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

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.

Is that a covid measure so they can inform you if there has been an outbreak?

Yeah I've only seen that under covid - where usually they have a guest book in which they make you write all your info. That practice seems to be fading in the past few months though, where I live.

Oh, that would make sense!

yeah pretty sure it's for contact tracing ... i had someone do this to me at an art opening months ago

Re: the traffic button above, there was a period in 2014-2015 along Mandela near 16th in West Oakland wherein if you pressed the button cross, it said, "Button Fault," and then repeated saying that in a robotic voice until the light changed.

the pelican near me now has sensors that'll turn the request to cross off if it detects the pedestrian has gone. unfortunately there's a blind spot and if you're too close to the pole then it won't see you and will just cancel the button press.

(do Americans have pelicans? PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossings. see also zebra and toucan crossings)

We don't allow pedestrians to control anything. You can hit a button as a gentle suggestion that you would like to cross the street at some point, please, sir.

They work the same in the US and the UK in my experience. You press the button and eventually you can walk, but depending on the crossing, don’t hold your breath waiting.

But then again, any crossing is slightly more terrifying in the US (in New York at least) because cars are still allowed to go even when the pedestrian light shows if they’re turning into the road you’re crossing. They’re meant to yield to you but …

even if we did have control of crossings no one would give a shit. i find it safer to jaywalk when there's a break in traffic than to go to the crosswalk and wait my turn because people just run red lights (faster than normal speed of course, because they stomped on the gas when they saw it go red) or honk at you if you aren't sprinting across. it's insane.

One of the most profound differences I had to adapt to in Washington State was people actually respecting pedestrians in crosswalks and stopping for them with some regularity, vs. Michigan where cars rule everything around me and drivers absolutely do not give a fuck about anyone on foot.

utah is one of the absolute worst places for this because most city streets are literally twice the width of streets anywhere else.

One of the most profound differences I had to adapt to in Washington State was people actually respecting pedestrians in crosswalks and stopping for them with some regularity

Not even crosswalks - many drivers stop and wave you across if you’re waiting at any point on a road.

One of the most profound differences I had to adapt to in Washington State was people actually respecting pedestrians in crosswalks and stopping for them with some regularity

This happened to me in Portland, Maine. There was no light at the crosswalk, so I was waiting for a break in traffic. Even though I "knew my rights," I wasn't just going to walk out into the middle of the street, crosswalk or no crosswalk.

But my companion said, "Just go!" and walked out there like Indiana Jones taking that first step in "The Last Crusade". And cars just .... .stopped!

It was wild, Portand's a wild town.

we've got both drivers that will stop and wave you across and drivers that'd probably mow you down for fun

as a pedestrian it's irritating because you end up waving on the driver who's trying to stop for you because the other lane of traffic isn't stopping and getting stuck in the middle of the road would suck

Rome is absolutely incredible for this. Cars do not stop or even slow down at crosswalks unless you take that leap of faith, in which case they slam on the brakes an inch from your calves

You often have to get through 4-6 lanes of traffic like this

Native Roman pedestrians don't even look up to see who's coming, they just set out and trust in God

ahah "Leap of faith", yeah it's the same in Hanoi... except there are 10 times more cars/motorcycles than in Roma !
It's an endless flow so when you don't have that "faith" you can wait forever on the side of the road... or just give up and find another way.