Plus ça change ...

... plus c'est la même merde.

And what merde (pardon my French) do I mean? Software that was perfectly good, but was "improved" anyway -- by deleting longstanding features. Software with an idiotic user interface. Software "standardized" to give the same experience on tiny phone screens and big monitors. Software that ...

I'm not opposed to change. That's kinda frowned upon among SF writers. And I'm fully supportive of updates that add new and useful features, squash bugs, improve security, or improve performance. I'm not complaining (today) about blatant bugs that -- somehow -- made it past QA, but that might -- someday, one hopes -- be fixed.

No, today's post (okay, rant) is about software stupidities by design. As both a user and onetime software developer, I feel entitled. Herewith a sampling (with names omitted not to protect the guilty, but because I don't care to moderate a flood of justification comments from the guilty) of software design stupidities that regularly vex me:

• On a web portal, the checkbox set by default at logon to stay logged on. So rather than have someone who wants to stay logged on click or tap the box once, I have to uncheck the box daily.
• On multiple browsers with the feature to change the font size of content, no way to change the tiny type of the browser's own text -- like menu items and bookmark names. (Yes, I know about add-ons. I use one. This one shouldn't be necessary.)
• On a banking app, the camera feature changed to take check pictures faster than a normal human being could frame the check. (To give credit where it's due, the next update restored a reasonable few seconds for setting up the check image.)

A slight change in story plans

In Short and Sweet, on April 19, I announced a bunch of pending short-fiction appearances. One of those stories, "The Pilgrimage," has since been rescheduled by Analog from the July/August issue (showing up about now in mailboxes and bookstores) to the November/December issue. As Yoga Berra instructed us: It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Indeed. For anyone just dying to read that particular tale ... sorry for the inconvenience.

Then there was my other prediction about an upcoming appearance in Analog: "My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage." That novelette remains on track for the September/October issue ... and it will be, I'm informed, the issue's lead story. That placement was a nice surprise.

While I get accustomed to bionic eyes ...

Following cataract surgeries and implanted lens, I'm without eyeglasses for the first time in ... sixty years. Yowza. But while I'm copacetic for distance, I still need to figure out what's best for close-up/reading. Ditto for the mid-range (as in: the computer screen across the desk even as I type). I suspect those won't settle out till my eyes settle in and another visit to the ophthalmologist.

The immediate upshot? I'm doing less reading, and less computer work, than has long been my norm. (And most of the time today that I felt okay to spend at the computer? Those hours went to my final polishing of a novella and sending it off.) Hence, today's post will be briefer than my usual. That's not to say, or so I shall flatter myself, this post will be any less interesting ...

Does not compute ... or does it?

NBC News offers, "Sex Robots Are Coming, and They're Not as Skeevy as You Think: Sex doll manufacturers and independent roboticists are designing and building the first humanlike robots that people can have sex with."

Just asking for trouble ...

And from Motherboard, by hacker, security researcher and human-rights activist Claudio Guarnieri, we have the earnest admonition, "Online Voting Is a Terrible Idea." A sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree. IMO, this short passage from the article sums up the issue perfectly:

... electronic voting attempts to solve a problem that just doesn't exist. With the predominant system of paper ballots, we normally get a preliminary count of the votes in a matter of hours already. The benefits provided by a more automatized counting process are not only questionable, but they simply do not outweigh the gravity of the risks involved.

Plenty of food here for thought. Now I'm off to rest my eyes for a bit.

Will wonders never cease?

Nope, I'm not being ironic. Recent astronomical reports are wonderfully amazing. I often marvel at the subtle details -- and mind-blowing implications -- astronomers can glean from their observations. Such as:

"NASA Space Probes Have Detected a Human-Made Barrier Surrounding Earth: We are changing space itself." And as this barrier of very low frequency RF waves is expanding the Van Allen Belts, extending the domain of near-Earth space that's not filled with deadly radiation, it seems like a good thing. If we can expand the protection zone out past geosynch altitudes, that will make travel up a space elevator safe. (If only we could build a space elevator ... but someday [I predict], that too, will happen.)

And speaking of waves ...

Suddenly, I want a pizza

"Massive Lava Waves Detected on Jupiter’s Moon Io." Consider this: Thanks to a rare orbital alignment between Europa and Io, an international team of researchers has identified and tracked a pair of lava waves as they coursed around Loki Patera, which is larger than Lake Ontario, and with a surface area of 8,300 square miles (21,500 square km). How cool (okay, that was ironic) is that?

Now on to a different sort of wave: gravitational.