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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Because there is very little overlap between “programmers who design the systems to be as efficient and reliable as possible” and “UX designers who consider elegance and ease of use, even if it means the install is a few extra MB in size”.

    Tons of FOSS UIs tend to fall into one of three categories:

    1. CLI. Maybe a third-party GUI exists.
    2. Laughably horrendous monstrosities that make early 90’s websites look good
    3. A direct ripoff of a paid software that has actual UX designers.

    It’s because the people designing the FOSS aren’t UX designers, so they either make their best guess at it (the laughably horrendous choice) or they just copy whatever paid software they’re trying to replace.


  • Also worth noting that Costco doesn’t require a membership for their fresh food, pharmacy, or (depending on where you live, and your local liquor laws) liquor store. You can just tell the greeter that you’re there for the pizza, and they’ll wave you through.

    Their pharmacy is often one of the cheapest, and the pharmacy techs at my local Costco are all super helpful. Apparently working in pharmacies is pretty soul-sucking, but my local employees always seem to be in a good (and not just artificial “retail smile” good) mood.

    And yes, the Costco brand vodka is every bit as good as Grey Goose.





  • Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. Discord isn’t searchable by search engines.

    Historically, if I had an issue with a product and I googled “[product] [issue]” I’d be met with a support forum post, with someone describing the same issue. I could read the thread to find how they resolved it. I don’t actually have to interact with the post at all, and I don’t need to ask the same question again. For most (decent) forums I don’t even need to make an account just to read the post.

    Discord throws that all out the window. Now I’m met with a “JoiN OUr dIScoRd SerVEr to GEt suPPorT” page. Nothing is searchable via a search engine. And Discord’s server searchability (even in the app) has always been, at best, absolute dogshit. You already need to know exactly which text thread things were posted in, (because you can’t search the entire server at once), and you need to know exactly what was said, (because there’s no fuzzed search terms).

    So 99% of the time, you just end up asking the same question that has already been asked a hundred times in the past, and now you need to wait for someone to respond. It also puts a lot more strain on the support staff, because they’re answering the same question a hundred times instead of just the once in a forum.

    And don’t come at me with the “but Discord recently added a support forum feature where people can start threads and save the conversation for later” bullshit. That’s a band-aid, at best. It still isn’t searchable via search engines, so it means the above issues with Discord’s search function still apply, and the forum function is essentially useless as support forums.

    Lastly, why the fuck should I be forced to join another server just to get support? What if I don’t have a discord account? What if I live in a region that Discord doesn’t support? What if I just plain don’t want to clog up my server sidebar with dozens of servers that I have only visited once? What if I just really hate the fact that your server has been configured to push notifications for every single message by default? What if I just fucking want to google my issue, and get an answer without any further effort?


  • The irony is that America isn’t even in the top 3 most litigious countries. That stereotype was a myth that was spread by McDonalds, in the wake of the (now infamous) hot coffee lawsuit.

    Basically, a woman was horribly burned by coffee that was way too hot (the coffee was hot enough to melt her labia and fuse it to her thigh) and only wanted McD to pay for her medical bills. It was something like $20k total, once all the skin grafts, reconstructive surgery, rehab, etc was accounted for. McD told her to pound sand. So she sued for the medical bills, because her insurance company required it as a condition of her coverage. Basically, her health insurance didn’t want to pay for it, so they said they’d only cover things after she lost a lawsuit.

    In the lawsuit, it was discovered that she wasn’t even the first person to have been injured; McD had been warned numerous times that their coffee was being served too hot (it was near boiling) and that it had horribly injured several people prior to this. But they kept the coffee hot to discourage free refills; People had to wait for their coffee to cool before they drank it, and all that waiting meant fewer refills. So McD repeatedly refused to lower the serving temp of their coffee, because they didn’t want to potentially give people an extra refill.

    In the lawsuit, the jury was so horrified that they awarded the woman the large judgement. Again, she was only suing for the medical bills, but they awarded her millions instead, to send a lesson to McD and hopefully get them to reduce the temp of their coffee.

    Instead, McD hired an advertising company to run an astroturfing campaign against the woman. They spread the myth that she was a money hungry vulture looking for an easy payday. They dragged her through the mud, and she ended up having a mental breakdown from all of the constant harassment. Simultaneously, they spread the stereotype that Americans are all super litigious and will sue at the smallest inconvenience. Again, to discourage future lawsuits by making people think their (completely legitimate) claims were frivolous.

    It’s widely considered to be one of the most successful astroturfing campaigns in history, and comments like yours are proof of that. The stereotype still exists to this day, all because McDonalds didn’t want to give free refills.