I have also configured my Windows 11 to look and act like Windows 7. I like my taskbar to be a list of open windows with labels. The tray area and the start menu is replicated across all my monitors.
I also have set the classic right-click menus.
There are some things about Windows 11 I like but a lot of it seems to be designed by people who use Mac OS (graphic designers).
> Plan an exit strategy now, before you need it later.
The idea that we'll all be forced off of Windows one day sounds like a dream, but so far we continue to be in a state where myself and many other are long past the point of wanting to leave, but we can't for some reason or another.
Microsoft knows that, which is why they've been able to do whatever they want and not worry about the consequences.
I keep a VM with windows on it. Unfortunately you have to purchase a license. Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade it like they've allowed since ~Vista. But now anyone tracking user agents knows I'm not using Microsoft. I didn't even put a browser on the VM. I have used the VM under 10 times over the past year and that's usually just to use Quick Assist to help others with their Microslop OS. Sometimes to deal with a particularly obnoxious excel file.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong cause I don't recall where I got this understanding from, but I believe Windows 11 still has the Windows 10 taskbar, but a startup process basically hides it and replaces it with a brand new one they made for Windows 11, built with web technologies. And they probably just never got around to figuring out how to put it somewhere else on the screen since they didn't inherit that behaviour from before.
I'm confused how you could create a norman door on your house. I thought a norman door could only be a door that doesn't latch shut. i.e. only the pull side should have a handle, cause you don't need a handle to push. But if the door latches, there's gonna be some kind of mechanism you have to interact with from both sides. You won't just walk up to a door with a knob and assume it'll open when you start pushing on it.
> People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet.
Sounds great in theory, but just today I was reminded how impossible this is when walking back from lunch, I noticed all the parking meters covered with a hood, labelled with instructions on how to pay with the app.
What do you mean by impossible in this case? Can't you just have the coin-operated parking meters back? Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards.
EDIT: I guess "just" is doing some heavy-lifting, so I won't argue this further, but "impossible" isn't the word I would use either. The city could revert this decision, definitely if enough people wanted them to (that's... I know, the hardest part). I just agree with the OP that we technically could go back to slightly less-digital society.
> Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards.
Unfortunately, a more accurate way of putting it is: stuff takes cards in lieu of coins. Like, where I live (also EU), ticket machines in buses and trams have gradually been upgraded over the past decade to accept cards, and then to accept only cards.
It's a ratchet. Hidden inflation striking again. Cashless is cheaper to maintain than cash-enabled, so it pretends to be a value-add at first, but quickly displaces the more expensive option. Same with apps, which again, are cheaper to maintain than actual payment-safe hardware.
It's near impossible to reverse this, because to do that, you have to successfully argue for increasing costs - especially that inflation quickly eats all the savings from the original change, so you'd be essentially arguing to make things more expensive than the baseline.
That, + logistics and logistics security in general. I agree, the costs are real; in general, anything physical with mass = costs. So the cost savings are real too - my point is that those are instantly eaten by inflation, so going from cash to cashless and then back to cash isn't a no-op; rather, the first leg quickly turns into a no-op, then the second leg would be increasing costs.
a few years ago the vending machines in my office building started accepting credit and debit cards for an extra fee of $0.35 per transaction. just recently they stopped accepting bills and coins leaving cards as the only option, but are still charging the extra fee.
I feel like this kind of glosses over the fact that a lot of people (I'd say an overwhelming majority) prefer the cashless options anyway.
I don't know if I have any friends who miss carrying coins and cash, or who miss carrying individual bus/subway tickets, but if they do, they're awfully quiet about it compared to the friends who happily say they can't remember using cash.
I'd say that if anything, cashless things are catching up to the general public.
Personally, I'm in favor of keeping things cash-friendly because people shouldn't be forced to be cash-free, but that's only to support a small minority of people.
Overwhelming majority prefers shit[0] - people pick from what is made available to them, not from what could possibly exist, and they don't have direct say whether or when what's available changes.
These cashless solutions are just another thing[1] being pushed from top down; the passengers only notice when they suddenly find themselves unable to buy a ticket for coins, but by that point, the decision has long been made, so people only get to whine and complain, or otherwise express opinions that are not actually listened to by anyone with power to change things.
This is not saying that all those solutions are bad or inferior. Just that nobody is actually checking with people whether they want it or not; technology is deployed as fait accompli, and regular people just find ways to cope.
--
[0] - Like flies, I suppose. There's millions of them, they can't be wrong!
[1] - Like most technology, really, both software and hardware.
Place where I park my car for work (Gosford, Australia) just got rid of cash payment, they now take card payment only (apparently there is also going to be an app, but they haven’t launched it yet). I think the number one reason is they are upgrading to a new system, and the parking technology vendor doesn’t provide cash payments as a standard option-probably they could implement a custom integration to enable it if they thought it was essential, but cash payments are so rare, it would be a difficult decision to justify. The carpark is owned and operated by the local government, so they need to justify their decisions, either as commercially viable, or else as producing substantial public benefit, but I think both arguments would be difficult to sustain in this case.
It’s kinda easy to justify though from a financial standpoint. If the parking meters take cash, you need all the hardware to accept and secure the cash. Then you need somebody to go around at some point and actually physically collect the cash. Then someone has to reconcile the cash, etc.
So at least from that angle I see it as an easy “government is actually trying to be more efficient” argument.
As a user cash is a pain in the ass. I have to count it out, keep it in my pockets, etc. So much easier to just tap my phone or my card. But yeah that’s a tradeoff in the classic “You’re trading X for convenience”.
Even then with cards they may still need to consider fraud via skimmers, or that the equipment can be vandalized. Going app-only (or vastly reducing the availability of payment machines) means less upkeep for them, but it also moves the kind of fraud to where people have replaced the information or QR codes to scan. It seems like a parallel to what google and whatever entities are pushing them to make these changes are trying to do, at some point someone has to put in work to keep the system working securely and everyone wants to delegate it to someone else.
At least in Australia, skimmers haven’t really been an issue for a long time. Everyone uses paywave / nfc payments. The ticket machines I’ve seen installed lately don’t even have a way to insert the card or a pin pad.
They are in theory still possible to destroy but it’s a lot harder and the little electronics left are cheaper to repair.
There should be a legal requirement then, that there's an office you can go to and buy vouchers with cash, which you can use on the machines. There's no need to collect the cash from all the meters but you can still pay cash.
Don't pay and when you get a fine take them to court and state you don't have a bank card. There's jo wat a council can legally require you to enter into an agreement with a bank to use council run facilities, it's likely nobody's challenged them on it though.
Every council I've lived in has still taken cash for every type of council fee, despite their "official" statement being they don't.
The next level of parking enshittification is pay-by-license-plate, which is starting to become widespread here in Perth, Australia, even for locations that are free parking, and locations that have parking machines. Surveillance just ratchets upwards.
Of course it's not impossible; but very incompatible with the agenda per which everyone must become a digital slave, guilty by default, surveilled 24/7, deprived of all privacy, freedom and rights, with TOSes replacing the charade that there is for law now, and impenetrable screens instead of human interaction.
There are places in EU too where parking meters have disappeared and payments are only done through apps. And I am talking about public space in the street, not private parkings.
I do believe that. Pointing out that I live in the EU was completely unnecessary, I meant that I live somewhere in the EU, I didn't really mean to compare it to the US.
The other problem, in the US at least, is that cash is very low value (inflation), and dollar coins never caught on. I'm not trying to carry around $6 in quarters to park for 2 hours. And that's a pretty inexpensive parking spot.
No, they're implying that you need a lot of coins to pay for parking.
If you need $6 to pay for parking, and the largest commonly available coin is a quarter, that means you need 24 coins to pay. If the value of currency was such that the parking only costed $3, or if dollar coins were more common, you'd need less coins to pay.
And maintain them, which I suspect costs even more. Parking meters do fiddly work, out in all weather, where people hate them and do all kinds of vandalism.
It doesn't surprise me that they want to make hardware maintenance your problem.
I parked in a garage in downtown Tacoma, Washington. The only option to pay was via an app. So I downloaded the app (by walking outside to where there was cell service, because I was, you know, underground in a garage) at which point it threw an internal server error when adding my card. There was no attendant on duty, and no way to pay with a credit card. So I left - just drove out of the garage. Then a few months later I got a fine for $75 for not paying. Then I called them to dispute it, and they offered to waive most of it, but it was still more than if I had been able to pay the fee initially.
I'm sure it was sold to the garage as a way to "maximize revenue and unlock operational efficiency". And sure enough, look, the revenue number is up and to the right. Working as designed.
Seriously, I don't understand why these stories have to so often end with someone just giving in and paying. Our society is so disenfranchised. I understand that doing it the right way by sending them written notice that it's an invalid debt takes time and effort, but there are options between that and just giving in and validating their nonsense.
You're right, I pasted this into Claude and it seems to think that there are many avenues. And Claude even named the parking operator by name because they're facing a class action for this very thing:
Claude wrote:
> The broader trend is in your favor. App-only parking companies are facing a wave of legal action nationally. A major class action lawsuit against Metropolis Technologies (one of the largest app-based parking operators) alleges they violated consumer protection laws by failing to provide adequate means to pay for parking and then penalizing consumers for not paying. Lanier Law Firm Tennessee's Attorney General secured a nearly $9 million settlement against Metropolis for similar practices, requiring them to implement clear signage, maintain staffed customer support, and automatically issue refunds when their technology malfunctions.
It's just so exhausting to deal with this kind of thing, I've been super busy and it's not worth it to me to fight over $30, which is exactly the bet these scummy companies are making. I think LLMs lower the cost of drafting serious sounding letters to the point where that should be my first impulse rather than giving up and paying them, which rewards the behavior.
>Regina city council made the decision to remove the coin option at downtown meters as part of the budget deliberation process, said Faisal Kalim, the City of Regina's director of community standards.
Yes, I read the linked article. Yes, the city made this decision. The decision could be reverted. I understand that this is a type of thing the OP (top-comment in the thread) is wishing for.
I don't see the "impossible" in my understanding of the linked article.
Coin-operated meters means someone have to come around checking the meter, collect coins, check the parking tickets. One person can only cover so many devices per day.
Then you have mechanical maintenance, with that comes disputes with "it was broken, it didn't accept the money" and so forth.
I've probably forgotten a number of other related things, but compare the above to digital solution.
Parking app, where the customer pays only for the parked time, no fiddling with money or keeping track of time. The parking attendant checks much quicker by just scanning the license plate while walking the rounds (could be done via car and a mounted camera even).
Analog just costs more, and citizens doesn't want taxes to go to things that are not strictly necessary.
It was possible for many decades already, budget and maintenance-wise. You can at least accept a credit card as an alternative. Yes, it's not perfect, but the fully digital alternatives also have drawbacks, as pointed by OP.
Things that were possible become impossible. Once Britain ruled the seas with wooden sailboats. Those boats are not perfect but could they win today’s naval battles? Also no.
"The decision could be reverted." Do you often buy a new car and revert that purchase to purchase a different new car? I guess you don't often use your own money so no big deal.
Why the snark? Did I misread? I don't often buy a new car, do you? I really don't understand what your last sentence means.
I don't even think this a fair comparison, it's more like keeping the old car just in case or for other family members. But I think I specified enough what I'm arguing already, yes this is unlikely, just not impossible.
I found one parking lot in the EU where there were only signs, and the signs not only pointed to an Android+iOS only, attestation-protected app, rather than a website, but an app that, at least on Android, was region-locked to only allow installations from people with the local country set correctly in Play Store (something completely different than the country Google sets for your account, for some reason).
It was a public lot, and the only lot in the town, as far as we could tell.
They are saying that things that have already been dumbed down can't go back. Obviously that's just their opinion, but I would guess that most people agree with them.
> Can't you just have the coin-operated parking meters back? Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards.
That costs money. Coin operated machines routinely are targeted by vandals, with each case making easily 100x the damage for loot. And card-acceptance also has its issues, the terminals need a data uplink, someone needs to take care of the machines. That's why so many (especially private parking lots) shift over to purely app based schemes. Orders of magnitude less tech you need to worry about.
I'm reading this discussion, and allow me to give you my two cents. It's not a matter of being impossible, but rather how much the rest of society is willing to pay to maintain such infrastructure (either through higher taxes when dealing with the government, or through more expensive goods/services when dealing with corporations, since companies need to maintain old infrastructure that most people don't use).
For example, I read that Switzerland voted to guarantee the use of physical cash, even enshrining it in the constitution, which clearly points toward preserving older infrastructure. However, if you have cash but no one accepts it, it becomes useless. So it would probably require more—something like requiring businesses and the government to accept that form of payment.
As many things in life, not impossible: but is society willing to pay for that?
This cuts both ways. Since smartphones are becoming such an essential necessity, we should neverever remove the possibility to adjust these devices for our own requirements
Right, and builders now build homes with Ring cameras pre-installed. Surveillance chills aside it's about building rent-seeking into every corner of the economy, and that's a top-down goal of modern capitalism. Requiring a smart-phone to park is just part of it, and it goes back to the parent comment that there is something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology.
To me it proves that Google's steps to lock down phones isn't really about security. To them the scams that happen are acceptable losses. The scammed will still use Android and still click on ads and still let themselves be tracked and marketed to as before. But if Google can use the excuse of security to edge out alternative apps and app stores they will spend plenty of money and time to do it.
This isn't security, it's sealing a hole in the sales funnel.
This is obvious to anyone with a brain. I'm not familiar with scam logistics or the videos you mentioned, and the exact same line you put in quotes is what first came to my mind.
tl;dr of this post is that Google wants to lock down Android and be its gatekeeper. Every other point of discussion is just a distraction.
> ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
Someone is just going to make a nice GUI application for sideloading apks with a single drag-and-drop, so if your idea is that ADB is a way to ensure only "users who know what they're doing" are gonna sideload, you've done nothing. This is all security theatre.
Google could easily put an end to that if they wanted. Just block adb access from the loopback address and VPN. I'm surprised this isn't already in place. The setup flow for those apps you're referring to is awkward enough that it's clear it was never intentional to be able to access adb on-device.
If you mean things like Shizuku or local adb connection through Termux, it's quite an awkward process to set up even for someone like me who's been building Android apps since 2011. Like, you can do if you really really need it, but most people won't bother. You have to do it again after every reboot, too.
People who want your money always want to have really great UX. I remember how painless buying lottery tickets online was, it was the smoothest checkout experience in all of online shopping I have ever done.
The scammers don't even need to make a GUI, they just need to get you to enable adb-over-tcp and bridge that to their network somehow - an ssh client app would do the trick.
How many people do you suspect are gullible enough to fall for these scammers but also competent enough to install an SSH client and enable port-forwarding for an ADB proxy? Like fifteen people worldwide?
How many people are gullible enough right now to plug a phone to a laptop over USB and execute an exe on an operating system with no sandboxing at all? ADB even seems to work over webusb. (at that point you may as well give up on hacking the phone, but I digress). That's exactly why I believe the problem is more complicated and why Google's solution is not really fixing anything, not for the users.
There's going to be a lot of people who don't have a laptop/desktop handy right now - because they're out of the house, because it's unplugged in a cupboard, or because they borrow it from a friend or use an internet cafe when they need that. So a requirement to use that and connect your phone to it is effectively similar to the 24 hr waiting period: time to think, time to mention it to a friend who's heard about this scam before. This is why phones are such an attractive target in the first place.
er... if you'll excuse me confirming the "HN is the 'well actually capital of the internet' stereotype"...
If you look throughout history, you'll see that before the advent of what we'd call 'modern states', most people who got their paycheck from 'taxpayers' did not see themselves as working for said 'taxpayers'.
Example: Pharaonic Egypt. Alexander's Empire, Bourbon France, Tsarist Russia, or more generally any kingdom, empire or any sort of duchy/earldom/county/etc where you have someone (the King, Tsar, Emperor, Duke, etc), whose job it is to lord over the peasants and take a cut of their work, not because they are an elected public servant doing the will of The People, but because they believe God Almighty has decreed that living off the wealth of others, and occasionally wasting large amounts of that wealth on building palaces or waging costly wars is what they were born to do.
as such, if you view the modern state as "basically an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy", then the police are not in fact working for 'Joe Taxpayer', but are just playing the same role that medival knights played for the Kings of France - they are the armed force of the extractive state, whose job it is to keep the peasants in line via violence so that they can continue to live off the fruits of peasant labor.
There's very valid reasons to have issues with Tahoe's changes. The dock being liquid glass is fine. But curving the windows to look like iPad apps, and not even adjusting the grab target appropriately for resizing the window is bad. Getting rid of the title bar so it's not clear where you can grab a window is bad. Apple Music hiding the volume slider behind another click is bad.
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