Article note: It's like the entire fuckin' industry decided to make things that look pretty instead of things that work well for the last 20 years.
We _know_ how (extended) Fitts' law works: things in the screen corners are the easiest to select because they have "infinite" depth in two directions, and edges are slightly harder with 1-d infinite depth, so you put your common controls there...so they move UI elements to be centered. (remember the early OS X demos with the centered Apple menu? Even "you're holding it wrong" Apple backed off on this kind of dumb shit).
We _know_ that consistent placement and appearance allows for "muscle memory" ... so they make shit that constantly moves, re-flows, and alters its visual presentation every time you see it.
We _know_ that multiple monitors and odd (especially ultra-wide) device aspect ratios are increasingly common... so they remove features for accommodating them.
Microsoft promotes itself as the productivity company, but the new Windows 11 taskbar removes key functionality and makes me less productive as a result. Missing features include power user elements like displaying the time and date on multiple monitors, or simple things like having small icons and being able to move the taskbar around. There’s so much missing here that I’m stunned Microsoft is shipping a new OS that takes the Windows taskbar back decades.
While this missing functionality initially seemed like bugs or unfinished code, it’s clear Microsoft now intends to ship the taskbar like this on October 5th. I personally use three monitors on my PC, and if I’m using a fullscreen app or a game on my primary one, I can’t see the date...
Article note: Oh boy.
China is a huge fraction of global manufacturing capacity (and holds like $3.2T of US treasury securities) so either having their gigantic not-quite-private companies collapse and thrash their economy OR nationally moving assets to bail said not-quite-private companies out out will be globally disruptive.
Article note: I'm not sure that 9/11 started it, but it certainly did illuminate to a large swath of politicians that "Fear + Bullshit = Power" is a winning strategy.
Article note: Huh.
NOT doing anything about the single-point-of-control distribution, but at least it looks like the government is opposing the rent-seeking a 30% commission on payments from apps to access things outside the Apple ecosystem problem, the frequent bullshit about delisting FOSS apps for linking their donation pages, and similar issues.
On Friday, the Northern California judge handling the closely watched Epic Games v. Apple court case turned in a ruling that, in many ways, works out in Apple's favor—but with one massive, App Store-changing exception.
The injunction is aimed at Apple, not Epic, and tells the device and software manufacturer to no longer prevent developers from including their own direct-buy links within their apps. Apple also cannot prevent app-makers from communicating with customers via any method customers opt in to (i.e. an email newsletter) about purchasing options. Apple has 90 days from today, September 10, 2021, until this injunction becomes live and actionable.
Article note: Aw fuck. The courts handed control to the knuckle-draggers, and they're doing their thing.
The Kentucky Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would eliminate the state’s mask mandate in K-12 schools and wouldn’t give districts any more than 10 of the state’s non-traditional … Click to Continue »
Article note: In a few years, wealthy progressives will be having their own progeny genetically manipulated (or at least screened) for markers associated with improved intellectual ability while still (very respectably) publicly screaming about how even suggesting that genetic factors might predispose individuals to be better or worse at academic pursuits is just a front for racism.
Article note: I probably still have a box of floppies somewhere with quarantined versions of Back Orifice, Sub7, L0phtCrack, Cain and Abel, etc. on them.
The late 90s were a fun time to be learning computers.
Article note: The whole "IBM wanted CP/M, Gary Kildall didn't feel like dealing with them, so Microsoft bought a clone (_probably_ from-the-docs not from-the-code) from SCP and sold that instead" history is always interesting. I didn't know there was that much earlier commercial history; it's an excellent preservation project.
A number of years ago, an 8″ disk containing Seattle Computer Products (SCP) 86-DOS 1.0 was successfully imaged. The newest files on the disk are dated April 30, 1981, making the disk the oldest complete release of what was soon to be known as PC DOS and MS-DOS, about a month older than a pre-release of PC DOS from early June 1981.
While it is possible to run the 8″ disk image with 86-DOS version 1.00 under an emulator, it of course doesn’t run on a PC or any PC emulator/virtualizer. That’s a shame because most of the utilities included with SCP’s 86-DOS run under DOS just fine. In theory, it should be possible to provide a PC compatible “BIOS” component (IBMBIO.COM or IO.SYS equivalent) and run the rest of the system more or less unmodified on a PC.
In case you don’t know or remember, Seattle Computer Products was the company Microsoft bought the rights to DOS from, making SCP’s versions of DOS some of the oldest in existence. Getting these old versions archived and running on modern emulators is critically important for the field of computer archeology.
Article note: Ugh.
NSA has been pulling the "Surely only we, the good guys (tm) can use this backdoor we've intentionally introduced into cryptosystems we've successfully pressured the adoption of" shit since the 60s (see HY-63, https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-scandalous-history-of-the-last-rotor-cipher-machine ), despite it blowing up regularly.
And, even more than "think of the children," it's always a lie. There are no attacks that "only you" can use, even if you can rationalize yourself as 'the good guys.'
No, not the 1980s TV show where Lionel Blair attempted to mime data abstraction to Una Stubbs
Retro fans, rejoice! A bit of digital archaeology has turned up a working early version of the CLU programming language and the files needed to create it uploaded to GitHub.…
