These "privileged" netzen who were able to shoot web for free because they had other sources of income could also be accused of knowing things.
We now have [for example] content creators who build their own workshop and make an effort to figure out something interesting. This is different from people who already have a workshop where they do practical things. The later will teach you stuff that is applicable, useful and/or marketable. It is deeply baked into their soul.
On the vic 20 and the Commodore 64 we had 4 function keys (f keys)[0] The order was a bit weird and the usability was not optimal. Without pressing shift you had F1 F3 F5 F7
If you designed a menu with just 4 options it would look something like.
[F1] - new game
[F3] - high scores
[F5] - settings
[F7] - credits
After seeing it just once reading wasn't really required. You would just hammer F1 twice for [F1] new game > [F1] easy mode You might see the second menu flash for a frame or not at all.
If the menu got more complicated you could chose to use the shift+F key for options used less regularly or you could move the option under a sub menu, or a sub sub sub sub sub menu.
The weird thing was that if you accessed a sub sub sub sub sub menu a few times it would get mapped into muscle memory. I remember hammering out something like [F3][F3][F5][F7][F1] you press the second button twice then the one below, then the bottom one below and end with the top one. If there was any hesitation the visual menu would show up and trigger the memory before even parsing the text.
It would almost instantly get me to the correct action out of a seemingly unlimited number of options.
Not counting the unusual even options, if the menus have 4 options each 4x4x4x4x4 is 1024 things!?!
I remember the awe seeing other people instantly plop things onto the screen.
Of course with such a limited computer there was not much need for such elaborate navigation but it was truly fantastic. My hands would navigate menus I didn't even know I knew.
Trying to navigate windows with the keyboard was a big disappointment by comparison. I now had to repeatedly think how to do things which on C64 was almost never the case. After finding something my mind had to noticeably get back to what I was actually doing.
I can pick up and place objects myself if only I could remember where I put them.
You could take video data and have fuzzy identification of objects moving around, then throw away the video and keep track of the objects, the blue floppy thing (gloves) and the metal shiny deforming things (keys) then have a more constructive dialog about the keys. A voice responding, what do the keys look like? Is there a blue square thing on the key ring? The less identifiable the object the funnier the discussion. What shirt? You have many shirts! Oh, the blue one, you have 4 of those, one in the sink, one behind the bed, one in the laundry basket, one in the closet. Oh the one with stripes! Why didn't you say so, it's behind the bed bro.
It could also ask you if they are suppose to be on the outside in the front door after you close it.
I woke up this morning with an odd thought. User interfaces are hard, they are not many but we have people who are really good at designing those, we also know how to user test them. Election programs are non binding, you can say one thing then do the exact opposite after winning. (Referenda are also complicated.) It doesn't seem to make sense in the modern age to be able to change your vote every x years. It's a great formula for [say] the 17th century.
What if we designed a really neat configuration page for the government and allow people to change whatever settings exposed to them. You check a candidate you like and with each option their choice is the default. If you don't agree with something you simply change it.
Then, one by one we take the topics away from the politicians so that they can focus on the rest of the work.
For choosing the party you get 3 up and 3 down votes that you may spend however you like.
A separate election is held to chose the team to populate and work on the interface so that gradually more and more topics get exposed. Their job would also be to research and estimate how familiar the population is with a topic along with a budget to educate the voter.
It would be enlightening for the candidates as well.
Eventually we can shut down the legacy system and have one or more nudgeable robot overlords.
Don't worry, I'm sure the dream will fade in a few hours.
It basically lets each citizen choose between direct or representative democracy, per issue, and does away with arbitrary things like election dates and even candidates (you can "elect" any other citizen to vote on your behalf, as can they). The only reason we don't have it is because it's basically impossible without software. Even very complex ranked choice voting can be tallied manually.
The interesting thing in the moment was not the formula necessarily but the idea to start with the interface.
If you are dealing with such monstrosity of an application all battles are lost at the interface level. It has to work for everyone, there is no room for excuses about dumb users, they are the target audience.
While in the US the number seems infinite, in the Netherlands we have roughly 140 000 laws that each could have a series of check boxes and sliders. Say we all do 4 per day, that would be only 1460 annually. It would take 100 years which seems to long. At 40 per day it would require to much effort.
If the interface is to work as desired a large amount of law needs to go.
We should burn the books most worthy first. Experts can compete finding the most nonsensical laws. Short videos can be made to explain why the law exists.
We assign a good number of test subjects to pick the least likeable ones until we have a good list of candidates unlikely to survive.
There must be a good feedback report of the terrible implications after a law is deleted.
I can see it already, naked people around camp fires, drinking booze in public, selling food after sundown, making music without a license, singing songs insulting the monarch.
We also don't know if the outcomes would be preferrable. Do we need to move democracy into a high-frequency trading kind of world to do the things we want to?
How about you make a database of questions related to voting history. The algorithm matches the candidate whose history aligns closest with your selections.
Twice I chat with someone who worked exclusively with customers no one else wants. One just grinds them down into a normal project, the other transparently charges what is reasonable for the unreasonable. $5000 for the first chat 24/7, for that money he explains how it is normally done, what it costs and what it costs to meet the insane requirements. If they chose normality he doesn't want the job.
yes. back in the day i would tend to wrap my database api in xml first in a standardised way and then i could just use xslt to return json or other formats from the api depending on the mime types requested by client. this fits in nicely with fielding's REST principles. all those technologies (HTTP/REST, XML, XPath, XML Schema, XSLT) actually work very nicely together and allow you to build nice systems that are very flexible, easy to integrate with and easy to change, even though they can be hard to make fast. maybe "move fast, break things" was a bad idea? =)
yes, there's definitely a bandwidth overhead with xml compared to json. that was an important factor in the shift i suppose. but then we have things like graphql, which has pretty much erased all those gains. you can also do tricky things like using binary on the wire and transforming at the endpoints.
it would be nice to see if fundamental xml tech can be improved in a new hardware and software environment. afaik, there hasn't been much if any innovation in that space in recent times. would love to know if there has.
The limited supply is what makes the market not work.
Whatever people think about migrants we can at least agree that everyone living in an area (town/city/country) all should have a roof over their head.
The real problem seems the disconnect between people, companies, processes and regulations getting in the way of building and the people, companies, processes and regulations wanting to move there or expand the population.
When it is dark my eyes adjust and I'm able to see significantly better than others. One time, after 10 minutes or so I was able to see the entire park quite well while the significant other couldn't see anything at all, she was terrified. When adjusted to the dark sudden bright lights hurt like getting stabbed and my vision is blurred for a few minutes.
It isn't as bad but some bicycle lights hurt too. They use to have large dish like reflectors and produce somewhat diffused light. Now some are tiny dots that illuminate the entire street. A small percentage of these is just horrific. I've purchased an extra strong one normally pointed at the ground in front of me but I can bend it upwards and shine it into these peoples face ~ to return the favor.
These "privileged" netzen who were able to shoot web for free because they had other sources of income could also be accused of knowing things.
We now have [for example] content creators who build their own workshop and make an effort to figure out something interesting. This is different from people who already have a workshop where they do practical things. The later will teach you stuff that is applicable, useful and/or marketable. It is deeply baked into their soul.