From what I’ve read, Kent expects others to just take his word for it, when he says his code wont break anything.

The kernel has long had practices around merging and releasing, specifically so that it no longer has to rely on contributors simply promising that their contributions have been tested and confirmed safe.

But Kent has repeatedly skirted or straight up ignored those practices.

This isn’t about not agreeing on code needing to be reliable. It’s about one person refusing to work with an established way of achieving that when contributing to an upstream effort.

He’s been told how to contribute again, and again, and again. And every time he takes it like it’s a personall affront to his credibility.

Not allowing Miku Miku Beams is reasonable tbh. Firing one of those off can level cities.

Well, I’d start with physical buttons. Forget stuff like face ID. A button that scans your fingerprint is a lot simpler to “get”. Same goes for volume keys.

Automatic screen brightness is pretty good, but if it weren’t a thing, buttons would work there. That’s how laptops do it.

I’d add a feature that makes certain settings reset to “default” after a configurable amount of time (or never). Airplane mode or mute could turn off over night, so grandma can never “disable” her phone and become unreachable, or unable to reach anyone. (Except by turning it off, a concept almost no-one has to be taught)

Give me the ability to disable quick settings in the notifications shade, grandma doesn’t need to toggle nfc, wifi, her data connection, or start screen recording (I literally tried to remove all the quick settings, but there’s a minimum!). Hell, get rid of the notification shade completely and make it a physical button that just opens your messages from whatsapp, sms and email, all in one list.

I don’t think we need to dumb down everything a phone can do. And I think we can assume an elderly person can get help with changing settings or setting it up to begin with. As such, what I wish fir, is for the simple stuff to be even simpler, and for the complicated stuff to be hidden away and essentially have configurable child locks, so they can’t be touched, except by someone who knows what the stuff does.

It should be possibly to put a device in a mode where it is “senile-proof”. But it isn’t. My grandmother can, and has, put her devices in a state where they do not work, simply by turning on airplane mode without realizing. And our current solution is to use Life 360, so we can check that her phone is still “online” and have someone visit her to fix it, if it isn’t.

I’ve done it over phone many times. I have a system.

I have them read whatever is on screen until I figure out what they’re looking at.

Then I use one of my own devices to follow along, so I have an idea of what they’re seeing, so I can give extremely specific instructions.

Sounds ok.

But limiting. My grandma is still able to learn and think.

She currently uses a tablet and a phone. Android, set up by me, and locked down as much as possible.

One home screen, with the apps she wants on one half of the screen, and a widget that shows notifications on the other half. (Limited only to notifications from apps like whatsapp, etc., she doesn’t need see that the phone updated the OS during the night etc.)

This way, all I had to do, was tell her how the home button works, and how the back button works. No explaining quick settings or the notification shade.

From there, she’s slowly learned each app, always safe in knowing she can hit home/back if confused, and take it from the beginning.

The notification widget has been especially good, as it is always there showing her her messages, and she can tap them to go straight to replying.

It’s infuriating to me that all modern devices require extra steps, just to see messages you’ve received. The way a message would be shown on the lock screen and then be “gone” upon unlocking the screen was infinitely confusing to her.

I’ve never lost patience with my grandma like that. She’s old, a sweet person (most of the time) and perfectly intelligent if you let her be.

In fact when guiding her with tech, I hate the way she calls herself stupid and slow when she makes mistakes.

We just don’t make tech for old people the way we should. There are “accessible” phones but the ones I’ve had experience with are atrocious hackjobs with deal-breaking quirks, when the whole point is to be simple.

Yeah… I’m not gonna be asking the stuff I already found answers to via an internet search.

I do the same thing, but with anime girls.

I think the “desktop app” is also just the web version. So yeah.