an alien fish dildo

That sounds intriguing.

He admitted that he had to use AI a little bit after a somewhat broken finger.

No devolving makes sense. The natural pressures are causing the user interface to be worse.

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.

Slava Ukraini

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.

You know what, I think I remember that. You’re right. My bad

https://youtu.be/Ifleu0VVAc0

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 think another big problem is that companies tend to install insanely invasive anti-virus and productivity tracking applications on the computer that are constantly sucking up the computer’s resources.

Its so bad. To do the same stuff you did 10 years ago, you need a computer with 4x the specs for Windows 11 + AI chip and everything is a subscription. meanwhile Ive upgraded my linux laptop once and it runs about 10x with the newest of software updates, steam, etc...etc... Libreoffice is much easier to use than MS products now.

The worst part is you cant opt out of windows AI. It sends your data along no matter what.