evilstevie @evilstevie@mastod1.ddns.net

When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was friends and family sheepishly asking me for tech support help, and me slowly, patiently explaining to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.

But that's not true anymore.

User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.

My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.

#HCI #UX #UI #okdoomer

What's happening at Microsoft, I think:

- Reality is everything is way too complex
- lots of MS things ship in risky configurations
- nobody (including Microsoft) can figure out how to scale securing it
- everything is way too expensive

Microsoft’s two biggest commercial security risks are ransomware groups, and /itself/.

They've gone from saying attackers think in graphs to getting attackers to live on the Microsoft Graph, which has allowed them to monetise their cloud security failures.

Has anyone ever tried telling you that the perfect bath mat doesn't exist?

Probably not, because that would be a really weird thing to say.

But anyway, I've created the perfect bath mat.
https://www.redbubble.com/i/bath-mat/Low-Quality-Bath-Mat-by-LowQualityFacts/154631604.FZTEY?utm_source=rb-native-app&utm_campaign=share-product&utm_medium=android

Good afternoon Mastodon. It's the weekend and I have just had the Laziest Morning Ever and hadn't realised quite how much I needed that.

I have attempted to represent my resulting mood with a small, slightly shiny, slightly lopsided stone.

#sillyScribbles #photography #cute #silly #stone

An adjunct professor for computer security found some odd stuff her students turned in:

https://labs.ripe.net/author/kathleen_moriarty/the-llm-misinformation-problem-i-was-not-expecting/

It was not the students' use of a #ChatBot that was the problem, but they were using material found on the internet that *itself* was created by a hallucinating ChatBot and published without verification!

This is a type of model collapse we will be dealing with not just at universities in the near future.

#AcademicChatter #AcademicIntegrity #ChatGPT

Happy to take suggestions for new dance moves btw. They may be unrecognisable if they make it into the animation (there is a 60 frame limit, no bending at the waist and no limb joints!) but if I can find an example I'll give a sparkly dancer adaptation a bash.

And on that note I need to thank @teapot_ben for mentioning the chicken dance in passing last week and inspiring dancer 34 🐔

All responsibility remains my own though. No blaming please 😆

It's the weekend, and that means it's time to do the chicken dance. Oh aye.

Thirty-four weeks, thirty-four dancers, and never let it be said I don't know a good dance when I see one.

*ahem*

Have an excellent weekend, if you possibly can 😊

#FridaySparklyDancers #sillyScribbles #animation #dance #silly #drawing

My current bout of fatigue must be beginning to subside if the puns have started coming out again

Good morning Mastodon.

It's Friday, and the shell experiments continue.

#sillyScribbles #photography #googlyEyes #silly #seaShell

Earlier discovery about wrong-way-up shells being super-happy-smiley-shells is not without exceptions.

Sometimes they're just alarmed.

Please do not be worried for the wee shellfolk; they are now the right way round again.

#sillyScribbles #photography #seaShell #silly #drawing

Everyone in the house was doing Sensible Things so I stayed out of the way and took photos of stuff lying around and have made an Important Discovery.

Taking a photo of a shell the wrong way up makes it super-happy-smiley-shell.

LOOK!

#sillyScribbles #photography #seaShell #cute #silly #drawing

Happy Burns Night to Boris Johnson from Nicola Sturgoen.

#FuckingClown

A wee bit of #Scotland for all those celebrating #BurnsNight

I filmed this on the #Cairngorm #funicular #railway back in 2011.

Experience the whole journey in 53 seconds.

Not to brag, but I was spewing out hilariously incorrect information before huge tech companies decided to create AI chatbots and ruin the internet.

Saw something on the front of the daily mail, that was complaining about wokeness and the rewriting of history because I'm reading the national trust had discovered links between churchill's home and the slave trade, and was decrying the rewriting of history, like what the fuck are you talking about, that's not rewriting anything, it's highlighting literal historical facts.

They don't half hate history being told in all its grimy details.