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

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.

Ok, I won't flat out say it's a "backward step," but I do miss being able to press the garage door button and then run out into the driveway like Indiana Jones.

Instead, I have to walk back inside the house and then out the front door, like a schmuck.

But aren't most sensors located a couple inches off the ground, thereby allowing you to step over the beam they shoot?

what is being discussed here

Ok, I won't flat out say it's a "backward step," but I do miss being able to press the garage door button and then run out into the driveway like Indiana Jones.

Instead, I have to walk back inside the house and then out the front door, like a schmuck.

― pplains, Saturday, September 18, 2021 1:12 PM bookmarkflaglink

lol I discovered this wasn't possible when housesitting for a friend.

But aren't most sensors located a couple inches off the ground, thereby allowing you to step over the beam they shoot?

Yeah, but I'm so slow tall that by the time I get to the door, it's already five feet off the ground.

Sic reminds me of the time I came home and my garage door wouldn't open at all. When I got inside, my Australian brother-in-law told me, "Took forever for me to open your garage door. Finally realized I had to pull on that red handle hanging down!"

hah!

I’ve only had to pull the release rope a couple times at my place, most notably when the power was out for three days after storms last year. I remember thinking, hey, hope this thing works

Same. My favorite part is putting it back into place. It's like a little model train set or something!

Mo money mo problemz

totally feeling like Tuomas in the famous ppl pics thread here

was able to guess at the change that’s taken place by pp’s last post, but then I get two more mysteries out of the rest of the same post

Alice Cooper was one of the first "shock-rock" artists of the 1970s. Lady Bird Johnson was the wife of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president.

Now what two mysteries can I help clarify.

i remain lost on this garage door thing but tbf i'm also not reading any of the posts very carefully

for the first and probably last time in my life i feel smug about having a garage door opener

most modern garage doors have sensors in them to prevent people from getting hurt so if you hit the button to start the garage going down and attempt to run out really fast to get outside before it closes, it senses you there, and the door starts going back up.

back in my day you just got crushed and died and your friends remembered you as the badass you were.

xpost

Used to be, if you needed to leave your garage on foot to the outside world, you could press the button on the wall of your garage to close the door and then run out real quick, ducking to avoid hitting your head, if you had to.

But then, America got all "politically correct" because "children" were getting "asphyxiated" by doors slamming down on them and now, we've got these little sensors on either side of the portal:

https://i.imgur.com/INwCuOi.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/U02zmqd.jpg

So if anything breaks the beam between those two sensors while the door is closing – a car, a child, a pet, Indiana Jones – the doors immediately stop closing.

xpost

thanks, both of you! still hazy on the red handle/release rope part but i can accept them as details of the process that i don't really need anyone to waste time trying to verbalize.