Jochen Wolters

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA is a magical place if you're at all interested in the history of computing and digital technology. The best way to experience it is, of course, to visit in person. Thanks to a project dubbed #OpenCHM, you can now also explore plenty of the museum's vast collection online!

A blog post, "A Collection Unbound" provides some neat behind-the-scenes info on OpenCHM, and makes for a good starting point of your explorations:

https://computerhistory.org/stories/collection-unbound/

Among all the non-skeptical hype about #AI, it's a silver lining that one of the major players is doing the right thing. And it's not discounting any issues with #Anthropic, but it does deserve respect that they walked away from massive revenue.

In a similar vein, Sam #Altman has demonstrated with his instant sucking up to the Trump regime that _his_ “moral” compass will always point to where the money is.

If you do want to use AI, at least make sure it is not #ChatGPT. @janhoglund@mastodon.nu

Well, then again, as we all know, (too) many fellow-Americans have zero problems shrugging off everyday violence — including regular mass murder — whereas anything even remotely related to sexuality is Of The Devil and will undoubtedly lead to the very end of our civilization. 😕🤷‍♂️ @redsad@ohai.social

So often, minor things have a big impact on #Usability.

In this case, I was stuck on this screen, because the Reject All and Accept All buttons only change the selection of the toggle switches. They do not, however, submit the selection and dismiss the window. For that, you need to tap that near-invisible Confirm button at the bottom.

That's the result of applying primary button appearance to secondary buttons, and vice versa.

And now imagine what it means that LLMs are also trained on this…

I've been exploring @kagihq@mastodon.social's Orion browser for a bit now. Judging from the overall #UX, I'm beginning to think that Orion is a better (fully #macOS-native) browser than Safari. E.g., Safari shows bookmarks in a browser window, and it closes all folders every time you close the window. Orion has a dedicated bookmarks window and remembers all folders’ open/closed states across launches. There are plenty #IxD details like this one, whose design in Orion simply is superior to Safari’s. Well done!

I've used DuckDuckGo for years now, and was mostly very happy with it. In recent weeks, I've explored @kagihq@mastodon.social, and I’ve now decided to make the switch. It does have a modest price tag, which buys you a complete lack of ads. Much more importantly, Kagi is insanely customizable. Simple example: Never want to see a particular site appear in your results? Two clicks, and done! This is an amazing demonstration of what search can be — and it’s available as an actual product right now.

In other words, “Keep users in control."

Which is number 7 of Ben Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design, first published in 1986.

https://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/goldenrules.html

Previously labeled, "Support internal locus of control," the rules explanation was: "Make the user feel that s/he is in control of the system, which reponds to his/her instructions/commands.”

If we, as designers, would simply always start with “human first," we'd create much better #UX. @marko_eu@mastodon.social

“isn't that a secondary goal of a good #UX, to prevent sleepy people from making stupid mistakes?”

No. Three things:

1. It's a _primary_ goal to never cause unintentional loss of user data — it doesn't matter that’s triggered by the software or user behavior.

2. This goal does not just apply to "sleepy people," but to _all_ users at all times.

3. Users should not be accused of making "stupid" mistakes. Maybe "foolish" or "unfortunate" ones; but never "stupid.”

😎 @ffissore@hachyderm.io

🥰 @hackaday@hackaday.social

Oh, come on now, what's £500M? 🤷‍♂️

What's that? £500M _per week_?! 😱

Come to think of it, if there was #Brexit, how about a #Briturn? 😏

@griega17@mastodon.social

Ich habe mir mal einige Listen mit Alternativen zu US-IT-Anbietern angeschaut, die im Rahmen von #unPlugBigTech und #unPlugUSA im Netz geteilt werden.

Stört sich eigentlich niemand daran, dass auf diesen Listen auch ganz explizit chinesische Anbieter auftauchen? 🤨

One of our members shared this video about resonance in the SMRC #hamRadio club's member chat. And it's way too good to not share this more widely. #Science rocks! 😉

Resonance is more than just standing waves
https://youtu.be/WCKt405t9V8