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Comment by purplecats | Hacker News Reader

> The button has no downside

downsides:

- inconvenience (like if my hands are in my pocket)

- exposure to illness transmission via increased contact with unknown but certainly dirty surface area (assuming touch is required)

- energy expenditure (if its not immediately next to you, or you have a disability)

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If these are the top 3 “downsides” you can come up with, then I’m fine referring to it as “no downsides”

Touch it with your elbow. And don't walk around with your hands in your pockets near traffic, it's bad risk management.

Makes sense for the big buttons, but some of them have tiny ones with a little rain hat, inexplicably. Why don't they all have big buttons, which are much easier to push?

We just have these stupid unpressable buttons near me. They're big with an embossed arrow on them, but if try to press it it might budge a quarter of a millimeter. I still don't understand how they work, if they're supposed to be capacitive or just have really tiny press windows. But they give zero satisfying feedback that you've successfully pressed the button. I hate them so much. And if you hit them hard they will murder your hand.

We have some that don't move much, but the make a beeping noise when you hit them, and an LED lights up.

>Why don't they all have big buttons, which are much easier to push?

In Australia, they all do have big buttons.

This post is a reach and a half.

You had to turn a doorknob to leave the house, but you're too disabled to push a fucking button designed for handicapped UX?

You're going to touch traces of a million other people's gender fluids on every single other thing you touch during your errand. Germophobia is very selective.

>an angst that could otherwise be channeled more appropriately

Sincerely, you might be on to something here.

Amazing you managed to write this post or read any of the comments.

Are your fingers OK?

Don’t make me laugh I’m trying to optimize my life for 0 energy expenditure.

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