, because X is a fucking mess, but replacing an accreted mess with a wrong-by-design mess is not improving the situation.

Article note: Oh the promise of computing environments that people shaped around themselves instead of technology designed to shape its users, how I miss you. Gone in favor of profit motives, complexity fetishists, and not seeing to public education.

Article note: Beyond not "dumbing it down," let's just preserve and teach it. Most people in computing have _no_ historical context, and it's a big part of why, as a field, we're so bad at our jobs.

Article note: It's an interesting issue. How catastrophic a climate model should we be building for? From Fukushima to Rotterdam we've clearly been under-estimating in big ways, but it's definitionally hard to deal with modeling exceptional conditions.

Article note: Oh legacy technology in production, always such a fun time.

Article note: From the people who brought you "Tenured or Homeless?"

Article note: ...As much as I'm not a fan of gigantic tech monopolies, this law is a threat to the open internet and flexing to shut it down is probably the best thing they can do.

Enlarge / Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, criticized the Australian proposal. (credit: Oliver Berg/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Google says it would have "no real choice" but to shut down its search engine in Australia if Australia passes a new law requiring Google to pay news sites to link to their articles. This would "set an untenable precedent for our business and the digital economy," said Google's Mel Silva in Friday testimony before the Australian Senate.

News organizations around the world have been struggling financially over the last decade or two. Many have blamed Internet companies like Google and Facebook that—in their view—have diverted advertising revenue that once went to news organizations. Some in the news industry argue that Google benefits from including news stories in its search results and should compensate news sites for the privilege of doing so.

So last year the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission proposed a new mandatory arbitration process designed to correct a supposed power imbalance between tech giants and Australian news sites. Under the new framework, news sites can demand that tech platforms (initially Google and Facebook) pay them for linking to their stories. Google and Facebook are required to negotiate "in good faith" toward a payment agreement.

Article note: Cue academic administrators salivating at the idea of one-time-expense course content packs instead of paying for instructional faculty. Side thoughts: * What about canceled instructors? Remember how Walter Lewin's lectures were the recommended best physics lectures until he turned out to be creepy? If we can use dead people's content, surely we can use canceled peoples? * I'm pretty sure being dead would not significantly affect the teaching practices of about 1/4 of the faculty I dealt with.