Show HN: A fork of sudo with Touch ID support • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: A fork of sudo with Touch ID support

#131

Post by stephenr » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 3:56 AM UTC

monkmartinez wrote: post #125

robinson7d wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The standard "function keys can do anything" response is getting old. That "function keys can do anything" is, in my opinion, the exact reason they had to go. They're scary for the typical user. What is F7? You may know, but it's not obvious in any way. That some of them cause destructive actions (e.g. Alt+F4 on Windows) makes it worse - they're scary to many users. And even when after figuring out what some of the…

> That "function keys can do anything" is, in my opinion, the exact reason they had to go. They're scary for the typical user. Then make the whole screen touch enabled and bypass the silly, tiny screen gimmick.

Adding 'touch' to a UI designed for mouse/trackpad + keyboard interaction is inherently a terrible idea. Even my pinky finger is much bigger than the cursor. I would have zero chance of being accurate with it.

Also, that still requires the actual controls to be on-screen somewhere. With the touch bar, you can opt to not have those controls (e.g. a toolbar in an IDE, or a palette in a visual tool like photoshop) shown on the main display if they're available when contextually relevant, on the touch bar.

Re: Show HN: A fork of sudo with Touch ID support

#132

Post by stephenr » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 4:03 AM UTC

tomtheelder wrote: post #126

stephenr wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me again how function keys can produce full colour multitouch interfaces, such as video/image scrubbers, colour pickers, etc. The standard "function keys can do anything" response is getting old.

But "full colour multitouch interfaces" are awful compared to keyboard keys! Getting to switch back to my mouse + kb after using my phone is so fantastic. This bar is all the bad stuff about a touchscreen (limited/no tactile feedback, reduced ability to rely on muscle memory) plus the bad stuff about keyboards (primarily that they are not where your eyes are naturally). There are a few tiny niche uses cases that will…

> awful compared to keyboard keys

Don't mistake your opinion for a fact.

I'm pretty sure I hate the current situation with F-Keys at least as much as you claim to hate multi-touch interfaces.

If you truly use F-Keys by touch (i.e. without looking) forcing the touch bar into F-Key mode should get you pretty close to what you had anyway.

The F-Keys don't have the little identifying lumps (on mine these are on F & J), so you simply have to know where they are by muscle memory. The only difference is you're tapping like a track-pad tap (as opposed to trackpad click).

Re: Show HN: A fork of sudo with Touch ID support

#133

Post by douche » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 4:37 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #132

tomtheelder wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "full colour multitouch interfaces" are awful compared to keyboard keys! Getting to switch back to my mouse + kb after using my phone is so fantastic. This bar is all the bad stuff about a touchscreen (limited/no tactile feedback, reduced ability to rely on muscle memory) plus the bad stuff about keyboards (primarily that they are not where your eyes are naturally). There are a few tiny niche uses cases that will…

> awful compared to keyboard keys Don't mistake your opinion for a fact . I'm pretty sure I hate the current situation with F-Keys at least as much as you claim to hate multi-touch interfaces. If you truly use F-Keys by touch (i.e. without looking) forcing the touch bar into F-Key mode should get you pretty close to what you had anyway. The F-Keys don't have the little identifying lumps (on mine these are on F & J),…

On a proper IBM-M style keyboard layout, the F keys are in groups of four, with spaces between each group. This makes it trivial to touch-type them without looking.

It's really a very well laid out keyboard design. The worst thing about laptop keyboards is that they are all so non-standard, and every manufacturer does their own special-snowflake thing, so that it is almost impossible to touch-type on an unfamiliar machine.

Re: Show HN: A fork of sudo with Touch ID support

#134

Post by elmigranto » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #78

elmigranto wrote: post #22

I don't think this is very useful, at least in my usecase, where most things don't require sudo in the first place (homebrew installed DBs, etc.). Would be awesome to TouchID restart Upstart things on remotes, which is not really feasible. One can dream, though :)

Use the keychain to store your ssh keys, that's been possible since about 2007.

It doesn't help when remote sudo asks for password, does it?