I recently tried to put my phone into black & white mode via iPhone accessibility shortcut (triple click on power button)
This did not seem to work for me. I would forget about it and after a while just left it on color.
Now I use a shortcut on the action button. By default my iPhone is black and white, pressing the action button gives me color for two minutes.
The crucial step is that after this time it is automatically switching back to black and white. Even when the phone is locked.
This now seems to actually help. And as a side effect I also enjoy looking at a few things in black and white. A new experience.
All these great ideas for how to prevent you from doing something, they all need to allow me to bypass it when I want to, but they also need to automatically switch back to the “locked” mode.
This needs to be seamless so that the “yes I am sure I want to read this” bypass does not become a new, meaningless habit.
What is also interesting is that apparently, for me, a hard lock-out, a hard disable, is not good enough.
Instead, reducing the joy (black & white filter) seems to work much better and does not motivate me to work around the restriction.
I doubt I would be happy with a dumb phone either. So this is a good middle ground.
One other thing I’ve always hoped to see is a kind of scheduled check in with me, where I am asked / reminded to get out of my Netflix / Reddit / YouTube tunnel vision.
Hardware and software to do that is tricky. iOS locked down too much.
But there are today quite capable and cheap Esp32 based smart watches (~$25) and I am trying to figure out how to integrate one of these into my life purely for tunnelvision-interrupting “are you really sure you want to do this right now?” notifications.
I feel privileged to have had a childhood before smartphones.
At least I can remember how we used to be.
All of these measures are not because of how it is today but because I am afraid of where we will be a few years from now. Endlessly engaging generated AI content.
Better try to build some boundaries while I still can.
I'd speculate those came first (kinda popular with streamers and such, I think) and they basically just added a usb port. In the product video you can even see that they arrive as individual sticks to be plugged in.
It is probably easier and cheaper to have 6x separate display & microcontroller and update each one independently
There is a lot of discussion in the comments about using VMs for dev work. I too try to at least use containers whenever I can but it's sometimes not very practical. Better than nothing.
99% of the threat model is software trying to extract data. Either for myself (e.g. blackmail) or to learn about me and attack others (impersonation for scams, fraud, blackmail against others) or to access systems I have access to (tokens, API keys, online banking)
Currently I am playing around with local LLMs on a Mac. The whole field is moving so fast that it is impossible not to rely on recent releases to quickly try new features. Unfortunately there is no way to access the Mac GPU in VMs.
So right now to have at least a tiny bit of separation I have the local LLM tools set up on a separate local Mac user that I can then ssh into and use to expose a web server usable from my main (dev) account.
This of course is far from perfect but at least a little better than before.
I fully expect supply chain attacks on AI tooling and perhaps even malicious LLM models to happen at some point. That target is too juicy.
Setting this up I was a bit irritated by some of the defaults of macos for multi user setups.
- All mac software is usually installed to the global /Applications folder. Homebrew needs a workaround to work across multiple users
- By default all files of a local mac user can be read by all other non admin local mac users. Only Apple-created folders like Documents, Desktop etc. are locked down
If you want to store files outside of those Apple-created folders, perhaps because you sync Documents with icloud and want to store project repos and larger files, perhaps because you have ssh and github configs, dotfiles etc. in your home dir, then they are all by default readable by other non admin users.
This is not to say that this is a huge issue that can't be fixed (just need to remove default permissions for group 'staff' yourself) but it is interesting that this is the default.
The concept of multiple local users seems to be completely ignored by users and by Apple, and has been mostly unchanged for decades.
There are tiny improvements such as Apples permissions dialog when an application accesses Desktop, Documents or Downloads for the first time. But this seems pretty useless all things considered.
Why is it not more common to have stronger local separation? I don't need and don't want total iOS-level sandboxing (and lack of file system) but why isn't there a little more progress on the computer side of things?
I agree that VM-level isolation with good usability and little performance loss would be a great thing. But this is aiming for perfection in a world pressured by more and more supply chain attacks as well as more automated (read: AI controlled) computer use.
As an 80% "OS-native" solution it would be great if I could easily use local users for different project files _and_ stream GUIs across users (to work seamlessly from one main account).
Then we could probably avoid the majority of security risks in every day computer use for developers and other "computer workers" alike.
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I skipped over that last part but this is the real blocker. It should be possible by now to easily stream a "remote" (local, different user) application UI into my current users window management with full support for my many screens, resolutions, copy/paste and shortcuts. All while having zero quality loss or performance overhead if done locally.
I don't want remote desktop, I want remote application UI. This is not a new idea (X11 forwarding)
Here's a fun thought:
AI workflows and agents have surprised us all. We see them clicking and typing and changing files on our machines. If the OS-makers don't come up with appropriate mechanisms then we will somehow end up recreating a new form of OS. It is already starting with AI-focussed browsers or ChatGPT as an entry point to delegate "browse the web for me".
It will be web based with compute happening on VMs in the background, probably billed like a SaaS and disappoint all of us wanting to preserve the ideal of personal computers.
Eventually it will make desktop OS's irrelevant and we all end up working with a form of chromebook
There’s been a push in recent years to teach the non-tech public that reusing passwords is bad, in part because if there is a leak in one service it’s easy to try the same somewhere else. Easy enough to relate to.
I wish the messaging would include email addresses as well. It’s easy for everyone to use different passwords nowadays with deep integrations everywhere. But generated email addresses still require a lot of extra steps for most users.
To change this has to first become a mainstream concern.
Today there is iCloud email forwarding.
But it’s still new and not as convenient to use outside of iOS.
Also I have no idea about the longevity of that service. Wouldn’t trust it as recovery mail for important accounts
> Renaming with anything other than Enter makes sense because Enter opens the file.
Does it? Enter is “text confirmation, make new line”.
With single line inputs it’s expected to work like a submit for e.g. a search. Submitting a file name change happens with enter on windows as well. Now if you rename with f2, then submit with enter and accidentally press enter a single time you suddenly have executed or opened something you only wanted to rename. Enter, the most prominent big button with a single function after space, suddenly becomes a completely orthogonal context sensitive option. That’s weird
And don’t get me started on the use of enter in Microsoft teams based on context of your message...
If you are in a list or ‘’’ code formatted block the first enter will break out and allow you to write plain text below in the same message, the second enter will send the message
> The fact that in Finder the Enter button does not actually enter a directory or run/open a file but let me rename it was the biggest surprise. I personally rename filesystem objects rarely, while I 'execute' them all the time, it does not make sense!
You are right, I hadn’t thought of that. But there is an easy solution that imho in a way is better anyways:
CMD arrow allows you to navigate through file structure including drill down, I.e. open folder.
CMD o opens/runs any file selected (also opens folders so it’s a not-so-elegant replacement for open on enter)
This to me makes more sense though now that I think about it because it differentiates between running (potentially unsafe/slow) and quick keyboard navigation through folders. I admit the CMD arrow functionality is a bit hidden
Finder is probably the worst part of using a Mac. But explorer isn’t that much better either
I am currently forced to use windows and it’s near impossible to get anything done with it without feeling frustrated. It simply doesn’t follow my speed and line of thought on anything.
I am quite shocked after using Mac for 7 years how little progress or even regression windows 10 went through. Without making this into a windows bashing thread only the explorer related things I can think of:
- unzip hidden behind right click or freaking menu button. And a dialog with checkbox to “show files after extraction”. Mac: double click. New folder. Done
- rename through right click or f2. Laptop means fn+f2.
Mac: press enter, type, done
- quicklook on Mac is the single greatest feature ever. Mainly because it works in file dialogs. Need to upload a file but don’t know which one? Just quicklook. Windows afaik has no equivalent
- somewhat related, maximum length of file paths. There is no excuse for that in 2019. If unzipping fails because of this the software is just plain bad
And this is just explorer which I barely use. Shocking
https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader/issue...