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

I was watching a programme about Nokia which mentioned how Apple came along with its massive touchscreen, which sacrificed battery life and durability i.e. we all now accept that a phone battery will need charging at least every night and if we drop the phone the screen will shatter, which wasn't the case before. There must be tons of these?

My own personal bugbear is how you used to be able to change the TV channel with a remote instantaneously rather than having to wait a couple of seconds after pressing the button and now that's seemingly impossible.

On a larger scale it's probably a backwards step that everyone is expected to have a recent smartphone to conveniently do loads of things (show your boarding pass, or whatever) and shit stops being supported within a few versions. Music compression too. But I guess I'm thinking of specific annoyances that shouldn't even be problems.

I was only half-watching the Nokia programme so please feel free to correct my comprehensive history of Apple there.

the original gameboy lasted about eight years through new release support and actual durability of the hardware

Everybody's landline used to work in a blackout.

^^ good one, also you can no longer get DC power from landlines

taking the headphone jack away

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too.

sez you, "Telecom"

:)

at my gym i have to log in on a giant touch screen to run on the fucking treadmill. the other day it asked me if i wanted to install updates. hl;kjalkjh;asgdhl;kasgd

My own personal bugbear is how you used to be able to change the TV channel with a remote instantaneously rather than having to wait a couple of seconds after pressing the button and now that's seemingly impossible.

― kinder, 14. august 2019 00:14 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wait, what?

oh god please just go away

iPod clickwheel RIP

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too

Right? It used to actually be enjoyable to talk on the phone (not to mention that handsets were much more ergonomic/comfortable/seemed less likely to induce brain cancer), no wonder phone calls seem like an intrusive nuisance now.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/the-us-navy-says-no-to-touchscreens-maybe-automakers-should-too/

I realized too when I got an iPhone for xmas how much it suffered from an absence of the trackball on my old phone.

The iPad was a bit of a stumble
-techno beaver

remote control thing is a great example. that drives me crazy any time i'm in a hotel or something and just want to enjoy the mindless zone-out of channel surfing. related: TVs coming with "motion smoothing" turned on by default and sometimes with no option to turn it off.

* many websites/apps/etc. have gotten slower and junkier as they've added features, loaded up with data-draining graphics and videos and scripts. like, just trying to see what the hourly weather forecast for tomorrow is involves a lot more clicking and waiting than it did a few years ago. google maps is another one that's gotten a lot shittier.

* new laptops with only USB-C ports so that to make this sleek, elegant thing fully functional and do basic things you need to buy an expensive dongle and have it hang awkwardly off the apple lust object.

* also in general, laptops replacing desktops for a computer that remains at a desk at all times --- massively worse ergonomically and less computer for your money.

* not to make this a physical media thread but def all the downsides of the streaming world belong here. but obv there are many tradeoffs.

* general trend of offloading labor onto unpaid customers (self check out, surveys, pressure from amazon to answer support questions for products you've bought, etc.).

* death of big-budget 2D animation (in hollywood anyway).

history is littered with these of course, cf. invention of agriculture and human health/life expectancy/society. or cars replacing transit networks, all of those stories. or at a pettier level, all the changes in shaving since idk the 1960s or 70s.

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too.

i hung onto my landline for longer than most people and in the early days of cellphones it was infuriating talking to anyone on theirs because the audio quality was terrible. it's better now but still not as good as landlines were.

the substitution of plastics for paper, cloth, wood, and metal (not as acceptable as it used to be but never more pervasive)

Color printer/scanners are a now an everyday cheapish appliance but their rate of malfunction makes them barely worth the trouble.
A black and white laserjet that couldn’t scan shit would cost you an arm but you could be sure that sucker would turn out pages for ages, iirc.

A lot of fast fashion type stuff bugs me, like having to actually look for cotton underwear.

as someone who lives in a country where you wear gloves several months out of the year, i daily cursed the engineer who introduced thumbprint unlock as the default on the iPhone

the default of ‘pick up your phone and look at it before we reveal the content of a text’ on the iPhone ten also a v stupid idea

A black and white laserjet that couldn’t scan shit would cost you an arm but you could be sure that sucker would turn out pages for ages, iirc.

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, August 13, 2019 5:02 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Brother still makes products of this caliber and they aren't disturbingly expensive.

at a pettier level, all the changes in shaving since idk the 1960s or 70s.

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, August 13, 2019 4:26 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

development of laser hair removal is a big improvement tbh

Color printer/scanners are a now an everyday cheapish appliance but their rate of malfunction makes them barely worth the trouble.

Not to be a commercial but after years of having problems with inkjet printers and generally feeling like they were the most unreliable piece of technology in existence, I bought an Epson Eco-tank and it has been life-changing. I actually love my printer now and wouldn’t trade it for anything. 100% reliable, scans and prints great, I haven’t had to refill it yet and I’ve had it for... 2 years? No more of the seemingly constant cartridge replacements. /commercial

Of course, that’s the opposite of what this thread is about.

I just had a 1958 Grundig tube radio repaired, it sounds amazing; finding someone who could work on it was the hard part

it wasn't really so long ago that devices like radios, TVs, stereo components, and even personal computers were designed to be repaired and kept in service for many years; now the same kinds of devices go directly to the landfill as soon as they fail, if not sooner; the fact that the replacement devices are cheaper and more capable than the junked ones is not a particularly impressive sign of progress

The loss of institutional knowledge about how to build heavy-duty, reliable liquid propellant rocket systems has had a massive impact on space programs around the world.

Now somebody tell me they have a way to get to the moon just fine.

I’m gonna be really anxious when the time comes to buy a new TV because the one I have has been so good for so long *raps on wooden table*

i was curious about buying a new tv - i haven't had one since the mid 90s, a portable black-and-white model from the 80s passed on to me from my parents - and the enormous variations in crazy features and too-good-to-be-credible prices just made me give up

I started with the knowledge that I wanted a Sony of a certain size with a certain number of HDMI inputs and went with that, I think?

i recently had ceiling fans installed, and we got the ones with lights built in

too late i realised that to turn the lights on and off we now need to fumble around with a dinky battery powered remote

curse a society that no longer understands that light switches should be easy to find in the dark

(also every button press is accompanied by an annoying beeping sound that can't be muted)

that everything has a remote is ridiculous.

Wait, I've never turned lights on or off with a battery-powered remote. That is not a backward step I accept!

Landlines, though. Still had one until 2011. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person who finds it physically difficult to converse satisfyingly on a smartphone.

i hate talking on the phone now, it makes me antsy and eager to get off the phone. but i don't know if that is something abt the phone itself, or how my expectations and practices around phones have changed, esp thru texting taking the place of calls for almost all the things i used to make calls for. and the ppl on the other end feeling the same way and distracted and eager to get off the phone too.

everyone hates talking on the phone now.
it's social anxiety and because we have so many job related activities where one is on the phone all the time.

although my mom still chats away like she is teenager of the year.

It used to be that after CRT and plasma declined, televisions were a forced compromise: backlit LCD or nothing, which suck for watching films (bad shadow levels, motion smoothing, etc etc). I white-knuckled the gap between plasma and OLED by self-repairing my plasma when the power supply failed, and then buying a used plasma which got me through (barely, with lines on the screen and driver failures) just until the OLEDs came down enough for me to consider an end-of-line clearance price.
Now of course I have the best TV of my life - it's kind of ironic because my film library is worth probably 5-10 times as much as the screen I watch them on.

Landlines were easier to have a conversation on because it was in real time. Cellphones have gotten better, but they're still bouncing audio off of metal towers like a pinball machine. Landlines were the technological final product of an evolution that began with two cans and a piece of string, and worked just fine.

I have the same tv remote problem with my microwave.

Are there really cars out there that combat drowsiness by not letting itself drift over any white or yellow line unless the blinker is on?] Because I will lose my shit, that's all there is to it.

things have gotten a bit better, but even as the early playstation era was happening i remember thinking "wow it sucks that i have to wait 15 seconds for every other screen to load". that was in stark contrast to the near-instant load times of the cartridge based systems at the time and of the recent past.

of course, we were all more than willing to wait as long as it took to gedda load of them polygams

https://i.imgur.com/KKf0O1X.jpg

When you buy a new video game and it has to spend an assload of time downloading "updates" before you can play the fucking thing.

Also Denny's getting rid of the Breakfast Dagwood

“like, just trying to see what the hourly weather forecast for tomorrow is involves a lot more clicking and waiting than it did a few years ago”

(since you’re not opposed to using google:) google “(city) weather” once, ctrl+h “wea” for every instance after

P much any form of watching tv now.

Are you guys saying landlines don't sound as good as they used to, or that cellphones don't sound as good as landlines? I agree with the latter, but as for the former, my landline still sounds great. I would never have a conversation on my cellphone unless I was away from home.

We have a landline so we can put the number on paperwork, and for “just in case.” I think we turned the ringer off two years ago. It sits behind the dehumidifier in our master bedroom.

xp saying that cellphones don't sound as good as landlines.

Coca Cola Freestyle machines. Ok...i love em. But...

Soda fountains in the past, usually your biggest problem was the soda came out flat because the bag needed to be changed. So maybe your number one choice isn't available, but other stuff is. Also, multiple people can fill their shit at the same time.

But with these fuckin machines, if you are unlucky enough to go to a store with only one machine, you gotta wait behind the dummy who can't figure it out.

Then when you get there, sometimes they're out of like every diet product, but you don't find out until you click on it and try to pour it, it stops, and greys out.

And then sometimes the shit just malfunctions and nobody in the restaurant knows how to fix it because they gotta call some help line. And if none of the machines work, you gotta wait in kine and get someone at the counter to pour you a drink

iPod clickwheel RIP

Oh and inspired by Neanderthal’s post just now! Automated airport bag drops - just an awful scourge and take far more time than having someone check the suitcase and slap the sticker on it for you. Goes double if you’re stuck behind people who are confused by this (naturally). Waited fifteen minutes behind a family checking in three suitcases the other day - there should have been staff to help them.

expiration dates on fresh fruit and veg is strange to this American. Isn’t the “use by” kind of obvious?

I think that's what sparked the change - there was definitely talk of removing "best before" dates for items where you could still use it after the best before, it just wasn't... best. Trying to reduce food waste and all that. But now we've still got a marker for it, it's just a somewhat perplexing marker.

Actually, question: do USians have both "best before" and "use by" dates or just "use by"?

I've seen both.

yeah it’s not consistent and I’ve always thought they meant the same thing

Sometimes you will just see "BB 04 26"

I assumed that “use by x” means ab expired item can become dangerous or gross soon after the date, and that “best by x” means it will still be fine, just not as good. Like spices don’t go bad, but their strength fades over time.

that is the distinction here

there's a great old post somewhere with roxymuzak clowning on expiration dates

In Norway, "best before" tags are frequently followed by "often good after" or "not bad after", as in "Best before 23 March 2026, often good after". Things like dairy and eggs keep ridiculously better than when I grew up; I've no qualms about using e.g. eggs one month past "best before" as long as I follow the other (very sensible) slogan that's being pushed about "expired" foods: "Look; smell; taste."

In Norway do they do that thing where the wax and chicken poop is still on the egg? Apparently they keep longer that way. In America it’s washed off.

i'm the ceo of a popular snack manufacturer, expiration dates are not real, it's just 20% safety factor stuff, just use your eyes and nose

thank you mr. peanut

he’s little debbie

i'm the ceo of a popular snack manufacturer

Uhh brimstead, we need to know more about this

Little-known fact, Pringles were originally called Brimgles

No one can brim just one.

ime US supermarket meat is usually labelled “sell by,” which I appreciate — “hey, you call it from here, man. good luck!”

In Norway do they do that thing where the wax and chicken poop is still on the egg? Apparently they keep longer that way. In America it’s washed off.

They look washed to me? I've seen the occasional tiny feather adhering to the shell though, so I don't know exactly which process is used.

a lot of Americans seem to think eggs in Europe are all covered in shit for some reason

We don't wash eggs (as it removes the protective membrane which means they go off more quickly) but that doesn't mean they are covered in shit, no commercial egg operation is just leaving the eggs in the same place the chickens shit

I have no opinions about washing eggs but I think the poop references are more about the eggs and poop both coming out of the cloaca

Not a backward step, but I find it patronizing when Google docs flags documents with "you often open around this time."

that's classic evil tech trying to think for me

as I said on that thread, I did not consent to being micromanaged by a brainless pareidoliac

a lot of Americans seem to think eggs in Europe are all covered in shit for some reason

I only heard about it from Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle

posh supermarkets in the UK employed people to use a little bit of shit to stick a feather onto every fifth egg so you know it's "authentic"

Is it chicken shit or do the workers have to supply their own shit?

asking for tax purposes

americans also insist on refrigerating eggs

we have to refrigerate them because the protective outer layer is washed off. keep up, Andy!

what if I smear my shit on them at home?

you can do that, it's the land of the free

fun fact you can only preserve the unwashed ones

https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/water-glassing-eggs/

whoa

Playing one of those "describe the thing without saying its name" games my daughter said "it has a camera". The answer? A doorbell. We just have a regular one but one of her friends has a ringu or whatever it's called.

> a ringu

lol

haha

This is maybe just a specific-to-me thing, but the one that is really getting to me lately is digital volume control. I like to listen to music/podcasts at a very quiet volume before bed. The lowest volume setting is still too loud, IMO. I downloaded an app called "precise volume control" which is supposed to ameliorate this, but I don't hear much of a difference. Give me an analog volume wheel on my phone! (I realize this would be an annoying thing to have in most other circumstances)

i miss analog volume control even the crackle of the capacitors.

filed under "all software is broken now", the latest thing that pisses me off is that my 10-year-old asus windows laptop came with microsoft onenote, which i've been using to keep all kinds of notes incl monthly budget and bills for years. kind of a crucial piece of software for me. they "discontinued" it and manually made it read-only on my laptop.

i might be better-served if i just wiped the whole thing and put linux on it, but the last thing in the world i want to do these days is some kind of big tech project i absolutely hate that shit so i will hobble along until they turn moving the mouse around into a "service" or whatever.

bit techy this one but
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/step-functions/latest/dg/concepts-amazon-states-language.html

writing json to define code.

    "ChoiceState": {
      "Type": "Choice",
      "Default": "DefaultState",
      "Choices": [
        {
          "Next": "FirstMatchState",
          "Condition": "{% $foo = 1 %}"
        },
        {
          "Next": "SecondMatchState",
          "Condition": "{% $foo = 2 %}"
        }
      ]
    },

there is a gui editor for it. every variable is a different dialogue box...

don't even get me started on the AWS services where they slopped something out because a competitor had it or customer wanted it only to never update, fix, or enhance it ever again

not saying step functions are necessarily that, but it kind of smells like it

no syntax checking when it's all just data. can't add comments. searching for things just turns up the java sdk version not the jsonata version.

we have hard deadlines and we decide to do it this way?

"This is maybe just a specific-to-me thing, but the one that is really getting to me lately is digital volume control. I like to listen to music/podcasts at a very quiet volume before bed. The lowest volume setting is still too loud, IMO. I downloaded an app called "precise volume control" which is supposed to ameliorate this, but I don't hear much of a difference. Give me an analog volume wheel on my phone! (I realize this would be an annoying thing to have in most other circumstances)"

I respect you for using the word "ameliorate" in casual conversion. I respect that. The volume control thing is immensely annoying with pornography. I don't know if it's because the most successful porn has the volume pegged at maximum, or if it's because spanking and shrieking carry more through the air than bass notes, but even at VLC's lowest volume setting I still get complaints from the flat below me and also the cleaning lady. Because 1% of a massive wall of sound is still too much. I need less than 1%. Like... 0.2% for example.

Whereas if I use the volume dial on my analogue speaker system I can dial in a kind of ambient background porn-o-vironment where the sound of drills and shouting merges with the sound of drills and shouting outside my window. It's especially irritating if I have multiple videos open on several different monitors.

Yes, in theory I could use headphones, but what if something goes wrong? I have a recurrent nightmare that I'll be listening to Spankbang - or whatever - through headphones, and then it'll dawn on me that there's no signal coming through the speakers and I'm actually listening to the website through the speakers, but with headphones on my head. Luckily I was the only person in the office at the time but that could have gone so badly wrong.

xp to koogs: this looks like hasura permissioning, which is my current high-water-mark for "wow there's an even worse way to write logic than in SQL"

yeah the volume control thing is a bummer. I like using these old Koss headphones, because among other things, they have an analog slider thats like a trim for the final level. So I can adjust down if need be. 100% of my home movie watching though I run the audio through a little mixer, so I can very precisely control level both downward and way upward, compress the audio to make dialog more even, etc...

I was watching this video, which I adore, and thinking about what an absolute horrorshow it would be, if it was made now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V726_HShyY

(I love all the background George and Marys who aren't singing, especially "quietly nodding and having a drink George" around 1:35-45)

yikes to me who's somehow *not* seen that before, on first sight it's totally been contaminated through no fault of its own! It's giving me really queasy vibes, probably from exposure to various ai rubbish.

but knowing and overcoming that; yeah agree the video's fantastic, I love the background barstool thing at 3:06+ where Mary appears to explain some slapping thing to a grinning George. Thanks for tip, this is definitely going into the "rewatch for details" list.