American judges have also been hobbled by decades of Republican legislation and judicial interpretations.
The American legal system has fucked itself into a corner where judges have to make these incredibly dumb technical rulings in specific interpretations and precedence, whereas as judges in many other western countries have much more freedom to look at the big picture or take into account systemic effects.
First of all, the author states part of the issue, then bets against it at the end:
Maybe the technology is still in its primitive stage, some breakthrough will come, and tricked-out houses will soon work seamlessly, removing friction and frustration from everyday tasks. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
The technology is literally in its primitive infancy. Matter is the open smart home standard, and the first version only just launched a couple years ago.
They've been continuously working on it and adding to it, but we are literally still in the 1.X era of the first smart home standard of any kind.
And that's just the backbone. That's like the Edison/Tesla/Westinghouse era, where North America just established that we're all going to use 120V, 60Hz AC electricity. It took a genuinely long time (decades) for light switches and receptacles to get as good and standardized and seamless as they are now.
The forces of corporate walled gardens do tend towards a fragmented experience, but interoperable standards have prevailed before, and Home Assistant is the single most actively developed open source project and is a driving force for true consumer focused home automation.
Secondly, a bunch of the author's complaints are nonsense / just badly designed versions of smart home products:
Light switches without clear On/Off/Dim/Scene Select labels on the buttons, are again, bad design. It's perfectly possible to have a smart switch that is very easy to understand.
You know what also sucks? Having to tear out an entire drywalled ceiling and do 120V electrical wiring just because you want your light switch in a different spot, or you want it to control other lights, or you want a three+ way switch.
You know what's nice? Having a complete separation between powering the devices, and controling the devices. It's nice to be able to turn individual lights on/off/to different colours and brightnesses depending on what you're using the room for.
Turning on the TV and it not turning on the streaming box, means it's an old tv or someone disabled HDMI CEC. New TVs will synchronize with the streaming box and soundbar / receiver automatically.
And I would argue that just having it start playing a random commercial filled channel, is worse for your brain then intentionally picking something to watch, but maybe that's generational.
I don't know how the author, their mom, or the rental supplied tech guy couldn't figure out how to look up the instruction manual for the dishwasher, because literally zero models of Miele dishwasher require wifi for setup or use.
Black glass oven buttons with opaque symbols have nothing to do with smart appliances, that's just bad design, and the author chose and bought a badly designed dumb oven, then blamed smart homes for some reason.
Programmable thermostats have been badly designed since the 90s, and yet, literally everyone uses them. Why? Because if it's your home, you look up the instructions, program to a schedule that makes sense, and then you don't have to go and adjust it multiple times a day. Modern smart Thermostats do the same thing but are usually more intuitive and nicer designed. This is because the author rented an AirBNB (i.e. a home designed for people to live in) rather then a hotel (a home designed for someone to temporarily stay in).
The author seems to not like touch screen numpads on their alarm system instead of buttons, because they display the weather while idle. Like ok, again, it's an AirBNB, not a hotel. The buttons are clear to someone who has literally never used them, but uglier for people who use them every day.
And with lag, yes, there is inherently more lag in a digital control device then an analog one but there does not have to be lag to the UI, that's just bad hardware / software, and as long as they're wired, the actual control parts of modern control systems have literally imperceptible lag, on the basis of <100ms.
Honestly, my takeaway from this piece is:
We're still in the infancy of smart home tech.
A lot of minimalist high design home stuff is functionally terrible.
Renting an AirBnB means dealing with a home designed for someone else.
Owning a software company makes you stressed out and rage at every little thing that's different.
I use both BetterSnapTool and DockDoor, and on a literal daily basis, I still find myself maddeningly frustrated by how difficult Apple makes it to find a specific application window.
Yes, I use this all the time out of necessity but it's still hogwash.
Mission Control is ok for selecting windows on a a single desktop as long as you have less then 6 open, it starts falling apart after that, and for some reason, no matter what, it makes the icons for full screen apps so small it's impossible to tell which particular mostly white web page is which.
Ctrl + Arrow Key - switches between only true Full Screen applications, forcing you to use Full Screen, instead of just maximizing. Want to know which windows are coming up next in the list? Too bad, use mission control.
CMD + tab - switches between your last used applications, it does not switch between windows.
On Windows:
you have a taskbar at the bottom where all running windows are neatly tucked away under each application, each with a preview.
With Alt + Tab you go through a list of last used windows, not applications. With a three finger swipe left or right, you can switch between them with a single gesture. You can configure this list to be all windows, or just the ones on that monitor. Their previews are always a predictable and visible size.
you have virtual desktops where you can put your entire window arrangement across multiple monitors away, and start a completely fresh workspace for a different task.
macOS has the unique ability to be good for newbies and power users (thanks to its unix underpinnings,) but falls short for people who have just enough computer knowledge to be dangerous (such as yourself.
Bruh, I'm a professional software developer.
I'm not complaining because I can't figure out how to use it, I'm complaining because I use it as fast as anyone can and it irritates me that it slows me down compared to using Windows or most Linux distros.
I feel like you can say the same about virtually any Windows laptop that cost the same as a MacBook Pro in the past 10 years.
I will give credit to their hardware, the M chips are very solid and they were smart to go in-house / ARM, they always use good mics and webcams, and their current microled screens are pretty great.
I just hate their software so fucking much. If I could get a good deal on a modern second hand MacBook I'd jump and put a better OS on it, but I can't bring myself to buy their hardware full cost given all of their business practices at the moment.
One of the most annoying things for me on Windows is when I close a Word file and want to open another one, if the one I closed is the last window then the entire program needs to restart which is very slow. On a Mac this never happens.
A) on windows that does not have to happen, that is a choice by the office developers. If they want they can instead close a window but still have a service running in the system tray that can bring them back up instantly. Famously stuff like Steam and Discord work like this ootb.
B) the alternative, is that on MacOS you either:
close the last window, and accidentally leave an application running that chewing up memory for no reason
think you're on the last window and go to explicitly close the application using Command Q, only to find out you still had another window open behind it or on another monitor that you needed, because MacOS provides no logical way of finding windows.
At work, let's say I'm working on a simple application, just doing basic work on a clean slate:
A browser open with reference material: my current Jira task, relevant documentation, Pull Request etc.
VSCode with the front-end code files, with an integrated terminal running the front-end server
VSCode with the back-end code files, with an integrated terminal running the back-end server
A terminal window for running the project / dev server and debugging
The GUI of whatever app I'm working on (usually a different browser tab)
Slack
Email
Zoom
Now let's say I'm doing slightly more realistic work, where I'm trying to hunt down a bug across a larger app consisting of numerous microservices, user types, and front ends:
A browser open with reference material: my current Jira task, relevant documentation, etc.
VSCode running our overall platform repo with a terminal running docker compose
Docker open for inspecting the logs and status of each service
VS code window for each microservices that needs to be worked on and dug through (+3-6).
A VS code window for the front-end code
A SQL / Db debugging tool
A browser window with the GUI for normal users.
A different browser window with the GUI for admin users.
Postman for debugging the backend.
Slack
Email
Zoom
A bunch of other windows from other half competed / interrupted tasks.
Lmfao. I use all the dumbass window management features apple provides. Again, they're just objectively worse then the ones that windows provides.
Alt tabbing applications is nonsense when a single application like your browser will likely have multiple windows open, each of which is serving a completely different task.
Making the only way to quickly switch between windows, being switching between full screen windows is literal nonsense.
It fucking sucks at managing applications and their windows. It's designed for writing your novel in café where you have one Google doc open and that's it.
you can download an app and just drag it into your apps folder. No installation required. You can also just use something like brew with --cask Param then you don't need to even download the app first
Technically you can do that on Windows without even the application folder, if the app is written to be a portable app, then you can execute that file from anywhere. Admittedly not quite the same thing, but still possible.
You can modify most settings programmatically
I will say, it's easier to edit most setting programmatically on MacOS, if those settings exist in the first place. On Windows the programmatic way to edit some settings is truly ancient and arcane, but on the flip side, windows actually has settings for virtually everything. MacOS doesn't even have a way of letting you have your mouse and your trackpad scroll different directions.
Yeah, that's not what I want because again, the application is not the context the user thinks about.
I want to switch between to the last used window, on that monitor, or pick between the different open windows, on that monitor.
On Windows, you literally just three finger swipe left and right. On MacOS you can use mission control to see impossible tiny thumbnails of full screen apps, and if you happen to be on a desktop you might be able to make out which open window is which, but if you're not or have too many open you just can't.
And you can do just that. You just have to use a different hotkey depending on whether the last used windows are of the same application or not.
Lmfao, "again, you can do that just as easily" followed by a series of keyboard shortcuts that do something else.
Again, this isn't complicated. I have:
Monitor 1:
Browser with Google meet
Browser with ticket
Document editor
Spotify
Monitor 2:
Browser with output
Browser with output with admin user logged in
Email
Document for reference
I'm on monitor 1 and want to quickly switch to the other browser window, how do I do that?
One of your keyboard shortcuts will cycle between running applications, not useful if I'm on the same application already. The other will cycle through all browser windows across all monitors, cycling me through two other windows and changing stuff in every monitor just to get to the other browser window on the monitor I'm on.
The only way on MacOS to achieve the quick switching, per monitor, window behaviour, that Windows has, is to full screen them and use command + arrow left/right, and it's still worse then Windows' three finger swipe (/ windows key + arrow keys), since it's slower and gives you no preview of the windows unless you go to mission control.
And on your external monitor you access that how? Do you have your dock persist and chew up space on every monitor, or do you have it hide and pop-up and then not go away and cut off the bottoms of your windows?
Second, asking how many windows I have open is dumb since you are asking for a static number for something that changes day to day. If I say 6, you say 7. If I say 11, you say a billion. You aren’t looking for a real answer to consider, you are looking from something to lie about.
It's not a dick measuring contest, I'm just genuinely curious how someone who actually uses a lot of windows manages, or whether I'm talking to a university student writing an essay.
I will say I have 3 browsers with multiple windows and tabs open across 3 screens, vscode, terminal, 2 virtual machines in full screen a simple swipe reveals, pages and numbers, TextEdit as a scratchpad for notes, a few finder windows, messages, discord, mail, and probably a few other things.
So how do you quickly switch to a different instance of the same browser, on the same monitor?
First, windows 11 has objectively the worst desktop GUI. It’s a downgrade from its predecessor and so bad literally everyone beats it now. It’s not better, it’s familiar.
Oh its just "bad"? I listed numerous basic failings of MacOS, including specific window management failings and their patronizingly useless notification system. How about you do better than "bad"?
I want to know which ones are running on that monitor.
but you're a programmer, why do you even care about the dock at all, you should hide it and use hammerspoon to make your system more suited for you.
Because I'm a programmer. I have enough code to write and maintain, and because if it was possible, I assume someone else would have done it by now given how much it's asked for.
On windows and KDE Plasma it definitely shows just the running application.
First of all no, on windows that's a setting, because windows has settings for things. You can either
Show the running applications
Show the running windows but collapse them into their application once the bar is full
Show the running windows and never collapse them into their application
You can hover over it and get a ridiculously long list of windows but that's honestly just as bad as mac. They're both bad solutions. Either you right click and get a list of text you have to remember, or you get a picture of the window that you have to scroll (I usually have way more windows open than this)
Lmao, no they are not equally bad.
First of all, on windows you can also right click and get that shitty list, but you probably don't use that because it's worse than the hover.
Second, the hover exists, and is better. An image preview of the window plus it's title is easier to scan quickly.
Third, you can also three finger swipe left and right on a trackpad, or windows key plus arrow key left and right to switch between windows, and you get a handy horizontal list in the middle when you do so you know exactly where you are in that list.
I can't tell if these are jokes or not.
How do you switch between the running windows on a single monitor on a Mac, without having to consider every running application and window on your whole computer?
Alt Tabbing switches between applications, not windows.
Command + Arrow key, only switches between full screen windows / desktops, forcing you to full screen windows, just so you can quickly switch back and forth between them.
you can disable this.. like, what even is this complaint. You can literally hide it just like you can on windows.
The complaint is that Apple's designers are obnoxious as fuck to waste more space than Windows on a taskbar that does less.
so yeah you literally don't know how it works. it literally is the developer's choice for how long a notification stays up and if it is persistent or not.
No, it is not. The user chooses in the MacOS settings for an app whether that app getsalerts or banners, and that changes their behaviour entirely. Alerts disappear and get lost, banners persist on your desktop until you dismiss them.
How about this. Go try out Hammerspoon, go try out AltTab. If those are too difficult for you then use BetterTouchTool (though that costs money).
How about the trillion dollar corporation spend their time and money coding a functional window system into their 30 year old operating system? Or how about they stop using bullshit walled garden tactics like the iOS / Safari Rendering engine to force developers into buying Macs?
the single qualm about the popups not showing for 'true fullscreen' apps. But you don't like fs apps anyway! So don't use them!
Again, there is no way to switch between running windows on a single monitor.
I do not understand why some people feel the need to defend such a dumb fucking windowing system. You obviously recognize how nonsensical Apple's full screen system is, and yet you come in here to insist it's not worse then Windows' because it has awkward multi step equivalents to windows' single shortcuts.
I mean, when you could convert Xbox Live Gold credits to Gamepass and get it for like $60 a year, it was genuinely a great deal. And that lasted for like 4+ years.
I am generally extremely pro workers right and pro environmental protection, but environmentalists really need look at the situation practically and holistically.
This article seems to suggest that it's impossible to mine ethically, and while I get that it causes inherent damage and destruction, the alternatives will cause more damage and destruction, just not here.
The sad reality of bill 5 is that environmental laws have been used to block infrastructure projects numerous times. And while local environmental concerns are obviously valid, in the real world that we live in, it is not obviously 'more ethical' to let them block the project so that it instead gets built in say Peru, or doesn't get built at all and we keep using fossil fuel infrastructure.
What I was saying is that it is not a binary choice between pushing damaging projects here or accepting damaging projects elsewhere, but instead wherever possible we should be doing what we can to mitigate and limit the environmental and social impacts of extraction, insofar as there are things we need to extract.
I mean, yes but there are always tradeoffs and time is a massive factor. If doing everything we can to mitigate local environmental damage means a process that delays the mining of minerals needed for mass-electrification and slows it down, then we'll end up doing more overall environmental damage as we continue to burn fossil fuels.
I know every online leftist seems to think Carney is the devil, but these numbers should give people massive pause at what the alternative looks like.
It's wild to me that with as centrist as Carney's been, he's barely pulled any of the actual conservative vote to him. Really seems like we have a serious problem with growing entrenched conservatism in this country.
I generally agree with most of what you said, but there's a balance to be struck when it comes to shitting on things.
If you publish that opinion online, be it a newspaper editorial, or a random comment on a post, you are helping to spread that opinion, and that general emotional sentiment, to others.
And both social media companies, and foreign governments (and some internal actors), all benefit from the population being angry and divided. There is a constant bias towards anger that always need tempering.
Well thought out and reasoned critiques about specific choices are one thing, glib comments made from skimming headlines are another (not saying that's what you do, but that's what a lot of social media users of all kinds, be they Reddit, Lemmy, Facebook, Mastodon etc) do.
I keep asking myself why this is happening here or if its common. I keep seeing more and more banks and gas stations being built here. Like, why!? We have a shit ton already. You can't go a block without seeing a gas station. And why the hell do we ned physical banks? 90% of money is fake and digital. It has to be a land grab so ...
This can happen when companies are making massive profits but want to hide them.
i.e. if they're getting government subsidies, either direct ones, or indirect policy support, then they risk losing it if they post record profits and draw attention to their lack of need. So instead they will increase capital spending: buy up more properties, renovate their stores with nicer fixtures etc. On paper this keeps their profits down as their costs have gone up, however, in reality their overall valuation has increased because they now own all these assets that they can use, lease, or sell in the future (assuming they didn't buy junk).
Some of it is also just normal expansion. If a new neighbourhood is built, banks and gas stations are often the first to try and get in. For gas stations it's to get the ideal corner, and for banks it's because people often switch banks when they move houses to whatever's closest, and then never switch again.
Some of it can be specific government policy. The current US government has crafted policy to boost the gas powered vehicle market for years to come, which may give more confidence in building gas stations and having them be profitable long term.
And some of it can just be normal market adjustments. i.e. they stopped building banks thinking that everyone going digital would eliminate them, but their projections were wrong and they're seeing more people then expected who still want to go into a physical location and talk to a person, so now there's a wave of buildout.
Or maybe you haven't noticed how every game that's made with Unreal Engine, all the way back since UE4, requires far more resources than is necessary to run what it's running.
We'll all wait for you to cite your source on that one, because, no Unreal does not perform particularly worse then any other game engine.
Unreal is broadly available and not just hidden behind AAA walls so a lot of A and AA devs won't have time to optimize their games with it, but they wouldn't have had time to optimize regardless of whether they published with Unity or Godot or any other engine. Unreal is certainly a vastly more efficient engine then Unity, which is its main competition.
Also, how are you squaring away the idea that Unreal is ruining games as art? There are two options:
be a creative game designer and spend all your resources on engineers to build you a custom game engine, then spend more resources training everyone at your company on how your specific niche engine works
be a creative game designer and use an off the shelf engine like Unreal to run and render your game so you can spend your resources on artists, writers, and designers, and everyone comes in knowing how to use it
Do you really think that number 1 leads to more artistic games? The literal entire reason we're in an indie game mecca right now is because of the widespread proliferation of third party game engines, that let small dev teams focus on the game and not the engine.
Lmfao, bruh, you're comparing looking at the sky and seeing what colour it is, to wasting your time on social media watching random outrage posts about video games like everyone sees the same rage bait that you do.
Go outside and touch grass, then cite your source dumbass.
Trump-Appointed Judge Rules ICE Violated Constitutional Rights of Minnesota Detainees — Drops Hammer in Strict Order ( www.mediaite.com )
B E L L Y
Smart Homes Are Terrible ( www.theatlantic.com )
archive.is link ...
MacOS is the worst Operating System
It can't do the literal entire thing an operating system is supposed to do: manage applications and their resulting windows, in a sensible way. ...
Next generation Xbox may launch in 2027 ( www.theverge.com )
It will also have a 'very premuim' experience, possible capable of running PC games as well.
Who is minding the water data centres will use? ( canadians.org )
Ontario government recycles oil sands propaganda for Ring of Fire mining development ( ricochet.media )
Time to slide
Latest federal polling numbers from Mainstreet
https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/6f88afb3-2597-464d-9521-3795cc0d3f53.jpeg ...
Is your city building a ton of banks and gas stations?
I keep asking myself why this is happening here or if its common. I keep seeing more and more banks and gas stations being built here. Like, why!? We have a shit ton already. You can't go a block without seeing a gas station. And why the hell do we ned physical banks? 90% of money is fake and digital. It has to be a land grab so ...
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney supports the $900 million lawsuit against Valve, arguing Steam is "the only major store still holding onto payment ties and 30% junk fee" ( finance.yahoo.com )