If I could go back in time and change what courses I took for my CS degree, it would be the exact opposite.

I wish I'd gone more into theoretical computer science, quantum computing, cryptography, and in general just hard math and proofs.

I took a few such courses and some things have genuinely been useful to know about at work but were also mind-expanding new concepts. I would never ever have picked up those on the job.

Not to say the practical stuff hasn't been useful too (it has) but I feel confident I could pick up a new language easily anytime. Not so sure about formal proofs.

I had to take some literature classes in high school, and had a truly exceptional teacher who facilitated great and interesting discussions. Really opened up my mind and I only later realized how lucky I was.

Those summaries always existed, in the past you could buy them as little books for most of the classic literature we read. Thing is they were always the same trite points even back then.

Our teacher would see right through any BS, but never call it out directly. Instead there would be 1 precise and nicely asked follow-on question or even just asking their opinion on a talking point. Not details, but a regular discussion question.

If someone hadn't read the book they'd stutter and grasp at straws at that point and everyone knew they hadn't actually read it.

On the other hand if you had read the book the answer was usually pretty easy, and often not what the common summaries contained as talking points.

So cheating not only didn't work, the few regular cheaters we had in our class (everybody knew who those were) actually suffered badly.

Only in hindsight did I realize that this is not the normal experience. Most other literature classes in fact do just focus on or repeat the same trite points, is what I've heard from many others.

It takes a great teacher to make cheating not "work" while making the class easy, intellectually stimulating and refreshing at the same time.

You must have been blessed with great teachers.

My experience was the exact opposite. I loved reading as a child. But I learned very fast in school that my "own opinion" on books results in bad grades, while reading and reiterating the "official summary" results in OK or even good grades. Like you say, the summaries existed long before AI. It is what the teacher and students make of the class.

If the iPhone wouldn't wobble so much and so loudly when putting it on a table I'd go caseless too. Hoping for the fold to improve on that aspect.

Yes, these are the best of the bunch. Sturdy too, have had one on my keychain for years now.

>Never mark as spam

has never worked consistently. For literally 10+ years now, I've always had a few emails per day go into spam even though that rule is in place.

My 49 inch Dell ultrawide is failing too. One USB port is already dead, and the other ports have just now started to develop intermittent issues as well.

This is what happens when the people issuing the orders (assign an icon for every task) are not the ones doing the task.

And the ones doing it have no say in how it's done.

Being involved and in the loop is how great software is made. Otherwise you can just outsource and have tickets completed.

> This is what happens when the people issuing the orders (assign an icon for every task) are not the ones doing the task.

No, this is what happens when the people in charge of UI design have no clue what they're doing.

In theory, the problems highlighted in the article would have become apparent shortly into the process of assigning an icon to every menu item. Forging ahead despite the impossibility of doing a good job on the task is a sign of orders being issued from top to bottom without feedback working its way from the bottom to the top.

Top down micromanaging of design is how Apple has always worked. It's not what's different now.

Yeah, if anything it seems like there is not enough top-down micromanaging. Especially with the icon consistency parts.

The difference is the lack of top-down QA and taste.

I'm afraid you both may be right in this case. "Make it blue!" - stakeholder. "Ok, but then we'll have to change everything for consistency." - VP of UI. Produces the horror that we have today.

If your UI designers can get this much crap past upper management, the managers have officially become the problem.

It's like what Miyamoto warned: a delayed UI is eventually good, but a rushed UI is forever bad.

Not only that but also the same short videos keep repeating. I have tons of great suggestions from Youtube on the main feed from creators I like, yet the Shorts feed is almost 90% garbage and AI slop.

It's deliberate, I'm sure. People say they want the vegetables, but then go on to watch hours of fast food / Shorts. Clearly the algorithm knows.

Not the language, but the linter can do it. IntelliJ inspections warn you if you do it: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/inspectopedia/StringConcatena...

I'm still here. But it hurts to see Mozilla shoot themselves in the foot again and again. They just don't get it, and they won't survive.

I was even a Pocket user when they acquired it, immediately stopped using it at that point because it was clear as day how stupid that integration was.

It's death by a thousand cuts, all to get some "other users" while alienating all the existing ones.

I'm even for all the AI features, but please let me add my own self-hosted LLM. Currently you can only set one via about:config, and as soon as you use any other LLM, the settings are lost. If I wanted everything locked down I could just use Chrome instead.