ilinamorato
@ilinamorato@lemmy.world
- Comment on Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft 2 days ago:
I’ve only ever had it work for me once or twice, and it was always near the very beginning of a project when I was only losing a few days or a week of work at most. When I discover that I fundamentally misunderstood or misjudged a core assumption and everything needs to be reoriented. Never when I already had code in production.
- Comment on Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft 3 days ago:
That’s fair, but even with that, it’s got to be easier to shove it into existing code. Especially if you’re trying to do it in a way that people don’t notice!
And actually, the Windows 10 start menu infamously had ads, too. So it can’t be that.
- Comment on Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft 3 days ago:
But this was four years ago! Actually it was released four years ago. This decision was almost certainly made before there were widespread code assistance AIs.
- Comment on Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft 3 days ago:
Tali Roth, the then product manager working on the core Windows user experience, including the Start menu, taskbar, and notifications, took up the question and talked about how building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
If you have working code, why would you rewrite it from scratch? Refactor, sure. Overhaul, maybe. But why rewrite the whole thing?! You’re gaining nothing but unnecessary bugs.
I know all the joke answers. To justify a product manager’s salary, because Microsoft gonna Microsoft, whatever. I want to know the real reason. Why would you ever rewrite working code from scratch if you don’t have to?
- Comment on Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft 3 days ago:
Four years ago, Recall wasn’t a thing. Microsoft was caught as off-guard by the AI hype machine as the rest of us. So I doubt this was originally the reason.
Might be now, though.
- Comment on Is gold investing a scam? 2 weeks ago:
Definitely a fair point. But for the most part, being in the country that collapses is going to be worse than being in a different country.
- Comment on Is gold investing a scam? 2 weeks ago:
This is just me, and I’m no expert. But I kind of think that, if you’re legitimately worried about your country’s currency collapsing, you might want to consider leaving your country. Any sort of collapse that leads to hyperinflation or the large-scale elimination of financial infrastructure is probably going to be difficult if not impossible for the average person to survive, gold or no.
That said, precious metals are a niche enough market that I can’t imagine it not being rife with predatory sellers; companies that aren’t offering scams per se—you’ll probably pay them and receive what you pay for—but companies which are counting on people not knowing anything about the market and accepting a terrible price or poor quality goods.
Again, not an expert. But my end-of-the-world investment would be in shelf-stable food, easily-stored seeds (for planting), medicine, hand tools, high-quality camping gear, books, that sort of thing. If there is a collapse, those sorts of things will be immediately useful and also tradeable.
- Comment on It's the Christmas light video again - 2025 edition 2 weeks ago:
It’s been a fun journey. And he’s on the Fediverse! mas.to/@TechConnectify
(not tagging him directly because I feel like he probably gets that enough)
- Comment on It's the Christmas light video again - 2025 edition 2 weeks ago:
Alec has been on a multi-year quest to get an incandescent color profile from LED Christmas lights. I haven’t watched this episode, but he usually does a pretty good job of recapping at the start of every episode.
It’s always super entertaining, in my opinion.
- Comment on This Minecraft map that recreates, [Kowloon Walled City], one of history's most notorious slums made me reconsider what's important in 3D level design 2 weeks ago:
I think part of what you’re saying is why the Kowloon build can’t deliver that, though.
- Comment on This Minecraft map that recreates, [Kowloon Walled City], one of history's most notorious slums made me reconsider what's important in 3D level design 3 weeks ago:
It’s a very good summary of the article. The things the author reconsidered were pretty nuanced, and trying to describe them in a headline without making the headline even longer than it is.
Would you have liked this better?
“This Minecraft map that recreates Kowloon Walled City, one of history’s most notorious slums, made me realize that 3D level design isn’t just about the complexity or the environmental challenge, but about the internal lives of the people who live there and the way that the game implies a greater reality that exists beyond the confines of the camera’s field of view”
Because that’s too long to fit in a tweet.
- Comment on This Minecraft map that recreates, [Kowloon Walled City], one of history's most notorious slums made me reconsider what's important in 3D level design 3 weeks ago:
I read the article. It appears to deliver on the promise of the headline pretty completely. The headline also isn’t sensationalized or misrepresentative of the content. Are you just upset because it sounds a little bit like a LinkedIn status in its construction?
- Comment on Threads alternative 3 weeks ago:
Mastodon has definitely improved, but more to the point, there’s really nothing else. Particularly not anything that anyone is using. Unless you widen your definition to include Bluesky.
Honestly, I’d say that Mastodon’s perceived complexity in the past was kind of an illusion anyway. The problem of choosing a server was really made out to be this huge hurdle, when in fact it was no big deal at all; I was a member of several different servers over time, and I didn’t feel like my experience was substantially different on any of them. Just join one that seems interesting or is near you or whatever, and you’ll be fine. After that, it operates pretty much the same as Twitter did. Following people on other servers can be a little bit trickier on web, but in the app it’s pretty seamless.
- Comment on New tech pulls lithium from dead batteries cheaper than you can buy it 3 weeks ago:
The process honestly sounds to me a little bit like decaffeination, which also feels like witchcraft to me. So it might work!
- Comment on Why do some Americans "feel ashamed" for being American even when it's not their fault? 3 weeks ago:
Speaking only for myself: because the American government has, for 250 years, claimed to act on behalf of the American people. When it was liberating concentration camps and sending people to the moon, that was something to be proud of.* When it was upholding slavery and winking at Jim Crow laws, it wasn’t.
It’s a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and so he purports to speak and act on my behalf. That’s deeply embarrassing and shameful, even if I couldn’t have done anything differently to prevent it.
- (Yes, I know that even those “good” examples are complicated. I’m just forming an example here)
- Comment on Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy? 3 weeks ago:
That…seems so obvious, now that you say it.
- Comment on Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy? 3 weeks ago:
That’s not about Bob trusting Grace specifically (that’s a premise of the entire operation), it’s about trusting that the letter Alice handed Bob was actually signed by Grace.
- Comment on I dunno 3 weeks ago:
Well and truly noted. I was unaware until I got called out on it, so the whole experience has made me wonder how often I do that sort of thing without realizing it.
Pretty hypocritical on my part, since I’m usually on team hey-actually-read-it-before-you-comment.
- Comment on Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy? 3 weeks ago:
That could very well work, yes; but I think that would require Bob verifying Grace’s signature, and that would require trusting that Grace didn’t make a unique signature that she only used for Alice, and making a note of who verified it.
There might be a way to verify those signatures with public keys in a way that didn’t require Bob to tell Grace that he was verifying the signature, which is still rattling around in my brain.
- Comment on Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production 3 weeks ago:
Are you kidding? I might actually stop buying new games and make it through my backlog now! This is great!
- Comment on Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy? 3 weeks ago:
I’m inclined to say no. Reducing the problem down to its most basic parts: Alice is authorized to talk to Bob, but Bob doesn’t know that. How can Alice prove it?
Bob has to assume that anyone asking to talk to him could be Mallory, who isn’t authorized to talk to him but will always answer “yes” if asked whether she is. So the authorization he gets has to be from a trusted third party; it can’t come from Alice.
Grace is a trusted third party. If Alice doesn’t care about privacy, and is okay with Grace knowing that Alice talked to Bob and with Bob knowing Alice’s identity, Alice can just tell Bob, “here’s proof that I’m Alice. Show this to Grace and she’ll confirm that I can be here.” This is SSO, essentially.
If Alice doesn’t want Bob to know who she is, but is ok with Grace knowing that Alice talked to Bob, she can ask Grace to give her a secret code, and give that code to Bob, who can check with Grace to know whether or not that code corresponds to someone who is authorized.
If Alice doesn’t want Grace to know that she’s talking to Bob, though, she runs into a problem. Because there’s no way for Grace to send Bob a message without knowing who Bob is, he can’t ask anonymously, and because there’s no way for Grace to confirm that Alice is authorized without knowing who she is, Grace will always know that Alice has asked for authentication to talk to Bob.
Adding Dave in as a trusted fourth party could solve the problem—Alice asks Dave to check with Grace, and lock his answer in a bag with a unique key that only Dave has. Then Grace could give the bag to Bob, who doesn’t need to know who Grace is to pass the bag to Dave and ask him to unlock it. But Alice would be trusting that Dave won’t keep records on which bag corresponds to which person.
I don’t think that’s a surmountable problem. I’ll have to think about it some more.
- Comment on I dunno 3 weeks ago:
Nope, you’re right. I just read the words and assumed it was one of the terrible ones.
This one is just…math.
- Comment on I dunno 3 weeks ago:
You’re right. I honestly just assumed it was one of those intentionally engagement-baiting posts when I saw it and didn’t even process the problem itself.
- Comment on I dunno 3 weeks ago:
In fairness, this one isn’t nearly as bad as most of the ambiguous problems that get passed around on Facebook with multiple parentheticals and such.
Your word problem is excellent.
- Comment on I dunno 3 weeks ago:
Whoa, you went from 0 to 100 on rage super quick. You ok buddy?
- Comment on I dunno 3 weeks ago:
it’s
a badly
written
math
problem
Seriously, every time this comes up and everyone makes a huge deal out of it, I keep thinking, “none of the people writing these better be teachers.” You have to be more clear than this.
- Comment on Art project about a cloud connected pan that has a moisture sensor in its handle and charges per wash. If the sensor breaks they sue you for breaking the digital lock. 3 weeks ago:
That’s really clever. And dumb in exactly the way Silicon Valley would actually do something like this.
- Comment on Gaming Pet Peeves 4 weeks ago:
Tutorial sections that just suck. Some don’t explain enough, others treat you like you’ve never played a game in your life. Or, when they interrupt you to explain a mechanic in great detail, but it’s too much of an info dump, and you’re just left wondering wtf they just said.
The ones I hate the most are the ones that meticulously teach you “press A to jump!” (Cool thanks, yeah, I’ve been playing video games since Super Mario Bros, I’m pretty good on the basics) but then you get out of the tutorial and play for an hour or two and realize that you’ve never once had to jump, but that complicated combo that they didn’t even allude to in the tutorial is for some reason the core game mechanic.
- Comment on Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash — "the fact that people are unimpressed ... is mindblowing to me" 4 weeks ago:
Even if the Windows voice experience put Jarvis to shame, I wouldn’t be interested. I don’t want to use voice control on my computer. Just about the only time I actually need voice control are when I’m far away or my hands are busy; so it’s nice for turning lights on and off when I have my hands full, or controlling timers when I’m cooking, or turning music on without getting up from the couch. Sometimes I’ll use voice-to-text if I have a lot to say or need to think it through. But I almost never want voice control (even if it were completely perfect, which it is not!) for the same reason that I listen to podcasts on earbuds: I don’t want to bother other people! Certainly not while I’m working, and definitely not when it’s liable to take agentic actions for me.
Buttons, knobs, levers, sliders, keys—all of those are better than voice control 999 times out of 1000. I don’t even like touch screens that much, and I’d prefer them over voice control.
The Microsoft executives inhabit a different reality than I do.
- Comment on If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, that might not work as well. I’m on a Framework laptop that hasn’t been modified much.