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

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

why does everything need to be a computer?

Well, yeah

in fairness, traffic lights have always sorta been computers, just dumber ones

Somehow missed the follow ups to my cooker complaint post.

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

It selects the function - grill, oven, fan oven, light, off.

So you have to turn it from OVEN to LIGHT to look inside??! I’m understanding even less with every explanation

tbc I blame this on the oven, not you

I’m all in favor of traffic signals that just detect the presence of cars, whether a pedestrian has pushed the button for a WALK signal, etc. but it makes a bit of sense to have some flow control on busy streets? Having one stop light turn red with zero cars when the one two blocks to the west has 15 cars waiting is just a logistical mess

i'm going to give this oven the benefit of the doubt and assume (pray) that the light is on for all dial positions other than "off"

Without getting out of bed and going downstairs to check, probably.

What was that thing a few years back when MTA machines were having a glitch and not taking credit/debit cards? iirc the only person possessing the requisite knowledge or special secret codes to fix the problem had driven out-of-state on vacation or something and it was a full day or so before they could even manage to get in touch w him... anyway I'm guessing there are probably more situations like that currently baked-in than we might tend to imagine. Will probably be fine, though...

The world is so stable now that it's become completely unnecessary to have any sort of redundancies in place for vital systems that affect millions of ppl...

the "stores with no phone numbers" thing is getting worse and worse

this is up there with my FedEx problem last fall, where I called FedEx to get the phone number to the distribution center to see if my package can be held for pickup and the FedEx customer service that you call on the phone did not have the phone number for the distribution center. I wasn't expecting them to be able to transfer me, but just look up the number? Anyway, I didn't want to be an asshole customer and asked, (probably kinda bitchily tho :( ) "so should i just google the place to see if i can find a phone number?" and the customer service person said, "uh .... i guess?"

why the FedEx customer service people can't be given a list of numbers idk ... like, the other day when i went to the corner store, they have the phone numbers for many of the vendors written on the wall behind the counter, and this is a mom & pop corner store.

A lot of that stuff is so bizarre, yeah. A massive corporation that in some cases is delivering people life-sustaining medicines or documents that might as well be life-and-death or extremely time-sensitive stuff, and their backup systems or people on the front lines involve scenarios that have almost zero coverage or support, like there is far more sweat put into the average parents' making sure their babysitters have backup entertainment on a given evening if netflix logins should fail. Just weirdly lazy and arrogant way to run shit.

Along these lines, I run into businesses all the time who are all "tell us your location and we'll tell you ours."

Especially banks. Let's say I live in Capitol City, but want to know what the address of a branch is in Deasonville. Nine times out of ten, they ask me for my location. That's irrelevant. So thenI get to a field that says something like, "What's your ZIP code?" My personal ZIP isn't relevant, and hell, how the hell do I know what the ZIP is for Deasonville? Just give me a map or a list or even let me search the field for "city"? Shouldn't be so hard!

^^^ agreed, this is terrible

the only reason I can think of for companies to not list their locations/give a full directory happened in my job years ago. someone was hitting a webpage of sales reps in order to data mine a full set

I guess a bank’s competitor could do the same to identify holes where there are no branches and then set up their own branches in those locations, but… there are other ways to figure out where bank branches are

Tangentially related: arriving at a restaurant, and having to give your phone number before they give me a table. I can understand this if there's a wait, and they're going to text you when the table is ready... but this has been happening as part of the immediate seating process. The only goal seems to be to track repeat customers and build some kind of data set, and I guess potentially to send obnoxious spam texts (although this hasn't happened). Right now it seems to just be a dumb extra step for both customer and host.