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

Yeah, I vastly prefer the tap option for sure, but even with that I sometimes get "wait, not yet.... okay, now go ahead and tap it... wait the light isn't coming on... oh, there it is, go ahead now".

I don't like it when you insert a card into the chip reader and the screen flashes a series of messages that are variations on "do not remove card" like it's trying to fake you out for that eventual "remove card" message.

are you enrolled in 7/11 frequent gas program

if so pls type phone number

UK touch-screen ticket machines at railway stations: some present you with a QWERTY keyboard, others with A-Z. If you are printing off pre-paid tickets you have to insert a card, but it needn't be the one that the tickets were bought on, so why?
I guess most people don't print their tickets now, though - it'sso long since I've been on a train.

don't need 7/11's help to have frequent gas

Although the gas station touchscreen did lead to one of my friends’ best quotes that I still rib him about. Years ago, just as the touchscreen things were becoming more common, we were driving back from a concert at Alpine Valley, late at night and exhausted, and stopped for gas in the middle of nowhere. I was half asleep in the passenger seat when I heard my buddy loudly exclaim from outside the car, “how the FUCK am I supposed to know the goddamn zip code here????”

Hahaha

lol yes re: the fakeouts for the moment when you're actually supposed to remove the card. it's like a high-stakes electronic game of Simon Says with these things.

yes

And Chip is always slide face up from what i understand, it only gets confusing on those rotating counter ipad kiosks or a vertical slot

Chip told me he gets confused on your mum’s vertical slot too

a stretch but payment accepted

if i can make the effort to visit your restaurant, i feel like you can make the effort to print a menu out

fuck a QR code; i didn’t even have my phone with me

Seems like that ship has sailed. When we were in Minneapolis, every single place we stopped to eat at had only a QR code option. Which, you know, in pandemic times I get it, but one spot said this will be their plan moving forward, less money to spend on physical menus.

feel like that was a COVID measure but one that's p much been deemed unnecessary by this point.

I hate QR codes. i hate reading a menu on my phone.

tempted to hack PF Chang's site to change the signature dish to "Roast Fuck"

It's also fun when you are dining with kids who don't have their own phones!

if you're gonna make me go onto a site, just give me the URL. I realize the QR code is for people who are technology challenged. but a URL would get me there faster. and they should cater to me and me only. because I'm Neanderthal oooog aggggh

Yes yes yes

hate hate hate the qr code thing. i can't get them to work on my phone. the way the restaurants direct you to use them is so presumptuous imo, like this smiling "i'll be back with some water, and the qr code for the menu is right there!" great well, i'll just be sitting here trying to google your website and getting bogged down in irrelevant results, thanks.

also, have not seen much talk of this, but it seems nakedly discriminatory in the same way as cashless businesses imo.

I just order corn dogs.

If they don't have them and they say so I ask what they do have.

They then give me a menu

Terrible idea, I will start doing the same!

lmao

i would like a sno-cone please

does the sno-cone come with fried plaintains?

was looking for a menu on the pub website. nothing. actually go to pub, there's a qr code for you to order from the current menu, which, obviously, has a url that they could've just linked to in the first place on their website.
but I guess that wouldn't involve downloading an out-of-date pdf on my phone

Wonder how many of these QR code menus are inside frames with midi's playing over them.

Join our webring

I love it when restaurants post their QR code on Instagram. How do I scan that?

in Chrome you can apparently just click the box and it'll run something, maybe Google lens

i tried it and it worked. spooky.

isn't this QR code thing basically a covid thing?

Yeah. Just like Zoom meetings and GrubHub.

Having physically visited one (1) restaurant in the past 1.5 years, I had no idea about this QR code thing. If that's a thing I encounter post-covid, I can't say that I won't get up and go to a different restaurant.

most places that’s a thing here, they still offer a printed menu on request. it was a sanitary precaution recommended in the list of restaurant changes

there’s a large beerhall-type place here that’s never had printed menus, just a beer list on their website and a large screen near the bar that scrolls through the beers available. “beer places that only have their menu on the untappd website/app” is a mild irritation but was definitely a thing over the last couple years


I don’t really care either way. Minor inconvenience if the food/drinks are good and printing menus regularly is kind of wasteful. Worst case scenario, just order the special

Not exactly a tech thing, but sort of - any article which is broken up by 'See other things!' links that aren't separated from the rest of the text (imo it's bad enough having them at all within the text even if visually separate - it's not like I'm glancing at a paper to see these but am literally scrolling down reading the article - but unforgivable like this.)
e.g. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210719-why-light-pollution-is-harming-our-wildlife
About 1/3 way in and there's just 3 bulleted links under 'you might also like' in the same font size etc as the main text.

isn't this QR code thing basically a covid thing?

Yes, that's where I started. But like I mentioned, we asked about them at a restaurant we ate at over the 4th of July and the server said they plan to stick with them permanently because "they are easier" and they'd already saved a bunch of money from not printing updated menus. I suspect it won't be widespread everywhere, but I do anticipate a number of places not going back.

Not really a fan of digital program notes at concerts/theater.

I went to an art museum last weekend and they were pushing web-based tours to do on your phone.

Which is fine, I guess. But I wonder if there will be a wave of nostalgia for those rentable tape player thingies

The sound is so much WARMER, y'know?

I'm not saying technology ruins absolutely everything, but the Lego Mario sets don't have paper instructions and instead require you to download a fucking *1.5GB* app instead that contains them. fantastic.

— Dan Hett (@danhett) July 27, 2021

ugh that's terrible.
I just spent a happy two days building a set with my kid that had an instruction booklet almost the size of an Argos catalogue

they are usually downloadable from the website. quality varies with the old sets though because the scans are so bad the black just becomes one big blob and you can't make out the bricks.

yeah, this gives you two choices, one at 153MB and a pdf at 5...

this = https://www.lego.com/en-gb/service/buildinginstructions/71363

How many times – especially on third-party software we license – that I've clicked a link to a tutorial and it's taken me to a 6:58 instructional video.

Should I take notes? Should I bounce back and forth between my project and your constantly paused video? Or how about a set of step-by-step directions that I can just read.

(Youtube handymen excluded from this objection. Not like I pay them anyway.)

I’ve noticed this with computer games—now that everything is on Steam etc., it seems as though instruction manuals have been abolished. Sure, there’s a tutorial level or popups when starting a game that give basic controls, but anything more than that I have to look for some GameFAQ guide or reddit post. Which sucks because I’ve had plot points spoiled while searching for that stuff. I had to turn off auto-complete in my browser after doing a search for "how to find [NPC companion name]’s…" and it filled in “grave”, spoiling a big twist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/technology/qr-codes-tracking.html

How many times – especially on third-party software we license – that I've clicked a link to a tutorial and it's taken me to a 6:58 instructional video.

seriously ... this is me and the gmail mail merge software I use once a year, that I forget how exactly to do the thing, and so I go to the site, and there's the instructional video. Like, look, I just want to know how to format the date for scheduled sending. I don't want to watch your whole video!

Fucking municipal parking apps!!! There are like four different ones that the towns around here use, you need to set up an "account" just to fucking park for ten minutes to pick up your bagels, the apps themselves are all terrible, clunky to use, often don't work, take way more time than just inserting coins or a credit card, and I'd be surprised if my credit card info is actually secure.

^oh fuck yes, infuriating. And I don't even live in a metro area.

yeah our one here is an object lesson in UI failure for the most part. Hilariously, if you want to interact directly with the meter it uses a mono LCD screen at waist height, in which either the polarisation or the voltage is fucked up to the extent that it gives navy pixels on a khaki background of almost exactly the same brightness. You also have to press some bizarre right arrow button to even enter the number of the parking space. I used to hate it but now I've kind of transcended to an existential amusement at how bad it is.

oh and it also never tells you how many minutes you've paid for. It gives you the expiration time, and doesn't show the current time, so you have to either keep it in mind if you remembered to note it first (there's no way back if you didn't), or cross check with your phone / watch and calculate the difference mentally.