Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

blind.guru

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 333 posts

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#81

Post by TeMPOraL »

UncleMeat wrote: post #75
dotancohen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A faster horse. People value privacy when made aware of the issue, but very few people are aware of how websites track (and manipulate) them.

I feel like this claim needs support. All of the studies I'm aware of that ask people to choose between different price points based on privacy end up showing minimal valuing of privacy.

GP's claims and the studies you mention are about two different things. GP claimed that users aren't generally aware of the extent their privacy is violated, and not that they would chose privacy over price if made aware.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

javajosh wrote: post #78
TeMPOraL wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The capabilities are there. The dev experience is there (somewhat; JS ecosystem is a mess, but I guess that's just a side effect of moving very fast). But the capabilities are not used for end-user benefit. Not much, anyway. Yes, I benefit from Netflix, I benefit from Google products (not as much as I would if they didn't keep on worsening the UX every few months) - and such functionality requires some of the new cap…

I agree with you on all points - I think we're just speaking past each other. I'm speaking about the platform, and you're speaking about applications. The applications written for the web today are exactly as you say; the browser platform itself, however, is quite extraordinary and I remain deeply impressed with it.

Right. I admit that I was strongly biased against browsers because of my distaste with web applications. The browser as a platform is slowly growing on me these days, and I won't deny that modern browsers are some of the most impressive feats of software engineering.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#83

Post by apjana »

Spivak wrote: post #3

Serious question, why search Google in your terminal with Lynx as opposed to `googler`? The actual result pages can still open in Lynx but the experience of navigating the results is very nice.

There's a patch over v3.9 that works with the new layout: https://github.com/jarun/googler/issues/306

Hopefully we'll have a PR merged soon.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#85

Post by kube-system »

UncleMeat wrote: post #75
dotancohen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A faster horse. People value privacy when made aware of the issue, but very few people are aware of how websites track (and manipulate) them.

I feel like this claim needs support. All of the studies I'm aware of that ask people to choose between different price points based on privacy end up showing minimal valuing of privacy.

It is clear that many people know that many services they enjoy compromise their privacy. These stories have been covered by mainstream media ad nauseam. Jokes about privacy compromises are part of pop-culture at this point.

Most people, however, are not enthusiasts or activists who are wholly invested in these topics. Even being aware of the issue, most act based on their immediate needs. Immediacy is an extremely important factor in decision-making.

If we were to give this a utilitarian assessment formula:

[severity of problem] * [immediacy of problem] [importance of need] * [immediacy of need]

Many people using social media to communicate with their family may evaluate that as:

[100] * [1] < [100] * [100]

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#86

Post by leesalminen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60
ppod wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mistake you are making is that you are trying to answer the question of what the average user wants by looking at what you want. Developers are not representative of users.

That's a cop-out. Being a developer and a long-time computer user biases me, but also gives me a more informed perspective on what's productive and ergonomic, and what's distracting and annoying. I can name the issues I see, instead of writing off the frustration as "this computer must have viruses" or "this is just how things have to be". Bloat because of inefficient design isn't delivering any value to regular peop…

In my experience (years of talking IRL with thousands of users of my B2B SaaS product), there exists a large cohort of users that don't want to improve their computer skills. They want the software to make things as absolutely "user friendly" as possible.

As an example, I tried standardizing on across our product (hundreds of fields). Within 24 hours we logged >1,000 tickets with users saying they disliked the change. They preferred the fancy datepicker because it let them see a full calendar and that enabled a more fluid conversation with the customer (like "next Wednesday").

Yes, Chrome does offer a calendar for this field type, but Safari for desktop does not (just off the top of my head).

I'm a vim-writing, tmux-ing, bash-loving developer. If it were up to me, I'd do everything in the terminal and never open a browser.

I recognize that the world doesn't revolve around me and my skills, interests and tastes. If a large cohort of my customers tell me they don't want to improve their computer skills and want a fancy UI, who am I to tell them they're wrong? They're paying me. They get what they want.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#87

Post by nope96 »

dessant wrote: post #11

The redesigned version of Google Search that is being A/B tested no longer shows links. Despite being a developer, I'm anxious to click search results, especially because when results are filtered to be from the last day or week, they are full of phishing sites and pages with scraped content that immediately redirect to malware. This change can't possibly be beneficial to users. It makes people even more ignorant abo…

Speaking of recent Google changes - Has anyone else noticed Google has removed the 'sign out' link? Before, you could click the upper right corner icon and "sign out", but that is now gone and I cannot find any way to sign out of Google, anywhere!

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#88

Post by jandrese »

linusnext wrote: post #74

From JWZ.org Greetings, Lynx users. There is a reason this page doesn't use ALT tags on the images. The reason is that the bozos responsible for both MSIE and Netscape Confusicator 4.0 decided that they would display the ALT tags of images every time you move the mouse over them -- even if the images are loaded, and even if they are not links. The ALT attribute to the IMG tag is supposed to be used instead of the ima…

Someone got really worked up over text appearing when they moused over an image, and broke accessibility because of it?

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#89

Post by ShteiLoups »

dessant wrote: post #11

The redesigned version of Google Search that is being A/B tested no longer shows links. Despite being a developer, I'm anxious to click search results, especially because when results are filtered to be from the last day or week, they are full of phishing sites and pages with scraped content that immediately redirect to malware. This change can't possibly be beneficial to users. It makes people even more ignorant abo…

At least in chrome, mousing over a hyperlink pulls up the destination address in the bottom left corner (for now).

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#90

Post by Endy »

leesalminen wrote: post #86
TeMPOraL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cop-out. Being a developer and a long-time computer user biases me, but also gives me a more informed perspective on what's productive and ergonomic, and what's distracting and annoying. I can name the issues I see, instead of writing off the frustration as "this computer must have viruses" or "this is just how things have to be". Bloat because of inefficient design isn't delivering any value to regular peop…

In my experience (years of talking IRL with thousands of users of my B2B SaaS product), there exists a large cohort of users that don't want to improve their computer skills. They want the software to make things as absolutely "user friendly" as possible. As an example, I tried standardizing on across our product (hundreds of fields). Within 24 hours we logged >1,000 tickets with users saying they disliked the change…

Then you have to make a choice - do you want to support pushing down the lowest common denominator? Or will you be a person of integrity, and take the most technically simple solutions to build a more powerful and fast tool?

Greed and morality can't mix. I personally support morals.

Post reply on HN