A case can be made for graphic like elements like buttons, but for text: treat it like text even if it's clickable.
In the Web version of Outlook, there are regularly times where the location of an appointment is a street address. That text is typically clickable. But the click action doesn't correspond to the choice of mapping service I might want to use in any one instance or to the fact that I might have other actions, like copying the address into another email/sms/etc. Outlook followed your philosophy. You can't select and copy that text, save for going through several auxiliary clicks just to get to a spot where you can. It's the most annoying behavior I can imagine.
That you think that you sitting in a meeting room talking it over with colleagues, or perhaps I'm a meeting in your own mind can assign legitimate uses and not, when something other than say security might be at stake, is just wrongheaded.
And by the way, that address being the link that it is is great 60%, 70% of the time. But when it's not it's clearly a design mistake.
The point isn't that the developer should disable text selection whenever he thinks it's unnecessary, which would indeed be silly. It's that sometimes the user interface rules for navigating selectable text conflict or interfere with the user interface rules for navigating, say, a set of tab panes. In that situation, making the tab titles selectable will cause grief.
I agree with your address example. That is user data, and it should be selectable.
I don't think we disagree, too much. tab panes matches the "button" example.
However, I am sympathetic to those arguing translation. Sometimes I'll visit Japanese or Chinese websites. With some frequency, even if most of the site has an English edition, I'll find some UI element not translated, including buttons and the like... OK I think it was the commenter that I responded to, in a different reply said... just Google it if it's a single word. Great! But I don't even know where to begin to get the right characters from my old fashioned US keyboard. So now I have to Google for how to use my keyboard to get the characters I want, which also may need pre-requisite knowledge of the language I'm trying to translate (radicals and all that jazz)... that's a heavier lift than may be anticipated and where a simple copy/paste into an appropriate translator would make things much, much easier.
I would suggest this: make everything buttons, links, tabs, etc. selectable and copyable unless there is a real explicit and compelling reason to do otherwise. Now to be fair, I'm old enough to have been "online" in some fashion or another since before general public internet access availability was a thing... so my expectations for butter-like user experiences are low and my desire to do any damn thing I want high... but even today, there are probably still more websites which don't stop you from copying anything than there are searching for that polished experience where only the right things can be selected. The discontinuity and the deviation from the expectation that I can copy anything I also find as something which diminishes the user experience, even if occasionally I'm annoyed by over selecting things.
Or... just open up big warehouses, only do online sales, and then deliver to customer?
The truth is we have tried it and on a large scale: The Automat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat). Don't see to many of those around anymore, except maybe analogues in Japan.
With some perspective on the idea, would you invest in the retail real estate, the technology development, and later maintenance, and then still need to have staff to stop people from just breaking into the machine?
I guess it's up for interpretation whether stealing from an Amazon van is easier or harder than stealing from a store. Is it more risky for the thief to bring the Amazon van to the hood, or the hood to the store?
The store tends to always be there, there is often times need to have a lot of them, and they're available at well known (even published) times whereas the van isn't always at the same places at the same time and doesn't even carry predictable goods... just that you know there will be goods. Sure you can guess or make your luck by waiting for the van or search for it in good spots... but the cost is higher for the criminal to try and count on such a thing.
The truth is I expect stealing from a delivery van is ultimately simpler... or simply stealing the package off the porch easier still. The issue isn't the ease or difficulty.
Where I expect consumer delivery businesses to do better in the face of theft is on the cost of theft (assuming a certain scale in the delivery business). Given the economies of scale of a warehouse and the delivery model vs traditional retail locations, I bet means the loss for any item stolen from the van is less than that of the same item stolen from a traditional retail location.
I'm sitting in the back of a Lyft car right now... I had to prompt the driver via a phone call to actually try to pick me up at the designated airport pickup spot (you know, where the app has me go), he spent 10 minutes trying to get out of the airport parking lot because he didn't seem to have a ticket, and now his constant pumping of the gas peddle in the sluggish Los Angeles traffic is challenging even my ironclad resistance to motion sickness.
How I wish I was in a Waymo right now! I've never had remotely such a poor experience in a SF robotaxi.
Uber and Lyft took a shit in their mess kits by making their north stars advertised wait time on hail.
This caused them to increase the driver pool beyond the point of competence. That, in turn, required degrading customer service to the point that if I actually need help I have to use the flow that says I was in an accident or raped.
Waymo is neat as a robotaxi. But the reason it wins is they seized the nationwide premium market, a beachhead Uber (and paradoxically also Lyft) left undefended.
What Scott is missing is that the only reason "it did not get to orbit" is of interest at all is that SpaceX keeps claiming they got to orbit with starship. I believe that the trajectories have all been suborbital by design, but it still pisses me off that they keep claiming they got to orbit.
The reason this matters is that if they get into an orbit in a short test, they need to exit that orbit with some sort of active system. So the statement "we got to orbit" implies a lot more technology development than the current flights actually show. I agree with Scott that Starship can easily enter LEO, but I am not so sure it can exit gracefully.
What exactly do you think is the “more technology development than the current flights actually show“ needed to get into and out of orbit?
My impression is they just need to leave the engines on a little longer to get to orbit, then turn them on again with the ship pointed in another direction to get back to the suborbital trajectory they’ve already demonstrated deorbiting from.
The hard part is reentering through the atmosphere without burning up, flipping, and landing, which they’ve already demonstrated multiple times. There’s no additional atmosphere between where they’ve flown and “orbit”.
A little more longevity and one more engine restart, unless the suborbital is very suborbital, then it also means a lot more delta v. It doesn't seem that far away at all.
What's surprising is that people are still resorting to this silly complaint about not reaching orbit when there's a perfectly sensible complain they could be making instead: that SpaceX hasn't yet demonstrated that they can reach orbit and return safely. The safe return is important because I would expect a failure to return safely to be a big deal: it's not like this thing is going to completely burn up if they don't have control during a deorbit. The inadequate retry thermal protection is a large issue even if the Ship has managed to get to the landing areas on target and soft land in the right spot: the burn through on the control surfaces seems to mean that was as much luck as good engineering that the thing didn't crash somewhere less intended.
I appreciate none of that is as pithy as saying it simply didn't reach orbit, but it's a real concern versus something that is really irrelevant.
Starship returned safely. Safe return of orbital generally means a splashdown within 1500 miles of Point Nemo. They just demonstrated that they can splash down within meters of their target buoy. Even if the flaps failed completely they still would have been far less than 1500 miles off target.
They've done so more than than this time, too. Granted, with a little less "Ship" than they left with on all occasions I know of.
No one (at least not me or anyone I take seriously) is arguing whether or not these suborbital profiles are designed to be safe even under adverse or full failure conditions; though the Caribbean air corridors might have been managed a bit more gracefully on some previous flights... still...
Nonetheless there is a valid criticism that in ten flights they still haven't mastered keeping the control surfaces of the space craft whole during the reentry phase of flight. 1500 miles isn't going to cut it as a safe return zone when they try bring this in for a catch. While I'm as impressed as anyone that they've hit the mark with compromised Ships as many times as they have, neither Port Isabel nor Titusville are 1500 miles from their nearest Ship catch towers and I wouldn't support any attempts for a catch until they can get the whole Ship back in good working order... reliably. While I'm a advocate for this program and SpaceX... I'm not such a fanboy that I can't see there are issues with this aspect of the program. This is ignoring the impact on rapid reusability and simply focusing on the basic safety of the program.
Port Isabel is 6 miles away from Boca Chica. They demonstrated on a previous mission that they can land within meters of their target despite burnt out flaps. If SpaceX tries to catch Starship their launch tower might not be safe, but Port Isabel would be safe.
But they haven't tried to catch Starship yet and likely won't for a while, so you're arguing a silly hypothetical.
"Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch."
"Starship completed another successful ascent, placing it on the expected trajectory. The ship successfully reignited a single Raptor engine while in space, demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn before starting fully orbital missions. With live views and telemetry being relayed by Starlink, the ship successfully made it through reentry and executed a flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean."
"The Starship upper stage will again target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned."
To be fair, there were two press releases where they didn't correctly use "sub-orbital" and used orbital instead. Releases 3 and 9. Neither said they achieved orbit, but more causally talked about the "orbital coast" and the worst: "Starship's six second stage Raptor engines all started successfully and powered the vehicle to its expected orbit" from flight 3. It's true these statements are incorrect, but they aren't asserting a direct claim to having reached orbit (though they imply it), when they make an assertion about the nature of the program they seem fairly consistent in talking about their "suborbital campaign" as well as talking about their orbital missions being in the future.
The way I'm reading it, it looks like they get sloppy with language sometimes, but it doesn't look like they are directly asserting anything other than being in a suborbital program.
I have most heard this in terms of "orbital velocity" and "orbital trajectory," as well as statements from the announcers on their livestreams, who are SpaceX spokespeople whether you want to excuse them or not, of "we reached orbit." I agree that if you look at their carefully-crafted press releases, there are fewer exaggerations than if you look at other communications. Even so:
> To be fair, there were two press releases where they didn't correctly use "sub-orbital" and used orbital instead. Releases 3 and 9.
Another example of an official communication is a March 14, 2024 Musk tweet after a rocket did not reach orbital velocity:
> Starship reached orbital velocity! Congratulations @SpaceX team!!
Orbital velocity at the altitudes they target is 28-30 km/h. They consistently stop their tests at about 26 km/h. This is not to say the rocket can't make it to orbital velocity, just that it didn't.
"They get sloppy with their language sometimes" is a good way to excuse repeated lies. If this were a company you were less of a fan of, "they get sloppy with their language sometimes" probably wouldn't fly for you, either. Getting called on their bluffs about this is probably the reason they have gotten more precise about their language.
By the way, it is my opinion that it is time to cancel the entire Artemis program and both of its failures of rocket technology. If SpaceX wants to continue to develop Starship, it should do so without federal funding. I would have no problems with the Starship program if not for the use of public money.
Is it really a lot more technology? If they were landing 100 km away I'd agree, but aren't they basically reaching the required orbital speed and reentering and landing under retrorocket control? I'm no expert on orbital dynamics, so I might be missing something important.
They're never reaching orbital velocity on purpose. The reason is that they're still proving that they can fire rockets and deorbit under control; until they do that, any problem automatically puts the ship in the ocean no matter what while if they go to orbit and can't control the deorbit they end up possibly causing a disaster.
Now, they are getting it to pretty damn close to orbital velocity... which is why saying they still haven't reached orbit is a bit silly. They're clearly technically able to reach orbit if they really want to... that they haven't proved they can safely leave orbit is the problem.
> A UUID is a collection of random characters like f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6
This statement is just wrong. More accurately, A UUID -can be- a 128 bit number made up of mostly random bits (UUIDv4) which can be represented as a string using a common representation. Sure, that may well be a common case for most, but there are very completely non-random UUID versions as well, such as UUIDv1 or, more recently, the somewhat random UUIDv7.
The author's proposed ID system is less defensible against some of the other UUID versions which aren't addressed. But that initial description suggests that the author doesn't have a complete enough understanding of UUIDs to really make a credible case about UUID problems (which do exist) vs. their own proposed system.
And yet the preliminary report for the incident in question includes reference to that bulletin, indicates that the switches in the accident aircraft were of a very similar design and subject to advisory inspections:
"The FAA issued Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB ) No. NM -18-33 on
December 17, 2018, regarding the potential disengagement ofthe fuel control switch locking
feature. This SAIB was issued based on reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that
the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The airworthiness
concern was not considered an unsafe condition that would warrant airworthiness directive
(AD) by the FAA. The fuel control switch design , including the locking feature, is similar on
various Boeing airplane models including part number 4TL837-3D which is fitted in B787-8
aircraft VT-ANB. As per the information from Air India, the suggested inspections were not
carried out asthe SAIB was advisory and not mandatory. The scrutiny ofmaintenance records
revealed that the throttle control module was replaced on VT-ANB in 2019 and 2023.
However, the reason for the replacement was not linked to the fuel control switch. There has
been no defect reported pertaining to the fuel control switch since 2023 on VT-ANB."
So while I agree that this being the cause sounds unlikely, referencing the switch issue is something relevant enough for the report itself.
During her remarks on Wednesday in a conversation with Northwestern Law Dean Hari Osofsky, Kagan took a notably hostile and forceful stand against a practice that hasn’t generated much public debate but has roiled the legal community in recent years: individual U.S. District Court judges blocking federal government policies nationwide.
Executive branch officials from the Biden, Trump and Obama administrations have all complained about their major policy initiatives often being hamstrung by a single judge.
“This has no political tilt to it,” Kagan said, taking aim not only at the sweeping injunctions but at the transparent “forum shopping” by litigants filing cases in courts they think will be friendliest to them.
“You look at something like that and you think, that can’t be right,” Kagan said. “In the Trump years, people used to go to the Northern District of California, and in the Biden years, they go to Texas. It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.”
-----------------------
There are many takes that you can have on this, but a principled view of how the court should operate shouldn't be a matter of if you simply get your way or not.
I'm talking more broadly about this court and its decisions, of which this decision is one of many that are obliterating precedent and directly empowering the sitting president.
Want to ban nationwide injunctions against student debt relief? Sure, I can agree with that. Want to ban nationwide injunctions against ACA enforcement or some other similar type thing? I have no problem either way.
Banning a nationwide injunction against birthright citizenship is inherently different. It’s a fundamental constitutional right we are talking about. Banning birthright citizenship should not be allowed to be enforced until SCOTIS decides the matter.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here to your point about sharing other's work. Some (many?) sell their tricks. So assuming that you've spent time developing a new trick and some portion of your living depends not just on presentation, but also selling the trick or training.... I could see some getting upset.
Otherwise, I don't think the issue is spoiling it for audiences as the craft and presentation style count as much or more than the trick itself.
One thing that you, and many others commenting on may be missing, is that we're getting an uncorroborated, retelling of a story that may well be simply reflecting the teller's own attitudes and reflections rather than a blow-by-blow account of what actually happened.
For example, say I was the interviewee and actually said of the SQL question: "Well, to be frank, that question isn't so good for understanding my SQL abilities." I don't think that would be rude or evidence of "being an asshole". A retelling of that story may simply be condensing it down to how that statement was interpreted: as a nice way to say, "that's a stupid question".
We shouldn't get too far into parsing what's in the story as a verbatim telling of what happened. We have the author's impressions of those events and their interpretations of the outcomes to drive home a larger point the author wants to make. That's it.
In the Web version of Outlook, there are regularly times where the location of an appointment is a street address. That text is typically clickable. But the click action doesn't correspond to the choice of mapping service I might want to use in any one instance or to the fact that I might have other actions, like copying the address into another email/sms/etc. Outlook followed your philosophy. You can't select and copy that text, save for going through several auxiliary clicks just to get to a spot where you can. It's the most annoying behavior I can imagine.
That you think that you sitting in a meeting room talking it over with colleagues, or perhaps I'm a meeting in your own mind can assign legitimate uses and not, when something other than say security might be at stake, is just wrongheaded.
And by the way, that address being the link that it is is great 60%, 70% of the time. But when it's not it's clearly a design mistake.
reply