macOS is slightly more consistent among apps that use system controls, but the more custom the app, or the more React Native or Electron it is, the less predictable it is

Infuriatingly, some apps try to be smart — only one line, return submits; more than one line, return is a new line, and command-return submits; but command-return on just one line beeps an error.

Years of muscle memory are useless, so now I’m reaching for the mouse when I need to be clear about my intent

So much is solved when developers just use the provided UI controls, so much well-studied and carefully implemented behavior comes for free

I get it. I also know customer service is a pretty low paying job for something that involves being yelled at all day

I get as frustrated as anyone, but it’s not the fault of the person whose job it is to take my call.

I remember once on the phone with Comcast I just explained the situation and jokingly said look, if it helps, feel free to tell ‘em I’m yelling and screaming. The guy laughed. An engineer called me an hour later with a firmware update for my modem.

Sometimes there’s no winning. But sometimes it helps if you can put people on your team

Yep. When I’m frustrated on the phone with a rep, I always make sure to say something like “I understand this isn’t your fault, but I’m very frustrated with X.”

It seems to ease the tension a bit, anyway.

Angry customers aren't at fault. If all customers are mad as hell when they call, then the company will have to start paying better wages to keep customer support staff from quitting, and they'd rather fix the problem before doing that.

Yes, and this has been the case for years. Cnet, ZDnet, PCmag have been user-hostile since long before AI summaries. Pop-ups, “before you go,” back jacking, all the worst.

The Verge is a surprise because it is relatively new and was relatively free of this crap for a long time.

They’re all just empty brands now. They totally caved to advertisers, and now only advertisers care about them.

I dare say AI’s popularity is a symptom of all this more than a cause.

This. The truth is still putting on its shoes and all that

I note that Ken Fisher did post an editor’s note, Benj did publicly own up to it, and all of this was mentioned in the article.

In writing code, as in writing poetry, the mechanical labor is 5% writing, 45% editing, and 50% reading. But the only thing that makes it yours is you.

Color schemes voluntarily added by the user to an app like vim, great.

All the more reason for developers to keep the app itself responsive to the user’s environment by default.

Don’t bake in elaborate visual choices. It’s a usability thing first and a style thing somewhere much farther down the list.

Keep it simple from the factory. Don’t get in the way of customization. Let the user’s environment do the work of adapting it to the user.

I think fantastical isn’t totally inaccurate, and I’m not being snarky (for once). The personal observations and sometimes colorful language has been something I like about Ars. Benj in particular, with his warm tributes to BBSes. Or Jim Salter’s very human networking articles. The best stuff on Ars is both technically sound and rich with human experience. “Fantastical” taken to mean something like, capturing the thrills and aspirations that emerge from our contact with technology, seems fair I think.

I’ll be interested in finding out more about just what the hell happened here. I hardly think of Benj or Kyle as AI cowboy hacks, something doesn’t add up

“Fantastical” means based on fantasy: not real. A fantastical journalism source is one filled with lies.

You seem to think it means “extra fantastic.” Not correct.

It has a second definition which means something like "unbelievable in its strangeness/perfection", which can be used to imply that a real thing feels made up.

I agree that it's not a good word choice when describing a thing that could actually be fake, but you could describe a view from a mountain as fantastical even though it was 100% real.

Benj Edwards posted about it on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p

And then a handful of companies can offer a service to let advertisers punch through the plugins. And then another plugin could block that!

Thing is you’re probably right. The modern web is made of middlemen inserting themselves into user experiences to divert and extract revenue from the primary stream between consumer and producer. There’s always room for another layer.

I think targeting web sites was the right move because it was the web sites who were doing all the tracking.

Of course now we also have browsers to worry about as well, being products of the same ad companies that were clogging up the web sites in the first place.

But if cookie laws pushed data collecting web sites to malicious compliance, surely similar laws would do the same to (also data collecting!) browser providers. I’d prefer to avoid inviting browsers to add another layer of bullshit. And there’s no reason it would make web sites behave differently… if I’m a web site bound to comply with laws, I’m probably going to cover my own ass and keep doing what I’m doing without assuming the browser will handle it. Rendering the browser controls redundant and ineffective.

If we want to look for core flaws, look at allowing a handful of giant companies to control the market for personal data — or to traffic in personal data at all.

Ad companies have convinced the whole economic system of the Internet that they are inevitable and essential. They are neither. But we won’t fix that either.

The solution is to get off the damn internet, but short of doing that, I’ll prefer to keep my options open to disable telemetry on my own terms.

Here’s something I would like, though: total sandboxing per web site. Let every domain be alone in its own room of cookies and telemetry. Let it think I only ever visit that site, and optionally always for the first time. I shouldn’t have to blow away all my cookies all the time just to keep Facebook from following me all over the web.