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

like i think we all know that many of these are seen as "forward steps" to somebody, even if it's just a corporation that counted the beans and realized that plastic components would save x cents per unit in the long term.

Yeah I think it's maybe important to note that 'progress' is often measured and driven by the bottom line of the companies who are ushering these 'innovations' into our lives. The theoretically possible things that people actually want/need/ask for are not often what we get.

I agree with these last 3 posts. I also think that the primary purpose of this thread is to take turns putting the word 'innovations' in scare quotes.

The way business is conducted often leads to regression or stagnation rather than progress, this article about Microsoft Word is a good example of this

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

👻innovations👻

Back when it was all DVDs by mail, Netflix had basically everything that was ever released on video. Now you're at the mercy of whatever each streaming service makes available that month, which is probably a fifth of what was available on DVD.

Wasn't the promise of streaming that you would have access to everything?

How is it that, thirty years down the line, email is still the same piece of shit technology that it always was.

Like, there's someone that I work with, every email she sends, the company logo graphic in her signature is always broken; instead, it shows up as an attached jpeg. There's also usually a second attachment called something like "0.html" which is inevitably just a blank web page.

It’s god’s way of telling you to send plain text emails.

Back when it was all DVDs by mail, Netflix had basically everything that was ever released on video.

xxp netflix dvd subscriptions are not that expensive and they have a huge selection of films from the 20th Century!

― Dan S, Thursday, August 15, 2019 7:04 AM (two days ago)

Wasn't the promise of streaming that you would have access to everything?

Did anyone ever promise this? They obviously would have been lying if so, but did any entity ever actually promote the lie?

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there was a good article a couple years ago that went over how much has been phased out of netflix's dvd-by-mail business through the attrition of dvds that got damaged and weren't replaced.... found it! https://www.kqed.org/arts/10141066/netflix_streaming_dvds

the "access to everything" story wasn't told so much by the streaming companies as by the equivalent of WIRED and other digital cheerleaderati.

I had never seen this last word and was hoping you had made it up for this post.

How is it that, thirty years down the line, email is still the same piece of shit technology that it always was.

Like, there's someone that I work with, every email she sends, the company logo graphic in her signature is always broken; instead, it shows up as an attached jpeg. There's also usually a second attachment called something like "0.html" which is inevitably just a blank web page.

― Hideous Lump

J

An issue w/the streaming myth is that it was propagated by people who have no idea how licensing works.

Speaking of one second delays, The half second or second it takes for newer model cars to go after you step on the gas pedal.

automatics in general belong on this thread tbrr

^ otm

J

lol

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definitely a practical step backwards

still an enthusiastic user of netflix dvd service, always waiting for them to drop the hammer on it. i cant imagine why it continues this long, other than the fact that it must cost them next to nothing to keep it up

PowerPoint is bad when used by amateurs. Program quad charts, excessive bullets, terrible formatting: these are not the programs’ fault. A bad briefing is bad because the briefer is bad at briefing. Its closest competitor, Keynote, has all of the same issues.

Word is mediocre when used for text documents that are 4 pages long and need to be reviewed by 2 people. It is phenomenal when a 30 page document with tables and figures needs to be reviewed by an organization of 100+ people. Its closest competitors still lag behind Word in this department.

Automatic transmissions are “bad” because they save on wear & tear (especially tires) and fuel consumption. If you claim to prefer manual transmissions for any rationale besides “fun” you are a moron. Anyway, drive electric. It’s practically 2020 already.

Email is brilliant technology, always has been, and if you hate it you have no place in an office. Go apprentice as a tradesperson and learn to cast bronze or pour concrete or something.

I like to count the number of fonts and font sizes people use in one PowerPoint deck.

i have better control over the car in a stickshift. at least it feels that way. the car doesn't "creep" when my foot's not on the accelerator and it's more responsive to the gas pedal. also i know when to shift, I'm not a moron. but yeah our electric/hybrid future will require automatics, I'm resigned to that.

i only grudgingly accept the existence of power steering so

In my experience apps like Slack have turned out to be worse than email for work comms - too much pressure to reply/contribute too quick and too easy to indulge in small talk you could either do face to face or not at all.

i liked the anti-Word article posted above because it wasn't primarily about Word sucking (altho the issues with overlapping use of style presets and ad-hoc select-and-click formatting are discussed) but about how much easier and more robust things *might have become* in a world without Word dominating the field and quashing innovation in the area of specific tools. i now use scrivener for all my substantial writing, and the one part of the workflow that suuuucks is taking the exported RTF into word for final formatting.

powerpoint makes it way too easy to lay out clunky, ugly documents, in just a "getting shit to line up, follow a grid, align, etc." sense. it still feels like a windows 98 era idea of what easy-to-use design would be (dumbed down and made clumsy, rather than streamlined with more functionality there if you want it). anytime i have to use it i'm just screaming for indesign inside. it also embeds all images at full size within the PPT file, which is very handy for tossing one presentation on a stick and taking it with you, but suuuuper annoying and wasteful of disk space if you're storing it locally, have multiple versions etc.

wasteful of disk space

god forbid.

i liked the anti-Word article posted above because it wasn't primarily about Word sucking (altho the issues with overlapping use of style presets and ad-hoc select-and-click formatting are discussed) but about how much easier and more robust things *might have become* in a world without Word dominating the field and quashing innovation in the area of specific tools. i now use scrivener for all my substantial writing, and the one part of the workflow that suuuucks is taking the exported RTF into word for final formatting.

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino)

or, in a world without word, i might have 12,000 different overlays for each different program to put on top of my keyboard...

The fact that scrivener can’t export to .docx is not Word’s fault

but… it can?

then why does Doctor Casino not do this?!?!?

I blame sic’s podcast post for turning this into the “complaining about commonplace tech we can’t be bothered to learn how to use” thread

bunch of old dogs on ilx

xp well maybe he just likes rtf - even if you put out docx, there's often some fiddling with the scrivener-formatted doc that one would like to do, unless you just commit to doing everything with scrivener and its formatting options. personally i just do barely any other than italics and a bit of header-ing so that i'm not distracted away from ~teh writing~

ILX THREADS DRIFT GET USED TO IT ALREADY

Sir this is an Arby’s

every thread of this type devolves into an amalgamation of software support threads

Word is just fine. Y’all are crazy. It’s Excel and its complete inability to handle large workbooks that drives me crazy.

It's all been downhill since Tandy's Deskmate

What is that thing where newer model cars coming to a stop at an intersection have to restart the engine when it’s their turn to go? I’m not sure if that’s what actually happening or if that’s just what it sounds like is happening.

that is actually what's happening. it's to conserve fuel.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/automobiles/wheels/start-stop-technology-is-coming-to-cars-like-it-or-not.html

That is a genuinely good and on topic thing for this thread. Enough with the half measures! Get a car that plugs in!

Amazing

My old Escort used to have that feature but we called it "stalling"

lol my ford fiesta does this now

blame sic’s podcast post for turning this into the “complaining about commonplace tech we can’t be bothered to learn how to use” thread

I helpfully provided step-by-step instructions for ppl who need to learn how to use web pages, old dogs are as worthy of my street pats as bright-eyed shibe pups

That is a genuinely good and on topic thing for this thread. Enough with the half measures! Get a car that plugs in!

― El Tomboto, Sunday, 18 August 2019 5:40 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Electric is such a massive improvement on internal combustion engines that I fully expect this thread to be complaining about electric cars in a couple of years.

What is that thing where newer model cars coming to a stop at an intersection have to restart the engine when it’s their turn to go?

my car does this, it threw me off a bit at first, but it's actually fine. it just happens automatically. I can turn it off but iirc you have to turn it off every time you start the car, it doesn't stay off

Doesn't that wear out the starter?

I have absolutely no idea tbh but according to Wikipedia: The starter is reinforced and designed to withstand continuous use without wearing too fast or overheating.

this is my first car so I don't have a lot of basis for comparison, but it seems OK. it's quite smart, like if the car in front of me starts moving it auto-starts before I've even taken my foot off the brake