logoalt Hacker News

rsynnottyesterday at 9:06 PM20 repliesview on HN

One fascinating thing about the whole AI phenomenon is how incredibly hostile it is to _standards_. Whether something works properly, or is ethical, or is true, no longer matters at all; all that matters is "pls use our AI".

Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation. And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods.

And it's not just them. There was a time that Google cared deeply about UX. Now, on macOS Google remaps CMD-G in Google Docs to launch some LLM bullshit (EDIT: huh, they may have fixed this; it was definitely doing it a couple of weeks ago), because, after all, it has only had a standard universal meaning on macOS for about three decades, no big deal.


Replies

storusyesterday at 10:04 PM

It's a complete takeover of technically incompetent management that feels like it can finally execute their ideas to the fullest instead of relying on those pesky swengs with their obstructions, complaints and problems. We'll soon get the management utopia everywhere.

show 6 replies
left-strucktoday at 2:54 AM

Wait, when did they rehabilitate their reputation? Before AI they were already shoving crap down our throats through windows 11.

show 1 reply
ExoticPearTreeyesterday at 10:07 PM

> Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation. And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods.

Probably they thought the new generations forgot about how awful they were in the not so distant past.

I think they set it all on fire because greed got the better of them again.

show 4 replies
kami23yesterday at 9:16 PM

When I've been working on stuff that requires a SSO login, I noticed that it makes, what I considered, hostile anti-user choices in defaulting to tracking pieces of information I didn't want to track and hadn't mentioned.

Fair that I didn't instruct it explicitly to make more pro-user choices, it just seemed to think slurping as much information into the backend was an default intention. Wasted a few more tokens to iterate on it to remove things, but it was IMO interesting enough that I finally submitted feedback around what I imagine is an interesting training problem.

jorvitoday at 2:35 AM

> And it's not just them. There was a time that Google cared deeply about UX

Are we talking about the same Google? They still haven't fixed Android gesture navigation after almost a decade.

pocksuppetyesterday at 10:34 PM

Has always been the case. Corporations hate standards and would rather lock you in except where market forces prevent them. It was a miracle we have something like the internet - and the government had to create it.

Microsoft's decade-long PR rehabilitation has worked wonders for them.

janice1999yesterday at 9:29 PM

They invested billions. They're scared.

show 3 replies
diego_sandovalyesterday at 10:28 PM

> Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation.

Mmm... I think I missed that part.

show 5 replies
giancarlostoroyesterday at 10:10 PM

Its even worse in my eyes, they dont even offer a model they themselves maintain.

pjc50yesterday at 9:11 PM

The only question is "number go up?": will this result in more money from investors or not?

avd201yesterday at 11:29 PM

The thing the annoys me the most (to use polite language) is that product design went off the window with the AI craze. You could probably ship actual products that actual people would want to use, but instead everyone wants to turn everything into a chatbot, as if chatbots are the pinnacle of user interface, the crabs of software, the purpose, goal, and telos of technology. It drives me nuts.

show 1 reply
cjonasyesterday at 11:54 PM

Claude code not supporting specifying an alternate location to look for agent skills is another example.

fuzzy_biscuityesterday at 10:18 PM

Not that surprising when you consider the monumental investments. It's heinous but right in line with modern corporate business ethics.

krainboltgreeneyesterday at 9:21 PM

> And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods.

It's the bourgeoisie dream: A means of production that also does the labor 24/7 and can't complain, infinitely spawnable. Theoretical slavery+, so of course they're throwing everything into the furnace for it.

show 4 replies
neloxtoday at 1:11 AM

Sent from iPhone

lpcvoidyesterday at 9:09 PM

AI is the ultimate grifting tool, grifters gonna grift.

show 2 replies
registeredcorntoday at 1:12 AM

What did Command+G do in OSX? Online results are saying it "advances to the next search result after doing find". In other OS', that's just the enter key, if I am understanding the context correctly.

show 1 reply
buzzerbetrayedyesterday at 9:32 PM

> There was a time that Google cared deeply about UX

Have we been using the same Google?

show 5 replies
AlexandrByesterday at 10:21 PM

> Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation.

"Decades" is a stretch. There was a brief window around the Windows 7/8 era and then, like a dog returning to his vomit, they returned to their user-hostile bullshit. Windows 11 is the culmination of that, but Windows 10 was plenty bad. Remember how Windows 10 made Solitaire a subscription service? Sticking copilot into everything is just more of the same.