obscura

> The most important thing I learned was that old computers are still fast — and quite usable as a daily driver.

I have to point out that your build isn't entirely an old computer. Having an SSD makes a major difference. If you were to use an IDE HDD or even an old SATA, you'd probably think differently.

Nevertheless, an interesting exercise.

While this the feedback in this mail indicates a problem, even if you remove the emotional language I don't believe it's constructive. Constructive feedback would not just indicate a problem, but also provide guidance/suggestions on how to correct it.

I sympathise with the author. Why should one have to put up with mails like this? I understand the argument of being professional, but it's very draining to have to absorb personal attacks and ill-mannered outbursts while never being able to respond in kind.

Given that the sender didn't provide constructive feedback, is seemingly not contributing financially, and can simply choose to not use the application, I don't see why a response in kind shouldn't be given. To me, Don's response was mild.

The animated GIFs are really distracting and detract from the writing. I eventually deleted them from the parts I hadn't yet read.

I have to say that Crump was incredibly forgiving and put in a lot of extra effort. I don't think anyone I've been taught by would have gone to this much trouble.

I'm afraid this is nothing new. I experienced similar frustrations - archiving didn't work, there were no notices about downtime, and support response was abysmal despite a Twitter account that was very active about US politics - all back in 2017. I left disappointed and with a refund in 2018.

You've tried two models of two non-Mac brands and one Mac laptop, and have concluded that all laptops except Macs "seem" to be problematic...

What a ridiculous post.

As with so many opinions these days, it's at one extreme and ignores the middle ground.

For some apps, the big issue is when you schedule the downtime to happen. If you are truly customer-centric, you should schedule for a time that causes the least disruption for your users. Of course, a decision like this depends on other factors - the number of users likely to be affected, how critical the app changes are, costs, etc.

I've noticed a number of companies in my country taking sites and apps offline in the middle of the workday when they're very likely to be in use. To me, this is unacceptable - the work on the app should be done after hours.

Nice article - I enjoyed reading it. The examples are interesting in that they show how difficult it is to cover all the scenarios one can encounter when trying to anonymise data - e.g., double encoding. However, Avast should have analysed the data, spotted issues like these, and fixed them. Of course, the problem is they didn't have the incentive to do so.

This whole issue is another example of how hard it is for all of us to make good decisions about privacy. Most people wouldn't think about privacy being a problem when using Avast. Even if you do read the privacy policy you actually can't be entirely sure what's being done with your data (which you indicated in your original October 2019 article). However, it appears that you're safe because the data will be anonymised. There's nothing more for you to do at this point other than trust that Avast is handling anonymisation correctly.

I wonder if it's actually possible to anonymise data effectively yet still make it useful. Based on literature such as the academic article you referred to [1] and another I looked at a long time ago [2], it seems to me that with enough seemingly unrelated data you can identify most people.

[1] De-anonymizing Web Browsing Data with Social Networks [2] Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets

I also recommend checking out the Affinity products. They're feature-rich, affordable and continually being improved.

I hope that in the wake of this more people start supporting the alternatives. More comepetition means more choice. Adobe's software is excellent, but they're far too dominant. The alternatives may not be good enough for everyone right now, but they're good enough for many of us and they're improving all the time.

The Affinity suite is great and affordable for me as a hobbyist. Many of the open source packages are also excellent.

This sounds like a flawed development cycle. Where's the end-user testing?

In defence of the developers/programmers, many people are really bad at explaining what they want, not least because it's often not what they actually need.

If a designer is designing something that looks good but doesn't work well (i.e., solve the problem), they are bad at usability/UX. They should be getting user feedback on their design before it's implemented - that's what user-centred design is about.

There's often a gap when it comes to understanding requirements - between the end-user and the developer, between the designer and developer, etc. Requirements gathering is actually a specialised skill and one of the key duties of a business analyst.

What are "basic facts"? Surely the point of most research is to uncover new facts? And what is "reference material" if not other research - research that you're using as a foundation for your own?

It's fair to question things, especially if they don't make sense to you and even if acknowledged authorities are behind them. However, (1) something that you may question is not necessarily something I may question, and (2) questioning may be a waste of time.

If a paper that says mixing red and blue paint makes green paint has a thousand citations, perhaps you don't need to question it because others already have. If you can't reproduce it, the simplest thing to do is ask an expert who says it is possible to do it.