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

How about kicking them hard, does that help

we'll just all have an easier time if we learn to serve the machines, guys

Best thing to do is stay perfectly still. If you startle the sensor it may summon a security bear

we're through the restroom glass people

I stayed at an airbnb that apparently had a motion light in the bathroom! I had to wave my arm to let it know I was still on the toilet.

― mh, Wednesday, November 13, 2019 5:01 AM (yesterday)

i think it was akm a while back who posted about it, but some of these things are now written into building codes to be "energy efficient" -- maybe this is some Berkeley, CA specific thing, because I don't think this is a requirement in Oakland (the next city over, same county)

Smacking the faucets doesn't work, but smacking the sensor paper towel dispensers absolutely does work, without fail!

abuse yr appliances before they can abuse you

i know this might be overgeneralizing a bit, but in response to OP, can i submit the entirety of the years 2000-present? basically this whole century so far.

falling down the stairs is not a "backward" step, exactly, but it is still bad

this fucking headphone jack thing i think about very often, that was a dumb move apple

I just watched a man eat a sandwich on YouTube and I'm having complex thoughts

I seen a man die

the continuing erosion of anonymous/pseudonymous space online. This is bad and people will realise how bad when it’s eventually gone.

― gyac, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 06:26 (three months ago)

i think it was akm a while back who posted about it, but some of these things are now written into building codes to be "energy efficient"

yah this is starting to bubble up here http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2019/11/complaints-at-broadway-building-part-of-pushback-over-adding-smart-lock-and-home-automation-tech-to-apartments/

Regarding the various sensors and systemps in public bathrooms' sinks nowadays, it's become so complex to find out which system you're facing (hand sensors located in various places, foot button, leg bar, actual thing to touch/turn/push on the faucet, etc).
Often it takes me a little while to understand what to do (and often I have to help people besides me who can't find out) !

My auxiliary toilet across the street at the Convention Center flushes each time I make a motion. I can see why these things are in there for possible health reasons, but don't even try to bring the environment into it.

We've got two paper towel rollers in our restroom that are sensor-controlled. So now, not only are we killing trees, but we're using lithium or whatever to distribute them. Best part is when the battery goes in and none of us can dry our hands properly.

The day I see this done on a toilet paper dispenser, I'm just going to ... shit.

Where's the thread asking us to guess an artist's discography using visually similar images of the album covers on Google Image Search?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, November 14, 2019 11:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

That was a fun thread! No idea what it was called.

― ☮ (peace, man), Friday, November 15, 2019 6:21 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Recognize Discographies from Approximate Colour Schemes! (an ILM cover game)

― ☮ (peace, man), Friday, November 15, 2019 7:29 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just went and tried to use GIS visually similar images to see if this could be replicated, but unfortunately they just gave me back 100 pictures of the same album cover.

― ☮ (peace, man), Friday, November 15, 2019 7:42 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

technological/practical "backward steps" strike again

― weird ilx but sb (Doctor Casino)

from a different thread. otm. Google Image Search legitimately became much worse this decade. i once used it every single day, usually several times. i loved it. then they gradually ruined it, one update at a time.

It's fairly fascinating how shitty Google has become... I mean, I know they have commitments to their shareholders, but all of their once cutting-edge services are now shadows of their former selves.

their ability to collect data on everything we do seems to be in good shape, though

"user 23402342304823048234_AKA_Z_S appears to be using GIS less and whining about it on a daily basis on an internet forum. assign bill maher ads to Z_S and monitor situation"

lollin'

I wholeheartedly agree about the shitness of Google.
The decline of GIS was hastened by Pinterest

Google image search is a weird tool as it now seems to be precision engineered to prevent you doing what you want to do with it.

Bing is a bit better.

Amazon's method of content delivery to the Library and registering devices is all sorts of ass-backwards

I live abroad, and in the pre-Skype days calling my folks used to be a simple matter of typing in a phonecard number plus their landline (I'm shocked I used to have about 26 digits memorized, btw). The calls were usually nice and clear, no fiddling about, talking to one family member at a time. But today requires first texting 'Skype?' then waiting for them to log on, then a protracted period of 'turn on your video/hit the unmute button/I can't see your face/I didn't get that/etc.', and then the call itself is choppy as shit because either their or my internet connection is poor. And they both try to cram their faces in the screen but I always only get my mother's right eye and my father's left eye -- never the full faces at once. (My in-laws are even worse -- my wife is lucky if she gets the tops of their heads and the portrait of Jesus Christ on the wall behind them.)

I mean it's great when it all works, and it's free, and it means my family can see my little kids playing, but the experience is so incredibly worse than talking on a landline used to be.

isn't this what facebook's Portal is meant to solve? 1000 muppets cannot be wrong.

light bulbs that don't turn on instantly.

not exactly backwards but i remember back in the 90s looking forward to a future when computers have more power and i won't have to wait so long for software to boot up and do things but this is something that has never really changed.

hm

maybe you're not using the right computers? The difference between booting up off an SSD and how it used to be is huge.

The days of waiting for Deskmate to load on my Tandy

I actually love my current car's level of phone integration (music, podcasts, navigation, messages, calls) but it tends to take a block or so to boot up.

I obsessively delete your phones from the memory of rental cars and dealership loaners, fyi.

Thank you for your service.

in London 3G is more reliable than 4G on my network.

I can't imagine needing a phone that does faster than 3g. Better on battery, too.

london mobile infrastructure - capacity and coverage - is appalling. regularly see foreigners incredulous at the patchiness of it.

i frequently drop down to 3 or 2g if im only browsing text based stuff (hello) in the city centre

for home use, bluetooth speakers are inferior to traditional speakers. but their 2 upsides--portability & ease of use with streaming services--keep me from reverting back to wired speakers.

My alternative to quite good bluetooth speakers is crap computer speakers, that is until I can get this ancient stereo wired up properly.

An Android equivalent of an iPod Touch, except it doesn't even have a camera, although it comes with a case that sort-of looks like a 40 year old Walkman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzdy_2kGGhM

lol. while watching the video, i forgot which thread i clicked on it from. backtracking here - yes, this is the right place

I have a digital Walkman - the NWA45. It's simpler than that model, not Android or anything and doesn't have any of the smartphone features. It's great. Like the one in the video, it takes any size SD card you want to put in it, which is an immediate improvement over the iPod. I'm using a 256GB card at the moment.

i'm trying to use alexa as a bluetooth speaker with a mac situated 5 feet away and it's pants

The best bluetooth speaker I own is still a jawbone jambox! And it’s probably using older Bluetooth and a crappier audio encoding than newer options

I know this isn't what this thread is about, but I just upgraded wordpress, which I'm supposed to do to implement all manner of good things to help me work with 'blocks', but know my editor doesn't work in visual mode at all, so now I write in Pages and copy paste into wordpress, which means it all gets in as one block anyway. So yay.

yeah the new wordpress editor is horrible even if you can use it. there is a plugin to use the old one.

Whatsapp voice messages. Jesus. Worse than voicemail.

There is a new app that lets you forward them to a transcription service. Which will be some poor underpaid person on the other side of the world listening to the nonsense instead of me, I guess.

Vending machines, when they were coin only, were always a finicky thing. Sometimes they demanded exact change, sometimes they wouldn't take your dollar. So yeah, the new machines that take cards are better.

Buuuut, if you made a cash purchase, you get your change and move on. The machines that take cards make it so that you can charge multiple snacks to the card in one transaction. So the machine asks you to make another transaction or hit a button to confirm no more transactions.

In order to do so, the button is often unresponsive the first few times you press it, so you have to wait to get the Total Vended confirmation to know your transaction is complete.

If you don't, the person after you can charge more snacks to your card (up to whatever was pre-approved). Yesterday I used the machine after someone who didn't hit the button and his transaction was still live, so I could have gotten snacks on his card if I were the dishonest type.

Minor thing but somewhat a backward step

at two libraries recently i have had to view microfilm on a new gizmo that's plugged into a computer. in fairness, this offers tons of useful features, like scanning documents directly to pdf rather than paying for shitty printouts, and being able to zoom and rotate at the touch of a button (rather than futzing with age-worn, mechanically janky interchangeable lenses). you can also reverse black vs white at the touch of a button which is amazing. however, the overall experience is profoundly worse and less usable than the rock-solid analog variants i've used on and off for decades, where once you load the film on, you're in control - one control wheel, jog it lightly to advance a bit, jog it hard to send the film flying a few hundred frames. now you have four buttons and/or their onscreen counterparts (forward, back, and "fast" versions of each - but the latter only work if you pull the glass plate and film forward, out from under the lens! so the trial and error of finding frame 2,354 is now much more painful). and the image on the screen is of course not an analog projection of light through a lens and a couple of mirrors, but a digital recreation which is inherently laggy, so when you make movements, there's this smeary blur and stop-start thing happening.... aggghh!!

the lag and smear is, i'm sure, partly because the computers these things are plugged into are low-budget filler PCs purchased ten years ago and just can't keep up with the software. but the control scheme is inherently worse and meanwhile the library has been talked into buying a fancy new gadget that's worse at the meat-and-potatoes functions.