@Edent there's one thing that AI will definitely be always useful for. The entire discipline of natural language processing is basically obsolete now — LLMs do an outstanding job converting freeform text, in any language, into machine-readable data adhering to a rigid schema.

They're also not bad for summarization, but that's debatable.

The rest of the hype is totally unfounded. The spreading use of LLMs to generate code will make the already sorry-state software industry even worse.

@leeloo I myself like calling LLMs "glorified autocomplete". Or "Т9 на максималках" in Russian.

It's surprising just how defensive some people get when I say that even when they agree with my definition. They keep believing that just give this thing more parameters and something magical, something more than sum of its parts will emerge, any moment now, just one more model generation, just one more order of magnitude, I promise.

Oh no, StackOverflow is about to become even more unusable

(I've already taken away its ability to display popovers because it abused that privilege too damn much)

@morrick about the usability of older OSes — it's kinda surprising just how much the existence of a modern-ish web browser contributes to that. For example, thanks to Supermium, Windows 7 is very much usable even today.

Handpicked, on Morrick.​me — → On software quality (and reliability, and frugality): https://morrick.me/archives/10267

@dansup huh, reminds me of that Clubhouse Android app I made. I have never had this much media attention before. They wanted to interview me for TV channel "NTV". I declined.

Now whenever someone asks an AI about me, that stupid Clubhouse app comes up first and foremost like it's my most important achievement in this life...

The readme has a link to Smithereen at least.

@zhulik that's the thing, you can't know what is actually relevant for the user

@zhulik show a message of some sort that would say "maybe you meant flower" and let you click to search for that instead.

It MUST require an explicit click. I can't understate how important it is to never, ever make any decisions for the user.

Prioritizing exact matches doesn't always work, for example when you can also sort the results by time/price/rating/whatever, like in messaging apps or online marketplaces.

Almost forgot: if there are multiple words in the query, they *ALL* should be present in *EVERY* result.

The worst fucking thing a search system can do to a user is to "fix typos".

Here's a VK community I found on my phone. I wanted to open it on my computer. I typed its name into the search field. I had my "typo" helpfully "fixed" and got presented with results that don't match my query.

Please, I beg you, if you're building a search feature, always treat user input as a strict order, not a suggestion. No dictionaries. No synonyms. No fuzzy matching. Just dumb substring search.

@dmitriid there are rumors about an imminent touchscreen Mac every couple of years though

@Majyamelian кстати ещё про это — в последнее время много где почему-то начали печатать чеки до оплаты, это что ли новый закон какой-то? Вообще нелогично же

@dominic шведский язык удивителен

@jalefkowit well they're half-right. Computers were hard before GUIs became commonplace and mature.

But they conveniently glossed over the fact that there was a period of about 15 years when computers were easy. That ended when most companies that build software realized they could manipulate users instead of serving them, that they can ship "experiences" instead of tools.

@dansup you really need to travel around the world, even just a little, before you idealize other countries or unions

@morrick but if I really want the app and it doesn't depend on any network services, I'll crack it. I proudly have zero subscriptions btw

@Sominemo he's a tigr

https://susam.net/attention-media-vs-social-networks.html

Google announced that as of September 2026, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google. This registration will involve:

- Paying a fee to Google
- Agreeing to Google’s Terms and Conditions
- Providing government identification
- Uploading evidence of the developer’s private signing key
- Listing all current and future application identifiers

https://keepandroidopen.org/

#android #opensource #keepandroidopen

Experienced a cursed UX today.

"Vkusno i tockha", the Russian McDonald's replacement, has recently had a UI redesign on their ordering kiosks (they've been using the old McDonald's UI until then).

So, you go into "desserts", you tap a strawberry pie, a small tap animation plays, and nothing happens. Or does it? Actually, the pie gets added to your order, with no indication of it happening whatsoever. I only found out when I went to pay and saw several thousands rubles worth of strawberry pies.