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

just learned that metacrawler still exists lol

> 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

I'm not paying for anything called Kagi

Same

iSearch.

Or mySearch

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.

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.

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

Not sure I agree? Noisey; need to find it, take it out and put it back; unskippable copyright notice; unskippable trailers; unskippable anti-piracy video…

scratchable

You wouldn't SCRATCH a DVD

Trailers you can skip over though, I always do.

find it out, take it out and put it back vs search every one of your services to see if they have it (or use justwatch, which is only accurate some of the time), fire up vpn to see if it's available in other territories...I'd say it's a toss up, and at least you can make your own dvd library more easy to find stuff in

Also easier to impress people with the Criterion Collection titles on your shelf.

I'm definitely tempted to go back to buying physical media for movies, but the one thing I dislike about physical media is that it takes up physical space.

Friends better appreciate my 4K of Tammy and the T-Rex or they're cut out of my life

I sometimes miss extras and outtakes / blooper reels. Don't miss unskippable anything.

Also using DVD chapters allowed one to watch Memento in forward sequence

physical media idgi

having drives full of the versions you want seems the best approach no?

are drives not physical media?

Does One Line Fix Google?

for whatever reason the "Web" option isn't available to me when i'm logged in, only when i'm logged out. what the fuck google?

dealing with backing up drives is a pita

I guess it’s the more environmentally responsible approach

self-checkout lanes at stores are a problem, i've had so many instances where the scanner freaks out and freezes up because i supposedly didn't place an item in the bagging area (i always do, because it says PLEASE PLACE ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA) and i stand there like a chump waiting for a store employee to come and fix it. it happened again the other day and i was told "it got confused because of the item's weight", and i have no idea what that meant.

some very light things just don't register. it sometimes help to just press the bagging area with your hand briefly.

(you do realise the bagging area is scales, yes?)

i think the confusing part is i'm not under the impression all bagging areas are scales, seems like several chains near me are just "areas" and others are scales. maybe i'll try the hand thing but what if i push too hard, or not hard enough?

https://giffiles.alphacoders.com/114/114236.gif

Lol - I had a meltdown at a self-checkout recently where it was like "Choose One: A) Emailed Receipt B) Text Receipt C)Printed Receipt" and I didn't want ANY fucking receipt but that's not an option so the clerk had to come over and help me

But I rarely deal with self-checkout as I'm invariably buying some form of booze

option D) shove receipt up your AI-ass!

Wait, the bagging area is SCALES

Yea, Dorian

Would you like a receipt is functionally the "you've paid, you can go now" part of the experience, though?

in Sainsbury's if you answer the "receipt?" question before packing it starts nagging you soon afterwards. if you leave it hanging you get more time.

keep reading stories about stores like walmart getting rid of self-checkout because people just steal and steal and steal. which is funny. they put them in so they wouldn't have to pay people to be cashiers.

in my local sainsburys now you need to scan the code on the receipt to open the gate and leave.

But I rarely deal with self-checkout as I'm invariably buying some form of booze

Getting locked out of accounts because PW manager fucked up...no way to resolve issue but wait 24 hours. Why? If I enter the correct password after several misfires, through no fault of my own, why should I have to put an important task on hold "for my protection"? Jfc government websites can kiss my ass.

24 hours? luxury.

i asked apple to reset my appleid password and have been told they will text me a replacement on the 5th june at 13:55:44 GMT (so precise, so far away)

there's a bus stop in hammersmith that's now obsolete because they've built a segregated cycle lane in front of it, the buses can't get within 5m of it. but it's still there, probably because it's one of those which is essentially a massive electronic advertising screen still serving ads and that makes it worth leaving

an hour into an excel session, go to save... greyed out

"activate account to save"

local data, local executable, plenty of disk space, not allowed to save.

wtffff

work computer too. i was working offline and i wonder if that was a factor. it's office 365, whatever that means.

I can't save in my afaik local office apps on my work mac because they disabled our shared office 365 account (and gave us individual accounts, which I never logged in to because I don't need to).

lol i just got migrated to 365 like a year ago 🤪

it's my area so, you know, there's more detail here – but the move from broadcast to streaming really has, is and is going to create a hell of a mess. 'glass to glass' as they like to say, all along the supply chain from the production lot to the screen/UI you view it on/with.

I was on the train down from Glasgow two days ago and I will just say that the transition from broadcast to IP has got a loooooooong way to go if my 4G connection was any indication

I'm so infuriated by the amount of software that requires specific email accounts + 2FA. I find myself trapped in verification loops all the time these days. I can't even remember the names of the ad hoc gmail accounts I create, or which services count as Microsoft. Yesterday I couldn't open a fucking .doc on my new burner phone. What used to be free open source software are now want you to register and will shower you with full-page ads before you can open a bloody pdf. My antivirus thinks it can do its daily promotion on my desktop. I don't want notifications, I don't even want to have to click and say "block" on every single webpage. There was a sweet period between the pop-up era and what we have now, and I want it back.

xpost to TH

yeah, and i think despite the bullishness of many CEO/DG people, most people internally recognise there's a very very long tail of broadcast infra that's going to need to be maintained if you want to maintain reach (especially if that reach is in your public service remit).

The challenge will be in doing that when none of the money wants to look at broadcast.

Mainly my post was from a very 'annoyed consumer' pov, is that the UIs are just so unhelpful and inconsistent and often quite janky. content discovery generally has gone miles backwards since 'broadcaster editorial decisions and a copy of the radio times every week' or whatever imv. if you overlay the viewing experience, and for a viewer you expect your finding, selection and playing of content to be seamless because why wouldn't you, then it gets even worse, with spinning wheels and 'something went wrong' messages, with no easy way to tell where in the chain something has gone wrong (wifi? connectivity? ISP? streamer back-end?)

All of the specialty message apps are a pain in the ass. I suppose the point is that people don't necessarily want their emails or phone numbers being shared, but my kids have multiple different apps to communicate with for summer camps and school. My comic book club only communicates via discord which I and others forget to look at.

i'm not sure how my dad is going to cope with an ip-only future given that he has had sky for over 20 years and still can't set a recording.

i also hate the way it always defaults to highest possible bandwidth - i am happy with half-pal, stop spending my money.

TV.

Used to be, sound and pictures matched perfectly as they were part of the same broadcast stream.

Now, because stereo sound and hi Def pictures are separate things, quite often the sound lags. By fractions of seconds, but still...