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

I truly don't understand why people have a problem with typing in a pin to open their phones. Never will use the biometric stuff.

― Kind regards, Anus (the table is the table), Sunday, September 5, 2021 2:01 PM (yesterday

High Five!

I truly don't understand why people have a problem with typing in a pin to open their phones. Never will use the biometric stuff.

Agreed.

Also biometric stuff is fine and its hard to rail against it too much without sounding a bit well much

Would happily do a blood test to open my phone tbh

I'm having a hard time seeing what is bad about any individual using whatever method suits thrm.

I just spit on my phone and it does a DNA test to unlock.

I swipe it through my butt crack like a credit card

I'm having a hard time seeing what is bad about any individual using whatever method suits thrm.

That goes both ways

I kind of assumed people hated the biometric stuff if they don't work for that industry or one that relies on it but that they figure everything else is compromised anyway do who cares

seems bizarre to me to have no problem at all with it even then but I feel the same about people who support or don't mind having CCTV cameras everywhere, I'm intimately familiar with the you're being a bit much about this look

I guess blurring of the line between surveillance and convenience (and the unclearness about who the convenience is for) seems like such a self evidently bad thing to me that it's weird how normal about it people are. and the potential price of not being normal about it is terrifying (which means you have to become your own cop and do a lot of their own work for them)

i don't think biometric stuff you have on phones (android here) leaves the device. so my fingerprint is hashed, the hash stored, and any new presses are similarly hashed and compared against the stored one.

if i bought a new phone i'd have to re-register my finger. if i put my phone into airplane mode it'll still unlock. so, slightly different.

I think if you are carrying around a phone and doing all the regular internet stuff people do, you've already conceded this a long time ago, and the biometric stuff only adds a tiny piece to the massive amounts of personal information you've already given away (like your precise location 24/7).

That being said, I totally don't begrudge anyone for not being comfortable using this stuff. OTOH, I'm still trying to wrap my head around what harm I'm causing to others if I prefer to use it.

I find it gratifying when someone from another country validates my horror about eg those banners on london buses because I know I'm not the only one but people get so weird if you bring it up as a problem like they're half contemplating turning you in or something

that's the logic I understand xp, I do not understand not understanding how it could possibly bother people at all regardless of logic

it's not so much the fingerprint or where it goes in this case as the cumulative effects these things seem to have on behaviour around surveillance of self/others in general & the sense that any hesitancy or criticism is kind of suspicious

I’ve never heard anyone express suspicion about someone being hesitant around biometrics or fingerprints, and certainly not here. On the other hand, people moaning about their privacy being taken away by big tech are seemingly everywhere.

I’m not happy about CCTV everywhere but that feels like a different issue.

are the people moaning about that wrong

Well it depends why. Usually they’re moaning about their own personal use and there’s a very simple way out of that which is to stop using Facebook and Google and Amazon.

Helpfully, there are about 10000000 other good reasons not to do business with those companies as well.

There's a lot of this we take for granted that should be questioned. I'm still dubious on the idea that biometric locks are a significant part of that puzzle, but ymmv.

It's a trade off for me. I feel like they provide more security for my actual phone because they are unique and can't be copied vs PINs, which are relatively easy to swipe. I really, really hate POS devices at certain stores that force you to enter a PIN for a debit card even if your own bank doesn't require it.

Like 9 out of 10 card swipe machines don't require a PIN, so why are there still ones that do?

I think it's the "I'll never understand people who…" that rubs the wrong way. I can understand why someone would want to use biometric (it's quicker, more convenient) and why someone would not. Can you seriously not understand the advantage, just the disadvantages of it?? Otherwise it certainly appears that you're calling everyone who choose to use biometric id foolish.

and the suspicion of discomfort thing is v real if you often have to interact with invasive bureaucracies with close ties to psychiatric & law enforcement in order to live, any excess paranoia feels like part of the point then

Yeah, this is pretty much what I was responding to, not that I think everyone has to use it, but I feel like my own personal reasons for preferring it are mostly ok, at least for me.

xp

On the Internet anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, this is canon

xpost Okay, fair enough Left.

no one is insulting anyone just for using this stuff so the hurt feelings are hard to empathise with here

I'll never understand you, Left

Lol Left nobody’s feeling are hurt

I was literally saying I don't see what's so hard about entering a PIN, which is something that had been expressed.

I truly don't care if you use it, I just don't think that the face or fingerprint thing are any more convenient than a PIN.

In other words, I'll keep using my PIN, thanks.

It's not "so hard". It's just easier to use face or fingerprint. Why else do you think people prefer it?

Cause it seems more "futuristic"?

I'll never understand you, Left

I especially like face id when I'm driving, using my phone for GPS directions. If face id doesn't work (often happens due to position of my face vis a vis the phone dock), I have to take my eyes off the road that much longer to enter pin.

I've also mentioned a couple different times that I use it less for convenience and more because I find it to be more secure

i don’t even lock my phone

baller move

Phone?

I don't even use GPS. Rarely leave the house without knowing where I'm going.

i don't even own a fingerprint

You owe d-mac a royalty fee

I can recall a time when to go to a soccer match, you would purchase a ticket - maybe from the ground, maybe by post or telephone.

Then a time, very recently, when you would carry a dedicated little plastic card with your name and number as a supporter of that club, and when you ordered, online or by telephone, the card would be 'loaded' with the ticket, or rather, the stadium turnstiles, I suppose, would be primed to accept you when you touched them with that card.

I attended a lot of matches both ways.

I have now arrived at a time when I receive an email from a club telling me that tickets are on a 'digital pass'. I click a link to something that has a scannable code thing, but when I try to do that it makes no difference. I don't believe that said pass is anywhere on my mobile phone as it was supposed to be. The whole concept seems also to involve Google Pay, a thing I have never had or wanted anything to do with.

The tendency is to think that I will never be able to go to a match again.

I admit that during a pandemic is a bad time to go to a match anyway.

I continue to believe that while technology has improved some things, it continues to make some things worse.

I went to a show right before the pandemic started. It was the first show I had gone to where I wasn't asked to print out my tickets at home - I actually had to have the doorman scan the QR code in the Ticketmaster app on my phone. I was fine with that (gripes about souvenir ticket stub collecting notwithstanding), but when I got to the club, it was in an area with shitty cell reception and for some reason the app timed out while I was in line and I was having a rough time trying to get it back up again. I managed to get it back up by the time I got to the front of the line, but it was way more frustrating that just having a fucking ticket.

Yes - I can see how that is bad.

Requiring internet access to get into a thing is bad because internet is not always reliable.

But I think what I described is bad at another level - I can't even get to the point of notionally having the ticket on my mobile phone.

always keep a screenshot or local copy

our local soccer team only accepts the digital ticket and will not accept screenshots. they have a dynamic barcode that changes periodically so screenshots won't work.

reception is awful outside the stadium. so you have to remember to download it to Google Pay in advance or you have a very bad time.

that is extremely annoying

fwiw I have both PIN and fingerprint enabled on my phone, I usually use fingerprint because it's quicker, but if I've just put handcream on or washed my hands the fingerprint reader doesn't work, so I can just put the PIN in then

The first time I drove through empty roads to a deserted transport hub for a covid test and had a masked person in PPE scan the appointment barcode on my phone through my closed car window was one of the most filmy dystopian-future moments of the past few years.