gxx's comments

1) Social media driven by algorithms, destroying the fabric of society. 2) Being the product, not the customer. 3) Endless, gratuitous, unstoppable changes to the tools we use. 4) The raging battle for our attention.

For me Google "verbatim" is the best way to get focussed results although it's too bad it doesn't allow date ranges. Bing search with appropriate use of guotes, + and - operators and date ranges usually beats non-verbatim Google search, and it can sometimes be better than Google verbatim.

Vaccine trials have shown that approved vaccines reduce moderate to severe illness and death. There is no trial-based evidence that they prevent people from catching the virus and spreading it [1]. It's even possible that people who are vaccinated are more likely to be asymptomatic and more likely to unknowingly pass it on.

So "vaccinating people who are the most likely to get sick" is the only option supported by the evidence. Or preferably vaccinate people most likely to become moderately to severey ill, or die.

At this time we should not be "vaccinating people who are the most likely to spread the virus". We don't know if approved vaccines will help with this.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210203-why-vaccinated-p...

Google and YouTube video search are terrible. I find the result poorly matches the query I typed, the results are hard to browse, and of course favor videos on YouTube ignoring better videos that may be on other sites.

Bing video search is by far better. Assuming you use DuckDuckGo type your search and follow it with !bv. The result is an excellent browsable display of videos that match your search well, that can be previewed by hovering over them, and the results aren't biased to just YouTube. You can also add emphasis to words in your search with the +/- operators and quotes.

Also the "up next" YouTube video is rarely as good as going back to the Bing search and choosing another video.

Brings back great memories. Based on the article in Byte Magazine 1977 (1) I got Spacewar running (in assembly language) on my kit-built Processor Technolory Sol 8088 microcomputer. Also built the 8 bit DAC and two hand controllers. The display was my kit-built Heathkit oscilloscope. It was magical to see those satellites orbiting for the first time!

(1) https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1977-10/1977_10_BYT...

The biggest difference between Macbook trackpads vs the best for Windows is the super low hysteresis of pointer motion vs finger motion. I recently bought and returned a Microsoft Surface Book with "precision touchpad". The main reason for returing it was that pointer control feels sluggish compared to the Macbook and its pointer speed was too slow even at its fastest. The best Dell touchpads are no better and Lenovo trackpads are even worse.

I understand that this may be because PC touchpad hardware reports jitter, sometimes higher than it really is, and this causes the Precision Touchpad software to increase the hysteresis. Macbook touchpads have low jitter and the driver is tuned to benefit from it.

If anyone Microsoft with input into the Precision Touchpad reads this, why don't you fix it or work with your licensees to fix it?

I'd like to switch to Edge but there is apparently no way to have it default to opening links in a new tab:

https://www.tenforums.com/browsers-email/67169-can-i-make-op...

I know about Command-Click to open in a new tab (Mac) but I want thie to be the default. It's crazy that Edge does not support this because every other browser does. (If someone from Micthe Edge team happens to read this post, please fix it.)

Do these problems also apply to USB C?

I've been wanting to switch to Windows from Mac for years. The thing that holds me back is the quality of the Mac touchpad vs any Windows laptop, and I recently ordered a Surface Book 3 having heard how great the touchpad is. I've already returned it.

The touchpad is pretty good but it's still not as precise as the Mac touchpad - there is a slight hysteresis that makes it imprecise for short movements. No amount of tweaking settings could overcome this. The only way to be accurate at short range is to slow the overall pointer speed so it takes more than one finger swipe to move across the screen.

The other problem with the Surface Book is the Home and End keys are not accessible at the same time as the function keys - a show-stopper for smooth editing and debugging in an IDE.

I've been wanting to switch to Windows from Mac for years. The thing that holds me back is the quality of the Mac touchpad vs any Windows laptop, and I recently ordered a Surface Book 3 having heard how great the touchpad is. I've already returned it.

The touchpad is pretty good but it's still not as precise as the Mac touchpad - there is a slight hysteresis that makes it imprecise for short movements. No amount of tweaking settings could overcome this. The only way to be accurate at short range is to slow the overall pointer speed so it takes more than one finger swipe to move across the screen. (If anyone from Microsoft is reading this - why don't you fix it? It can't be that hard.)

The other problem with the Surface Book is the Home and End keys are not accessible at the same time as the function keys - a show-stopper for smooth editing and debugging in an IDE.

Another good reason to wear a face mask other than protecting yourself from Covid-19...

I usually search videos with Bing using the !bv redirect from DuckDuckGo. Google's video search is shockingly bad, considering they own YouTube.

Not only are Bing's results more on target, it also displays search results much more conveniently. Also Bing supports the "+" operator that Google does not. (Also the "-" operator.) These allow accurate targeting of what you are looking for.

I also usually redirect to Bing image search (!bi in DDG) because their support of the "+" operator allows more accurate search targeting.

The cost to collect the huge amounts of needed to train meaningful models is surely not growing at this rate.

Becoming a powerful politician...

Many Arduino compatible boards support hardware debugging. For example the Adafruit Feather series have connectors for a J-Link debugger. The Arduino Nano 33 BLE and Sense have pads on the botom to solder the leads of a J-Link cable. STM Nucleos even have the debug probe built in accessible over the same USB port.

PlatformIO https://platformio.org/ is the preferred Arduino IDE (a plugin for VS Code). It has support for hardware debugging, C++ code highlighting, code completion and Intellisense.

I bought a 13 inch Macbook Pro in 2017 and within six months of normal use the spacebar and other other key were intermittent. I was fortunately able to get it fixed under warranty.

However I've been using since then with no need for servicing and the keys are at this moment perfect. Various keys have become intermittent since then but I found a trick that so far has fixed it every time.

The key mechanism seems to be VERY robust and can take a lot of pounding. Usually the particles jamming the mechanism (e.g. food crumbs) can be broken up by repeatedly banging hard on the offending key.

I've had keys that were intermittent or even not come all the way up and this has always fixed them to be literally as good as new. It seems that once the particles are broken small enough they either remain in place but are harmless or maybe they are small enough to fall out by themselves.

Paying attention to how users work and and what they need can also be extremely profitable. The entire idea for Microsoft Office came from our discovering how often they were struggling with differerences in basic UI between say Excel and Word (which were quite different back then). Also how often they wanted to say copy data from Excel to Word or embed an Excel table in a Word document.

Based on this we decided to make the products more compatible in UI and able to work together better. It was a huge challenge because the products were designed by different teams that intensely belived in they way they had chosen to do things. It required Bill Gates to push it to make it happen and even then it was difficult.

Office 97 was the result and Office grew into a product that made billions for Microsoft. This came from our obsession with user experience...

I worked on the design of the first several versions of Excel. For Excel 3.0 we were intensely interested in user behavior. We often compared alternative prototypes of proposed features in the usability lab. We sometimes would invite develpers to watch users strugging with what they thought was great idea...

Also, long before the Internet we asked users permission to send them a special version of Excel (called the Instrumented Version) that would intelligently log actions, but not data to a floppy disk. Users would send the disks back to us for analysis. We used the analysis to understand how users really did things vs what we thought the did. Sometimes we got some surprises. We used this to prioritize features where users were having difficulty that needed special attention. It also indicated frequenty performed actions that would benefit from, for example, being put on the toolbar.

I think our user focus was an important reason why Excel has been so enduring. (Although Office 2003 screwed it up to some extent - I was no longer there.)

Back then at Microsoft the applications group tended to take the lead in UI developement and many of the things we designed made their way into Windows. Some were even picked up by the Mac! Although Steve Jobs would never have admitted it.

It grieves me to see the shoddy state of software design these days. There is no craftsmanship. Visual design take precedence over real usability. Maybe this is because with fast developemnt cycles and the ability to instantly change a web based design, it's easer to throw crap at the wall and keep iterating until it sort of works.

These days user interaction designers have endless great user data on which to craft wonderful UI but it rarely happens. If they happen to hit on something good, usually another team takes over and changes it, often for the worse!

(End Rant)

I became so annoyed with LinkedIn I added every filter I could think of to block all email that even mentions LinkedIn. I don't care if I miss opportunities. I like the freedom from distraction .

A more recent similar expedition was the Falkland war of 1982 where the British, at high cost, sent a force to retake the Falklands when they were siezed by Argentina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War