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
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:11 (four years ago) link
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.
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:18 (four years ago) link
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
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:19 (four years ago) link
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
― epistantophus, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:22 (four years ago) link
Of course, that’s the opposite of what this thread is about.
― epistantophus, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:24 (four years ago) link
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
― Brad C., Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:37 (four years ago) link
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.
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:45 (four years ago) link
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*
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:47 (four years ago) link
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
― j., Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:53 (four years ago) link
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?
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 00:59 (four years ago) link
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)
― umsworth (emsworth), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 01:00 (four years ago) link
that everything has a remote is ridiculous.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 01:02 (four years ago) link
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.
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 01:08 (four years ago) link
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.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 01:24 (four years ago) link
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.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 01:28 (four years ago) link
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.
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 02:05 (four years ago) link
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.
― pplains, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 02:45 (four years ago) link
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
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 02:49 (four years ago) link
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
― i'd rather zing like a man, than FP like a coward (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 04:00 (four years ago) link
“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
― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 04:04 (four years ago) link
P much any form of watching tv now.
― i'd rather zing like a man, than FP like a coward (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 04:23 (four years ago) link
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.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 04:30 (four years ago) link
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.
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 04:55 (four years ago) link
xp saying that cellphones don't sound as good as landlines.
― visiting, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 04:56 (four years ago) link
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
― i'd rather zing like a man, than FP like a coward (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 05:23 (four years ago) link
iPod clickwheel RIP
― gyac, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 05:26 (four years ago) link
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.
― gyac, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 05:29 (four years ago) link
I am terrible at affixing the tag that prints out to my own bag. They always have to redo it.
― i'd rather zing like a man, than FP like a coward (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 05:31 (four years ago) link
Neanderthal otm re soda machines. I hate those things to the point where I won’t eat at places that use them. Or if I do then def pass on a drink. I think they change the flavor of the drinks too.
― big city slam (Spottie), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 05:55 (four years ago) link
I will never forget the day I dropped a newly fully loaded 256gb ipod classic between a Montreal subway car and platform, instantly assuring its doom
― Simon H., Wednesday, 14 August 2019 06:09 (four years ago) link
Flat screen TVs all sound terrible and require a sound bar or audio system
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 06:30 (four years ago) link
The smartphone/battery issue annoys me so much (especially as an IPhone user).If you’re out for meetings/conferences etc a half day, you’re basically done. I like their design and all (although I don’t like the big ass big screens, circa iPhone 5 it was fine for me) but it requires to also carry a power plug/alt battery at all time so not really an improvement ...
― AlXTC from Paris, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 06:48 (four years ago) link
I really miss those trackballs that bolted onto the side of a laptop and which you controlled with your thumb. I am hopeless at pointing and clicking with a trackpad.Also, trains with doors that can only be opened when the driver releases them and windows that can't be opened at all.
― van dyke parks generator (anagram), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 07:08 (four years ago) link
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 07:25 (four years ago) link
Also, trains with doors that can only be opened when the driver releases them and windows that can't be opened at all.
There is a positive side to that second one...
https://metro.co.uk/2016/08/07/man-decapitated-after-sticking-head-out-of-train-window-6053666/
― The Pingularity (ledge), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 07:41 (four years ago) link
do landlines really not work during power outages now? because that's the main reason I still pay for one.
― ☮ (peace, man), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 07:44 (four years ago) link
We drove to Cardiff to buy the last decent plasma TV before they all went LED. don't ask me but my husband Knows About These Things. So yeah, no idea what we'll do when it goes kaput.
― kinder, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 07:45 (four years ago) link
* 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
― kinder, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 07:56 (four years ago) link
(xpost to self: lcd not LED; don't emit the crystals)
― kinder, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 07:59 (four years ago) link
and yes the classic ipod was great. had one of the first editions - so sleek! so futuristic! it lasted ages although perhaps not 18 years later.
― kinder, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 08:04 (four years ago) link
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.
It's also crappy for the staff who have to work these now. They used to sit behind a desk, close to their other colleagues, where they could keep a glass of water or tissues or whatever they needed. Now they have to stand in the middle of the machines and only speak to people who are already annoyed. It is a major inconvenience, and one of the many reasons I cba to fly very much anymore.
Also, maybe it's just the televisions my family buys, but you can no longer see the screen properly unless you are sitting right in front of it.
― trishyb, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 08:15 (four years ago) link
― (Appears only as a corpse) (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 09:03 (four years ago) link
On that note, the continuing erosion of anonymous/pseudonymous space online. This is bad and people will realise how bad when it’s eventually gone.
― gyac
i mean this was doomed when the internet got taken over by nazis, right? i find a great deal of value in having places to talk about personal stuff that doesn't instantly notify every single person i have ever met, but a large percentage of people who also find a great deal of value in it are nazis and pedophiles. i can't think of any way to protect me without also protecting them.
― Abigail, Wife of Preserved Fish (rushomancy), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 11:17 (four years ago) link
thru texting taking the place of calls for almost all the things i used to make calls for
I don't find texting comfortable either! It wasn't as bad when my phone's keyboard looked like this: https://www.lg.com/ca_en/images/cell-phones/lg260/gallery/medium02.jpg . (Admittedly, switching languages is easier now.)
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 11:58 (four years ago) link
those touchscreen menu-based coke machines suuuuuuck and are increasingly common at multiplex theaters, places where you are usually there trying to make a specific time of something and really don't want to wait behind someone figuring out a machinere: weather: my issue is that any given page I bookmark for weather is filled with all kinds of junked-up shit, OR is way too basic. the absent functional midlde may be a running theme for this thread idk.agreed about most low-end flatscreen TVs and their built-in speakers - every apartment i've been to to watch a movie in the last couple years, it's been constant "too quiet during dialogue, too loud during explosions" volume adjustment. you can turn on some kind of curve-flattening normalize function on some of them. couldn't say how they compare versus the days of big clunky cabinet TVs with *basically* functional speakers built in, it's been too long and i don't remember how they really sounded.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 12:00 (four years ago) link
yeah i bought a blackberry two years ago because my last, clinging-to-life slider phone from like 2011 finally gave up the ghost and thank god, someone extended this slim hope for the physical keyboard.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 12:01 (four years ago) link
DC a lot of it is down to how these shows get mixed. a lot of times they're sitting in million dollar rooms and mixing for 5.1 and in that setting it sounds amazing.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 12:06 (four years ago) link
sure but the point is everyone else has accepted it sounding like crap
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 12:10 (four years ago) link
I had to use a cable between my seemingly good LG TV and the router just a few metres away because the...preload(?) compression would get so bad streaming Netflix. Even with the cable it was a problem watching shows on NOW TV for the first few seconds (particularly annoying with e.g. old Futuramas where you would literally not be able to read the joke message at the start. NOW 'solved' the problem by just removing the old Futuramas from their service...).
― nashwan, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 12:19 (four years ago) link
Same with the gym where I work: when our POS system is on the fritz or updating, we just write down what people have bought and members sign in their names on paper, like they used to back in the day.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Saturday, 27 April 2024 17:58 (three weeks ago) link
at Vue cinemas in the UK the staff can’t change anything about the projection, including the volume. it’s all set remotely. same for other aspects of the theatres, like air conditioning and lighting.
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 27 April 2024 18:04 (three weeks ago) link
what if the wrong movie gets projected
imagining someone hacking into the theater's mainframe and showing Caligula
― ain't nothin but a brie thing, baby (Neanderthal), Saturday, 27 April 2024 18:08 (three weeks ago) link
Xp my corner store is a 7-11 and several times I will show up as they are closing and have turned the registers off, and they totally take cash in that window of time before locking the door
― sarahell, Sunday, 28 April 2024 00:54 (three weeks ago) link
Maybe not all 7-11s are owned by franchisees but the ones around here are… cigarette prices differ significantly
― sarahell, Sunday, 28 April 2024 00:57 (three weeks ago) link
And maybe this qualifies as a backward step too! So the closest one is the price the yemeni market charges plus tax … as in the total I pay is the same as at the yemeni market… the second closest one actually adds tax to the amount the closest one charges for a pack plus tax … basically they double tax. The one in Berkeley across the street from the good donut shop actually does it as tax inclusive … so it ends up being 10% cheaper than most everywhere else except Walgreens… however I have to drive to el Cerrito to get to a Walgreens that sells cigarettes… Yea smoking is bad and I should quit.
― sarahell, Sunday, 28 April 2024 01:05 (three weeks ago) link
i see duckduckgo releases updates that breaks their search engine now
― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Thursday, 23 May 2024 07:49 (yesterday) link
I was fairly enthusiastic about shifting to duckduckgo for a short while, but it's never really lived up to expectations at all and haven't bothered with it for a while.
― This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 23 May 2024 07:57 (yesterday) link
i've been using it pretty unthinkingly for a number of years but it isn't any better than google at finding relevant results afaict and is often worse. i put up with it out of google spite. but yes having your website not work at all not ideal
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 23 May 2024 09:09 (yesterday) link
I've been using duckduckgo the last couple of years, honestly seems pretty much equivalent to google for the kind of searches I do (90% coding related stuff), though not right now obviously
― silverfish, Thursday, 23 May 2024 13:17 (yesterday) link
i like a lot of the built in protections and functionality and probably use these as much or more than i do almost any other similar type of "you'll need to select and configure some stuff here" options in any other technology
but the search results are tbh trash
― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Thursday, 23 May 2024 13:46 (yesterday) link
DDG & google seem about the same these days but that’s only because google deliberately broke google a while ago
― subpost master (wins), Thursday, 23 May 2024 13:50 (yesterday) link
I feel like this is completely insane but I'm paying $4/month for kagi for search now because it's the least bad.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 23 May 2024 14:17 (yesterday) link
isn't DDG essentially just a privacy-protecting interface for using Bing? meaning it's not that DDG is a bad search engine, it's that it's not really a search engine at all and Bing sucks (ftr I use DDG)
― rob, Thursday, 23 May 2024 14:32 (yesterday) link
DDG search results used to be good but took a turn for the worse at some point a while back.
Has anyone else been getting weird search results from DuckDuckGo lately? For example, I can enter the name of a website and none of the results will be the website's home page (whereas Google will give me the home page as first result). It's not always doing this but it's been happening enough lately for me to notice it.― visiting, Saturday, January 1, 2022
― visiting, Saturday, January 1, 2022
― Kim Kimberly, Thursday, 23 May 2024 14:38 (yesterday) link
Every time I watch a DVD I remember how much more of a pleasant and user-friendly medium it is, by every conceivable metric, for viewing films (as opposed to streaming)
― Paul Ponzi, Thursday, 23 May 2024 17:26 (yesterday) link
My opinion of DDG has never really shook its adoption by Pizzagate and associated nutters (which was the first and for a long time the last I heard of it)
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 23 May 2024 18:32 (yesterday) link
also using kagi now
― stet, Thursday, 23 May 2024 20:55 (yesterday) link
mmm have been mulling this
and orion, except it doesn't seem like it integrates with keychain
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 23 May 2024 22:40 (yesterday) link
I have heard both good and bad things about Kagi, may check it out.
― This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 23 May 2024 23:11 (yesterday) link
just learned that metacrawler still exists lol
― mookieproof, Friday, 24 May 2024 03:10 (seven hours ago) link
> I have heard both good and bad things about Kagi, may check it out.
i pay 10 bux a month for kagi and at first it felt refreshing but all they talk about is their AI shit now and their results feel less great after the honeymoon period
― paul mccartney and wigs (diamonddave85), Friday, 24 May 2024 03:13 (seven hours ago) link
I'm not paying for anything called Kagi
― Alba, Friday, 24 May 2024 06:21 (three hours ago) link
Same
― z_tbd, Friday, 24 May 2024 06:25 (three hours ago) link
iSearch.
Or mySearch
― z_tbd, Friday, 24 May 2024 06:26 (three hours ago) link
occurs to me that while Google is terrible, it still may not be possible to go back to anything good, the internet is just so full of shit now that filtering it out seems like a sisyphean task.
― This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 May 2024 06:40 (three hours ago) link
Does One Line Fix Google?
Forget AI. Google just created a version of its search engine free of all the extra junk it has added over the past decade-plus. All you have to do is add "udm=14" to the search URL.
― Kim Kimberly, Friday, 24 May 2024 06:55 (three hours ago) link