molasses

Would love to see the base of products like this open sourced.

I'm able bodied, but years back suffered tremendous pain, that led to me having to lie down on my back and use the computer with a keyboard. And TBH even that was a pain. I got quite far under OSX tiger, and browse the web. Use a terminal etc. But at the time it led me into thinking about alternative interfaces. And the one thing that did catch my eye was 'dasher' for text entry. Which could be controlled with a simple pointer. And it did make me wonder how far you could go with a pointer based interface. I wasn't that fast while trying it out. But could construct sentences with a bit of effort.

https://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/

I've been thinking about it some more recently, as AI could assist with word completion, and augmenting it with some AI helpers could really improve things. And if the idea was extended.

Not wanting to sound like an able-ist snob, but interfacing with traditional computers with a keyboard is hard. And the interface is clumsy. Even touch devices and keyboards. My Mum could never use a computer, but she has worked out how to use a tablet and find videos on Youtube. I keep meaning to introduce her to voice input. As this would really benefit her.

Despite the huge tech leaps with smartphones and tablets and what not, I do feel there has been a huge regression in basic communication between people only exacerbated by the pandemic. There's knowledge available easily at people's fingertips and that's great, along with new channels of communication. But text based comms have retarded many people.

I guess you can't talk while it is in.

Using google to find specific websites, only amounts to me typing hacker news or facebook. That's about it. My main bulk of queries are question based, but I'm also from a previous era, where I throw keywords at Google rather than questions, which is a learned response from back then. I do 'ask' google assistant questions, and it doesn't do a bad job at it. I would love it to be a glorified PA and general knowledgeable 'person' I can go to for advice.

At the same time, I've containered much of my interaction with Google so it can't draw on my past history. So I have no idea what I'm missing. It did have a tendency to feedback loop a bit too much for me in the past, pigeon holing me to specific websites. There's a huge trust issue, you leak your ID in about four common regular queries so I'm not so sure I can even beat it.

People kind of go through a contrarian phase. I read something the other day, probably on Twitter, that to get the answer you want, you deliberately put out the wrong answer. And leach out the bile to get results.

I think there are still lots of people that are on-boarding. And over time they simmer down. Much is poor etiquette unwittingly forced, as we have finger fumbling interfaces.

I struggle reading threads on Twitter, just as I do on HN. If I could watch the thread grow organically perhaps possibly via a visual map, I'd stand a chance. Fork a thread on Twitter and content can end up totally buried. It's useless.

HN is far more simple in approach, but you only really stand a chance if you monitor your own thread. Kind of. So you just end up glancing this and that. Or trying to read something and then give up. Threads only get traction for about a day and people fall off reading them precisely because engagement requires a silly cognitive leap.

Natural conversations are a bit all over the place, but the brain is quite good at forming some kind of narrative. Despite participants sometimes have wildly differing interpretations. These aren't even apparent in the moment. Ruminating delays, and going back to conversations from yesterday doesn't much happen, unless you have quite an intimate relationship with someone, or you are very topic focused.

Throw many disjointed feeds into the mix, and how on earth do you navigate them, let alone participate in them.

About the only thing that kind of works for me when thinking back is something like newsnet, with basic topic threading. With well considered posts.

Apologies for adding to the noise.

I wonder if we could make a more semantic web by enforcing some meta data standards and having more piecemeal content.

I was reading some tech article the other day. Something like 10 best Foos or something. And there was no date on it. A commenter said, great article but no date, and the author replied that the page was refreshed with evergreen content. You'd have had to be a mind reader to know that. But I guess at least I got my answer via a little Q and A on the page.

What was bump.me? Photo sharing is why Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp is insanely popular. Sharing photos is just difficult.

I've had to resort in the past of putting a small web server on the phone, just to get files off it via WIFI. But of course that's clunky.

If peer to peer networking were easier, trustable etc, it could be a real life saver. There's some feature in Google Files that's WIFI sharing, but I haven't tried it.

I abandoned bluetooth early on, because I kept having issues. Stubborn pairing is still a pain.

For music, I bought a DLNA renderer (more like a Chromecast), and just assumed that lots of software could remotely talk to it. But about the only software that almost works with it is something with a poor UI from yesteryear on Android. And music service support is hit and miss. So I'm edging towards Bluetooth now.

That said, yesterday I resorted to CDs. And today, I've jacked a spare phone into an auxiliary port. And I won't use my phone for Bluetooth music mainly because if I walk out the room or want to take a call it all goes tits up.

I've had Bluetooth on Debian Linux on my Thinkpad for years, and different releases have been hit and miss for things like file transfer. And address book syncing. And that's not confined to Linux either.

When it works... It does feel like magic.

Really I want to easily route sound from one app to a particular device or devices with easy remote management. Voice control is a bit hit and miss. But hands free remote is a good idea.

UI is very esoteric, like when you are offered a list of Bluetooth services. A phone I had would offer itself as a remote device or something, but I never figured out how and what it did. Or the worry that your phone might turn into a data access point accidentally.

Aha, that's why I never spotted it. What have I missed!?

Never seen the option in compose for a fleet? How do you do one?

So does this still use Presto, and is there any forward movement on it?

Crashed it, before even getting going with it on the content blocking prefs.

Otter 1.0.02 on Manjaro.

qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 580, resource id: 8418551, major code: 40 (TranslateCoords), minor code: 0 Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Logo could do with a makeover. Possibility of a really nice cute graphic. Firefox seem to have repeatedly missed that opportunity.

And the O is a bit reminiscent of Opera. ( I read it hopes to ape some of the better bits of Opera's past.)

Certainly space for an innovative - I'm in the driving seat type browser. The space is really lack-lustre, and not in a good way.

Yeah, I thought canned beans would be cooked and fine. But I guess one bad one can get through.

Oh man I got poisoned by some bought canned kidney beans used in a salad, and it wasn't pretty.

I went through a raw food phase, and there was something distinctly satisfying about bean sprouts. And crunchy salads. Cooked food seemed so dull by comparison. The jar method is good, I had one with some plastic mesh that I'd leave on the drainer and swill through a few times a day. The post has inspired me to resurrect it.

I tried win 10 recently on older hardware with 2gb ram. Long story short: totally unusable. Turned on Win 8.1 on machine with 2gb ram. That was pretty usable and almost pleasant by comparison. I used to think that distro was a stinky turd. The UI in 8.1 was very inconsistent and gave me hives. 10 has changed markedly already between big updates.

Oh come, Linux's UI is completely inconsistent, between toolkits, desktops, distros and the like.

It doesn't always work. I have two machines, one that has issues with a north bridge, which initially prevented shutdown and prohibits, suspend and hibernate. And another where the Bluetooth dies until reboot on an Intel wireless card. Another machine wouldn't upgrade due to a wireless card, that took about three days of troubleshooting. My Linux boxes glitch too. I rarely have stuff that just works.

I get this. I have a low spec phone by today's standards, and it has android 10, it is pretty useless practically. It is pretty much stock. And I would gladly go back some versions for speed hikes.

There are shells that help with discovery. And auto completion helpers. These are great. You might infer from documentation. There was a big thing about spacial awareness years back, my brain works well like that, familiar brain paths for controls in certain places. But that relies on repetition. I pretty much always forget shell incantations. So any helper tools are a boon for me. Self described to GUI or richer UI would be welcome. If it's not already done.

File explorer multi pick is the thing I desperately claw for for a pointer.

I know this is vaguely off topic. But main point was that boot up times aren't bothersome for stable systems with long uptime. When boot loops feel almost mandatory to get anywhere, with pretty much a virgin OS, and it takes days to actually get anywhere - it is an issue.

So many versions. I just remember wrestling with floppies getting dial up networking on a wIn 95 laptop.

We ran a small drop in cafe and we're excited to run win 2k and xp on something like 600mhz Pentiums.

Someone donated an old pc. We turned it on and it had win 3.1 on and it booted in a blip. We looked at each other in amazement. It's odd what you forget. And at the time I preferred the 3.1 style to 95, though tooling was pretty horrible. Changing video modes for example.

Win 95 also didn't originally come with TCP/IP from what I remember. Pre internet os, that you wrestled with to get internet support on.

Later service pack version came bundled with the web client stuff.

Networking was very hit and miss back then.

I have a friend that has run blackbox style desktop for an age. He still prefers it over native win 10.

But it does play a part if you are forced through lengthy updates and reboots.

I was stuck on a 1.3mbits/s link and waited a day for a dist update that never happened.

I walked away from Windows then, and came back 6 years later. Win 10 on spinner and older hardware with 2gb ram. This originally was touted as a frugal os.

Took a day and a half of updates on a faster connection.

The machine then was so slow and CPU sucking when idle, I couldn't do anything with it. A browser would down it. Totally unusable.

Gave in, had Debian on it within an hour and it is okay with chromium, but still 2gb limits it heavily. But at least it works.

Casts mind back to win98 era, and same hardware would fly.

So if stable, and no reboots don't care so much.

They killed hibernate in Windows for a faster boot didn't they?

I have vista on a ten year laptop, and that is quite fast to boot, but now unsupported and breaks.