N9000 was so ahead of it's time.
No, it belonged to an alternative universe - and, arguably, a better one.
Readit Newspatrakov commented on Nokia N900 Necromancy yaky.dev/2025-12-11-nokia... · Posted by u/yaky
patrakov commented on UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16 alecmuffett.com/article/1... · Posted by u/nvarsj
I guess we will see a jump in the number of foreign eSIMs sold to UK minors.
On downdetector.com, an AWS outage has approximately the same start time. Related?
patrakov commented on Free software scares normal people danieldelaney.net/normal/... · Posted by u/cryptophreak
Having to read a label and go out of the tool to do something else is basically impossible UX, yeah. You'll never get users to do that, and little in line warnings also won't work unless you block the buttons at the same time I think.
In this example I wonder if the tool was too "MVP" and they didn't evaluate what minimum viable would mean for the users?
In this case, the product owner had a wrong idea of what's minimum viable, and his idea was faithfully implemented, plus a warning in the app to call me in specific incompatible cases.
Later the missing pieces were added, we had "two buttons" and the resulting user confusion because they did not know and could not be taught whether a container makes sense for a particular lab.
patrakov commented on Free software scares normal people danieldelaney.net/normal/... · Posted by u/cryptophreak
Sometime around 2012, Windows XP started having issues on my parent's PC, so I installed Xubuntu on it (my preferred distro at the time). I told them that "it works like Windows", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer + scanner they had worked great! I went back home 2 states away, and expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.)
If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that normies don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. You're part of the problem this simplified Handbrake UI tries to solve. Normies care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs. The interface is paramount for non-technical users.
I currently work in the refurb division of an e-waste recycling company.[0] Most everyone else there installs Ubuntu on laptops (we don't have the license to sell things with Windows), and I started to initially, but an error always appeared on boot. Consider unpacking it and turning it on for the first time, and an error immediately appears: would you wonder if what you just bought is already broken? I eventually settled on Linux Mint with the OEM install option.
For one of my relatives, it also never happened. I installed Linux on their laptop that was having issues and explained how to browse the web and use some apps.
They always answered me "it works well".
But what I found during my next visit is a paper with a telephone number of computer helpers, and the laptop was running a fresh copy of Windows, presumably installed by these helpers.
patrakov commented on Free software scares normal people danieldelaney.net/normal/... · Posted by u/cryptophreak
Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one.
Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I just need ..." is difficult. It takes a single strong-willed defender, or some sort of onerous management structure, to prevent the interface from quickly devolving back into the million options or schizming into other projects.
Simply put, it is a desirable state, but an unstable one.
While working for one of the previous companies, I hit a regrettable counterexample for the point in the article.
Developers built a web UI for creating containers for the labs, taking the advice from this (then future) article too literally. Their app could only build containers, in the approved way. Yet, not all labs were possible to run in containers, and the app did not account for that (it was a TODO). Worse, people responsible for organizing the labs did not know that not all labs are compatible with containers.
Lab coordinators thus continued to create containers even in cases where it didn't make sense, despite the explicit warning "in cases X, Y, Z, do not proceed, call Alexander instead".
So if you make one button you better make that it is always the right button. People follow the happy-but-wrong path way too easily if there is no other obvious one.
patrakov commented on The scariest "user support" email I've received devas.life/the-scariest-u... · Posted by u/hervic
patrakov commented on Three ways formally verified code can go wrong in practice buttondown.com/hillelwayn... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
That’s impractical. Take binary search and the assumption the list is sorted. Verifying the list is sorted would negate the point of binary search as you would be inspecting every item in the list.
There is a useful middle ground here. When picking the middle element, verify that it is indeed within the established bounds. This way, you'll still catch the sort order violations that matter without making the whole search linear.
patrakov commented on Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/10/... · Posted by u/thomasjb
And I prefer to have a healthy bank account balance.
Storing 18TB (let alone with raid) on SSDs is something only those earning Silicon Valley tech wages can afford.
Not really. I know that my sleep is worth more than the difference between HDD and SSD prices, and I know the difference between the failure rates and the headache caused by the RMA process, so I buy SSDs.
In essence, what we together are saying is that people with super-sensitive sleep that are also easily upset, and that don't have ultra-high salaries, cannot really afford 18 TB of data (even though they can afford an HDD), and that's true.