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

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.

I agree with these last 3 posts. I also think that the primary purpose of this thread is to take turns putting the word 'innovations' in scare quotes.

The way business is conducted often leads to regression or stagnation rather than progress, this article about Microsoft Word is a good example of this

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

👻innovations👻

Back when it was all DVDs by mail, Netflix had basically everything that was ever released on video. Now you're at the mercy of whatever each streaming service makes available that month, which is probably a fifth of what was available on DVD.

Wasn't the promise of streaming that you would have access to everything?

How is it that, thirty years down the line, email is still the same piece of shit technology that it always was.

Like, there's someone that I work with, every email she sends, the company logo graphic in her signature is always broken; instead, it shows up as an attached jpeg. There's also usually a second attachment called something like "0.html" which is inevitably just a blank web page.

It’s god’s way of telling you to send plain text emails.

Back when it was all DVDs by mail, Netflix had basically everything that was ever released on video.

xxp netflix dvd subscriptions are not that expensive and they have a huge selection of films from the 20th Century!

― Dan S, Thursday, August 15, 2019 7:04 AM (two days ago)

Wasn't the promise of streaming that you would have access to everything?

Did anyone ever promise this? They obviously would have been lying if so, but did any entity ever actually promote the lie?

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there was a good article a couple years ago that went over how much has been phased out of netflix's dvd-by-mail business through the attrition of dvds that got damaged and weren't replaced.... found it! https://www.kqed.org/arts/10141066/netflix_streaming_dvds

the "access to everything" story wasn't told so much by the streaming companies as by the equivalent of WIRED and other digital cheerleaderati.

I had never seen this last word and was hoping you had made it up for this post.

How is it that, thirty years down the line, email is still the same piece of shit technology that it always was.

Like, there's someone that I work with, every email she sends, the company logo graphic in her signature is always broken; instead, it shows up as an attached jpeg. There's also usually a second attachment called something like "0.html" which is inevitably just a blank web page.

― Hideous Lump

J

An issue w/the streaming myth is that it was propagated by people who have no idea how licensing works.

Speaking of one second delays, The half second or second it takes for newer model cars to go after you step on the gas pedal.

automatics in general belong on this thread tbrr

^ otm

J

lol

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definitely a practical step backwards

still an enthusiastic user of netflix dvd service, always waiting for them to drop the hammer on it. i cant imagine why it continues this long, other than the fact that it must cost them next to nothing to keep it up

PowerPoint is bad when used by amateurs. Program quad charts, excessive bullets, terrible formatting: these are not the programs’ fault. A bad briefing is bad because the briefer is bad at briefing. Its closest competitor, Keynote, has all of the same issues.

Word is mediocre when used for text documents that are 4 pages long and need to be reviewed by 2 people. It is phenomenal when a 30 page document with tables and figures needs to be reviewed by an organization of 100+ people. Its closest competitors still lag behind Word in this department.

Automatic transmissions are “bad” because they save on wear & tear (especially tires) and fuel consumption. If you claim to prefer manual transmissions for any rationale besides “fun” you are a moron. Anyway, drive electric. It’s practically 2020 already.

Email is brilliant technology, always has been, and if you hate it you have no place in an office. Go apprentice as a tradesperson and learn to cast bronze or pour concrete or something.

I like to count the number of fonts and font sizes people use in one PowerPoint deck.

i have better control over the car in a stickshift. at least it feels that way. the car doesn't "creep" when my foot's not on the accelerator and it's more responsive to the gas pedal. also i know when to shift, I'm not a moron. but yeah our electric/hybrid future will require automatics, I'm resigned to that.

i only grudgingly accept the existence of power steering so