Month: October 2024

Frustrations and Fixes in Modern UI Design Practices | October 04 2024, 17:01

There must be a special place in hell for those who program automatic text insertion when you copy something to the clipboard.

Right next to those who prevent copying text or images to the clipboard (as if you can’t just take a screenshot), enable autoplay on videos (like Facebook, for example), put a useful footer below a block that has infinite scrolling, making it impossible to ever reach the footer (I have this issue on my WordPress blog, for example, and can’t fix it), create software that functions differently on mobile and desktop (Facebook again), reset everything to zero when you go back to a page with infinite scrolling, prevent sharing a link to a post page (LinkedIn), break navigation with the back button (a lot of them do this), and limit passwords to certain special characters (for example, I was registering at the DMV yesterday, where an exclamation mark is considered a special character but an underscore isn’t).

I think we should publish a book on UI antipatterns. Because compiling what should be done is now impossible, there are too many variations, but what should not be done is a relatively limited list that can be divided into “sometimes even professionals do this” and “everything else”.

Exploring Forgotten Sci-Fi: From Obruchev to Efremov and Beyond | October 04 2024, 14:30

I wonder, has anyone under 25 read Obruchev and Efremov? I’m curious how these would read in the year 2024. As a child, I remember being utterly engrossed. The Sannikov Land, Plutonia, Andromeda Nebula — it all seems far from mothballed, and could even be turned into a decent Hollywood movie script, but then again this is just my nostalgic impression. Generally, Belyaev, the Strugatsky brothers, and many others have been undeservedly forgotten.

Fernand Pelez | October 03 2024, 18:43

The French painter of Spanish descent, Fernand Pelez (1848-1913), produced his most striking works in a series, the first of which portrays a gaunt, weary mother and her five children struggling to survive on the streets. The few extant works of Pelez remind me of certain paintings by Thomas Benjamin Kennington, about whom I wrote in May this year. Alas, very few of Pelez’s paintings have survived to this day.

Posts like this fall under the tag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com, in the “Art Rauf Likes” section, you can explore all 112 of them (unlike Facebook, which ignores almost half of them).

Decoding Keystrokes: High Accuracy Typing Inference from Sound | October 03 2024, 14:22

11 years ago, I wondered if it was possible to tell by the sound of keystrokes whether someone was messaging in a messenger or not. In 2023, a scientific article is published with a prototype that can determine with 95% accuracy what a person is typing just by recording the keystrokes on a smartphone, and 93% accuracy when recorded through Zoom. The code in the article is declared to be available to other researchers. And they admit that they have not yet used language models, but with them, it should be really good. Link in the comments.

Andrew McNeile Jones | October 01 2024, 20:42

Why do still lifes typically feature mundane subjects like insignificant vases with fruit or lifeless fish? Consider Andrew McNeile Jones, for instance (Andrew McNeile Jones, British) — his still lifes focus more on interiors. Until 2017, his paintings primarily revolved around interior spaces, treating them as the main subject. However, from 2017 onwards, it appears his artworks shifted towards being predominantly suited for interiors — ones that enhance the look above a sofa in a contemporary apartment. This later phase of his oeuvre is more elusive to me. It’s as though the artist himself was supplanted. I’m not judging if it’s better or worse; it’s just markedly different. I’ll add a link to his website in the comments — do take a look.

Posts of similar interest are categorized under the tag #artrauflikes, and you can find all 110 of them on beinginamerica.com under the “Art Rauf Likes” section (unlike Facebook that tends to forget — or overlook — almost half of them).