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The rise of user-hostile software

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Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#291

Post by Ekaros »

hnick wrote: post #281
api wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something weird happened over the past decade. I blame free (as in beer). If you can’t sell software you have to monetize in other ways. This creates a huge forcing function to push acceptance of surveillance, adware, and worse as hard as possible. It’s hard to complete with free. A free thing can build a network effect fast, then monetize with roundabout methods like surveillance. Payment also adds friction, and I…

A similar thing happened in games. I'm old enough to remember horse armour in Oblivion. Ridiculous idea but look where we are now. Not only do most microtransactions cost more, they aren't only in free to play games. They're in full price games and those with monthly subscriptions. And they have enough people arguing that it's a good thing because more money = better game. I can buy a mount in a game for USD$40... or…

And then we got to add gambling mechanics into "microtransactions" which weren't so micro anymore. At least with horse-armor and DLC you see what you get. With gacha and lootboxes you can't be even sure about that.

And the money is gone forever. At least with Valve who kinda made it big you can recoup some of investment if you get lucky and use it to buy other games on their platform...

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#292

Post by account42 »

hnick wrote: post #281
api wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something weird happened over the past decade. I blame free (as in beer). If you can’t sell software you have to monetize in other ways. This creates a huge forcing function to push acceptance of surveillance, adware, and worse as hard as possible. It’s hard to complete with free. A free thing can build a network effect fast, then monetize with roundabout methods like surveillance. Payment also adds friction, and I…

A similar thing happened in games. I'm old enough to remember horse armour in Oblivion. Ridiculous idea but look where we are now. Not only do most microtransactions cost more, they aren't only in free to play games. They're in full price games and those with monthly subscriptions. And they have enough people arguing that it's a good thing because more money = better game. I can buy a mount in a game for USD$40... or…

At least horse armor in Oblivion was DLC - basically a tiny expansion - even if cut down and sold at price / value that was outrageous compared to previous expansions. Microtractions have grown to be way more egregious since then:

- Generally locked to an account, so either not resellable or only within the Developer's market where additional profit can be extracted for each sale.

- There seem to be more and more consumable microtransactions, so you have to keep buying to get the same experience.

- Lootboxes and other gambling mechanics that mean you are not even guaranteed to get what you want when you pay.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#293

Post by Ekaros »

mrweasel wrote: post #132

As someone who do operations, shitty software is increasingly pissing me off. We get software from customers and their suppliers with declining quality. The developers will try to “fix” or improve their work by bolting on things like ActiveMQ, Kafka, ElasticSearch, NoSQL and everything but the kitchen sink. They rarely give production deployment much though, and if they do it’s just a bunch of people yelling Kubernet…

Working in security and seeing these systems just bolting boxes after boxes of various things sometimes I wonder what are we doing? Is all of this really needed? And how many messages etc. did we actually need to handle? How many resources we are allocating for all this?

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#294

Post by Ekaros »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #29

This flowchart is true for many things... even webpages: How many users actually wanted to subrscribe to your newsletter the first time they visited your page, before they even read the first article there? How many first-time visitors actually want to donate money? ...

Or ask me for feedback. Like I haven't even used your site yet, only feedback I can give is don't ask me for feedback...

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#295

Post by account42 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #60
api wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something weird happened over the past decade. I blame free (as in beer). If you can’t sell software you have to monetize in other ways. This creates a huge forcing function to push acceptance of surveillance, adware, and worse as hard as possible. It’s hard to complete with free. A free thing can build a network effect fast, then monetize with roundabout methods like surveillance. Payment also adds friction, and I…

> If you can’t sell software you have to monetize in other ways. For a piece of hardware I buy at a store I'd expect that the price I paid for it is sufficient to not require further monetization - mandatory cloud services (e.g. a web-available surveillance camera) excepted. Anyway, there is another cause: continuous backward-compatibility breaks from OSes. Windows is ... relatively decent in that the only things tha…

> maintaining any support for Linux is just as a massive effort.

Is it? ALSA still works, even if routed through PulseAudio or PipeWire. X11 still works even if what you are talking to is XWayland. OpenGL still works even if there is also Vulkan now.

Even if you want to stay up to date with the audio/windowing API of the day there are libraries like SDL that will help you stay up to date.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#296

Post by jmrm »

I think the article is pretty kind and benevolent about what the companies do this kind of things. This isn't done simply because they don't care about users or care more about developers, they do it because they want to get more money after buying the product.

Some spy their users to sell their information, others ask a lot of personal information to do that. Usually they give you some "poisoned apples" in the shape of software you don't need, and even they are some cheeky who try to sell you other things, in a more polite way[0] or using the "erosion method"[1]. More infuriating are those who doesn't want you to control them and the only thing you can do about this is uninstalling[2].

The worse thing about all of this is the difficulty about avoiding this kind of software, like some printer drivers[3].

[0] Sometimes, after opening or using the software, they show you some ads of the same company

[1] The erosion method is what Avast do in their free software. Lots of pop-ups (yeah, in 2021) from the software asking you to buy some of their product until the users buy it to "shut it up". I don't think this works too much btw.

[2] Have you used any PC with a paid McAffee antivirus installed? They don't let you ad some exceptions to analysis because they want it that way. So, if you have some old hardware, with unsigned drivers, you might won't be able to install it because the antivirus says that is malware.

[3] When you buy an HP printer you have to install all of their software to have some kind of details, like reporting to you it doesn't have ink and that's why doesn't work, but to have that, you have to install a 500 MB package with a lot of things you don't need, a lot of ads about how HP original ink is the best, an HP Assistant icon in your task bar, and a lot of process, services, and programmed tasks who only make your PC slow. Meanwhile, Canon ones only need a 20 MB~50 MB installer who works fine without all the bloat.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#297

Post by majani »

stadium wrote: post #250
benatkin wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've played Hill Climb Racing, and it's a pretty awesome game, even for an adult. The varying gravity, and inaccurate but fun physics, and the variety, are what made it fun for me. I haven't played it in years, and after that moved on to Geometry Dash, which I see myself wanting to play in the future more than Hill Climb Racing. I've scoffed at Candy Crush, but wondered if people who play that might feel the same way…

As a parent the volume of in-game purchase advertising and scarcity tactics are anxiety inducing for both myself and my kids. Every game on every platform should have a global opt-out for in-game purchases, just like do-not-track on iOS 14.

Needing a password for every in-app purchase is the default on both Android and iOS, and only the password-holder can change that setting. Many change the setting because they get annoyed by the constant typing of passwords, and that's 100% on the user if they do that and their kid ends up buying the biggest coin package in their favorite game

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#298

Post by jmrm »

kstenerud wrote: post #80

You'll notice that all of his examples of user-hostile software lack a universally accepted standard. This is not new. Do you need to install special vendor software to use your bluetooth devices? No - everyone follows the standard, so your OS just knows how to hook up your headset. With USB it's different, because the standards are insufficient for the gadgets that we use, resulting in specialized software for your…

I think is impossible to standardise everything. You can do it only with products with limited use cases, like Bluetooth devices, USB HID devices, some "standard" USB devices like cheap mouses, sound cards, disk drives, or WiFi NICs.

I won't ever happen a GPU standard in a short or medium time, because deciding how it would work were giving their R&D to the competition, and AFAIK, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have totally different types of architecture.

Printers maybe could have some kind of USB standard, but I don't think the different printer making companies are willing to do that, the same happens with some kind of "gaming" devices. That would mean not showing ads of cartridge or other products and letting the users be more outside of their "ecosystem". QMK keyboards are a honourable exception to this btw.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#299

Post by mosselman »

Aeolun wrote: post #43
mosselman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate my brother printer. Now I have to do some weird black magic that involves pulling out the power cable and paper tray and inserting the cable while holding some buttons in order for it to even turn on. A year earlier it suddenly stopped being able to print wirelessly and, as with all cartridge printers, the ink is crazy expensive. A month ago I bought an HP printer with an ink reservoir for my mother and it is…

Or just buy a laser printer and never have the issue again?

Toner is bad for your lungs.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#300

Post by stadium »

majani wrote: post #297
stadium wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent the volume of in-game purchase advertising and scarcity tactics are anxiety inducing for both myself and my kids. Every game on every platform should have a global opt-out for in-game purchases, just like do-not-track on iOS 14.

Needing a password for every in-app purchase is the default on both Android and iOS, and only the password-holder can change that setting. Many change the setting because they get annoyed by the constant typing of passwords, and that's 100% on the user if they do that and their kid ends up buying the biggest coin package in their favorite game

Yep, I have passwords enabled. I don't want to see the in-game purchase features at all. The alternative right now is, don't install the game.

Used to be, you could get the ad-free version of an app for a small price, or the ad-supported version for free. I'd happily pay money for an ad-less, in-game-purchase-less version. Instead I have to teach money management and de-escalate an upset kid explaining why they can't have this amazing in-game-purchase feature that is only available for the next 30, 29, 28.. minutes else it is gone forever.

It's exhausting when it's supposed to be fun.

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