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

I even have a folder for emails from mailman-type systems where they assign you a password.

how many things can you think of exist that want a constant energy output off of a low-tension wound spring?

Mechanical watches most commonly, which nowadays cost more than those with an electronic quartz movement pushing the hands around. Same thing goes if you're making a toy record player.

If I lose or ever misplace my phone, I'm fucked work-wise - all these double-authentication stuff comes to the phone, I don't have contingencies in place

Your phone number is tied to the insertable SIM card; your mobile carrier can provide a replacement.

sarahell, you are probably doing it right, but you are also way more organized than many of us too

I guess I remember about 10 passwords and the rest are handled by a password manager. I’ve no idea how people could live without them one these days unless they’re reusing passwords. I guess by repeatedly resetting their passwords by email, yeah, but that seems a massive faff.

them one

I’m about the same. Remember 5-10 passwords and have 720 in 1password.

on my laptop I have an encryption app you start up by entering a password. that unlocks a file with all my passwords and other info like bank account numbers. Lock when done entering password.

on my iPhone I use icloud password keychain which fills in the password after Touch ID/Face ID verification; this also works on newer Macs with a fingerprint reader.

My password is bigbuttz69 hope nobody figures out my username

xp I’ve got two-factor in apps instead of text messages because it’s convenient. I’ve botched migrating them before, but think I’ve got it down now. We’ll
find out in a couple weeks!

my mother's maiden name is yourmom

xxp - what do you use when it requires at least one capital letter or special character?

Or is it like:
Bigbuttz69

and

Bigbuttz69!

The requirement of an "account" and therefore password for every goddamn merchant is definitely a step backwards, like how many fucking times do you really think I'm going to be ordering from vinyldeerfencing dot com after this?

xpost B!gbuttz69

not sure if it might be a wrinkle of my wacky setup or what, but more and more higher security type stuff (banking, credit cards) don't seem to think my password is enough anymore and send me a new code via email every single sign-in. Even when all my sign-ins have been at home.

my mother's maiden name is yourmom

― maf you one two (maffew12), Monday, November 1, 2021 2:19 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao same, maybe they're related????

maffewperman and mapman

no way we'd both be descended from the Dildo Yourmoms?

man alive extremely otm

i agree but then.... no way i am doing the Facebook or Google logins. Guest checkouts for stores are a good idea though.

ime plenty of stores have guest checkouts. I'm paranoid though and always create a login. What if I want to return it, or it gets lost... I imagine calling them up and them being like sir, I have no record of your account. Unlikely but I'm getting a little (more) insane as I get older.

ime plenty of stores have guest checkouts. I'm paranoid though and always create a login. What if I want to return it, or it gets lost... I imagine calling them up and them being like sir, I have no record of your account. Unlikely but I'm getting a little (more) insane as I get older.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, November 1, 2021 8:30 AM (one hour ago)

hahahah -- I definitely get paranoid like this too, though most of the time I do guest checkout anyway

you're always fine as long as you get a confirmation email with the order/tracking info. That's just schtick they pull to get you to give them your data -- they always try to make it seem like it benefits you.

my mother's maiden name is yourmom

― maf you one two (maffew12), Monday, November 1, 2021 2:19 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao same, maybe they're related????

― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map), Monday, November 1, 2021 8:14 AM (two hours ago)

I am now beginning to think that the best man at my wedding, Hugh G Cock, might have played that role at other weddings other than my own?!!

my phone (pixel3a) wants to update (Android 12). it's a 1.5GB download. over 3g.

I'm at a mall for the first time in years. I don't know where to go. They have electronic kiosks everywhere, oh surely there is a map at one of these kiosks. No! Just a QR code to scan for a map, on your phone,which does not actually lead to a map. Also cell coverage here is terrible.

trying to read any map on a phone is a nightmare anyway

ha, in London is usually a case of zoom in so you can see the road names and the nearest tube is off the screen. zoom out so you can see the nearest tube and it stops showing you the tube station name...

my bank used to accept scans of checks as deposits

now, as part of its efforts to deliver best in class service, that function is no longer available. instead, you can try to take photos of both sides of the check with The Mobile App That Doesn’t Fucking Work

i mean i can literally mail you the checks with a physical deposit slip but is that really what you want

ha, my bank *sends* me cheques (dividends from Lloyds shares) and also keeps asking why i didn't deposit the one for £1.53 that it sent me two years ago.

My mortgage company guilts me with every paper statement mailed to my address and with each login I make into their site, "Why won't you go PAPERLESS? Don't you care about the ENVIRONMENT?"

Meanwhile, the same mortgage company sends me mailed paper offers to refinance my home at least four times a month.

I got the mail yesterday and had 10 envelopes with credit offers - six from Citi alone. Also four communications from my insurance company that cheerily invite me to "go paperless," though we already did - a decade ago.

Also 12 appeals for charitable donations. SPLC and ASPCA among the worst offenders. Interestingly, environmental (and enviro-adjacent) nonprofits - Nature Conservancy, I'm talking about you - seem to love the idea of paying the Federal government to use gas-powered vehicles to provide me with rectangles of wood pulp, with which I populate my recycling bin. I then pay my county's government to send a gas-powered vehicle to come get these rectangles, and send them back into the neverending routine of design, print, mail, toss, recycle, lather, rinse, repeat.

One of my idle fantasies about being rich (lol) is centered on this. I would like to inform every nonprofit that I donate to (there are lots) that the amount of my support will be contingent on how much mail they don't send me. Each charity will start the year with a planned donation of (say) $10,000. I will reduce that donation by a thousand dollars for every piece of direct mail I get.

I'm not rich enough, nor enough of a dick, to apply the same to email / texts, but it remains a persistent fantasy.

Haha, your heart's in the right place, but that sounds kinda like the guy who sits down at Waffle House, places ten $1 bills on the table as a potential tip, and then removes one for each infraction.

except a company isn't a person

GTA definitive editions

(although 'accept' might be stretching it)

Microsoft Word becomes more and more of a disaster as it gets more advanced. They honestly need to just start over.

Xp pplains, yes I know of whomst you speak and no that is not the intent at all

I just... sometimes get a sadface at how much mail I get from people who I already mostly agree with and to whom I have already given money to and to whom I will continue to contribute to as long as I am able to share my immense good fortune and completely undeserved privilege.

Have I politely asked these organizations not to send me mailers? Yes I have.

Do I know what it is like to be them? Yes I do, as a former designer and writer of nonprofit direct mail pieces. And as a former magazine circulation manager I know a bit about mailing-list management and the complexities of both doing targeted mail marketing and excluding people via opt-out procedures.

Nevertheless, if I am filling a decent-sized bin with this stuff thrice weekly, something is broken somewhere.

And listen, I really, really want to emphasize I wasn't making an exact comparison between YMP's predicament and the loser at Waffle House.

Microsoft Word becomes more and more of a disaster as it gets more advanced. They honestly need to just start over.

pplains, we cool

I have to draft a lot of documents that require a lot of formatting, and the automatic (unwanted) formatting changes are just a constant fucking nightmare. Also I have had situations where there's a strict page limit on a document and then suddenly at the last minute I email it to someone and it's two pages longer for them than it is for me and we can't figure out why.

I've tried all the advice about setting up styles and stuff, doesn't help. Best thing is the format painter, but even that gets undone all the time. Clearly if I want to change the spacing on paragraph 135 that also means I want to restart the numbering in the next paragraph, change the margins and spacing and put it in a different typeface. That totally makes sense.

i've had to use Powerpoint a ton this year because i'm temporarily filling in for another professor, who's very generously shared her notes and slides. i normally do all this stuff in InDesign and... GAH, the number of basic layout and lining-stuff-up tasks that are just needlessly janky and clunky.

Word is basically like "Hey, wouldn't it be FUN if we suddenly switched to blue comic sans for the next paragraph of your summary judgment brief? Change it up a bit!"

oh yeah i love when it spontaneously makes one paragraph calibri

or when the numbers are 11 pt and the rest of the document is 12. and why not make just one numbered paragraph indented .19 inches and one .23 inches. do you want to backspace and move one sentence into another paragraph? let's un-number the entire paragraph IF you can backspace at all. and don't bother trying to paste it in because you are now the world of in .23 inch indents. it's the best.

otm

It's sort of the word processing equivalent of when google started doing those AI images and it was like "here's a very powerful computer's extremely fucked up and trippy interpretation of what a dog looks like based on a bunch of pictures of dogs," except with documents.