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

The last two energy companies I was with I put my name down for a smart meter (because I’m bad at remembering to take a reading) and never received one. Since the last lot went bust I’ve been with shell energy & every time I go online to submit a reading there’s a bit that says “for up to date readings order a smart meter” or whatever and when I click the “find out more” link it takes me to a page that says “we hope you are enjoying your smart meter”. Cheers lads

i caved and had a smart meter put in last winter - reluctantly, but it was the least hassle option at the time. last month i had a couple of texts from British Gas telling me i needed to submit a meter reading. i just ignored them, they've shut up again now.

I really don't want a meter that is going to grass me up to British Gas when I throw caution to the wind and have oven/grill/central heating all going at the same time.

exactly! See, this is the way we think "across the pond" but we have no choice in the matter, really. ... PG&E says, "we're installing smart meters" and you either complied or they cut you off.

xp just have to say, i fucking love it when a problem appears on the horizon, i ignore it, and it just goes away all by itself.

I got a smart meter put in a few weeks ago and every time I log in to my account online (which I had to do because I kept getting messages saying 'due to a service disruption we cannot access your usage data' but then it turned out they had accessed it all along) it tells me to get a smart meter aghghghg

We had something that was using an insane amount of electric but we managed to ID it before the smart meter. So would've actually been really useful about 6 months ago.

my goddamn doctor's office, I swear to God, is just impossible.

they made it so that you can book appointments online *finally* in the last year or two, only when you do, half the time they call you back and say "oh your doctor's not in that day" (then why the fuck are the dates available, when they require you to specify doctor?!). I had to reschedule my appointment for a few months ago due to the nightmare that work became, as I literally couldn't take any time away from work, and finally that's ended, so I had booked an appointment for a day off I had coming up. They waited a week to tell me the doctor was unavailable that day, and tried to book me an appointment for this week, when I can't come. And now, since they waited a week, other days where I was also off and could have come are now no longer available (whereas they were when I made the appointment last week!).

Secondly, they don't allow the pharmacy to call in renewals of prescriptions, they require ALL renewals to be requested through them, and they send it to the pharmacy, and it always gets fucked up

this time, they sent me not one but two texts telling me my Rxs had been sent to my local pharmacy, who has no fucking clue about it, and after multiple attempts they insisted they had nothing and told me to call the doctor. I have to do this literally every time.

Lastly, their paper bills advertise an ability to pay your bill online, which is great for me, as I often during this busy season don't have much time to call and wait on hold during a work day. you go onto the website, you click on the menu item that says Billing, which advertises that they don't support online billing. but then on the home page, they advertise that you CAN pay them...on Paypal (seriously?). I opted to do it, simply because I had a balance of almost $100 from last time and I didn't want them to deny seeing me, I included my name, account number ,etc, and it went through, they accepted it. and then on the voicemail today they tell me I still have an outstanding balance, so I had to contact them about that.

yeah, about time for me to find a new place to go to, once I can coordinate the transferring of my records. there are a lot better facilities around here.

amazing to me that they built their site using a template and the dummies aren't smart enough to realize they can disable the Billing tab as opposed to actually having it only for you to click it and go "lol not supported".

tell them you can fix their shit, then quit your regularly-aggravating job and become a super-successful consultant just telling health-care providers that they suck

Healthcare bill pay is next level annoying. I have docs that seem to have three different places you can pay your bill online and they are all annoying in their own special ways.

Despite the advent of email and webpages, you can’t re-negotiate a cable tv/broadband package with VirginMedia except laboriously by phone - and you can’t see what packages are available (for existing/renewing customers).

When I agreed a package, the call centre person had to read the main elements of the contract to me over the phone!

xp This is perhaps outside the scope of this thread but can’t read those just grievances about medical bill pay without piling on that the amounts one is charged range from just flat out in error to discriminatory to arbitrary.

My GF's mom got a new fancy TV recently, and when we went to her house, we realized that she had the high-def setting colloquially known as SOE - 'soap opera effect'. Everything looked like a BBC series from 1978, even if it was originally shot on film. "I think it looks fine!" she said. We then dug out the manual and spent 40 minutes trying to make it look normal

A couple years back, my cousin was watching The Graduate in this setting and I wanted to drown myself

oh, is SOE the motion smoothing thing that makes everything look like it was shot on a camcorder?

older TVs we had actually made it easier to turn it off, now on my current one there isn't an option to turn it off, instead you just choose Cinema mode from the picture settings so it doesn't look stupid.

for a while there was an article every 3 weeks about SOE and why all the TV's are pre-set that way in, like, best buy, and to this day none of the explanations make a lick of sense

"we just thought fans would like to watch Bullitt the way 6-year olds intended it to be watched"

sports are better with the smoothing turned on and it’s maybe male sports fans who are more willing to part with big bucks for new TVs? idk

or female too, not sure why i needed to specify that lol

the motion smoothing thing

Yeah, if 35mm film was shot 18 fps or whatever, I think the setting digitally fills in the the rest so it's like 1800 fps.. just awful

motion smoothing clears up some of the jaggies you get with fast camera movements in sports, but I still think it looks worse despite that

all4, channel4's shitty version of iplayer. please login. takes about 3 hours due to their dodgy software and my dodgy remote. search for programme, ditto.

play episode 8? no, i want episode 1.
advert, jewellery
advert, don't tit about on railways
advert, macdonalds coffee
warning, contains strong language...
4401-network-file error. try again in a few minutes.

repeat to fade...

(am guessing programme file is in aws glacier storage somewhere)

Walter doesn't Present...

(gave up and started from episode 2 which i had recorded. was terrible, 3rd string swedish detective drama. deleted all 7 hours)

Over here on the smaller island, I haven't had a problem with All 4 in years, either through the app on my telly or on my laptop, and I use it all the time. I'm always surprised to see reports about its awfulness.

It died on its arse completely for the recent England-Germany match which did briefly have me thinking I should go back to cable.

live streaming is a different beast, especially at scale (this is my day job)

but the first episode of something from September, on demand, should be easy

soap opera effect

This is the main reason why I'm sticking to my old TV that is pushing 20 years old. All the new TVs I've seen make everything look like crap.

My problem with new tellies is that you more or less can't watch standard-definition telly on them anymore. It's all fuzzy and indistinct unless it's HD.

Friend signed up for a print cartridge subscription while doing a degree. Degree is now complete, he no longer has need for it so cancelled. However now when he tries to print something with his remaining cartridge it blocks the printer asking him to renew his subscription in order to use it. He could buy a new cartridge but apparently for ppl who cancel without paying it straight up blocks the printer entirely.

That's outrageous!

the subscription/SaaS model is coming for everything physical that it can

and it's not really a "technological" step since the way the printer functions hasn't changed at all

another example: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature

all technological steps are better understood as techno-social, imo. nothing just "happens" or becomes widespread just because it's technically possible.

I assume Telsa will eventually use the subscription model for braking

I assume that along with the heated seats, BMW's already doing that with their turn signals.

your smart toilet has a subscription model for flushing.

it seems like the more technologically complex things get the more fragile they are and harder to fix

Technological innovation is a selling point and just thrown in to make sales rather than improve the product

I think the fragility is part of the design to force people to continue pouring money into things instead of having items which last and therefore don't continue to generate revenue.

Relevant sketch at 11:20:

https://omny.fm/shows/this-is-branchburg/episode-1-welcome-to-branchburg

examples of things that you physically have but can't use due to it being tied to a subscription model (real or imagined)

I assume that along with the heated seats, BMW's already doing that with their turn signals.

The old ones are the best :D

it is also fitting that phones became the money-making racket du-jour at the turn of the century. a commodity that everybody needed that became a gadget arms race that reduced the amount of affordable options for people who were literally just using them to make calls.

The old ones are the best :D

― Chewshabadoo, Monday, October 24, 2022 12:51 PM

You talking about BMWs or blinker jokes?

Hey, Blinken!

i had a 1980 320i about 25 years ago and that car had almost every single mechanical problem possible. then it got stolen. when it got recovered about a month later, i was somewhat disappointed tbh.

there's no mute button on a Roku remote

My wife just sent me a recipe that was an Instagram Reel. It has written recipe underneath but to follow it in the app I either have to listen to some terrible music, or mute, either way preventing me from listening to the podcast I was listening to. Taking five screenshots appears to be the only way to get this into a vaguely usable format.

Out of curiosity, what's the backward step?

there's no mute button on a Roku remote

I still wonder about this.

Out of curiosity, what's the backward step?