i have a deep and irrational hatred for the fact that some people call computer programs “apps” now of days
And it’s really not that unreasonable. What the user thinks of as an app could be more than 1 program. It makes sense to put an abstraction between users and programs because lots of sophisticated software use separate programs that the end user doesn’t care about, just the whole.
Thankfully the dictionaries get a little more specific. I do want an artillery capable paint gun though, that sounds rad
The Task Manager in Windows always had an “Applications” tab and a “Processes” tab, going back to Windows 98 at least. “Programs” was always too broad and restricted to being colloquial; the specific word was either application or executable.
What’s worth ranting about is whether people have stopped understanding “App” as short for something.
The l33t w4r3z d00dz were calling applications ‘appz’ since at least the '90s. Then there was that brief period where Apple tried to claim “app store” was short for “apple store” so no one else could say it…
The browser represents a political statement that the rendering of the web page ought to be under the control of the user. The app is a capitalist reaction to that statement.
The web browser is under the control of Google. The app is just a thing actually designed to run on your computer that can actually utilize its features.
And then the “app” “actually designed to run on your computer” is actually just chromium
responsive web design has brought this back a little. I can do almost everything I need to on my linux phone natively or through the browser. it is a hassle tho. frequently need a user agent switcher, etc
Responsive web design is obnoxious. If I’m using a desktop user agent on my phone, that means I want to see the desktop site, even if I have to zoom and pan to see everything. I don’t want the site’s CSS to decide from my screen’s width that it’s a mobile device and show me the mobile version anyway.
I think the pure concept of responsive web design is that the same exact content is shown at all resolutions, but with different layout. The issue is that exposing that information lets them discriminate between desktop clients and mobile clients.
But with responsive web design, often the way the same content is presented at a lower resolution is by making it less usable, tracking or no. I don’t want a site’s navigation bar to become a dropdown on my phone, because then I can’t see the site content and the menu at the same time.
Having to keep using the “desktop site” setting on mobile Firefox so that every website can just work without needing an app.
I miss when absolute cranks had their own websites. Give me ten Time Cubes over any website app
TIME CUBE. Yes. This was the perfect website. Along with the various anti-time cube and pro-time cube websites and the wars between them.
It’s hard to explain. It was a website written by a very strange man based around a central idea that all science is wrong because one rotation of the Earth should be considered 4 days instead of 1 day. The website itself was a long string of text explaining his positions in very strange language, but since it had no home page or anything, the information wasn’t separated. And it was formatted poorly so the most basic information was at the bottom and subsequently added updates were at the top, making it impossible to read.
Warning though, Time Cube guy used a lot of slurs for some reason
I keep a list of the weird guy home pages I find in the wild so I can check up on them.
What are they up to at the moment? Could you post one of your favourites as an example?
this one is one of my favorites: https://www.wussu.com/
English dude named weed who runs the classical guitar tabs site. He’s also into activism for causes like squatters rights.
ingy.net has gotten weirder since my last visit, wingdings are now the font but most of the content seems the same, the ssl cert has expired.
https://www.mindprod.com/ This person wrote the guide to writing unmaintainable code, a long winded comedy masterpiece. They’re also into a lot of other stuff they write about, including their sexuality, politics, life being HIV+
http://www.adrian-kingston.com/index.htm I found this guy looking up information about IR blaster protocols but I liked how he’s been continually updating with his vacation photos for like 20 years.
https://www.quarkcentral.net/home this person just writes about their theory of the universe along side their resume and tech blog.
I find most of these people through esoteric tech blogs, almost all the guys posting their blogs that have been around for a while have other weird stuff that’s worth looking at. Honestly finding these guys is one of the best reasons to browse hackernews.
If anyone has any more cool ones I can add to my list, i’d be appreciative.
