I'm all for taking the piss out of excessively overvalued social media companies and general internet frenzy over stupid shit but WhatsApp (which I don't even use) is far more than just a social media tool - it's an SMS / phone / chat replacement. SMS is far far bigger than something which can be classed as part of a social media bubble.

It's gross.

It's horrible.

It's for dumb end users more focused on the look of something than the functionality (ie: not us)

I am so sick of applications and websites focusing on flat, shadeless, bullshit design.
They seem to use literally 3 colours only - white background, black text / lines and ONE shade of colour used sparingly. Most pages entirely white.
I'm extremely sick of pages and applications removing most 'dividing lines' too. The post I'm writing right now is in a box to the left of this box is another nice line which is separating the reply form to the list of topics on the right.

Here's a prime example of design I fucking detest.
https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/secure/attachment/12130/Calling..jpg
Now a lot of people hail the Cyanogenmod / Google stock stuff as 'clean and wonderful'
Bullshit, look at those icons at the bottom, no labels, no lines dividing them to define the size of each button, all cramped in one spot and RIGHT BELOW and directly touching THE HANG UP BUTTON - extremely easy to accidentally end the call but noooo that's 'clean'
Gotta love those icons, I can probably guess what the function of each one is but if they were labelled I'd know for sure, no ambiguity. Yes it's easier for translation purposes, that's not my problem though, sorry! - I just know - at a glance, with the text, I will identify the icons faster, every time.

Here's another example of shit design.
http://dri1.img.digitalrivercontent.net/Storefront/Company/msintl/images/English/en-INTL_Office_2013_Pro_ESD_AAA-02776/en-INTL_L_Office_2013_Pro_ESD_AAA-02776_RM2_mnco.jpg
Now I got used to those office tabs in the end, with 2010, it's not too bad to be honest but look at this up the top, the "active" tab is the home tab, you'll note the text is a different colour and there's a line defining the outline of the highlighted tab - but that's it? Seriously? Why can't there be more colour behind the word home or grey out the other tabs text like INSERT , PAGE LAYOUT etc?

Those are 2 examples of the flat, colourless, white, ghastly design which "looks clean" because right now "clean" is in. Use some colours, use some dividing lines. Is shading a bad thing? Apparently - ok then use solid colours, use lighter ones, but for fucks sake this mishmash of just white with no lines, gross. Lines are good, boxes are good.

FWIW: Some of the slashdot beta is making good use of dividing lines but there's a lot of words which could be bold or a slightly larger font or placed differently. Everything looking the god damned fucking same makes things more difficult to read.
Look at source code in a good coding tool, it's not PRETTY but it's very easy to identify things with colour and spacing.
I generally detest the flat designs of sites and applications of late, please don't apply that shit to oldschool places which don't need it.

If you don't get what his referencing in his post, I'd say you're probably the one who doesn't belong here.

I'll wager 400 quatloos on the newcomer.

I haven't been forced to it yet but I checked it out a couple of times and it was horrendous.
Considering I just got told this:

I'm guessing classic is getting the ass eventually?
So, where should I go for the right kind of news since I won't be continuing here, any suggestions? - I particularly like the older posters here with some incredible tales of technology, systems and workplaces from eras long since lost.
Replies suggesting reddit will be rightfully ignored.

For many many reasons but I post for one you'd be surprised at.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...

People continue to do this stupid shit to perfectly good hardware, sure it's symbolic in this case to prove a point, none the less any of us here with a fucking grain of common sense realise it's a load of complete shit.

That data could've been copied 10,000 times over from that machine by now (obviously)

I'm only glancing at the article here but that seems to be indicating those are the DSL, not mobile data prices, is that right? Those prices are completely insane and I live in Australia. I can get around 300gb per month for $80 or so on ADSL2.

Is there literally 0 competition available in this region? Those prices are ...utterly appalling, virtually making the internet unusable for anything but casual browsing in that region.

What's a good PLAYER?
I use XBMC on a fairly basic HTPC I love it but what's the best solution to buy friends and family so they can have XBMC? I don't want to administer a HTPC.

The Apple TV2 I tried, it's got NO balls, it runs XBMC like shit, the remote is garbage and it's laggy with an even remotely decent sized collection. Hell there's 8gb of flash on there and if you've got a mammoth collection you may actually end up filling the disk with the thumbnails.

Those WDTV devices aren't bad for the price but it's no XBMC.

People responding with "Rasberry Pi" are tinkerers and not actual extensive XBMC users. You're going to see the same problems as the Apple TV2 (only worse)

Colour me stupid guys but where and what is this slashdot beta? I've been posting a heck of a long time and I don't think I see it?

I've gone in to the options long ago to keep the site looking "normal" - I've got no idea what this place looks like without my cookie but much like IMDB* I'm very happy with the existing look, I didn't like the change to be honest.

* IMDB - IMDB is a "service" now - as is Gmail - a lot of things on the web should no longer be goddamn fiddled with. I still login and have the old IMDB and god help them if they ever remove the option to keep the old look for registered members.

I'll wager $400 on the newcomers.

They are "worth" nothing. The bitcoins however are currently valued at X amount.
Mind you, I'm not implying cash is "worth" anything either.

On topic, the Winklevoss Bros are predicting up to $40,000 per coin
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/17/winklevoss_predicts_400bn_bull_market_for_bitcoin/
Who knows what will happen? I just wish I'd made some money from it myself :/

I got into a debate about super cars vs sports cars (I admit, it's a bit of an empty debate) but it seems there's no such thing as a supercar, only sportscars. So I can confirm some pretty dumb shit is debated.

What's significantly more frustrating, is I made a comedy edit to a womans profile who basically belittiles men who play games, quite harshly. (I admit, a comedy edit isn't cool) The edit was rightly removed, a moderator responded to me and said don't do it again. I said fine, I'd already posted the link on a gaming discussion board, someone else makes a similar edit, moderator bans me for editing the page. No idea what an IP address is or username but someones US cable IP does not match my Australian ADSL IP in the slightest.
After that ban, I vowed never to donate to the site again, I've heard many reports about the moderation there, some real power mongering going on and king of the internet syndrome. Fuck em.

My bank pincode is 145766412139
(I couldn't fit the 52 at the end)

Methodology is all that matters, those 3 were the best I found by far. StorageReview is not really applicable anymore - my SSD reviews are at TR and AT now.

If I'm interested in a particular part I'll google a HEAP more places - but those are the definitive ones for me. Dislike HardOCP for their awful, terrible benchmark graphs they introduced 5 or so years back and the owner can be an ass to people too.

Pedantic but this is not the definition of a troll at all. Steven King would be trolling in his grave if he'd heard this.