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

Are there really cars out there that combat drowsiness by not letting itself drift over any white or yellow line unless the blinker is on?] Because I will lose my shit, that's all there is to it.

― pplains, Wednesday, August 14, 2019 2:45 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

BRING THIS ON. I will stan for forcing EACH AND EVERY DRIVER to use turn signals EVERY TIME.

xp

I've never liked the trend toward the giant, flat Mach 3 style razors. There's a total lack of precision with those.

the really annoying thing abt shaving is that switching over to a safety razor + soap + brush model, which overall is saving me a fortune and giving me a better and less irritating shave, requires wading through sites and instructional videos all completely steeped in obnoxious "culture of old-fashioned masculinity" stuff.

i mean this was doomed when the internet got taken over by nazis, right? i find a great deal of value in having places to talk about personal stuff that doesn't instantly notify every single person i have ever met, but a large percentage of people who also find a great deal of value in it are nazis and pedophiles. i can't think of any way to protect me without also protecting them.

Honestly 90% of my time online is pseudonymous and I generally keep to myself for much this reason because it’s often...not great?...being female online (esp when you’re opinionated like I am.)

Shaving is going to be a lot better once they add that 7th blade, though

Also Simon H’s iPod classic story upset me as I left mine in a taxi a few years back and am still never over it :(

The lesson of self-checkouts isn’t “automation will create machines that work better than humans, destroying jobs in the process.” It’s “automation will create machines that work worse than humans, but in a way that shifts the remaining labour on to the users.”

— alex hern @ santa clara (@alexhern) August 13, 2019

otm

Regarding ipods : did they really sound better than today’s iphones ? I don’t remember noticing a difference switching from one to the other.

the Bluetooth connectivity in my car sucks...takes a good minute to get going, and it'll randomly stop or cut the first few seconds off of songs. not problems I ever had using an AUX cord but it looks like this problem has been 'solved' via removing the headphone jack altogether

think i'm just gonna buy another ipod classic on ebay once this one goes kaput

There is an automatic paper towel dispenser at my daughter's gymnastics gym that will only give me one towel. And I mean I will stand there for up to a minute afterward trying to get a second towel to no avail.

Our paper towel dispensers do that too, to save the environment. Even better is when the batteries go dead and you have to wipe your hands off on your pants.

BRING THIS ON. I will stan for forcing EACH AND EVERY DRIVER to use turn signals EVERY TIME.

If there's another car within 500 yards of you, sure. But being forced to do it out on the open road with nobody around?

And it's one thing for the damn chime to keep going off until you put on your seatbelt. Having some weird "safety" function affect the performance of the vehicle could cause major problems. "Sorry, I killed your cat! I tried to swerve, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot to turn on my blinker!"

What about protecting you from them? See: loads of people cool about Obama expanding the surveillance state and being all hand wavey about implications finally making the connection that the Trump admin now has all that data. Particularly when you consider the government tried to identify people who looked at a Trump protest site.

― gyac

See this is a weird one because I'm very familiar with the culture of white male paranoia - the belief that everyone is out to get you despite everybody all the time stacking the deck in your favor. And now that I'm out as a member of a group that is legitimately, uh, targeted, I'm less paranoid? If anything it's driven me to be more out. Privacy would be nice, but if I can't have privacy they can't have their secrecy.

the really annoying thing abt shaving is that switching over to a safety razor + soap + brush model, which overall is saving me a fortune and giving me a better and less irritating shave, requires wading through sites and instructional videos all completely steeped in obnoxious "culture of old-fashioned masculinity" stuff.

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, August 14, 2019 1:18 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I tried using safety razors last year. They were obviously better at shaving my face, but I couldn't stop slicing up my head. So I went back to cartridge razors, but kept going with the soap and brush.

Sainsbury's are really determined to make everyone adopt the "scan as you shop" thing, but I can't see the point.

OTOH I was happy not to have to chat with the cashier at the co op who always does the same banter about "are you saving your points for Christmas?" every time I go there, ideally this would be resolved by him being told to stop doing that by his boss.

Regarding ipods : did they really sound better than today’s iphones ? I don’t remember noticing a difference switching from one to the other.

v skeptical of this tbh, not an expert but can't see a reason for this to be true

_Flat screen TVs all sound terrible and require a sound bar or audio system_

not mine - Sony A1E uses actuators so that the screen is a speaker and there is a small subwoofer in the stand, it sounds pretty excellent (and I am fussy)

xp to self oh unless this is because of them removing the headphone socket?

Regarding ipods : did they really sound better than today’s iphones

Not really, they definitely impart a color to the sound (maybe a lot of muddy low mids?). It was pretty striking when I compared some of my own rough mixes (although you still have to wonder about the differences between the Dropbox player vs the Soundcloud player etc). I'm used to the 'ipod sound' though, and I still like them for carrying around a ton of music.

tbh some of these issues can be resolved by just not buying iPhones, I mean I know people like them for some reason but my phone costs 1/5 as much but has a battery just under twice the size of an iPhone X

Regarding ipods : did they really sound better than today’s iphones ?

well they had this warmth to them

do landlines really not work during power outages now? because that's the main reason I still pay for one.

― ☮ (peace, man)

not if your provider has switched to VoIP:

VoIP phones will not operate when the power is down, unless you have an uninterruptible power supply.

https://www.steadfasttelecom.com/you-have-the-power-voip-and-poe/

https://voipstudio.com/blog/how-do-you-deal-with-a-voip-power-outage/

Feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg for technology no longer being ready for infrastructure problems.

google maps is next to useless now, and i'd put google search up there too. once they started customizing your results to your location is when i think the slide began. of course the migration of all content to five websites didn't help this either

How are the maps useless now?

+1 to google search, what a complete waste of what was once an amazing tool.

of course the migration of all content to five websites didn't help this either
a chilling truth -- seriously makes my skin crawl and yet

for me the transition to streaming has not been a positive or forward step wrt music. it feels like a loss because i used to invest time, money, or both into a thing and now that money is almost expected to go to a gross middleman company that is giving me a preposterous buffet when i would prefer to order a la carte, the backwards way. :(

not only giving me a preposterous buffet, but watching me closely as i eat and saving the data to use to sell things to me
gross!

Well said

Elements of Car Repair, two stories:

--My Mom accidentally bashed in the front fender of her Yukon in a parking lot (separate long story). To replace said fender, you have to basically dismantle the whole front clip (remove bumper, hood, grill etc.) before installing the new part.

--A friend of mine was filming something at a bar. She was getting ready to leave at closing time when a drunk backed his Mustang into her Lincoln. Cosmetically, not a lot happened, just stuffed paint and clear bumper damage. Unfortunately, the computer was damaged enough her car had to go back to the dealer for several days of repairs.

"Scuffed Paint" even.

A car's "Check Engine" light 99% of the time has nothing to do with the engine but rather the onboard cpu/diagnostics.

I'm in favor of all changes that make people loathe their cars more

LL otm

the times when i most enjoy music, these days, is when i actively try to resist the current paradigm of listening and constrain myself to repeated listens of 1-3 things until i've memorized every note

it's like that with a lot of times. my best reading experiences are when i force myself back into 1989

"it's like that with a lot of times"

how do i still have a job

i'm mostly talking about the navigation features of google maps, the UI is terrible many xxp

The iPad was a bit of a stumble
-techno beaver

― calstars, Tuesday, August 13, 2019 7:13 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lmfao

Back to printers, I bought when I moved to AZ and was gonna be working remotely. A "smart" printer oooh I'm living in the future. Had automated setup routine, get to nearly the final step: loading the paper. It would not recognize the paper was loaded, no matter what. So the thing was unfuckingusable.

Printers and scanners have always been bad and don’t belong on this thread.

If you only need b/w get a brother hl-2350 or 2360 from Craigslist for like 40$. Duplex laser printer. WiFi works. Fast enough for the home. Replacement no brand toner is $10.

If you have a smartphone and you are scanning documents (not slides or photos etc and you don’t need a document feeder) then you don’t need a scanner. Just use scanbot or whatever. Even the notes app on iPhone is better than a cheap scanner.

"it's like that with a lot of times"

how do i still have a job

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, August 14, 2019 11:28 AM (thirty minutes ago)

this made me lol, ty karl :)

My mobile has stayed connected through a number of local power outages. Don't know if the nearest mast has some backup power or it was just luck.

In my first job in the late 80s I flogged laser printers. They cost silly money but were quite reliable tbf. The OG HP DeskJets were OK as well IIRC.

E-ink was one of the best innovations ever and it’s baffling to me that “advanced” e-readers switched over to basically just being tablets (this doesn’t really count tho as they are still coming out with kindle classic and equivalents)

E-ink was one of the best innovations ever and it’s baffling to me that “advanced” e-readers switched over to basically just being tablets (this doesn’t really count tho as they are still coming out with kindle classic and equivalents)

― YouGov to see it (wins), Wednesday, August 14, 2019 1:12 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

did you see https://remarkable.com/

LL otm re a la carte music. me too! I use streaming to check stuff out but still want to have actual mp3s or, gasp, a cd of stuff I want to "keep" and revisit. I pretend this is because I mostly listen to music on my car cd player (it does have an aux for my ipod but the file structure somehow does not let me select anything specific so it's just shuffled) but also i like experiencing music this way rather than a sort of radio that can be shut down whenever "they" choose.

That is why I started buying vinyl again. Streaming allows me to check out a ton of stuff, but if something actually knocks my socks off, I'll plunk down the cash get a hard copy for the house.

I have a playlist on my phone of my favorite 1000 songs or so and whenever I play it in the car I'm just constantly skipping songs, I never know what I actually wanna hear

someone was telling me that you can fairly easily repurpose an old smartphone to use as a media player. ... because eventually my 10 year old iPod will die

I have 1000 playlists. It's pretty awesome.