Notices by Jonty Wareing (jonty@chaos.social)

In case of emergency: A map of every capybara in the UK and France

https://www.google.com/maps/@/data=!4m3!11m2!2s8x4VZIBoZrTUaKNCwPtUM_DWiQmlEA!3e3?utm_source=mstt_0

I feel sorry for young people who will never experience the intense satisfaction of pressing a CRT monitor degauss button

Has anyone told them

Reminder: Just because someone is posting on social media a lot, visibly doing projects, and otherwise looks like they're living their best life

1) Does not mean they are ok - social media is often a distraction and an escape valve

2) Does not mean they are ignoring you - they may be overwhelmed and incapable of handling messages

This prehistoric fish wishes you a happy Wednesday

Turns out the cure for impostor syndrome is discovering quite how incompetent the person who previously did the job was

Unpopular opinion: Dogs do not belong in shared offices. I will not change my mind.

would anybody like a KEEP EARTH WEIRD sticker because I have a lot of KEEP EARTH WEIRD stickers

Honestly the funniest thing I've seen this year. I know it's only mid-January, but still.

you had ONE JOB

Things I regret: Looking at github issues for the open-source self-driving car conversion kit.

Thousands of people use these things on public roads.

https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/34346

Candidate for understatement of the year: "This can be a safety issue if a driver is misled into thinking that steering is occurring"

The most damning evidence I've ever seen for "this device is only used by single people":

If you have a passenger they *also* have to be looking at the road or it sets off the "pay attention" alarm.

Or they can put their head on the dashboard.

You can say "Threads is an apocalyptic drama which causes psychological damage" and accurately describe both Threads (1984 British TV film) and Threads (2023 Social Network)

My TV show pitch is Storage Wars but with abandoned S3 buckets

Applause for the marketing team who turned this bug into a feature

Fuck it, we can call them all out - please collect the worst consumer electronics UX nightmares you see this Christmas and send them over. Take photos, videos, describe it - jonty@jonty.co.uk

I'll shove them all on a website and try to embarrass companies into fixing them.

Press friends: I shall be in touch

I feel desperately sad when thinking about all the non-technical people with nobody to help them. This industry is making them feel stupid and frustrated, purely for profit reasons.

Don't build dark patterns into your UX. Refuse. Complain. Call them out. You're actively hurting people in the world.

Family members keep saying "I need lessons" or "I'm too old for this technology" over Christmas.

When I look at what they're struggling with it's reliably a buggy UX nightmare, and often wasn't cheap so they persist in using it.

I don't know how we fix this. Consumer electronics is totally broken.

The worst thing is that people make what seems like informed choices when buying - "good" brands, expensive models, recommendations from press.

But those rules no longer work in a world where brands change hands, software updates constantly, and the device has to be compatible with everything else you own.

Explaining this is hard.