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It’s clear to me from the very start of this video that Microsoft is incentivizing people to stuff this shit into their product any way they can. I also assume that they’re tracking basically everything you do in their software using analytics of some kind, and people accidentally clicking those stupid icons counts as copilot usage to the other suits.
It’s not evolving backwards. It’s being carefully crafted to turn into exactly what corporations wanted from the beginning but couldn’t do due to technical and legal limitations.
It’s also devolving, having less features, being slower/less optimised and so on. Cramming “AI” into it isn’t devolving, it’s enshitification
You are mistaking the direction of evolution. Software started out with as much freedom as the hardware could afford.
In the 80s you ran your program in real mode (or whatever the equivalent mode was on your hardware). No kernel, no OS, nothing in the way. The software ran on bare metal with the ability to do literally anything the computer could.
In the 90s and early 2000s, safety features were introduced, but customizability was still king. Remember how you could accidentally remove some toolbar from Eclipse and never find the way to get it back? That kind of UI was considered normal back then.
You had stuff like the BlackBox system that allowed the user to customize the UI like a developer. The user could not only move buttons and other UI elements wherever they wanted, but they could also create their own and use scripting to make them do whatever they wanted.
Then came the iPhone and Windows 8, and from then on the target became simplification. The downside of the customizability of yesteryear was that things could get complicated and that most users didn’t use or even want these systems. Getting back to the Eclipse example, it was incredibly common back then, that people accidentally closed part of the UI and never found a way to get it back. So that’s when the minimalisation and “less is more” mentality came in. They moved everything that wasn’t used all the time into submenus and to a certain extent, it kinda worked.
But of course, with MBAs being MBAs, stuff like adding AI buttons to force people to use the next big monetizable thing became more and more prevalent.
So is my edc to match it lmao.
Phones are locking down and getting harder to get rom and root support and a lot of projects are either giving up or dying.
Welp! Back to the laptop I go! Been carrying it with me everywhere just like I did before I got a smartphone. The only duties my phone needs to do is make calls, answer SMS and RCS and tether.
Could’ve said a version of this about every multi-function pocketable device ever made, but they’re still fun
Maybe we’ve been pushing way too hard, way too fast into the age of technology being integrated into our every waking moment, bros.
I’m ready to go back to like an iPhone 5 level of technology and Windows 7. Just wish it was realistic.
24/7 connectivity was a mistake. I miss that brief window when we had cheap supercomputers in our pockets, but data was still expensive.
I don’t want internet to be expensive but like…I wish we’d go back to dumb phones and computers maybe. Kinda like an early 2000s vibe.
Cause if you look at 2025 vs 2000 or even 2005, we’re honestly insanely different in terms of technology in such a short span. Just feels like too much too fast imo. Like maybe we DON’T need technology incorporated into every aspect of our lives.
The scariest thing is - we’re from a generation where we remember a life before this. Gen Alpha and whatever comes after will only ever know an internet connected life. How do you explain this to someone like that?
I don’t miss the price haha, I miss its implications: If you were outside, you were outside; and there was no email which could hopefully find you well.
🤣🤣 okay true
The word you’re looking for is “devolving”.
That would make sense if evolution had a direction. But evolution can favor less complexity just as well as more: it depends on the selective pressures it’s under. “Fittest” is not necessarily “best.”
This applies metaphorically to marketed products as well as literally to biologiccal systems. It’s not inevitable that the marketplace will deliver progress. You might never get that invisible handjob.
No devolving makes sense. The natural pressures are causing the user interface to be worse.
I prefer “enshitification”
Evolving backwards would be returning to ergonomic UIs with clear HIG being followed, having a scriptable variant for every class of applications, and any piece of software, OS UI included, not acting as an advert. Contrasts and colors and bright pictures are not what I need to see while working. It’s as if your screwdriver was built in the form of an alien fish dildo, and had a chain of ringing bells. Why is this bullshit considered normal and usual with computer interfaces, I dunno.
And a company’s website is its interface to the world, for the user. Not its advert. They’ve already seen the advert or don’t need it if they are on that website! They want to actually use it.
an alien fish dildo
That sounds intriguing.
I think you’ll find that, sadly, nobody is worse for HIG than software engineers, especially Linux aficionados.
They like their design as unpalatable and shit-lookalike as possible.
the irony is that title was probably AI generated.
He admitted that he had to use AI a little bit after a somewhat broken finger.
Doubt. If I can type with one hand while chatting with those hot women in my area, this guy can type with nine fingers.
What? He kinda broke a finger and then suddenly needed to use AI? His one bad finger prevented him using the other 9? He couldn’t speech-to-text it?
Or did AI break his finger to get him to make the video?!
There is a video for you to watch and get the context.
I’m not clicking on what looks like an AI slop YouTube video just to find out why a guy making a video about AI needed to use AI to make the video. Beyond seeing clippy for nostalgia, seeing that it’s likely a video about MS I care even less.
If you actually thought it was a video of value, you could have written (or just copy/pasta) a description of the video and why it might be of interest.
I’m not your AI assistant.
It’s a reference to “it is evolving, just backwards”
It’s simple - if your product or platform uses dark patterns, I will not use it. I will even use an inferior platform or product in order to be free to choose how I use my software.
What do you mean by dark patterns?
Design that is in the interest of someone other than the user, intended to coerce or trick the user into behaviors that benefit that non-user at the user’s expense.
The trick is figuring out what parties do that without constantly sniffing traffic or reading source code. Sometimes I wonder what all on F Droid has malware.
Examples:
- Microtransactions instead of asking for the price up-front
- Using gambling mechanics in non-gambling games (e.g. loot boxes)
- Eliminating potential stopping points in the user interaction, like e.g. endless scrolling instead of pagination
- Using big, visually engaging buttons for the actions they want the user to perform (“Accept tracking”) while using tiny, grey links for the actions they don’t want the user to perform (“Reject tracking”), or even worse, hiding the action they don’t want the user to perform behind multiple menues.
- Using wording that creates fear or other negative emotions to stop users from performing such actions (“If you cancel your subscription now, you will lose access to this, this, and that. Everything you did will be lost. Do you really want to do that?”)
- Disguising ads and other non-organic content as organic content. (“I found this product and it cured my hair loss, my potency issues and made me rich at the same time! ~sponsored ad~”)
- Disguising ads as notifications
- Disguising ads as the download button
- Agreeing to do one simple action contains a hidden agreement to a ton of other things
And many more things like that.
I feel like the last on the list is on everything these days. 400 pages of ToS.
I will, if I have no other option. Say, finding a working VPN service in Russia … sucks (mostly banned). I think I’ll end up with a VDS and an https tunnel.
Slava Ukraini
No, I can’t rent a Ukrainian VDS, it might even get me to jail.
But in general, I hope your leadership’s assholes fester and they die in horrible pain
That’s too easy.
Agreed
You forgot the second part. And a flashy salute to go with it.
“Looks like you’re trying to be productive. Let me correct that for you”
Clippy didn’t hallucinate. I think Clippy wins
“Looks like you’re writing a letter”
No I’m not, fuck off Clippy.
Turns out we just hadn’t coined the term for computer intelligence being wrong as hallucinating yet.
You know what, I think I remember that. You’re right. My bad
Clippy still wins though because you could have him duck off.
And he had bespoke animations that were kinda charming
and you could change him into something else. links the cat was mine.
I think the cat used to be all over XP.
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The concept of a desktop assistant has always been there.
And it’s always been trash. That’s how you know it will always be there in the future too.
It depends. A chatbot is kinda gimmicky, I agree. But stuff like ocr, reverse image seach from current screen, voice to text and probably more can be nicely combined into one assistant app. Google assistant used to come close to that, so did the old Cortana (although not quite as versatile). They didn’t reinvent the wheel but they were genuinely convenient.
