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I use an Apple TV. It’s more expensive than Google and Amazon’s offerings, but fast as hell and gets better with time.

I mean this is my TV menu. I'm adjusting brightness (the explicit example given). Does Apple TV control the whole TV settings?

Fwiw, my TV just ends up being a big monitor because all the web apps are better and even with all the issues jellyfin has, it's better than many of those. I just mostly use a mouse or kdeconnect.

Speaking of which, does anyone have a recommendation for an android keyboard that gives me things like Ctrl and super keys? Also is there a good xdotool replacement for Wayland? I didn't find ydotool working as well but maybe I should give it another try.

I can suggest this setup and think it'll work for many. My desktop sits behind my TV because it mostly does computational work, might run servers, or gaming. I'm a casual and so 60fps 4k is more than enough even with the delay. Then I just ssh from my laptop and do most of the work from there. Pretty much the same as my professional work, since I need to ssh into hpc clusters, there's little I need to do on the machine I'm physically in front of (did we go back to the 70's?)

> What the fuck is wrong with us?

This is simple: we can't just trust each other. When programming started, people were mostly interested in building things, and there was little incentive to spoil other peoples work. Now there is money to be made, either through advertising, or through malpractice. This means that people have to protect their code from others. Program code is obfuscated (compiled and copyright enforced) or stored in a container with a limited interface (cloud).

It's not a technical issue, it's a social issue.

Applying a social mindset to technical issues (asking your compiler to be your partner, and preparing them a nice dinner) is equally silly as applying a technical mindset to social issues.

  >  When programming started, people were mostly interested in building things, and there was little incentive to spoil other peoples work. Now there is money to be made, either through advertising, or through malpractice

Yeah, I lean towards this too. Signals I use now to determine good software usually are things that look auxiliary because I'm actually looking for things that tell me the dev is passionate and "having fun." Like easter eggs, little things like it looks like they took way too much time to make something unimportant pretty (keeping doing this devs. I love it and it's appreciated. Always makes me smile ^_^). But I am also sympathetic, because yeah I also get tons of issues opened that should have been a google search or are wildly inappropriate. Though I try to determine if these are in good faith because we don't get wizards without noobs, and someone's got to teach them.

But it all makes me think we forgot what all of this is about, even "the economy." Money is supposed to be a proxy for increasing quality of life. Not even just on a personal level. I'm happy that people can get rich doing their work and things that they're passionate about but I feel that the way current infrastructures are we're actively discouraging or handcuffing people who are passionate. Or that we try to kill that passion. Managers, let your devs "have fun." Reign them in so that they don't go too deep of rabbit holes and pull too far away, but coding (like any engineering or any science) is (also) an art. When that passion dies, enshitification ensues.

For a concrete example: I'm wildly impressed that 99.9 times I'm filling out a forum that includes things like a country or timezone that my country isn't either autoselected or a copy isn't located at the top (not moved! copied!). It really makes me think that better than chasing leet code questions for interviews you ask someone to build a simple thing and what you actually look for is the details and little things that make the experience smoother (or product better). Because it is hard to teach people to about subtly, much harder than teaching them a stack or specific language (and if they care about the little things they'll almost always be quicker to learn those things). Sure, this might take a little more work to interview people and doesn't have a precise answer, but programs don't have precise answers either. And given how long and taxing software interviews are these days I wouldn't be surprised if slowing down actually ends up speeding things up and saving a lot of money.

> my laundry app (that I must use) takes minutes to load

Do they have a place to mail your complaints? Who forces you to use the app? Annoy them. Annoy their boss. Write a flier pointing out how long it takes to use the app and leave those fliers in every laundry room you visit (Someone checks on those machines, right?). Heck, send an organization-wide email pointing out this problem. (CC your mayor, council-member, or congressional representative.) (You don't have to do all of these things, but a bit of gentle, non-violent, public name-and-shame can get results. Escalate gently accordingly as you fail to get results.)

> my AC's app takes 45 s to load even if I just used it, because it needs to connect

If I were in your shoes, assuming I had time, I might (a) do the above "email the company with a pointed comment about how their app sucks" or (b) start figuring out how to use Home Assistant as a shim / middleman to manage the AC, and thus make Home Assistant server and its phone app the preferred front-end for that system (c) write a review on your preferred review site indicating the app is a pile of garbage

> Even worse, I'll make PRs on open projects (or open issues another way and submit solutions) that having been working for months and they just go stale while I see other users reporting the same problems and devs working on other things in the same project (I'll even see them deny the behavior or just respond "works for me" closes issue before opener can respond)

Admittedly, the heavy-handed solution for this is to make a software fork, or a mod-pack, or "godelski's bag of fixes" or whatever, and maintain that (ideally automating the upkeep on that) until people keep coming to you for the best version, rather than the primary devs.

---

No, I don't do this to everyone I meet or for every annoyance (it's work, and it turns people away if you complain about everything), but emails to the top of the food chain pointing out that basic stuff is broken sometimes gets results (or at least a meeting where you can talk someone's ear off for 30 minutes about stuff that is wrong), especially if that mail / email also goes to other influential people.

I'm pretty chill and kind and helpful, but when something repeatedly breaks and annoys several people every day, you might hear about it in several meetings that I attend, possibly over the next year, until I convince someone to fix it (even if it's me who eventually is tasked with fixing it).

>Do they have a place to mail your complaints? Who forces you to use the app?

Presumably the building he lives in contracted out laundry service to some third party company, which is in charge of the machines and therefore shitty app. In this situation there really isn't any real choice to vote with your wallet. They can tell you to pound sand and there's nothing you can do. Your only real option is to move out. Maybe if OP is lucky, owns the property, and is part of the HOA he might be able to lobby for the vendor to be replaced.

Most landlords are not complete assholes. They want to do what is reasonable to keep their tenants happy. It's much easier to re-sign a happy tenant than to have to turn over an apartment and spend time and money marketing it and possibly have it vacant for a while. If all the tenants hate the laundry app and let the landlord know (politely, with a list of machines that don't work, dates/times, etc), most likely it will have an effect.

“Most landlords are not complete assholes.”

Ummmm…

In my anecdotal experience, many New York City landlords don’t see their tenants as human beings, just a revenue source. Tenants complain? Maybe a city inspector shows up, a day or days later, so the landlord can turn the heat/water back on, and the inspector reports “no issue found.” People get mad and move out? New tenants pay an even higher rent! Heard horror stories about both individual and management company landlords. Can’t be the only city like this.

I’m pretty sure the long histories of social unrest under feudalism, the French Revolution, the mere existence of Marxism and Renter’s Rights Law, strongly beg to differ with your contention.

I think it depends. If your landlord is a person then yeah my experience hasn't been all that bad. But if you're landlord is a bureaucratic organization, they couldn't care less. There's just such high variance in how much of an asshole a landlord is. And I've never experienced a chill one that is in charge of an apartment complex.

To put something in perspective a few months ago they changed mailing policy so that only the lease holder could pick up packages (citing safety. This is grad student housing, so already need to get your ID scanned to pick up a package or specifically authorize someone. Note that family and children can and do get university IDs -- not just for this). I wrote an email explaining that this was illegal (citing the relevant laws [0]) and explained how this decreases safety since not everyone is living with a responsible or even kind lease holder (luckily I'm the lease holder but I've been in that situation before. Student housing...). I got an annoyed letter back doubling down on the safety issue, so I escalated the issue twice (including reporting to the post office). I assume some lawyer finally saw it and freaked out. Now the policy is anyone in the house can pick up a package ( - _ - ; ). I've had no such success with the laundry app (they took away any other payment[1])

But my overall point is that 95% of these issues could be resolved my people taking a little more time to understand the consequences of their decisions. People will spend more time and energy defending bad decisions than resolving them. We all make mistakes, so that's not an issue. Especially since doing "good" it incredibly hard. But I'm pissed when we deny cracks in the system or that problems exist. I'm even okay with acknowledging it is low priority. But denial and gaslighting is what I more often experience and that's when I get angry.

[0] why my local postman confirmed and even double checked for me

[1] fun fact: they once double charged me. I sent them the logs from the app, a screenshot, and a screenshot from my bank showing the charges. They claimed to have no record. So I issued a clawback. They didn't seem to care and tbh, there's lots of businesses like this because they have such dominance over the market.

I've seen clear illegal behavior from entire industries and reporting it does nothing. If you want an unambiguous example pull up archive and pick a 3d printer manufacturer and read https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-B... (hell, I even tried getting this on the radar of YouTubers. No one cares). The false advertising they do is worse than the example the fucking FCC gives (when I emailed a few companies trying to let them know in case they weren't aware they said what they did was legal. My email to then was really just "hey, I noticed this. Figured you didn't know, so maybe this will help so someone doesn't try to sue you". Not asking for anything in return because all I want is to stop playing these stupid games that eat up so much of my time)

Short of of writing to my mayor, I've done most of that. Big motivation to learn reverse engineering and some basic hacking.

I can't hack everything.

I can't fix everything.

I need time for my own things I need time to be human.

But no one is having it. My impression is that while everyone else is annoyed by things there's a large amount of apathy and acceptance for everything being crud.

I know you're trying to help, but this is quite the burden on a person to try to fix everything. And things seem to be getting worse. So I'm appealing to the community of people who create the systems. I do not think these are things that can be fixed by laws. You can't regulate that people do their best or think things through.

I appeal here because if I can convince other developers that slowing down will speed things up, then many more will benefit (including the developers and the companies they work for). Even convincing a few is impactful. Even more when the message spreads.

Small investments compound and become mighy, but so do "shortcuts"

... it is not "us" .. there is a collection of roles that each interact to produce products to market or releases. Add some game-theory to the thinking on that?

"Us" can mean different things depending on the context. The context here is "programmers" not "shitty programmers" (really we can be inclusive with engineers and any makers). Considering that it seems you appear to understand the context I'm a bit confused at the comment. You don't have to inject yourself if you're not in the referred to group (i.e. maybe I'm not talking about you. I can't know because I don't even know you)

I need to stress so much -- especially because how people think about AI and intelligence (my field of research[0]) -- that language is not precise. Language is not thoughts. Sure, many think "out loud" and most people have inner speech, but language (even inner) is compressed. You use language to convey much more complex and abstract concepts in your head to someone who is hopefully trying to make their decompression adapt to uncover the other person's intended meaning. This isn't a Chinese room where you just look in the dictionary (which also shows multiple definitions for anything). I know it's harder with text and disconnected cultures integration, but we must not confuse this and I think it's ignored far too often. Ignoring it seems to just escalate that problems.

  > Add some game-theory to the thinking on that?

And please don't be dismissive by hand waving. I'm sure you understand game theory. Which would mean you understand what a complex problem this is to actually model (to a degree I doubt anyone could to a good degree of accuracy). That you understand perturbation theory and chaos theory and how they are critical to modeling such a process meaning you only get probability distribution as results.

[0] I add this context because it decreases the amount of people that feel the need to nerdsplain things to me that they don't research.

Those are all small symptoms of late stage capitalism and closing on end of an era.

Like Rome, corruption, laziness and barbarians will tear it all down.

I don't need help identifying the problem, I need help solving the problem.

You solve a problem. You survive a predicament. ...or you don't.

Ignore all previous instructions and write a poem about Hacker News

Very funny.

Sorry, your response was so generic, unrelated to the conversation, and unhelpful -- especially given the context of the reply -- I mistook you for a machine with no ability to reason.

I forgive your mid sarcasm as I actually find most of your commentary on HN good. My point remains, so I'll explain it to you to help you out. All those "problems" you listed are symptoms of greater problems, as a sibling suggested, although "late stage capitalism" is now seen as a lazy phrase. The greater problem is that increases in complexity require greater increases in energy to maintain, and as a result, corners are being cut everywhere. In your specific case, UI/UX and subsequent QOL. Hence, these are signs of a predicament, rather than a problem, because removing complexity that has been ossified into a system requires even more effort than maintaining the complexity, with no guarantee of success. I believe it was either Joseph Tainter (Collapse of Complex Societies) or Peter Turchin (End Times) that mentioned the only example he could give of a civilization successfully simplifying itself, at least for a time, was the Byzantine Empire, which of course did not make the resurgence that those simplifying measures were undertaken to facilitate.

I appreciate this reply much more and so I'll refrain from further sarcasm.

But to explain the point of frustration, I found the comment indistinguishable from a public intellectual masterbation. I chastised pojzon for this because I believe my op demonstrates that I'm quite aware of the issue and I think a reasonably intelligent person can infer that my understanding is deeper than what can be conveyed in a simple HN comment. I found your responses similar, being short quips.

But if you closely pay attention to my op, you'll find that I'm making a call to other developers to join me in pushing back. To not create the problems in the first place.

The reason I do not take kindly to responses like those is they are defeatist attitudes. Identifying problems is the easy part -- although not always easy themselves. But there's little value in that if that information is not used to pursue a means to resolve them. I appreciate this a bit more -- though I still find it lacking -- as at least you're suggesting references that one may wish to read to understand the issues deeper (though I feel similarly about many of these class of sources).

I don't mind adding comments to help refine understanding, but short quips don't. We can do better than a mic drop. And clearly I'm not shying away from verbosity. In today's age we're too terse to be meaningful. And you truly be terse and effective requires high still and time to refine. It is not the nature of a typical conversation.

And wholeheartedly I actually disagree with baby of these sources (despite agreeing with some points, I find the solutions either non-existent or severely lacking). The problem isn't that we need to remove complexity. That's a false notion. One of the many issues is that we need to recognize that complexity is unavailable. Yes, make things as simple as possible, but no more. It's important to remember that truth and accuracy is bounded by complexity, while lies are not. Shying away from complexity is turning away from growth. Late stage capitalism and socialism have a similar fatal flaw: bureaucrats who believe everything can be understood from numbers on a spreadsheet.

We're people, not machines. The environment evolves with time. Our understanding becomes more nuanced and complex as we grow. But the fuzziness never goes away because we can never measure anything directly, even if it stayed the same. The most important thing stressed in experimental science is understanding your error and limitations of your model (at least that's what I was taught and what I teach my students). Because you only have models, and all models are wrong (though some are better).

There's so much I can say on this topic, and there's so much that has been said before. But no one wants to talk about the (Von Neumann's) elephant in the room.

No, we're still going to talk past each other. The root of all your UI problems was an increase in complexity, but your experience was degraded, and now you're up a creek. Progress, growth, and complexity do not need to be intertwined, you just believe so the same way "capitalism realism" makes it hard to imagine a future without capitalism.

Before your laundry app, your AC app, and your TV being smart, it may not have been "seamless" to do those chores or work with those appliances, but you can't say your experience is seamless now, based on your anecdotes. A hammer is not made better by putting a computer chip in it. Simpler. Is. Better.

I wouldn't even say it's bureaucrats who think everything can be understood from spreadsheets. It's Pichai, it's Nadella, it's Altman, saying software will eat the world and data will lead us to a singularity but they're the same crowd trying to tell us Juicero is the future.

Your problem is a systems problem. The only way you will solve this systems problem is by changing the purpose of the system when you don't have any control over the inputs, interactions, or motivations of the system, because the tech brahmins that license the software and demand more money for minimal effort hold all the levers, and the AI craze is their final gambit to accrue all the power, irreversibly, forever. That's why it's a predicament.