Mastodawn

I really like it when apps have a "search" button conveniently located at the bottom of the screen where I can get to it while using my phone with one hand. But then they go and put the text box at the top of the screen, and once you realise you now have to go and click that, you have to change how you're holding the phone to click it to then actually start searching - using the keyboard that appears at the bottom of the screen...

I know this is the definition of a first-world problem but it's amazing how many apps do this. They've taken something that should be one easy swift click-and-go, and made it into two awkward movements to opposite ends of the screen that completely breaks flow and concentration. Ew.

I imagine this would be even more vexing for people with accessibility requirements...

#ui #uidesign #ux #accessibility #a11y

ds Jun 1

@bluewitchgwen using a VM is a good way to check usability stuff, or seeing if you like one distro/desktop environment over another, but VMs aren't great if you want to check performance or hardware compatibility.

Most distros offer a way to try the system without installing it, such as Fedora Workstation. I've had a great time with Bazzite on my games machine. It's geared towards gaming and is pretty hands-off in terms of admin to keep it up to date etc.

There are a lot of options out there though (I'm sure you'll get a huge variety even just in this thread), so the VM idea is actually a good place to start if you want to whittle down all the choices before getting one of them running on the physical hardware...

Show thread

ds May 31

@cairobraga a short-term solution might be to force it to a pre-slop version (I've seen 3.4.1 cited as a good version in a few places?), and your package manager should have config options that let you lock it at that version.

Not a great long-term strategy but should give some breathing space while the situation gets resolved somehow...

Show thread

ds May 28

@joshg bizarre. I'd start by checking the manufacturer website for any bios/uefi firmware updates for the laptop

Show thread

ds May 24

@Old_IT_geek there were a lot of substantial things covered by Pocock in that interview yet somehow their takeaway from it was to blow one little sentence way out of proportion. I saw the interview and unless I'm missing some broader context, the quote "there's plenty of conversations happening all the time" is doing all of the heavy lifting in that take... a v weird thing to focus on for analysis IMO

Show thread

ds May 24

@HardBeingGreen hmm, rewatched that bit but i'm not quite hearing it. I see where he said "discussions are happening all the time" but I took that to mean people talk about all sorts of ideas but with no indication of it being a serious prospect vs people just asking "what if".

To me it sounded more like he's just interested in doing the best job he can for his community and at the moment that's doing what he's doing in the Senate... but yep can see how it's all v open to interpretation

Show thread

ds May 23

@HardBeingGreen interesting as a thought experiment, but was probably the least interesting part of the chat

Speers: "will you rule out ever potentially doing a thing?"
Pocock: "no"
Speers: "you heard it here first folks, Pocock is not not considering doing a thing, amazing journalism well done Speersy"

It was weird to see Speers zone in on trying to analyse that when there was much more substantial stuff Pocock was actually talking about

ds May 10

just wait until those voters realise Gina isn't going to buy them all a plane

#auspol

Show thread

ds May 3

@tychotithonus I throw my email address into the "personal dictionary" (settings > system > keyboard) and set the first letter as a shortcut - then I just need to type "d" and the address shows up in the autocomplete suggestions. Saves a lot of typing!

Show thread

ds Apr 25

@spacebug I'm not sure about the actual security value of this against someone who's had physical access to your machine, but it's a neat concept so I'll throw some ideas in anyway:

There might be a way to set some text in gdm using dconf, but I see there is also an option to set a welcome logo - I wonder if you could use that to display a QR code of your hash, and have a script updating the backing image every 15min.

A bonus would be that your phone app could scan it and verify it without you having to manually compare sha hashes. This would depend on gdm updating the image "live" without needing a restart though, unless you are ok with only verifying when it boots up.

Depending on the size that the logo is rendered you might want to reduce that to a sha256 or even truncate it further (I'd think even a 128 bit truncated hash should be enough for this purpose).