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

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

tbf Teams functions pretty well for me at work, I even kind of like the built-in wiki, but the way it’s organized with our daughter’s school apps - especially OneNote - is just a nightmare to try and navigate. And she’s the age where she’s absolutely determined to do everything independently no matter how infuriated she gets so like 90% of the time she just winds herself up into a meltdown and refuses all help.

We're a mostly MS Office workplace and while our Slack's been going for a while it's been mandated from on-high (as in campuswide) that we have to use Teams at some point next year. I've poked around in it -- seems useful enough for what we do that I can live with it, but obviously it's just a bit of extra randomness.

It actually does make all parts of an online set of meetings easier in that you can have files attached to channels and reference them directly from a video meeting in that channel

However, we’ve done that multiple times now and each time someone has to helpfully say “you have to click on the group, then the channel, then click this weirdly worded thing at the top to switch from chat to attached videos (or whatever)” and the person who says this on our non-Teams chat system gets a dozen upvotes for good content

They also have a few things (notably the interface to share a file during a live video meeting) where the description text and the link to open the file are in the same typography and there’s no indication which text is a link

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

I don't have a dick but although Google Sheets has vastly improved recently, DickPunch Excel makes it easier to "hide columns and rows"