A search engine that filters out ai generated sites and content. Or just works at all.
A good start that allows you to pin/ban sites from search results, order by least ad trackers, search the small web, and more:
Its paid, which can be seen as ridiculous but for me it helps me be confident im not the product.
I keep seeing this WAY too much. I’m starting to get suspicious it’s being pushed by their ad/marketing department. 🤨
Well in which case you probably won’t believe me but I’ve been using Kagi for a while and am extremely happy with it… no link with the company at all other than a very satisfied user 🤷🏻♂️
You can improve Google a bit using ublacklist but it still wasn’t anywhere as good as Kagi.
I will say Kagi isn’t as good when it comes to looking for local businesses or services… I still use Google for that but you can do that within Kagi with a !g and it anonymises the search
Well Darren (if that is you’re real name). I’ll be keeping my eye on this situation.
It’s pushed by people who already pay for it
I haven’t experimented with it much, but:
A good Discord alternative, with all its main features like voice, text, and screen sharing, federated, and self-hosted.
Maybe?
Yeah, it’s getting there but not quite yet. And it still doesn’t have screen share, as far as I know.
I don’t know if matrix checks all of these boxes yet… but a discord contender built on matrix would be a dream.
Matrix will never replace discord, because implementing gifs took them like 10 years so far and it’s still not even a concept. And imagine discord like experience without gifs. Impossible.
Which is sad, because Matrix is otherwise absolutely great! It’s just not focused on casual users at all.
And imagine discord like experience without gifs. Impossible.
Sounds like heaven to me
For some people indeed. But general audience, majority of discord users, see it as “ah, it’s the ripoff without gifs”.
I have never sent a gif on discord, and people who did are maniacs. There are better formats than ancient .gifs.
Well, majority of people discord is focused on do use them. That is how it is. When Matrix offer something meaningless (for them) like e2ee or federation in exchange for not having gifs and being “too complicated to set up”, you’ll never get this people to use it. It just makes no sense for them.
I’d love the ability to have channels directly link to Web pages
Like an iFrame?
Accurate progress bars and “remaining time” displays (yes, I know that this isn’t technically possible, but we’re wishing here).
I don’t want to see my computer/phone grind away for a few minutes yet still be at “0%”, then jump to “76%”, chug away some more, then abruptly finish a task. When something is going to take time, I wanna know if we’re talking “stare at the screen for a minute” kind of time or “find something else to do for a while” kind of time.
I just want to do a humble brag here and say that there are some programmers that care.
30 years ago when I used to make multimedia training software, I would run an installer with another script running that would time stamp completion of the different install steps.
I would average them out and using the equivalent of a player piano, “playback” the progress bar on the end-user install.
So instead of reporting that a certain percentage was done which didn’t actually represent the time, you got an extremely accurate progress bar that on almost every computer, went up at a very predictable rate.
It’s a grotesquely easy thing to do and I don’t know why it hasn’t become common practice.
Like you said, as developers, there’s often nothing we can do about this. The state prior to something taking forever can be exactly the same as the state prior to it finishing quickly, so there’s no way for us to predict it.
The best we can do is give you a throbber.
That’s better than nothing! At least I know my computer isn’t frozen.
Not so much software as an element that needs to be part of so much software but, for some unfathomable reason, is not:
Picklists which work properly. If I type “U”, do not give me a screen full of Ts with the first U at the bottom. And let me type more than one letter to get to exactly where I need to be in the list. It can be done but it rarely is done and it does my head in.
Also, if you must include a scroll wheel to enter numbers, make it possible to just fucking type the numbers instead.
This is probably not what you intended this thread for but I’ll take any chance I get to ask UI designers to get a fucking grip…
I like a good rant. Got any more?
Software developers who never have, and never will have to, use the software for real. I think every coder should be forced to use their own software for one month out of every year they work on it (and be able to do the job that goes with it because how the fuck else are they going to get a clue?).
And fucking stop making PC software that looks like it was designed to be used on a phone. I cannot do my job on a phone, no one would ever do my job on a phone, everyone who does my job has at least two large screens. We do not want to click a million times to do one simple task, and we do want to be able to see masses of information at the same time.
/rant
Software developers who never have, and never will have to, use the software for real.
Yes. The customer doesn’t necessarily know what’s possible or know how to articulate what features they want. I spent one week in a position where I was using my own software for production and immediately made several simple enhancements once I had hands on experience with the expected business process.
Every programmer should go through an exercise like this at least once in a while.
I am quite old, so remember the transition from scientists writing their own software to systems analysts who specialised in writing software that was fit for purpose. And that was exactly the ideal: the systems analyst was supposed to be someone who could code as well as their programmers could and understand the job the software was designed for as well as the customer did.
None of that seems to have happened. Some of the kids who could code got lucky with billion dollar jackpots from very low hanging fruit. And ever since, we’ve just been hit by waves of kids who can code going straight into software development with absolutely no experience of how work works.
It’s a difficult problem to solve. I have an aunt who developed software in the '60s and '70s who had to retire early because the languages she used became obsolete (apart from a brief bounce running up to Y2K). But it is a problem we absolutely have to solve. So much shitty software, wasting so much effort, for the developers and users alike.
I think every coder should be forced to use their own software for one month out of every year they work on it (and be able to do the job that goes with it because how the fuck else are they going to get a clue?).
At my company, all developers spend time every year in customer support. It gives us first hand experience with what our customers are running into and asking for. We also work directly with field consultants on their projects. It’s not exactly this, but it’s pretty close, and it works really well.
That must help a lot. But often, when I am quietly cursing them, I just want to make them shadow me for a day to see, and feel, the impact of their ridiculous decisions. We have given them written explanations, had meetings, shown screenshots. But nothing gets through. If they had to spend a day a week using it, they might actually do something about it.
We have given them written explanations, had meetings, shown screenshots. But nothing gets through.
They’re not paying attention, then. If they used it for a week, they’d probably just write off any problems as “eh, that’s how it’s designed.”
Some folks just don’t get that there’s more to writing software than the code. The human element is super important.
Here’s a basic UI thing that needs to happen: spatially stable navigation.
When I scroll up, something should not appear unless it was just hidden by my scrolling down.
When I hit “back”, I should always be where I just was.
These are, in some ways, the same thing. Scrolling up on a webpage is, quite often, intended as an “undo” for the previous scrolling-down action. When I scroll up, I want to see the last thing that disappeared under the upper fold. I don’t want to see your menu, which wasn’t there before.
Sponsor Block for podcasts
FreeCAD alternative so we can have another FOSS CAD drawing software :(
No, I’m actually cool with FreeCAD but an alternative is welcome one especially one that can work on linux.
It would be really nice to have a parametric 3D modeling software solution that was on the same level as Blender or KiCAD. Every time I try FreeCAD I end up moping out pretty quickly.
FreeCAD in its vanilla state (without tweaks) is pain in the butt in term of usability, it’s still bit “hard” to recommend for casual user when they are coming from commercial like Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks and such.
Recently Ondsel Team created sort of modules for FreeCAD which also marketed as standalone product that lets you to make it functions like Fusion 360 in term of cloud connectivity, their free tier also good even better than Fusion 360 Hobbyist License. They also contribute toward FreeCAD upstream for some general improvement though some of them are exclusive on their own implementation.
The day FreeCAD 1.0 dropped, I definitely going to try it out because I’m stuck on Fusion (needed for collaboratory work) ever since graduated from college.
Yeah, I was taught using NX and coincidentally also use it at my current job, but I have dabbled in almost all of the other commercially available platforms and so far FreeCAD took the longest for me to “pickup” as it were.
I mean of all the features F360 has, cloud connectivity is probably the least desirable one for me. In fact, I’d say it’s an anti-feature.
You are probably already aware but there is OpenSCAD which allows you to model via programming rather than by UI. Not really an apples to apples equivalent but I find it decently interesting. I do wish there was something a little more more overtly friendly to beginners like Fusion360 though.
To be honest, it is first time I discover OpenSCAD, probably due to its nature modeling by programming rather than visually.
Logically you do want to model by visually especially when it’s more complex geometry and perhaps that’s reason why you may seeing them less getting recommended in general when something like BricsCAD (Education license), OnShape exists.
I agree Fusion 360 (on Windows) with Free Hobbyist/Personal license is good start to learn CAD modelling for free though as year went by the Hobbyist license becoming stricter and limited in term of policy which raising red flag for hobbyist, not to mention Autodesk also converting users lifetime license into subscription without any notice is enough reason to stay away unless your job provides you those CAD program licenses.
Mapping software that can give directions the way human navigator would.
When I’m driving in my own city, my mapping software should be intelligent enough to know that I am aware of most of the roads; it can track me.
I don’t need to hear
“Keep straight on Highway 101 West signs for Highway 101 West for 300m, then take exit 104 South signs for Highway 104 South, take exit 104A South signs for 104 South, merge onto Highway 104 South signs for 104 South. Go straight on Highway 104 South for 400m then take the left lane and turn left on route 40 Eastbound signs for route 40. Boodle-ding you are on the correct route. In 200m turn left onto route 40 Eastbound signs for route 40 Eastbound. Turn left onto route 40 Eastbound signs for route 40 Eastbound.”
… When what is needed in a realistic sense is the following:
“In 300m take the exit to 104 Southbound then after 400 m, turn left at the first set of lights onto route 40”
That’s kind of what the old Google Maps did 20 years ago. Now Google Maps will yell you to exit a highway in order to stay on that highway.
Sadly, that description was motivated by a direct experience I had a few days ago with Google maps.
But I’ve definitely had that other experience as well, where the next leg of the trip is to go straight for 20 minutes, and Google Maps chimes-in every 30 seconds to remind me to stay straight.
The most recent meaningful upgrade I have seen in the software is that instead of deciding to either play each piece of audio through the phone speaker or the Bluetooth, quite at random, it will now play things through the Bluetooth. Livin’ in 2024.
deleted by creator
That would be a meaningful improvement. I moved - basically sight unseen - a year ago to a new town. Day one I needed every bit of turn by turn. Now, if I’m headed to any of the four or five places I bother to go, I just set up the map as a CYA and a simple “yep, make that turn you’re planning on” would be sufficient.
Then there’s a 90 minute trip i make every two weeks, that I know fairly well but not like I’d know a daily drive. The first hour is “Jump on 74 west, take exit for 57 south, and go a ways”. That part I have down cold obv.
After I get onto hwy 36 tho, damned if I can remember where the (poorly marked) left turn onto CR 1300 is.
Better still would be an adaptive mode. Leave me tf alone with my CCR playlist until I’m within a couple miles of that poorly marked turn. THEN help me out with a gentle reminder.
The hour or so of instructions prior to that point are wasted and would be pretty easy for AI to figure out I don’t need help on that part.
Something other than “Finder” for macOS
There’s
ls! But seriously, if anyone knows any “normal” file browsers for macOS then I’m all ears!I use pathfinder. It’s an improvement over finder, but still not great.
I haven’t tried it but maybe you can give it a try this (I have it saved in my check for later list lol).
Thanks I will have a look.
Something that can utilize a Shazam API or something similar and go through my entire music library (which is full of hundreds of tracks named “Track 1”, “Track 2”, etc.) and title them appropriately, ideally with correct metadata and album art. I would pay a lot for this.
MusicBrainz Picard is what you should try out.
Also, a song recognition feature was built into MusicBee for updating tags, but it never works as well as it could be.
Be sure to enable the extra cover art plugins in Picard.
Musicbrainz Picard has been amazing getting Plex straight for me. <3
The user scripts to import meta data from other sites rocks my socks. These are user created so search the internet for them.
Why isn’t there vr animation software? Why can’t we have several people pop up in an instance and animate avatars like a stop motion movie?
AnimVR
Probably not exactly your intention but have you seen some of the stuff created in Dreams for PS4?
Bloodborne on PC
A proper file picker for Linux.
Just curious, what are your issues with the current available options?
I’m not the person you replied to, but the one and only thing I miss about Windows is being able to paste a web address directly into the file picker.
Say I find an image here on Lemmy that I want to share with a friend on FB Messenger. On Windows, I could just copy the URL of the image, go to FB, “upload image” and paste the URL into the file picker dialog.
On Linux, I have to save it to my disk first.
Holy shit what?? I’ve been using Windows since 95 and didn’t have the slightest idea you could do that.
It’s not really advertised or intuitive in any way, so that doesn’t surprise me. In fact, I have no recollection of how I came upon this feature. Maybe I discovered it in a fever dream, maybe it was on a lifehacker.com listicle. I’m not even sure it’s supposed to be a feature, for all we know it could be an odd quirk, some legacy code in explorer.exe. The inner machinations of Windows are an enigma.
I never knew you could do that. Maybe I’ll try my hands at implementing that on the kde file picker.
If you ever get around to it, let me know. I’d buy you a drink!
Say I find an image here on Lemmy that I want to share with a friend on FB Messenger. On Windows, I could just copy the URL of the image, go to FB, “upload image” and paste the URL into the file picker dialog.
so do the same and paste the link on facebook. I thought facebook shows image links on chats.
I could just send the link, but I’d rather it be displayed directly in the chat. In any case, this was just an example. When I wanted to upload my avatar to lemmy, I had to download the image I found online and then upload it via the file picker. It’d be more convenient to just point the file picker directly to the URL of where the image is hosted in the first place, which Windows’ file picker dialog allows (or at least it did on Windows 7).
Can’t preview files before choosing them. Only thing is that tiny little “preview” thing for pictures and videos. Have to squint to even see the little tiny preview. No right click to open in file picker. I could go on.
linus could use something like directory opus on amiga
I wish there would be more Total Commander/Free Commander tools be in Linux Nemo like mass renaming, better file filtering as I type, show recursive folder structures flat, better advanced search, implemented zip/unzip and view of archives, multi folder parallel view, better tab organizaton (lock tabs, close all tabs, name tabs, clone tabs in other view).
No offense but what the heck do you mean by that? Every linux file Explorer I’ve used has been really good. WAY BETTER than Windows Explorer at the very least. Personally my favorite is Thunar
The thing that pops up when you are choosing a file to be posted/sent. Like if you want to post an image on lemmy, the dialog window that pops up to pick the file from your local storage that comes up.
What you’re thinking of is something like nautilus, nemo, or dolphin.
Those are well known to be awesome, but the file picker/chooser has been shit for 20 years.
There was this small project long ago where you could organize all your desktop data in mindmap like 3d galaxies. It was really beautiful, but I can’t remember it’s name, nor have I found something similar again for modern operating systems.
A viable alternative to the Blink and WebKit dominance to allow something other than every browser being Chromium.
Firefox’s Gecko engine is rather tied into the browser meaning nearly all Gecko based browsers are just Firefox with pre-config and extensions.
I’m keeping an eye on Servo and Vox as what seem to be the most viable alternatives currently in development.
A FOSS digital audio workstation that’s on par with Ableton
Not FOSS, but Renoise is phenomenal and works on Linux, at least. Made by a very small company. Difficult to get used to if you’re not familiar with trackers, but not that difficult. It’s not Ableton Live, but it’s way up there in terms of professionalism and flexibility. And it’s very cheap, too.
Renoise is very fun to use, and sounds great too. My imaginary DAW would definitely come with a ‘tracker mode’ inspired by that
What are your thoughts on Ardour ? I don’t think it’s geared towards live performance though
I like that it exists, but haven’t gotten any good results with it personally. I could see it being useful if your needs are simple though, e.g., just setting up mics with instruments, and getting a decently-mixed multitrack recording together.
That said, I fully acknowledge that building something with the capabilities and sophistication of Ableton, or Logic, etc, is a gigantic undertaking, requiring huge amounts of work from a well-organized team. But an ‘all-in-one’ DAW solution might not even the right approach to take here, tbh. Maybe the FOSS model would work better for building a bunch of small modules that can be brought together somehow
You know the CEO of Ableton encourages pirating Ableton right?
I have a paid copy of Ableton already, just enjoy the open-source model a lot more for (basically all) non-music software, for the openness and flexibility
