Ever driven the same car or used the same camera or power drill for 8-10 years and thought: "I wish all these buttons and levers were suddenly in different places and did different things"?

[firesphere@cloudisland.nz]

@ptoothfish @bastardsheep The only constant is change, otherwise people won't buy our stuff!
Sigh

[croyle@wandering.shop]

@ptoothfish ^^^ THIS!

[nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social]

@ptoothfish I'd say it's a toot about tech in general...

There's making improvements, and then there's just straight up fixing what isn't broken...

[brettm@swarm.coiloptic.org]

@ptoothfish@mastodon.nz its not a toot about openbsd or alpine linux tho

[dirtyancom@kolektiva.social]

@cascheranno @ptoothfish I mean, look at what happened when tech bros started making cars... Everything suddenly became a touch screen — and everyone hated it.

[rainynight65@aus.social]

@ptoothfish It was bad enough when I had a rental car recently and the indicator was on the other side of the steering wheel, where decades of muscle memory expect the window wipers to be.

[_thegeoff@mastodon.social]

@ptoothfish My linux setup is still about as close to the 2006 version as you can get, plus an early Mac style dock. If it works...

[tanquist@masto.ai]

@ptoothfish
How timely. After weeks of tearing my hair out trying to deal with confusing and non-functonal aspects of the new Outlook, my supervisor asked me why I don't just use Outlook (classic). I replaced my shortcuts today and it's going much better. Windows 11 still sucks, though.

[cascheranno@hachyderm.io]

@DirtyAnCom @ptoothfish absolutely! And not just hated; turns out a blind reach for a knob (or, forgive my human-factors fanboying masquerading as nostalgia, a row of 6 fat station buttons) is *safer* than looking away from the road at a touch screen.

[stevenheywood@mastodonapp.uk]

@ptoothfish
But if they didn't periodically resize the keyboard buttons on touchscreens and round off the corners to minimise the chances of your hitting the letters cleanly there'd be no opportunity for the mandatory AI autofill to tell your doctor you want a repeat prescription for a Palaeozoic armoured fish.

[admin@mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com]

@cascheranno @ptoothfish I mean this is pretty much what I *have* done because have you seen cars these days??? My 2009 Pontiac slowly rots on the street while I walk and bike because I am *not* buying one of these rolling enshittifications.

[zgryphon@gweep.cat]

@ptoothfish I have in fact thought that about a car, but in that case I started so thinking within a few days of acquiring the car and spent the entire 8 to 10 years continuing to think it.

[60srefugee@spacey.space]

@ptoothfish I've imagined a "Twilight Zone"-esque short about a man who every day wakes up in an alternate timeline where everything's almost the same except that all devices have completely different (often absurd) controls which he has to relearn every day. He ends up living in the Canadian wilderness in a log cabin he built himself.

[maikek@fedifreu.de]

@ptoothfish That's just to keep you alert My brothers once tried to establish a system, where the F1 key would alternately trigger HELP or Format

[jonasgraphie@mastodon.social]

@cascheranno @DirtyAnCom @ptoothfish

In principle I like putting big screens in cars. Then one can have a nice large map, and show other relevant information. And also do the "big" settings one usually does once or rarely - while not driving.

But for everything which has to be controlled either regularly while driving or is time critical there has to be an other appropriate (easy, takes practically no attention) way for doing the command.

[howitzer105mm@pdx.social]

@ptoothfish I have a 2024 Snodgras Rapier and a 2024 Snodgras Defender and it would be so nice if the steering wheel controls were identical, the dash controls were identical, the dashboard instrument placement were identical, and so on. Sadly the Snodgras Motor Company has no concept of uniformity in controls. It also doesn't seem to believe there is value in building common parts in bulk.

[nicelady@theforkiverse.com]

@ptoothfish I always think about how much "cleaner" the car would look if, for example, there was just one pedal which opened a series of menus hiding functions like "brake"

[virtualbri@mastodon.online]

@ptoothfish :spittake: God I laughed so hard at this. And then imagined mandatory drill upgrades that moved the power button each time. And then laughed some more.

[nicelady@theforkiverse.com]

@tanquist @ptoothfish I dread the day when we're forced onto the new outlook. Been toggling that toggle on every computer I've used for years now.

[eedly@mindly.social]

@ptoothfish Yes, all the time, but I'm left-handed and chronically cranky and I prefer motorcycles.