[HN Gopher] Folk Interfaces
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Folk Interfaces
        
       Author : lysergia
       Score  : 192 points
       Date   : 2022-09-02 09:34 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (maggieappleton.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (maggieappleton.com)
        
       | austinsharp wrote:
       | I was surprised to see no mention of automation tools like IFTTT
       | and Tasker. These sorts of overarching automation oriented tools
       | let people solve a lot of problems by stitching together things
       | that aren't designed to work together.
       | 
       | I would actually put Excel in this original category. Part of
       | Excel's utility is that it is really good at enabling building of
       | dashboards, applications, whatever. While Excel's builders didn't
       | have D&D character sheets in mind, they definitely expect users
       | to do unanticipated things with the software, just as much as
       | IFTTT or Tasker would.
       | 
       | In some ways this is a "platform" type of perspective. "Here's a
       | bunch of building blocks, go do whatever you think you need" is
       | really powerful once the network effect of building blocks gets
       | big enough. Any tool with a built-in DSL or workflow builder type
       | of UI is probably in this category.
        
       | jessejjohnson wrote:
       | The theme/presentation of this site is top tier. Nice work.
        
       | avg_dev wrote:
       | I found the post interesting. It provoked me to think about the
       | low-code, no-code movements, and of the concept of folk
       | interfaces. It is a nice term and I will try keep it with me in
       | my future thinking. I found the 9c radio particularly appealing.
       | It also made me consider how I ended up where I am now, and one
       | thing that struck me is that when I was learning to program, I
       | tried learning from textbooks about programming and they
       | intimidated me and felt impenetrable. I didn't know how to get
       | into them at all. Then by stroke of fortune I came across the
       | first programming book that really took me. It was called C for
       | Dummies, by Dan Gookin. It was filled with humor and encouraged
       | experimentation, and above all it was empowering. It made me feel
       | good and it inspired me: I sent a couple of busted but well-
       | intentioned input routines off to a friend who was further along
       | in the process than I was and he introduced me to the off-by-one-
       | error. I never became a good C programmer, but I learned how to
       | make the computer do my bidding in small ways, and it wasn't long
       | before I picked up another book, on Perl and CGI.pm, and I wrote
       | my first "web applications". Eventually I went on to do a
       | computer science degree. Today, by HN standards, I'm maybe
       | nothing to write home about, but I make a very comfortable living
       | and I enjoy writing code at work. I enjoy learning about tech in
       | my spare time, even now.
       | 
       | I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I wish to see learning
       | to code, per se, easily accessible for all. I'm not talking about
       | cheap or even free boot camps that promise entry into a lucrative
       | job market. I'm talking about a kid, or a parent, or an auntie or
       | uncle or cousin or sister or brother, about whoever, who just
       | sees something they want to make happen and they literally do
       | because they can. I read through the comments and I re-read the
       | wonderful article by Robin Sloan linked below ("An app can be a
       | home-cooked meal" -- look through this comment thread, and you'll
       | see it, alongside my first observation of the term "OA", one that
       | took me some time to decipher -- another thing that will stick
       | with me).
       | 
       | I believe that programming is and always will be for the masses.
       | I believe in development best practices when they are called for.
       | But for learning, for discovering the beauty of computing and the
       | joy of software, of writing one's first programs, I wish the
       | barriers were less!
        
       | sgt wrote:
       | On the etymology of "folk", saying that it the word comes from
       | Old English folc is true, although a vast over-simplification. A
       | lot of languages share this word.
       | 
       | This is actually an ancient word, you can trace it back to proto-
       | Germanic "fulka", and further to Proto-Indo-European "plh-gos"
       | (presumably pronounced something like phulgos or pholgos, close
       | enough to folk).
        
         | Mappleton wrote:
         | OA here. Thanks for the expanded etymology. I was using
         | https://www.etymonline.com/word/folk as my source which goes
         | into more historical detail. But didn't want to get too carried
         | away in the opener on etymology.
        
         | talideon wrote:
         | If you want its direct ancestor, then it's perfectly true. The
         | etymology further back than that would be irrelevant, and also
         | unattested.
        
         | avgcorrection wrote:
         | Folksy: people doing good or neutral stuff
         | 
         | Vulgar, populist: people doing naughty or debased stuff
        
         | thegabriele wrote:
         | ...and then from phulgos to the latin "vulgus"?
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | Where "vulgate" and "vulgar" come from, the common.
        
       | lrpe wrote:
       | I build fictional worlds as a hobby, and sometimes I need to make
       | a map of a globe and find myself in need of a program that can
       | draw vector shapes onto a globe and project it onto a 2D map
       | afterwards. The simplest way I've found to do that which fits my
       | workflow is a program called GPlates. A program that simulates
       | plate tectonics. I've never touched the simulation part, although
       | it might be useful in my worldbuilding at some point. All I use
       | it for is drawing colored shapes.
        
       | uhoh-itsmaciek wrote:
       | Folk interfaces are a natural consequence of the focus on
       | building applications for millions of users and the dearth of
       | situated software [1]. They're also a clever way of claiming no-
       | code or low-code platforms in unexpected places.
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2004-03-30-shirky-
       | situ...
        
       | mikewarot wrote:
       | Random folk practice that _drove me nuts_ , Outlook "Deleted
       | Items Folder" as storage, never actually deleted, ever.
       | 
       | 20+ Gigabyte mailboxes, which were actually a threaded,
       | searchable, rich content database. (Exchange's superpower (when
       | it works) is a almost perfect online/offline sync able database
       | -- You can send an email in your offline client, when you go
       | online it'll get sent, your calendar updates will sync, etc)
        
       | yuchi wrote:
       | This argument is very similar to what I usually, probably
       | inappropriately, refer to "malleability" of a software, interface
       | or system in general: it's ability to be used way beyond the
       | initial use cases, and hopefully be good at it.
        
       | rileyphone wrote:
       | This is referred to in the literature as 'appropriation' [0],
       | though perhaps that term has gained too much cultural baggage
       | recently to be useful.
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/cbe110a4-c761-4afe...
        
       | dan-g wrote:
       | One of my favorite creative uses of Excel comes from !!Con 2017,
       | where Kevin Chen used spreadsheet to implement HDR imaging[1].
       | It's also just an incredibly well-crafted presentation.
       | 
       | [1] https://kevinchen.co/projects/excel-hdr/
        
       | mikewarot wrote:
       | Using Virtual Machines as capability based security is something
       | I've come to accept.
       | 
       | Windows and Linux are vulnerable to the confused deputy problem,
       | so you separate your concerns into separate VMs and give each
       | "machine" a set of resources (capabilities)
       | 
       | IBM and Digital machines have done this since the 1960s.
        
       | tikwidd wrote:
       | Some random folk practices I've come across:
       | 
       | * Blocking, stacking and pulling creep camps in DOTA. Unintended
       | behaviours that became core game mechanics.
       | 
       | * Comments in the tag section of Tumblr posts, to avoid the
       | comments appearing in a reblog ("Why do people use tags on tumblr
       | instead of comments?" [1])
       | 
       | * The appropriation of switching MOSFETs such as the IRF510,
       | designed for low frequencies, in homebrew amateur radio QRP power
       | amplifiers. "In talking to International Rectifier, they were
       | floored to find out QRPers were using them at 7MHz or higher."
       | [2]
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/nu4vpa/w...
       | 
       | [2] http://www.iw3sgt.it/IW3SGT_PRJ/IW3SGT_AMP_LF/ClassDEF1.pdf
        
         | dietmtnview wrote:
         | Since we're talking about DOTA. Defense of the Ancients was a
         | custom map game in Warcraft III. I don't know if this is still
         | a thing, but custom map games on Starcraft and Warcraft III
         | absolutely ruled. There was freeze tag, capture the flag, tower
         | defense, a zombie defense like game based on Starship Troopers.
         | Absolute golden age of gaming for me as a kid.
        
         | salmo wrote:
         | Distortion, overdrive, and the 808 are all examples off the top
         | of my head of folk analog audio.
         | 
         | The former two tend to use the imperfection of diodes leaking
         | to create varying degrees of fuzz (really clipping) based on
         | placement. It fakes pushing an amp past it's thresholds.
         | 
         | The latter abused chips that failed QA as the source of noise.
         | They can't make "real" ones anymore, since the chip is out of
         | production. This one's from my memory and the description may
         | be flawed.
         | 
         | In both cases, abusing electronics' imperfections is the goal.
         | 
         | Now with pedals, you get magical beliefs about "original"
         | parts, but that's another story.
         | 
         | So many guitar effects are based on accidents and
         | replication/reduction of them. It's both technically and
         | historically fascinating to me. "This sucks, but sounds cool.
         | How can I make a smaller box that does it?"
        
         | kanar1e wrote:
         | I believe another term related to these phenomena is Elephant
         | Paths. Named after the trails that pedestrians leave behind
         | when they choose a shorter path over grass in favor of the
         | official paved paths.
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | Twitter's "retweet" and "hashtag" were both folk innovations
         | that became product features. People used to write 'RT @user
         | "comment"' to retweet.
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | I found that a really interesting development, and they
           | embraced it. Probably the best example of "go with where your
           | users are going" I can think of.
           | 
           | And it's silly as well, because anyone with a few weeks of
           | software development knowledge could probably hack a Twitter-
           | like together. Not that at that scale, admittedly, but still,
           | prototype-twitter was nothing fancy.
        
             | pimlottc wrote:
             | There's a term for this: "desire path"
             | 
             | Like when you see a worn path in the grass where hundreds
             | of people took the same shortcuts instead of using the
             | proper planned-out pathways.
             | 
             | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
        
           | amadeuspagel wrote:
           | The quote RT is another example. People used to take
           | screenshots of tweets to quote RT.
        
       | jonahx wrote:
       | This is like the interface version of Hyrum's law:
       | With a sufficient number of users of an API,         it does not
       | matter what you promise in the contract:         all observable
       | behaviors of your system         will be depended on by somebody.
        
         | VyseofArcadia wrote:
         | Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1172/
        
       | SamBam wrote:
       | Orthogonal to the main point of the article, I was interested in
       | the mention of Victor Papanek's tin can radio receiver, which
       | apparently cost 9c to make (presumably the cost of the
       | transistor, since everything else was recycled), and could be
       | fueled by burning wax or dung.
       | 
       | I haven't been able to find a simple guide for how to make one
       | myself.
        
         | password4321 wrote:
         | Not super useful without a tuner, receiving every frequency at
         | once.
         | 
         | Perhaps the next step up:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio
        
         | failrate wrote:
         | It sounds similar to a trench radio, in which case it is
         | entirely passive (like a cat's whisker radio), and used a flame
         | source to treat the surface of a razor blade upon which the
         | needle was sat.
        
         | mikewarot wrote:
         | Odds are that 9 cents is the production cost in massive
         | quantity. A single unit might be days of work and a few dollars
         | of parts. (Inflation)
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | The biggest issue that I come across, is users of my software,
       | developing mental models of the software that I would never, in a
       | million years, have developed, myself.
       | 
       | They often work with the software, based on their "strange"
       | mental model, and can have very weird workflows.
       | 
       | In some cases, this is excellent, and it is worth it for me to
       | learn the new model, and maybe add affordances for it.
        
         | leokennis wrote:
         | One example for me is iMovie on macOS. They dedicate 50% of the
         | screen to a sort of "project media library" where you put all
         | videos and audio you want to use in your project and that also
         | holds all titles, transitions etc. you can add.
         | 
         | Literally everyone I ever see using this software drags videos
         | directly from the finder onto the timeline, then pick a
         | transition once and then just copy/paste it within the
         | timeline. So 50% of the screen is wasted real estate for a lot
         | of the users.
        
           | PoignardAzur wrote:
           | I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
           | 
           | Are you saying that this is wrong because picking "assets"
           | (rushes, transitions) is done once at the beginning of the
           | edit process, so the screen space is wasted the rest of the
           | time?
        
             | xsmasher wrote:
             | Not the poster you replied to, but I think I understand.
             | 
             | * instead of using a two step process (add to library, then
             | drag from library to timeline) users just drag media to the
             | timeline. Makes sense. How often do you re-use the same
             | clip?
             | 
             | * instead of dragging in a transition and having to re-set
             | the values from the defaults to the value you want, users
             | drag in once, set the values, and then copy-paste it
             | around.
             | 
             | In both cases the users are doing the most efficient thing.
             | With the real workflow in mind, having the media library
             | take up so much screen space is a huge waste.
        
               | leokennis wrote:
               | Yep, exactly!
               | 
               | This is the interface:
               | 
               | https://kennis.cc/public_uploads/c39f8aab.jpeg
               | 
               | The entire yellow part is basically a poor approximation
               | of the Finder, and you can see how little space that
               | leaves for the video preview.
               | 
               | Either that or I genuinely misunderstand some brilliant
               | concept from Apple.
        
         | lopis wrote:
         | My favourite XKCD "Workflow" [0] is very relevant here.
         | 
         | Unfortunately, because people function that way, there's a lot
         | of pain ahead for those to learn to rely of obscure uses of
         | software. Sooner or later those pathways are dropped, if for no
         | other reason than cutting down on maintenance costs.
         | 
         | https://xkcd.com/1172/
        
         | uhoh-itsmaciek wrote:
         | Could you talk about some concrete examples?
        
           | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
           | Gimme a bit. I'm going to have to come up with examples that
           | don't compromise any proprietary information. Most of the
           | examples are from my work for a photography equipment
           | manufacturer, and they wouldn't want me to talk about it.
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | Git is a pile of patches!
        
           | ThePadawan wrote:
           | Not parent, but here's an example from a past project.
           | 
           | Customer: "Could you make the 'name' field of this entity
           | longer? We need to add longer names."
           | 
           | Me: "Why?"
           | 
           | Customer: "Well, we want to name the entity '2022 - Spring -
           | $500k - Contoso Inc. - Presale stage' so we can find it more
           | easily."
           | 
           | Me: "So what you actually want is to be able to filter/search
           | for entities by all those values, and you're just using the
           | name as a workaround because it's all you have."
           | 
           | Customer: "Well that's how we do it in Excel."
        
             | pradn wrote:
             | This is why listings on Amazon are a million words long.
             | They do an adequate job pulling important attributes into
             | the metadata so you can filter on them, for some
             | categories. For example, the size and type of TVs. But it's
             | not really possible to do that for all product categories.
             | Moreover, users can't easily see the attributes in the
             | search page, so it's best to just put it all in the title.
             | For things like motherboards, they get super dense with
             | jargon.
        
               | ThePadawan wrote:
               | I worked at Switzerland's biggest online retailer whose
               | USP was that it actually did strongly typed attributes
               | really really well.
               | 
               | To date, it's still incredibly searchable. Want to find a
               | 5.5" phone running Android 10+ and at least a 12MP back-
               | facing camera for below $350? You can filter for it.
               | 
               | It was an absolute nightmare on the (normalized, backend)
               | technical level, but a real pleasure to consume on the
               | denormalized, frontend level.
        
               | leokennis wrote:
               | https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/ is also a great example
               | of this. No idea how they do it.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | leokennis wrote:
             | Worst part is, even if the fields are there (let's say in
             | JIRA) there will still be a soulless bureaucrat middle
             | manager who'll regularly remind everyone by e-mail to use
             | the "JIRA task title template guidelines" so you end up
             | with stories like "[PRD][Feature X][XL][Development][JAVA]
             | Bugfix for calling API Y with empty order ID [Prio
             | 4][Impact 2][2022Q3-sprint5]"
        
             | bombcar wrote:
             | This SO MUCH!
             | 
             | It doesn't matter that you can add any fields you want in
             | Salesforce, and we do, nobody will use them and continue to
             | encode all the information in the title of the object.
        
               | ThePadawan wrote:
               | Funnily enough - I was building this application ...to
               | replace Salesforce (for this business process, not
               | company-wide).
               | 
               | Because the person managing Salesforce approved all
               | requests to add any field, there were just 400 instead of
               | the 5 I mentioned, and none had any validation - so no
               | one knew which ones to fill with data, which ones to keep
               | updated, and which ones absolutely to never touch because
               | you would accidentally commit fraud because you falsified
               | sales figures.
        
       | bo0tzz wrote:
       | Another article in a similar vein, that I thoroughly enjoyed
       | yesterday: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
        
         | shanusmagnus wrote:
         | Thank you so much for surfacing this! I've never heard of Robin
         | Sloan, but I loved this article to a disturbing degree. How
         | beautiful, how true.
        
         | Mappleton wrote:
         | OA here. Loved this piece as well, and it certainly got me
         | thinking about a set of themes that led to this essay. Robin is
         | an exceptional thinker in this space.
        
         | nicbou wrote:
         | I frequently use this metaphor. This article had a profound
         | impact on what I work on. It's well worth a read.
        
       | amadeuspagel wrote:
       | A lot of people use gmail or whatsapp for notes.
        
       | inasmuch wrote:
       | Whenever I need to explain to laypeople what I do as a software
       | designer, I tell them that most of my job is figuring out new
       | ways to visualize and connect outlines and spreadsheets.
        
       | mikewarot wrote:
       | I use Hugin[1] to manually align images and combine them into
       | virtual focus.[2] I started doing this after learning of the
       | Stanford Multi-Camera array[3], and wanting to replicate the
       | ability to see through things[4].
       | 
       | I didn't have the budget, so I used one camera and a cluster of
       | photos from slightly varying locations. I got there
       | eventually.[5]
       | 
       | [1] https://hugin.sourceforge.io/
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://www.flickr.com/photos/---mike---/albums/721577185851...
       | 
       | [3] http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/
       | 
       | [4]
       | http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/videos/crowd0-sa...
       | 
       | [5]
       | https://www.flickr.com/photos/---mike---/51018992733/in/albu...
        
       | benjaminjosephw wrote:
       | > No matter how much well-intentioned user research these
       | companies invest in, they'll never be able to produce software
       | that fully meets the needs of individual users and culturally
       | distant communities.
       | 
       | Domain experts being able to solve their own problems sounds is a
       | worthwhile objective for software tools but innovation in this
       | space has been surprisingly sparce.
       | 
       | I've been searching for other examples of end-user programmmable
       | tools beyond spreadsheets for inspiration. Anyone have
       | suggestions of some other places these kinds of "folk interfaces"
       | show up?
        
         | pbronez wrote:
         | The entire Low Code / No Code and RPA / IPA markets exist for
         | this. Airtable, App Smith, etc are a modern, web-based take on
         | Access.
         | 
         | The more generic a tool is, the more creative people get with
         | it. For example, emailing a file or note to yourself is a folk
         | interface. Using a Facebook group to role play is a folk
         | interface.
         | 
         | Nothing has come close to matching spreadsheets though.
        
         | msmenardi wrote:
         | Not quite what you're asking for since it's designed to be
         | hackable, but the Vim alternative text editor Kakoune:
         | 
         | https://zork.net/~st/jottings/kakoune-a-punk-rock-text-edito...
        
         | RunSet wrote:
         | People using notepad to subtitle screen-captured tutorials on
         | Youtube.
        
           | Joker_vD wrote:
           | As cringey as that looks, what are other options there?
           | Windows' desktop (and neither Linux's IIRC) doesn't have a
           | built-in "stick-it note" functionality -- which is kind of a
           | shame if you really think about it.
        
             | bee_rider wrote:
             | There are a couple sticky notes programs that appear to be
             | in the Ubuntu repos at least. I guess it isn't "built in"
             | in the sense that it comes pre-installed on install disk,
             | but it would be installed in the same way as any other
             | first-party software.
        
         | astrobe_ wrote:
         | Browsers used to be. They used to let the user apply their own
         | CSS sheets to websites, and some extensions still allow tem to
         | manipulate pages ("user scripts").
         | 
         | Web technologies were designed to let the user do what they
         | want with the document they receive. But "the web" then evolved
         | in a different direction.
         | 
         | Case in point: TFA, like many other sites, is unusable without
         | Javascript. And it's not even "because CDN". Why do I have to
         | execute code on a page that could be 1:1 replicated in pure
         | HTML ?
        
         | slaymaker1907 wrote:
         | It's very explicitly intended to be reprogrammed, but
         | Tiddlywiki is a pretty good one. It is a great platform since
         | it gives you data storage, advanced queries, and rendering.
        
           | mikewarot wrote:
           | Wait a minute... it's meant to be reprogrammed?
           | 
           | SO THAT'S WHY I was pushed to try to use it (but didn't see
           | the point after a few minutes) It's self contained AND
           | REPROGRAMMABLE????? Holy cow!
        
         | agentultra wrote:
         | Corel's office suite has a scripting language if I recall. My
         | grandfather in law learned enough of it to develop a few
         | systems for managing family finances, gifting (it's a large
         | family), etc.
         | 
         | Emacs is notable. It requires learning a bit of elisp
         | programming but, like a browser, is basically a development
         | environment that gives you access to a windowing system, input
         | from the user, image rendering, text buffers, etc. Plenty of
         | people write their own tools to manage particular workflows.
         | 
         |  _Update_
         | 
         | Examples of emacs as folk interface:
         | 
         | - https://bofh.org.uk/2019/02/25/baking-with-emacs/
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | Minecraft comes to mind, if you want to think out of the box.
        
           | lioeters wrote:
           | In that case, I'd say Conway's Game of Life evolved into an
           | unintended end-user programmable tool, or folk interface,
           | where people figured out how to build logic circuits, Turing-
           | complete programs, and eventually the Game of Life itself.
           | 
           | These examples seem to show that there's a kind of wisdom and
           | creativity of the crowd, the folk, collective behavior.
        
         | nonoesp wrote:
         | Visual programming tools, such as Grasshopper 3d, have created
         | a microworld of custom-made plugins and user interfaces, mostly
         | to generate 2d and 3d geometry, but often used to achieve other
         | programming feats.
         | 
         | There are even explicit plugins that let users create UI
         | components to control and visualize program inputs and outputs.
        
         | account-5 wrote:
         | MS Access databases.
        
         | EvanAnderson wrote:
         | Microsoft Power Automate[0].
         | 
         | This tool scares the hell out of me, as a sysadmin, with end
         | users who have no education re: software engineering (and
         | potentially really wonky mental models about software)
         | developing potentially business-critical tools/processes out of
         | the IT equivalent of "glue and tape".
         | 
         | This is especially scary to me because building on "evergreen"
         | platforms like Office 365 means that critical emergencies and
         | downtime could occur at the whim of platform owners making
         | changes to the underlying platform. Spacebar heating.. all
         | that... >sigh< (And I'll be expected to fix it when it breaks
         | and the user who made it has left...)
         | 
         | [0] https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/
        
         | eyelidlessness wrote:
         | One I haven't seen mentioned: Max/MSP[1]. Technically it is a
         | visual programming _language_ but I don't know how many users
         | realize that.
         | 
         | 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software)
        
         | obliquely wrote:
         | Hypercard was this and generated really rich "folk" artefacts.
         | Filemaker (https://www.claris.com) is sort of this still. A
         | modern example is Coda (https://coda.io) which is seeks to be
         | spreadsheet like in terms of inviting folk (end users) to play
         | and create while making database and scripting easy enough to
         | discover and wrangle.
        
       | andrepd wrote:
       | > Large California-based companies produce monolithic apps and
       | interfaces for a global audience. They're designing for the
       | broadest, generic use cases to make things work for the greatest
       | number of people.
       | 
       | Hah! If only! Actually they often (but not always) seem to design
       | it for an SV audience with the latest-gen phone/computer, fast
       | uninterrupted internet, familiarity with the latest "UX" fads,
       | perfect eyesight, etc. Anybody that falls outside that narrow
       | group can get shafted.
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | and when you start from the premise that folk interfaces are not
       | only good but should be actively encouraged, you get something
       | like emacs.
        
       | Joker_vD wrote:
       | > chairs as doorstoppers,
       | 
       | Wait, there are actual things, called "doorstoppers", that are
       | designed to work exactly as door stoppers and have no other
       | discernible function? Do they by any chance look anything like
       | paperweights?
        
         | al2o3cr wrote:
         | There are, and they'd make fairly poor paperweights because
         | they aren't typically very heavy - the intent is to use
         | friction with the ground to keep the door from moving, rather
         | than just weight. For instance:
         | 
         | https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-Heavy-Duty-Walnut-Brown...
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | There are heavy ones (cast iron doorstop will find some) and
           | they work better in certain cases.
           | 
           | You can also use a doorstop to wedge a door _slightly_ open
           | so it won 't close and auto-lock.
        
             | mikewarot wrote:
             | If the door has a deadbolt as well as a lock, you can use
             | the deadbolt to ensure that the door _doesn 't_ auto lock
             | by locking it with the door open.
        
         | jussion_zoonist wrote:
         | They are wedge shaped and usually made of rubber. You stick it
         | under the door, hold it in place, then pull the door to get it
         | stuck on the doorstop. Some doors also have built in door stops
         | that are different- more like a kickstand on a bike.
        
           | dwringer wrote:
           | There's also the folk tradition of just cutting off an angled
           | piece of scrap lumber to use.
        
         | zach_garwood wrote:
         | I suppose another folk solution is removing the pin in the arm
         | of the device that automatically pulls the door closed. I had a
         | high school teacher who did that.
        
         | timw4mail wrote:
         | Generally they are just a wedge-shape that gives enough
         | friction at the bottom of the door so that the weight of the
         | door or strength of the closing mechanism can't overcome that
         | friction.
        
       | agentultra wrote:
       | If this is an interesting idea to you, check out:
       | https://screenl.es
        
       | pradn wrote:
       | There's also the Indian cultural concept of `jugaad`, which
       | refers to folksy hacking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad
        
       | nuc1e0n wrote:
       | I approve of this, but its hardly novel. Web browsers were
       | originally intended to view flat html documents with hyperlinks
       | between them. The concept of a web app is itself a 'folk'
       | repurposing of technology.
       | 
       | Another might be the way blocks in minecraft are repurposed to
       | make all sorts of elaborate redstone machines such as automatic
       | farms.
        
         | mikewarot wrote:
         | Also, Minecraft and other games have been used as covert
         | communications channels.
        
       | ExtraE wrote:
       | Please write concisely.
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-02 23:01 UTC)