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

I loved being able to do check deposits via ATM. Like I felt that was a forward step. Haven't used a deposit slip since the 90s, though I still use checks from time to time. Mostly for school stuff. Schools like checks, because kids are not great at transporting cash.

My wife was an early adopter of "take a picture of the check and now it is deposited" thing. Like, once you have done so the paper rectangle is extraneous and you can just throw it out in the recycling bing. At first I was afraid. You could even say I was petrified. But now I'm a believer, because I realized that money was already just a construct. An abstract agreement about a certain arrangement of ones and zeroes.

This is just the logical extension of the way Yap Islanders use huge stones circles as money. A stone may not have moved in decades - in fact, may be under water - but everyone has a shared agreement about who owns which, and can thus be used meaningfully in transactions

Mike you’ll need to win the lottery by 2030 because there’s a good chance FM gets switched off then :/

I just received a $600 paper check from the State of California to do with as I see fit. It says "Golden State Stimulus II" on it.

I use paper checks all the time because it is more expensive to do a digital bank-to-bank transfer (we use a separate bank for our mortgage) than to write a check from my primary checking account, then deposit it in the mortgage account. I have yet to figure out a better way, even after some investigation.

Yeah, I probably write a half dozen checks a month between rent and various utilities.

I just received a $600 paper check from the State of California to do with as I see fit. It says "Golden State Stimulus II" on it.

Ah, So you immediately rolled it into a tight tube to snort cocaine through, right?

I mean, right?

I just received a $600 paper check from the State of California to do with as I see fit. It says "Golden State Stimulus II" on it.

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, December 22, 2021 10:20 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago

did you file your taxes literally on October 15th? .... those showed up approx 5-6 weeks after the state processed your tax return. Honestly, the dumbest was the federal stimulus payments that got sent via debit card and it was annoying to go through the process of transferring the money from the card to one's bank account.

I use paper checks all the time because it is more expensive to do a digital bank-to-bank transfer (we use a separate bank for our mortgage) than to write a check from my primary checking account, then deposit it in the mortgage account. I have yet to figure out a better way, even after some investigation.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Wednesday, December 22, 2021 10:36 AM (forty-seven minutes ago

exactly! and the funds go through much more quickly than if you do some tech workaround via paypal, though you could possibly have the mortgage account set up as an alternate linked account in venmo and then one of you would venmo the money to the other ... which is dumb in theory, because only couples could do this.

Theo literally Venmos me or uses Zelle to transfer his portion to my checking account, then I write a check to myself as the holder of the mortgage account, then take a picture of the check and do the deposit that way. Why? Because I'm not paying $15 transfer between two bank accounts that happen to be at different banks.

seriously! it is so stupid! ... also the thing where you can have the bank send a check to someone ... and it takes a week, because they are mailed from like south dakota.

Also, I think a lot of the electronic payment processing systems are gonna step up on charging increased fees or being more thorough in terms of vetting "friends & family" payments

Idk ... this recent thread topic made me realize how many people probably have regular day jobs working for large employers that don't involve accounts payable or receivable. ... for a month at work, at one of our client sites, we had the contractor that gets paid via paypal, the contractor that gets paid via venmo, the contractor we write two checks to: one for labor and one for materials, and the contractor that we pay in cash, and these people were getting paid at least once a week.

xp - I think you could set up the mortgage account as a linked account to your venmo, then Theo could venmo you, and you could transfer it right then to the mortgage account?

xp to self: and this is really a backwards step in that it used to be you could pay everyone by check except for the people who were adamant about being paid in cash. Like: two payment methods, now there are at least a half dozen.

bank to bank transfer works differently depending on whether you’re doing an outgoing or incoming transaction, sometimes? like sending money from one might incur a fee on the source account, but another bank I use doesn’t charge anything if I use them to transfer funds into the account from another bank. they just want more money in their hands

well yeah, it's usually the person paying that gets charged the fee because their bank is "doing the work" as well as disbursing money. Wire transfers are different. And foreign transactions.

I was thing of tables’ transferring issue. Might be able to just reverse it from a push to pull situation and save a check

Ovens that you can't just turn on and set a temperature with two handy dials, instead you also have to set a cooking time via an options menu and press "start", on a touch screen that only makes sense with the aid of the manual.

My friend has a microwave that is so complicated I can barely cook anything in it when I housesit. A microwave!

Dials are so satisfying. I imagine the % of the world that prefers repeatedly stabbing buttons (worse still, flat buttons) to adjust a time or temperature to be very small.

Just last night I tried to microwave on “low” for the first time ever and realized I had no idea how to do it. There’s a button that says “Power level” but it doesn’t seem to do anything at all. Could be that the microwave’s broken but this is a newish model I haven’t used all that much.

I have that same issue on my microwave I don’t know if this helps in the case of yours, but I realized I had to do "cook time" first, then hit “power level”. Frustratingly, it only affects that specific instance—so if I need to cook a few more minutes after it finishes, I have to re-do the whole process, rather than it remembering the level.

That's it! What I didn't get was you have to not just press "cook time" but actually set a cook time before hitting "power level." Once I do that it says "PL 10" and then enables me to change the 10 to a lower digit.

Of course a button that just said "low cook" would be much simpler. Don't think we really need 10 different microwave temperatures.

7.5, that's a good power level.

Ovens that you can't just turn on and set a temperature with two handy dials, instead you also have to set a cooking time via an options menu and press "start", on a touch screen that only makes sense with the aid of the manual.

TBH I still see the introduction of that second dial as a technological/practical backward step; much handier when there was just the one.

My main requirements for an oven/stovetop are that it runs on gas of some sort and that it doesn't have any fucking technology hoonja-doonjas beyond some knobs and a button or two. I'm trying to cook not play Banjo Kazooie

i used my parents' gas powered oven the other week to bake some bread and did not like it. vastly prefer the heating elements in my electric wall mount oven at home (it has 1 knob for temp and 1 knob for which elements you want btw - pretty simple.)

My bugbear is microwaves and washing machines with pictograms that aren't decipherable without the manual. Just write the damn function in words on the machine if you can't come up with a clear symbol.

that doesn't travel though. they use pictograms so they don't need to translate words.

(although the opposite always used to tickle me when, say, they translate the "74 minutes" on minidiscs* into 5 different languages, all of which were pretty much the same word anyway - minute / minute / minuto / Minute / minut / minutt / minuutti)

(* this was a while ago)

On my microwave you cant just set it on 'defrost' and punch in a cook time. hit the 'defrost' button and what would you expect the little display to say? thats right: it flashes the word "F00D"... huh? For years I never got past that part.

eventually, after many years of fruitless research, travelling the globe pondering ancient texts in the sub-basements of forgotten libraries and crumbling monasteries, i was able to figure out that the defrost setting requires a satanically bewildering series of inputs based on weight and food group, all of which the user is expected to navigate via the little 4-digit numerical display and a 10 digit keypad with no letters or anything. god is dead.

i have a fairly new microwave with a "chaos defrost" function where the three food types you can choose are BREAD, MINCE or MEAT. which tbh is about right.

Not sure I agree with all these crazy knob and button takes, but one thing my microwave does that I like is that it beeps and the display says GOOD when the time is up. Just GOOD. Your food is now GOOD. You are GOOD to proceed with eating your food.

It’s the little things that make me happy.

one day you're going to do that and it's going to say BAD

Fuck, I hope you’re wrong. That’s going to be a terrible day.

https://i0.wp.com/tuninginshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/xf203_1090.jpg

TBH I still see the introduction of that second dial as a technological/practical backward step; much handier when there was just the one.

I can't even guess what the second dial is supposed to do

Not sure I agree with all these crazy knob and button takes, but one thing my microwave does that I like is that it beeps and the display says GOOD when the time is up. Just GOOD. Your food is now GOOD. You are GOOD to proceed with eating your food.

I think the second dial's a timer?

We just got a new microwave, and I can't tell you how much more I enjoy pressing actual buttons instead of just numeric indentions on a pad:

https://i.imgur.com/Vj0tm0k.png

the "stores with no phone numbers" thing is getting worse and worse. the other day i went to the Google store in Manhattan to buy a phone. their point-of-sales system was down and they couldn't sell anything. i went for a walk, had a slice of pizza, came back, same problem. OK - went home. i want to call them today and make sure it's all on the level before i make the one-hour round trip again. guess what? no phone number! it's not listed anywhere online, not in the store website, not on maps, not in the FAQs, and if you chat with online support, they will take twenty minutes to confirm they don't have a phone number, and that's if you sit through questions about whether you consent to have information about your Pixel device is recorded. i don't own a Pixel device, which is why i wanted to go to the store. and this is a leading technology company, or so i'm told.

Infuriating. I guess you could look it up on Google Maps and see if the live report says it’s much less busy than usual lol

It kind of does. Bad sign?

https://i.imgur.com/ZA0gzfO.jpg

Though maybe they just haven’t updated their averages since the pandemic

Hard to say. When I was there on Friday, the place was packed.... with people waiting around to see if the issue got resolved.

Instead of telling you when it's safe to cross the street, the walk signs in Crystal City, VA are just repeating "CHANGE PASSWORD".

Something's gone terribly wrong here. pic.twitter.com/W5h8OjBXUu

— Joey Politano (@JosephPolitano) March 13, 2022

lol. tells a whole story of some unnecessary tech vendor, tech consultancy, or over-eager municipal tech office, inserting themselves unnecessarily into the delivery of public services.

alternatively about how every public service has been / is being sold to the highest bidder at every possible node.

It’s probably more that the controls are in “the cloud”, rather than on site.

I think it means people have bad password maintenance requirements/scheduling

But like........... Must passwords even be a thing here? How did the world ever get by before etc etc