I'll agree that I did some conflating. But it also destroyed discoverability, especially when some things are only findable in certain contexts, and the shift was forced down user's throats.

To hear it from couple people that were on the office team at the time (as I did), the overriding driving force for the change was political, not end user needs. Not saying you can't have a win-win scenario, but often it's caught up in an attempt to keep sales and upgrade revenue flowing (which is why we've seen the shift to subscriptions for mature software).

> No PM in history has ever said "This seems to be working pretty well, let's leave it the way it is." Because that's not bold. That's not visionary. That doesn't get you promoted.

This has been the case with operating systems and many significant pieces of software for a long time now. From Windows and OSX to Office to less widespread software like quicken. UI and UX changes being pushed in virtually every release as the "great new thing" that will make your life better to the point where it has become like the fashion industry where everyone is looking for this year's "new style" and follows the seasonal trends (dark mode! light mode! flat icons! raised icons! whee!).

Once most software reached a level of functionality that satisfied 99+% of its users, such as Office did 20 years, for any subsequent changes to seem significant they had to violate many of the rules of good UI and UX design - like how Office 2007's ribbon was a step back in terms of explorability/discoverability. As a programmer, I am well aware that the menus and UI built up over the previous 2 decades could have been retained, or kept as an alternate mode, but I'm also aware that most people would have stuck with what they already had invested hundreds if not thousands of hours invested in learning, and the resulting low adoption rate would have meant the person responsible didn't get her promotion and bonuses. Priorities you know, the good of the one outweighs the good of the masses. And how many times are disruptive UI/UX changes made to promote something someone paid for (Looking at you Mozilla/Firefox)?

> It is the dream of every PM to come up with a bold UX innovation that gets praise, and many believe the gospel that the software is better at figuring out what the customer wants than the customer is.

While the PMs may dream, their customers curse the day they were born and wish nothing but ill-fortune upon them.

Most of the software and devices we have are tools to us. And now that we live in a world where they are auto-updated whether or not we want them to be, it is now a regular occurrence to go to use our phones or PCs to do something we have done numerous times before and be startled to discover that something has changed and it's made doing the task we wish to do more confusing, difficult, or that it started doing something completely unintended. No one likes going into the garage to get a hammer, only to discover that they have to relearn how to hold and wield it, but that's pretty much the norm today for many pieces of software.

I can remember one day when it started that I would pull my phone out of my pocket and there would be a half completed reply email sitting there. Apparently after a recent update my phone added a "shake to reply" option that it defaulted to on, and it interpreted the action of my putting it in my pants pocket as a 'shake' and launched a reply as it was disappearing into my jeans pocket. With no warning to it, I had to eventually puzzle out what had changed and was going on. A waste of my time and comfort.

Phone OS updates happen all the time, and we are trained to install them without a second thought (patch latest security holes, etc), but they don't come with (nor do we usually want) a nice tutorial spelling out ALL of the changes we didn't ask for and had no choice in. Desktop OSs are no better. Too many times I boot up my PC to find new widgets added, and my custom UI and registry settings have been reset.

> For others, not so much. It will be "interesting times" upcoming. But will this lead to an overall improvement in working conditions? By itself, probably not -- but as part of a larger movement, maybe.

The danger that I see right now is that many companies are not training new hires very much and want someone who is already nearly perfect for the open position in terms of prior experience, etc. And it's usually taking a long time / number of applicants to find someone willing to fill the position.

Call Center level jobs I can see companies insisting on everyone being onsite and getting away with it, but as soon as you get to positions that require more specialize skills & experience, there is real risk that by letting go everyone not willing to return to the office full time they are going to be short staffed for a much longer than expected as:

A) Qualified people will be harder to find than anticipated due to the requirements, or

B) A lot of those who are qualified are probably going to want remote work (full or partial) and will pass on the job offer in hopes of finding a remote job, or

C) They are going to be unwilling (or unable) to relocate to said employer thanks the absolutely bonkers Real Estate market right now.

And there's only so far they can push those who remain before they feel the impact of being understaffed.

> Huh, I missed when NASA got the bug out of its butt for reusing the DragonX capsules.

Weren't about 95% of Space Shuttle missions technically a "reuse of a previously flown spacecraft"?

How much would the nearest ISP quote to run a cable out to his cottage?

Pretty sure it would be an astronomically huge number.

Far too many times I've been in the middle of editing a text field on a web form when for some unknown reason my press of the backspace key was misinterpreted and instead of delete previous character I typed, it was "exit to previous page and discard all the stuff user spent the last five minutes filling out".

As an aside, it seems like a lot of pages are sending every keystroke back to update as you are typing stuff in, and whenever there is a hiccup in ping speed the user experience goes to crap. I wonder if the webpage devs ever even consider the impact of a crappy connection, just or assume everyone else is physically 50 feet and one network switch away from the server. It seems to have been happening a lot these days, what with all the DDOS attacks and outages going on.

One thing I've notice that been steadily rising the past decade, and really has taken off this year, is people, usually using bots, to buy up any sort of limited quantity product that they think there will be a resale market for, and then turn around to sell it on eBay, etc a huge markup.

New Game Consoles, Concert Tickets, New release Video Cards, pretty much anything they imagine has a profit potential. And it's not just consumer goods, I saw a lot of attempted rent seeking/arbitrage in local real estate when the market was so hot the past few years. I ran into people renting multiple apartments and turning them all around on AirBnB, etc.

At least for me, I've had to take a hard-line on not buying something marked up second hand (that shouldn't be), and just 'letting it go' rather than know that I am contributing to this behavior.

I really would like to see some sort of tech solution to allow people the same chances as everyone else to purchase limited and new items, but I can figure out any scheme that can't be gamed.

> But if you're a normal worker, just save a lot early on, keep saving at a decent pace, and cash out early if you can.

Not everyone can. Two groups of 'best laid plains' derailing people quickly come to mind:

Many of my co-workers, and myself included, got divorced in their 40s and set back financially 10 to 20 years. It doesn't matter than in the vast majority of cases I personally witnessed their spouses were unfaithful, wanted to try for someone new, or were just tired of being a parent and wanted 'to be free' - as the main breadwinner for their families they usually wound up on the short end of custody and the big end of paying out support for years.

Additionally, financial black-swan events, like losing one's job during the 2008 crisis followed by extended unemployment, caused many people to have to 'cash out' their retirement savings in order to survive financially and not lose their homes, etc. Not only did they have to sell their retirement account assets at fire-sale prices, they got to pay the extra tax penalty for doing so. Many who fell into this camp were also set back decades financially.

My point is, even when individuals "do everything right" financially - working hard for years and years, diligently saving for retirement while trying to live life, raise a family, and generally trying to do a little more than just exist for their employers - their financial world can be upended and they find themselves looking at retirement before 70 not even being a possibility. And what 'safety net' do we have for them? none.

I use signal. End to end encryption for the win.

Quite possibly... very little to none.

The Crew Dragon Capsule has 8 different abort modes and splashdown locations and is capable of aborting at any point during launch. If the Falcon 9 booster explodes, the automatic systems should be capable of getting the capsule clear and safely get it back in nearly all scenarios.

Imagine a near repeat of the Challenger disaster, with the first stage exploding between 60 and 90 seconds after launch, and the astronauts being yanked clear and safely recovered instead of conscious until impact with the ocean. The impact on the perception of SpaceX and NASA would be far better as people would first be horrified but then quickly overjoyed and relieved. SpaceX would get huge accolades and positivity for making such an event survivable.

Clearly the problem is that the web pages need to be more "Mobile friendly" and support features like one item per screen and continuous loading.

That will fix everything and make PDFs obsolete and we will sing their praises ...or so my UX/UI design teams tells me...

I will not be voting for him. But, I do understand your reasons.

Though, he is insane.

> Are you able to share details on the backstory?

An awful lot of it, probably not without incurring the wrath of the IP holders. And it's always worth remembering that everyone has a different perspective on any given thing.

I suppose I can say that in the beginning, it took years of trying to find someone at Microsoft interested in a digital re-release. For the HD edition, no one at Microsoft really thought there would be much demand for it - a 2D game from the 1990s. This was before remasters and 'HD editions' of older games was a common thing, and the traditional RTS genre had fallen out of favor with MOBA, etc being the new hotness. Once it was clear there was an audience and demand for it, well.. remember the old proverb: "Success has a thousand fathers" and all that involvement led to Age 4 being on the way among other things.

> A good chunk of why AoE2 is even still around is due to:

There's a whole lot more to the story than will ever be told... (I ought to know)