When Google first launched it's homepage, its emptiness (just a logo & search box) was a stark contrast to the portal pages popular, which were loaded with content.
Some thought the Google homepage "sucked" whereas other liked it. (I was in the latter.)
Likewise, the interface for Gmail. Or the interface for Google Maps. Or the interface for Chrome.
I remember when Google appeared and literally can't recall anyone who thought it sucked. There statistically have to be some people who hated it. But everyone I knew was either on dial-up or low bitrate leased line and it was impossible to dislike that design.
But not everyone was on dial-up. A lot were in dorms w/ (for the time) high speed connections or workplaces with it.
Remember at the time it wasn't clear that search was going to be the dominate pattern for how people found information on the web. It seems crazy now, but in the early days of the web, the space was small enough that a directory-style approach worked pretty well. It was Yahoo's directory that made it initially popular, not its search.
And so there was a fair bit of debate on which was better -- something like a directory + search (a la Yahoo!) vs just search.
It took a bit of time before search proved if it was done really well, you didn't need a directory.
Calling that abuse seems... off. I have no concerns with people saying the don't like something. But the current nature to be hyperbolic is off-putting to me.
It's an intentional act performed by a party upon another party, in the full conscious deliberate knowing intent to do something other than be nice or even neutral to the other party, but to bother and annoy them, to consume attention and time that they did not willingly give.
It's not the worst crime of the century and so it is a small abuse, but abuse is still the correct word. And it's not a small abuse when performed on a million people instead of one.
If you don't think so then you must be ok with me stealing a single cent from you, and everyone else. Surely you merely dislike that and would defend my behavior against anyone trying to do something so dramatic and hyperbolic as to involve law enforcement over something so small.
Surely the abuse is caused by your browser showing you the slide in.
python.org might be asking your user agent to do it, or it might be asking a third party to do this; either way the interpretation of how to display that is down to the user agent. I don't see any popover/slidein but I'm running uBO which is probably blocking this. I do this because I don't want the 'abuse'.
"Surely the abuse is caused by your browser showing you the slide in."
The only time that is true is when Edge throws up it's own popups when you go to a chrome or firefox download page.
Outside of that singularly outrageous example, the browser is doing everything it promised to do and everything the user asked it to do, which is to render the data coming from a server, as so no, the browser is not the abuser.
Unless you are still just a kid or something that has just never really thought about anything yet, then you understand this perfectly well, and so your attempt to think up some contrary argument is not merely in honest error but disingenuous.
A thing that the user does not want, but is presented on top of content that they do want, is not serving user intent.
Of course, it's serving the needs of the project, theoretically. (Organizational capture of organizational perpetuation at the expense of organizational goals are a common problem, but I don't have any opinion or knowledge of this case.)
Adopting the user-hostile behaviours of advertising and perpetual fundraising are not a great way to make users happy. But they work, I guess. At some cost.
Don't ask me, I voted by disabling JavaScript and running Firefox. I don't have these problems.
It's actually kind of embarassing seeing someone from the org chime in and say ~"this is our first time doing this, so we expected feedback" ... and separately infuriating ~"we will take this into account for next year".
a) Any Internet-enabled human should have seen and avoided this problem from a million miles away.
b) "We expected feedback" ?? this phrase is fucking insulting, sorry.
c) Not next year. Take it down now and preserve some credibility. What is wrong with you people?
On mobile it is actually worse than the (now locked) thread suggests where it is merely covering 5% of screen area. On mobile the popup takes up more than 50% of screen area for me as it's by default opened up all the way.
Thinking about making a new thread to ask it to be taken down for good.
I looked out of curiosity and on my 15 inch laptop screen it does take up probably about 40%. I'm surprised by how egregious it is. And it looks like they changed it (or there's an A/B test?) since the thread. It also now jokes about how banners are cringe, actually taking up more space!
Unmitigated arrogance combined with scathing contempt for their user base, perhaps?
I'd expect nothing less from the people that botched the Python 2.x to 3.x transition, burning billions of dollars of software value and countless hours of development effort in the process. Or the people who repeatedly failed to come up with a sane library and package system.
Python demonstrates that having a standards body and caring about backward compatibility are not bad things, and that a platform's most important job is to absorb pain, not multiply it across millions of users.
It comes as no surprise that even their web site would migrate to the latter camp.
Abuse has a meaning of misuse or use in an unintended way, as in “bringing a large bottle to take home is an abuse of the restaurant’s free refill policy”.
It doesn’t imply the strength of the word in “sexual abuse” or other law-related contexts.
It's abuse. Sugar coating it will only empower the perpetrators. Is it the most inhumane thing possible? No, obviously not. But these sites are taking advantage of the fact that you're there to do something, learn something, get something done, etc and they have your eyeballs. What they're doing is intentional, distracting and getting worse.
I don't care what the commercial status of the site is that I'm visiting, you will not hijack my attention.
Does this apply to political lists too? I know political calls/text are excluded from Do Not Call and hence I get a crap ton of political spam texts (most recently from "Adam Miller for Congress OH-15", despite never living in Ohio). I'd really, really like to remove myself from all these political lists.
I've had that, though it was from a different state. Also recently started getting texts from some MAGA related organization, though I'm about as far from MAGA as it's possible to be. How does my number get on these lists, anyway?
> It's mostly clickbait/outrage for the sake of headlines & clicks.
That's just how populist messaging works, even before the internet. You say outrageous stuff on the radio and then people listen - just ask Adolf Hitler.
We know, for sure, it works - particularly when the medium is new and people haven't built up a strong sense of discernment.
> Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.
This is a terrible idea. Users should have choice & control.
I'll say something that on the surface level seems controversial, at least to HN: Some users prefer ads. And those users should be allowed that choice.
Ads are part of a value exchange. It's disingenuous, imho, to frame the question as "Do you want 'X' with or without ads?" Absent any other criteria most people would naturally say without ads. But I feel it's disingenuous because it overlooks the value exchange.
A better example: Would you prefer Netflix with ads for $7.99/month with ads, or $17.99/month without ads?
A lot of people are choosing the ads tiers. It's the fastest growing tier. Personally, I have the ads-free tier, but I can make that choice for myself. The people wanting the ads tier should be able to make that choice too. I don't see the value in taking it away from them.
I don't deny there are bad experiences. I do think Samsung is making a mistake & damaging customer trust with the refrigerator thing. I likely won't be buying one in the future.
Like anything, advertising can be done well or it can be done badly. I don't use Instagram myself, but I have a lot of friends who love fashion who do & say they're on their to follow brands & find deals. They find the ads a good way to discover some new fashion product & snag a good discount.
Likewise Amazon sent a catalog to my house. My kids are using it to think of what they want to ask Santa. A catalog is basically a book of ads.
Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought. "Unskippable" ads seem incompatible with freedom of thought.
> "Users should have choice & control."
Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries, some sort of severe regulation seems necessary.
I am not able to travel to work or anywhere else without seeing ads, which manipulate my thoughts in unpleasant and often offensive ways. If samsung and similar companies achieve their goal, screens with ads will become more numerous and impossible to avoid, even at home.
These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.
netflix and youtube are cute examples of paying to get fewer ads, but you do not get very far without finding product placements or other types of ads in their videos.
I'm not sure how to express this, but you're not entitled to only see things in life that you find pleasing. You might as well complain you sometimes see ugly people.
> These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.
It's funny you keep bring up unskippable ads. I remember when YouTube invented the skippable ad format about ~15 years ago. How quickly it became a right & a guaranteed personal freedom.
This is one of the major political problems of the 21st century, convincing people that many of the problems they see in society are in fact free choices made by individuals, and not necessarily something that needs to be fixed from the top down. The human tendency to impose one's own preferences on others is strong, and it seems every generation needs to learn the lesson anew.
It depends on how you define "suck."
When Google first launched it's homepage, its emptiness (just a logo & search box) was a stark contrast to the portal pages popular, which were loaded with content.
Some thought the Google homepage "sucked" whereas other liked it. (I was in the latter.)
Likewise, the interface for Gmail. Or the interface for Google Maps. Or the interface for Chrome.
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