The print button doesn't persist across all sections of the ribbon, the Copilot button does. They decided people weren't using Copilot enough so they carved out a permanent place for it on the window. If the print button started elbowing other UI elements off the screen to occupy more and more prominent places then you could absolutely bet users would complain.
The last time Microsoft went all-in on an annoying UI element like this? Clippy. How'd that go?
You don't think users, paid users at that, shouldn't have a say in product development? Good lord no wonder the public distrusts the tech community so much.
Yeah, I think the more broad issue here is that NYT should know better that public sentiment on AI is incredibly negative.
I do find this somewhat paradoxical to the fact that clearly a lot of people use it.
It seems like one of those things where culturally it’s become virtuous to be against it and to say you don’t use it, but privately most people are using it.
Still, I think NYT’s subscriber demographic is likely pretty educated and specifically paying for higher quality content. They don’t want haphazardly tossed together recipe blogs.
AI sentiment is negative enough that all companies who build in AI features need to include a toggle that hides them completely. Otherwise you get user backlash like this.
So negative that the first I heard about this was with the title "New York Times adds glue to its Cooking App. Users aren't thrilled" (presumably from someone who read the niemanlab article before I did)
I think there are prob more paid users who want the feature and are willing to pay than those who don't want it, which is why the team built it. They might even believe it brings in new users. It's polarizing but all ai features are lately.
TFA says that over 70% of the comments were negative with the remainder being split between positive and neutral. I'm sure the Times thinks it will rope in new users, but I'm sure the Times is factually wrong.
If they're not users what are they? Are you trying to claim that the NYT site is getting brigaded by anti-AI advocates? There are plenty of AI-negative reviews on Apple's app store. Is the App Store publishing bogus complaints too?
I think Occam's Razor applies here. Much like Copilot or Dell's AI computers, nobody wants slop from the NYT. People pay for NYT Cooking specifically for the human curation. Getting slop with a big "we didn't test this recipe and aren't responsible for it" is a net negative in this context.
Sigh. The SET of commenters is not the SET of users.
> Are you trying to claim that the NYT site is getting brigaded by anti-AI advocates?
No, I made very clear what I was claiming: Commenters are statistically biased toward complaints. People without complaints are less likely to comment.
> Is the App Store publishing bogus complaints too?
Too? I said nothing about bogus complaints.
I don't want to insult you so I won't respond further.
How would the NYT Cooking website even look like if it was entirely modularized into pieces that could be turned on and off to customize it to perfection for every taste?
This AI thing is not even active nor activated unless you use it. The complaints here sound more reactive to the word AI than anything else to me.
“It blows my mind at how allergic AI bros are to consent.“
You make it sound like you have to use it.
Would you demand your mobile device manufacturer to rollback the features you don’t like and don’t use? Did you consent to it?
The allergy against AI is understandable. But that’s because companies tries to shoehorn it in everywhere. This however sounds like a perfectly fine use case, which is also optional to use.
I actually would absolutely love it if my mobile device gave me complete control to remove the parts i don't like and don't use, that'd be lovely. Instead you gotta install Graphene or something.
People rag on the USA refusing to allow higher speeds without PTC
Who does this? The US barely has PTC because freight companies continue to fight it tooth and nail. You only need to look at the Amtrak Cascades crash to see how subpar even modern rail infrastructure is in the US. Neither is PTC a panacea as anyone who is old enough to remember when Thales' craptastic train control system sent a Muni train the wrong way down the wrong tracks in San Francisco.
There are definitely groups of people who hate the limited speeds of Amtrak, especially in the southwest corridor (the trains Amtrak runs there are capable of "technically high-speed (120 mph)" but can't do it because the freights haven't paid for the rails to be upgraded.
Everyone wants PTC installed, nobody wants to pay for it. Amtrak wants the railroads to pay for it. The railroads don't care about it because they run 50 MPH or less freights, so they want the government to pay for it. The government has no funding and wants Amtrak to pay for it. Amtrak reminds the government that Amtrak is just the government with a bad wig on, and the cycle continues.
And California keeps trying to build a high-speed rail for infinity billion dollars when the cost to PTC the entire LOSSAN corridor is only $250-500 million (and many agencies have done parts of it themselves already).
The state of US rail is entirely due to nobody actually giving a shit and there not being a central authority powerful enough to force it thought (because nobody gives a shit). Kind of the story of the USA in general.
Thank you for escalating the arms race that's currently destroying the internet. I can't look at the Apple user forums, my health insurance company's portal, pay my county taxes, browse Digikey and Mouser, view Github or whatever forge, etc. etc. without having to jump through Cloudflare or Anubis garbage designed to block your abusive behavior.
I'm just overflowing with joy that you're comfortable wasting my time and money.
Even if it's not the GP, if there's profit to be made, somebody will do it. I was reminded of the power of economic motives the other day, when it turned out someone bought an entire trustworthy reseller just so they could compromise the Ledger supply chain by including a tiny eSIM module that OCRed the screen and transmitted the seed.
I use the automated captcha solvers, stealth browsers, proxy IPs and so on. In regard to ethics, I think this is the right thing to do. The minimum I can do is just to show this is not a matter of excuses or mental gymnastics to trick myself into thinking it's fine.
Even if you said, a lot of the public commons is destroyed, I would NOT use bots and cause more destruction because 'everyone else does it' or 'it's a lost cause'. I say it is the right thing to do because the balance is such that using the internet is actively harmful to the user. That is, using the internet with bots is neutral to the user, and using it without bots, you are being actively harmed and exploited.
If you are using search, this is not a library. You are using your time to train targeted advertising that exploits you; you are selling your search history to the highest bidder. If you are using ChatGPT you are just working as a teacher for free.
On services, you have paid for the product, but the seller is scamming you by not giving you the product. The seller is using dark pattern UI to trick you.
If you are on social media, don't think of this as a public park. You are being treated like a lab animal, your behavior is being studied for the benefit of a corporation.
So the point about the bots is that I think people should be empowered to protect themselves from the internet, which is otherwise actively harmful to their wellbeing.
It's a vibecoded project, so isn't it more like a creation of Claude? I think it's quite relevant to see where/if the clanker improved on the existing product.
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