Change for the sake of change is something spouted out by people who simply don't bother researching the change or understand the use case behind it. Change costs money and it's always driven by something. Sometimes it can be simple such as "redesign the UI and rev up the version so we can sell the next product", and other times it's more complicated.

The current trend towards "ugly" is driven by the user requirements, not by marketing. New icons emphasise the usable space on which to click them (hence square rather than round). Window borders are larger (and uglier) but easier to click on. And the whole metro interface was driven by one simple fact:

We are in the world of touch. You can deny it, but I walk down my local electronics store and more than half the laptops there have touch screens. Half of those again are transformable into a tablet style. The Windows flagship product (Surface Pro) is one of the most non-PC like PCs released, and that is what is driving the whole UX design these days.

Is the current product perfect? Heck now. It's the product of a retarded mind that should not have made it past early alpha testing, however it is attempting to solve a very real problem which is that Windows 7 is utterly unusable on a touch screen. I can't wait for Windows 10... eeerrr lets say I can't wait for Windows 11 because I get the feeling Windows 10 won't have solved the many issues in Windows 8 yet.

UI trends are following marketing all around the world. It has nothing to do with UX experts. The designs are all about not wanting to be the person walking to work in a bright blue suit in the 90s after everyone has moved on.

The entire world is changing to a flat look, not just advertising and company logos, but also physical things (tables, chairs and even whole houses have modern styles which emphasises flat colours and straight edges). The UIs are simply catching up with what the rest of the world is doing.

For some fun, do a quick google search for 90s house décor, 2000s house décor, and modern house décor. You'll get a lovely progression from a bland look with lots of patterns, through sparsely set out houses with lots of rounded edges and strange styles, to the modern square and flat look that dominates current style magazines which closely matches what we see on the computer.

I like the fact that an article that talks about the recycling bin icon actually hides the recycling bin icon under some stupid overlay when you open the oversized thumbnail.

Sub question: Would you care if you lost a few blocks of data? Bit rot is a serious concern but the problem is an isolated one. If I lost a single photo on my computer I may be lightly upset, but no where near as upset as losing all the data on my drive.

Only if it's not always online, doesn't continuously backup, or isn't located on the same premises as the primary drive, otherwise you'll find your NAS will lose data at the same time when your PC gets nuked by flood, fire, theft, lightning, virus etc.

Ahhh so we'll prosecute people on the assumption that they may have committed a crime?

Interestingly I was at the mall only an hour ago. My car was parked in the carpark, but I'm currently injured and unable to drive. I physically can't operate the gearstick right now, but somehow my car and I made it to the mall? How could this be? It is a mystery.

The other part of the mystery is that I don't know where my car is at the moment. It's not in my garage.

Oh wow. Just plain wow!

I'm not a resident expert on IEDs. But I did do physics in grade 8 and you're right. I'll assume you knew that gunpowder only burns too right? As does a vapour cloud of LPG.

Did you know that anything that burns can be made to explode violently killing everyone in the area? Like... corn starch, and hay?

Well in Australia where we are forced to vote we voted with hate against the previous government's policies. Now the current government is implementing policies we don't like. Best of all the erosion of our rights is not a partisan issue and all major parties supported the data retention laws except the greens who are bat shit crazy and shouldn't be in power either.

Tell me again who I should vote for?

I didn't change my behviour because there are terrorists everywhere and I have nothing to hide and thus nothing to fear. The government said this is the best course of action for my beautiful young children who need to be kept safe.

If I choke on my own vomit after this post will it be covered by healthcare?

Given the mass of their clients it stands to reason that there would be a gravitational anomaly causing cars to speed up the closer they get.

Ahhh then clearly there is no problem here. Please move on to the next Slashdot article.

I use the Lynx browser you insensitive clod.

Why do you add "friends" that spam you?

Facebook has 1.44billion active accounts and that includes countries which have no access to the internet. Given the current stats of the number of people around the world who are connected it stands to reason that someone in the western society would have a Facebook account even if they don't actively use it.

Samzenpus wasn't thinking anything, he was relying on statistics and surprisingly many of us see the photo just fine.

Given the limited number of possible start / stop cycles a subway will experience along with curves in the track and a standard response expected from coming into and leaving a station (I'm guessing 5Gs would be a bit much for anything other than hitting another train), I'm going to say the answer is probably far closer to 92% than it is to 0%.