Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

A common failing of the newer Sanyos

I moved into a new place with an LG-brand Internet of Things washer dryer combo with (*chortle*) "AI". It does decently with clothers and bedding, but it does not know how to wash a bathmat. Apprently I can't turn off the AI and just force a cycle with certain settings, instead it has to choose for you based on weight, etc.? I can't get the app to work with it, either, apparently there are more "options" throught the app

bit like the difference between my sisters microwave and mine.
mine - a manual dial for the timer, and a dial for choosing the power setting.
and that's it.
her's you need a bloody degree in computing to figure out how to heat a bowl of soup.

Every time we get service on our 20-year-old appliances, the repair guys say we should absolutely keep them, because the new appliances are computerized and locked as fuck, and cannot be repaired without

Granted, they have a vested interest, but based on my parents' experiences with computerized washer/dryer type stuff I am inclined to believe the guys

...repaired without programming and software and internet connectivity and shit, I guess is what I meant

Also there's like some potentially pretty dire security/privacy consequences for internet-of-things devices.

I have seen at least three movies/tv shows where the plot revolves around an IoT thermostat or toaster or something.

Generally I am not paranoid but I am still a little leery of having my refrigerator talking to my toothbrush, and my car knowing what music I like.

iot things do get hacked a lot because there are a lot of them and they tend to be no so secure but i think generally the hackers are using them more as botnets ie computers from which attacks are launched rather than end targets cause theres prob not much of value on your fridge

you could play some funny pranks tho

washing machine begins playing All American Rejects tunes

xp - they did that in season 3 or 4 of Silicon Valley i think?

You all just reminded me that I still can't turn on the radio in my 28-year-old car.

The battery died this winter. After recharging, turning on the radio just displays the word C•O•D•E because it still thinks it's worth being stolen. I can't even listen to the 6-CD changer I've got next to the spare tire in the trunk!

The Internet says to call the dealership. Great, I'll just look them up in the Yellow Pages, I guess.

Send them a fax

I found a couple useful tips when I searched, but I hope the one that said "hold the radio power button down for 40 to 50 minutes" meant seconds

"alright, 39 minutes and 30 seconds, almost there....shit, FIDO, who let you out!"

*flings door open, finger comes off of button*

"ahh SHIT! let's try again"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo

"hold the radio power button down for 40 to 50 minutes"

It's a Mercedes, so this may actually be the process.

I can't even listen to the 6-CD changer I've got next to the spare tire in the trunk!

Would love a 6-CD changer, preferable to trying to listen to Spotify in the car. would also love a spare tire in my trunk, tbh.

new cars with overly busy taillights! i don't need to see a fucking biryani crawl for a blinker signal on the freeway.

lol otm

every time I get a rental car, I generally spend 15-20 minutes trying to figure out where/how to open the gas cap

I hired a car a few months ago and it took me about 3 minutes to figure out how to start it. There was no key, just a Bluetooth fob, and the on/off button was hidden from my point of view by the steering wheel spoke (if that's what it's called)

It always amuses me that Alamo doesn't assign you a rental car at our airport, you go up and down the aisle of your car class, pick one, and get in!

I always wonder if the following has ever happened:

*Someone tries to get a more expensive car, is told to GTFO or pay the difference, and refuses, because they're already in their car.

*Someone driving off with someone else's stuff in the trunk cos someone put their stuff in, walked away to take a call for a sec, and came back to no car.

*Someone driving off with a baby in the car

*Someone changing their mind, forgetting to put the keys back in the original car, getting another, and driving off with those car's keys.

It's not a backward step though - you can even do the whole rental on a fucking kiosk with no humans trying to sell you unnecessary upgrades over and over.

But few of them have owners manuals inside, some don't even have a QR code that you can scan to pull a digital one up, so you gotta Google if you don't understand certain features.

Definitely rented one that I couldn't figure out how to start, but they'd brought it to me fully started, so I didn't realize I didn't know how to start it until hours later when I tried to drive back home

So this is the opposite of the things in this thread as it's mindblowing (to me) that this works - but my other half used https://pimeyes.com/en yesterday -
took a photo of himself now and it searches the web for photos of you out there. It came back with one photo (which we were both in!) from 12 years ago at an event (you have to pay to see/find it properly but used a bit of sleuthing to avoid that).

The fact it can do this accurately with no incorrect guesses, from a photo 12 years later, different type of camera, different angle, lighting etc is incredible to me. I think there are probably more it could have found so might see if it can do that.

Yeah, it's a bit scary that site

Stalking fears over PimEyes facial search engine

Yikes. It found three theater promo pics of me from years ago from a pic I just took.

But it did also pull two pics of a Saudi Arabian prince that I apparently look like

See, I'm scared to try something like that. Not because of what it would turn up, but just for the "Thanks! You have now been added to our database!" declaration I'd fear I'd get.

Neando bin Salman..

tbf youve already been added to their database xp

Yikes indeed - thanks for the link Alba. I'd not heard of this before now.

Since moving in to a fourth floor flat with no lift I think the relative difficulty of buying a matching fridge and freezer that you can stack on top of each other as opposed to a single combined unit qualifies for this thread. If you want to go the former route it feels like your choice of models is reduced by 90%. For a bit more context: I had to send back a combined unit within minutes of arrival as the guys delivering couldn't get this 180cm high 80kg beast up even two stairs in our building - two bigger burlier people could probably have done it but think I'd feel more comfortable with separate units now if I could only find ones energy efficient enough.

https://shop.royalmail.com/media/wysiwyg/738762_RM_DEFINITIVES_SHOP_BNR_Dt_HERO_1400x600_002__1.jpg

new technology means we can have invidual barcodes on every single stamp that we produce. not entirely sure why we'd want that but hey...

but my main gripe is that the perforation there, the one between the stamp and the barcode, it's fake, it's just printed

All hail King Large

it's not fake! i tore one off the other day because i just subconsciously assumed it was an extraneous bit of rubbish and then i freaked out because i was like.. if they're including a QR code now it's probably required?? so i hunted through my trash and painstakingly peeled it off the thing it had gotten stuck to and reaffixed. ffs. no idea if i actually needed to do that. wth is it even for?

Tracking … YOU

it takes you to King Large's onlyfans

I'd guess more sorting than tracking tbh

it takes you to King Large's onlyfans

― rob, Tuesday, 7 March 2023 14:51 (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

okay i'm properly laughing at this

it can't be tracking you because you didn't give them any details when you bought them, plus they are transferable.

the only thing i can think of is either internal tracking or to stop reuse, which would need a database of all the stamps they've ever seen

and I've 4x1st sat right here and the perforations are as fake as fake can be.

Used to be they could lift your dna from where you licked the stamp.

Now they can probably link the QR code to the credit card that was used to buy it.

Eventually it will be possible to watch videos and even greetings from senders.

can you not scan the code yourself and track the letter seems like that would make sense and be nice not that the video of the sheep wasnt nice but a tracking system for watching a video for sheep isnt nescisary you can just watch one if you want

Here's a weird story:

We get mail all the time for people who used to live at our address. Two of them are dead.

One day, a letter comes addressed to a name that I hadn't seen. Didn't even come close to the others. No one on our street with that name.

In fact, I couldn't find any result on Google or spokeo or whatever of anyone with this name. (Let's say it was Jeffrey Greentoad.)

The letter was from the USPS, asking if I'd be so kind to fill out the form and give permission to have all of Mr. Greentoad's correspondence forwarded to his new address in Florida.

Because I own a car and work only 40 hours a week, I found the time on a Saturday morning to go down to the post office and deal with this bullshit. The clerk was confused. "Then just don't fill out the form?"

I talked to a supervisor in the back. His answer was along the lines, "What's it matter to you if his mail just goes past your box and on to Florida?"

My response was "What if he's receiving drugs or cp in the mail? Except the senders don't know his real address, but they do know mine?"

That clicked with him. He made a copy of the letter and gave me back the original.

I still get letters from T-Mobile, insurance companies and Capital One addressed to this guy. At least it's not drugs or cp. One letter came in from a creditor, who I called to make sure that nothing from this guy's credit report got intertwined with my credit report.

All these letters have barcodes anyway, but WHAT IF I had received a package with a handwritten address and a postage stamp with a QR code? I guarantee I could find somebody who could scan it and tell me where it came from.

presumably a lot of the address stuff is done with OCR in the early sorting phase these days and having a scannable code in the stamp means you can do that association of metadata to physical object just once while routing it through the system and just snapshot the code at each successive routing facility

yeah they do that anyway in the usa at least but were affixing their own code that long barcode sticker this way you do it for them

yeah, I remember at one point they were printing a long series of bars down the side of envelopes

at least as far a normal old fashioned stamps which is prob the last form that doesnt have a code on it from the beginning

QR CODE ON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S FACE.

one of my jobs has a PO Box at a nearby post office. A client mailed us a check to our PO Box. It got returned to them with "address unknown" ... this is the post office not knowing the address of one of its own post offices???

so Amazon's stupid media app.

I have a OnePlus phone, and I have an enormous number of purchases of Amazon digital music, so I used to download the mp3s onto my phone for flights. or sometimes if I want to use an individual track in a recording. This was easy as fuck prior to like, this year, after a recent app update.

Now, on many devices (including mine), you can't actually download music from the app to your device. it 'downloads' to the Amazon app, meaning if you go into the Downloaded tracks section, they'll show there and play offline, but you aren't able to access them on your phone.

But there is a workaround! if you go onto the website in desktop mode from your phone and purchase the track, then you can download it the old school way!!!

Combine this with the fact that instead of just showing you your library, when you click on a band in your library, it shows you their entire discography, often which is littered with shit that is erroneously attributed to them, and if you click the Library button to just see the stuff that you bought, it shows you all of the tracks you bought from each album, but to get to the album itself and play them in order, you have to right click and click on "go to album".

― stank viola (Neanderthal), Wednesday, November 2, 2022 12:14 PM bookmarkflaglink

so I actually think imposters are intentionally creating music under existing IPs to take advantage of Amazon's setup, I don't think it's actually an accident anymore. Like just about every artist I go into has a recent release with cheap artwork, and it's often just individual single releases, and the music itself, if you play it, sounds like it was made in 5 minutes.

since they're on the streaming app I assume they're doing it to make a little money, esp because the new releases often show up first in the list of releases.

hilarious example was someone claiming to be King Diamond wrote a bunch of terrible pseudo-techno and uploaded it

(on another note, I absolutely hate Amazon for allowing you to purchase Paramount Plus through Prime Video, when it's also available to get directly through Paramount Plus, because my mom has (multiple times) mistakenly thought she was in the Paramount Plus app but had accessed it through Prime Video, it showed membership had expired, and she restarted it, thus causing me to pay for it twice)

amazon is the perfect example of business disruption just cheap chaotic crap from top to bottom

before the internet allowed for "online check-ins", for doctor appointments, you just brought your ID card with you at time of appointment, that's it.

now that some of these facilities allow for online check-in for appointments, which is supposed to *save you time* when you arrive, there's zero reason to require someone to show a copy of their ID card. ID cards are not proof of coverage, you can't scan them - you still have to electronically submit for pre-authorization using member data. They were only ever intended to make it easier for the patient to share their member data with the receptionist.

but CVS for its MinuteClinic and Virtual Visits wants it, in addition to you providing the Member ID/group ID. Ok, whatever. Takes two seconds!

CVS's MinuteClinic site is actually fine - you upload the pics of your cards, and it extrapolates the member ID/group ID from that, actually saving you work. But their Virtual Visit site?

First, instead of letting you manually enter the carrier name like the MinuteClinic site, you have to choose it from a dropdown list, for which they usually have like 35 permutations of each carrier, which after you pick the right one, asks you to choose your specific plan from a dropdown list, which usually doesn't contain the specific plan you are in.

Then, they want you to take pics of your ID card. However, after I took them, it told me the file size limit was 2 MB, to upload another file (they were both barely over). so I compressed both files to get them under 2 MB, and reuploaded them, and submitted them, and then get taken to a screen seconds later that said "we were not able to get in touch with your carrier - you may have to pay out of pocket for some or all of your visit", which led me to cancel the appointment entirely (I can do virtual visits elsewhere, and opted to do exactly that!)

I'm at the eye doctor at they hand me an intake form and it's laminated and I have to fill it out with dry erase marker.

Ok, guessing this saves on paper, which is good, but...

-the form has so much crammed together, it's almost impossible to avoid smearing, which I did accidentally twice

-It says to flip over and fill out the back. How the fuck am I supposed to do that without smearing the entire front side? So I did it very carefully by holding the form up and signing that way

-Presumably you erase and reuse these. What if there was an incident of sorts and you claimed I didn't tell you on the form I had cataracts and I said I did?

Idk if this is the right thread but here we go:

There are a lot of people experiencing need around my neighborhood and there is regular package theft. The building email chain is, at least once a week, asking where something is or if anyone has seen it or taken it in for safekeeping. At this point i just want to shake people and say if ur so concerned about package/mail loss just go to the fucking store and buy it yourself. We’re surrounded by retail; you can famously get anything you want in NYC.

https://nymag.com/strategist/article/led-light-bulbs-investigation.html

Interesting but like a lot of long NY Mag pieces that one feels like a lot of richly detailed complaining and not quite enough reporting. Couldn't this guy have found somebody from from the actual lightbulb industry, like I dunno Philips, to address one of the million complaints? "LEDs are not good or bad but more like weird" needs a little more unpacking.. Like maybe there is a reason why film shoots aren't lugging their own generators anymore for lighting that goes beyond just economics

yeah, this is kind of garbage

the short version is "I used to just buy the standard 60W/100W bulbs at the corner store and never worried about color temperature or anything and the new bulbs look different"

he also seems to have forgotten or completely skipped the period of CFL bulbs that you'd put in lamps and fixtures that were the prior lower-energy solution but sucked in predictable ways

the one bit that drove me nuts was "the dimmer switch wouldn't work with the new LED light fixture" because holy shit have you ever tried to install a dimmer with any sort of bulb without checking whether you had the right bulbs, the right dimmer, etc? it's actually gotten easier now! and I say this having used all three (traditional incandescent, CFL (not actually dimmable) and LED)

my anecdotal evidence is that I've had some nicer LEDs that have lasted over a decade right now

Bulbs that claim to be dimmable sometimes aren

Um, I meant to post:

Bulbs that claim to be dimmable sometimes aren't, or rather, "we are technically dimmable but we will emit a high-pitched whiny sound whenever we are dimmed."

So, get used to either having the lights all the way on/off, or wondering why there's a mosquito in your Kamp at all times.

tom scocca on why led lightbulbs suck

https://nymag.com/strategist/article/led-light-bulbs-investigation.html

oh haha i should have read the revive before posting

definitely team 'led lightbulbs suck' fwiw. going to order-horde a bunch of incandescents.

yeah why burn 4W when you could pump out 80

as a sometime lighting tech 1) there are still some tasks+vibes for which i want+use incandescents but 2) i suspect that these days this is often because i don't have nice enough LEDs.

i enjoyed the second half of the scocca article and learned stuff from it (liked the part about dollar-store kelvin levels-- indeed a telling detail-- and the part about tastes in lighting across climates) but the first half plays kinda fast+loose w its terms while trying to rationalize a faintly andyrooneyish sense of loss. it says led bulbs are "computers" with "diodes and drivers"-- okay well yes obviously they are diodes and they have things called drivers (which scocca is half-deliberately allowing the average reader to confuse w the software drivers they're familiar w having to roll back because an update broke them); unlike incandescent bulbs, they require direct current modulated+controlled by integrated circuits. is an integrated circuit a "computer"? it's a machine that performs binary logic, but the article says it can therefore "hang" or "crash": well not really. it's a carved rock electricity flows thru. it doesn't have any data to corrupt or memory to leak. it can break, or distort, but so can a filament, or a river.

some $20 bulbs indeed do have computers onboard, with software and bluetooth and "apps" and everything, but that is a different and admittedly maddening phenomenon bigger than bulbs (cf the entire consumer appliance sector) and at least in bulbs is still presented as an expensive Feature and not a fait accompli. and the theatrical LED fixtures i work with are computerized, because they need to talk to DMX controllers and respond to programming. but the LED itself is still just a thing you run power thru and it lights up.

most consumer Greenery (paper straws etc) strikes me as an attempt by genocidal entities to sell sad and guilty egotists on the idea that they might personally still reach heaven without having to blow up any pipelines; and this is how i felt about CFCs and thus also about LEDs at first; but idk they're pretty amazing. was interesting+amusing to read about the lighting problems at places like the met but (as the article eventually acknowledges) we're working this stuff out. again, found the stuff about unequal kelvin distribution compelling, but as i'm the kind of guy who thinks feeding everyone is a political problem presumably i'm also the kind who thinks giving everyone nice warm indoor lighting (if they're of scandinavian tastes) is a political problem.

(ALL THAT SAID while i think the article is trying to illegitimately transfer your irritation at your laptop and/or "smart fridge" to LED light bulbs, they are undeniably digital, including in a way the article never really gets at except when it complains about "flickering": they are only ever either on or off. i believe most LED "dimming" is really extremely rapid strobing: the light isn't half as dim but rather lit for half the time. if you were of a mind to i guess you could make some sad-modernist hay out of the replacement of a continuously perceived analog world with one chopped movielike into a trillion momentary silicon flashes divided by equally momentary subliminal blackouts. on the other hand, you can perform a similar flourish with alternating current. poor, perverse diode.)

*CFLs (lol)

good points

it does irritate me that in offices, manufacturers managed to create led replacements for tube cfls that,
while not really doing the fluorescent flicker anymore, are identical in every other way. maybe we could have taken a moment to decide whether offices need to look like that

someone at work posted: jump leads in boot. boot needs power to open.

that took me a second, but: oh no

it does irritate me that in offices, manufacturers managed to create led replacements for tube cfls that,
while not really doing the fluorescent flicker anymore, are identical in every other way. maybe we could have taken a moment to decide whether offices need to look like that

Ugh. I have actually seen art galleries use these by choice (as opposed to "the building came with these, and we can't afford to fix the lighting") and it makes the space look like a CVS.

It’s my unprofessional opinion that it’s not blue light that’s harmful, it’s the association with office spaces that melts your eyeballs

most of the led bulbs I've bought over the past 6 years have been shit, they last no longer than other bulbs. I have no idea if they are legitimately saving energy; I assume they are.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a LED bulb go bad.

The expensive ones I’ve got never seem to die, but when I’ve got the really cheap ones (£1) they seem to die or start turning into a strobe after a few months.

I have no idea if they are legitimately saving energy; I assume they are.

touch one for a clue

(that's rly the reason that in a world of toys and "backward steps" these retain the clarkeian magic for me: light without heat!)

yeah it’s insane

Werent tungsten bulbs phased out like 10+ years ago, I'm confused. Were they not, in the US?

Not until August of this year in the US

Huh, Youve not been able to buy them here in years and years. But like everyone said above there's been loads of inbetween, like those ugly twirly flurou bulbs that would take forever to turn on, and be dim and a horrid blue cast. And never fit into the lightshade because they were so big and weirdly sized.

the latest Google Chrome mobile, when you want to go to your bookmarks, now has an extra click where you have to choose between Reading List and Bookmarks.I know it's just 1 click but I'm going to install Firefox because of this.

(and no, you can't disable it this time)

the desktop version has had this for a while ... I just accept it now lol

Maybe not exactly the right thread but a v bad feature of modern tech is that thing where Bluetooth earphones are like 10 minutes away from dying & decide they need to let you know about this by interrupting your listening every 10 seconds with a very loud & annoying sound until the battery finally goes. Given that I’m usually out & about when I’ve got them in & can’t do anything about it anyway I’d much rather they just cut out with no warning & I don’t get those last 10 minutes of the thing I’m listening to ruined

Lol I got rid of my last pair as it would say "Please charging" over and over in the waning minutes.

I hate the ones that have on-ear detection that cannot be shut off, like my old JBLs. Having a great song going and hearing a beep then the music stop when the headphones are on my ear and have been the whole time is aggravating.

I got a new set cos I got tired of it.

I’ve never had a pair that didn’t do this, it seems common to all. Previous ones have cut in with a loud beep, my current (skullcandy) ones have a horrible voice that says LOW BATTERY — curiously the LOW BATTERY woman has an American accent whereas the woman who says “power on… connected” when I turn them on has a British accent

No matter what the sound is it will come in at max volume even if what you’re playing is a lower volume so it’s extra obnoxious

They're trying to kill their owners

Maybe not exactly the right thread

oh, this is precisely the thread for that ... I do not have these horrible things. I do not want them. There are those widgets that can connect via cable from the sadly headphone jack free devices we are cursed with now, and I will advocate for said things ftw

I can't wait for neural implants.

watching Captain Scarlet dvds and they've upgraded the sound to 5.1 but it means the classic seven bongs they use when changing scene are just wrong - the even numbered ones are quieter and/or positioned somewhere else

(luckily the original mono is still available as an option, but isn't the default)

There are those widgets that can connect via cable from the sadly headphone jack free devices we are cursed with now

this is a revelation to me in my current reluctantly-bluetooth-headphone-curious phase, ty

although, all the results i'm finding are widgets to do the opposite task: connecting your bluetooth headphones to something that only has an AUX jack

I think sara meant USB-C/Lightning to 3.5mm. They're handy.

A step back for sure, even if a pretty cheap one can sound better than most any phone that ever had a built in jack. Not as if that's relevant for most users/uses.

I so rarely see anyone with wired headphones on transit anymore. It’s like seeing someone with a discman.

I use buds that are wired to each other. My wife and daughter like airpods but I they're constantly getting lost or separated and you have to know where the case is all the time.

I know if I tried those I would constantly be looking for one of the four components - and if any one component is missing, the entire assemblage is useless.

I think sara meant USB-C/Lightning to 3.5mm. They're handy.

― maf you one two (maffew12), Sunday, May 14, 2023 5:07 AM (fifty-two minutes ago)

yes, exactly!

I’ve been using wired Etymotic er4sr’s for years. No interest in bluetooth although i’m sure it’s convenient at times.

I know if I tried those I would constantly be looking for one of the four components - and if any one component is missing, the entire assemblage is useless.

― coolgnoscenti (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, May 14, 2023 5:29 AM (thirty-two minutes ago)

this is my co-worker ... i swear, this guy has spent more on airpods in the past year (either losing a piece or something breaking) than I have spent on cell phones in my life ...

Approximately 73% of my life has been spent trying to get pieces of audio equipment to talk to each other. Let's review, shall we?

My stepsister had an 8-track player that required series of elaborate Radio Shack adapters to successfully play Olivia Newton-John in a car.

My first computer was a TRS-80 using magnetic tape as a storage medium.

Once on a long cross-country drive my uncle became obsessed with CBer lingo, like "got your ears on?" It took hours to badly get an antenna magnetically mounted to his station wagon and the project was abandoned.

To get an Atari 2600 console to work correctly required a spaghetti of cables and being on channel 2.

From there we go to dual-cassette boomboxes, helping my mother delete objectionable language from pop songs so that they could be played in the Catholic school where she worked, without messing up the beat.

From there we move on to using a Y-adapter to get two guitars to share a Roland Cube amp.

Later I had a boombox with the wrong tape speed, so that songs recorded on it could only be played back on that specific machine.

My first solo record was recorded on a 4-track cassette Portastudio and then, perversely, transferred to computer using the "mic in" jack and a 1/8" mono adapter.

Nowadays the equipment and interfaces are better - but I can still, even more perversely, be left dead in the water by not having a particular dongle or adapter or stupid watch battery or charging cable.

I was doing a recording session recently that required not one but three trips back home or to a convenience store before all the things would speak to the other things.

I have spent more hours untangling cables than I care to think about.

Still prefer all that to airpods

I have spent more hours untangling cables than I care to think about.

i probably have spent more hours untangling cables than you ... but yes. not that long ago really ... maybe 10 years ago, i still had an entirely analog "media system" ... i had a CRT TV (it was free; i didn't pay for this item) connected to a RCA-Coax converter, which connected to the output of a RCA switcher, the audio outputs of which were connected to some early 1990s home stereo receiver + speakers, and plugged into the switcher were a DVD player, a VCR, and a triple 1/8" cable that could connect to a video camera or laptop (via adapter)

lulz sarahell ok you win

i mean ... i used to get paid to untangle cables ... i had days where i spent 4+ hours untangling cables

You both win.

I could add how I used to "steal" music at work by downloading mp3's from Napster, playing them on whatever winamp was in the year 2000, with a YMP's 1/8" line going from my work computer's keyboard headphone jack to the mic jack on my Sony dual-cassette recorder sitting on the floor, where I probably unknowingly produced the final mixtapes I would ever make in my lifetime.

my work computer's keyboard headphone jack

that is dedication!

much of my system is still hardwired— stanton mixer running to two kali speakers, with ins from a cd player, vestax dj battle turntable, dual cassette deck, and one 1/8” aux connected to a little dongle so i can listen to music from my phone on occasion.

my computer in my office, tho, is bluetooth-bound to a soundbar/subwoofer combo.

i will never use bluetooth headphones.

Got a new laptop from work, connected to a dock in my office. I took it home for the first time and realized that it has 0 standard usb ports, so I couldn't connect a mouse or keyboard to it all weekend. So annoying (mostly the mouse, though being much more comfortable with a mouse over the trackpad is another sign of being old I'm sure).

I'm not switching to Bluetooth headphones. Have borrowed my kids' before now and they may have promised utility but, for myriad reasons, delivered a royal pain in my arse. Wired it is.

I hate wires. I tend to play with them and get distracted by them if their placement is situated oddly.

Though originally I moved to Bluetooth as I had a Samsung which no longer had headphone jacks. But my OnePlus does have a jack for wired earphones, surprisingly.

I was v sceptical towards wireless, but then several years ago was talked into trying Bose QuietControl 30 with this kind of halter around the back of my neck connecting the two buds physically. It was a revelation; I loved it; I've worn out (and/or mortally mistreated) several, and Bose have always been extremely good at replacing/servicing... except now they no longer have any models with physical connection/harness between the buds, only those loose ones which I am guaranteed to lose. Do Not Want. Am scouring second-hand market for cheapish QC30s and have scored two since my previous one died irreparably. Kinda yay but also feel like long-term losing battle. Any recommendations for current bluetooth in-ear non-droppable devices?

part of the issue with bluetooth headphones is they're much more complicated system-wise like anything digital and are produced on silicon valley's planned obsolescence timeframe. i don't want to learn new technology every 6 months to a year just to use headphones. definitely on team 'i will never use bluetooth headphones'. i used to hate wires too but now i'm like you can pry them from my cold dead hands lol.

idk all the bluetooth headphones I’ve had in the last couple years (yes I have a headphones hoarding problem) just work and half of them work in wired mode too

> being much more comfortable with a mouse over the trackpad is another sign of being old I'm sure

an arm injury makes a mouse difficult at the mo so I'm using trackpad for the first time. i swear there is no way to release a drag without the cursor moving half an inch.

also, and this might just be netbeans, but two finger swiping to scroll and then hitting ctrl-tab to switch panels, if you get that slightly wrong you end up zooming in / out instead and your code is suddenly 600pt or 6pt. i do this about 20 times a day.

Many xps removing the headphone jack was a shitty move but I’ve got to say, having been forced to go wireless I wouldn’t want to go back, as someone who was constantly catching the wire on something while doing whatever activity. I don’t use true wireless as they would inevitably end up with the many broken buds I see on the ground everywhere, but Bluetooth ones with a short wire that hangs around my neck are pretty much perfect EXCEPT for the mf pointless low battery alert thing

I did a search to see if there was a brand that didn’t do this & found this from the 1st world problems subreddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldproblems/comments/ae6sdu/bluetooth_earbuds_chanting_low_battery_please/

Really seems like every affordable brand (& some expensive ones) have this issue & everyone hates it

the armband phone holder has been perfected afaict. i just wrap the extra length of cord around the holder, no muss no fuss. i look like a fitness mom ca 2005 but it's reliable, it just works all the time, no need to remember 3 additional things in advance to enjoy music whenever i want to move around, and on the plus side it keeps my phone put away so i'm not tempted to look at it.

Beeping preferable to the voice version, at least.

i look like a fitness mom ca 2005

in a few years, this will be the hot look that young people will pay to have

The only problem I've had with true wireless Bluetooth buds is that someone nearly opened their car door on me and I was so shocked one of the buds fell out, then the driver reversed over it

wrt buds with a wire between.. you can get any 2-pin or MMCX set of IEMs or buds and a corresponding bluetooth adapter to go between. I'm using a TRN BT3 in the gym. Few years old.

well that’s that cleared up then

https://www.headphonesty.com/2022/04/review-trn-bt30/

they've just separated the bluetooth from the actual earpiece part (iem - in ear monitor) so you can use your existing ear pieces with that (as long as your ear pieces have the right connections, either 2-pin or the mmcx coax-like connectors in the to photo there, which are the two competing standards)

and this looks like what was mentioned above - an adapter to plug your wired earphones into so you can use them with a bluetooth phone (although where do you put that receiver? you now got two unconnected things to carry, which seems a bit odd)

https://www.onbuy.com/gb/bluetooth-50-universal-headset-wireless-adapter~c16193~p29442989/?

my issue isn't with the headphone cord at all, it's with the iphone: the headphone jack won't stay in the phone if you so much as sneeze at it. this was never a problem with my ipod, but my ipod can't stream things so

well that’s that cleared up then

Anytime.

I thought the tethered buds were a thing of the past too.. but seems Sony is still making some. Like the WIC200.

xxp Well it looks like the back is a big clip. It's another way to go. But yeah still charging two batteries.

as someone who will absolutely lose one of their wireless earbuds within a day, I feel the progress towards their universal adoption as a gathering storm directed personally at me

and this looks like what was mentioned above - an adapter to plug your wired earphones into so you can use them with a bluetooth phone (although where do you put that receiver? you now got two unconnected things to carry, which seems a bit odd)

That's what I do

In the early 1990s I used to install TV/media displays at big tech conventions like Comdex and Digital World and the turn this thread has taken has given me bad PTSD flashbacks of working with video distribution amplifiers.

comdex!!! i remember loading equipment trucks for comdex lol

can't login to / register with hmrc without a passport, and renewing mine would be £80 or so and two weeks, easily. other possible forms of id are driving licence. i don't have one of those either but it might be cheaper and easier... only applying for a driving licence requires a passport...

(it might be different if i do it in person)

(also, why is firefox highlighting licence as a spelling error when it's set to GB english)

apps for parking

omfg yes

I mean paying for parking in the UK is a fucking disgrace full stop, but I'm kind of stuffed without the apps. I just never have cash.

some people don't have smartphones (e.g. my parents), what are they meant to do? pretty sure they'd be baffled by the automated telephone payments line too. keep cash payments for people who don't want to or can't pay otherwise, have a contactless thingummy for everyone else. fuck an app (or phone payments).

Oh God parking apps are the WORST

The ones near us replaced actual machines that took cash and card, and one of them near my friends cat cafe requires you to create a whole fucking account before you can even see how much it is to park. After doing all that one night it boasted that it was $15 to park and I peaced

Also having to enter your space number and license plate number and lord help you if you miskey either and get a ticket anyway

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the literal worst feeling in the world is arriving on time to a destination where you have previously downloaded the parking app and set up an account, only to discover that the old parking app has been acquired by a different parking app company so you're right back to square zero.

why are we not tagging these qr codes? maybe just even fill in a couple of the white squares.

The justpark phone number will no longer accept my bank card because a payment once failed to go through, and no idea how to fix it, I will not download their app, guess I just can't park.

I totally take the point about it being worse for people without phones, but when I'm faced with an old style pay and display car park now I tear my hair out ("What, I now have to trek back to the car, open it up and put this on the dashboard? I'm in a HURRY"). That's if I can figure out the UI of the machine in the first place.

Round our way they've covered all the on-street parking machines with black plastic, which is an eyesore.

There's a multistorey car park I use in Leamington Spa which used to have an automatic reg recognition system, pay on exit, etc. then last year they ripped it all out and replaced with pay-and-display paper ticket machines on every floor. how's that for a backwards step? though I don't actually mind the machines (which accept contactless) I don't like having to leave the kids in the car while I walk there and back, because they will fight, get out of the car, etc.

If there’s no cash option, it’s discriminatory and fuck it; but also, if there’s no non-cash option, it’s discriminatory and fuck it. Here in Philly, it is perhaps one of the only official systems that works— there are zones and kiosks at every zone that either take card or cash, or you can use the app and pay that way. Shouldn’t be a hard problem to solve.

Now don’t get me started on SEPTA, our public transit system. At least they’re beginning a phone-based payment system finally, after years of using a system of RFID chip cards that…get this… expired. Like, I had to buy a new card and load it with funds even tho my old one had funds on it. Just to ride the subway for a few miles. Insanity.

On the subject of reg recognition: having to go into a shop and wait in a queue to pay for petrol while my car sits blocking the pump seems mad to me when the forecourt has plenty of cameras.

I now have THREE separate parking apps, and they're always required in places with no signal/wifi. Fuck them to hell. Usually no card reader either.

Quite honestly it drives me nuts how the default assumption is "everyone has a smartphone" in so much of society, which tabes otm, is discriminatory.

My company once changed the system for calling out unplanned from calling a voicemail and leaving the details to an Android/iOS cell phone app. Sure enough, one or two training classes later, two employees said they didn't have smart phones, what do they do, and leadership was flummoxed like they literally hadn't expected.

But back to parking - not ALL parking apps are clumsy, but so many of them make you do a lot of work. What I also hate is that these apps SHOULD provide you with added convenience - i.e., you paid through 10 pm but you got held up. Cool, I'll just relog into the app and add some additional time!

Except all of them I've used, even though you set up an account, it knows your license plate and (if applicable) your space number, you go to add more time, but it doesn't allow you to. It counts the time you are purchasing from time of purchase and doesn't incorporate the time you already paid for. So you have to wait for it to expire first

I don't like having to leave the kids in the car while I walk there and back, because they will fight, get out of the car, etc.

This is on u for raising feral crime kids imo

One time I left my kid unattended when getting gas and these 2 bikers started harassing them and he threw a boomerang and killed one of them

Quite honestly it drives me nuts how the default assumption is "everyone has a smartphone" in so much of society, which tabes otm, is discriminatory.

Round here you can pay by text message as well, so a dumb phone will do. Not that everyone has one of those either.

Once got talking to an elderly lady at an airport who asked me "why is everyone always on their PHONES". Thought she wanted to do the usual boomer rant about this but turned out, no, she genuinely did not know what the functionalities of a smartphone were.

it is indeed my fate to walk the earth as the shamed father of two feral crime kids, at least until one of them goes off to uni I suppose

I remember my nan tutting at everyone wearing headphones at a local historic attraction. They were listening to the audio guide!

Theres new underground carparks near me that are cashless in a good way - it reads yr licence plate, so if youre there less than the 1 or 2 hours it allows, all is well and it lets you out. They should just do that for onstreet parking - read the plate, charge nothing if it less than X window of time, if over X, send a bill/charge to CC. No cash for inspectors to have to collect, no need for apps, no fucking around looking for which machine to pay at.

All that said I've NFI how they'd put a camera in to record a paralell-parked car on the road.

. . . i don't even own a car

https://media.tenor.com/FFnlR-x5mTEAAAAC/nathan-fillion-but.gif

tbf i was totally put off cars by hook turns

the car has to enter the spot at some point right

why are we not tagging these qr codes? maybe just even fill in a couple of the white squares.

― pplains, Monday, July 3, 2023 10:13 PM (yesterday)

this is a beautiful idea

apps are good

Leave room for the entree

How much to print 500 stickers with QR codes leading to carfree.com or thewaroncars.org to paste over those parking signs.

QR code leading to pics of Tubgirl

I like parking apps. Hated having to find ways to make change before taking a trip downtown.

Count me among the haters. I don't own a car, so I only encounter these things when I'm traveling in a rental or a borrowed car. So I'm on the road, going from town to town, and inevitably it's some different app than the one before, or the app wants me to enter my password which I certainly don't remember, etc. etc. I guess I'm just annoyed at the idea of keeping multiple different apps installed on my phone so I can hypothetically park if I'm ever again in a town that happens to have been suckered by the same app company as one that I've used in the past. (The entire thing seems like an obnoxious way for a private company to slip in and grab a slice of what should be a fairly basic and easily-implemented municipal function and revenue stream...)

My city still has parking meters that take change as well as an app for the same spaces. Half an hour is something like 25¢ while the app charges you 35¢.

I'm comfortable with this. Making more options available rather than taking some away. I carry around quarters in an Altoids tin like an old man, but the app is convenient (and worth the small surcharge) because I can extend my time without going back to the car to plug in more quarters.

However, I don't frequent the private lots anymore since they removed the cash option and now have QR codes on the kiosk. I was carrying around an Android J3 up until last year. It barely could read QR codes for restaurant menus.

put it this way - I'd be fine w/ an app if that wasn't the only way to pay for parking, like give me options!

and also don't make me go through hoops in the process, like there's one parking app I have which even if you scan the QR code, doesn't know exactly which parking lot you're at, you have to search for it or enter the number from the sign or some shit, before you can even get to the stage of paying.

whereas there's one local lot here which literally you click a link, go right to payment and enter your space number, and boom...it's easy and over in two minutes. I wish they were all like that.

xpost pplains otm

I carry around quarters in an Altoids tin like an old man

you are literally my dad

I'm still proud of you.

i have somehow managed to avoid these up until now, but i don't doubt that i will hate them in the future when they are imposed on me.

Last year I stayed at a hotel in New Orleans that used a parking garage with a really bad and confusing online app. Parking was supposed to be covered in the price of the room, but the garage had many signs giving dire warnings about not leaving your car there for any tiny amount of time without registering on the app. So I registered and paid for a space and of course was told by the hotel that under no circumstances would they refund anything I already paid for parking. There was zero information about how any of this was supposed to work, which I'm pretty sure was the point, it all felt extremely scammy.

The entire thing seems like an obnoxious way for a private company to slip in and grab a slice of what should be a fairly basic and easily-implemented municipal function and revenue stream...

this

^^

maybe by city is just so dysfunctional they haven't even thought of this additional way to fuck things up?

I can’t even guess at the number of accounts I’ve made for sites/apps that I only needed to use a single time.

what I also hate is meters of any kind where you're in a part of the day/week where paid parking isn't required, but the system doesn't shut off intake of payment and willfully accepts your money. obv intentional because they know they'll bilk a lot of people who don't realize.

I used to go to see shows at the Orpheum at its old location in Ybor City and always parked in the same paid lot across the street, for about 4-5 years, including Sundays. One day I got out to pay and someone said "you don't have to pay on Sundays" and pointed at the part of the sign I missed. so for four years I probably paid like $80 in parking I didn't have to because they intentionally didn't program the machine to indicate parking was free during those off hours/days.

there's also the paranoid part of me that always assumes I misread the sign so I probably DID notice but just assumed that since the machine was telling me to pay that I had to. been towed out of town before and it sucks bad enough that I like to prevent it.

_The entire thing seems like an obnoxious way for a private company to slip in and grab a slice of what should be a fairly basic and easily-implemented municipal function and revenue stream..._

this

thing about ParkMobile/ParkWhiz and similar sites is a lot of the companies who partner with it don't always account for it properly.

there was one time I used ParkWhiz to park at a lot out of town and the attendant had never heard of it and had to consult his supervisor as to whether he could take my "confirmation" without paying. and on multiple occasions, where the parking site didn't account for the # of prepaid spots when determining capacity, so I showed up and the lot was full already (one of the times I got out, moved the cones, and parked on the side somewhere because I had no time to find another spot).

(referring to prepaid parking that is)

the app is convenient (and worth the small surcharge) because I can extend my time without going back to the car

I did forget to mention the time I drove a different car to work, forgot to update the info and got a parking ticket anyway.

you know what's a technological step backward we all just accept now? the automobile 😎

if we're talking Flintstones car there are steps forwards and backwards

they only work if you have a good pair of bongos

you know what's a technological step backward we all just accept now? the automobile 😎

I'm too traumatized by the parking app I tried to use in Leeds to post here. All I can say is that it took 45 minutes to get to the cruel "I'm sorry, but cannot add foreign credit cards or banks to your account" knifetwist at the end.

i mean the most prominent thread result on ilx for leeds does read, iirc, "that vile remnant of the north" so you ought to have been on notice imo

if it bleeds, it's Leeds

FWIW, I had been in the UK for ten days and may have let my guard down and/or was thrown off-axis by Scotland

when LOST was on, we all felt bad for the guy punching in meaningless numbers around the clock, but now I have to do the same every time I want to look at my bank balance or look at my paystubs

We had to take a step backward during Y2K, but I think it would be a safe bet for the bank to start putting 20__ on the date lines again.

again?

youknowwhatimean

if your power blinks for a split second due to a nearby lightning strike, you won't be able to serve soft drinks for 10+ minutes as the Coca-Cola Freestyle machines take that long to reboot

(at a Wendy's)

10+ minutes is a long time, but Freestyle machines are overall a net benefit for allowing me to add Cherry flavor to any type of soda.

oh yeah I love the machines as a customer for realz.

though I'm also the dude who worked at Steak 'n Shake as a kid and added vanilla to every soda I poured myself

Dutch electric bike brand's bankrupcy could render all their bikes unusable (the electric part only, I suppose, it's still a bike)

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/07/15/233244/if-vanmoof-ebikes-locks-you-out-of-your-own-bike-a-rival-companys-app-could-help

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/003/194/001.jpg

> (the electric part only, I suppose, it's still a bike)

if they are anything like the ebikes that litter london streets then it'll lock the brakes on and make them impossible to ride. i often move badly parked disposable bikes out of the way of pedestrians / pushchairs / wheelchairs and you have to pick them up and roll them by the one unlocked wheel. and those things are heavy.

oh, i's those bikes, i saw someone riding one the other day

website says

Security:
Kick Lock with active-retract pin
Integrated Theft Defense
Automatic Rider Recognition
Manual disarm with backup code
Anti-theft nuts and bolts
GPS and Bluetooth location tracking

so i'm hoping the manual disarm works

Man, I hope my electric toothbrush company never goes bankrupt.

same for electric toilet paper

Seems like the way things are going, your toaster will stop working whenever it needs a firmware update, or if you fail to pay your monthly subscription for toast

The moral is, keep your old stuff

Stopped analog clock still has the right time twice a day.

A broken digital clock never does.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/rival-e-bike-maker-helps-vanmoof-owners-grab-bike-keys-while-company-struggles/

Less than a week after US outlets caught on to VanMoof's Dutch business troubles, Cowboy, another European e-bike maker, had released Bikey, an iOS app that does what it says in its description: "Save your VanMoof bike key." The app was developed "during a one-day hackathon," according to its description, as Cowboy "shares the belief that every single bike deserves to be on the road." The app supports S3 and X3 models at the moment.

Along with accessing keys, the app aims to provide basic functionality, like unlocking, changing assistance levels, and adjusting lights. Cowboy told TechCrunch that an Android version is forthcoming and that anyone with a VanMoof bike should grab their key soon, as it will be inaccessible if the company's servers are shuttered.

VanMoof's apparent mismanagement (how do you go bankrupt in an e-bike boom?) is pretty disappointing given what seemed like a festive approach to bike theft. (They made an upbeat youtube series where they tracked down and recovered stolen bikes without a lot of rage-spiking drama that you might think that would entail.)

Cowboy isn't the most healthy company either, they've needed investor money 5 times already and are still in the red. Proprietary batteries and other unique parts mean that repairs are hella expensive and can take months. They are now looking for normal bike shops that want to help service the Cowboy bikes.

a good mantra in these times is: wait for the second (generation/model/version) of everything before you buy.

don't connect your bike to the internet is my mantra tbh

great Peter Gabriel jam too

lol, that could just be the album title he's looking for

Sim trays

Giving up on my Sonos and going back to a cabled speaker.

what didn't you like about them?

I was a bit annoyed at the setup for the Sonos I had but figured it out

I wanna be

Your e-biker

Why don't you call my name

I'm your

E-biker

Neanderthal I mentioned it on the Spotify thread recently - playback frequently stops between tracks and somehow seems to be the speaker at fault.

oh that's weak

Qobuz seems to frequently stop between tracks too, but I’m not using a wireless speaker.

have found Sonos maddening lately using spotify/alexa but havent as yet tracked down the evil company specifically at fault

trying to deposit a check using my phone camera. out of six checks, two worked fine, two were accepted after half a dozen attempts, and two just wouldn't go through

my bank used to accept scans -- nice high def! -- but no longer

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackcats/comments/ut6if8/walked_in_on_my_husband_using_our_cat_as_a_mobile/

my cat's a calico : /

I use black t-shirts all of the time for scanning stuff.

This is probably more a business step than technological but: video game demos, or rather, the lack of them. I hear great things about a game like Elden Ring, but am on the fence because I am uncertain whether I will stand the difficulty, fantasy is not usually my thing, etc. In the past, I could play a demo and make a decision. These days, I have to just decide whether to give it a swing if it's on sale. Sure, Steam will offer a refund if I've played for less than two hours... but aside from having to still spend time up to 80GB, a lot of games have such extensive introductory cutscenes/hand-holding mode that you've barely got to the meat of the game two hours in.

I suppose now people just watch a Let's Play on Youtube, but that doesn't really tell me how the game feels to play.

why does my laptop think I'm in Nevada? All the targeted ads are like "100% Nevada Since Day 1"

are you on a vpn or work computer

I'm on a work computer, but I do sign into the VPN

A couple weeks ago it kept trying to give me weather info for Dallas, now it's convinced I'm in Las Vegas

Memory cards. The tiny ones that are now standard. I get that circuitry can always be made more complex for the size but theres just a point where its so small its unpractical to handle or store anywhere.

I opened a drawer the other day and clocked the number of memory cards that were in there.. two card readers.. haven't used any of them in years. What do people even use them for now? If you're a pro photographer I get having a few cards that you can pop in and out of your camera but otherwise?

I used to use them for portable music players, that's been several years ago now.

nintendo switch, cameras, handful of other game devices, whatever

I think there are still a bunch of phone people who are outraged by apple’s lack of memory card slot

oh yeah and raspberry pi systems and other small form
factor things but I assume some of those have support for the short format nvme sticks now

You should get Elden Ring

I hear great things about a game like Elden Ring, but am on the fence because I am uncertain whether I will stand the difficulty, fantasy is not usually my thing, etc. In the past, I could play a demo and make a decision.

I asked similar questions, and just took the dive. Buy the disk version (preferably used) and sell it back if you don't like it. As for the game, I followed some guides, changed the controls up a bit, and ended up getting into the flow of things well enough to have now dropped over 130 hours into this beast and just beat friggin' Malenia, who is arguably the hardest boss in the game.

In the spirit of this thread, however, I don't recall many video game demos back in the day (cartridge game era), so the fact some even exist (I tried FFXVI's demo this summer) is pretty cool, but the general economic risk/reward experience remains the same as long as you buy physical not digital

Actually I suppose there were more video game rental options back then, which is def not a thing these days, so you could have tried a "demo" by renting a game.

The check scanning thing a bit upthread makes me doubletake to realise americans apparently seem to still use cheques a lot? I havent touched any since the 90s and even then I only ever used them to pay rent.

Game demos otm. The impetus for sharing as much as you got on shareware in the 90s just isn't there without the scarcity of bandwidth and storage. And no rental shops, yeah. Now it's more about waiting to try stuff you're not sold on many months after release when it goes on sale. It's gone topsy turvy.

otoh glad there was a Street Fighter 6 demo. The open world aspect caught my attention... but then i tried it for 10 minutes and deleted.

I should have clarified I'm talking about the micro SD cards that I guess some phones have. The postage stamp sized ones, that have been around since the mid 2000s I guess, are ok. Its actually the best thing for me to exchange samples between my little field recorder, mac, and sampler. But those micro ones, I mean.... are we really going to make something smaller?

If you buy a postage stamp sized now it’s usually just the tiny one in an adapter

We got our dad one of those birdfeeder cameras that identifies birds using AI and it needs either a micro SD card or a cloud video subscription to take the videos of birds. So that, I guess.

the annoying thing with the micro sd cards is that you can't easily label them - generally too black and shiny for any pen and to small to fit much on. i ended up scratching numbers onto them, Roman numerals given that it's easier to scratch straight lines, and keep a list on the laptop.

that high tech feeling you get when you find yourself scratching roman numerals onto your recording medium

Would a little sticker fuck with the function?

i split the nail on my thumb and have applied a plaster to stop it catching on things. but now i can't scroll.

Two things that were absolutely not okay in the pre-digital era and are even less okay today: that thing where you were trying to set an alarm clock and you accidentally went past the time you intended, and you therefore needed to go all the way around again.

And also when you have a watch with a little date window. I own three of these. But if I forget to put one on for even a couple weeks, I am going to be twisting the stupid knob for what seems like half an hour to get back in synch with terrestrial time. And I know I am going to be doing it again in six months, so what exactly is the point?

Now I kinda understand why our parents had the VCR flashing 12:00 for the entire eighties.

no it was always midnight in the 80s, read yr blogs

the VCR displays were actually very pessimistic doomsday clocks

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_recruitment_blunder/

In autumn 2021, candidates seeking their third-level specialist training position (ST3) were looking forward to hearing where they would end up in one of the NHS's most sought-after medical disciplines.

However, the body responsible for their selection and recruitment – the Anaesthetic National Recruitment Office (ANRO) – told all the candidates for positions in Wales they were "unappointable," despite some of them achieving the highest interview scores.

Only when one of the candidates challenged the decision did ANRO realize its error. A subsequent Significant Incident Review showed a complex and confused approach to using spreadsheets led to the disaster.

"The interview scores are stored in an Excel spreadsheet. Each of the seven UK recruitment regions creates a separate spreadsheet, but these have no standardised template, naming convention or structure. After being manually amended, all of the various scores are entered into a Master spreadsheet. This is carried out row-by-row and takes several days, likely to be subject to interruptions," the report said.

In the process, a ranking column in the Wales Region Spreadsheet had been wrongly transferred to the Master National Spreadsheet, erroneously appearing as an interview score. After their interviews, candidates were ranked 1 to 24 – with 24 actually being the total number of candidates interviewed in the region. But even the highest possible "interview" score of 24 was much lower than candidates' true scores, and because the candidates had been ranked in order of performance, the best candidates were deemed weakest and vice versa.

"As a consequence of this all the candidates from the Wales Region did not score highly enough when all candidate scores were ranked nationally and all candidates from the Wales Region were 'unappointable'," the report said.

The report – only published in July following a Freedom of Information request – reveals that poor choice of technology for organization-wide decision-making was compounded by inconsistent practice, including the erratic use of Excel's "VLOOKUP" function designed to transpose data from one spreadsheet or data source to another.

brb applying for a suddenly very well paid job

Two things that were absolutely not okay in the pre-digital era and are even less okay today: that thing where you were trying to set an alarm clock and you accidentally went past the time you intended, and you therefore needed to go all the way around again.

Sometimes there is a secret way of going backwards - holding some random button and shifting time simultaneously - but of course you only discover this after years of going the long way around and next time you've forgotten how to do it again.

Yeah this and the watch thing are stupid. But most people only have their phones now and they adjust the time automatically. The future !

I always looked for an alarm clock (including digital ones) that allowed both forward and backward adjustment of alarm time whenever i bought one.

ours have a little control wheel, it's definitely a perk although remembering what all the buttons do when pressed vs held is surprisingly a lot to manage. an overall drive towards things with fewer buttons takes us to all these multi-use ambiguous things. sleeker but slightly less functional.

I'm still using the same GE alarm clock that I've had since seventh grade or so (see the 'how old is your alarm clock' thread) and yes, I'm still doing this onerous task at least twice a year, more when there's power outages

Can't remember if I posted on here but my alarm clock I've had for over 20? 25? years finally died a few months ago.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/self-checkout-kiosks-grocery-retail-stores/675676/?gift=Bqi2uZtdZSXIt7UBFZp4FBRxqWDIvFkgSDWgLrOvUoY&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

That is a non-paywalled gift link from the Atlantic, in case you are interested. Just the normal predictable gripes about self-checkout.

Do I weigh my grapes? What if I want wine? Can someone just approve my OBVIOUS age? Do they need the actual date of birth, do they need to physically scan my ID, or can they put in a random pre-2000 date?

Do I have a loyalty card or do I put in my phone number? Coupons? Do I wish to round up for a charity? Do I need a bag, did I bring a bag, am I okay with a bag charge?

I am five minutes' walk from three grocery stores, two convenience stores, two department stores, a liquor store and a wine/beer store.

Every time I go out for something I think not just about getting there, finding a thing, and buying it... but how much fucking hassle it will be to successfully complete said transaction. 7-11 and

...Target and Safeway are equidistant from me but I know that 7-11 will just let me have the wine, while Target will make me jump through two hoops and Safeway will make me jump through three.

Do I wish to round up for a charity?

ftr this is just a tax writeoff scam, never do it

Whole Foods put in self-checkouts and managed to make them shittier than any others. Slower, only space for one bag (maybe I don’t want to put raw chicken and asparagus together?) and no cash. They would love for you to scan your palm though, because giving Amazon biometric data sounds way more enticing than just taking 3 seconds to get my debit card out.

the question about wine and alcohol is weird and complicated— i have been in places where they just look at me and put a random date in the computer (Whole Foods, often), and I have been in places where my ID literally expired the day before and wouldn’t scan properly and they wouldn’t sell me a beer, tho i was clearly 36 years old.

i do all loyalty programs for grocery stores and have an email account for them and other corporate “deals” stuff.

i find that the less i worry about all this, the less it seems to matter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i admit that i just use apple wallet for payment when i can— i hate cards and always have.

Table I hear you on the arbitrary rando nature of the ID thing.

Like I am standing here, it's 6 PM and I am wearing a suit and I have grey hair and I am literally holding the hand of a preteen child.

I just want to buy a stupid bottle of pinot grigio to go with the goddamn chicken and couscous that I am also purchasing. Maybe I have some scallions and cat food as well.

Does anyone REALLY think that I'm secretly a teenager trying to get away with some alcoholic mischief?

And yet. Some of the time, the cashier is like boop, you're cool, we know you're over 21. Some of the time they ask me to enter my date of birth myself. Some of the time they decide to enter some random date from the 20th century. At other times I need to take my ID out so they can scan it.

But here's the thing: I NEVER FUCKING KNOW which of those things it's going to be. Which store, which cash register, which cashier, which time? Apparently there is literally no way to know.

Honestly it would be great if every store just posted a sign telling me how much of a pain in the ass it's going to be to get a stupid $10 bottle of pinot grigio if I am a grey-haired dad in a suit, holding the hand of a preteen child.

(Nota bene I have been a retail chashier myself and I know they're just following directives from above. It's not about the individual employees but rather about their management chain.)

Do US stores have self-scanners? These were great over Covid. There's a bank of handheld scanning machines at the supermarket (usually a large store) entrance, you unlock one with your loyalty card or app (btw pretty much all supermarkets have these to generously give you amazing savings...) then just scan and pack your stuff in the cart as you go around. Go to a self checkout machine, scan a barcode and it loads it all up and you pay as normal. Stuff that needs weighing, you weigh on scales around the store and print out a little barcode sticker.

It meant no double handling of goods/needed to pack at the till. Also you can see prices if they're not clear.

They do random 'you have been selected for a scan check' when you go to pay, where staff take a bunch of stuff/your whole shop out and check you scanned it.

You could totally steal shitloads of stuff if you're lucky.

On the other hand, there is a Sainsburys in the studenty area of my city that doesn't have these and also has a gate the other side of the regular self-checkout machines that won't let you out unless you scan your receipt!

Some US chains experimented with the above before COVID, but quickly dropped it. My preferred grocery store when I lived in Maryland had it for like a minute.

Puffin, working in local government I know for fact that the Virginia ABC send out underage Virginia State Police cadets to test who cards. You should be flattered!

I vastly prefer self-checkout and will choose it whenever provided the option. I'll admit the challenges with it, especially at some specific stores, but still better to minimize my human interactions wherever possible. Amazon Go is my favorite though.

speaking of supermarkets, how does android pay / apple pay / whatever work in supermarkets given that i lose phone reception whenever i enter one? surely it has to check with a server somewhere.

It works roughly the same as the chip in a card – the phone more-or-less mimics a debit card, so no connection required.

(i installed it on my phone after thrice getting to the checkout without my debit card but i've never used it, and i've got nfc off by default so would have to jump through hoops should i ever need it but...)

the lack of phone connection in supermarkets, that's a thing, right? i only ever notice when i'm listening to Sounds and it stops. is it being actively blocked (which i think is illegal) or just a function of being inside somewhere with no windows?

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/umrfbm/never_getting_any_phone_signal_in_supermarkets/

- it's a big metal box, basically.

modern buildings codes in the USA result in commercial buildings being near-Faraday cages unless provision is put in the building to allow cell signals to propagate

I hate self-checkout more than most things and I have never even tried to use the things Kinder is talking about.

Also YES why do I lose reception inside most supermarkets in the UK?! It's stupid.

Oh wait - I just saw koogs link will read.

I have wondered for 5 years why that happens and if it was only to me lol. Have had to go outside to google recipes.

it's annoying because I need Internet to use the stupid nectar app

Yes that happens in M&S when I try to use their app so I have to open it before I enter the store.

That seemed to be a issue around here in past years, but it all seems better now? Some stores have wifi, albeit terrible wifi.

Boring Md I know they do that, and I would like to be flattered. Maybe I was flattered at 42 (twice 21) but it has since become tiresome.

Like, really?

Honestly I would be more okay if it were consistent. But at present there are at least four potential paths: "yeah, you're old, we're cool," "show me the front of your ID," "can you type in your date of birth?" "uh, can you take it out so I can scan the back?"

Sometimes they type in the actual date of birth, sometimes they just fake it with something that's a bit more than 21 years ago, sometimes they just want to get the year right. But then some places actually want to scan the barcode. My problem is that I never know which stores/cashiers/registers are going to require what.

Adding to this, the loyalty card, the phone number, the PIN, the '"do you want cash back," the "do you want to donate to the Abused Puppies Fund" prompt, and (in my jurisdiction) the "how many bags did you use" prompt? Oh and do you need parking validation as well?

All of it adds up. At this point I would seriously reward a business that was just called "Food for Money."

Particularly annoying when I'm trying to text my wife photos of potential replacements for when the specific thing she wanted me to pick up are out of stock and I have to walk clear to the front of the store and get as close to the doors as possible to even sent it out.

• Dislike self-checkout because I can't do all the cool things a cashier can do. Ten cans of catfood? How about I take one can and quickly swipe it ten times? No? I have to do each one individually? And hear PLACE ITEM IN BAG after each one?

• Usual complaints about alcohol purchases, but in my state, adults under 21 years of age can't sell you alcohol. When the red-vested manager finally shows up after five minutes, she usually pushes the twelve-pack across the scanner and punches in a random birthdate while the original casher stands there.

• Back in the 90s, I was once denied a pack of cigarettes because the cashier looked at my state-issued laminated driver's license and deduced that the "3" in my birthyear was actually a "9". Still steamed about that, but at least technology has taken a step forward from that.

• Don't know what the fuss is about the shoplifting. I haven't gotten one item for free at self-checkout, but Lord knows I've walked out with plenty of free twelve-packs of Coke in the bottom of the cart because both me and the cashier had forgotten about them.

self-checkout has honestly gotten much better since it started it seems to me, to the point where I prefer it unless I really have too much groceries. I've gotten really good at it. I guess the alcohol thing is a bit annoying, but I don't purchase it that often at my regular grocery store.

also both big grocery stores around here that I regularly go to have had self-checkout, then a couple of years later removed self-checkout, then putting it back in. With inflation and increased fear of shoplifting, I am wondering if they are going to take them out again.

I actually switched grocery stores because the one I liked switched to mostly self-checkout and it has one of those systems that weighs every item and gets upset at you when the weights don't check out. and it malfunctions constantly. it's really bad with produce. if I'm buying more than $50 worth of stuff it just takes forever.

I've gotten way less "put the item back in the bag" or whatever it was warnings in the last couple of years, which leads me to believe that they increased the tolerance for weights being slightly off, but I'm guessing this hasn't happened everywhere.

I understand why cashiers will card anyone and everyone buying alcohol, because I'm pretty sure the store can be presented with some astronomical fines if they are caught selling to someone underage.

Hilariously last week I was being rung up and the cashier said, "oh, wait a second..." and grabbed a card from the checkout station next to her. I thought she had maybe scanned something twice by accident and needed the card to void it, but no, she used it to apply A SENIOR DISCOUNT!!!!

Sadly the next time I went there the (a different) cashier did not try to give me the discount. I am really bad at math, but I think it was like ten percent off! I need to try to play up the doddering aspect of how I present from here on.

Most of the places near me do not have self-checkout (I think in part because of space limitations?) but in any case I avoid using them on principle (i.e., I hate doing things)

The self-checkout at the local Aldi is very hectoring--if more than about 3 seconds pass between scanning, it barks at me to scan an item or use the screen to checkout. Heaven forbid I take a moment to distribute things evenly in my bag.

one thing I've learned over the years of using self-checkout is that it's quicker to not put anything into bags as you do the checkout, just do the checkout putting everything directly onto the bagging area and only put it in bags once you've paid.

ftr this is just a tax writeoff scam, never do it

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Wednesday, October 18, 2023 9:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

how does the scam work? stores can't write off customer donations.

I think some of the self-checkout issues that people have aren’t a big deal for me because I was a grocery checkout person relatively recently and still know a lot of the PLUs and the quirks of scales and etc.

xp caek it looks like I was incorrect on that after some research

they do sometimes do shady things tho:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/12/06/metro/heres-why-cvs-was-sued-over-fundraising-fraud-checkout/

Good reasons not to donate at the register:

• It doesn't go directly to the charity, obviously. And who knows when the store lets go of the money.

• Does it go into an interest-bearing account before it's donated? Does the store donate the interest too?

• You're giving the retailer all of the credit for giving. Way to go for making Walgreens look good.

• Charities appreciate the money, but have no idea who's giving what, other than "shoppers at CVS" and can't follow up.

• Maybe the stores don't get the write-off, but neither do you.

I thought sleeve was right about the stores getting the deduction, but even if they don't, the altruism is still very small.

I think some of the self-checkout issues that people have aren’t a big deal for me because I was a grocery checkout person relatively recently and still know a lot of the PLUs and the quirks of scales and etc.

hashtag humblebrag

agree w/ all that pp, I still won't do it

my beef is when they have twelve checkout aisles but only one or two are ever open, no matter how busy they are... why did you bother to build all these ghost aisles, harrumph

I have a local grocery store here notorious for that Andy, they have around 30-35 lanes and in my 16 years of shopping there (off or on), I have never ever seen more than eight checkouts open at one time, no matter how busy they are.

“ Do US stores have self-scanners?”

Oohhhhhh do we ever

I love this thread and am sad I didn’t realize it’d been restarted until now

Out of curiosity, would y'all be interested in going back to the pre-supermarket age where the grocer would get you everything from behind the counter, at least for stuff like prepackaged goods (and would possibly be sporting a villainous mustache and commuting to work on a pennyfarthing bicycle)?

I guess that's kind of still the case with cigarettes in convenience stores.

I don’t like self-checkout and yet have become the kind of person who uses it because, well, there are never enough lanes with cashiers and as I age I don’t want to be in a place with lots of strangers any longer than I absolutely have to.

(This is magnified at present, during flu season.)

Philip, I don’t know if I’d want to go back to that 100% (haven’t experienced it) but it’d be cool to have maybe one or two stores where that could be done

it sounds really nice hearing older families reminiscing about what sainsburys used to be like (go to the butter man ask him to carve you some butter etc) but I wasn't there maybe it was shit

what we have now is probably marginally better from an autistic pov but it has put a hell of a lot of people out of work so I'm generally against it

table, thank you for your service. I have spent considerable time behind a cash register myownself. If needed I could probably key in my ID from 1990 blindfolded. I could also probably count and reconcile a drawer full of coins (remember those?) in my sleep. Every evening, arranging pennies like soldiers in ranks of ten.

I always use self-check at Walmart because it's the store of last resort and I never have more than 4 or 5 items, plus the staff there all have the "please release me from this hell on earth" dead eyes. I do my main shopping at a different chain in Tupelo and always go to a staffed lane because they make quick work of a full cart and don't seem miserable to be there, lots of laughing and shit-talking among themselves.

I never use self-check because they don't allow alcohol in those (at least here in CA) and I'm always buying some form of alcohol, sometimes just a beer for the parking lot

i will never use the self checkout options.
i like having a chat with the staff.
have got to know most of them on the checkout at the shop i use.
fuck automation.

ymp and jvc, wasn’t meant as a humble brag or boastful, just sharing my experience.

I just had to do a capcha thing for a finance thing for work... "Click any motorcycles" "Click any Traffic Lights, if there are none click next"

21 fucking rounds of this... 21 times I had to pick the bicycles and fire hydrants.. and THEN I had to do the double-identifier thing with a code sent to my phone... fuck this shit

Hilariously last week I was being rung up and the cashier said, "oh, wait a second..." and grabbed a card from the checkout station next to her. I thought she had maybe scanned something twice by accident and needed the card to void it, but no, she used it to apply A SENIOR DISCOUNT!!!!

It happened again, tonight! With a different cashier! What is going on? I realize the pandemic years have probably been rough on me but I don't look THAT old? Was it the Geritol that I put on the conveyor belt? I didn't give them the store discount card so it's not like they have magic access to my age, and even if so I doubt that their program begins at fifty?? The only thing I can figure is that someone made a huge fuss and subsequently management encouraged the employees to apply the discount when in doubt, like the reverse of carding for booze. Or that I tend to throw my change into their weird tip containers if I pay with cash, and it's karma boomeranging. Fwiw it's a "Foodtown" and the other Foodtown I go to doesn't ever give me magical age-based discounts.

a quick search reveals that at some stores such discounts apply to those as young as 55.

Not trying to be ~ageist~ or unreasonably vain btw, am just really fixated on this in part because grocery shopping is one of my favorite things in life. That Kurt Vonnegut thing about going to the post office is me, except replace w grocery stores. I love life but mostly the things that most people seem to think are boring or resent because perceived as quotidian. I should probably become a P.A., except not for the scary type-A people who are millionaires and want someone to arrange elaborate playdates for their kids. More like, can you go to the Hungarian bakery for me, it's treat time and I am kinda busy, etc.

xpost yeah, I'm fifty! Maybe Foodtown are pioneers in that respect, though.

Dell(ll) I am with you on one thing: I generally find grocery shopping really soothing and pleasant. Aisles, choices, colors, produce.

I love my wife utterly but this is a place where we differ: I would happily shop every day. (How do I know on Tuesday what I will want to eat on Friday?)

So she orders delivered groceries and does real adult meal planning. I just kinda go where whims take me. We work it out.

Yes! It's the summum bonum of creation. I'm surrounded by all these things that originate in plants or elsewhere and then feed us.

i’m on team YMP and del here— i love shopping every day. my husband hates it.

We have a local butcher and fishmonger; if they're busy on a Saturday morning you can spend 20 minutes waiting to be served listening to the same conversations about shared acquaintances, Spurs' chances this afternoon etc etc.

I find grocery stores awesome as an aesthetic experience, but only when they’re mostly empty.

I don't use self check-out as passive resistance against automated shops, even if I am not sure how much point there is in trying to save these jobs. And out of laziness of course.

I also secretly enjoy doing groceries, especially in the nicer shop. There's a little of the childhood magic left in all the things to choose from, the excitement of saving on good deals, the pleasure of picking and discarding with conviction or arbitrary rationales. Even if in the end I always more or less get the same things. I'm not very efficient in a shop, it's more a relaxing time.

I’ll wait in line for self checkout even if there are empty cashier lanes to support automation.

I don't really have an ideological relationship with self-checkout.

At first I liked it because I am very introverted and I enjoyed avoiding people. Now that it has gotten so fussy, with so many prompts, I no longer am as sanguine.

Also as Nabozo writes, capitalism isn't likely to reverse course and become more humane. I can patronize different businesses, like mom and pop corner stores, but I doubt that what I do inside Safeway or Target or whatever is going to affect their business model.

even if nobody uses automated checkout, it doesn't inherently mean more cashier jobs will be created. automation creates the potential for these employees that would have manned registered to be deployed elsewhere. it doesn't inherently eliminate a job.

When jobs are invariably eliminated ANYWAY but these greedy shit companies, is not really the fault of the automated checkout, but rather employers not giving a fuck about labor as they haven't for centuries. budget cuts, reduction in force, all these things were happening before automated checkout and will continue. they'll just have 3 cashiers handling everything while the line is 25-30 people deep at all times, much like every call center has 2 hour waits now.

also self-checkouts give you the ability to steal from greedy stores so that's a plus.

*by these

Otm Neanderthal

give you the ability to steal

Probably why smaller stores who wanted these to save a grand total of around $20/hr quickly got rid of them

I recently had two of something. Scanned one, forgot to scan the other, simply walked out. I don't generally think of myself as an inveterate criminal or serial shoplifter.

But I got home and had two thoughts:

Thought 1. "wow, I didn't mean to do that, oops."

Thought 2. "Damn, that was actually surprisingly easy! If I needed to sometimes steal stuff, that's a pretty slick way to do it. If caught, all you need to say is 'oops, didn't realize.'"

Did that when my mom and I drove two cars off the lot when we only filled out paperwork for one

lol

i have scanned an avocado in a bag when i was apparently supposed to scan the avocado bag. whoooooops sorry wally

ENBB - self scanners are way way easier than self-checkouts! Which I only use when buying maximum 5 items because the tills are always tiny.
Also it's pretty fun to go round zapping stuff.

They have a little kiosk in Camden Yards in Baltimore that will charge you based on what it sees you pick up and walk past the turnstile with.

so i just need to imperceptibly pick it up

It does have a human attendant LOL

Can someone not make a touch-screen phone which understands the difference between the thing you wanted to touch half a second ago and the thing you accidentally touched because it popped up or moved in that half-second?
Or just a keyboard, a phone with a keyboard, can I have one of those please?

will photobucket ever learn that i do not care about 'saving my account' y/n

touch screens at gas stations. why????

touch screens are an abomination afaic

"Can I have $20 on 3 please?" that's all I need. i guess you could call it "voice control"

“Or just a keyboard, a phone with a keyboard, can I have one of those please?”

I still hold that the Palm Pre was the far better phone than the original iPhone.

understands the difference between the thing you wanted to touch half a second ago and the thing you accidentally touched

you know how many companies only ever get clicks because of mistakes like this? do you want to drive them all out of business?

I'm sure this has been bemoaned multiple times here for years but *why* do tech design people hate things like knobs and pushbuttons so much? does their research indicate that manipulating things physically in that way risks disrupting the kind of zombie fugue flow state of their ideal consumers? is it about a misguided obsession with a vaguely sci fi aesthetic? do people who aren't nostalgic whiners actually prefer this smooth crap?

I tried cooking on one of those smart touch hobs recently and it was just insufferable. any small splash of liquid from a pan turned something on or off or confused the whole thing into shutting itself down for safety. it seemed to have been designed by people who have never cooked before. everything took at least 1.5x longer than it should. I'm still pissed off about it. how do people live with this?

I think your basic bottom of the range 4 burner gas hob/oven is all anybody needs, there is barely anything that can go wrong with them short of your gas getting cut off because of non-payment or the apocalypse. They lack flame power, but if you want a an industrial kitchen in your house then you need to win the lottery.

we have one of those at home, yes extremely annoying.

I have arthritis in both hands, not severely but enough that it's a pain to operate, also cannot open twist-top "child-proof" containers, and yes, writing on a smartphone (as I'm doing now) is a very frustrating process. But nobody building these things has apparently ever considered this.

apologies for the ableism there, but these smart cookers are something I'm going to avoid for as long as possible

sorry calz, that was an xpost, I would love to have a basic 4-ring gas hob, unfortunately the landlady does not agree.

the best low-tech kitchen investment I've made in recent times was buying a steel garlic press. It looks indestructible, is easy to clean, doesn't have any removable parts and you can squeeze 4/5 cloves in it. It's fucking amazing!

We have one and the plastic grip came off and vanished in the maw of the kitchen god. Still usable and amazing but leaves some deep indentation marks in my fingers!

I shamefully buy jars of pureed garlic now

I still buy jars of pureed garlic/ginger every few weeks, because my hands and skin get worn out from too much mincing and need a break sometimes

You can get induction hobs (which ARE a technological forward step compared to gas) with dial controls - but they tend to be more expensive ones for the professional kitchen marker. I’m stuck with a cheaper one with touch displays which is a bit of a pain - but it honestly is much better than the gas hob we had before and also does not emit loads of pollutants.

I assumed having dials would be much less expensive and resource intensive than touch controls. is that wrong? I don't know how any of these things actually work. I hope there are more affordable home versions available eventually though

I assume now it‘s much simpler to stick in a touch screen which can be made in another factory and then just plugged in with one-click of a cable connector as opposed to a multi step process with manual controls.

A couple of nice things people probably like about the touchscreen interface is that it makes cleaning really really easy, and also allows things like timers to visual show the hob is off - with a dial it would appear the hob was still on and be confusing.

Yeah but if I wipe it or move a pot across it or anything it turns off, it's really annoying to use even after a year or so.

I was staying at a hotel last week with touchscreen bedroom lights – impossible to turn the light on to find the bathroom in the middle of the night when there’s no switch to feel for.

I was teaching a class with 18-20-year-old students from all around the world this week, asked them to make a single powerpoint slide and email it to me as an attachment. More than 50% were unable to complete this very simple task!

that was me when my manager asked me to fax something to somewhere about 10 years ago

when i started teaching in 2003 i used ohp slides, still have a folder full of them, superior in every sense to every interactive whiteboard ever made.

I was teaching a class with 18-20-year-old students from all around the world this week, asked them to make a single powerpoint slide and email it to me as an attachment. More than 50% were unable to complete this very simple task!

do you think the problem was "files" (i.e. experience with computers rather than phones/tablets/chromebooks) or "powerpoint" (iiuc ms office is basically no longer used at all by kids)? would it have gone better if you'd asked them to send you a link to a google slides presentation?

it would have been smoother, for sure - but these young people are preparing for university and will soon have to submit .pptx files through turnitin, so they absolutely have to learn this

i think a deeper issue with touchscreens for me is that afaict hands just aren't designed to lightly graze a smooth hard surface with no resultant or antagonistic physical movement involved for hours on end. so not only is the touchscreen being horribly misapplied to every situation where the perfect interface was achieved pre-internet a question of losing an incredible amount of efficiency, but the entire experience of using them is physically one of the worst things we can do with our hands and fingers.

at least it feels that way to me, i'm no expert, everything about using touchscreens just feels incredibly bad to me.

it would have been smoother, for sure - but these young people are preparing for university and will soon have to submit .pptx files through turnitin, so they absolutely have to learn this

imo universities are going to have to deal with the facts that 1) schoolkids learn on chromebooks and tablets 2) chromebooks and tablets are not actually poor preparation for the "real world of work" in 2023 (i.e. gsuite and web apps). it's just poor preparation for universities staffed by professors in their 50s that are captive to IT education vendors.

until they do, however, you have my sympathies!

I kind of agree, but also it really sucks that people don't seem to have a grasp on the file architecture of their computers or other devices, just an indirect relationship mediated through apps, relying on google/apple/whoever to keep their photos / documents there. I don't trust these companies to be good custodians of our personal archives.

fair

i mailed in all my application materials for college, then wrote all my essays in the computer lab in the library. in the early 2010s.

the idea that people shouldn't be allowed to go to college because they don't know how to mail you a power point slide is insane.

i realize that's not exactly what you're saying, but imo it's totally fine to accept that a lot of adults have and will continue to want their computers to "just work," same as their cars. it doesn't make them incompetent or less able to succeed in the world, it just means they focus on other things

also digital archiving sucked before 'the cloud' as much as it sucks after it.

I get it though. I'm finding I frequently have to include search strings when I set tasks/homework that involve 'Googling something'. Let alone writing an email.

Digital natives my arse.

xxxp I'm not any kind of gatekeeper to university or anything else, but it's just a simple skill, basic digital literacy, something really useful that takes at most 10 minutes to learn

xp it sucked 20 years ago, it sucks a lot more now, but the megaupload era in the middle was by far the suckiest

I don't think everyone needs to know how to code, or even use ms office, just think it's concerning that everyone just has to completely trust apple/google/etc. to take care of all of their photos & videos, and rely on streaming services not to take down a tv show or a film.

people would be better off learning how to pirate

nothing about using a specific software solution to do something that can be done a million other ways is basic digital literacy

I'm talking about attaching a file to an email, what are the million alternatives here?

Left at 10:37 11 Nov 23

people would be better off learning how to pirate

Millions Now Living Will Never Attach A File To An Email

i've been a gmail user for over ten years but within the past two years had to start using MS teams for work. it was definitely frustrating to realize i could not, in fact, figure out how to attach a file to an email

all of which is to say, it may be tempting to blame user error, but what about the knobs who design this absolute dogshit

I like to have a few USB hard drives around, and periodically save all my historical stuff to them. Every few years I buy two more and save the same few thousand files to both, figuring that at least one will survive.

Inevitably, some will stop working or lose compatability. I accept this risk. But it's also why I buy a couple drives every few years.

In the olden days, whenever I got a new computer, I would transfer huge numbers of files... which would inevitably become obsolete and/or unreadable.

So I totally understand the skepticism about cloud storage. No, I don't trust Google Drive or OneDrive or whomsoever to keep my shiz intact in perpetuity. But I can have reasonable confidence that if I've posted something to social media, emailed it to myself, printed it out, and saved it to two or three hard drives, it has a decent chance of survival.

nobody knows how to use a card catalog anymore

Also, even given these precautions, it is probably okay if I occasionally lose a picture of my girlfriend from 1988, or an essay I wrote about Virginia Woolf in 1991, or a bootleg live REM recording from 1993. Not to mention a couple hundred articles about social marketing and health education from 2004-2008.

I try to strike a balance between keeping what matters and sometimes just letting stuff go.

i'm with you, ymp, i'm just into embracing the impermanence of all things.

i don't ever put anything in my phone. everything is on files on my hard drive and when i'm out somewhere and somebody asks me, say, what medications i'm on, i can't answer, because my list of medications is on a file on my hard drive. for me the cloud isn't about preservation, it's about accessibility. do people in younger generations care as much about keeping their old stuff? i'm a hoarder. i spent decades painstakingly collecting a whole lot of stuff i can now instantaneously stream. all this stuff i thought was precious and valuable just isn't anymore. this box i have with all this stuff on it, when i'm gone i'm pretty sure it's going to get trashed. who's going to want to keep it? who's going to be able to find the password to it?

i get irritable about ten varying versions of everything on usb sticks and drives im trying to become digitally clean and efficient tbh

I have begrudgingly had to learn how to use Microsoft products and it isn’t that hard, imho, but as everyone notes, they are just unspeakably ugly. No matter the rest of the work environment, they just give “suburban government office” vibes no matter how one adjusts settings. Bland, ugly, not intuitive.

i've been a gmail user for over ten years but within the past two years had to start using MS teams for work. it was definitely frustrating to realize i could not, in fact, figure out how to attach a file to an email

On the same track and in tune with this thread, I have to downgrade Outlook to create a contacts list since the new version can't assign a dozen email addresses to one contact list/group.

There's even a button on the window that says something like "downgrade" because even Microsoft knows it sucks.

nobody knows how to use a card catalog anymore

― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 12 November 2023 00:38 bookmarkflaglink

I was reading an old detective story the other day (Murder in Mind by PD James) and was fascinated by a scene involving data management/metadata and information retrieval, where the detective (Dalgliesh) is trying to find a blackmailer in a psychiatric clinic:

In the medical director’s room two hours later, Dalgliesh placed three black metal boxes on Dr Etherege’s desk. The boxes, which had small round holes punched in each of the shorter sides, were packed with buff-coloured cards. It was the clinic diagnostic index. Dalgliesh said:

‘Mrs Bostock has explained this to me. If I’ve understood her correctly, each of these cards represents a patient. The information on the case record is coded and the patient’s code punched on the card. The cards are punched with even rows of small holes and the space between each hole is numbered. By punching any number with the hand machine I cut out the card between the two adjacent holes to form an oblong slit. If this metal rod is then inserted through, say, hole number 20 on the outside of the box, and pushed right through the cards, and the box is rotated, any card which has been punched through that number will stand out. It is, in fact, one of the simplest of the many punch-card systems on the market.’

‘You appreciate, Superintendent, that the case records are confidential?’ ‘I’m not asking to see a single case record. But if I did I don’t think either you or the patient need worry. Shall we get started? We can take out our class 1 patients. Perhaps you would call out the codes for me.’

A considerable number of the Steen patients were in class 1. ‘Upper-class neuroses catered for only,’ thought Dalgliesh. He surveyed the field for a moment and then said:

‘If I were the blackmailer would I choose a man or a woman? It would depend on my own sex probably. A woman might pick on a woman. But, if it’s a question of a regular income a man is probably a better bet. Let’s take out the males next. I imagine our victim will live out of London. It would be risky to select an ex-patient who could too easily succumb to the temptation to pop into the clinic and let you know what was going on. I think I’d select my victim from a small town or village.’

The medical director said:

‘We only coded the country if it were an out-London address. London patients are coded by borough. Our best plan will be to take out all the London addresses and see what’s left.’

This was done. The number of cards still in the survey was now only a few dozen. Most of the Steen patients, as might be expected, came from the county of London. Dalgliesh said:

‘Married or single? It’s difficult to decide whether one or the other would be most vulnerable. Let’s leave it open and start on the diagnosis. This is where I need your help particularly, Doctor. I realize this is highly confidential information. I suggest that you call out the codes for the diagnoses or symptoms which might interest a blackmailer. I don’t want details.’

Again the medical director paused. Dalgliesh waited patiently, metal rod in hand, while the doctor sat in silence, the code book open before him. He seemed not to be seeing it. After a minute he roused himself and focused his eyes on the page. He said quietly:

‘Try codes 23, 68, 69 and 71.’

There were now only eleven cards remaining. Each of them bore a case record number on the top right-hand margin.

a minor theme or piece of interest in the (excellent) '70s TV thriller Edge of Darkness is that detection takes place in the period where paper records and communications are transitioning to computer databases:

The Sources of Information
This is very noticeable watching it now. It's in a middle place between computer databases and everything still being on a hard copy somewhere. Phone calls still needed. Having to go to places to collect information. It made me wonder how modern writers manage to move their characters about at all. What is the motivation to move someone from one place to another when an awful lot of essential information can be garnered online. It becomes more esoteric. Less about necessity.

This is from a time just before that conundrum is posed, so that phone calls and rendezvous and travel are all required. People may not be contactable when you need them. How Craven navigates the world of information is interesting. Detection doesn't happen as such – he is just *driven* (as Jedburgh says of him in the final episode) to acquire whatever he needs to get to the centre of the web. Craven finds recordings, notes, interrogates, interviews, a computer database, he uses psychic contact with his dead daughter, Emma, and talks to himself, he exists in a web of surveillance, data security and information secrecy, odd secret service functions. Colleagues consider him on the edge of sanity – one version of the 'edge of darkness' at play – and he himself wonders what territories he is walking in, especially when he loses the link with his Emma. It is becomes increasingly clear his role as a policeman is becoming entirely absorbed by an emotional quest. Quest? Yes, the motives behind the drive are sexualised, animistic, mythic, arthurian.

its one of the things that any modern day bond/MI thriller steuggles with alright- theres only so many times (once, tbh) you can hack a network in a series before im done with your computer network hacking schtick

the best thing about yr smileys is the absolute centrality of the need for management of human contacts for big and small purposes, and the injection of urgency and danger and criticality in the minor processes of moving people and signals about

Nicholson Baker wrote

...at least a book and a half on card catalogs anyhow much lore was being lost when they fell out of favor.

I can personally remember the dominant smells of at least three different card catalogs, as if they were vintage wines.

Falls Church, Virginia had a slightly musty smell. The cards had rounder corners, whether through design or use. Fairfax County? A little sharper and drier. The cards themselves had a more edgy crispness. Webster Groves, Missouri had a robust hint of mushrooms. They were a bit more yellow, I think.

...St. Louis County's felt a bit cheap. Virginia Commonwealth University's cards were on their way out in the late 80s but the drawers still felt substantial and made a nice ratchets sound when you pulled the drawer all the way out.

I love when you click on an article or a task or something, and it prompts you to log in, and after you log in, it doesn't actually take you to the thing you wanted to open, but back to the home screen.

fizzles - that PD James excerpt is actually rather excellent... this is actually the most challenging part of what i do professionally. (i'm a data analyst working in healthcare fraud investigation). what this means is that the tools i start with provide a surfeit of information, way too much to meaningfully investigate, and my job is to try and weed out the parts of it that are unlikely to be interesting or worthy of investigation - the dead ends, you might say. it's _very_ similar to what dalgliesh is doing here. whether the records are stored in a paper file (and a lot of them still are, these days... I was working in an office which kept their records as paper as recently as 2011) or electronically, the process doesn't change as much as you might think!

james doesn't quite get the theory of unauthorized medical disclosure right, mind. from a healthcare information management perspective, disclosing the diagnosis codes and their meanings wouldn't be a problem at all... at that time, i guess the facility could come up with unique diagnosis codes. fucking nightmare. i shudder to think of it. if you're collecting healthcare data you need a standard clinical framework, and that's not going to be confidential. patient data, that's the confidential bit... whether you disclose one patient's information or all of it, even in 1963, i'd think an ethical medical director would balk at that request.

i really should watch _edge of darkness_ at some point. i get it confused either with the US mystery soap opera _edge of night_ (cancelled in 1984) or else _threads_. it's taken me quite some time to get to the point where i can take joe don baker seriously as an actor. my first encounter with him was in _mitchell_ (yes, the MST3K version) which is, uh, perhaps not his finest work. i feel like it's one of the reasons a show like MST3K would only work outside of hollywood... actors like Joe Don Baker and Kim Cattrall went on to have quite respectable acting careers after they were ridiculed on the puppet show. Even the ones who didn't... Timothy van Patten is a well-respected director who's done some good stuff. In 1990s Minneapolis, who's going to know or care about things like that?

james doesn't quite get the theory of unauthorized medical disclosure right, mind. from a healthcare information management perspective, disclosing the diagnosis codes and their meanings wouldn't be a problem at all... at that time, i guess the facility could come up with unique diagnosis codes. fucking nightmare. i shudder to think of it. if you're collecting healthcare data you need a standard clinical framework, and that's not going to be confidential. patient data, that's the confidential bit... whether you disclose one patient's information or all of it, even in 1963, i'd think an ethical medical director would balk at that request.

― Kate (rushomancy)

oh i forgot to add, in practical terms it wouldn't much make a difference. it's baked into american healthcare law that there are exemptions to patient confidentiality. investigating a crime is one of those exemptions. i mean it's easier if you have a subpoena, that way there's nothing to contest in court, but someone from scotland yard comes around investigating a murder, that's a strong case for making an exception to patient confidentiality guidelines - even moreso when there's nothing explicit about those circumstances written into law!

nobody knows how to use a card catalog anymore

i'm sure this is true but also i recall, under mrs riehl in grade six, having to write reports with each book citation written (in *very* strict order that was some Style) on separate 3x5 cards which should then be gathered and placed into a pouch/wee envelope(?) at the end of the report

also there were -- i can't remember the official name, but i feel like they were red -- annual indexes of the articles in (major) periodicals. fucking amazing

also mrs riehl was *awesome* and in her class i learned that the world population had just crossed four billion. and now it's twice that, which is absolutely crazy

also there were -- i can't remember the official name, but i feel like they were red -- annual indexes of the articles in (major) periodicals. fucking amazing

I remember those. They were called the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature or something eye-glazing like that.

yes!

could use that these days not gonna lie

And iirc major newspapers like the NY Times had their own separate sets of those periodical indexes. It's funny to think how recently I used those - in the early 2000s I researched a murder that had happened in my apartment building some 20 years prior which someone had told me about in passing. Those books helped me nail down the exact date and other details of the case.

They were called the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature or something eye-glazing like that.

I used to work for a company that made this kind of thing. I worked in the social sciences department, writing abstracts of academic articles for library catalogs. God, it was a great job. Stupid internet ruined it, of course.

trishyb, it’s funny because when remembering card catalogs and those publications— which were on their way out as i grew up (i am 39)— all i could think to myself was “the internet really fucked up some of the coolest shit we had”

allow me to vent for a moment about goddamn touch screens and moving everything into a computer

I drive a 2013 Ford that I can't in good conscience call a lemon because it has been surprisingly durable in the big ways, hasn't needed any major repairs in the 5 years I've owned it. And at the same time, the electronic system is such a piece of shit, it is constantly surprising me with new ways to malfunction. Today I turned on my car to drive to work, radio was on from last night, fine. But none of the audio controls were working and I couldn't adjust station, volume, input source, anything. There are a few actual buttons - power is one, can scroll through stations or adjust volume on the steering wheel -- so I pushed the power button to try the old on-off. The touchscreen display changed to now acknowledge that I had turned the whole audio system off, but the radio kept merrily playing away. Now nothing is working, can't turn the audio back "on" in order to access controls, guess this is what I'm listening to for the remainder of the drive! Then when I arrive at work and turn the car off, the radio is STILL playing even after I open the car door (which is normally what shuts off all the electronics). I was running late for a meeting and really thought I was going to have to leave my locked, turned off car in the parking lot blasting the radio. Thankfully it did shut off once I used my fob to fully lock all the doors. Various pieces of this shitshow have happened in the past, but not quite to this extent. I should also note that this car has an infuriating habit of the battery dying randomly - has probably happened ~10-15 times in the time I've owned it. This was a good reminder that the electronic system is such a dysfunctional independent operator that of course there is probably all kinds of shit going on that I can't even see that's draining the battery.

While we're on the topic and perfect for this thread, I should also mention that none of the electronics that adjust the driver seat work. Just stopped one day, maybe 3 months ago. I am sure it's fixable but probably for $$$ and the seat froze in my preferred position so I'm just living with it. Needless to say, the manual crank and lever that adjust the passenger seat work fine and dandy.

I should also note that this car has an infuriating habit of the battery dying randomly

hmm. is it a ford focus? this has happened to us twice since we bought our 2010 focus a year ago.

it's a cmax energi but i think when i have researched, the same issue does exist with the focus. is it a plug-in hybrid? i think it can be mitigated somewhat by turning off as many things as possible (radio, ventilation, etc.) before turning off the car. which is absurd.

as a rule i believe its considered good battery management to turn off the main electronic drains before the ignition, likewise dont run them without the car running

is that absurd? idk.

ok ours is a cmax as well (and a focus?? confused) but not a hybrid. i don't turn usually turn the radio etc off, will do now for superstitious reasons. i looked into just getting a new battery but jesus they don't make it easy to replace.

imre halfords are your frugal friend there

not to be that guy but you know the old acronym about Fords.

lol I know at least two

yeah this is my first and last ford

xps dmac, in a car in which the headlights stay on when the car is off, you need to turn the headlights off when you leave the car, the manual will say as much, and that's not absurd. when everything shuts off once the car is off, i think it's pretty wild for the battery to keep draining and then die. it's never been an issue in any other car i've owned.

gotta be a short somewhere, the battery is just draining to ground i.e. the chassis

easier to say than to find, though

yeah fords are just shitty cars, i have a '14 ford focus and goddamn i'm amazed that it still runs. for like each of the first six years i owned it there was another recall on it. i think they eventually stopped doing recalls because nobody owned one. the last time i saw another '14 focus someone was dealing out of it. my advice? do not, under any circumstances, go to your local ford dealer.

anyway the trans (i don't know if i've mentioned it, but damn near everybody calls them "trans" here. yes, i've had cis friends verify this.) goes out, on a regular basis. design issue. it was supposed to make it "sportier". maybe i just don't drive "sporty". i guess i should love it more. the way i drive it, it's bad at passing. that's fine. passing isn't important to me. anyway, i've had to have the, uh, trans replaced twice now. it's got something like 35,000 miles on it.

jfc— my 2005 Outback has 195k on it, still rolling

jfc— my 2005 Outback has 195k on it, still rolling

There are *so many* Subarus on the road in Montana (and Idaho).

yeah, rural California too, which is where I lived when i bought this guy 70,000 miles and eight years ago for 5 grand

There are *so many* Subarus on the road in Montana (and Idaho).

― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson)

about a billion of them out here too... they're reliable cars, good outdoor cars, _and_ the official car of lesbians. i am choosing not to share the deliberately infuriating and obnoxious nickname some trans people (who love them as much as much as lesbians do) give them.

this is actually the most challenging part of what i do professionally.

― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 13 November 2023 22:56 bookmarkflaglink

really interesting!

the conversation has reminded me of Keith Thomas' description of his note-taking and information retrieval system:

Nobody gave me any such instructions when I began research in the 1950s. I read neither Beatrice Webb nor Langlois and Seignobos until many years later, by which time my working habits had ossified. When I did, though, I was reassured to see that, in a slipshod sort of way, I had arrived at something vaguely approximating to their prescriptions. En route I had made all the obvious beginner’s mistakes. I began by committing the basic error of writing my notes on both sides of the page. I soon learned not to do that, but I continued to copy excerpts into notebooks in the order in which I encountered them. Much later, I discovered that it was preferable to enter passages under appropriate headings. Eventually, I realised that notes should be kept in a loose form which was flexible enough to permit their endless rearrangement. But I recoiled from uniform index cards: my excerpts came in all shapes and sizes, and there was something too grimly mechanical about card indexes. Since Anatole France’s description in Penguin Island of the scholar drowned by an avalanche of his own index cards, it has been hard to take them seriously. I still get cross when reviewers say that all that I have done is to tip my index cards onto the page.

When I go to libraries or archives, I make notes in a continuous form on sheets of paper, entering the page number and abbreviated title of the source opposite each excerpted passage. When I get home, I copy the bibliographical details of the works I have consulted into an alphabeticised index book, so that I can cite them in my footnotes. I then cut up each sheet with a pair of scissors. The resulting fragments are of varying size, depending on the length of the passage transcribed. These sliced-up pieces of paper pile up on the floor. Periodically, I file them away in old envelopes, devoting a separate envelope to each topic. Along with them go newspaper cuttings, lists of relevant books and articles yet to be read, and notes on anything else which might be helpful when it comes to thinking about the topic more analytically. If the notes on a particular topic are especially voluminous, I put them in a box file or a cardboard container or a drawer in a desk. I also keep an index of the topics on which I have an envelope or a file. The envelopes run into thousands.

This procedure is a great deal less meticulous than it sounds.

lol

one of my first jobs in a library was updating the loose-leaf binders of legislation. when laws changed they sent you new pages which you had insert and throw the existing pages away. it was a horrible tedious task which everyone avoided, so the packets of new pages stacked up in the in-tray. sometimes if you hunkered down for an afternoon's session at it you'd be replacing pages that you had inserted an hour earlier because the law had changed twice since last time.

not at all in the spirit of the thread and smell and tactile experience aside data management has unquestionably got easier and less arduous.

that said ofc problems of merging/standardising datasets and metadata persist. and it seems like a classic example where the huge efficiencies in data management get used up by new ways of exploiting the data. i’m sure in all sorts of cases this has enabled insight into how to improve areas of society (medical records for instance?) and spot patterns not sufficiently visible at a more a local level. but how clear is it that the amount of data aggregation now possible provides a proportionate improvement in circumstances, social conditions, or productivity? at the margin the amount of data now synthesised in many contexts requires machine learning to generate insight. how valuable is that insight in practical terms?

i’d be willing to hear both cases! it seems entirely reasonable to say “yes, this is a paradigm shift in our ability to improve people’s lives” (or, ah, extract wealth).

equally i can imagine a case for saying it’s at the heart of the west’s productivity problem.

Ford = Fix It Again, Tony

Fix Or Repair Daily

yeah, i find the purpose of standards in the first place is to keep people from having to invent the wheel. with technology now... i mean, that's what i feel most of my career has been doing, kind of learning through trial and error. i mean, honestly, i'm fine with that. learning through experience, to me, that's the second best kind of learning (behind only "learning by teaching"). maybe one day there genuinely won't be a need for the kind of thing i do. maybe "machine learning" or something will do it. i don't know. or, maybe like with a lot of people, material conditions will change to an extent that i won't be able to do what i'm doing anymore - either working conditions i can't adapt to, or pay that won't support me. it's already happened to a lot of people. could happen to me at any time. to me, that's the backward step, the constant precarity. so far all i've lost is my house. maybe in a couple of years i won't be able to afford an apartment. just how it goes, right?

in a lot of ways data management _has_ gotten easier. my dad was a librarian. i wanted to be one too, but various circumstances meant that getting a masters degree wasn't in the cards. part of my fucking around for a couple of decades... informatics wasn't a career path when i first went to college. the most recent time i went back to school i saw a guidance counselor and told them i wanted to be a librarian and they said oh hey how about informatics? which it turns out is kind of the same as library science, except it's for-profit, and they pay you a lot more money to do it, and there aren't any meaningful ethical standards, and you only need a bachelor's degree, and oh yeah it's mostly marketed towards men. well, like the meme goes, "i found a way to get more women in STEM".

imre halfords are your frugal friend there

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/815s7YbGa3L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

Found On Road Dead

that said ofc problems of merging/standardising datasets and metadata persist. and it seems like a classic example where the huge efficiencies in data management get used up by new ways of exploiting the data. i’m sure in all sorts of cases this has enabled insight into how to improve areas of society (medical records for instance?) and spot patterns not sufficiently visible at a more a local level. but how clear is it that the amount of data aggregation now possible provides a proportionate improvement in circumstances, social conditions, or productivity? at the margin the amount of data now synthesised in many contexts requires machine learning to generate insight. how valuable is that insight in practical terms?

i’d be willing to hear both cases! it seems entirely reasonable to say “yes, this is a paradigm shift in our ability to improve people’s lives” (or, ah, extract wealth).

equally i can imagine a case for saying it’s at the heart of the west’s productivity problem.

― Fizzles

ah, shit, i don't know. depends on how you look at it, i guess. i'm looking at it from a position of relative privilege.

with regards to machine learning, to me, it's just the next iteration of the loop. the old way was you have all this data, and you have people whose job is to take data and get insight out of it. the new way is that you have AI learning and _it_ generates the insight for you. how valuable is that insight in practical terms? well, maybe you get a professional to take that insight and translate it into practical terms. i mean it's the same basic _process_, isn't it? to me, on a theoretical level, it's not _that_ different from what dalgliesh was doing in 1963, except that every time you iterate more and more people are cut out of the process.

with regard to social conditions... life is getting harder and harder to live. more and more people live more and more precarious states of existence. it's really difficult, a lot of times, to be a happy and fulfilled human being. sometimes i feel like the whole history of industrialization is an attempt to mold human beings to fit the demands of our technology, and frankly, we're kind of at our limit. i don't think the answer to that is for us all to become "post-human". if i'm going to change, that change is going to be informed by technological advances, but it's going to be on _my_ fucking terms.

i don't think the west _has_ a "productivity problems". i think that an increasing number of us don't have a place in the society the elites have made, and an increasing percentage of the elites' efforts are going towards preventing us from collectively doing something about it. i'm not inclined to think the long game is going to go in the elites' favor, but what do i know?

it’s like the Kia acronym— Killed In Automobile

im selling a 14 focus next month in perfect working nick with never a days trouble

honest guv

the ceo of ford said a couple of months ago that they have so many different suppliers for the different components of their vehicles, each of whom has their own suppliers, some of whom don’t exist anymore, or who got bought and merged into some other corp, that in some cases it’s literally impossible to find someone who understands the code used in a particular component, so if there’s a problem or change needed or update required it just can’t be done

so he claims that ford is going to bring the entire software supply chain in-house, and retrain existing employees to maintain it

did i say next month i mean this week

This is kind of off topic but it's interesting to note the difference between OG Star Trek (we will transmit those codes now) and Star Wars (we need to physically get this recording to our allies) - I suppose Trek is physically transporting something solid (the Enterprise) every week.

I once worked on a cybersecurity project for airplanes. When you have an airplane with sensitive avionics/electronics, you can't really update the software through the wifi at the airport Starbucks.

There are definitely people out there who would like to be able to crash an airplane while not actually being ON said airplane. So as recently as 2019, the software was updated with a physical disk, carried by a person.

I love when you click on an article or a task or something, and it prompts you to log in, and after you log in, it doesn't actually take you to the thing you wanted to open, but back to the home screen.

― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, November 13, 2023 3:16 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This. Even worse when it happens with online shopping carts. Makes me want to just use the "checkout as a guest" option at all times

This is kind of off topic but it's interesting to note the difference between OG Star Trek (we will transmit those codes now) and Star Wars (we need to physically get this recording to our allies)

To be fair, Star Wars does take place a long time ago.

They physically transport a recording in Star Wars because it is a riff on Hidden Fortress, and Lucas needed something to replace the gold being transported in Hidden Fortress.

want to pick up on kate’s substantial posts but i’m oin a pub and right now just want to say, a problem exemplified by but by no means confined to…

reading local news websites on your phone.

reload reload ad cookie reload try and scroll to read text around and covered by an ad go back to top reload crash.

i mean in this age of responsive design is it too much to ask.

i’m sure this has already been covered.

the web is unusable in general but yeah local news websites are the ultimate evolution of the form

if trying to find the text behind the popups and ads takes longer than reading the text then the police should come and take your news website away.

Just Enough Essential Parts

Tracer and Senor Camaraderie *otm*.

the web is unusable in general! my god. a truth that makes you weep. how did we do it.

The information superhighway, unfortunately there's an overturned semi

don’t assent to all of it but in general Ben Tarnoff’s Internet for the People covers a lot of the why i think.

Thanks for the recommendation, will definitely checkout. I've been thinking a lot in the last few years how pervasive and often essential the internet is in our lives, and yet how little control or say its users have in how it works or is designed.

well look users are very overrated as decision makers but advertisers are worse

so he claims that ford is going to bring the entire software supply chain in-house, and retrain existing employees to maintain it

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand)

look these deckchairs aren't going to reshuffle themselves

my email is full of emails from everyone I've ever bought anything from telling me to buy stuff from them for Black Friday, despite the fact that I've never voluntarily signed up for a marketing email in my life

Meanwhile the leftist American shitpost accounts I follow on Instagram have pivoted hard to telling me I'm a monster if I buy anything

Please sir, I live in Sydenham and I just got paid, is it OK if I just buy a jumper and 500ml of Chinkiang vinegar

I run uBlock and noscript on Firefox and I never get Youtube ads btw. Might be something to do with having scripts from the nefarious "doubleclick" blocked idk

UBlock occasionally stops working on Instagram, which to be fair is a fantastic incentive to never look at Instagram. the ads on that are really intrusive and insufferable outside of an all-too-brief period where I just got inexplicably served neverending ads for hilariously bad self-published urban fantasy novels

I am an unashamed and prolific user of Youtube Revanced on android and it works like a charm outside of requiring the occasional onerous reinstall

i consider those black friday emails a service - how else would i know i needed to unsubscribe from these fools

That is a fair point yes

I just sort of feel like these people should have an EU GDPR black ops squad rappelling through their windows to fine them 500,000 Euros at gunpoint every time

what is with Support Ticketing systems that completely ignore formatting?

I was submitting a ticket for a problem with a financial account I have - not long ago, this company's ticketing system was basically WYSIWYG - however I formatted the message is how it went over, and vice versa.

This week, I opened one and they recently changed vendors for their ticketing program apparently, because the format was all different. I did paragraph spacing because I had a lot to report and wanted to make it readable, and then after I submitted, the system ignored my formatting and mushed it into one gigantic paragraph, making it hard to read.

thought maybe it was a blip, but then the agent responded and his response was a similar wall-of-text with no spacing.

(no they're not using Zendesk lol)

i saw a supermarket card reader reboot this morning.

the ones in local Sainsbury's have also changed and whereas i used to slap my card right on the screen and that was always ok, the new ones have a reader on the frame *above* the screen and it often doesn't register.

makes me feel like rishi sunak...

I feel like mobile food ordering that doesn't require proximity to location to place is growing to be one.

McDonald's and Wendy's, you can place the order, but they won't start making any of it until you indicate you've arrived at the location. Whereas AMC and Taco Bell, once you place the order and choose the time you want, it gets made at that time, regardless of where you are.

So these places can potentially get hit with a ton of orders all at once, from people who might show up significantly later than the time they indicated, meaning a risk of having to remake the food if it sits too long (or dealing with an angry customer when you refuse to remake it, even though it's their fault). whereas requiring proximity at least spaces the orders out a bit because generally, the customers don't all arrive at the location at the same time.

see this happening all the time lately, like AMC last week which got hit with like 5-6 chicken tender pre-orders all at the same time, and the AMC only had like two people there because it was a Monday.

also, what's with this trend of having 'password-less login' on some commerce sites, where they email you a login link instead.

like I get the benefit of moving away from passwords, but without another factor required, doesn't that create a security risk if you ever have your email address compromised, where someone can go to a website, get a link to that email address, and gain access to your account on that app too, which will include your mailing address and possibly banking info?

You buy your chicken tenders at an AMC theater?

not ME, no. i buy them where every good American does, the gas station

Hate passwordless logins. I feel like it punishes those of us that are good at keeping and maintaining a password vault. Treats us all like those that just have to recover passwords each time they login.

back in the security wild west when we asked customers for their passwords *over the phone*, one customer paused and said "ok", then proceeded to tell me "L-O-N-G.....D-O-N-G"

Someone in my personal orbit had a story about a guy whose girlfriend was named Daphne. Her best friend was named Susie.

At some point, for some reason, this guy had to reveal his password to IT, Although he hesitated, he eventually had to reveal that his password was DaphOnSusie69.

You buy your chicken tenders at an AMC theater?

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Monday, January 22, 2024 12:03 PM

not ME, no. i buy them where every good American does, the gas station

― Disco Biollante (Neanderthal), Monday, January 22, 2024 12:19 PM

No, but seriously. Are you pre-ordering chicken tenders from the movie theater through your phone?

*Pre-ordering*...

"No, plains. I'm post-ordering them once they're already in my mouth."

I did once a few weeks ago when I was going to a movie and I hadn't gotten to eat dinner first cos work ran late

it wasn't my worst decision that day, much less that week. but it was up there

xpost lol my dad would have saluted you for that one

Password-less vs passwords is orthogonal to whether you have another factor involved - you can have either with another factor, and you can have either without.

I've been considering switching to effectively password-less for any sites that I don't use regularly - scrub them from the single-point-of-failure that is my password manager, and just hit up the 'forgot password' button when I need to use the site.

Someone in my personal orbit had a story about a guy whose girlfriend was named Daphne. Her best friend was named Susie.

At some point, for some reason, this guy had to reveal his password to IT, Although he hesitated, he eventually had to reveal that his password was DaphOnSusie69.

― Wine not? (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, January 22, 2024 10:35 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

My husband had a regular ambulance partner back in his early days as an EMT, and at one point the partner got called into the office and reprimanded because his password to get into the system was "BigTittyCum" lmfao.

For a long time I only used incredibly filthy passwords for the exact reason that it would be a big disincentive to ever reveal them to anyone

Also they're memorable!

Tracer_HandJ0b

jfc FedEx Office sucks so much. My printer has been busted for a while and I don't use it enough to fix, so I go today to print/scan some docs I need to request a 401k withdrawal. they've recently changed their process, where you used to just scan your card, it'd tell you how much you had racked up in charges, and then you clicked End Session where you were done.

I guess some people complained because there was no way to 'go back' and cancel a few jobs to lower the cost after you'd done them, so now you pre-authorize an amount.

cool! I never know how much it's going to cost, so now I wind up pre-authing more than it cost, and it doesn't get released back to my card for a day or two. but the kicker - if you pre-auth too little, there's no way to just top off the authorization balance mid-job. it simply tells you that you didn't pre-authorize enough, and gives you the option to either go back and redo the job so it falls within your budget, start over at the beginning, or End your Session.

well, silly me, because I was so used to the old way, once the scan job started on the machine, I went and tossed all of the documents I was scanning (since I didn't need a physical copy anymore). so now I had no way to re-scan the doc and I can't get a new copy of the bill because...lol to access it online you have to have the ID number...from the bill.

I give up.

Does anyone know which phones still have a fucking headphone jack?

Samsung Galaxy A71 5G

I used to bemoan the loss of the headphone jack but having lived with wireless headphones for a couple of years now I can't say I miss it anymore. Bluetooth headphones are just so much better in every conceivable respect.

I have tried Bluetooth headphones and it was not for me for a number of reasons. The main use I have for my phone is to listen to/edit music and if I can't port out the audio that's going to be a lot of trouble too.

> Does anyone know which phones still have a fucking headphone jack?

i've been looking myself

https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-headphone-jack-phones/
https://www.androidcentral.com/best-android-phone-headphone-jack
https://www.phonearena.com/news/Best-phones-with-a-headphone-jack-Google-Pixel-Samsung-Galaxy-LG-and-more_id124459

annoyingly when going into actual shops to see what these phones are like, the headphone socket is generally hidden behind the locked cage they put on display phones. the samsung galaxy a14 was the one that caught my eye: <£200 with audio jack and sd card slot

(and available at multiple places within walking distance)

I used bluetooth headphones for about a year and while there were pluses it's generally been a massive relief to return to wired ones that I'm not losing several times a day, that I can keep playing constantly without losing power, that aren't competing with everything else that needs charging. getting the wire caught on stuff is a small price to pay

I like the ones that are wired together, so I am not constantly losing one or the fussy little case.

I bought Anker Soundcore bluetooth earpieces, none of the little silicone bud things fit my ears, one fell off into the oven, it still works but jfc I will never use bluetooth earpieces ever again. Obviously i can’t use the ones i bought

I bought a cheapo Samsung early last year and it has a headphone jack, which is kind of hard to access because of the case

I just use my regular over the ear headphones plugged into a bluetooth transmitter

I was gifted a AirPods Max for my birthday a couple years back. I never would have been so extravagant on myself when I already have a perfectly good wired Grado and Sennheiser ones that I’m ride-or-die with. I must have a half-dozen each of mini-to-lightning/USBC adapters around the house. The APMs are very very good to great (it’s worth getting involved with the EQ settings in the iPhone’s Music player) - the noise-cancelling has been life-changing for travel.

If I get air pods I will keep forgetting to charge them, then will lose one or both after maybe a week, they are extremely non-ADHD-friendly.

I'm telling you, not even with the wired ones can I fit anything into my right ear. Any of 'em, from the official Apple™ buds to the cheap ones from Walgreens.

same. my ears reject buds

Glad I’m not alone. Everything falls out of my ears immediately

haha same

someone actually questioned me when I was at a Wawa eating and had some fairly big cans on my ears ("why not use earbuds, do headphones provide a better sound or something?").

outside of "why is it your business", my response was "the shit slips out my ears, I got mutant ears", and went back to rockin

Bluetooth has started to fail completely whenever phone goes into pocket

this never used to happen and is now consistent across different phones a s devices, what gives

* When I'm trying to read an article on my phone, and the text keeps jumping as new ads invade the column

xxp I dropped the $ for custom IEMs five years ago and it's been one of my best audio purchases ever.

Earbuds work fine for me, and so do Airpods— they rest in my ear in way that works.

But every other pair I have tried, from Sennheiser to Anker to cheap bodega ones— don’t work, the little bud part doesn’t rest in my ears at all.

That's why Sennheiser include a range of different sized bud parts with their ear buds. I recommend the Momentum TW3s.

none of them work— none of the sizes fit. perhaps you weren’t paying attention to the discussion

it’s happened with two different brands now, not going to waste more money by trying one of them again.