That is a weird thing to highlight anyway. I assume there are 10-100x more people who face a problem vs file a ticket. Especially for something as nebulous as, “program runs slowly”.
I have a long list of bugs in programs I use everyday, but I am not going to waste my time filing a ticket that will be ignored. GTA5 had famously bad loading times which nobody on the inside cared to fix until a nobody posted a solution to their JSON parser.
As gamer a poor performance is something I have never felt I need to fill ticket for. And I think I am with majority. The developers should bloody well know if their game runs poorly for most users.
There is little expectations for such tickets to do anything. Unless you have some very specific problem which no one else has. And even then... I would be doubtful of them doing anything.
What needs to be better about screens outdoor? iPhones have had nicely readable screens in bright sunlight for a long time now, including compatibility with sunglasses. Though it would be nice to see this in all other phones too.
Other than that I agree. Especially camera bumps are annoying to me, I would prefer a phone thick enough to make the bump disappear, that would then automatically solve the battery life issue as well.
I don't have the impression people care about the weight of phones. Premium phones have metal and glass cases, and in the non-premium market the thing that matters is price.
What matters to me is how comfortable it is to hold and use with one hand. Large and thin phones tend to be bad in that aspect.
The real problem with current keyboards is the physical arrangement of the keys. Staggered rows instead of columns make them less ergonomic, the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard. The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text. While the weak pinky finger has to cover more keys than the others. These things are more significant than qwerty vs dvorak.
Need to type faster? Spend some time practising every day and you will gain more speed within weeks than from just switching layouts. Most people don't as speed often isn't actually that important. I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed. Need less hand movement? Placing symbols, arrow keys etc as secondary function onto the central keys with a programmable keyboard helps with that, changing to dvorak doesn't as much because on a modern keyboard you can reach all letters without hand movement either way.
I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed.
If you ever have a thought that you want to put into words but need to wait for your fingers, you are being bottlenecked by your typing. Most people think and speak faster than they can type, especially in short bursts; and I'm saying that, as someone who can comfortably type at ~160-180wpm and burst over 200 for a few seconds at a time, I still find myself waiting for my fingers. Holding a conversation over IM is one of the most common places where this bottleneck becomes very noticeable.
> If you ever have a thought that you want to put into words but need to wait for your fingers
I'm not sure, I don't think that happens a lot to me, especially because I speak and type in multiple languages. I as well, feel bottlenecked by the brain, not typing speed. Even when I use voice-to-text software, I struggle to speak out loud my thoughts in a well-structured and well-paced manner, which somehow doesn't happen during normal conversations, only when I'm trying to write my thoughts down.
That being said, as someone who keeps their hands on the keyboard a dozen hours a day, of course I would love to find a way to type much, much faster and more accurately. I bet it comes in very handy when taking notes during Zoom meetings, etc., but my vim-muscle memory freaks out even thinking of having to rebind hjkl keys to something else. I wonder if vimmers who switched to Dvorak or Colemak can share their perspective. I've never gotten brave enough to give them a try, always felt like a waste of time for questionable benefit, but that's probably how most people think about vim-navigation, which has become an inextricable part of my keyboard workflow and I am very grateful for my younger self for learning vim-navigation.
That key makes up about 15% in English text, and it could be covered by 10% of fingers but instead it's 20%. Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys. Altough I haven't looked at actual keypress stats and how those are distributed across fingers. Might be interesting to look into.
On my keyboard I cover six keys with my two thumbs. It eliminates almost all hand movement and guess what, I feel a difference in my pinky fingers but not in the thumbs. I'm not saying every keyboard should be like this, but I think on a large scale you can probably improve wirst and hand health in the population by making a few small tweaks in how keys are arranged.
> Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys.
As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory. It's like a novice golfer complaining that it hurts their hips when they rotate through the swing, or a tennis player complaining that trying to add spin with a wrist twist feels weird, or any millions of other example of "feels weird without practice". Hell, most people can't do the most basic of yoga poses without practice. Muscles need to be stretched and trained into doing what you want them to do. Once they are, all of the complaints go away and things feel normal.
Is QWERTY the most efficient, no. But as someone else commented, speed is not my issue. Thinking what needs to be typed is definitely my speed regulator. If I were to just do basic text dictation or re-typing while reading a direct source, my speeds increase dramatically.
I find that most typing complaints are from those that never had formal typing instruction and are self taught with games or similar. I was fortunate to have one full year of typing while in high school, and it is by far the most used class instruction I've ever had.
Nah dawg. I was a practiced touch typist for years. We had oodles of typing in elementary school. Pain in my pinkies didn't get better. Only worse because keys like {}| are far more important in programming than writing English and add to pinkie stress. Switching to a Kinesis Advantage with thumb keys and layers to put keys like {} under better fingers resolved my problem.
> As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory.
Becoming a good typist doesn't magically change your pinkie from being the weakest finger on your hand to the strongest. That's basic anatomy. And, specifically if you are a good typist, then your neutral hand position will absolutely involve stretching your pinkie to hit enter/backspace/shift - they're exactly wrong with their assertion.
I'm vaguely aware of the Kinesis Advantage - it looks like a pretty solid ergonomic keyboard (although it may not be for me because it's not a split keyboard and my shoulders are pretty wide). Does the software do QMK stuff like mod-tap?
Yes, firmware on the Advantage 2 (what I have) does allow some QMK type stuff like mod-tap. They call it "tap and hold". It's more limited than QMK from my understanding (e.g., only 1 layer, tap and hold only on certain keys) but for my uses cases it's been fine.
While it's not a true split, the key wells are ~6" apart which is plenty IMO. They do have the similar Advantage 360 Professional which is a true split and uses ZMK for more programmability.
I think having Shift available for the thumb would help a lot (in the middle just below Space bar).
Most experimental layouts that add more features make the mistake to overload it, some of these things even look totally thumb-driven.... This make everything very confusing. Just Shift for a start, would be good. The pinky is too much overloaded. Offloading some of it to the thumb would actually be an improvement.
I still miss a Compaq keyboard I had with a split spacebar. You could choose various options; I had the left side as backspace.
I don't agree with your statement about switching though. I was a very good Qwerty typist, but I'm much faster and more accurate on Dvorak. Switching was one of the most useful things I have ever done.
The much reduced hand movement is extremely comfortable, paying dividends every day. And it fixed my RSI.
Of course over long periods of time we're bottlenecked by our brains. But the things to write come in bursts, and typing speed blocks there. Also transcribing what someone is saying, needs high speed.
My experience completely contradicts your assertions.
The part about hand movement confuses me. On qwerty you can reach all letters without moving the hands. On both qwerty and dvorak you still need to move or stretch the hands to reach backspace, arrow keys, escape etc. So how does dvorak reduce hand movement?
> the things to write come in bursts
In short bursts I can reach higher speeds than what I can maintain over a period of time. It's fast enough for me.
> transcribing what someone is saying, needs high speed
That's a very specific use-case and I wouldn't type fast enough for that no matter what layout. At that point I'd probably learn stenography instead.
The physical keys are the same ones no matter if it's qwerty or dvorak, of course, so yes you can reach the keys without shifting your wrists over.
But some movement is there, and once I reached even 10 wpm or something, it was immediately noticeable that this is more comfortable because so much of what I now type is on the home row. Fingers need to stretch less, wrists wiggle less.
> In short bursts I can reach higher speeds than what I can maintain over a period of time. It's fast enough for me.
I don't do Dvorak for the speed. I did it for the comfort and getting rid of RSI. But I'm also faster.
To me it's a bit of a separate question of "does speed matter?". I'd say yes, because sometimes you're taking notes while someone is talking, and the less time you have to type while listening, and the less you are behind on noting down what was said, the easier it is to not lose the thread.
> [transcribing what someone is saying is] a very specific use-case
Some version of this happens every single meeting I'm in.
You don't necessarily need word for word, or maybe you want word for word, but you don't need every sentence, but note taking during a meeting will be much worse if you can't type fast.
The stagger is beneficial for the right hand but makes it harder for the left hand. An ortholinear layout is not more comfortable, ideally there should either be a symmetrical or columnar stagger.
I switched to Dvorak around five years ago now. I decided to switch at the same time as switching to a columnar split keyboard (specifically the ZSA Moonlander, which is still my primary keyboard (my secondary is the ZSA Voyager for travel)). I did this switch at the same time, because I felt like it would be a sufficiently different keyboard that I wouldn't have as concrete of muscle memory, and I wouldn't be fighting my QWERTY instincts as much.
A big part of why I wanted to make the switch at all is because I was experiencing fatigue in my hands, and I felt that it could be due to my improper typing habits that I developed from mostly learning to type through playing videogames. I wanted to properly type from the home row, and the split columnar keyboard basically enforces that, and Dvorak makes it even easier.
I will say though, I type at about the same speed that I did before I made the switch. Switching layouts almost certainly will not enable you to type faster. Switching layouts encourages you to deliberately practice typing on that layout (I did lots of typing challenges while learning) which will make you faster. The biggest benefit for me has actually been in my back! The split keyboard allows me to rotate my shoulders back a lot more, which makes me feel way better at the end of the day. My hands are less fatigued too, but I don't feel like that was as big of a deal for me.
I also do not agree with TFA that the keyboard layout does not really matter.
I have switched a few years ago to Dvorak. I do not think that this has changed much my typing speed, which has never been important for me. However, it has greatly increased my typing comfort.
Now I consider that switching to Dvorak was one of my best decisions and I only regret that I have spent decades using Qwerty without trying alternatives.
Of course, using an ergonomic keyboard is at least as important as the key layout.
Same for me. I’ve got a Voyager as my main keyboard and I use Colemak. I didn’t have any fatigue or anything, I was just curious what all the hype with alternative layouts was about.
I’m about the same speed as I was on qwerty, but my back and shoulders feel a lot better with the split keyboard. It feels really good to type with an alternative layout, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, the learning process was pretty arduous for me, and I’ve kind of lost my ability to use qwerty.
I would definitely recommend a split keyboard though. The ergonomics are much better.
> the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard
This is what puzzles me most of the mechanical keyboard market: you can have whatever shit cramped in on a 60%/75% keyboard but the spacebar is still the long slab.
Eg: Shurikey Hanzo 001 65% is especially... bold in this
What puzzles me about the mechanical keyboard market is why they go for the small keyboards to begin with. I can't imagine anyone has a desk so small that the handful of inches shaved off really makes a difference. So why subject oneself to having to relearn all the muscle memory, and the lack of useful keys? It makes no sense to me.
Less things to connect, less switches, less caps, ... I think it's mostly about manufacturing cost. If you build a keyboard yourself, you're glad if you have to solder less. So for sure any prototype of a new design will start small. If you go full size price goes up a lot.
For usability alone those small sizes don't make much sense in an office or on a desk.
> For usability alone those small sizes don't make much sense
They do. Having every key reachable without hand movement is quite comfortable. Switching to and using arrow keys is as fast as typing a capital letter with shift.
But it's not everyone's cup of tea, just like Dvorak seems to be great for some people here and pointless for others.
The “missing” keys are on additional layers reached via a modifier key, or by overloading keys on tap/hold, or by increasingly esoteric methods the smaller the board gets: chording, tap dance, etc. They’re typically no less accessible than capital letters, while allowing you to keep your fingers on the home row.
For me, the additional keys on my larger keyboards rarely prove useful in practice. I end up mostly using the same subset available on the 60% I’m typing on now – it’s quicker and more comfortable than reaching over to the dedicated key.
On the other hand there is spatial memory. Overloading things has some downsides - it adds more possibilities for errors - and makes muscle memory complicated.
In a lot of software those extra function keys are well used, easily go into muscle memory and help to safe a lot of time.
I actually make fewer errors and in some cases reach higher speeds when typing a lot of special symbols as everything is reachable without moving my hands and I arranged all special symbols in a way that makes sense to me. Muscle memory works perfectly fine, with the difference that I don't need to make blind error prone hand movements across the keyboard to use arrow keys etc.
That sounds promising. Training muscle memory for a custom arrangement of keys is something I'm not (yet) brave enough to do. Did you arrange everything yourself?
Normal Arrow-Keys on a layer are good. But I need Arrow-Keys usually in combination with Shift and Ctrl. (move to start, end, next instance, declaration, implementation, Select something). This is already overloaded a lot, so I'm not sure, how well this works with a layer.
The thing that's missing for me most are those function keys. I need them a lot - sometimes overloaded in combination with Shift and Ctrl. Those actions are usually something that should be out of reach from normal typing (Terminate something, start a Compiler, mess with Breakpoints, ...).
Those small keyboards never include function keys. But I think I could just build something for that.. Custom button-Panels with a few keys are quite easy to make.
There are a lot of full-sized keyboards there aka 100%, for example look at Keychron, there are 39 100% and 30 96% along with some variants.
But the obsession with <80% keyboards are steaming from a couple of factors and less soldering as other commenters said is one of them. Other one is what "the community" as many others were overwhelmed at some point by "the influencers" who adored that "digital nomad" lifestyle[1] and ~65% is surely more convenient than 100% one. Another point though I'm not sure it's conscious one is what a lot of people not even using 100% in their life anymore because their devices has a not 100% keyboard from the start - laptops, or don't have a keyboard at all - smartphones. So there is no attachment or "spatial memory" of quickly punching some number on keypad or using navigational block naturally. And at last but not least if you have 100+ keys it's hard to justify all that layers shenanigans and whatnot, heh.
As N=1 I can tell what despite what I ended with K3 Pro (it's 75%) accidentally I'm pretty happy with it because it's compact enough what I can toss it in the laptop bag (though rarely) with my 14" or postman-like[3] with an 8" Android tablet but I still do have the function keys (I was aiming at 65% at first), don't need another keyboard at the desk and 65% isn't that much smaller than 75% despite the looks.
EDIT: oh and don't forget what 90% of the market is just [stupid] fashion anyway, you can't be a serious about MK, DIY and all that when you can buy "solid mega gaming mechanical keyboard with cool anime girl themed keycaps and 95 modes of RGB backlight! (only 3 keycaps btw, but it's not mentioned)" for less than $50 not only from no-name (or RJELTHKETG) Chinese shop but from the big names too.
NiZ manufactures a reprogrammable 75% split keyboard in their L84 series. Granted this isn’t mechanical, but a (subjectively suprerior) electrostatic capacitive switch keyboard.
There's a rule against commenting about "tangential annoyances" like text formatting or bad UX on a linked website. It's possible a comment about GPT use might have been interpreted as that, but I would disagree - this has an effect on the quality of the content. Either way this rule is not very consistently enforced as far as I observed.
There's also the rule against generic tangents, which this subthread certainly is. The trouble with those is that they tend to get upvoted to the top of a thread (as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45089350 was), where they choke out the rest of the discussion.
It's not fair but yes, it may help once AI users stop making obvious mistakes that give it away.
At least until the publisher secretly runs the content through AI by themselves. YouTube already does that with short videos, making them all look like AI generated content and making drawn animations etc look objectively worse.
I also found out the hard way that many modern powerbanks will shut themselves off if the charged device doesn't draw enough power, which means many smartwatches will simply not get charged by default. Supposedly that behaviour can be turned off by pressing/holding the power button the right way, but telling non-tech people "with this specific device you just have to remember to first do this arcane ritual before it works" is usually not received well.
Okay, and how many refunded the game on Steam?