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

so Amazon's stupid media app.

I have a OnePlus phone, and I have an enormous number of purchases of Amazon digital music, so I used to download the mp3s onto my phone for flights. or sometimes if I want to use an individual track in a recording. This was easy as fuck prior to like, this year, after a recent app update.

Now, on many devices (including mine), you can't actually download music from the app to your device. it 'downloads' to the Amazon app, meaning if you go into the Downloaded tracks section, they'll show there and play offline, but you aren't able to access them on your phone.

But there is a workaround! if you go onto the website in desktop mode from your phone and purchase the track, then you can download it the old school way!!!

Combine this with the fact that instead of just showing you your library, when you click on a band in your library, it shows you their entire discography, often which is littered with shit that is erroneously attributed to them, and if you click the Library button to just see the stuff that you bought, it shows you all of the tracks you bought from each album, but to get to the album itself and play them in order, you have to right click and click on "go to album".

xps Samsung Sound Assistant, and I'm guessing similar, has an option for allowing any apps to play sounds at the same time (and control the volume for each, like you would on a computer pretty much). Might be sort of a backwards step mess on its own, but I prefer it to interruptions.

shuts everything up for calls at least

Roku doesn't want you muting ads.

pp is wondering when you previously had to take five screenshots to capture a recipe, as opposed to it being a bad forward step, I believe

I was thinking of someone in her kitchen in 1980, trying to follow along with Julia Child cooking something on television, frustrated that she couldn't also listen to the radio at the same time.

What a HELPFUL Insta cook would do is post the recipe in the comments.

I am all the way with alba in that for many, many things, there doesn't need to be audio and visual. But calling a recipe channel a backward step from a cookbook, well, I'm there in spirit, but I don't know if it'll hold up in Practical Court.

whatever medium a recipe is in, I'm bound to sit down with a pen and paper first and work out substitutions and scale.. and write it out in shorthand in steps. Then I make a great meal and throw away my notes.

I should buy a scribbler lol

What a HELPFUL Insta cook would do is post the recipe in the comments.

I think we're talking at cross purposes, pplains - she had posted the written recipe below, but it wasn't possible to get it all one page, hence the seven screenshots. Yes, I wasn't comparing it to TV cookery; I was comparing it to the ease of accessing a written recipe on a website (where at least you can copy and paste if it's in an annoying format) or, heaven forfend, a book/magazine.

well I'll be danged -- can't copy text in insta.

Practical Court finds for alba, court adjourned.

I've always wondered if Apple pushed the "live text" feature in the latest OSes because of so many folks having to screenshot as a work around for whatever b.s. page formatting is bolluxing it up.

xp - also, why would you want your phone next to you while you are preparing food that could end up making a mess of your phone? Insta is so horrible for anything that requires reading more text than like, 5 words total. ... I remember being annoyed at the formatting when I had to c&p band bios from myspace ... Insta is so much worse!

Yeah tbh I often end up printing recipes out, though I managed with my screenshots today (the recipe wasn’t messy)

i feel like generally speaking phones are a step backward from monitor-and-keyboard computers in every way when it comes to usability.

has anyone mentioned gym admissions yet? all the gyms i know of have gone to requiring you to scan in via app. when i signed up i insisted that not having a physical barcode tag on my key ring was a deal breaker and they dug one out of some drawer for me. almost every morning i'm passing by people standing by the doorway fiddling with their phone for a minute.

i do like the fact that phones can do screenshots and then save as a photo as opposed to the computer method where you have to "print screen" then c&p into ms paint (or whatever the apples do).

^ #scorpioseason

you can save screen images directly to file with key combos these days! and by these days I mean for quite a while now. you might have to have "snipping tool" open on Windows but it's pretty straightforward on mac

haha i figured it was pretty straightforward on mac lol

if yr paying an extra $1000 for a computer, it better have a more straightforward screenshot process, because otherwise ???

really though with snipping tool you just hit a hotkey and it lets you drag an outline of what you want to save to file. it's about the same

print screen, open MS Paint, c&p then crop as necessary seems simpler to me but

Windows key + shift + s for a snip is the greatest keyboard shortcut I know.

Maybe ctrl+T to reopen a tab.

You used to be able to toggle the text between cases in Word - all lower case, all upper case, or initial letters only upper case - by highlighting said case and pressing Shift + f3, but on both my current work & home Windows 10 laptops, that does something trivial and annoying like change the brightness of the screen instead and I don't know how (if at all) to do the case-toggling (this may belong here in that it is genuinely a retrograde insoluble step, or alternatively it may belong on the 'boring computer questions'thread, I dunno, but am hoping one of youse IT whizzes will...)

Shift + fn + f3? If there's a Function key.

Possibly, thanks. Will try tomorrow & get back to you, cheers! (Read 'fn' as 'f***in'' at first, had momentary thought of "how very dare you!", then relief)

always here for some fn help

Shift + fn + f3? If there's a Function key.

It worked! Thank you maffew12!

Deadly. There's probably a "function lock" setting somewhere that would reverse the use of the Fn key so you'd use that for brightness and whatnot, and actually get to use F keys as normal. Anywhere from windows keyboard settings to a manufacturer program to a BIOS setting, depending on the machine.

Cherish the F keys while we still have them.

What kind of Rokus don’t have mute buttons? I’ve owned and used quite a few and they all have?

Ours doesn't, purchased about three years ago. I think there were one or two fancier tiers we didn't spring for... Maybe one of those still has the Mute button?

Naturally, we still have the essential shortcut buttons for Netflix, Hulu, ESPN and "Sling." No one would dare ship a remote without *those.*

Are these standalone Rokus or Roku built into the TV.. or both?

My parents use an old Roku and hate (well, can't handle) having more than 1 remote to deal with. I found an old Logitech Harmony remote at a yard sale and set that up for them. I was so impressed with that, I got myself one on eBay. The older basic infrared style with no mouse/pointing/hub and whatever. Seems people still add devices into the database that even the old ones can use.

Snipping tool is the best, I use it every day

My child barfed on my Roku remote. I got a harmony. It has a mute button. But most of the time I use Alexa to mute the tv.

@maffew12 - Standalone Rokus in USB stick form.

one of the annoying things about my USB stick Roku which I mostly think is great is that my old Logitech Harmony remote isn't compatible with it since this roku doesn't use infrared for communicating with the Roku (since it's behind the TV).

I've programmed the Roku remote to control the volume of the soundbar, but this means I can't use the remote for turning the TV on or off, so I need the TV remote just to turn the TV on or off. I feel like it should be possible to have the power button on the Roku remote be associated with one device and the volume button with another (this is hardly an uncommon setup), but as far as I can tell there's no way to configure the Roku remote this way.

i have a new LG TV and a new Roku stick and i wasn't expecting this but the LG remote actually controls the Roku..... and the other way around! so it doesn't matter which remote i pick up. i did nothing specific to make it behave this way

My child barfed on my Roku remote

what were you watching, Human Centipede II?

Cannibal Holocaust: The Musical

what were you watching, _Human Centipede II_?

These days roasted pumpkin seeds are delicious ! But I miss the days of roasting them 'round the hearth with good company, my neighboors the Hawthornes - we have lost such fateful camaraderie though we have gained that word. I blame the Whig party!

I am fucking furious that Google is forcing 2-step authentication on my email accounts, a feature I didn’t ask for nor want. My passwords are unique and nigh impossible to figure out, even for me at times, and I never use keychain or other such things to “remember” them— that’s the point of a password. Fucking ludicrous.

i have gotten to a point where I almost have the 5 digit numbers memorized for the various companies that have forced 2FA ... i have some sad says where the first screen of recent calls on my phone are all 2FA messages

It's all bloat that needn't exist afaic.

get rid of your google account iirc

speaking of bloat that needn't exist!

I am pondering it, tbh!

at some point i set up 2fa for facebook, which i log into like once a year

for whatever reason, fb won't accept the secret google time code anymore, and wants me to send them my passport or something similarly insane to unlock it. oh well!

Windows key + shift + s for a snip is the greatest keyboard shortcut I know.

woah thx Chinaski, that's certainly a forward step for me!

Really not loving the current US trend of requiring ID for alcohol purchases across the board.

I have grey hair and bifocals and two children. I am standing here coming home from work and wearing a suit and buying pork tenderloin, a pound of french-cut green beans, a dozen diapers, some cat food, and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. I just want to get home and cook dinner and fall asleep in the middle of a Law & Order episode that I've already seen.

I am really obviously not a high-schooler trying to get some beers illegally. And yet someone needs to scan my driver's license and enter the date (which, for those keeping track, ends in 197ntyfucking1).

As a former retail cashier myself, I understand that they are beholden to their management and their employers and they don't make the rules. They don't need the hassle of making judgment calls.

But giving them the ability to exercise some little bits of uncontroverisal judgment would be welcome. It would save everyone time.

I think it sometimes depends on how the store has their point of sale systems configured tbh. I went through this a while back w/Walgreens and cigarettes. For many years they just had to type in the date of birth in order for the computer to allow them to charge me for cigarettes. This was better because they would often just type in whatever birthday that satisfied the age requirement. Sometimes they'd ask and I'd have to say xxxxx xxxx 197ntyfuckingxxx. In the past couple years, some of the stores switched to having to scan or swipe the ID.

whenever I hear about pointless rigmarole around a retail transaction I assume it’s related to metadata/purchase habit tracking