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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • In my experience, many translations suck hard, to the point of, having on occasion compared different language versions of a novel, wondering how can readers of the translated version understand certain passages at all… So, I also try to read in the original if possible, if it is Portuguese, Spanish, French, English or Esperanto. I can kinda understand Italian as well but not enough to read a full-length novel… Still learning German…






  • There are companies specializing in document management. One of the services they offer (besides archiving, secure destruction, etc.) is scanning books and creating high-quality pdfs of their contents. This is usually a (semi-)automated process that uses a machine that opens the book only as much as necessary, to try not to even damage its spine. I’ve used it professionally and can vouch for this kind of service, even if I cannot really recommend you a particular provider, since I very much doubt you live near me, in Europe. Still, I’m pretty sure you can find one close to you if you search.

    This will only take you halfway there, by producing a good quality pdf version of the book that you could share with others. To go the extra step of OCR’ing it, proofreading, adding the links, would need something else…



  • Alan Dix’s book (aptly named “Human Computer Interaction”) is quite good, even if somewhat old by now. HCI is an actual academic discipline with, yes, tons of theoretical and empirical results that govern what a good UI should be. Many of which are indeed grounded in psychology, others in physiology, etc (what we call Human Factors). There is a whole special interest group of the ACM just about it: SIGCHI.

    Do not confuse this with fashion/trends/taste. These change, resulting in widely different possible flavors of UI over the years. But the underlying principles are the same.

    Another thing to remember is that the fact that Apple, Google, or someone else implemented an UI in a certain way doesn’t mean they are following best practices and guidelines. Novelty sells, even if at the end of the day it does a worse job of things…

    Edit: added link to SIGCHI






  • That makes total sense. Still, it removes the pressure of choosing a server, since migration and use of several servers becomes seamless. As it is right now, there’s the resilience and future lifespan of an instance to consider, plus fragmentation of your identify as defined not by your username but by your actual “online persona” constructed from your posts, etc. (unless you’re really going for alts, of course). You can create other identities on other instances but they are separate, you “lose” your posts, etc. if something happens. if I understood correctly, that becomes less of an issue with nomadic identity?




  • The problem is that the concept of “user of a site” is still a thing. There should just be “fediverse users”. Everything gets federated, why not user credentials? Then it would not matter if you register on site X or Y. It would be the same. What we need is a federated identity service. It would still be completely decentralized, dependent on no single server, and much more resilient to server shutdown, defederation, etc.

    Edit: typos