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.
― Amply Drizzled with Pure Luxury (Old Lunch), Friday, 16 August 2019 21:59 (four years ago) link
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.
― triple-washed (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 16 August 2019 22:13 (four years ago) link
The way business is conducted often leads to regression or stagnation rather than progress, this article about Microsoft Word is a good example of thishttp://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 16 August 2019 22:29 (four years ago) link
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPointhttps://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html
― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, 17 August 2019 01:13 (four years ago) link
đź‘»innovationsđź‘»
― j., Saturday, 17 August 2019 01:51 (four years ago) link
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?
― Hideous Lump, Saturday, 17 August 2019 05:17 (four years ago) link
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, Saturday, 17 August 2019 05:49 (four years ago) link
It’s god’s way of telling you to send plain text emails.
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Saturday, 17 August 2019 06:03 (four years ago) link
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)
― Dan S, Thursday, August 15, 2019 7:04 AM (two days ago)
Did anyone ever promise this? They obviously would have been lying if so, but did any entity ever actually promote the lie?
bookmarkflaglink
― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Saturday, 17 August 2019 06:20 (four years ago) link
― j., Saturday, 17 August 2019 06:29 (four years ago) link
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_dvdsthe "access to everything" story wasn't told so much by the streaming companies as by the equivalent of WIRED and other digital cheerleaderati.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Saturday, 17 August 2019 11:28 (four years ago) link
I had never seen this last word and was hoping you had made it up for this post.
― TS: “8:05” vs. “905” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 August 2019 11:35 (four years ago) link
― Hideous Lump
J
― Abigail, Wife of Preserved Fish (rushomancy), Saturday, 17 August 2019 12:15 (four years ago) link
An issue w/the streaming myth is that it was propagated by people who have no idea how licensing works.
― frustration and wonky passion (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, 17 August 2019 12:46 (four years ago) link
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.
― Bnad, Saturday, 17 August 2019 14:17 (four years ago) link
automatics in general belong on this thread tbrr
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 17 August 2019 15:03 (four years ago) link
^ otmJlolbookmarkflaglinkdefinitely a practical step backwards
― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Saturday, 17 August 2019 15:11 (four years ago) link
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
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Saturday, 17 August 2019 15:35 (four years ago) link
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.
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 15:47 (four years ago) link
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.
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 15:51 (four years ago) link
I like to count the number of fonts and font sizes people use in one PowerPoint deck.
― Yerac, Saturday, 17 August 2019 15:52 (four years ago) link
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.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 17 August 2019 15:55 (four years ago) link
i only grudgingly accept the existence of power steering so
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 17 August 2019 16:08 (four years ago) link
In my experience apps like Slack have turned out to be worse than email for work comms - too much pressure to reply/contribute too quick and too easy to indulge in small talk you could either do face to face or not at all.
― nashwan, Saturday, 17 August 2019 16:10 (four years ago) link
i liked the anti-Word article posted above because it wasn't primarily about Word sucking (altho the issues with overlapping use of style presets and ad-hoc select-and-click formatting are discussed) but about how much easier and more robust things *might have become* in a world without Word dominating the field and quashing innovation in the area of specific tools. i now use scrivener for all my substantial writing, and the one part of the workflow that suuuucks is taking the exported RTF into word for final formatting.powerpoint makes it way too easy to lay out clunky, ugly documents, in just a "getting shit to line up, follow a grid, align, etc." sense. it still feels like a windows 98 era idea of what easy-to-use design would be (dumbed down and made clumsy, rather than streamlined with more functionality there if you want it). anytime i have to use it i'm just screaming for indesign inside. it also embeds all images at full size within the PPT file, which is very handy for tossing one presentation on a stick and taking it with you, but suuuuper annoying and wasteful of disk space if you're storing it locally, have multiple versions etc.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Saturday, 17 August 2019 16:32 (four years ago) link
wasteful of disk spacegod forbid.
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 16:36 (four years ago) link
i liked the anti-Word article posted above because it wasn't primarily about Word sucking (altho the issues with overlapping use of style presets and ad-hoc select-and-click formatting are discussed) but about how much easier and more robust things *might have become* in a world without Word dominating the field and quashing innovation in the area of specific tools. i now use scrivener for all my substantial writing, and the one part of the workflow that suuuucks is taking the exported RTF into word for final formatting.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino)
or, in a world without word, i might have 12,000 different overlays for each different program to put on top of my keyboard...
― Abigail, Wife of Preserved Fish (rushomancy), Saturday, 17 August 2019 16:37 (four years ago) link
The fact that scrivener can’t export to .docx is not Word’s fault
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 18:18 (four years ago) link
but… it can?
― j., Saturday, 17 August 2019 18:19 (four years ago) link
then why does Doctor Casino not do this?!?!?
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 18:23 (four years ago) link
I blame sic’s podcast post for turning this into the “complaining about commonplace tech we can’t be bothered to learn how to use” threadbunch of old dogs on ilx
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 18:25 (four years ago) link
xp well maybe he just likes rtf - even if you put out docx, there's often some fiddling with the scrivener-formatted doc that one would like to do, unless you just commit to doing everything with scrivener and its formatting options. personally i just do barely any other than italics and a bit of header-ing so that i'm not distracted away from ~teh writing~
― j., Saturday, 17 August 2019 18:27 (four years ago) link
ILX THREADS DRIFT GET USED TO IT ALREADY
Sir this is an Arby’s
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 18:30 (four years ago) link
every thread of this type devolves into an amalgamation of software support threads
― triple-washed (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 17 August 2019 18:36 (four years ago) link
Word is just fine. Y’all are crazy. It’s Excel and its complete inability to handle large workbooks that drives me crazy.
― Mr. Snrub, Saturday, 17 August 2019 19:21 (four years ago) link
It's all been downhill since Tandy's Deskmate
― i'd rather zing like a man, than FP like a coward (Neanderthal), Saturday, 17 August 2019 19:22 (four years ago) link
What is that thing where newer model cars coming to a stop at an intersection have to restart the engine when it’s their turn to go? I’m not sure if that’s what actually happening or if that’s just what it sounds like is happening.
― omar little, Saturday, 17 August 2019 19:26 (four years ago) link
that is actually what's happening. it's to conserve fuel.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 17 August 2019 19:31 (four years ago) link
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/automobiles/wheels/start-stop-technology-is-coming-to-cars-like-it-or-not.htmlThat is a genuinely good and on topic thing for this thread. Enough with the half measures! Get a car that plugs in!
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 August 2019 19:40 (four years ago) link
Amazing
― omar little, Saturday, 17 August 2019 20:08 (four years ago) link
My old Escort used to have that feature but we called it "stalling"
― mick signals, Saturday, 17 August 2019 20:45 (four years ago) link
lol my ford fiesta does this now
― Carisis LaVerted (m bison), Saturday, 17 August 2019 20:52 (four years ago) link
blame sic’s podcast post for turning this into the “complaining about commonplace tech we can’t be bothered to learn how to use” threadI helpfully provided step-by-step instructions for ppl who need to learn how to use web pages, old dogs are as worthy of my street pats as bright-eyed shibe pups
― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Saturday, 17 August 2019 21:14 (four years ago) link
That is a genuinely good and on topic thing for this thread. Enough with the half measures! Get a car that plugs in!― El Tomboto, Sunday, 18 August 2019 5:40 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 18 August 2019 5:40 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
Electric is such a massive improvement on internal combustion engines that I fully expect this thread to be complaining about electric cars in a couple of years.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Saturday, 17 August 2019 21:18 (four years ago) link
What is that thing where newer model cars coming to a stop at an intersection have to restart the engine when it’s their turn to go?
my car does this, it threw me off a bit at first, but it's actually fine. it just happens automatically. I can turn it off but iirc you have to turn it off every time you start the car, it doesn't stay off
― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 17 August 2019 21:56 (four years ago) link
Doesn't that wear out the starter?
― pplains, Saturday, 17 August 2019 23:45 (four years ago) link
I have absolutely no idea tbh but according to Wikipedia: The starter is reinforced and designed to withstand continuous use without wearing too fast or overheating.
― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 17 August 2019 23:48 (four years ago) link
this is my first car so I don't have a lot of basis for comparison, but it seems OK. it's quite smart, like if the car in front of me starts moving it auto-starts before I've even taken my foot off the brake
― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 17 August 2019 23:50 (four years ago) link
I have it too and agree that it mostly works fine. Apparently it’s not like a hard restart, more like some kind of suspension that just springs back to life when you take your foot off the gas. The amount of tech in the car overall is pretty boggling - I’ve had it six months, read the manuals front to back, watched hours of videos, and still don’t understand all of it. Absolutely love it right now, but it’s got definite “quirks” and I fear the day it brakes on its own in highway traffic or whatever because a sensor malfunctions.
― Manitobiloba (Kim), Sunday, 18 August 2019 04:11 (four years ago) link