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

Disney + Netflizzz + Apple TV = what, £20 a month? and live HD tv is free for me in the UK because Freeview innit. my TV has a free app for Al-Jazeera, a free app for Sky News, for tons of things, all in better quality than broadcast. I really don’t see much of a future for the traditional Electronic Programme Guide.

that said, “FAST channels” i.e. fake TV delivered over the internet in a channel-style lineup - like a whole channel devoted to the Beverley Hillbillies - with extremely targeted ads, because they can track everything you watch - appear to be very successful right now - PlutoTV, etc. So I dunno.

The organisation I work for recently upgraded its office equipment. In the past the printers and scanners were directly connected to our PCs, but now we have a small number of multi-function printer-scanner-photocopiers that are connected to a central print-scan server. And we lease this equipment instead of owning it outright. We're way behind the curve, but the security implications of cloud-based print services were a major issue for several years. The base had a psychic incursion several years ago and the continued survival of the project was a close-run thing.

In theory this new arrangement is supposed to save money on servicing and toner cartridges, because everything is part of the lease. But if the central print server crashes, or the connection is severed, we can't print or scan anything. And because the print-scan server is "in the cloud" the servers are far away. I suspect there's a legal fiction whereby the cloud organisation promises not to house our data in a prohibited jurisdiction, but ultimately it can't guarantee anything because the data is spread far and wide. That's not my field. I merely draw up the interrogation lists.

The other issue is latency. Latency. It irritates me no end. I'm a really fast typist, and on the rare occasions when I have to prepare a document locally the difference is like night and day. When I'm using The Cloud it's like typing in treacle. It's like listening to an echo of yourself. It's not that cloud services are necessarily awful, it's just that our service has horrible latency. In contrast, when I'm preparing a document locally it feels as if my soul is flying. Suddenly the saddle has been removed and I am free to run to my heart's content. Like a charging bull finally given its freedom. Who is the matador. Who is the matador.

What is heaven to a racehorse? An endless field without rabbit holes, no jockeys, no whips, no saddles, just speed. Speed and the rush of air. The god-force of this universe created me to lead humanity into a new dawn where there is only love and beauty, but I can't do it if I can't type fast. Are my keystrokes being monitored? If so, by whom? Am I monitoring myself? Is it me?

I hate typing anything more than a short post on my phone for the same reason.

I'm a really fast typist, and on the rare occasions when I have to prepare a document locally the difference is like night and day. When I'm using The Cloud it's like typing in treacle. It's like listening to an echo of yourself.

same.
then there's also the thing with multiple people (even just two) working on the same document at the same time ... there is still a child-like joy I have when the two users are simultaneously working on the same thing at the same time that ends up being antagonistic ... like some Laurel & Hardy sketch.

see also: issues w/r/t permissions.

great post, ashley!

it kind of reminds me of jumping in videogames. in some games, you become the character and you jump. in others, you feel more like the person who tells the character to jump, and the only difference is that slight lag between the input and response

Wow, yeah. Great post and responses.

it kind of reminds me of jumping in videogames. in some games, you become the character and you jump. in others, you feel more like the person who tells the character to jump, and the only difference is that slight lag between the input and response

This is a wonderful observation, may well be destined for the "old ilx posts that haunt your thoughts" thread in a few years.

Oh, thank you but I’m just repeating what I’ve heard elsewhere. I’ll try to find a link, I’m sure somewhat had written or made a video about it

How can google be so bad at searching through its own gmail

^^^ THIS! What the hell. Honestly I don’t get the gmail love, but I guess I have had to become Outlook savvy b/c job.

Google's spam filter has also been on a steady decline. It's kind of novel as a reminder of what email was like before built-in spam filtering was just part of the background (overall a "forward step" to be clear).

I sometimes have to check the google spam filter for "real" emails

new gas company webpage 'submit a meter reading' button takes you from a page that *shows* you your name, account number and address to a page that *asks* you for your name, account number and address. even worse, the first page is written such that you can't copy the 12 digit account number.

the lookup "may take up to 15 seconds" it says. yeah, only it fails the first twice. and at the end i got an empty page.

^ dark patterns trying to get me to install a smart meter.

(i am also due £400 credit, £66 a month, only it kicks in on 1st october and my bill is due before that so the discount won't contribute to this bill)

go to pay electric and gas bills...

"You've joined our queue

We’re keeping things moving for you at this busy time by using a virtual queue.

Please don’t close or refresh the page.
🛈Your wait will be about 12 minutes"

on a gas company website!

you shouldn't have to wait to just pay a bill

that's on the landing page, it won't even let me login for 12 minutes

https://my.edfenergy.com/user/login

Water company used to mail me a bill, telling me how much I owed them for the month.

Then, they declared that to keep the mailing, I'd have to pay an extra charge. So fine, I went online only.

To pay online with a credit card, there's also an extra charge. Using an online check is free though. All they want me to do is fill in my routing and accounting number.

I prefer to go the other direction, filling in my utility accounts on my bank's website and keep them all in one tidy place.

So here's the punchline: I get an email every month from the water company. It has my account number, but no dollar figure for what I owe. I go to their website, log in, take note of what I owe, and then head over to the bank's website.

I guess we're saving trees. Time and energy though, well, that's another argument.

fuck’s sake

my most frustrating thing recently is websites/cloud products that don't list the full range of functions available when clicking on a menu option.

much like a website which only has a prompt to "sign up" and none to sign in for existing customers, but gives you the option to 'sign in' as an existing customer after you click the 'sign up' button.

like for instance, for S@aviynt, which is an access management cloud tool, which doesn't tell you that the path to remove someone's access is the same as the path to add it. the b utton you click on is purely for adding access and nothing to suggest (until you get inside) that you can remove it there as well.

related gripe: The other day, I logged into my Adobe account to try and re-download Acrobat X. The homepage includes a big section called "YOUR PRODUCT" which you would think lists all your products. To my "wtf" reaction, it only had one product there, and not other purchases I've made over the years. After ten to fifteen minutes of talking to the robot support system, then a human support system (with long delays between each message), it finally came out that, actually, what I needed to do was go to the top of the screen, click on "Plans and payments," and under that, click on the "Products" link, which takes you to a full list of all your products. Why not put them all on the homepage? Why hide 'products' under "Plans and payments"? Who knows?

I choose to blame all of this indirectly on the much bigger backward step, now almost a decade ago, of Adobe switching from a "buy our software" model to a "subscribe to our software" model. The tech support guy who helped me with the website tried again to upsell me on the subscription model, but since owning the programs outright has now saved me thousands of dollars, I'm pretty disinclined to switch until the old stuff just plain stops working. At which point I guess I'll look around for a good third-party or open-source knockoff. Or just keep an old-timey computer set up with only old OSes and software on it, I guess.

"you shouldn't have to wait to just pay a bill"

The media is advising everybody to submit their energy readings today, because the price goes up tomorrow (NB this story is about NI specifically):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-63086811

I wonder if that's the reason. Presumably there would be a spike when people come home and read the meter. It angers me that I get emails telling me to read my own meter. The company used to pay someone to visit my house and do that for me. Imagine if Uber sacked all of its drivers and just gave everybody a car and said "here, you drive yourself around" except that you had to pay them £45 every time you did so.

Or imagine going to a pub where you have to serve drinks to yourself and then leave £25 behind the bar. Or imagine going to a concert venue and there's no band and instead you have to play the instruments yourself and where the band would be there's an audience and you are the band except that you're actually going to the dentist and you have to replace your own fillings.

"it kind of reminds me of jumping in videogames. in some games, you become the character and you jump. in others, you feel more like the person who tells the character to jump, and the only difference is that slight lag between the input and response"

That's a very good point. I wonder if it's what Alzheimer's feels like. Modern games - popularised in the Batman: Arkham series - whereby instead of having direct control over the character you just tap a button at the appropriate moment and the character performs an action. e.g. instead of pressing the PUNCH button, you press the ATTACK button and Batman (or whoever) executes whichever attack looks the most cinematic.

I'm still in two minds about it. On the one hand Batman is a trained fighter and I am not. And the Arkham games are good fun. But it feels more like a rhythm game than a fighting game.

edf ask me for meter readings "before the 23rd" and then text me on the 21st to tell me i haven't sent them one yet.

then, two days after sending it (see above) they text again saying i haven't sent it, despite having sent an email the day before with the amount i owe them.

most annoying is the way both my gas and electric bills are due on the same day rather than coming out of different pay-packets. (6-monthly water bill as well this month, which is as much as gas and electricity combined)

the "save trees by not having us send you a paper bill" argument would maybe have more weight if the company making that argument wasn't a polluter by profession

Mobile versions of websites that don't contain the full functionality of the website. I often go to a website (not an app) on my phone and find it has been "optimized" for mobile. Then I use the "view as desktop site" feature in Chrome and find there is a load of other stuff on there that isn't available on the mobile version.

noticed that with goodreads yesterday

sometimes, because my internet connection is via my phone, I'll get the mobile version of the site despite being on the laptop, four buttons on a 1920 pixel wide screen

tables on Wikipedia are usually set up to be sorted as required, but you can not sort on their mobile version. Also if there's a director or a musician I want to talk with my wife about, the best way is to find on Wikipedia, then click on the "中文" button in the languages section of the sidebar, this is also not there in the mobile version.

On my Android phone, there's a "languages" link at the top of every article that takes you to a list of other languages in which the article is available.

I've been trying all morning to get into my Scottish Power account. I was in a 1 min queue, refreshed, they then said they'd sent me an email with a link to 'continue logging into my account', which I did, and now I get a loading screen saying 'continuing your journey' .

xp I have an android too, just checked a random article and nope, no languages.

now I get a loading screen saying 'continuing your journey' .

This is not a step I accept.

Speaking of mobile vs browser version:

I tried purchasing tickets from a local theater on their webpage in chrome on my android phone. It gave me the choice of either creating a new account and password with them or logging in via facebook. I chose the facebook option because I want to avoid creating new accounts at all costs. This resulted in it trying to open facebook in chrome instead of in the facebook app, which of course didn't work because I never use it in the browser only in the app. It asked me for my facebook login and password which I don't know because I generally avoid situations where I log in and out of facebook. So then it asked if I wanted to skip the login step, which I did. Instead of logging in, facebook sent a numeric code to my email. I enter the numeric code thinking that would log me in and I'd be done, but instead it took me to a screen where I could reset my facebook password, again something I wanted to avoid at all costs. At this point I gave up. If the original login with facebook prompt had opened the app instead, this would have worked seamlessly, but really my main complaint is all these small websites that are insistent that you have some account you log into instead of just providing you with the option to purchase one time as a guest.

xp to CaAL: are you sure? It's the icon under the word Article in the screenshot below:

https://i.imgur.com/ltuvR9u.jpg

gah, sorry for huge

> sorry for huge

this is another thing. i take a picture of the heron in the park and post it to fakebook or something and it's like 4000 pixels wide and really doesn't need to be. i can crop it before posting it but i can't resize it to something sensible like 1000px using the built in app. yeah, twitter will downsize if for you but that's only after you've wasted the bandwidth uploading the huge original.

the "save trees by not having us send you a paper bill" argument would maybe have more weight if the company making that argument wasn't a polluter by profession

It was probably on the irrationally angry thread where I mentioned getting a note each month from my mortgage company to go paperless and then getting three or four more bulky envelopes from them begging me to refinance my house.

I wonder how much "going paperless" is really about reducing overhead and labor costs for processing the checks and paperwork sent *to* them, versus the cost of the straight-to-garbage mail they send *out*. Certainly seems like a lot of the online payment processing is designed around cheapness for the company rather than convenience for the customer!

whaaaaaat

wasted the bandwidth uploading the huge original.

also

this is another thing. i take a picture of the heron in the park and post it to fakebook or something and it's like 4000 pixels wide and really doesn't need to be.

your camera taking higher-res photos than it used to is not a backwards step

no but websites should auto-resize images to a sensible width.

I do find it a bit odd that to resize images on an iPhone (unless you're emailing) you have to download some obscure app, or install a Shortcut, to do it. The bandwidth thing generally doesn't bother me but sometimes websites ask you to upload photos of documents or whatever and they have stingy size limits that you then run into.

I just had this issue for the Glastonbury registration photo id requirement.

I found a workaround of temporarily changing my iPhone camera settings to ‘most compatible’ format (jpg), and when uploading it there was an option to send various file sizes (s, m, l).

Instagram is really annoying for image resizing

It angers me that I get emails telling me to read my own meter. The company used to pay someone to visit my house and do that for me.

wait, what? sorry, I'm American. The idea that the utility companies would let the customers read their own meters and charge based on what the customer reports is wtf to me ... though y'all probably think the same thing about our income tax system so ... anyway, we now have "smart meters" that I think electronically communicate with the energy company so they don't have to have someone come out to read them.

I think it is pretty hilarious that the US medical industry is still so tied to the fax machine for 'physician orders'.

_
wait, what? sorry, I'm American. The idea that the utility companies would let the customers read their own meters and charge based on what the customer reports is wtf to me .

ime they don't. nobody has read my gas meter, or even asked to, since they replaced it ~5 years ago (and then he got it wrong).

electricity meter is in the hallway and they do read that from time to time (it's a branch of g4s iirc)

(gas meter is inside my flat, under the sink, they need me to be here to read it. but I've been wfh for 2.5 years and nothing. they seem happy that I'm not lying to them)

funnily enough just been informed i can get a SMETS2 smart meter which might actually make it worthwhile. though after pushing smart meters on me for years, i now find that they have no bookings available for the foreseeable. the UK's smart meters roll out continues to tear up trees.