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

They physically transport a recording in Star Wars because it is a riff on Hidden Fortress, and Lucas needed something to replace the gold being transported in Hidden Fortress.

want to pick up on kate’s substantial posts but i’m oin a pub and right now just want to say, a problem exemplified by but by no means confined to…

reading local news websites on your phone.

reload reload ad cookie reload try and scroll to read text around and covered by an ad go back to top reload crash.

i mean in this age of responsive design is it too much to ask.

i’m sure this has already been covered.

the web is unusable in general but yeah local news websites are the ultimate evolution of the form

if trying to find the text behind the popups and ads takes longer than reading the text then the police should come and take your news website away.

Just Enough Essential Parts

Tracer and Senor Camaraderie *otm*.

the web is unusable in general! my god. a truth that makes you weep. how did we do it.

The information superhighway, unfortunately there's an overturned semi

don’t assent to all of it but in general Ben Tarnoff’s Internet for the People covers a lot of the why i think.

Thanks for the recommendation, will definitely checkout. I've been thinking a lot in the last few years how pervasive and often essential the internet is in our lives, and yet how little control or say its users have in how it works or is designed.

well look users are very overrated as decision makers but advertisers are worse

so he claims that ford is going to bring the entire software supply chain in-house, and retrain existing employees to maintain it

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand)

look these deckchairs aren't going to reshuffle themselves

my email is full of emails from everyone I've ever bought anything from telling me to buy stuff from them for Black Friday, despite the fact that I've never voluntarily signed up for a marketing email in my life

Meanwhile the leftist American shitpost accounts I follow on Instagram have pivoted hard to telling me I'm a monster if I buy anything

Please sir, I live in Sydenham and I just got paid, is it OK if I just buy a jumper and 500ml of Chinkiang vinegar

I run uBlock and noscript on Firefox and I never get Youtube ads btw. Might be something to do with having scripts from the nefarious "doubleclick" blocked idk

UBlock occasionally stops working on Instagram, which to be fair is a fantastic incentive to never look at Instagram. the ads on that are really intrusive and insufferable outside of an all-too-brief period where I just got inexplicably served neverending ads for hilariously bad self-published urban fantasy novels

I am an unashamed and prolific user of Youtube Revanced on android and it works like a charm outside of requiring the occasional onerous reinstall

i consider those black friday emails a service - how else would i know i needed to unsubscribe from these fools

That is a fair point yes

I just sort of feel like these people should have an EU GDPR black ops squad rappelling through their windows to fine them 500,000 Euros at gunpoint every time

what is with Support Ticketing systems that completely ignore formatting?

I was submitting a ticket for a problem with a financial account I have - not long ago, this company's ticketing system was basically WYSIWYG - however I formatted the message is how it went over, and vice versa.

This week, I opened one and they recently changed vendors for their ticketing program apparently, because the format was all different. I did paragraph spacing because I had a lot to report and wanted to make it readable, and then after I submitted, the system ignored my formatting and mushed it into one gigantic paragraph, making it hard to read.

thought maybe it was a blip, but then the agent responded and his response was a similar wall-of-text with no spacing.

(no they're not using Zendesk lol)

i saw a supermarket card reader reboot this morning.

the ones in local Sainsbury's have also changed and whereas i used to slap my card right on the screen and that was always ok, the new ones have a reader on the frame *above* the screen and it often doesn't register.

makes me feel like rishi sunak...

I feel like mobile food ordering that doesn't require proximity to location to place is growing to be one.

McDonald's and Wendy's, you can place the order, but they won't start making any of it until you indicate you've arrived at the location. Whereas AMC and Taco Bell, once you place the order and choose the time you want, it gets made at that time, regardless of where you are.

So these places can potentially get hit with a ton of orders all at once, from people who might show up significantly later than the time they indicated, meaning a risk of having to remake the food if it sits too long (or dealing with an angry customer when you refuse to remake it, even though it's their fault). whereas requiring proximity at least spaces the orders out a bit because generally, the customers don't all arrive at the location at the same time.

see this happening all the time lately, like AMC last week which got hit with like 5-6 chicken tender pre-orders all at the same time, and the AMC only had like two people there because it was a Monday.

also, what's with this trend of having 'password-less login' on some commerce sites, where they email you a login link instead.

like I get the benefit of moving away from passwords, but without another factor required, doesn't that create a security risk if you ever have your email address compromised, where someone can go to a website, get a link to that email address, and gain access to your account on that app too, which will include your mailing address and possibly banking info?

You buy your chicken tenders at an AMC theater?

not ME, no. i buy them where every good American does, the gas station

Hate passwordless logins. I feel like it punishes those of us that are good at keeping and maintaining a password vault. Treats us all like those that just have to recover passwords each time they login.

back in the security wild west when we asked customers for their passwords *over the phone*, one customer paused and said "ok", then proceeded to tell me "L-O-N-G.....D-O-N-G"

Someone in my personal orbit had a story about a guy whose girlfriend was named Daphne. Her best friend was named Susie.

At some point, for some reason, this guy had to reveal his password to IT, Although he hesitated, he eventually had to reveal that his password was DaphOnSusie69.

You buy your chicken tenders at an AMC theater?

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Monday, January 22, 2024 12:03 PM

not ME, no. i buy them where every good American does, the gas station

― Disco Biollante (Neanderthal), Monday, January 22, 2024 12:19 PM

No, but seriously. Are you pre-ordering chicken tenders from the movie theater through your phone?

*Pre-ordering*...

"No, plains. I'm post-ordering them once they're already in my mouth."

I did once a few weeks ago when I was going to a movie and I hadn't gotten to eat dinner first cos work ran late

it wasn't my worst decision that day, much less that week. but it was up there

xpost lol my dad would have saluted you for that one

Password-less vs passwords is orthogonal to whether you have another factor involved - you can have either with another factor, and you can have either without.

I've been considering switching to effectively password-less for any sites that I don't use regularly - scrub them from the single-point-of-failure that is my password manager, and just hit up the 'forgot password' button when I need to use the site.

Someone in my personal orbit had a story about a guy whose girlfriend was named Daphne. Her best friend was named Susie.

At some point, for some reason, this guy had to reveal his password to IT, Although he hesitated, he eventually had to reveal that his password was DaphOnSusie69.

― Wine not? (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, January 22, 2024 10:35 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

My husband had a regular ambulance partner back in his early days as an EMT, and at one point the partner got called into the office and reprimanded because his password to get into the system was "BigTittyCum" lmfao.

For a long time I only used incredibly filthy passwords for the exact reason that it would be a big disincentive to ever reveal them to anyone

Also they're memorable!

Tracer_HandJ0b

jfc FedEx Office sucks so much. My printer has been busted for a while and I don't use it enough to fix, so I go today to print/scan some docs I need to request a 401k withdrawal. they've recently changed their process, where you used to just scan your card, it'd tell you how much you had racked up in charges, and then you clicked End Session where you were done.

I guess some people complained because there was no way to 'go back' and cancel a few jobs to lower the cost after you'd done them, so now you pre-authorize an amount.

cool! I never know how much it's going to cost, so now I wind up pre-authing more than it cost, and it doesn't get released back to my card for a day or two. but the kicker - if you pre-auth too little, there's no way to just top off the authorization balance mid-job. it simply tells you that you didn't pre-authorize enough, and gives you the option to either go back and redo the job so it falls within your budget, start over at the beginning, or End your Session.

well, silly me, because I was so used to the old way, once the scan job started on the machine, I went and tossed all of the documents I was scanning (since I didn't need a physical copy anymore). so now I had no way to re-scan the doc and I can't get a new copy of the bill because...lol to access it online you have to have the ID number...from the bill.

I give up.

Does anyone know which phones still have a fucking headphone jack?

Samsung Galaxy A71 5G

I used to bemoan the loss of the headphone jack but having lived with wireless headphones for a couple of years now I can't say I miss it anymore. Bluetooth headphones are just so much better in every conceivable respect.

I have tried Bluetooth headphones and it was not for me for a number of reasons. The main use I have for my phone is to listen to/edit music and if I can't port out the audio that's going to be a lot of trouble too.

> Does anyone know which phones still have a fucking headphone jack?

i've been looking myself

https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-headphone-jack-phones/
https://www.androidcentral.com/best-android-phone-headphone-jack
https://www.phonearena.com/news/Best-phones-with-a-headphone-jack-Google-Pixel-Samsung-Galaxy-LG-and-more_id124459

annoyingly when going into actual shops to see what these phones are like, the headphone socket is generally hidden behind the locked cage they put on display phones. the samsung galaxy a14 was the one that caught my eye: <£200 with audio jack and sd card slot

(and available at multiple places within walking distance)

I used bluetooth headphones for about a year and while there were pluses it's generally been a massive relief to return to wired ones that I'm not losing several times a day, that I can keep playing constantly without losing power, that aren't competing with everything else that needs charging. getting the wire caught on stuff is a small price to pay

I like the ones that are wired together, so I am not constantly losing one or the fussy little case.

I bought Anker Soundcore bluetooth earpieces, none of the little silicone bud things fit my ears, one fell off into the oven, it still works but jfc I will never use bluetooth earpieces ever again. Obviously i can’t use the ones i bought

I bought a cheapo Samsung early last year and it has a headphone jack, which is kind of hard to access because of the case

I just use my regular over the ear headphones plugged into a bluetooth transmitter

I was gifted a AirPods Max for my birthday a couple years back. I never would have been so extravagant on myself when I already have a perfectly good wired Grado and Sennheiser ones that I’m ride-or-die with. I must have a half-dozen each of mini-to-lightning/USBC adapters around the house. The APMs are very very good to great (it’s worth getting involved with the EQ settings in the iPhone’s Music player) - the noise-cancelling has been life-changing for travel.

If I get air pods I will keep forgetting to charge them, then will lose one or both after maybe a week, they are extremely non-ADHD-friendly.

I'm telling you, not even with the wired ones can I fit anything into my right ear. Any of 'em, from the official Apple™ buds to the cheap ones from Walgreens.

same. my ears reject buds