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

I have Sony MDR over-the-ear headphones with that screw adapter and they work fine with my iPhone (an old model which has a 3.5mm audio jack). I don't use a case though, so maybe that's the difference. I guess it's a moot point now anyway, what with Apple deep-sixing the audio jack on all new iPhones.

This butts up against the case on my iPad so the jack won’t seat properly.

ohhhhhh! this sounds like a case issue rather than a sony issue? (what early rejecter said) -- I had this problem with my old phone (for which I used a case) -- now I just don't use a case

Ah, parking lots/garages where ominous signs warn you that you MUST pay at a pay station or kiosk.

First, they are often a lie. The dirty secret of those self-pay kiosks is that (in my experience) you can always pay at the exit gate with a credit card.

(To clarify: I don't mean the kind where you print out a ticket and put it in the car. Or the kind where you tell it what space you're in and pay virtually. I mean the kind where there is a self-pay kiosk AND an exit gate where you have to prove you paid in order to leave.)

There are two reasons: first, if you ignore all the PAY AT THE KIOSK signs, they still don't want you to gum up the system when you try to exit. If there's a line behind you, it's not like you can get everyone to reverse so you can get put and go pay at a pay station.

Also, if the pay station is out of order, they still have to let you leave. So they will always (again, in my experience) give you an option to pay on your way out.

Second: look at your ticket. Notice what size it is. About the same size as a frickin credit card. Which means that the machines that read them are totally able to process a credit card.

All the signage - take your ticket with you! You must pay at the pay station! - are just designed to make you think that there's no other way. In reality they just want to speed up the exit lines, and if more people self-pay it goes faster.

I have never encountered a parking garage of this type where you actually could not pay at the exit gate.

All of the ones that have PAY AT KIOSK signs but also have payment at the gate that I've been to *used* to not have the ability to pay at the gate.

I learned the bad way why they leave the kiosks and encourage people to pay there. If the payment system breaks, would you rather have someone call from the machine at a kiosk, or from the gate as people behind them assume they're merely incompetent and not dealing with a broken system? They yanked the kiosk completely at a garage downtown here and immediately went to pay-at-gate and it broke multiple times before they hammered out the bugs.

there's an infamous garage in Orlando here that requires some apt steering getting in and out as it has a winding ramp. compounding things = they do have the 'pay at kiosk' machines, and after you pay, you're told you have ten minutes to get the fuck out (or presumably, the now validated ticket won't work).

you can pay at gate, but mh kinda hit on the problem - I got stuck in there 20 minutes once when people in both available lanes who opted to pay there realized it wasn't working once they got to the gate. your only other option other than waiting for them to fix is paying at hte kiosk, which may or may not be manned, depending on the time of day.

there's also a garage at Pointe Orlando like this, but the issue there is just about every idiot doesn't see there are three lanes available and all pile into one and you're stuck behind them because there's not enough room to get around the vehicles in front to get to the other lanes until you move up a little.

tourist Orlando is a hellhole.

by *kiosk*, I am actually referring to a diff kiosk than the downstairs ones they tell you to pay at, there's a manned one to the right and front of the exit gates where you can manually pay, 1991 style

it has always seemed fairly obvious that they pay at kiosk thing is to encourage efficient exit from the garage? i am more than happy to do my part in advance if it means i can exit the garage quickly, particularly if i'm in the vicinity of a sporting event or concert.

the one time I got stuck at the pay-at-exit place, which no longer has a payment kiosk, I ended up having to hit a call button that connected me to an operator at some unknown remote location. luckily it was merely payments that were broken and not his ability to remotely open the gate

I was in Jacksonville once and some of their parking garages are weird, so I went in one and took a ticket and I was ready to go home after and I pull up to the machine and of course it doesn't work where I can pay, or it didn't read my ticket....something weird was going on. the office next door appeared to be unmanned.

I don't know how I got the gate to go up, I guess it just did when it sensed my vehicle coming near, and then this alarm went off and I freaked out as I saw someone's head pop up in the office in reaction.

drove away, and to this day I keep waiting for Jacksonville police to take me in

I know it's been a thing for a while but I'm finding ads are getting dropped more and more aggressively into videos on YouTube lately, interrupting speech in ways that would never fly on trad TV. And these ads, skippable though they are, can run for minutes. WTF is with whoever permitted this.

there's a scenario I have in my head where Apple invent a beautiful new kind of lavatory, so sleek and white and beautiful looking, ergonomic and practical. Except it doesn't have a flush. Not even an automatic thing where you pass your hand near it. It literally does. not. flush. because they figured that flushes are ugly and cumbersome and that "people in 2020 will not want to flush".

xp - I went on a date with a guy recently who labels and categorizes youtube ads ... now I understand why he has this job.

the Apple Deuce

I know it's been a thing for a while but I'm finding ads are getting dropped more and more aggressively into videos on YouTube lately, interrupting speech in ways that would never fly on trad TV. And these ads, skippable though they are, can run for minutes. WTF is with whoever permitted this.

I've been seeing this more and more often lately too, most recently right in the middle of a song. Super obnoxious.

"You can run
and you can hide
but I'm not leaving
unless you come with--OLD SPICE MAKES A MAN'S NUGGETS SMELL LIKE BAKERY-FRESH MUFFINS! HERE'S THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT"

I thought the increased YouTube ads were something to do with us watching more (my kids like inane cartoon stuff on there) but it has been noticeably worse.

remember, if you skip ads, you are stealing that programming!

Seems like if the YT video starts with an ad that is skippable quickly, it's a sure sign I'll get one of those mid-video ads. But if I get one of those ads at the start that I can't skip, odds are that will be it. Wish I could pick!

lol Neanderthal

btw man what a jam, that song

there is a firefox extension that block yt ads btw, it is so good

if you are referring to ublock origin it blocks a whole universe of adtech on pretty much every platform (except for the new FB interface afaik).

a backward step we all accepted long ago: printer manufacturers not bothering to update drivers for older models

sorry, HP LaserJet 1012, you're in perfect working order but suddenly my Mac can't talk to you anymore

they are better about this for Windows operating systems tbh ... maybe Apple should go into the printer manufacturing business

The Apple printer will only be compatible with Apple paper, and there will be only one button for clearing jams. Any jam that cannot be cleared with The Button needs to be resolved at the Genius Bar.

it will be very cuet tho!

what is needed is the printer equivalent to Vue Scan. A massively compatible 3rd party print driver.

I have fond memories of early Apple LaserWriters, those things were huge but reliable

a new Apple printer would probably not use paper

It would print your documents indelibly onto your gossamer, futuristic hopes and dreams, which exist in a cloud that is yet to be realized

And cost $50 per page

I sent a fax today
To see if i still feel

a backward step we all accepted long ago: printer manufacturers not bothering to update drivers for older models

sorry, HP LaserJet 1012, you're in perfect working order but suddenly my Mac can't talk to you anymore

I don't know if this fits, but certain channels slightly speeding up old TV shows to squeeze in more ads into the same runtime. Noticed this today watching Gunsmoke with dropframes on TVLand, which was followed by an an un-doctored Andy Griffith that ran 35 minutes with ads.

Radio stations are notorious for speeding up songs and have been doing so for decades. Not surprised at all by this.

Seinfeld plays sped up by 7.5% in repeats to fit in more ads

(and on streaming they cut out about a quarter of the picture)

yeah I noticed that picture cutting on Prime recently, bothered me at first but made my peace with it fairly quickly - particularly because if I ever replay Seinfeld I only need it on in the background whilst doing something else.

Pan-and-scan 4:3 versions stretched to 16:9 is the only way to watch films properly.

i sometimes see Charmed repeats on 4 music and they are doing exactly that for those.

this explains why I've kept complaining when I put Nick at Night on that everybody's voice sounds a wee bit 'higher pitched' on Friends.

I can foresee a day when I have my own separate television that does not play through speakers or connect to Chrome or Home or anything else, and which has just one remote, which does not need to be programmed. This television will not require the intervention of a fucking tech person to turn on so that I can just watch my quizzes when I want. Jesus.

That wincing high frequency 'hear things from the perspective of a character who just survived a bomb going off or might be about to have a seizure' sound that is in SO many dramas now and goes on for over ten seconds or more sometimes...I need an auto-mute button for this.

have we talked about 2FA and password complexity and how both are gigantic buckets of bullshit yet

pretty much why I'm always locked out of everything

xp - I have definitely experienced comedic results of 2FA

the classic:

Person on Computer: it's asking me for a code
Person with Account: are they sending me the code?
Person on Computer: your number ends with 9032?
Person with Account: yeah
Person on Computer: yeah they are sending you the code
( time passes)
Person on Computer: did you get the code?
(time passes)
Person on Computer: okay I'm having them send the code again
Person with Account: sorry, got another call -- here's the code
Person on Computer: I had them resend it, that was the old one
Person with Account: (sends screenshot with previous code)
Person on Computer: no, there should be a new one
(time passes)

remote learning with Teams and OneNote feels like it belongs here now. It seems like the primary source of stress in my household these days.

OneNote worked two years ago when I used it in my last teaching job, but now that I really need it, it does not work. I spent a full class period trying to get kids to activate their OneNotes, only to find that it's too mysteriously glitchy to be worth bothering with.

Teams is Microsoft’s “hey, we need a tool that competes with this one simple bit of functionality. and a tool that competes with this thing. and wouldn’t it be cool instead of just offering an alternate to Slack and Zoom, we also shoved a full-fledged document management suite in it that’s a thin wrapper over SharePoint?”

arrrrgh

I have no idea how they’ve fucked OneNote, which worked fine for me a few years ago, but I suspect it also has the blood curse of SharePoint now

I just call whatever Microsoft application I’m currently using DickPunch because that’s what using them feels like

I dare not speak the name of any product Microsoft has that seems slim and useful because they’ll overhear me and decide it needs a handful of kitchen sinks