
i make games and music, sometimes.
profile picture by @thewaether!!!
I don't even have anything intelligent to add, I just want to say I'm happy/relieved to see someone else writing about and acknowledging the constant begging for my attention as a fundamental degradation in computing over the last 30 years
i have gotten to the point where i literally say "holy shit leave me alone" out loud when using my phone because i'll get two/three popups/notifications on shit
you read a web page and you move your mouse off the top HEY PLEASE WAIT BEFORE YOU GO dude i just moved my mouse i was still reading the page but now you've interrupted me
I realize it's a bit of a divergence from the core thesis of this singular post, but, it's related to me. I like having control over my machines because I can tell them exactly what to do and then feel confident they'll do that, which is a mechanism that saves me attention-currency. When I have to micromanage and babysit them to stop them from doing things I know they'll do but don't want, it becomes an attention-sink just like every other modern appliance.
I feel bad for my partner whom has to endure every time I just loudly shout "AURGH!" at a webpage or app when it pops up to ask me for a rating or sign up for a mailing list or turn off my adblocker or it loads something post-hoc and all the links move around on my page...
I have a somewhat difficult time physically reading text so I am one of those people that highlights the text with my mouse as I go so I don't lose my place, and I kind of "read it aloud to myself in my head". Especially after a decade of STEM education I now primarily "read for detail" like that to miss absolutely nothing. So many sites see you highlighting stuff and decide to pop up additional nonsense or make stuff jump around because my heavens, you've clicked! ENGAGEMENT!
(Extra special forever jail for sites that don't make text look like a link, but treat it as one if you click on it.)
Never mind sites that see you've scrolled back up (to re-read an earlier detail to help make sense of some ambiguous pronoun later in the article because all of the ads have pushed the introduction of the subject off the screen already) and assume you are... leaving? or something? and rush to show you WAIT! DON'T LEAVE! ... I'm not, I am actively reading and now I lost my place again ...
please leave me alone and let me read your content, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!! I promise if I want to engage with you afterwards I will! I will find your social media icons or the reply box and I'll engage so damn hard! you'll be desperate to be rid of my engagement!
...and one last "I guess I'm an OLD CRANK" now item: if I have to click a "maybe later" or "remind me" button one more time, I'm gonna blow a vein in my forehead. Please for the love of all that is good and just in this world just let me say "NO". The older I get the more I just wanna say "NO" to everything and the more I realize that society is structured around making sure I never even get a chance to say "NO".
exhausted from whining 
"I like having control over my machines because I can tell them exactly what to do and then feel confident they'll do that"
also somewhat divergent, but god I feel this on a visceral level with every "smart" function that phones and apps have these days. Not that I've ever had the misfortune of having to use them, but hell if it isn't annoying to see suggestions to "turn them on for easier use" every time I go look through Settings for something that's been needlessly obscured from user access-
...staying on topic, I really just have no need (nor desire) for any of that "smart" crap when I'm already proficient enough to use my device efficiently for my own needs. Like it'd just take me more time and effort to delve into all these irrelevant-to-possibly-mildly-convenient features that I've barely heard of than what I could possibly gain by using them.
My device is not smart; I am. Let me use my device.
god i hate windows update
isn't that like getting an econo shitbox car and never maintaining it? never updating the parts or fixing anything?
for me at this point: yes, and i do not care that it's out of date or insecure, i just don't, and i largely cannot be made to care. it's the only way to take control back.
windows gets updated as and when i feel like spending a day un-breaking the update service then re-breaking it just as soon as i'm done.
i use StopUpdates10 now for this (though it's full of other garbage and i wouldn't recommend it) since breaking it is too much effort after the first few times
the car analogy is funny too because a bunch of modern cars are replacing shit with touchscreens and it turns out touchscreens are terrible as a replacement for physical dials and buttons and levers in cars, so... yeah, you would want an econobox that just fuckin works
also why the fuck do we still have to shut down windows for updates? yes it's a hard problem to decouple and modularize the kernel and all that but also: this is literally the only thing that could ever make me care about a new version of windows. i thought they were supposed to be solving this years ago. i do not give a shit about your updates, do them quietly and do not interrupt me or do not do them, this is my computer and not yours microsoft.
Not trying to be snooty because Desktop Linux is frustrating, extremely compromised, and straight up untenable for so many different kinds of people...
But this is the reason I put up with it. At the end of the day I at least feel like I own my computer.
I got tired of running Linux (as someone who used it daily from 2012 until basically last year) because, while it does at least not fuck up my control, it breaks constantly and in ways that are not fun to troubleshoot
Case in point, on the laptop, the touchpad would just randomly grind to a complete halt. The debug log filled with messages about some IRQ hang, but there was no obvious way to fix any of it, short of plugging in a new mouse. The wifi also dropped randomly and would similarly randomly revert to a hotspot I made two years earlier and deleted, locking itself off wifi until I fixed it
All computers are garbage
I mean yeah, it's a real "pick your poison" sorta situation. I'm lucky apparently that all the hardware I already had seems to just like "just work." I tried to make it clear I wasn't suggesting you should use linux.
There's no GOOD solution, I guess I'm just saying my distaste for a lack of control is strong enough for me to deal with unmitigated jank.
yeah, for me it's just the inverse. the real fact of the matter is just computers... they arent good
I had to fanagle a solution that made it impossible for it to auto restart but i dont even remember what it was...
Apple has, admittedly mostly from benign neglect, maintained the last decent desktop OS. we'll see if that continues tho lol
We've finally found a setup where Windows Update exists, it's happy (doesn't complain at us about being out of date), it can't check for updates, but Microsoft Store apps and everything still install and work fine.
This has only been possible with the Portmaster firewall, which suffers from Linux-Software-itis (the user interface is terrible and clunky) but it does technically impressive things that no other Windows firewall does (like actually suspend unknown connections while you answer a prompt, rather than completely terminating them).
We believe blocking slscr.update.microsoft.com for wuauserv is what did it, it just somehow becomes happy with life and thinks that its checks return successful. Your computer retains the ability to install things but just becomes totally neutralized. Microsoft Store still works. Pretty nice honestly.