I'm left handed, and I previously put my mouse on the left side of the keyboard. I eventually stopped because video games assume you'll use your left hand on the keyboard for wasd movement etc. I blame this for my poor performance, I used to be good at video games.
Anyway, one day at work, my team lead comes over and tries to use my mouse to show me something. It's not moving. They do a double take, pick up the mouse, and realize it's an orange that was sitting to the right side of my keyboard.
That’s hilarious. I was once in a lecture hall with a friend who was a lefty. I forgot my mouse that day and was using my trackpad. But after break I instinctively came back, sat down, put my hand on my mouse and began driving.
He looks at me, my hand on his, on his mouse, and just says, “this isn’t pottery.”
Pulled a funny on the developer in the cube across from me. Plugged in a second mouse into his computer, and would occasionally wiggle it a bit. He was absolutely sure the office was monitoring everything he did. "It moved again!" Walk around to his side -- nothing. "I'm not crazy. It moved"
We did that in my office one April Fools' Day. Switched the wireless receivers on the mice of two coworkers whose desks were across from each other. It was a funny moment but of course they figured it out quickly!
I'm curious why the default keyboard layout of games is of particular issue to a lefty?
Asking because while I am not a lefty, I created my own standard 3D game layout way before games made wasd standard. The very first thing in every single game is to go to settings and reconfigure.
If you are wondering, it's basically just one to the right. ESDF, which is superior to wasd because it gives more keys to access without having to reach very far. In particular it avoids having to use caps lock, which in some games doesn't even work or it is at the very least very annoying when turning the game off or alt+tabbing out (say coz you died and want to do something other than watch while you wait).
As a lefty it seems very conceivable to me that something like uhjk would work comparably?
Well.... when I started gaming, remapping keys was not a standard capability. And then, it's not just wasd you have to remap. And, again, back in the day your settings did not persist in the cloud. Overall, it just didn't feel worth it. I thought I would eventually catch up with right hand mouse, but I feel like I still don't have the same dexterity that I did.
Also, just my 2 cents worth - no matter how much better your capabilities are - users hate changes
That first point is fair enough. Trying to play an old Tomb Raider is impossible nowadays, as no remapping can be done, so I can't use ESDF, so I won't play it.
I don't get the rest though. Of course it's not just WASD you gotta remap. I literally, for each game, go through the entirety of the controls and remap every key around my ESDF as per perceived usefulness of the command. Before I've ever played the game. Then as I start playing I might find that a certain key is more useful or less useful than I thought and I remap them. It always takes a minute or two until my muscle memory adjusts but that's about it.
I also agree with the standards thing, which is why I do the ESDF thing. That's what I am used to. And of course there were no cloud persistence and I still don't and won't use Cloud persistence. Why would I do or need that and what does that have to do with anything?
I do agree w/ my sibling post that shift, ctrl, alt had some advantage, if you needed a three key combo for something. Like I crouch with Z, so crouched strafing while also moving forward or backwards might have been a problem sometimes. Not nowadays though.
I think your issue is at least 50% absolutely not a lefty issue, but a willingness one. You mention you're still not as good when using the mouse w/ your right hand. I think it's totally worth it to "get over that hump" and try the mouse in the left hand and just do that remapping. If I was able to do it consistently throughout the years before Cloud was even a thing, you can do it too! ;)
Another potential issue when remapping keys involved rollover and ghosting effects for individual keyboard models.
Some clusters of keys were simply better than others when it came to being able to press bunches of them at once--and have the program actually notice--and the modifier keys (control, shift, alt) were especially privileged.
I’m right handed and taught myself to also use the mouse with my left hand but only when playing games. For movement and all the extra functions, it made more sense to me to use the numerical keypad with my dominant right hand.
When typing, I can accept the rows of letter keys being shifted horizontally, but it just feels weird using that part of the keyboard for games.
The best office prank I ever pulled was on a fellow dev, probably the smartest guy in the room. He came back from lunch and all of his apps stopped working. He couldn't launch anything. He restarted the computer and still nothing would start. He eventually figured out that launching an app from search works, but nothing would launch from his desktop shortcuts.
That's because while he was having lunch, I took a screenshot of his desktop, set that screenshot as the desktop background, and then hid the dock and deleted all his real icons :) (Well, put them in a folder for easy recovery).
He just kept clicking and clicking on that screenshot for way too long. Best 15 minutes of my life...
Never in all my jobs except for one, inappropriate one that I actually quit, would someone even dream of sitting at my unlocked computer without my permission and acknowledgement and do stuff behind my back be it pranks or admin stuff. It's beyond taboo, it's something that might get you punched in the face around here.
I've heard that the culture of some workplaces can even encourage this, as there is training value for developing good habits (though I haven't been at an organization like this myself).
The idea is that users are trained and regularly reminded to always lock their computers when they step away for cybersecurity. So, if they forget, their computer is relatively harmlessly messed with (like with changing the desktop background).
The consequences are then trivial, in contrast to potentially severe if a person left their computer unlocked with unvetted people coming in and out of the office during an event, or if they left their laptop unattended in a public area.
I work at a fairly large firm where we do this. If you leave your computer unlocked it won't be long before "you" announce in the company slack that you'll bring cake on Friday. Or something like that.
Some people still leave their computers unlocked somewhat frequently, but overall I think it works.
Similar here. We are really trained to lock when leaving the machine. One co-worker when pressed into coming with us for lunch did it blindly and after some seconds and finally a glance at the screen wondered why the lock screen did not come up. He accidentally had pressed shift-delete instead. On the folder he had worked on without committing the whole day. m(
This is exactly what we did and why we did it in the early 2000s. The company (of about 700 people) standard was "baggy pantsing"[0].
Of course there was etiquitte. You only ever emailed smaller groups (your team, your floor, rtc) - never all staff. You always explained to a newbie so they didn't feel too embarassed or singled out - and they always got a heads up during training.
Our small team of 15 got pretty crazy though. Rebinding keys, replacing all the icons with My Little Pony or Hello Kitty custom sets, etc. It became a good competition and a great way to blow off steam in a high output role, and as a byproduct built in good physical security.
The team at my first tech job did this; I left my computer unlocked and stepped away, came back to find "I" had sent a joking message to the team saying that I forgot to lock my computer. It definitely trained that habit into me, I lock my desktop when stepping away even at home.
I think it's probably a good technique, though it needs to be done with a bit of care to not seem too hostile or humiliating. Changing the desktop background seems like a good idea, since it's harmless, obvious to the user, easily fixed, and doesn't impede actual work.
I worked on a team where, if you left your computer unlocked, someone would send an email (from your email) to the rest of the team letting everyone know you were bringing donuts for everyone the next day.
I work at a SOC2 audited business and had a coworker who would routinely leave his PC unlocked. I would routinely set his desktop background to My Little Pony. He would routinely get grumpy at me and tell me not to touch his computer. I would routinely tell him I can't touch his computer if he locks it.
It was a great way to train someone to follow SOC2 requirements.
The reason I asked for the documentation is because even your bank example falls short - my coworkers and I are trained in and expected to follow SOC2 requirements. Taking the job in the first place means explicitly agreeing that you will follow the SOC2 requirements that we adopted because our customers said "we won't host data with you unless you are secure and audited."
I can see an argument that I shouldn't be a "vigilante" about making sure people follow security practices they agreed to when taking the job, but we are all responsible for the security of the business. A repeat offender coworker who doesn't care about the security consequences of leaving their PC unlocked is a security risk which needs addressed. This isn't just a case of messing with a friend.
Further, the PC is company property and subject to acceptable use policies. It's not "my computer" so I have no reasonable expectation that it is a sacred object other people won't mess with. Assuming others won't mess with your things is a terrible reason not to lock your door at night. Getting angry at a burglar for entering because you failed basic security misses the point of your failure.
My repeat offender coworker got over his indignation that I touched his computer and then started doing what he was required to do the entire time and locked his computer every time he got up. I stopped touching his computer. He didn't get written up or fired for repeat security failures, and all was well.
Just for context, we were quite young, and it was quite a small business. It was a mom and pop that started as a mail-order catalog, and we were hired to modernize their web presence.
Now, by "web presence", it's true they had a website. And it was made with HTML. Lots and lots of HTML, in fact, as in thousands upon thousands of hand-edited, non-version-controlled files on disk that they'd manually curated over the years.
We didn't exactly have a cybersecurity team or defined best practices. But we were treated well and worked together well. (Still friends with that dev a decade later!).
It was also a really small town. We all hung out after work, went to the lake, climbing, whatever. Lived a few houses apart from each other (or sometimes in the same house, lol). We trusted each other. Had to. It's the kind of environment where relationships took precedence over rules.
Looking back, it was definitely an uncommonly intimate situation, but it was awesome!
> In fact how the funk do I know YOU'RE not the undercover North Korean agent?
If he's a undercover North Korean agent and you leave your computer unlocked for he to steal data, you'll likely be fired. So you should be thankful that he's not one in this particular hypothetical scenario.
Let's consider that the colleague IS IN FACT a mole, a spy, an agent of a hostile entity be it a state or why not, a competitor. Iran or Russia couldn't care less about your enterprise business operations and customer relations software but SAP would be glad to silently eliminate a competitor.
So said agent takes the opportunity to plant the malware on ANOTHER employee's computer, that's self-understood. He's not so stupid to risk incriminating himself. If all goes well, nobody will even notice where the infection began. If somehow it gets traced to it's root ... it's Johnny, the light hearted and jovial slightly overweight colleague that everyone likes and not Timmy the bleak and dull looking fellow that nobody quite notices outside mandatory interactions like the daily standup. Who would have thought that all that friendliness and charisma of Johnny was just a facade to his true evil intentions?
To be consistent, surely the cleaning lady is perfectly within her rights to access your unlocked pc. Download all your files and sell them to the highest bidder. Just to make a point.
It gets better. I think it was actually set to auto lock after a minute or two, but I had practiced the routine on my own computer a few times first and managed to get it down to like ten seconds.
He went to the bathroom right before heading out for lunch. I had my window. I did it quickly, and then joined him for lunch, keeping a straight face the whole time. When we came back I nonchalantly asked about some code for him to review but he was like hold on...
Didn't suspect me until way too late :D
But then after that, every time some random error popped up, he was like... "solardev, what did you do this time!" Fool him once...
I've recently been driving a policy at my workplace that if you find a PC unlocked, you send out an email blast promising donuts (also copying in the victim). The victim then has a choice: admit to a security breach and have to sit through a training session, or follow through with donuts. This incentivises reporting, and disincentivises leaving your computer unlocked through social, economic and experiental means
xscreensaver still has this. I have it on my laptop. Sometimes it triggers when I'm out consulting. Clients think the machine crashed. How could you not notice this is a crash screen from HPUX?
Before a certain school presentation I moved all the power point files into the windows startup folder and turned off the machine. The shenanigans that ensued had my friends and I laughing for two hours straight.
My goto folder name when I don't know what to name it is temp. I have so many temp folders around. Never seem to get around to renaming them something more meaningful.
At one company we talked about doing the ultimate version of that prank (which ultimately would make it easier to discover)…
1. Unplug the mouse,
2. Cover the mouse sensor with tape,
3. Replace the desktop with a screenshot,
4. Flip the screen 180 degrees,
5. Print out the screen, and tack it in front of the monitor…
A more elaborate version of this prank is to combine it with two more steps: unplug the mouse (or turn off Bluetooth), plus also put tape or a sticky note on the underside of the mouse, covering the sensor. Voila, they will have to troubleshoot the malfunctioning mouse three times in a row.
FancyZones is a good alternative to tiling on windows. It combines best of both worlds, imo, is very easy to configure, and there’s apparently no tool like that for linux.
Also I find clicking on an icon faster than typing, especially when your mind is too busy to recall the exact name but the muscle memory knows where it is, or when the interface of a program assumes using mouse anyway. (Although I have to admit that most of my “desktop icons” are actually start menu tiles.)
So while I understand and agree that different workflows exist and you have yours, I still don’t get why you should be disappointed by someone else using another one or having desktop/icons at all.
Years back I was called in to our accountants office due to a "bug" in SAP. I was demonstrated that when you try to do so-and-so it would not work. After clicking around and filling in a few fields an error message appeared and the accountant made a sound of annoyance and quickly closed the popup with the error, not reading or processing it's content. I was just presented with "See, doesn't work!". Okay, but can we do it again and you don't close the error box? Second time around she refrained from closing the error message, which VERY clearly stated that she had forgotten to fill in a field in the previous form. I just walked away quietly.
Sadly, this affliction impacts even the tech savvy. It’s super annoying to get a random teams call from a co-worker, who proceeds to instantly “OKAY” past the error message for the third time that day.
Just read the message dude. How many times have we been over this.
Funny that reading the manual was the source of, not the solution to, the problem.
The British-sounding phrase "uppity know-it-all whose seniority level was substantially above their competency level"* is a nice one to put in the memory banks for future use.
This reminds me of the classic web-comedy 'The Website Is Down', the first episode of which has a version of the error path in question as a plot point.
* To be clear to those who didn't read the article, the user in question was not in that category
Reminds me of the time when an aunt of mine complained that the clock in her android phone doesn’t work. Nor can she launch any of the apps on the home screen except the home row (bottom one with phone and contacts). She has been opening the full app drawer for all her apps.
Her grandson had taken a screenshot of the phone’s home screen, set it as the wallpaper and removed everything except the bottom row icons.
This is a legit problem when including screenshots in a document. The worst is when there's a screenshot of a video player, with a big play button on the thumbnail. Your brain just wants to click it and doesn't understand why it won't play.
So please, when you're including screenshots, put a border around it, or an overlay, or a caption, anything that helps make it clear this is just a still image and not an active control!
Be doing website mock-ups with Photoshop before coding them (which was the style at the time), different mock-ups, send different JPEGs, even some PSD to toggle stuff.
Client says "Anon, site is broken, clicking links don't work !".
back and forth on the phone
Turns out client is clicking on links in the PSD.
Did I mention client was running their own 2 person design agency at the time ?
I was recently following along with a video tutorial (on FreeRTOS) where the person was live coding in VSCode, which is what I also use. He would type in code while also reading the code out loud. I was switching between the video and my own editor to type along with him, and at the same time try out some other stuff in the same code.
I stepped away for something, and when I came back, clicked in my code to place the cursor where I thought I had left, and to my surprise the editor started to write the code by itself while also reading it out loud. It was of course the video, but I was pretty tired and it took me a bit to realize. A very confusing experience.
Indeed. We, technical folks for all I know, simply don't expect the answer. I was trying to guess what was happening while reading, and was pleasantly surprised. Summarizing it is like
When you maximize a video for full screen you get those messages that give a warning. Those seem to be impossible to remove due to a potential of abuse by hackers.
> one of his colleagues had written a Word document with instructions on how to use Excel. To help the account managers get the message, that document included lots of illustrative screenshots.
> Jeremy realized his user had clicked on a screenshot, which had grown to a size at which it was easily mistaken for Excel itself. This also explained why it would not accept input.
Anyway, one day at work, my team lead comes over and tries to use my mouse to show me something. It's not moving. They do a double take, pick up the mouse, and realize it's an orange that was sitting to the right side of my keyboard.