nxc18

WinUI3 is horrible, but that is an implementation detail. WPF isn’t so bad (of course for business reasons no one should use either).

I still see WPF and AppKit as both being superior UI technologies to web+react, if you ignore the challenges of distribution.

I think the universe of SPAs that should exist is far smaller than the universe of SPAs that does exist, and the hype around react is largely to blame.

They’re pretty easy to keep, set a reminder to water once a week and that’s basically all you need to do. Maybe if you want to go crazy, test if the soil is dry first.

Does this argument change now that Spotify does offer meaningful connection to fans?*

Spotify tells me when any of the artists I listen to are coming to town - I’ve found and bought tickets this way and I don’t go to a lot of live shows in general.

Spotify is trying to sell me merch and artists can have both a merch and an events tab in app.

Edit: I see an artist with only 400k subscribers selling merch (compared to Lady Gaga’s 99 million), so it must be at least somewhat accessible.

* I don’t know if Spotify is charging money for these services or if they are ultimately fair, but at least for some artists it is generating ticket sales

Very slightly off topic but also on, I’ve noticed a tendency for well-meaning accessibility folks to drive to bad outcomes to meet some standard. Color is one where the standard is usually right, but there’s pretty strong evidence that the standard is bad in some cases. See APCA v WCAG. https://git.apcacontrast.com/documentation/WhyAPCA.html

If you click any link on this page (to the author’s site) and you dare to use an alternative browser on iOS, it shows a full page modal that can only be navigated around by clicking an “escape” button which tries to execute a Siri shortcut. Apparently in-app browsers are a threat to user freedom, but Orion is caught in the dragnet. Perhaps an example of the paternalist approach to development on the web gone wrong.

There’s an interesting economic point to be made about the specialization of labor and the benefits that arise from that.

Just like it is more efficient to have a food system than to have everyone feed themselves from their backyard (if they have one), maybe someday people will realize that it will be more efficient to build things once and re-use.

Similarly, every argument for “AI makes it cheaper so we can do it now” falls apart under “AI also makes it cheaper to not do it”.

In 3 years, all this compliance shit will be out the window, because AI screen readers and agents are going to make the whole point moot.

Since the whole compliance racket is totally disconnected from actual accessibility outcomes, why would AI have any impact here?

There’s a standard and a law and money to be made.

Is that true or does it only feel true because they nerf the old models just before every major release?

Even something as simple as buying a movie ticket can require submitting a name using only Japanese characters.

If you can’t read, you can’t write, and if you can’t write, you can’t think.

Depending on your place in the class hierarchy, and the orientation of your moral compass, this may or may not be a good thing.

I don’t think Phil had any other options while existing under Satya and a relentless push to services revenue. If Windows can’t make a case for itself without moving heavily to services (advertising and pushing 365, primarily), how could Xbox?

I’m not really sure how the C-suite is escaping blame here.

And this attitude is why we have the software we have in 2026. The profession used to recognize value beyond next quarter’s dividend (jk, we only do stock buybacks now for tax reasons).

Seatbelts and airbags sometimes kill people, too. Sometimes people die in unlucky ways.

People for some reason forget that for most election apps you can run it in a browser tab and avoid almost all of the overhead.

You can run slack, teams, outlook, Spotify, figma, and just about everything else in a browser tab; you get Linux support for free and you are only running one browser instance.

I was really disappointed that air cleaning didn’t take off after Covid. Super disappointing to see society just collectively decide to not learn any lessons.

Even if there were no mortality or productivity benefits, you’d think cutting down on cold and flu would be sufficient motivation on its own. Especially in schools and other high risk places.

Kudos to these people.

Does it? Do people actually play those games? I thought people just liked buying them and never playing the vast majority of them.

Console stores also have sales. Often with pretty huge discounts. I just bought a bunch of games on Xbox in the 1-5 dollar range. I see similar sales on PS5 all the time.

They fired all of their SDET, eliminated the SDET role/discipline, and made SDEs responsible for quality and shipping their features, a major conflict of interest.

This happened ~2014/2015.

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-microsoft-doe...

True, those things make Windows unusable. They also make the Mac worse, but not so much worse that it isn’t an absolute breath of fresh air compared to any corporate provided Windows device.

Try using any demo app from their user showcase on web.

GitHub enterprise is getting worse release after release. Cloud demand/usage spike is just an excuse.

Loads, the various attempts to overthrow the Weimar Republic for one, but many smaller, like the Impresa di Fiume.

Maybe not “for fun” but largely for justifications that pale in comparison to the suffering they unleashed.

Americans ready to go to war because eggs and gas are too expensive, or their trans teen’s top surgery was delayed, might be making similar mistakes. But Americans are good at making mistakes, perhaps supernaturally gifted.

Nobody starts a revolution for funsies

They definitely do, see the 1900s.

I think modern day Americans do not understand how bad war is because they’ve been engaged in it for nearly 30 years continuously without directly feeling the consequences.

I think it counts as effectively unhackable since it remained unhacked until five and a half years after its successor went on the market.

I wonder if, assuming they continue making Xbox, they find a way to mitigate this in the next generation.

Fair enough, you’ve been very convincing and I think you’ve identified a blind spot of mine. I’ll need to take some time to develop a better understanding of these sub cultural movements. Thank you.

Does going on tour and spending long hours hacking computer systems count as lying flat? I’d say they were just contrarians who worked differently, and we’ve got lots of those, working hard, in all parts of society. Entrepreneurs also reject the usual rat race but they do it so they can work harder and have even more responsibility.

You can make analogies to the current, active antiwork movement.

I think it is pretty clear that all of society is poorer for the existence of these people. Perhaps China’s ability to keep a lid on it is one small part of their relative economic competitiveness.

When I spend too much time on TikTok (about an hour I think), it slips in a video of a relatable young person saying something like “hold on! You’ve been scrolling for way too long now!…” or alternatively, “I understand it’s easy to keep watching videos, and trust me I’ve been there before, but those videos will still be there tomorrow. So go get some extra sleep, turn your phone off, do yourself that favor and have a great night”.

The experience is probably the digital equivalent of hitting rock bottom, but it does shame me into stopping and is probably good for my mental health overall.

I can’t imagine a western company doing that for their customers. Can you imagine Facebook actively trying to get you to spend less time on their platform? The closest is Netflix “are you still there?” but they’re just trying to save bandwidth.

Edit: https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktoktips/video/6781608404646464774

Can you please elaborate? I’m trying to avoid causing distress but I don’t see how what I’ve written is anything other than clear, neutral, and respectful (even more than usual for an Internet forum).

(PS: I don’t discuss mechanisms of depression with depressed people; reviews from friends who have recovered are generally positive, I think mainly because I am willing to put up with the emotional abuse and continue to be supportive)

Key phrase is “a lot of”.

To break down the full statement:

- “Sometimes I wonder” => this is an explanation/story I’ve thought about; it is one of many models of the world and I have doubts about how applicable it is

- “a lot of” => an amount that is more than negligible but likely less than most (in other words, less than half)

- “in western society” => proposed model/story applies only to a limited western context; implies that this is describing cultural and environmental phenomenon rather than personal failing

- “(I say western because I don’t know enough about others)” => acknowledgment of blind spots and limitations in knowledge generally

- “is due to life just being too comfortable” => core assertion of (theorized) mechanism.

I don’t think there’s any mystery why abuse and trauma create depression; I’m more interested in why people without those problems (like people I know with depression) end up depressed.

I’m not the only one asking these questions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3330161/ Of course that study points to a more direct relationship with sedentary lifestyle and isolation, which isn’t an exact fit for the “comfortable western lifestyle” story/model.