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

I just sold my Phish ticket stubs from the 90s for WAY too much money, so I'm bummed that I won't be able to do that in 20 years if I end up hating the bands I'm currently going out to see.

whoa I never realized there was a market for that

brb, putting my 1986 Grateful Dead stub on eBay

We're planning a surprise party for my mother this weekend. (Please don't tell her.)

We're all also hoping she doesn't notice anything odd when everyone across three states simply drops off the radar on her "Find My Friends" app.

While only one aspect of Google search's lightspeed journey into the toilet, I'd like to more generally call out the (possibly correct but still infantilizing) assumption that no one has the ability to spell anymore and that some algorithm knows what you actually meant to write. The words 'did you mean' now make me IA on the regular.

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.

texting actively makes me look illiterate because google "autocorrects" to put fucking greengrocers apostrophes everywhere

you mean greengrocer's apostrophes?

It occurs to me occasionally that automation and the maximization of convenience is infantilizing in a very nearly literal sense, to the extent that shielding people from steps in a given process will ultimately render them unable to undertake those steps when/if they're required to do so. Like I shudder to think about the condition of a handwritten page when the writer in question has grown up having every electronic word autocorrected for them.

^ why you weren't allowed to use a calculator in math class BACK WHEN THINGS WERE DONE RIGHT

When I try to type about denim jeans, my phone always corrects it to Jean's.

Do any other airlines than BA do anything like that fuckawful celebrity safety film they insist on doing instead of letting the crew do it? Serious Clockwork Orange shit.

A lot of airlines have videos on the larger planes. I like the BA one. Although I couldn't figure out if the old version with Gillian Anderson speaking in a stoic british accent was supposed to be a joke. It was all confusing.

Virgin had a decently entertaining video a few years back, with robots and ninjas in it. They have since replaced it.

The Air France one still uses that Glass Candy song

couldn't figure out if the old version with Gillian Anderson speaking in a stoic british accent was supposed to be a joke

haven't seen this video so dunno about the stoicism, but Gillian Anderson's "natural" accent is English & she has lived in England nearly all her life, apart from term-time high school and during X-Files active production

Most airlines from English speaking countries have a novelty safety video now, not necessarily with celebs. The BA one with Chabuddy-G was/is the absolute nadir of the genre.

The Qantas one cycles through some ‘typical Australian tropes’ like sitting in the front of a cab and being a boorish prick abroad.

xpost I was researching about her accent before and knew she had lived in england but for some reason I assumed she usually speaks with a non-english accent.

I just doublechecked, in interviews she doesn't speak with a british accent. The stoic'ism is that she is very serious and placid in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrQ-RlPDPFo

I just doublechecked, in interviews she doesn't speak with a british accent. The stoic'ism is that she is very serious and placid in the video.

― Yerac, Thursday, August 15, 2019 12:45 PM (six minutes ago)

she can speak in either accent. i think she might do the american one for american media and vice versa?

yeah, see above

yeah i just learned about being 'bidialecta'.

whoops left off the 'l'. bidialectal.

a truly wild backwards technological step:

for the first fifteen years of podcasts, if you wanted to sample a podcast you were interested in, you could just download the episode from the podcast's website.

now, to follow a recommendation, you can't click on a link, because that will take you to a third-party company's redirect to an app.

so you have to google the podcast
then click on it
then click & read a couple of pages of the website to get an idea of whether you want to try more than one episode.
then, you have to google the podcast plus "rss" to find an aggregator service
then click on that
then find the rss link on the page
then click on it to see if it's set up to render in-browser
then click into the URL bar when it turns out not to be
then ctrl+x to copy it
then open a separate plugin or program that you had to install because Firefox took away rss support
then click "add a new feed,"
then click ctrl+v
then click "preview,"
then click "cancel"
and now you finally have a list of episodes you can download from to sample this thing that was recommended and sound intersting

^^ why I have never listened to a podcast, part LXXVII

she can speak in either accent. i think she might do the american one for american media and vice versa?

If you think that's weird, watch Kristin Scott Thomas switch back and forth between (British) English and French sometime.

That seems awfully complicated I just go to my podcast app search for the podcast, hit subscribe and away I go, if I don’t like it I unsubscribe.

Spotify is great for pods.

I don't even subscribe, bc for some reason giving Google Podcasts permission to 'access my web activity and data' is the line in the sand I've drawn. I just go to the app, search for it, and download whatever episode.

When I try to type about denim jeans, my phone always corrects it to Jean's.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, August 15, 2019 2:03 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

dril's ilx account doxxed

seems awfully complicated I just go to my podcast app

the podcast app costs a thousand dollars and then you have to buy new headphones for a couple of hundred just to use it, which don't work with any of your other audio devices

In Australia, the iPhone range starts at A$749 for an iPhone 7 – making it the cheapest entry level model. The new iPhone XS range starts at A$1,629 and A$1,799 for the iPhone XS Max. The iPhone XR will begin at A$1,229.

my phone was free with my contract and my headphones cost $7 canadian

and i only listen to podcasts on my phone because if I'm at home i have better things to do (watch ds9)

Not the Apple podcast app, just a podcast app, I use Castro, no idea if it’s available for Android but there are undoubtedly a bunch.

I got my Samsung Galaxy off craigslist for $240 but maybe they don't have used non-Apple products there, idk

guess sic is listening on his free computer

yeah, even on the shittiest smart phone it's pretty easy to listen to any podcast. This is part of the reason why I listen to a lot more podcasts on my phone than spotify (which is terrible on low end android phones)

ipods don't have apps guys

Pretty sure iPod Touches have apps. My iPhone app (Downcast) lets me quickskip 30 seconds by swiping right, which is the best feature.

the problem is the main aggregators are where people are encouraged to push their podcast feeds and all the links go directly to those, I think

iPods were the first main target for podcasts and iTunes has one of the largest podcast directories, though. I mean, assuming you're still using iTunes for synching and not something third party

fwiw this site seems pretty good and seems to have rss links directly: https://www.listennotes.com/

Pretty sure iPod Touches have apps

Came out 12 years ago.

you mean greengrocer's apostrophes?

― Number None

i did that on purpose

the clickwheel one had apps too! there were like these trivia games you could download. helped me kill time on a long flight

The Qantas one cycles through some ‘typical Australian tropes’ like sitting in the front of a cab and being a boorish prick abroad.

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed)

as opposed to be the 'typical american trope' of being a racist prick fucking everywhere

yesterday after great pestering from windows i consented to install their latest "upgrade", which first took 24 hours, second didn't work, and third managed to turn back on my touchscreen, which i turned off because it had broken for some reason and was constantly registering presses rendering the computer unusable. which is an extreme case but the constant stream of "you have an update! better install it or some hacker will exploit a 0-day and hold all of your files for bitcoin ransom!" is pretty strongly backward progress imo

sic, while I sympathize as a fellow iPod Classic-owner and stubborn ass-dragger when it comes to progress, I think the podcast issues you face are relatively unique to your situation.

I saw the BA safety video a week ago - the one bright spot is how pissed off the makers must have been when Olivia Coleman won an Oscar.

I think because I hate flying so much, I like the BA video due to the easy distraction (obviously as seen by my Gillian Anderson confusion (she is not in the new one) and trying to dissect a lot of people's involvement and because I super like the curly haired woman in the older one).

sic, while I sympathize as a fellow iPod Classic-owner and stubborn ass-dragger when it comes to progress, I think the podcast issues you face are relatively unique to your situation.

just because many ppl have very happily accepted being herded into third-party data-harvesters does not mean that it is not a technological/practical step backwards to change a plurality of podcast websites such that you cannot download podcasts from them