Pretty cool. I lived out that way for a bit in the early 2010s (Abrams + Munger). I take it you're from Garland originally, or did you grow up in the city?
Wow, this is a great blast from the past. I grew up on the road where this airport http://www.airfields-freeman.com/MA/Airfields_MA_C.htm#norfo... was. You would walk right out our front door and the field with runways was right in front of you. I vividly remember being about 6-7 years old (so, 1993-1994) and seeing a plane crash in the field. Was hoping to find mention of it but didn't see any. Either way, total nostalgia flood. Simpler times. Thanks OP!
Yeah, you see a similar phenomenon in the northeastern US. Places like New Bedford and Lowell, Massachusetts were doing much better when whaling and textiles were in their golden years. Now, not so much.
I was a console and laptop guy for my whole life, built my first PC I think age 32-33. It was initially daunting but /r/BuildaPC and analyzing many builds on PCPartpicker.com really helped. I also had a couple of people at work who helped me physically assemble it, which was huge.
Honestly, it's much more straightforward than it seems when you think about how complex PC internals seem without much prior knowledge. I would say find some builds you like on PCPartPicker.com and try to emulate them. When it comes to assembling specific parts together, find YouTube videos that closely emulate your setup. For example, the last PC I built used a Lian Li mini case which is very small and can only house very specific sizes of some parts (mainly MoBo and power supply). But it's a very popular case, so there were a ton of very detailed youtube videos on doing a Lian Li mini build. That stuff really helps.
Another thing, highly recommend getting some type of screwdriver / tool kit like this: https://www.ifixit.com/products/mako-driver-kit-64-precision.... I am sure some frugal stickler will come along and tell me why I am dumb for overpaying for this kit, but I really enjoy the convenience factor and did not exactly have a robust set of hand tools laying around - which I expect is the case for many building their first PC.
Yeah I went from Vyvanse to XR to IR over the last 7 years and am happy with IR. I feel as though my ADHD symptoms are mitigated appropriately and the side effects are virtually non existent. Vyvanse was great for productivity but I felt like an absolute laser-focused robot and was not at all pleasant to be around.
I know you were being tongue in cheek, but I am pretty sure this launched right around 2017. In fact, I don't think it's been updated since. I always thought this was a really great idea, but I admit it is strange seeing it crop up again now (looking exactly as it did years ago).
Agreed 100%. Most of the comments here conflate the work of designers with stuff they are _compelled_ to do by marketing, PMs looking to pad their KPIs, “growth” departments (is that term even around anymore), or in many startups cases, bad CEO/head of product decisions. I have been in the design industry as a working professional for over a decade and have never, ever met a designer who willingly implemented a dark pattern.
I have, however:
-Had a VP who insisted I styled the unsubscribe link to our paid subscriptions 10px font and deliberately violate WCAG contrast guidelines (not that he could be bothered to learn or listen on what that means, he just wanted it invisible)
-Had a founder ask me to deliberately bury an app settings button in the primary menu three layers deep to (aspire to) throw folks off the trail of account deletion
> I have been in the design industry as a working professional for over a decade and have never, ever met a designer who willingly implemented a dark pattern.
I work for a company that historically avoided dark patterns since I joined. Whenever someone suggested a dark pattern, it would get called out and we would figure out a different solution, it was quite refreshing.
Last summer, one of our designers started heavily and repeatedly pushing certain dark patterns to our product team. I'm not sure the product team knew that these were dark patterns, and would get approval. When it came time for the developers to review these changes or additions, we pushed back like we normally would. But since there was no clear definition of "dark pattern" or enforced policy that we would avoid them as a brand/company, we were told that these were not dark patterns despite definitely being such and effectively forced to implement them. I didn't touch that code, and half of the team also refused to take on this work.
I've noticed this has become another feud between product/design/ux and engineering. I would think that UX experts would avoid dark patterns because they decrease the quality of the experience, but when the business and product become involved there are competing interests.
The last sentence summarizes all of this thread perfectly IMO.
Without giving away too much detail I’d ask if that designer is a one person or very small department? That would be my guess. It makes these arguments a lot easier to win if you have a mature design practice with good leadership who can say “What biz/sales/product are asking for is not feasible as it violates our established criteria for dark patterns”.
This is, of course, toothless in small or medium sized orgs that only maybe have a few floating designers, for example.
> It makes these arguments a lot easier to win if you have a mature design practice with good leadership who can say “What biz/sales/product are asking for is not feasible as it violates our established criteria for dark patterns”.
We don't really have established criteria, we're a smaller org and typically it's been the developers that have resisted implementing any dark patterns while offering alternatives and product has historically been supportive of this.
And yeah since we're a small org, we have a small design team with just a few floating designers. The example I mentioned was with just one in particular and the only one my team really works with.
I live out here. 10 miles may as well be an inch. It is VAST.
All of the towns around here have a population of 2000 or less, save for Alpine at a whopping 20k. Personally, I have zero concerns about being in the radius of any of all that.
