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

xp Every time I log into my work email, Microsoft insists on a sending a security code to my phone, no matter how many times I check the little box that says "please don't do this for the next thirty days." What's the point of having the check box if it doesn't work?

You have to make sure to check only the boxes with bicycles in them i think

the phone generates a one-time password after i've entered my bank id and password. the (secure) password is stored in my password app behind a less secure password, but the phone also has a swipe pattern and/or fingerprint protecting it.

this generated password lets me log into bank's web page along with my bank id and my security question answer.

and if i want to send anyone money then i also need to generate a transaction id using the bank app on the phone.

(i'm more worried about needing a phone in order to access bank website. what if i lose it?)

If I lost my phone, I would certainly need to jump through some hoops to get to my online bank yeah. (I guess I have a backup solution in the form of a digital code generator in a closet somewhere, but I doubt I'd remember the associated password/PIN needed with that one.) I'm assuming (read: hoping) this is a common enough occurrence that it is one of the areas where actual human customer support at the bank hasn't totally atrophied.

I had a little generator fob but it died without warning the day my rent was due* and installing the app was the only timely alternative

(* Probably not that exact day - I only used it once a month, could've been any time in the previous 30 days)

I am averse to fingerprint protection/login stuff because of all the tv and movies over the past few decades where they just cut the person's finger or hand off and use it to access the secret vault or door or what-have-you. I am sure this is just a sign that I am a truly damaged person, and that very few other people think about how this technological advancement can lead to dismemberment

I am averse to it because the fingerprint sensor seems to stop working after about 6 months for some reason.

iirc the fingerprint sensor doesn't work if the finger is cold

Or if you've just used a bleach-based or disinfectant cleaning product.

(Good thing nobody has a special reason to do a lot of cleaning things nowadays!)

fingerprint scanners can never read my fingerprints because my hands are permanently ashy

printyflakes

lmao

yeah the whole act of searching is now fraught with results that don't actually contain the words you searched for, because the machine is assuming associations and syllables and people-who-searched-for-x-also-searched-for-y. and it's like, no, i picked to search these words because i'm trying to answer this specific question. now i have to open six tabs and control-F for the key words and then close them again when they're not really there.

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Thursday, August 15, 2019 2:36 PM bookmarkflaglink

just wanted to report that, anecdotally, this perennial issue has, somehow, become staggeringly worse in like the past two weeks. on google, DDG, everything. absolutely no confidence at all that ANY of the search results displayed contain all, most, or even more than one of the search terms i included. wtf.

I think Google is experimenting with some non-cookie tracking methods, whereas your searches are mapped to a cohort... i.e. "if you love the blues, you'll love Bluez Hammer" because all these other folks that searched for similar stuff love them. So far Mozilla wants nothing to do with it, and I think others are not enthused at all as well.

all i want is to be able to search "name of building" architect or "name of building" built or (keyword) (keyword) (keyword) architect and find articles that actually include those words, so i can narrow down when things were built and who the architects might have been. instead i just get literally any page on the internet that mentions the name of the building. or some of the words in the name of the building, quotation marks be damned. fucking hell.

everything weighted towards recency too. good luck trying to find anything written about any topic before 2010 if that thing has also been written about a lot since then then.

surely these are the conditions for a nu (non-Google) Google to establish itself?

or to find access to academic resources via library, same as it ever was tbh

on google after you search click on tools, then change "all results" to "verbatim"

(andy baio of waxy.org complained about this a decade ago so google added this verbatim search)

sorry, just catching up on this thread, my reader’s digest of the past few weeks:

I guess if you're comfortable dealing with Python packages, there are some great packages.

oh, i for one am super comfortable dealing with python packages. you just unzip it, and it runs in your browser. (sorry about the formatting and huge-ass image)

cant believe no one is commenting how great and horny this is!

disclaimer: this technological advancement can lead to dismemberment

abanana, thank you so much for the 'verbatim' trick!!!! i'd seen references to that feature but they were really old articles and for whatever reason i wasn't seeing it in the post-search tools. i guess i'm switching back to Google from DDG just for the ability to easily do that. huge huge huge time-saver. sigh.

there is a "default to verbatim" plugin but it ruined my search results in a different way after a while. I use duck duck go more these days but if I'm honest the results aren't that much better.

surely these are the conditions for a nu (non-Google) Google to establish itself?

as Doc said, even DDG is creaking under the strain of there being just way too much garbage on the web now

abanana - thanks so much!!!! this verbatim thing is great

Being placed in a help queue because a company fucked up and didn't send me the correct files, which I paid for. Like, maybe you could have sent the correct files the first time so I don't have to keep going back and forth with a customer service rep?

I'm reminded of why I used to use soulseek unapologetically before the arrival of bandcamp's UX and payment improvements a while ago. Downloading music files from almost any other site is a waste of time and energy.

I think you also can still put individual words or phrases in quote marks to make Google search for them verbatim

https://www.google.com/amp/s/searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-98189/amp

Yep. Just tried it. Still works. I’m used to putting phrases in quotes but had forgotten that you can do it around single words too.

I've definitely done quote searches where my demands have been overridden, though. The tip about verbatim mode is good and I will be using that. Seriously, search engines being almost useless these days is my biggest technological bugbear. It makes me so fucking angry.

yeah, the quotes don't work for me. it's like they've told the algorithm "if it's in quotes, it's *fairly* important, but feel free to disregard also!"

the good news is that google wants to make this problem significantly worse: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/14/1024918/language-models-gpt3-search-engine-google

The digital tools used in modern radio broadcasting are super-glitchy: "Do we have Dennis on the line? Okay, it looks we lost Dennis, we'll try to get him back on.. meanwhile.."
I remember old analog phone lines sounding tinny on the radio but being fairly reliable. NPR is always cutting out and losing guests, but that may be because of pandemic-related home broadcast setups.

User issue imo

We used landlines and big fat analog consoles in the 90s, and we still had those problems.

Cellphones (used by callers sitting in traffic) probably the main culprit.

I know sign-up security questions are notoriously awful, but this selection seems to me especially egregious. I don't have a definitive answer to any of these questions, and even if I did it's likely I wouldn't word it or spell it exactly the same next time. What's more, since it's for a workplace pension thing, I have to select THREE of these to answer and presumably remember what I said until next time I need to sign in, when I'm like 65 or so.

https://i.ibb.co/7gs9dLT/security-question.png

I thought the same when presented with this multi-question format but then when I actually got asked the answers they were as multiple choices, so not as hard

Haven't these questions been acknowledged as Bad Practice for more than a decade now?

I do hate answering them, because I resent corporations taking this grab inside my personal life, even without the security worry of them being leaked and being used to crack my account on other sites.

I guess I could make up answers and save them as a note inside a password manager but I have a fear of being unable to reset them if that gets lost and having someone say "Well if you lied to us about the name of your favourite primary school teacher I'm not sure I can help you regain control of your pension". Plus it's a faff.

I used to just make the answer to everything "eat my ass"

Coincidentally, that is actually my mother's maiden name.

And I've been pronouncing it "iht Mee us" all this time

excellent work everyone

I'm still paying the price of spelling "New Orleans" as "Nawlins" somewhere 15 years ago.

I remember someone with a very country accent calling once and trying to do security questions with me and the one she couldn't get was "Name of first pet", but she couldn't understand that we were looking for the individual animal's name, not the "type" of animal. she said she grew up on a farm, so the guesses went something like:

"a cow?"
"a chicken?"
"a pig?"

all while me subtly trying to hint "did any of these animals have names you called them by other than PIG?"

That's amazing.

"In what city did your parents meet?" "It was in a town?"

I used to just make the answer to everything "eat my ass"

would it work universally ... with the spaces and all? I always wonder about the people who answer these things completely sincerely. Also, I'm wary of giving sincere answers because mine tend to be pretty common ... like if I were someone trying to commit identity theft and had to guess the name of someone's first pet, "Blackie" or "Fluffy" would be pretty likely guesses ... as opposed to ... buttplug

yeah that's one reason I used to give bullshit answers because of my fear of exactly that, but then when I lock my account, I can't remember whether the answer is "What is your father's middle name" is "Butthole" or "Go fuck yourself".

just ask your mom

i've long thought that subjective security questions like "what is your favorite book?" reveal a lot about the people who create them