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Folk Interfaces

maggieappleton.com

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Re: Folk Interfaces

#81

Post by mikewarot »

bombcar wrote: post #42
al2o3cr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, and they'd make fairly poor paperweights because they aren't typically very heavy - the intent is to use friction with the ground to keep the door from moving, rather than just weight. For instance: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-Heavy-Duty-Walnut-Brown...

There are heavy ones (cast iron doorstop will find some) and they work better in certain cases. You can also use a doorstop to wedge a door slightly open so it won't close and auto-lock.

If the door has a deadbolt as well as a lock, you can use the deadbolt to ensure that the door doesn't auto lock by locking it with the door open.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#82

Post by password4321 »

SamBam wrote: post #26

Orthogonal to the main point of the article, I was interested in the mention of Victor Papanek's tin can radio receiver, which apparently cost 9c to make (presumably the cost of the transistor, since everything else was recycled), and could be fueled by burning wax or dung. I haven't been able to find a simple guide for how to make one myself.

Not super useful without a tuner, receiving every frequency at once.

Perhaps the next step up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

Re: Folk Interfaces

#83

Post by shanusmagnus »

bo0tzz wrote: post #8

Another article in a similar vein, that I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

Thank you so much for surfacing this! I've never heard of Robin Sloan, but I loved this article to a disturbing degree. How beautiful, how true.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#84

Post by nicbou »

bo0tzz wrote: post #8

Another article in a similar vein, that I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

I frequently use this metaphor. This article had a profound impact on what I work on. It's well worth a read.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#85

Post by failrate »

SamBam wrote: post #26

Orthogonal to the main point of the article, I was interested in the mention of Victor Papanek's tin can radio receiver, which apparently cost 9c to make (presumably the cost of the transistor, since everything else was recycled), and could be fueled by burning wax or dung. I haven't been able to find a simple guide for how to make one myself.

It sounds similar to a trench radio, in which case it is entirely passive (like a cat's whisker radio), and used a flame source to treat the surface of a razor blade upon which the needle was sat.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#86

Post by leokennis »

ThePadawan wrote: post #64
pradn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why listings on Amazon are a million words long. They do an adequate job pulling important attributes into the metadata so you can filter on them, for some categories. For example, the size and type of TVs. But it's not really possible to do that for all product categories. Moreover, users can't easily see the attributes in the search page, so it's best to just put it all in the title. For things like motherb…

I worked at Switzerland's biggest online retailer whose USP was that it actually did strongly typed attributes really really well. To date, it's still incredibly searchable. Want to find a 5.5" phone running Android 10+ and at least a 12MP back-facing camera for below $350? You can filter for it. It was an absolute nightmare on the (normalized, backend) technical level, but a real pleasure to consume on the denormali…

https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/ is also a great example of this. No idea how they do it.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#87

Post by leokennis »

ThePadawan wrote: post #37
uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you talk about some concrete examples?

Not parent, but here's an example from a past project. Customer: "Could you make the 'name' field of this entity longer? We need to add longer names." Me: "Why?" Customer: "Well, we want to name the entity '2022 - Spring - $500k - Contoso Inc. - Presale stage' so we can find it more easily." Me: "So what you actually want is to be able to filter/search for entities by all those values, and you're just using the name…

Worst part is, even if the fields are there (let’s say in JIRA) there will still be a soulless bureaucrat middle manager who’ll regularly remind everyone by e-mail to use the “JIRA task title template guidelines” so you end up with stories like “[PRD][Feature X][XL][Development][JAVA] Bugfix for calling API Y with empty order ID [Prio 4][Impact 2][2022Q3-sprint5]”

Re: Folk Interfaces

#88

Post by goblinux »

pjc50 wrote: post #9
tikwidd wrote: post #7

Some random folk practices I've come across: * Blocking, stacking and pulling creep camps in DOTA. Unintended behaviours that became core game mechanics. * Comments in the tag section of Tumblr posts, to avoid the comments appearing in a reblog ("Why do people use tags on tumblr instead of comments?" [1]) * The appropriation of switching MOSFETs such as the IRF510, designed for low frequencies, in homebrew amateur ra…

Twitter's "retweet" and "hashtag" were both folk innovations that became product features. People used to write 'RT @user "comment"' to retweet.

I remember early twitter thinking RT was some guys initials and was so impressed at how popular and cool he was. Everyone was tweeting him and he seemed to be everywhere

Then I learned what it meant.

Never meet your heroes

Re: Folk Interfaces

#89

Post by dannyobrien »

mikewarot wrote: post #72

Using Virtual Machines as capability based security is something I've come to accept. Windows and Linux are vulnerable to the confused deputy problem, so you separate your concerns into separate VMs and give each "machine" a set of resources (capabilities) IBM and Digital machines have done this since the 1960s.

Yep, I've been thinking the same thing. Thanks for conveying it so well!

Re: Folk Interfaces

#90

Post by d4mi3n »

dietmtnview wrote: post #70
tikwidd wrote: post #7

Some random folk practices I've come across: * Blocking, stacking and pulling creep camps in DOTA. Unintended behaviours that became core game mechanics. * Comments in the tag section of Tumblr posts, to avoid the comments appearing in a reblog ("Why do people use tags on tumblr instead of comments?" [1]) * The appropriation of switching MOSFETs such as the IRF510, designed for low frequencies, in homebrew amateur ra…

Since we're talking about DOTA. Defense of the Ancients was a custom map game in Warcraft III. I don't know if this is still a thing, but custom map games on Starcraft and Warcraft III absolutely ruled. There was freeze tag, capture the flag, tower defense, a zombie defense like game based on Starship Troopers. Absolute golden age of gaming for me as a kid.

It goes further back, actually—IIRC there was a DoTA custom map on StarCraft: Brood Wars. It has no resemblance to the DoTA of today, or even the one on Warcraft, but the lineage of that game goes back further than a lot of people are aware of. :)
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