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

Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

ux.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 326 posts

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#171

Post by jodrellblank »

Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

As you said ten years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7253841

The scary part is that you will likely be saying it again in another ten years and again and then you’ll die as “that weird cursor offset obsessed fanatic”.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#172

Post by loeg »

demondemidi wrote: post #157
MenhirMike wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, that's another fun one! Your yearly tax return should be as close to 0 as possible, otherwise you're either over- or under-withholding. Then again, I met some people that use it as a kind of piggy bank because they wouldn't be disciplined enough to save up for bigger purchases otherwise and... well, I can't even, but if it works for them, there are worse things to spend money on.

I have income from multiple sources and they are not aware of each other. For example, they will all keep paying social security even when I’ve exceeded the max deduction. It is far too complicated to correct the finance departments of multiple companies. I just reconcile it all at the end of the year and get a refund. Got a better strategy I can use?

You can file a W-4 with exemptions and avoid overwithholding! This is a fixable problem.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#173

Post by xur17 »

dcow wrote: post #165
MenhirMike wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, that's another fun one! Your yearly tax return should be as close to 0 as possible, otherwise you're either over- or under-withholding. Then again, I met some people that use it as a kind of piggy bank because they wouldn't be disciplined enough to save up for bigger purchases otherwise and... well, I can't even, but if it works for them, there are worse things to spend money on.

By the interest free loan logic, you should have your employer withhold zero and then you put your taxes in a high yield savings account and pay them all as late as possible.

The IRS already thought of this - they charge you interest on the money you owed them (with some exceptions, like waiving it the first year it happens, only charging you if you withheld less than last year, etc).

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#174

Post by loeg »

rvnx wrote: post #156
sgerenser wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just try to convince the average person that “getting a big refund” is a bad thing, since it means you gave the U.S. government an interest free loan.

(Not from the US) Why is it a good thing to lend for free to the US gov ? Because the regional banks aren’t that stable ?

People like getting the big lump sum and some don't even realize it was their money all along that they just overpaid throughout the year. It's not a good thing for individuals to overpay.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#175

Post by kps »

londons_explore wrote: post #124

Were the first mouse pointers graphical? I remember using a black rectangle as a mouse pointer in console based applications - it was literally one character of the console with inverted colors.

> Were the first mouse pointers graphical?

Yes. Set aside a few hours to watch ‘The Mother of all Demos’.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#176

Post by ramesh31 »

It's funny how much of this stuff comes down to just "because that's how someone did it first". I see this mirrored in my own work, where so many arbitrary decisions are maintained for no reason other than that they were chosen at the outset. Nice to see that applies to basically everything.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#177

Post by loeg »

minkzilla wrote: post #169
rvnx wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not from the US) Why is it a good thing to lend for free to the US gov ? Because the regional banks aren’t that stable ?

It is not a good thing because it is interest free and inflation exists. If you would have had that money earlier you could have put it in high yield saving account or payed down debt.

It is not interest free. E.g., I was paid $480 in interest on overpayments last year.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#178

Post by fortran77 »

MenhirMike wrote: post #139
speff wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

> my friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. Let me guess: Tax brackets? That's the one thing that most regular workers in the US just don't seem to understand (and arguably, many people knowingly spread falsehoods to further some agenda).

And yet here you are trying to spread an agenda in a thread about mouse pointers that taxes are too low because the majority of people are too stupid to understand tax brackets.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#179

Post by eropple »

pmarreck wrote: post #152
cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. You can even customise both the inner and outer colours as an accessibility feature!

What??? TIL. A lot of the accessibility features are actually neat even to those without the need for them.

Yeah, it’s become super useful for me to color code the cursors between my work and personal Macs.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#180

Post by isleyaardvark »

speff wrote: post #123
Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

It's amazing how far that can take you. I saw a post on another social media site about something being wrong, and a comment said it's not wrong, it was just missing a "not". Which was the exact reason it was entirely wrong.

So people can state absolute absurdities and have people agree.

Post reply on HN