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Google Images Restored (github.com)
gchokov 1168 days ago [-]
Someone in Google’s UX and Design department, really needs go out and breathe some fresh air. Is it only me, who dislikes 95% of the design decision of Google products in the recent years?
neilpanchal 1167 days ago [-]
There are so many things that bother me about contemporary UI in general, I ranted on here the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293

I sincerely feel that the discipline of building user interfaces is long lost and perhaps never to come back. From car dashboards to loud typography, the whole field is regressing. Minimalism, too much white space, infantilization of users, design trends, loss of predictability, etc. are all symptoms of this.

There are still some gems that I find here and there: https://neil.computer/notes/the-design-of-diskprices-com/

userbinator 1167 days ago [-]
Minimalism, too much white space

Those two tend to be related. It really angers me every time I see a huge amount of whitespace for no good reason, but then most of the functionality is hidden behind a dropdown menu whose equally stupid '...' indicator only shows up when you happen to hover over it. WTF.

Back when UIs were still good, things would usually be hidden only if there wasn't enough space. You could see almost everything you needed at a glance. The "designers" dismiss that as "messy" and "clutter", which is frankly absurd --- something functional is not going to look "clean", much like a machine shop that's in active use: Tools and parts are laid out everywhere, because the user needs access to them.

That diskprices.com site is great. Craigslist is another one that comes to mind. The only thing it's missing is a "submit" button for those who have JS disabled... otherwise it's a perfect example of extremely functional design that wasn't ruined by "UI/UX designers".

towndrunk 1167 days ago [-]
"indicator only shows up when you happen to hover over it. WTF."

My wife and I had this conversation the other day. There are things in iOS you only get or see if you long press. How the hell are you to discover these things?

chii 1167 days ago [-]
It's a subtle psychological manipulation of the mind of the users of computers - stick to the simple use case, and don't do complicated things, don't try to be an advanced user, don't think for yourself and just consume what we tell you to.

I hate it.

echelon 1167 days ago [-]
> I hate it.

There's nothing you can do. Computing stopped being about expert users the minute the rest of the world got online. Now the giants control all the devices, platforms, and mindshare. They will never cater to you. Informed users aren't the ones clicking the ads or buying the things as intended.

We've crossed into the gravity well of user hostility, and there's no longer any escape.

I hate it too.

Moru 1167 days ago [-]
The annoying part is that they still need help with a lot of stuff but now all I can say is "no, I just don't know." I used to be able to figure out just about anything they wanted help with, be it how to program the video or set up windows just the way they wanted or in worst case write a program that solved whatever for them. Now I just feel stupid. What happened?
greggman3 1167 days ago [-]
This sounds like a great inspiration for a modern parody of "They Live" (1988)
Too 1167 days ago [-]
Some times not even long pressing is enough. Try to find the timestamps of your texts in Messages on iOS.

I spent several minutes bashing around, double tapping, longpress, force press, went into settings to look for toggles. Had to google it eventually. Turns out you do this by swiping left. And i had actually tried to swipe sideways before, but only right.

Once you know it it's actually very convenient, but discovering it is near impossible.

codetrotter 1167 days ago [-]
> How the hell are you to discover these things?

Sometimes by accident, sometimes from hearing about it from others, sometimes from searching on Google for how to do something.

andai 1167 days ago [-]
I keep hearing about these secret iOS features. Is there a manual or something I should have read?
userbinator 1167 days ago [-]
But "modern" software is perfectly usable without documentation! /s

I miss the days when software actually came with very detailed documentation for the user. They had their hidden features too, but at least there was documentation for them.

iaml 1167 days ago [-]
Both ios and android have 'tips' app that fulfills this role and are hard to miss since they spam notifications at you.
iFreilicht 1167 days ago [-]
Long pressing is the equivalent of a right-click or shift-click, it's a well-established pattern. MacOS tried to avoid right-clicks for the longest time, but often there's just not enough space to have every feature discoverable by visuals alone.

Of course, hiding everything behind that is not good, but when I look at apps like FairMail that try to show you what you can do directly, it just gets very confusing and the space left for the actual content becomes miniscule.

rebuilder 1167 days ago [-]
>How the hell are you to discover these things?

The same way power users discover e.g. keyboard shortcuts, I imagine.

userbinator 1167 days ago [-]
The same way power users discover e.g. keyboard shortcuts, I imagine.

At least keyboard shortcuts are visible directly in the menus, for both Windows and Mac.

jjoonathan 1167 days ago [-]
Hamburgers and Hieroglyphs are where UX goes to die.
p49k 1167 days ago [-]
This is all personal preference, but personally I strongly disagree with you. I find that diskprices site to be poorly organized, difficult to use, and the majority of the site is the full (non-normalized) text descriptions of the individual items, which is not only a giant mess of text, but also unnecessarily replicates data. The data columns are misaligned, too much repetition of certain words that could be abbreviated ("External/ Internal"), etc.

I think it's good design to hide certain functions behind "..." - For example, I can't tell you the number of times I've accidentally flagged a post on HN just because my finger accidentally touched my phone or because I was trying to click the comments link a few pixels away (which is the feature that people want to access on 95% of clicks that occur in that region). If I had to hit "..." first, it would never happen because I would have just accidentally opened a menu. (And if you flag something, you may never be able to unflag it because it loses ranking and appears at another position somewhere on the site or disappears entirely).

AnIdiotOnTheNet 1167 days ago [-]
I think the current trend away from good UI is itself a symptom of a larger trend in our industry: the trend away from respecting the user.

Users are not customers now, they are cattle. You farm their attention and don't care about enabling them.

nostromo 1167 days ago [-]
This soulless corporate style of illustration not a single person likes:

https://www.imgur.com/DcL05OA.gif

(This could be a subset of infantilization, since this art style seems to come from books for toddlers.)

rajacombinator 1167 days ago [-]
What is the name for this abhorrent trend, and how did it originate and become ubiquitous?
0xfffafaCrash 1167 days ago [-]
It's a "flat design" vector art style inspired by the work of the Memphis Group that's called "Corporate Memphis" primarily by critics. While Hacker News is apparently too sophisticated to be condescended to with simplistic animations that look good at very different resolutions, I think a lot of people like it.

If everyone hated this and considered it "corporate," it wouldn't be the one used by some of the animation studios that create the most popular content (e.g. Kurzgesagt).

Green_man 1167 days ago [-]
I'm pretty ignorant of design styles, but what always bothered me about "Corporate Memphis", and styles like it, was the very weirdly caricatured humans depicted within it. The people usually look incredibly weird, and while it's not quite "uncanny valley" or whatever, it feels like a very cheap and ineffective attempt at implying diversity. Maybe this isn't the intent at all, but it's most noticeable when there are differently deformed people in the art. People in real life come in all shapes and sizes, but not in the same way, with very bright colors and comically different proportions. As a non graphic designer, I appreciate that such a flat, 2D style may require some unrealistic designs, but as a human, I'm pretty sensitive to depictions of especially unrealistic human imposters. I adore Kutzgesagt, and I think that may be due in part to their predominant use of birds and other animals as agents, rather than strangely proportioned people.

"Here we love people, even if they have enormous hands!" https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbWYR4lWkAEOgAo.jpg

"I don't care if you're white, brown, black, orange, or purple!" https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Aleg...

nicbou 1167 days ago [-]
They represent an urbanite 20-something's version of diversity. I appreciate the effort, but I noticed that it rarely represents characters of different ages or styles.

This is very low on my list of grievances though. I like those vector characters quite a bit more than the stock photos they replace.

josefx 1167 days ago [-]
I wouldn't be surprised if the simplicity of the style made it interesting for constrained budgets and time tables.

Kurzgesagt mentions on its patreon that they used to spend on average 150 hours on each episode and are now at up to 500. While the style stayed mostly the same I think there is now also a lot more going on visually than in the early videos.

andai 1167 days ago [-]
I love Kurtzgesagt but don't like these graphics. I didn't realize they were supposed to be the same style!
anfilt 1167 days ago [-]
I don't think it has anything todo with vectors. Sure general vector art tends to be simpler. What I see is mostly people complaining about empty space, that can be used, and have to access common actions through a menu, also a lot of times no way to add common action like customizable readily available menu ect...

While the uncluttered design for something someone only uses a couple times might be fine to avoid overwhelming someone. If you use it daily and even multiple times a day that can make it harder to use.

It also remind me something i read about a ticket kiosk for some transit system. They updated the kiosk with simpler interface to select various things. While effective for infrequent riders, people who would purchase tickets daily found it much slower because the old kiosk allowed them to type in codes they memorized.

GuB-42 1167 days ago [-]
I'd say it started with the mobile web. Lots of space and simplistic interfaces make a lot of sense when you have a small screen and fat fingers. It is terrible on a desktop but since people want a unified experience, to keep things familiar to the user and to simplify development, you get the least common denominatior.

I'd say that the "flat" trend was started by Microsoft with Windows Mobile and Windows 8. Apple and Google followed (for once Apple didn't start the trend). I liked it at the time, maybe for the novelty, but it quickly faded. Still I understand why people may like it.

tpxl 1167 days ago [-]
> people want a unified experience

Never have I ever heard of a user wanting a unified experience. I have heard plenty of designers though.

int_19h 1164 days ago [-]
Why would I want a unified experience between desktop and mobile, when input methods are completely different? It's kinda like using a bicycle handlebar to steer a car.
1167 days ago [-]
userbinator 1167 days ago [-]
zwlee98 1167 days ago [-]
the Official name is Humans of Flat.

https://onepagelove.com/tag/flat-design-humans

vagrantJin 1167 days ago [-]
Dribble and Behance unfortunately dictate UI/UX as trendy photoshop ideas infiltrate real websites.

What about usability? What about accessibility?

Nope.

unixhero 1167 days ago [-]
To be fair, the guy in the top right tile is a lucky guy!
antihero 1167 days ago [-]
See whilst diskprices is very functional, it is aesthetically poor.

Good design has both functionality and form.

Design is not only about being as useful as possible, but also to present something that is beautiful - it is easier to build a relationship with a user when they are compelled to enjoy a product more due to its visual appeal.

I think a lot of developers seem oblivious to the power of aesthetics because they are so ardently in the functionality camp. The density of information on DiskPrices, whist great for a power user, would probably be daunting and overloading for the average user and whilst it has a retro vibe, is catering to a niche - people technical enough to be looking at disk prices.

RedShift1 1167 days ago [-]
100% agree. When I look at the Windows 10 UI, like for example the settings app, everything is flat, square, 2 tone and all the whitespace makes it look disorganized. It looks downright depressing.
jspash 1167 days ago [-]
My biggest gripe - since I can’t add to your excellent critique of today’s design problems - is when someone comes up with yet another css framework or the like which removes ALL affordances, hides critical functions under mysterious icons, removes ALL colour and personality... then calls it “beautiful”.
iFreilicht 1167 days ago [-]
I don't agree with you 100% here, I believe some small tweaks could make diskprices.com more accessible. But your own main website is so damn good: https://neil.computer/

Functional, high visibility, accessibility, discoverability. There's no bullshit, no hidden anything, it's true minimalism and 100% honest. This is what actual good design looks like. A dark mode would be nice, though.

NetOpWibby 1167 days ago [-]
Neil has some great posts and I agree with everything you said. Twitter, Facebook, and Google all look like Fisher-Price design, it’s annoying.
pottertheotter 1167 days ago [-]
I agree with you overall, but diskprices is far from perfect UI. The layout of the information and how it is accessed is useful. But other design elements, such as color, would make it better.

One of the best designed products I've ever used is the TiVo DVR. We first got one in 1999, the year it came out. I loved it, but realized how well it was designed when I started using other DVRs in the mid 2000s. As a prime example, to delete an episode on a TiVo required pressing one button. On another DVR I had it was six button presses! It was like this for countless things. It was obvious the folks at TiVo had thought long and hard about usability and design and other manufacturers couldn't care less.

Now imagine if TiVo made their remote a rectangular cuboid with hard edges, and all the buttons were hard plastic squares that were all the same color. It would still be much easier for me to delete an episode on the TiVo than on other DVRs, but holding and using the remote would not be a positive experience. Putting some work into the remote so it fits in your hands, the buttons are nice to press, and color and shape of buttons helps you find the button you want would make it so much better (thankfully they did).

Diskprices is similar to the hypothetical TiVo with a crappy remote. Someone worked hard on some aspects of design and usability, but out of either ignorance or arrogance ignored the rest of the aspects.

ju_sh 1166 days ago [-]
Agreed. Finding the right balance between beauty and functionality is definitely a something that seems to be in decline. I've used applications that present too much data and others that hide it all away, both equally frustrating.
jtolmar 1167 days ago [-]
I appreciate the structure of that diskprices website, a big list and a filter bar is one of those classic designs that has disappeared in the modern web. Nowadays it'd be an AI-sorted list that attempts to filter with a search bar, the list would fit four items per page because it insists on showing you pictures of hard drives, and it'd be paginated at some absurdly small number of results per page (or infinite scroll).

That said, I disagree with its FAQ claiming whitespace and color wouldn't help. It'd be a lot easier to actually read the data with a light alternating row color, slightly more vertical spacing, and not styling the links as a wall of underlined blue text.

abhinav22 1167 days ago [-]
I like your website too! Very nicely done
clintonc 1168 days ago [-]
The main changes this extension addresses were made because of a settlement with Getty Images.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...

Lammy 1167 days ago [-]
The worst part of the settlement isn't even the UI changes but how the image search results now seem to favor showing Youtube video frames above showing regular images from non-Google websites.

I guess they get to pass the buck to the video uploaders who have asserted (truthfully or not) that they have a right to upload whatever they're uploading and that they "grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display and perform it) in connection with the Service and YouTube’s (and its successors' and Affiliates') business"

londons_explore 1167 days ago [-]
I guess one of the ranking signals is probably "amount of legal trouble this result will get us into".
bonestamp2 1167 days ago [-]
Yup, we can cut them slack on this one -- they didn't want to make it worse.
fuzzy2 1168 days ago [-]
They’re in good company though. UI/UX in general is going to hell. Not just in $big_corp, but nearly everywhere.

I think that’s mainly because we have UI/UX as a dedicated function now. It’s a job that seems to attract people that don’t know how software _works_. This results in “uncanny” UX that looks similar enough but just doesn’t work the way it should.

Maybe I’m just getting old though!

101008 1168 days ago [-]
I am interested in your point of view. Care to expand?
_underfl0w_ 1167 days ago [-]
I'm not the parent poster but I see where they're coming from - form used to purely _follow_ function in computer UI/UX (as in most engineering fields) but now it's been delegated to "creatives" who, by virtue of their skill set, put form first.

Overall "betterness" is subjective, but speaking as someone who uses a computer as a tool I can honestly say I'd prefer it to function pragmatically than look pretty, if the prettiness requires sacrificing of pragmatism in some way.

NoSorryCannot 1167 days ago [-]
I'm not sure I see any reason to expect or believe that engineers would make good ui/ux decisions. It's not clear to me that choices that are simple for engineering are necessarily even aligned with ultimately being functional.

A good ui/ux specialist will be interested in reducing error rates and improving ease of discovery and use through affordances and good organization of information and actions. Obviously other business interest may conflict with those goals but those same interests are capable of corrupting engineering as well.

And I don't think ui/ux work is as recent as this is all making it sound. Perhaps it is more common now even for orgs where their bread and butter isn't software but ultimately making tools useful and safe and accessible predates software entirely.

arp242 1167 days ago [-]
I think the shift in recent years has been from "UI designers" to "graphic designers". There is a massive difference between the two, but also a lot of conflation. Computer programmers may not be the best UI designers, but graphic designers are even less so, and the "but my art!" graphic designers are the absolute worst.
cvuls 1167 days ago [-]
a main tenet of graphic design is sacrificing your art for functionality. i'm not sure what designers you've been speaking to, but i doubt they're professionals.
userbinator 1167 days ago [-]
I think the difference is between "professionals" as in "gets paid doing this stuff", and as in "actually knows what they're doing".

As evidenced by the discussion here, there seems to be far more of the former than the latter.

oauea 1166 days ago [-]
That is still the wrong way to look at it. Functionality comes first, then you can make that look pretty. There should be no art in your UI.
derefr 1167 days ago [-]
I think they’re talking about a certain kind of “brutalist UI” that used to exist because it was the only possible UI for very simple systems (e.g. switches to bang bytes into registers to bootstrap a machine; character-oriented VRAM you wrote to directly; two-character Unix commands to save line-printer ink; etc.) and then was carried forward as a sort of tradition by people used to that restrictive minimalism (e.g. modern uses of Forth; C for application programming; shell commands that are non-interactive even when run directly from a PTY; essential config files in arcane formats that aren’t easily machine-generated, under the expectation that people are doing system bring-up by hand, Linux-From-Scratch style; etc.)
int_19h 1164 days ago [-]
An example of good UI/UX specialists would be the people who designed IBM CUA. Where did they all go?
BlahGod420 1167 days ago [-]
Given two functionally equivalent pieces of software, customers will choose the prettier of the two. That's all I want to contribute to the conversation.
ramoz 1167 days ago [-]
Yes, same: If your solution users aren't satisfied, then your solution is naively unpragmatic.
BlahGod420 1165 days ago [-]
That's a totally meaningless sentence.
fuzzy2 1167 days ago [-]
It's really quite simple. I've been using PCs since Windows 3.1. With "good software", I intuitively know how to use it and how it will behave. Of course, new concepts arrive every now and then, like ribbons or the hamburger menu or whatever. However, what's behind them is in the end still the same.

When I am faced with the challenge of designing an interaction in software, I always try to make it fit established patterns.

Now I'm working with a UX expert. The interaction designs I receive are just not right. They are not intuitive. I am rather disappointed. My impression is that this expert is simply not an expert PC user. Of course, that's N=1 as far as my professional work is concerned.

Furthermore, in the last… 12-15 years, more and more software seems to change just for the sake of change. My personal opinion is that this is because of designers trying to justify their existence.

CamperBob2 1167 days ago [-]
It comes down to a simple, enduring principle: people who don't use something shouldn't have sole authority over its design.

So many of the complaints about the dominance of seemingly-incompetent UX professionals really boil down to failure to consume one's own dog food. The UX pros are not incompetent at UX design, but they are unfamiliar with the tasks that the program will ultimately be used for, and that's even worse.

This phenomenon is more widespread than most people realize, even here. If you buy a new Porsche 911 today, you'll find that the garage-door opener button has been moved to a touchscreen menu. People who take a bus to work are now designing Porsches, in other words. It's only going to get worse from here.

RobertKerans 1167 days ago [-]
Corollary is that many engineers are unfamiliar with the tasks that end users are actually going to use the software for. This phenomenon is definitely more widespread that people in this thread seem to realise, afaics because many are power users used to power interfaces. Power interfaces are generally not enormously useful for the majority of users (preemptive /s: yes, please tell me anecdotes about how pet power interface is superior).

Yes, there is flawed design: that covers most design, in the same way there is flawed programming, which covers most programming, and flawed approaches to business which covers most business, and so on.

[edit] the feeling I get from the threads here is that many commenters don't get that most design involves huge tradeoffs, same as programming. Design training is not "make a pretty thing" (which is what many commenters seem to be dismissively suggesting, which is actively offensive), Dribbble is really not reflective of actual design, and much of what you see is surface driven by designers having to find tradeoffs to deal with management edicts/commercial goals/technical limitations that may conflict with otherwise good design

benibela 1167 days ago [-]
My pet peeve is the new file handling

The programs used to ask for a file name before saving it somewhere. Programs with modern UI/UX just save the file to a random place and then you have to search it.

The browser saves it to Downloads, or to the Desktop, or perhaps to the home folder.

The GNOME screenshot tool saves it to the home folder

The GNOME audiorecorder saves it to somewhere else

dzhiurgis 1167 days ago [-]
iOS homescreen management is one example. Three confirmations to delete app. Can’t delete app from search. Editing stacks is miserable.

The the control center... changing audio source - fine motor skills required if you ever find how. Long pressing things means its faster to do things from settigns.

My pet peeve is macos Photos. Forget ever watching your videos for which storage you pay. It just won’t play until you click edit which is gonna just crash app about 10% of time. If it doesn’t it takes 5 minutes to download at like 10mbps.

chii 1167 days ago [-]
> Three confirmations to delete app. Can’t delete app from search. Editing stacks is miserable.

I would even consider it by design - management doesn't want apps to be deleted so easily. It's a subtle nudge for a user to accumulate apps, which slowly increase and eat up disk space.

The justification is that if no one deletes apps often, the button to do so should be hidden away, so users don't "accidentally" delete an app. And the designers are just a cog in the wheel - they listen to the objective given to them by management and do exactly that.

This is why you see great designs from apps that are written/made by a single person, or from a small team that cares. One such example is IDEs like Intellij - the UI/UX design is very much geared towards developers (by developers).

Griffinsauce 1167 days ago [-]
This is it. I'm shocked by the amount of blame designers are getting here while they have a job that gets the most unskilled criticism and feedback (as displayed in many comments here).

Everyone has an opinion on design, including stakeholders and management who their jobs depend on. I think all the engineers here don't realise the privilege of having their own impenetrable domain.

TheAceOfHearts 1167 days ago [-]
Add or Remove Programs on Windows often requires more than 3 clicks to uninstall an application as well, so I'd argue that specific complaint isn't new.

On macOS you can usually just drag the .app file to the Trash.

oauea 1167 days ago [-]
Lots of people studying UX design but not actually using a lot of computer programs.
Griffinsauce 1167 days ago [-]
I disagree. UI/UX designers often make utopic designs that would work great for the user, the engineers don't have the resources (time) or the will to execute it well and halfway through execution of the already dressed down version management pivots the team to their latest whim or fucks it up by adding a bunch of badly designed requirements meant to hack metrics.

We live in a world of Frankenstein UIs and it's not the designer's fault what ends up on your screen.

If you want to make a historical comparison, I'd argue that it's more likely to be in the way of working of today vs back then when UI design would get locked in much more _or_ get truly designed along the way with the product needs.

fuzzy2 1167 days ago [-]
But software rarely exists in a (design) vacuum. It runs on Windows, it runs in a browser, on an iPhone… or maybe the software already exists and it's just a new feature.

That's why "we live in a world of Frankenstein UIs". We don't need "utopic designs" but rather consistency. Both in visual language and interaction design.

There are a few notable exceptions like HMIs on industrial machines or a car's entertainment system.

Of course, incorrectly implemented design exists, too. No doubt about that.

de6u99er 1167 days ago [-]
I disabled YouTube on my Android phone, and use it in the browser instead. It is heavily overloaded with functionality, that any accidental touch results in an unwanted action.

Google Search on mobile browsers is horrible too. When having a typo in the search terms and trying to fix it, the search field moves to the top of the screen and it constantly happens that I click on the second or third entry in the list of suggested searches.

I also have issues with GBoard, which cause tons of typing errors. My last iPhone was an iPhone 3G and I recall it having a much better keyboard many years ago than Google currently has.

It's almost as it was deliberate to artificially increase certain click KPI's or force users to use the phone's search bar or autocorrect function.

I believe, decision makers at Google are too far away from the products, and while managers might have developed good soft skills they massively lack practical knowledge. Google would do good hiring more engineers and less academics and managers.

anothernewdude 1167 days ago [-]
I cannot recommend the combination of NewPipe and VLC enough. Have to get NewPipe on your own, because it disables youtube ads as well so it's not on the Play Store.

It's been the only offline youtube solution I've found.

morsch 1167 days ago [-]
Paying Google is another offline youtube solution.

It's odd, though, I watch much more youtube than Netflix at the moment, but since all the stuff on youtube is available anyway, the monthly subscription still feels too expensive, despite being cheaper than Netflix. I wish they would unbundle their music offering, which I have no interest in, but presumably that's precisely why they won't unbundle.

de6u99er 1167 days ago [-]
Thanks, I'll give it a try.
supersour 1167 days ago [-]
Speaking of Youtube "mods", has anyone created any tools that provide a unique related videos algorithm or the like?

I find that the rabbit holes I went on years ago were much more interesting than the content I see on youtube now, and I don't think it's that the content is getting worse.

catillac 1168 days ago [-]
I am a designer and my opinion is that they’re micro optimizing with A/B testing to such a degree that they miss other significantly different paths that would be better overall.
grenoire 1168 days ago [-]
It really does seem a local/global maxima problem with the way they're trying to improve. I think they've been locking themselves into the local maxima, and at their scale it's probably really hard to expand the search beyond what's 'safe and known.'
toper-centage 1168 days ago [-]
Google is data driven and AB tests the hell out of their features, so I would assume these changes make them money somehow. Your personal preferences or anyone else's is merely a very small data point in their design process.
michaelmrose 1168 days ago [-]
Doctors used to believe that basic hygiene was unnecessary despite having enough information in theory to figure out this wasn't so.

The presumption that someone in theory has access to lots of information and therefore is making the best or even good decisions on some dimensions by virtue of the their access to data is poorly considered. It is entirely possible to be smart and possessed of good data and still use it poorly. People are flawed so companies made of of people are also flawed.

Google image search is a poor product not worth using compared to bing.

gradys 1167 days ago [-]
I guess the question here is who is more like those doctors in this scenario: you, or the people running the randomized controlled trials?
michaelmrose 1167 days ago [-]
It's kind of contrary for you to prove that google's design is optimal according to the scientific method with the bald assertion that it is scientific with zero evidence by virtue of it being proprietary.

My feeling about its utility isn't a scientific statement its purely anecdotal but at least it represents a singular actual and honest viewpoint.

You are free if you liked to express the alternative perspective that the changes are for the better for users or for google and this would be an equally honest anecdote even if we disagree.

The only intellectually dishonest viewpoint is to assert without detail or analysis that its good along some dimension because it is AB tested.

Google image search is mediocre for the following reasons

- They removed the button to actually go TO the image in response to a lawsuit with Getty on the theory that somehow making people go through an extra step would stop people from using their built in browser tools to download images.

- When you go to the page where the image is supposed to be you may actually find yourself on a page only vaguely related to the exact image. Maybe it WAS found on the front page of some infinite scroll through crap but the desired image is nowhere to be found when you click through and get whatever new crap replaced it on the front page.

- Alternatively you get served a smaller sized version of the image.

- Not only are the filters not shown by default in google image search vs bing in mobile firefox google opted to disable that functionality meaning you had to load the slower desktop version of google for the tools to filter by date or other details to show up. This wasn't a bug it was a deliberate design decision to attack a competitor that they ultimately reversed later.

- Google image search seems to deliver subjectively worse image search results. I realize this is hard to quantify.

- On the broader google search issues you actually need an extension to be able to right click on a link and copy the url to share it because otherwise you get something like this

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

instead of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_is_a_test

It's pretty amazing to break sharing a damn link. The addon to fix this requires worrisome permissions to the data for google.com

Also the search "this is a test" without adblock doesn't show any of the textual results on the entire screen on a 24" 1080p monitor. Screen 1 and 2 are a video, exhortations to buy the song, people also search for videos and finally some actual results on screen 3.

Google is basically 90s Lycos with lots of extra money and reach. Everything google does other than ads and chrome ranges from acceptable to just canceled. They do lots of things OK but nothing excellent.

iggldiggl 1167 days ago [-]
> Not only are the filters not shown by default in google image search vs bing in mobile firefox google opted to disable that functionality meaning you had to load the slower desktop version of google for the tools to filter by date or other details to show up. This wasn't a bug it was a deliberate design decision to attack a competitor that they ultimately reversed later.

And reverse image search still doesn't work unless you spoof your user agent as mobile Chrome.

fbelzile 1168 days ago [-]
I wish it was money they optimized for. It's probably engagement or some other obscure marketing metric.

The problem with that is if they introduce a bug that requires you to refresh the page more often. All they'd see is an up-tick in "engagement" and keep the change with the bug. I think it happened to me with Facebook page notifications and not being able to clear them properly, at least on Firefox...

thotsBgone 1168 days ago [-]
Yes, companies are profit-driven always. Not customer-satisfaction driven, unless that's what will bring them the most profit (especially true for newer, smaller companies).

This makes me wonder if there is some structure similar to a corporation which would maximise something besides profit, without either being out-competed by a corporation or turning into one.

ghaff 1168 days ago [-]
Competition ("out-compete") implies competition on some metric such as profitability. So, if that's the metric, then they'll be profit-driven. Of course, profitability can be optimized for over different time horizons--even if speculatively. For public companies, time horizons tend to be relatively short, or at least quarter-to-quarter profitability is important.

A private company, however structured, can define out-competing however its owners want to so long as it can pay its bills and employees.

astrange 1167 days ago [-]
Public companies are driven by what their executives want, insofar as their owners aren't paying attention. If they were pure paperclip maximizers they would switch businesses more often, but you don't see coal plants selling fentanyl out the back.
smichel17 1167 days ago [-]
It's not exactly what you describe, but you might be interested in looking into cooperatives. https://cdsus.coop/about/what-is-a-co-op/
kungito 1168 days ago [-]
I'm pretty sure that the big corps are changing the design based on some toxic metrics where they don't really care if we, a small demographic of power users, get annoyed all the time
astrange 1167 days ago [-]
I think the power users are actually just perpetually annoyed, find software features to assign it to, and then we end up with reverse causation.
userbinator 1168 days ago [-]
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts."
hangtwenty 1167 days ago [-]
You are not alone!

And I am very, very pissed off at the neglect of Google Classroom's UI. I wish they had (and would still) stay out of education, it's so irresponsible to half-ass it like they have.

Google Classroom's UI problems have got to be negatively impacting kids' schooling. It's unethical.

cosmodisk 1167 days ago [-]
From what I remember reading some comments from ex googlers some years ago is that if you can't quantity something nobody will be listening too serious. So designer have difficult times there:)
Havoc 1167 days ago [-]
Not just google. e.g. Reddits new interface is in the same league
nicbou 1167 days ago [-]
It features many quality of life improvements, but it's slow as molasses and obviously geared towards a very different kind of community.
Andrew_nenakhov 1167 days ago [-]
Definitely. They had their nice moments when they introduced the first version of material design, but it got rather ugly when they started putting outlined icons everywhere.
Triv888 1168 days ago [-]
The only thing that I like about gmail.com is the search feature and the fact that most of my accounts are tied to it. But I use Thunderbird for getting my emails...
errantspark 1168 days ago [-]
Fuck Getty Images. Fuck IP law. Fuck copyright. All that shit needs a massive refactor. I can't bear to think about how much harm has been done to software and human reality in general by lawyers and MBAs seeking to extract the maximum amount of value from things.

I'm glad things like this exist, but so sad that they need to.

EDIT: and as one commenter astutely pointed out, fuck Pintrest too, a perfect example of the hubris of SEO focused trashes with no morals or sense of personal responsibility; degrading the commons for their own gain

gkoberger 1168 days ago [-]
What's wrong with Getty? They spend a lot of money to take pictures, and other people pay money to use them. How would you change their business model?

EDIT: I hadn't realized that Getty is the reason for the removal of the view image button! I stand by my comment in general, however I do think removing that button is crappy.

markdown 1168 days ago [-]
Getty charges $1000 for public domain photos. Fuck 'em!

EDIT: They also fraudulently claim to own public domain photos and legally threaten people who use them, demanding payment.

gkoberger 1168 days ago [-]
I don't understand your point. If you hate copyright and IP, then you inherently also have to believe Getty should be allowed to take public domain photos (or someone else's photos) and sell them.
ceejayoz 1167 days ago [-]
They have the right to sell them. I'm not sure it's ethical to do so for $1k/image.

It's definitely not OK that they billed the photographer who took the public domain photos for using them on her own site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_M._Highsmith#Getty_Image...

de6u99er 1167 days ago [-]
I think people buy public domain images from Getty, because Getty will be liable in case that an unknown license of a public domain image suddenly pops up. Means they protect their customers from IP trolls.

That being said, anything published on the web should be free. E.g. if some don't want their image to be used, they should not publish it publicly in the first place.

markdown 1166 days ago [-]
If you're using my IP without my permission, saying your friend told you it was actually his IP isn't a valid defence.

I mean, maybe you can sue your friend later on, but that's between you and him.

All that matters to me is that you've used my IP without my permision.

matttb 1167 days ago [-]
I'd never heard of this before so I searched it and the first result turned up this[0] (see lines 2-4/Exhibit A). Big jump from selling public domain images to seeking out payment for public domain images.

[0] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3001353/Filed-Com...

LocalH 1167 days ago [-]
They shouldn't be able to threaten legal action for those who acquire public domain images elsewhere, just because they choose to fraudulently license them.
gkoberger 1167 days ago [-]
Agreed. It was a (shitty) mistake and they apologized immediately. This was not part of the court case, and Getty has never argued they should have been able to do this.

I imagine they automate copyright takedown notices, and there was a bug somewhere. It's not great, but I don't believe it was malice.

markdown 1167 days ago [-]
> If you hate copyright and IP

Are you responding to someone else? Wrong thread? Because I haven't expressed that sentiment here.

> you inherently also have to believe Getty should be allowed to take public domain photos (or someone else's photos) and sell them.

Are you responding to someone else? Wrong thread? Because I never said they shouldn't be allowed to profit off public domain photos.

There is profit, and then there's just fucking people over. $1000 for a photo they didn't take and didn't pay for is just disgusting. All it does is restrict access to historical photos to 99% of the world, allowing only the very rich access to this window into our past.

leonry 1166 days ago [-]
Maryam Jafri has had a small installation called "Getty vs. Ghana" (https://www.maryamjafri.net/gettyVsGhana.htm) that was once shown in the MAC/VAL.
Proven 1167 days ago [-]
> Getty charges $1000 for public domain photos. Fuck 'em!

Why is that a problem? You don't have to pay for their services, and you can get the same photos elsewhere.

0df8dkdf 1167 days ago [-]
This is the exact reason why I don't like these large corporations. Suing to take down content vs hiring competent IT personal to put images you don't want unauthorised person to download behind an authentication (there are plenty out there).
Xelbair 1167 days ago [-]
What's worse - instead of fixing their shit, they bloody sue google.
mackrevinack 1167 days ago [-]
duckduckgo lets you view images no problem
amelius 1168 days ago [-]
You forgot to mention Pinterest.
syndacks 1167 days ago [-]
We wouldn't have modern civilization without IP law. Curious how you make a living; if it's like anything like the vast majority of the people on this site, or society in general for that matter, it's rooted in laws protecting theft of intellectual property.
lolc 1167 days ago [-]
The term "intellectual property" lumps together quite disparate concepts. It's not helpful to use it. And "theft" is a poor analogy.

I'd say society wouldn't change much if copyright were abolished. Probably for the better. Claiming authorship should still be protected in my opinion, see next point.

Trademark law gives some nice protections to consumers, so I'd vote for that one to stay.

Patent law? Ahhahaha where do I begin? To think that we rely on that crutch to develop medication makes my head hurt.

mminer237 1167 days ago [-]
Wouldn't programming, writing, music, and art as careers basically be gone overnight without copyright? Who is going to create a book, video game, or movie when they can't sell it? Programmers would be the best off of those I guess, but only because they would have the option to move all code server-side to stop piracy.
Fargren 1167 days ago [-]
Copyright law has existed for only a few centuries, and people created art and science before it, as careers, for the entirety of human history. These jobs would be a lot different without IP law. They might be payed less and be done less, or maybe not. If they are payed less, it's true probably they wouldn't be as prolific. But they would still exist, it's disingenuous to claim IP law is a requirement for creative endeavors.

As a matter of fact, programming already works as if IP law didn't exist from the point of view of many programmers.I'm hired by a company to produce a product, in exchange for a salary. I don't know any IP that I might produce as a result of my work. I'm simply paid for my time. Could (as an example) novel writers be payed for the time spent writing a book rather than as a function of the sales of their books? I see not logistical reason why not. Maybe the market won't bear many writers under those conditions... But they would still exist, right?

Note: I think Trademark law is really good. And patents have issues but they are mostly good. I'm only talking about copyright here. I'm not entirely against the concept of IP, but I do think copyright law is not nearly as critical as it's made out to be. Maybe the optimal solution is weak copyright rather than no copyright, but I think it's important to understand that no copyright is not as crazy as it sounds.

mminer237 1165 days ago [-]
Computers, speakers, monitors, and printers didn't exist for most of human history. Reproducing a work was quite an ordeal, you couldn't just upload it to your website where anyone could google it and download it in two seconds.

Also, for most of human history, artists were funded by doing commissions. People wouldn't create music and movies for their fans, they would do it for the millionaires who could afford it, a la Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

As for programming, maybe you don't care about your IP, but your company sure does. How would your company be funded if anybody could download its product? A few products might be able to survive just by being developed just for government contracts or for other large companies, but any care for ordinary consumers would be gone. And there is no similar market for books. Sure you could set up a book-writing company like you could now but where would the money for those salaries come from? No one will pay the company for a book they can download for free more easily.

Fargren 1164 days ago [-]
There are many things to answer to here, but let me pick at least a few

> As for programming, maybe you don't care about your IP, but your company sure does.

I don't think they do. The software I write is used by workers in my company's warehouse. It's valuable because it makes their job easier. Sure, we don't give the software away, but we also don't sell it. We would lose very little if we released it for free. I know this doesn't apply to all software, but it applies to a sizable amount of it. It would be interesting to measure which fraction of time spent writing software is for projects like this, I don't know how to even begin estimating it.

> Sure you could set up a book-writing company like you could now but where would the money for those salaries come from?

Some ideas, in no particular order. Asa I said before, maybe reduces the amount of books that get written, but can't say for sure.

-Preorders. The publisher commits to only releasing a book once it has received X orders for it. GMT does this for boardgames.

-Patreon-like model, or plain subscriptions. Customers commit to paying for whatever is released, or just pay periodically and the publisher/author commits to releasing stuff that makes customers happy.

-Making nice editions: this could get very competitive, but surely a publisher who makes nice editions would still sell them. The publisher would be incentivized to pay popular authors to create books so it has more stuff to sell, even if other people could make other editions.

int_19h 1164 days ago [-]
How about sane copyright terms at least, for starters?
userbinator 1167 days ago [-]
China isn't "modern civilization"...? ;-)

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

errantspark 1167 days ago [-]
I am calling for a refactor, not anarchy. I will go on record as saying that we would be better off as a society with drastically reduced intellectual property protections, especially along the temporal axis. You shouldn't be able to hold onto IP of any sort for more than a decade or so under any circumstances.
dendodge 1167 days ago [-]
I'd even accept life. I don't necessarily agree, but I can see the argument that someone should have the exclusive right to profit from their work for the rest of their life. Maybe even add a few years as a grace period to give the estate time to adjust business practices in response to a sudden death.

But why we need to add another 70 years is a mystery to me. How does that encourage creativity and innovation?

dendodge 1167 days ago [-]
Avoiding the obvious argument that theft is a poor choice of word for this case, I'd like to question whether we actually treat intellectual and traditional property as similarly as IP proponents like to claim.

If you sell me an antique chair, I'm free to upcycle it, transform it into something new, and sell it on. I'm free to examine it and build an exact replica. I can give my chair to whomever I want and let any number of strangers sit on it. Such is the nature of property.

If you sell me a song, I must keep it in your proprietary system, leave the DRM intact, and definitely never even think about remixing it and selling my derived works.

IP is not property, it's a distinct beast of its own. It can't be "stolen" in the traditional sense, and it seems it can't really be bought or sold either.

alacombe 1167 days ago [-]
> We wouldn't have modern civilization without IP law.

Disney focused copyright laws have nothing to do with the development of modern civilization. There is plenty of case where overly tight licensing has proven detrimental to a technology.

ubercow13 1168 days ago [-]
But why that version? It wasn’t much different from the current version. I preferred the version before, when the page didn’t automatically expand and collapse and scroll around in a disorienting way.
yudlejoza 1167 days ago [-]
Agree.

The new UI is actually slightly better with the image view on the side instead of taking up the center of the screen, since we have widescreens everywhere.

But both are worse than classic google images, which was from when? 2015? 2013?.

zkmon 1168 days ago [-]
Forget UX, the image search itself _doesn't_ work. Search for some known person's name. 90% of the image results will be from the side bars on LinkedIn page of that person, which have no relation to the search key words.
Can_Not 1167 days ago [-]
Wouldn't that be LinkedIn's fault for (presumably) not marking the sidebar as "not SEO content"? A few other websites have been destroying my searches this way.
pdimitar 1167 days ago [-]
I started using Yandex image searching. It's objectively better than Google for many queries. So is Bing/DuckDuckGo.
therealmarv 1168 days ago [-]
Just use Yandex Image search. It also has a reverse image functionality and it does not censor as much as Google Images.
ZoomStop 1168 days ago [-]
It also allows for searching by size which of course Google removed with updates but helps greatly when searching for icons, wallpapers, etc.
zerocrates 1167 days ago [-]
You can still search by size on Google Images (though you're limited to fairly coarse categories of sizes).

It's hidden under "Tools."

kyriakos 1168 days ago [-]
Really missed that view image button especially for Pinterest images that are pure spam
javawizard 1168 days ago [-]
That button was removed in response to a lawsuit from Getty: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...
tzfld 1168 days ago [-]
Is there anything good done by Getty since its existence?
kyriakos 1168 days ago [-]
They keep buying off smaller stock image platforms as well killing competition
natch 1168 days ago [-]
Would love to see somebody make an image search site that lets you filter all that stuff out. It would be fine with me as a user if it respected no-hotlinking policies too. But the filter could just omit paywalled / registrationwalled sites and those that do trickery like obnoxious watermarks or showing one image to the search crawler and another one to site visitors.

I have nothing against sites trying to make money. But sometimes I want to see just the stuff that is straight out there and isn’t wrapped up in dark patterns.

poisonborz 1168 days ago [-]
There were multiple scripts and extensions popping up to restore the feature right after it was removed. Eg. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image/jpcmhce...
EamonnMR 1167 days ago [-]
I used to love google images because you could find the context of an image and start a journey there to find new information. Pinterest killed that by creating an environment that rewards stripping the context away from images while aggregating them and then seo-ing it's way to the top of every search. Rendered it useless as a tool except for the occasional 'I need a reaction image stat!' punch line generator. If I need to find something now days I just need to find it via text.
ffpip 1168 days ago [-]
Just right click the image and press 'I'.
kyriakos 1168 days ago [-]
I don't think you get the full size original image
forgotpwd16 1167 days ago [-]
You are. But wait for the image to load or you'll get the thumbnail.
atombender 1167 days ago [-]
I started using Bing's image search when Google Images started going downhill. It's cleaner and more usable, with easier access to the original image.

But Bing has unfortunately been going downhill, too. It does some double redirect that breaks the back button, and it often appears to be stuck. And its ads are intrusive. But the worst thing is how they inserted this thing called "Shop for similar", which is a completely useless widget inserted above the "similar images" sidebar widget. It's weirdly dissonant when looking at, say, a photo of people in immigrant detention centers and being offered sweaters similar to those in the photo.

therealmarv 1167 days ago [-]
Give Yandex Images a try
rosmax_1337 1167 days ago [-]
Extensions like this keep my faith in the internet going, and a lot of other stuff in general going as well. Because it proves that for every moron you can find, there will be a decent person to counteract them.

The problem is as always, it is easier to break things than it is to make things.

RyanShook 1167 days ago [-]
Looks like a great extension, hoping they don't use it to steal my information since it has full access to Chrome!
triangleman 1167 days ago [-]
Somehow with ublock origin on firefox mobile, my google images search links directly to the original image. It's glorious.
gpmcadam 1168 days ago [-]
This is good but what annoys me most about Google lately is that all searches turn out to be product searches instead of images of a thing. Just makes me trust the results less and less.
meibo 1168 days ago [-]
Nice! The current image search is still a great product, with some filters, especially with the "find by image" stuff - this takes it to another level.

Can't fathom how Getty was able to make them remove the "view image" button. Thanks copyright.

scpedicini 1167 days ago [-]
I got sick of having to open a new tab, navigate to google images, type in my search just to find a quick one off image. Having to do that dozens of times was really taking me out of my workflow.

I wrote a windows app that lets you quickly search google images and copy the original image to your clipboard for ease of use when chatting or if you need to paste a quick image into a document you are working on. It's GPL-3 in GitHub:

https://github.com/scpedicini/truman-show

michaelmrose 1168 days ago [-]
I really like this in theory but if an adware company someday buys your addon I could be compromised. It's easier to use bing image search which has been better than google for images for a while now.
_underfl0w_ 1167 days ago [-]
TFA is a github page, friend. If you truly care about compromise as stated, just build the add-on from source. No reason to point to nonexistent future threat vectors.
michaelmrose 1167 days ago [-]
Do you remember Stylish? It was a very popular firefox/chrome addon with 2 million users which was sold to an ad company that started using it to siphon off users data.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/styli...

The threat isn't nonexistent and having the source doesn't help as much as you might imagine. Most people can't read the source in any meaningful way and those that can might still trivially miss something malicious. In practice its only as safe as the meaningful analysis by skilled hands makes it in actuality. Realistically you would be lucky if someone notices several months after it started siphoning off your data and only if its egregious enough to get it kicked off of the extensions store.

faebi 1167 days ago [-]
Funny, it was the exact reason why I switched to duckduckgo for 99% of my searches. The day they did it, I switched because I had enough. I remember some intensively discussed post on HN.
kemonocode 1167 days ago [-]
The project's rather esoteric license confuses me quite a bit, as it seems to have a mixture of English and French, and I can't make heads or tails out of the French parts. Could anyone else help me out describing the license terms in plain English, please?
unpixer 1167 days ago [-]
Plugging 'Jollo' into Wikipedia gets me a page about a defunct machine translation engine. This reads exactly like a simple license that went through several rounds of machine translation. Making some allowances for usage and spelling errors, as well as some outright guesses at meaning, here's a somewhat fractured full-English translation:

See, far wanderer, confronted with raw, programmatic instruction in the most pure form. A hesitation, troubled to the terms that this license affirms. By a voyage to explore the mechanism and ponder the making. Ta da! The remedy: an egress without risk.

Leave No Trace via seven principles:

0. Modify language in advance. Attach the Jollo LNT license with copies to distribute.

1. Not responsible for negligent coding of the program.

2. Not sympathetic for negligent coding of the program.

3. No permission to modify it under any circumstance.

4. No permission to distribute under any circumstance.

5. Respect the programmatic instructions.

6. (Do) not interfere with the harmony of a friendship.

Edit: jollo.org is kind of trippy.

kemonocode 1167 days ago [-]
Yeah, that's more or less what I got out of it, so it's effectively source-available but not really open source software per se?
needs 1167 days ago [-]
Well, you can still right click on an image preview in Google Image and then select "Show Image" to get the image in full resolution, like the good old "View Image" button.
hartator 1167 days ago [-]
At SerpApi, we'll be happy to sponsor this! Reach to me via email julien _at_ serpapi.com.
flokie 1167 days ago [-]
This including no results from Pinterest is a great combo
tiagod 1168 days ago [-]
Great work. It's usable again, finally.
a2tech 1168 days ago [-]
Is there something similar for safari?
alisause 1167 days ago [-]
I was a really bad girl. Punish me with your dick in my mouth. - https://adultlove.life
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Top burny busty chicks only on this site! Follow the link, and you won’t be sorry! - https://adultlove.life
6357357457 1168 days ago [-]
Just use the Yandex image search.

Yandex hasn't yet removed or crippled its face recognition-enhanced image similarity search capability like Google and Bing did (probably because women complained that it turned up their old nudes/ludes), and Yandex doesn't exhibit bizarre racial biases like this:

https://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/76372135/

Sad that Americans have to use a Russian search engine to get away from Google/Bing censorship, bias, and politicization.

aaron695 1167 days ago [-]
PirateBay for images is back!

Not complaining, I love using the PirateBay to steal. I also don't makeup reasons I do it. It's for theft, because getting something of value for free feels good.

rcoveson 1167 days ago [-]
> It's for theft, because getting something of value for free feels good.

I love this too. I steal the mountain air when I hit the trails, I steal the sounds of nearby conversations, and I steal the memories of songs I've heard. Sometimes a friend will sing me something, and I steal that too. I play my music loud sometimes, and I hope those around me steal it.

I've stolen things at my job from my coworkers, little ideas that belong to my company. They'll breed and have child ideas, stolen children, which I will make available for theft by others down the road.

I even stole your comment; it had a little value, in its way. I won't pay you for it, even if you ask. In fact, if you ever write something and seal it away behind copyright, I can't promise I won't read it at a library in the future; you wouldn't see a dime.

Finally: If anybody ever asks me for something I know, or something I am capable of reciting--be it music, poetry, fiction, whatever--I will help them steal it by repeating it. I will not turn them away out of some unnatural commitment to the idea that all valuable information has an owner who must "get theirs" in advance of any transfer.

lolc 1167 days ago [-]
You think that downloading an image is stealing?
aaron695 1167 days ago [-]
> You think that downloading an image is stealing?

Do you really expect me to believe your are an archivist using a Google Image interface to get images to then wait the ~70 years of copyright to use them?

These, "Piratebay has Linux torrents", or "a hash isn't copyright" arguments don't hold up in a court and don't hold up with mates at the bar.

We are an abstract society, it's why we no longer live like animals. We are right now having to decide what things like Facebook and Twitter really are, beyond the technical they are internet companies.

This add-on is great, and should not be illegal in any free society, but forcing Google to change was a different story.

lolc 1167 days ago [-]
> Do you really expect me to believe your are an archivist using a Google Image interface to get images to then wait the ~70 years of copyright to use them?

I'm not claiming to be.

> These, "Piratebay has Linux torrents", or "a hash isn't copyright" arguments don't hold up in a court and don't hold up with mates at the bar.

I don't know people who say any of that.

> We are an abstract society, it's why we no longer live like animals. We are right now having to decide what things like Facebook and Twitter really are, beyond the technical they are internet companies.

You speak in riddles.

> This add-on is great, and should not be illegal in any free society, but forcing Google to change was a different story.

So what's the story?

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