Grumpy Website

I can see how this one might be confusing- https://grumpy.website/post/0Vp0pSilq

but the site is misrepresenting the state. That user's state is still "muted," the red line indicates that it is a client side mute (so the user who checked the mute box can't hear them, but everyone else can) while the mute icon without a red line indicates that the other user has muted themselves; they're not transmitting audio.

There is a third state- Server Mutes turn the entire mute icon red and is a "far-end" mute. No one in the voice channel can hear that user and the user probably can't unmute themselves.

Looking more at the site I feel like the point it's trying to convey would be much stronger if it went for a quality over quantity approach and/or proposed solutions to some of these problems. A lot of them seem to almost intentionally miss the point of the UI.

For example, the airpods post[0] notes, "Want to listen to the podcast on your iPhone while playing a game on your iPad? Well tough luck using your AirPods for that," which is just completely false.

Sticking to posts like this[1][2] would lead to a much higher quality website imo.

[0]: https://grumpy.website/post/0VaJdRL-y

[1]: https://grumpy.website/post/0VlYhfUMg

[2]: https://grumpy.website/post/0VfEvLg0j

> I also really dislike the App Store. [...] I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things

I used to do this too, and like you, I've now grown to really dislike it. My reason is different, though: the App Store app has _plummeted_ in quality. It's now so hard to use, I don't bother using it.

1. The UI is all over the place. Some UI controls cause pages to swipe up from the bottom. Some cause pages to swipe in from the right. Some cause modals. Whenever I click something, I have no idea what it's going to do. Here are some examples: https://grumpy.website/post/0RsaxCu3P

2. It's full of bugs. I have witnessed the App Store lose track of whether an app is bought or not, downloaded or not, or installing or not. Another example: https://grumpy.website/post/0SU9WNFXB

3. It makes the rest of my system worse. Every week or so, I get a message like "Fantastical cannot be updated because it is open". I didn't set it to update. I had no idea it was even updating. I just get an obnoxious dialog interrupting my work.

The App Store used to be like a shopping mall — I'd browse the shelves, see what was new, and maybe buy a small app I liked the look of once in a while. But now it's become so hard to browse, I don't bother paying. Everyone loses out.

Gcaptcha hates VPN users, and Firefox users [1, 2]. You can ameliorate this by being logged in in a google account (!). The cynic in me mutters something here about advertising.

Cloudfare, on the other hand, sometimes just decides that the website said "nope" and blocks you. It's such a giant PITA. I spend a lot of time in two countries because of my job and family -- and one restaurant near my home in one of them has decided to block all IPv4 (but not ipv6...) connections to it with cloudfare. I used to look at their menu online, often on the days that I flew back (in the 'before times'). I have to use a VPN to get around that (their food is good!). Cloudfare recently started introducing obnoxious captcha requirements and occasionally outright blocking.

The more people who use VPNs -- and I am sure they are on the rise -- the more it becomes normalised hopefully the more that this goes away. To be honest, it's a price worth paying for privacy at any rate.

[1] https://grumpy.website/post/0RzW4elEN
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20147015

Thanks for that link. One related to this one just got me on DVD Netflix's payment settings site.

https://grumpy.website/post/0VkVVuQ6t

There is no button to remove your card info. It had my old ZIP code and updating it wasn't working (it would still fail address verification). So to update the value, you are somehow expected to know to clear the field and then save, then enter the correct value and save a second time.

Except it doesn't work.[0] What does work is entering a different credit card, saving it, then reentering your original card with the correct ZIP code.[1] So bad design with no affordances and a broken help function, lead to a long-time customer wanting to unsubscribe out of frustration.

[0] Neither did the chat function to ask for help. I had to talk to a support person who told me how this was supposed to work. A phone call to support is an expensive cost to a business based on volume.

[1] Which made me think they were storing extra info using my card number as a key. And that's not great.

For more of these daily annoyances: https://grumpy.website

The growing user hostility of UIs makes me want to stop developing software and even stop using computers. I started using computers because they made more sense to me than a lot of things. Now, I'm encountering these little moments of illogic and unreason every hour of the day.

It's not just beginners who need little cues. I'm deeply familiar with the APIs behind many of these monstrosities and yet I still find myself annoyed or momentarily confused by UIs that minimize, obscure, and hide in the name of Design.

https://grumpy.website/post/0Sqvx1C9H

> Five other people are reading this doc, right? Wrong! The user with a white avatar is actually a button to start a chat! Why does it look like a user and is placed where all other users are, we’ll never know.

> But wait, isn’t there a chat button next to Share? No, that’s comments! What’s the difference? Comments are square, while chat bubbles are oval!

> Also, if you ever wanted to check how your stocks are doing, there’s a button for that too.

Nice :-)