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

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

I paid for my podcast app and it is not a data harvester.

https://support.downcast.fm/article/84WhiJ1BFT-privacy-policy

podcast.. websites?

hmm podcasts.. cool technological/practical "backward step" bro

for real though all software is garbage now

zing is great

Seconded

Tracer I download programmes from BBC radio websites! it's weird how as of this year or thereabouts they always announce "this programme is supported by advertising outside the UK" but then no ad is included. like someone coded a thing that will serve you a special version of the file depending on IP, and somebody coded a script that inserts the announcement into a version of each of the file-size options that BBC radio websites offer, but nobody got around to coding the bit that inserts the advertisement after the warning about the advertisement.

So Spirit airlines is using self boarding pass scan to speed things up

It is moving at a snail's pace aa the average idiot on this flight barely knows how to use them

Employee is having to help everyone...just like THE OLD WAY

Oh and they're having all zones go at the same time.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF ZONES THEN

I had to look up AA boarding groups for my wife recently and they had ten boarding groups plus an extra non-group that went before the rest, she had priority which got he into group 4. In Australia we have two lines premium and everyone else but in practice everyone just joins whichever line looks shorter and they board simultaneously. It's a lot quicker (but less monetised).

nobody got around to coding the bit that inserts the advertisement after the warning about the advertisement.

Oh it's coded, but there are more podcast episodes than the BBC's ad partner (Acast) can actually sell ads against. The BBC has thousands and thousands of podcast episodes; only a couple hundred get ads against them each month. And it's dynamic, so an episode that had an ad against it last month might not this month.

I’m going to consider myself as winning a very genial game of Russian roulette every time the ad chamber comes up empty from now on.

Used to be functions disappearing from home stereo systems and being replaced by flashing lights to make it more discoey.
Trying to think what went between me getting my first one which got stolen and then me having to replace it. I think there were things like the choice of what part fo a twin cassette deck set up you got to play in which direction and when it stopped is the first thing that comes to mind. You could actually use the remote to choose between side a and b of 2 decks and if you played to end of tape, continually through entire tape, or if you then swapped over to the other tape & i think that could be done from the remote.
Now I'm not even sure fi teh current player flips the tape side automatically.
I think that first one also had a set up for you to manually set up your audio choices, graphic equaliser like which gave way to choice of about 12 different sound pattern things like salsa, disco, soul, jazz, rock which were all preset.

We occasionally get adds on bbc podcasts down here. The electoral commission seems to buy a bunch during elections. It’s a bit jarring getting an Aussie ad on the bbc.

most of these are trade-offs where the "backward step" is accompanied by a "forward step". They exist because more people view the forward step as larger than the backward. It is natural that some do not, but it's still not accurate to describe the net as simply a "backward step".

this has to be a malcolm gladwell chapter

"every change is ultimately positive progress" is a curious stance

The existence of Malcolm Gladwell is a backward step we all just accept now.

lol I said "most of these" and indeed most examples of backward steps itt came along with huge forward steps. it would be more interesting to look at the ultimate net progress as you suggest, though. the idea of this thread seems to be to focus on what was traded off in a really negative light, which I think is more indicative of personality (which isn't necessarily negative) than any shift in technological capability. it's not as if battery technology got worse when the iphone came along. battery technology would probably be in a slightly worse state today without the huge driver of smart phone money.

see my "ruin but not replace" post - it's fallacious to assume that because the change happened/caught on that it was overall better or more beneficial. just has to benefit the right people, or render the old system just-broken-enough.

like i think we all know that many of these are seen as "forward steps" to somebody, even if it's just a corporation that counted the beans and realized that plastic components would save x cents per unit in the long term.

Yeah I think it's maybe important to note that 'progress' is often measured and driven by the bottom line of the companies who are ushering these 'innovations' into our lives. The theoretically possible things that people actually want/need/ask for are not often what we get.