Quality user experience in things that are core functions of use, and specifically them not getting bogged down (or potentially âbrickedâ by) the need for luxury, or ads, or ease of use.
In a car, the driver seat should, in my mind, be manually adjusted. Why? Because if the motor breaks because it has to adjust each time you sit down, and the last person to use the car is my mother or girlfriend, I literally cannot drive my car until it gets fixed because I am too tall.
But something like heated/cooled seats is perfectly fine to have as a luxury, because if my seat cooler fan breaks, I just have a sweaty back as if I didnât have a seat cooler.
Same with manual transmissions: if I ever have my transmission start acting up and I donât have the money to bring my car to the shop, I could probably fix it, albeit with a lot of difficulty and cursing. But an automatic? No way in hell.
Plus, my manual lasts longer, stays cooler, tows more, is more fun, provides more control, keeps me more aware and focused while driving, and is a theft deterrent.
You can apply this logic to anything: if the object becomes useless without it, it should be as basic, durable, strong, resilient, and/or foolproof as possible, but when the object would not break without it, it can have as much luxury as desired.
Everyone should use interoperable instant messaging platforms like XMPP or Matrix.
Why can't WhatsApp users talk to Facebook Messenger users? That's ridiculous. It'd be like Gmail users not being able to talk to Outlook users.
RCS is not the answer because it has a hard dependency on carriers and Google - I'm extremely tired and irritated that people like it and tout it as some amazing saviour. I am convinced nobody has read past all the marketing propaganda to find out how it actually works.
Screaming. I'm against it.
When I see someone on the other side of a political divide screaming, I think they're dangerous and evil. When I seem someone on my side of a political divide screaming, I think they are ALSO those things, plus ignorant, useless, and counterproductive.
- progressive enhancement and unobtrusive javascript
- usability
- graceful degradation and stability
- minimalism, lack of third party dependencies/attack surface
- low/no build, ease of use and development
I love this question. My answer is Beauty. we are surrounded by ugliness and it pains me. almost everything could be made more beautiful.
Censorship.
All kinds including tech. People not wanting to allow someone to read a book because the person is "in trouble with the law." What does their breaking the law have to do with their explanations of how a technology works? Nothing...and the removal of a book says more about the vendors than it does about the supposed criminal. Generally censorship as practiced in this country is more about politics (ie: someone not liking someone else) than it is about accuracy.
Hacker News at its best.
There has to be a vanishingly small number of places on the internet where someone could post a question like this and immediately receive a flood of thoughtful, earnest and substantive responses.
So for all its faults, the particular version of Hacker News thatâs embodied in this post + comment thread is something I care deeply about - and has had an ongoing positive impact on my life.
Great question OP!
Coral reefs.
They cover less than 0.1% of the ocean floor yet support approx. 25% of all marine species.
They are very beautiful indeed.
They provide coastal protection.
Also, they will be gone in a few decades.
Freedom of computing/information, i.e. having ability to control computer hardware from software as one wishes. Windows and macOS + driver systems are not anymore allowing this freedom, so on the software-side Linux is our only hope as of 2025.
Every problem stems from roughly half the population fearing the idea of people and practices that are different from their own. It feels like addressing any other problem is palliative. There has to be a way to improve this.
Personal accountability
Knowledge as understanding, embodiment, and wisdom.
Consent and respect. Kindness as the default.
Care beyond the transactional.
Art as an expression, healing, experience.
Awareness and reasoning beyond thinking and analysis.
climate + democracies
And AI is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we need for these to thrive...
A lost cause for the most part, communication. Seems like most of what passes for communication these days is one way; what can I get out of it? how can I use this? do I agree or disagree? do I like this? what does this say about me? etc? etc? etc?. These days, people love to blame this sort of narcissism on the internet but things were not much different in the 80s, it was just easier to believe there was something better, we still had our ignorance.
Ethics, empathy, and honesty. I have no love for sympathy though.
Doing good and making the world a better place, finding love, having good relationships with friends and family, solving interesting problems, intellectual growth
Life. All life. Though, mosquitos, bacteria, and parasites are a struggle.
Also, I try constantly to be a better father and husband. This too is challenging.
Kindness. Be kind to your colleagues. To your friends. To your family.
And that will show in your product. It will be kind to your users and customers.
Math and kindness
Protecting the natural world.
Freedom, including the ability to own and use tools as I wish.
Community.
The internet as an open and interoperable space for end users
Family, truth, beauty
My parents, pets, and friends.
- My wife
- My kids
- My family
- My house
- Empathy
- Kindness
- Equality
- Usability
- Design / beauty
You, me, them over there
Interactions.
I care deeply about coding. There was a blog post here about a man who gave up software development for carpentry. I see myself down that path because the organization is abusing the art for monitory gains. The finished product almost always is a behemoth ugly spaghetti that is frankly uninspiring for me to be part of another project.
When I confide this to my close friends and family, who almost always roll their eyes, I have to admit, I can't shake of the love and relate them even if I try to.
Guess I am helpless.
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This has been growing on me very slowly, but very steadily over the decades: we really need to base the digital aspects of our society and our governments on Open Source, Free/Libre software. I donât want to take away anyoneâs iPhone or PS5 or PC with Windows and Photoshop and Steam, thatâs all fine.
But stuff like registering an appointment with my local Citizens Office, or the people at the Citizens Office workers writing a letter to some other government agency, or this other government agency storing said letter on a hard disk somewhere â this whole âdigital operating systemâ of a country and its people must work without any involvement of closed-source Microsoft, SAP, Apple, Google, AWS stuff being involved.
It was okay to depend on products of Big Corp back when Computers and Networks and Data where a small side quest to everyoneâs life.
But this stuff is now a fundamental building block of society.
Every line of this building block must be publicly available for everyone under a OSS license, period.
Iâm naively hopeful that stuff like the âDeutschlandstackâ is going to be tackled in all seriousness.
I pray that the EU ramps up investment in OSS projects into billions of Euros rather sooner than later.