Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️I found a very odd Google search bug/misfeature on android: I've somehow gotten stuck in Brown Mode.
It happens in both Firefox and Chrome, and as long as I'm signed into my account, it's brown.
There's no color theme settings I can find, and while I thought this was a dark mode issue, the dark mode options are quite minimal:
And all three of those options either give me the regular non-dark theme, or the new Brown theme.
None give me the Grey Dark Theme, the one I get when I'm logged out.
Grabbed a tablet: logged in or out over there gives me the grey theme (Although it looks bluish there, which could mean everything or nothing).
Possibly important note: the tablet is logged into a different Google account
It's been suggested this could be a dynamic coloration based on androids dynamic themeing. Nope, changed my wallpaper to completely different colors.
I also tried applying the "color palette" feature (which was off) to make my whole OS pink and blue. Still brown.
I also tried applying the "color palette" feature (which was off) to make my whole OS pink and blue. Still brown.
Same for the OS-level dark mode. I had it on, but turning it off (and turning on the Google-search settings dark mode) still gives me brown.
Also not affected by if Firefox's dark mode is off or on.
I'm starting to think we have too many dark mode switches.
You should have one, not multiple intricately nested ones, but I fully understand why it's not easy to make it work that way.
You should have one, not multiple intricately nested ones, but I fully understand why it's not easy to make it work that way.
Annoyingly this is only happening on my personal account, so I'm not set up to easily lie to Google about where I am or what time it is.
It's not the "eye comfort shield" blue-light filter either. When that's on, the UI of the Browser and OS are affected, not just Google, and Google looks different: this is a clear theme, not just a full screen color filter.
For my final test, I need to wait until it's "a time Google thinks I should be awake" in my timezone, because right now my leading theory is that Google is applying their own blue-light-filter by switching into a second THIRD SEARCH SKIN based on the current timezone + location.
And when I log out*/use private browsing/use incognito: it doesn't know my location to personalize it to.
*haven't actually tried logging out, just private modes. I hope that is not an oversight.
It is way too "I have been awake for 20 hours" for me to attempt logging back into my Google account without accidentally deleting everything and forgetting all my passwords and my mother's maiden name*.
* hey what if I have two dads, neither of which changed their name? It's the 90s, it's possible! These poor kids can never have a quite-shitty password-reminder!
It's also possible there is nothing at all I can do that affects this, and it's just some A/B testing that one of my accounts got in the segment for and the other didn't.
In 1948, B. F. Skinner's "Superstition in the Pigeon" showed that if you fed pigeons at completely random times, they would still try to predict when they'd be fed. Absent any information or pattern for when they'll be fed, they become "superstitious".
The repeat specific behaviors, turning in place, waving, pecking at a specific spot on the floor...
The repeat specific behaviors, turning in place, waving, pecking at a specific spot on the floor...
They do this, he asserts, because they're trying to repeat the meaningless actions that happened the last time they "won", and got fed.
It's like a lucky pair of pants you always wear when your team wins.
It's like a lucky pair of pants you always wear when your team wins.
In both cases, there's no action that leads to the win condition, and no information to accurately predict the outcome.
But both our brains and the pigeon's brain don't work like that. They assume there are patterns and tries to find them. They assume it's not just all random and unpredictable.
That's usually a good thing! It clearly is very useful, for both us and pigeons, to figure out the patterns... because usually there are!
Many things are related and predictable. Basic physics for example: if a thing is in the air, it will fall down. Get out of the way.
Definitely a pattern there!
(Although you may need to adjust for the "flying" loophole)
That's why we evolved a "pattern finding" brain. Because there's patterns in the world, and recognizing them is useful.
Anyway, I think of those pigeons, spinning in place, perhaps praying to some God of Food Pellets they invented, and how they don't know there's no pattern and all there actions are meaningless. The cruel scientist man built this game so you can't win, and worse: you don't know you can't win, so you have to keep trying.
I thing about them and how I've been doing professional "computer stuff" for like two and a half decades now and BOY does it feel like we're spinning pigeons a frightening amount of the time.
Anyways, A/B testing: because gaslighting is cool if you do it in parallel at scale!
Still brown at 3:20pm. So it's not time based.
Jade@foone On my phone I've been stuck in brown land for a couple days too
Bizarrely on my desktop the colours didn't change but they fucked the font up
C.Is it as simple as "brown means you're signed in, otherwise you're not"? You said it was only when you were signed in...
</dumb-q>
John de Largentaye@foone could also be that Google themselves are A/B testing and you’re in the test cohort.?
Lunar 🛸 ♾@foone This is an odd toot without context.
Blisterexe@foone i would suggest that the brown theme looks significantly better than yhe default blue.
Also ddg lets you choose a custom theme
The Long Tail@foone But unless you've already done A/A testing, you have no idea what the natural variability in the system is, so you have no idea whether the result from your A/B test is statistically significant...
Catcrimes@foone the entire field is built of layer upon layer of superstition masquerading as engineering
It's amazing it all works as well as it does.
Tim Kingman@foone Spinning Pigeons would be a great name for a blog/consultancy/niche hardware maker/ska band, and all the domains are available.
Emil HAS MOVED TO tiggi.es@foone the Chinese SF author Cixin Liu had a twist on this where turkeys were fed at a predictable time of day, eventually a turkey scientist makes a model that predicts when the turkeys will come. The day after they come up with the model all the turkeys are killed and eaten.
hattifattener@foone Have you read "House of Stairs"? It made a bit of an impression on me as a kid. The author's other stuff was similarly intense if I recall.
@hattifattener yeah, one of my favorite books as kid. I've owned three distinct copies.
Steve@foone sounds like the Republican Party to me.
Andrew Haining 
@foone this is what exposure to AI and "algorithms" does to the human brain except instead of food, it's anxiety
Bill Seitz@foone an old twitter thread of mine https://twitter.com/BillSeitz/status/1538327133566771202
truh@foone Google decided not to offer me SMS as a second factor any more because of safer alternatives which is fair I guess. Problem is that none of the alternatives work. It's either "verify by clicking accept on the Android device you no longer have" or "verify by creating a OTP in the account settings of the Android device that isn't even connected to Google services any more".
Brian Campbell@foone Is it also possible this is Google A/B testing something? I've noticed A/B tests that they do tend to be sticky by account, so in one account you might see a new feature but in another or not logged in you won't.
UpLateGeek@foone you could do what I did when they removed paginated search result pages and replaced it with the much worse infinite scrolling/load more results, send them a feedback complaining about it. Took them ages to fix it, but I eventually got my proper paginated results back.
LR
Dany 