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

ok this is kind of cool. my kid's home sick, on the couch under a blanket, and i'm wfh. he's listening to radio 4 through the alexa. it's desert island discs and one of the choices was public enemy 'rebel without a pause' and my kid goes 'alexa, play songs by public enemy' - suddenly 'fight the power' is on. that's pretty rad.

When I first got my alexa i used to get up in the morning and shout Alexa play some jazz!

tracer yr kid is now on an international terrorism watch list, sorry to report

I still treasure the memory of the day in my first IT job that someone moderately important emailed the entire organisation (presumably accidentally) a video of themselves skydiving, naked

btw this was in the 90s when video files were large (video compression in its infancy and not the default option for home video editing software) and network bandwidth was not - the entire infrastructure ground to a halt all day and people trying to check their email over dialup became very irate

xp

It's cool, the S1Ws will be crashing through Tracer's windows at any moment now to liberate the child.

Windows 10

That's all, just Windows fucken 10

Whatta sack of trash

ooh good we’re about to move on to that at work.

Made the mistake at home a while back, had it foisted upon me at work a couple weeks ago. Sucks.

C'mon, Microsoft. You cranked it all the way up to 95 at one point, only to slide all the way back down to 10? Weak, bruh.

I've been on Windows 10 for a couple years and haven't had any problems.

DIdn't ILX once have a "Subscribe to this thread!" function? That was insane.

Seriously, the postman couldn't even fit that effing DMB thread in my mailslot.

worst euphemism ever

my experience of windows 10 was basically like the launch of Coca-Cola Classic after the New Coke nightmare that was Window 8. it's still slightly less functional and slightly more cluttered than 98/XP which is basically as far as PC operating system software actually needed to evolve for my purposes. so yeah, fits for the thread.

Like, much of the reason I've remained a PC head is that I can't stand the infantilizing 'here, let us handle that for you, techno-n00b' philosophy that seems to inform so much of Apple's stuff. But now Microsoft is gradually adopting the same approach. Really, it's the inability to opt out of their constant mandatory updates that sticks in my craw the most. No no, Windows, it's totally cool that you had to restart everything while I was away and close out the programs I was running and those unsaved files I had up. Whatever you think is best, father.

I am so tired of microsoft disabling 'stereo mix' input every time they update, one day I know it's not going to be fixable.

And while we're at it, just in case it hasn't been mentioned already, Apple hardware evolving into a variety of differently-sized smooth white obelisks with no pesky vestigial ports for things like 'headphone jacks' or 'physical media discs' is really just the dumbest shit in the world and it baffles me that people just roll with it. Like at some point they'll decide that screens are superfluous and their customers will just nod as they strain to understand the complex set of faint atmospheric tones and chimes that Apple has decided is the logical step beyond the primitive concept of a GUI.

^^^

I agree, but I don't really think it's that people have been just rolling with it, there's been a pretty sizable negative response and complaints every time they remove the ports and jacks. Apple just doesn't give a shit and people are so invested with the "ease of use" already that they have no choice. I'm not sure what effective pushback would look like, but I'd love it.

Yeah nothing will ever be as bad as Windows 8, everything after is a sweet relief

xp

we've all said "dongle" more times in the last two years than in all of human history, so that's a neat side effect.

Well, I guess some of us were raised by people who allowed us to refer to a penis by its proper name rather than forcing us to use a ridiculous and humiliating neologism.

yy I wish people wouldn't feel they need to buy this stuff that doesn't actually do what they want

That's nearly every piece of technology at this point afaict. Feels like I spend roughly equivalent amounts of time using a device and swearing at that device to effing do what the gee-dee aitch it's supposed to effing do already for the love of pete.

xpost buying a penis?

Thankfully, I don't have to lay down money for that privilege.

subsidized penis?

We all just accept it now, whether it works the way we want it to or not.

infantilizing 'here, let us handle that for you, techno-n00b' philosopy

vs. m-soft's 'we know better than you how to handle action x and will make it aymptotically almost impossible to override our auto-implementation.'

I don't believe this beautiful disaster has appeared itt yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo

How is that real?

If I ever have to install those and go through that process, that's when I just go "full oldster" and stubbornly sit in the dark.

lolllll, how many minutes of youtube clips does it take to change a lightbulb

I'm pretty sure that video is GE employing hyperbolic absurdity as a method of gently breaking the news that they accidentally happened to snare the consciousnesses of all living humans in a simulation of their devising. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.

I'm not sure what has changed, but it's worth noting that this appears to be an updated version of the video that was making the rounds earlier in the year for its depiction of an utterly hilarious dystopia. The fact that they didn't manage to shave like 2:45 off of the video tells me that GE didn't really take away anything worthwhile from getting hardclowned.

claps for MI5 being disbanded!

haah whoops

windows 10 is grand tbh

last good windows version was XP.

Why, in 2019, is on-hold music always so awful? I'm sitting on the phone waiting to get a washing machine serviced and the music sounds like it's being played on a scrunched up cassette tape at the bottom of the ocean. It also loops round in a really annoying way so that the tune cuts off after 10"s, a short gap that sounds like someone's about to pick up, and then it starts again.

Telephones in general still sound like absolute shit.

The main problem for me with on-hold music is that it's almost always really loud

People who have on-hold music on their telephone systems are rarely on hold on their telephone systems.

Ours probably says something like "Our offices are closed for the Memorial Day holiday...."

We once had a customer escalation cos he was on hold for ten minutes and at one point the hold music played a Christmas song

when did it become ok for them to show 4:3 clips on a 16:9 tv and fill the gaps on the sides with a blurry copy of the edges?

Truly the comic sans of video presentation.

must be linked somehow to news/entertainment shows deciding on standards for using cell phone footage shot in the vertical orientation

They could at least fill the black space with like fractals animations or something. Dancing babies? I'm just spitballing here.

Used to be that time traveling machines were simple to program. You set the destination date and time, and boom, you're on your way.

Now you have to pick a primary day and a secondary day if the time jump doesn't work, and the secondary defaults to 12/12/2019 for some reason.

it's downloading a fuckin' system update so I can't jump back to my native time.

Y'know, it sure did seem to me like there were an awful lot of extra people wandering around today.

wait til u see what happens to you in 5 minutes

u get zinged. and it winds up on the "zing" thread.

I am preemptively mortified.