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

why does my laptop think I'm in Nevada? All the targeted ads are like "100% Nevada Since Day 1"

are you on a vpn or work computer

I'm on a work computer, but I do sign into the VPN

A couple weeks ago it kept trying to give me weather info for Dallas, now it's convinced I'm in Las Vegas

Memory cards. The tiny ones that are now standard. I get that circuitry can always be made more complex for the size but theres just a point where its so small its unpractical to handle or store anywhere.

I opened a drawer the other day and clocked the number of memory cards that were in there.. two card readers.. haven't used any of them in years. What do people even use them for now? If you're a pro photographer I get having a few cards that you can pop in and out of your camera but otherwise?

I used to use them for portable music players, that's been several years ago now.

nintendo switch, cameras, handful of other game devices, whatever

I think there are still a bunch of phone people who are outraged by apple’s lack of memory card slot

oh yeah and raspberry pi systems and other small form
factor things but I assume some of those have support for the short format nvme sticks now

You should get Elden Ring

I hear great things about a game like Elden Ring, but am on the fence because I am uncertain whether I will stand the difficulty, fantasy is not usually my thing, etc. In the past, I could play a demo and make a decision.

I asked similar questions, and just took the dive. Buy the disk version (preferably used) and sell it back if you don't like it. As for the game, I followed some guides, changed the controls up a bit, and ended up getting into the flow of things well enough to have now dropped over 130 hours into this beast and just beat friggin' Malenia, who is arguably the hardest boss in the game.

In the spirit of this thread, however, I don't recall many video game demos back in the day (cartridge game era), so the fact some even exist (I tried FFXVI's demo this summer) is pretty cool, but the general economic risk/reward experience remains the same as long as you buy physical not digital

Actually I suppose there were more video game rental options back then, which is def not a thing these days, so you could have tried a "demo" by renting a game.

The check scanning thing a bit upthread makes me doubletake to realise americans apparently seem to still use cheques a lot? I havent touched any since the 90s and even then I only ever used them to pay rent.

Game demos otm. The impetus for sharing as much as you got on shareware in the 90s just isn't there without the scarcity of bandwidth and storage. And no rental shops, yeah. Now it's more about waiting to try stuff you're not sold on many months after release when it goes on sale. It's gone topsy turvy.

otoh glad there was a Street Fighter 6 demo. The open world aspect caught my attention... but then i tried it for 10 minutes and deleted.

I should have clarified I'm talking about the micro SD cards that I guess some phones have. The postage stamp sized ones, that have been around since the mid 2000s I guess, are ok. Its actually the best thing for me to exchange samples between my little field recorder, mac, and sampler. But those micro ones, I mean.... are we really going to make something smaller?

If you buy a postage stamp sized now it’s usually just the tiny one in an adapter

We got our dad one of those birdfeeder cameras that identifies birds using AI and it needs either a micro SD card or a cloud video subscription to take the videos of birds. So that, I guess.

the annoying thing with the micro sd cards is that you can't easily label them - generally too black and shiny for any pen and to small to fit much on. i ended up scratching numbers onto them, Roman numerals given that it's easier to scratch straight lines, and keep a list on the laptop.

that high tech feeling you get when you find yourself scratching roman numerals onto your recording medium

Would a little sticker fuck with the function?

i split the nail on my thumb and have applied a plaster to stop it catching on things. but now i can't scroll.

Two things that were absolutely not okay in the pre-digital era and are even less okay today: that thing where you were trying to set an alarm clock and you accidentally went past the time you intended, and you therefore needed to go all the way around again.

And also when you have a watch with a little date window. I own three of these. But if I forget to put one on for even a couple weeks, I am going to be twisting the stupid knob for what seems like half an hour to get back in synch with terrestrial time. And I know I am going to be doing it again in six months, so what exactly is the point?

Now I kinda understand why our parents had the VCR flashing 12:00 for the entire eighties.

no it was always midnight in the 80s, read yr blogs

the VCR displays were actually very pessimistic doomsday clocks

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_recruitment_blunder/

In autumn 2021, candidates seeking their third-level specialist training position (ST3) were looking forward to hearing where they would end up in one of the NHS's most sought-after medical disciplines.

However, the body responsible for their selection and recruitment – the Anaesthetic National Recruitment Office (ANRO) – told all the candidates for positions in Wales they were "unappointable," despite some of them achieving the highest interview scores.

Only when one of the candidates challenged the decision did ANRO realize its error. A subsequent Significant Incident Review showed a complex and confused approach to using spreadsheets led to the disaster.

"The interview scores are stored in an Excel spreadsheet. Each of the seven UK recruitment regions creates a separate spreadsheet, but these have no standardised template, naming convention or structure. After being manually amended, all of the various scores are entered into a Master spreadsheet. This is carried out row-by-row and takes several days, likely to be subject to interruptions," the report said.

In the process, a ranking column in the Wales Region Spreadsheet had been wrongly transferred to the Master National Spreadsheet, erroneously appearing as an interview score. After their interviews, candidates were ranked 1 to 24 – with 24 actually being the total number of candidates interviewed in the region. But even the highest possible "interview" score of 24 was much lower than candidates' true scores, and because the candidates had been ranked in order of performance, the best candidates were deemed weakest and vice versa.

"As a consequence of this all the candidates from the Wales Region did not score highly enough when all candidate scores were ranked nationally and all candidates from the Wales Region were 'unappointable'," the report said.

The report – only published in July following a Freedom of Information request – reveals that poor choice of technology for organization-wide decision-making was compounded by inconsistent practice, including the erratic use of Excel's "VLOOKUP" function designed to transpose data from one spreadsheet or data source to another.

brb applying for a suddenly very well paid job

Two things that were absolutely not okay in the pre-digital era and are even less okay today: that thing where you were trying to set an alarm clock and you accidentally went past the time you intended, and you therefore needed to go all the way around again.

Sometimes there is a secret way of going backwards - holding some random button and shifting time simultaneously - but of course you only discover this after years of going the long way around and next time you've forgotten how to do it again.

Yeah this and the watch thing are stupid. But most people only have their phones now and they adjust the time automatically. The future !

I always looked for an alarm clock (including digital ones) that allowed both forward and backward adjustment of alarm time whenever i bought one.

ours have a little control wheel, it's definitely a perk although remembering what all the buttons do when pressed vs held is surprisingly a lot to manage. an overall drive towards things with fewer buttons takes us to all these multi-use ambiguous things. sleeker but slightly less functional.

I'm still using the same GE alarm clock that I've had since seventh grade or so (see the 'how old is your alarm clock' thread) and yes, I'm still doing this onerous task at least twice a year, more when there's power outages

Can't remember if I posted on here but my alarm clock I've had for over 20? 25? years finally died a few months ago.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/self-checkout-kiosks-grocery-retail-stores/675676/?gift=Bqi2uZtdZSXIt7UBFZp4FBRxqWDIvFkgSDWgLrOvUoY&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

That is a non-paywalled gift link from the Atlantic, in case you are interested. Just the normal predictable gripes about self-checkout.

Do I weigh my grapes? What if I want wine? Can someone just approve my OBVIOUS age? Do they need the actual date of birth, do they need to physically scan my ID, or can they put in a random pre-2000 date?

Do I have a loyalty card or do I put in my phone number? Coupons? Do I wish to round up for a charity? Do I need a bag, did I bring a bag, am I okay with a bag charge?

I am five minutes' walk from three grocery stores, two convenience stores, two department stores, a liquor store and a wine/beer store.

Every time I go out for something I think not just about getting there, finding a thing, and buying it... but how much fucking hassle it will be to successfully complete said transaction. 7-11 and

...Target and Safeway are equidistant from me but I know that 7-11 will just let me have the wine, while Target will make me jump through two hoops and Safeway will make me jump through three.

Do I wish to round up for a charity?

ftr this is just a tax writeoff scam, never do it

Whole Foods put in self-checkouts and managed to make them shittier than any others. Slower, only space for one bag (maybe I don’t want to put raw chicken and asparagus together?) and no cash. They would love for you to scan your palm though, because giving Amazon biometric data sounds way more enticing than just taking 3 seconds to get my debit card out.

the question about wine and alcohol is weird and complicated— i have been in places where they just look at me and put a random date in the computer (Whole Foods, often), and I have been in places where my ID literally expired the day before and wouldn’t scan properly and they wouldn’t sell me a beer, tho i was clearly 36 years old.

i do all loyalty programs for grocery stores and have an email account for them and other corporate “deals” stuff.

i find that the less i worry about all this, the less it seems to matter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i admit that i just use apple wallet for payment when i can— i hate cards and always have.

Table I hear you on the arbitrary rando nature of the ID thing.

Like I am standing here, it's 6 PM and I am wearing a suit and I have grey hair and I am literally holding the hand of a preteen child.

I just want to buy a stupid bottle of pinot grigio to go with the goddamn chicken and couscous that I am also purchasing. Maybe I have some scallions and cat food as well.

Does anyone REALLY think that I'm secretly a teenager trying to get away with some alcoholic mischief?

And yet. Some of the time, the cashier is like boop, you're cool, we know you're over 21. Some of the time they ask me to enter my date of birth myself. Some of the time they decide to enter some random date from the 20th century. At other times I need to take my ID out so they can scan it.

But here's the thing: I NEVER FUCKING KNOW which of those things it's going to be. Which store, which cash register, which cashier, which time? Apparently there is literally no way to know.

Honestly it would be great if every store just posted a sign telling me how much of a pain in the ass it's going to be to get a stupid $10 bottle of pinot grigio if I am a grey-haired dad in a suit, holding the hand of a preteen child.

(Nota bene I have been a retail chashier myself and I know they're just following directives from above. It's not about the individual employees but rather about their management chain.)

Do US stores have self-scanners? These were great over Covid. There's a bank of handheld scanning machines at the supermarket (usually a large store) entrance, you unlock one with your loyalty card or app (btw pretty much all supermarkets have these to generously give you amazing savings...) then just scan and pack your stuff in the cart as you go around. Go to a self checkout machine, scan a barcode and it loads it all up and you pay as normal. Stuff that needs weighing, you weigh on scales around the store and print out a little barcode sticker.

It meant no double handling of goods/needed to pack at the till. Also you can see prices if they're not clear.

They do random 'you have been selected for a scan check' when you go to pay, where staff take a bunch of stuff/your whole shop out and check you scanned it.

You could totally steal shitloads of stuff if you're lucky.

On the other hand, there is a Sainsburys in the studenty area of my city that doesn't have these and also has a gate the other side of the regular self-checkout machines that won't let you out unless you scan your receipt!

Some US chains experimented with the above before COVID, but quickly dropped it. My preferred grocery store when I lived in Maryland had it for like a minute.

Puffin, working in local government I know for fact that the Virginia ABC send out underage Virginia State Police cadets to test who cards. You should be flattered!

I vastly prefer self-checkout and will choose it whenever provided the option. I'll admit the challenges with it, especially at some specific stores, but still better to minimize my human interactions wherever possible. Amazon Go is my favorite though.

speaking of supermarkets, how does android pay / apple pay / whatever work in supermarkets given that i lose phone reception whenever i enter one? surely it has to check with a server somewhere.

It works roughly the same as the chip in a card – the phone more-or-less mimics a debit card, so no connection required.

(i installed it on my phone after thrice getting to the checkout without my debit card but i've never used it, and i've got nfc off by default so would have to jump through hoops should i ever need it but...)

the lack of phone connection in supermarkets, that's a thing, right? i only ever notice when i'm listening to Sounds and it stops. is it being actively blocked (which i think is illegal) or just a function of being inside somewhere with no windows?

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/umrfbm/never_getting_any_phone_signal_in_supermarkets/

- it's a big metal box, basically.

modern buildings codes in the USA result in commercial buildings being near-Faraday cages unless provision is put in the building to allow cell signals to propagate

I hate self-checkout more than most things and I have never even tried to use the things Kinder is talking about.

Also YES why do I lose reception inside most supermarkets in the UK?! It's stupid.