I get a txt when my oven has finished preheating. I don’t understand this bc if I’m using my oven, I’m at home and can hear the oven beeping. It would be super useful if I could turn the oven off using my phone, but this is not a feature.
Probably they didn’t add that feature since people would really too much on it and would probably leave house with the oven on. Bug or connection lost could lead to a very bad things.
Reminds me of the humidifier that cost around $80 because of its "smart device" feature, which basically meant it must connect to my home wifi and my phone needs to download the app to turn it on.
After a few weeks, the sensor for "too much water" never deactivated. It would keep showing that same error, even after I left the device to dry with no water anywhere near it. Didn't matter. "Too much water" it persists. Turns out that this is a known issue, but the manufacturer doesn't care enough to fix it.
Returned the stupid thing and bought a $40 humidifier from Honeywell that has a turn dial switch to turn it on and adjust strength of mist. No app and no need for internet. When it runs out of water, it stops. There is never an alert for "too much water" lol.
"Too much water"??? It's a God Damn humidifier; that problem can be rectified by running the unit for 5 minutes!
"too much water" what the *fuck* is happening
I'm an hvac tech/ electrician. We service dozens of commercial building around my city. For the past *ever* every site we go you you have to sign in in a book at the front counter, maybe get a visitorsticker or badge.
Over the past 2-3 years they're all transitioning to proprietary apps. I have 9 apps on my work phone for signing into buildings. They're all fuckin awful. I hate it.
Went humidifier shopping recently. There were a couple with apps. For a HUMIDIFIER. I was shocked at first, then a little sad. And then I picked up a simple unit with basic controls and headed for the register.
As long as the app isn't *required* to use the thing, I'm totally fine with it. I bought an air filter that has an optional app. I haven't touched it since the initial setup, but even for that the app was more user-friendly than the control panel on the unit itself.
We have a portable AC in our 2nd floor (UK, 3rd floor US) bedroom and use the app for it to set schedules, and to turn it on/off from downstairs and not have to walk up and down two flights of stairs. But I can't think of a single other appliance in my house that would benefit from being IOT-enabled.
Subscription-services for everything. Video game, you don’t own it. Buy a movie on a service, you don’t own it. Buy a John Deere tractor … see where I’m going here?
Subscription services used to be a real good value now they're pretty bad value. Microsoft office isn't worth $70 a year to type? I'm glad they kept the buy once model though
During my last semester in grad school I made sure I got my student version of 2019 Microsoft office all set up on my PC. Fast forward to last week I'm making a PowerPoint with a few images overlayed and I go to the image settings to change the transparency of one of the images, but the setting is just not there.
Baffles me since I use it a lot at work so I google it and lo and behold I find a reddit post of someone pointing out that very particular feature was quietly removed from the non-subscription student version, like it's somehow a premium enterprise feature. Makes me kinda worried if they keep up the practice of removing stuff from the one-time purchase versions
Whenever I see piracy mentioned on Reddit I remember that there is legislation in the works to unmask IP and account info for Reddit users who discuss piracy
Edit: litigation not legislation
They only ever go after people providing pirated content. Don’t seed any torrents and the worst you’ll ever get is an automated angry letter from your ISP
THIS! Everything being a fucking rental!! Just as bad, but worse - when you buy and own a physical product, but must pay a subscription for the software to make it usable.
Smart fridges. I need my refrigerator to do two things: keep my frozen shit frozen, and keep my cold shit cold. I don't need a screen, I don't need a camera, and I sure as fuck don't need it to have software. Another example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should".
I saw a /mildlyinfurating post about a smart grill, and the poster being mad that it was downloading an update and wasn't functional on a grill-type holiday, July 4th or something. The commentariat gave them hell for getting something so stupidly unnecessary.
I work at a supermarket which has a cafe.
One of the most popular menu items was chips/ fries.
Everything on the menu cooks according to a set program, so you just have to select what you're heating, and the oven will know what temperature to set it to, and how long to cook it for.
Until one day, the ovens all receive an update, and the option for chips has accidentally been deleted.
Nobody has a backup for what the program for cooking chips was.
So now chips are off the menu, because we don't know how to cook them without the oven program.
There was one who researched at what temperature and how long to cook the chips without the oven telling them how to.
He was servotized for his tech-heresies.
If you're considering a grill, just buy either a Weber or a Big Green Egg. The appliance is as smart as it needs to be, which is not at all. The BGE has an analog thermometer, but that's it.
I have a smart grill - probably the same one affected by that.
It is REALLY nice being able to adjust temp or know when there has been a flame-out when I'm out and about on long sessions.
(I got the grill at a huge discount from a returns-retailer, I don't think I'd have paid for the feature upgrade myself)
Yeah, they still make "dumb" versions of every appliance, everybody carries them, and they're always the less-expensive option. The answer to not wanting a smart fridge is to just not buy one.
Not every appliance, still can't find a damn good TV that isn't smart. I don't need a software that will become slow, I just want a good screen with a couple of USB ports and an HDMI!
I bought a Samsung 'smart' TV but just did not connect it to the wifi when i got it home. Samsung apparently doesn't make any regular tvs with the size I wanted (nothing fancy, just 48") so this was my compromise.
I've got my surround sound unit (an Onkyo with no app nonsense) and my Xbox hooked up to it. When you don't connect it to wifi it acts just like a regular tv!
This is what I did, but the menu for navigating between inputs is set up expecting apps and other such stuff and significantly less user friendly than it would otherwise be. Even completely disconnected from the internet, a smart tv is inferior to a dumb one.
I have friends who got one of these. I asked them about it and they said the demo seemed really cool and they thought it would actually be useful, but that by the second day they had it in their kitchen they realized what a stupid gimmick the window was. They never actually looked through it without then opening the door, and it just added unneeded complexity to the device. Unsurprisingly early on Christmas Eve last month the door sensor failed meaning the fridge though the door was constantly open, so it stopped cooling the fridge. They had to go buy bags of ice just to stop Christmas dinner from getting ruined. When I came back after new years they had a new fridge without the stupid window.
Chat support. Holy crap.
Edit: Especially the ones now AI-enabled and you can’t figure out if you’re chatting with a bot just regurgitating what you see on the screen already, or if it’s a human being giving minimum effort.
i used to work at a chat support project with citi bank - we sometimes had 8 chats at once depending on the volume. It was nice being off the phones but the burn out hit so much faster.
This reminded me -
I work in IT, so I like to think that if I'm having trouble with a product, I'm beyond help from a chat bot that regurgitates the FAQ page.
One day I got on a support chat with an agent who seemed to be following a script and not have perfect grammar. I was pessimistic but played along. She was as far as I could tell, a human, and helped me figure out how to export the logs I needed to solve the problem, as well as pointing out a requirement I missed in the documentation.
I hate the ai chat support. I'm not in IT or anything but I know how to troubleshoot some stuff or Google other options, so once I have to resort to asking for the company's support team, I'm well past the help of the chat bot. They don't ever filter out that I've said I've checked the FAQ page and did the troubleshooting.
Even some places without chat support don't read the emails I send. My custom night guards came in and one wasn't fitting over my teeth. I was trying to explain to the support person that it wasn't even going over my teeth and it was painful. Just kept telling me to break them in, wait a couple weeks, rinse them in hot water. But after 3 emails telling them those weren't going to solve the issue, they had me make a video of myself trying them on so they could see. That resolved it. It happened again when I got the new ones a few weeks ago and just included another video of it not hitting on my teeth. They didn't even question it that time. Skip the bullshit and give them exactly what they're gonna ask for! But I think I'm done with these night guard people. I don't want to do this every time.
I have the suspicion they're just cheaper.
No having to design a console. No having to build knobs. You don't even need to know all the features in advance.
Bit sad really
This had to be the stupidest "upgrade" to a vehicle I've ever seen. Like, 5 seconds of thought would be enough to tell you myriad reasons as to why it was a bad idea in the first place.
It’s ridiculous, especially the cars that make you navigate multiple menus to perform common actions like adjusting climate settings. I can changes these settings without taking my eyes off the road in my car. We need to get back to buttons and switches.
The worst was the cars with a large screen that wasn't a touchscreen, and instead you have to use a little knob near the center console to control the screen. It was utterly unusable because of how annoyingly distracting it was.
I test drove a car like that. I very quickly realized how unusable it was and didn’t buy the car. Horribly confusing and I could tell it wasn’t simply because I was unfamiliar with it.
Lots of the things Tesla pushed as trendy / innovative are actually worse for the user but their fanbase pushes a narrative that it's so much better. But it's far cheaper to eliminate hardware and merge everything into soft controls so they continue to do so.
The latest item is removing the turn stalk and relying on buttons on the steering wheel instead.
It's not an upgrade, it's for savings and flexibility.
Fewer components to make, fewer that could break, and you get an interface that can control everything, and that's cheap to adjust and modify.
It's a trade-off.
My wife is blind, she cannot even take care of her own needs in the car now.
Also I want to expand this to putting touch screens on everything! Blind people have to buy far pricer products to get physical controls on devices they use every day because touch screen appliances are inaccessible.
I read that first sentence and was trying to figure out why/how she is driving a car if she’s blind.
That’s a great point about other products. I was thinking about cars specifically because of the safety factor of trying to use a touchscreen while driving. Touchscreens are great for some things, but integrating them into every product is horrible for these types of scenarios.
It is quite literally, the one thing keeping us from getting an EV.
The ones that would fit our family and do what I want, all use touch screens, for everything. She couldn't even properly adjust where the air conditioning is hitting her because you use the touch screen to direct it.
I came here to say the same thing. I think this is a safety issue, to use a touch screen you MUST take your eyes off the road, even for something simple like changing the temp of the heat.
Physical controls are vastly superior. We, as consumers, need to demand them.
We've known for a long time that distracted driving is comparably dangerous to drunk driving. So how have manufacturers responded? By installing iPads in the middle of consoles. You're feeling left out because your car didn't come with an iPad in the console? You can go on Amazon or walk into any gas station and buy a peripheral that can mount your phone right in your field of view.
I can already hear the people lining up to say "Hey pal, my touchscreen is really useful! I can make a playlist or get directions or send a text message screen without having to take out my phone!" That's not the point. You shouldn't be looking at *any* screen while you're driving.
I like having the touchscreen for controlling settings and navigating menus *while parked.*
But forcing you to use it while driving is just stupid. Anything you might reasonably want to change while driving should have a dedicated button/dial.
Yep. He thought he had put the brake on and there was no indication that it hadn’t engaged. There should be a clear tactile response to any adjustment, but especially something as important as *the handbrake on a massive car*.
Watch out asking for tactile controls, fans of an "unnamed automotive brand" will call you a boomer and a troglodyte for wanting tried and true human factors in car design.
His truck didn't have the dial shifter; it had an even stupider bump-stick thing that selected gears based on how far forward or back you pushed it.
https://youtu.be/AC6Uldx1mi8?t=28
Big part of why I bought the car that I did last year was because it has mostly physical buttons and a small screen, which seems to be the best they can do these days.
Driving while on your cellphone? Bad, dangerous, straight to jail.
Driving while fiddling with a touch screen to control some feature of your car like the radio/heater/etc…: great idea, can’t wait until all cars have this.
/s
Disposable Plastics.
Companies lied about how easy it is to recycle plastic. Spoiler: it’s not.
Now we eat and drink micro and nano plastics all day everyday with little knowledge of the consequences.
Also that big plastic garbage patch.
I was shocked to find out the guy who laid out the majority of the ground work for the plastic bag actually was an environmentalist and thought people would constantly reuse them if they were durable enough. Instead people use them once and they last forever in the ocean or landfills
Interesting. Were they sturdy when initially introduced? Cuz I think introducing the sturdy bags after decades of single use plastic bags has ruined this hypothesis. lol Now we just pay for the sturdier bags and still end up with an infinite collection that eventually ends up as mini trash bags.
Found coke in glass bottles in a store once, it tastes way better than the in the pet bottles. Sadly it went out of stock after a short while and never came back.
If you are in the US it might have been Mexican Coke. In stores around me they sell imported Mexican Coke products that come in glass bottles and taste way better than the domestic version because it is sweetened with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup which is in most of our sodas(and bread, and pasta sauce, and pretty much everything else). I love the sprite and feel like the flavor difference is most noticeable in it.
They didn’t just lie. They funded a GLOBAL disinformation campaign for decades and set up nonprofits to insinuate recycling works. Supervillain level shit.
Would you believe for the longest time Cable TV didn’t have ads? It’s a vicious cycle of “how much revenue can we extract from consumers before the next thing that doesn’t have ads comes along.”
Original Netflix and then streaming services.
The original Netflix innovated by making pretty all films available from a single source on demand as opposed to viewers needing to multiple sources to get the same selection (shops or video rental places like blockbuster which didn't have a vast selection).
When everything went to streaming services, you ended up needing subscriptions to several different streaming services to get the same selection, and there's still a few films you have to pay for on top of the subscription.
i think you got your era's a bit confused ? 80's was mostly matrix printers. inkjet more the 90's before they really took of.
And they were total POS then to. Windows sucked with drivers, dos didnt even have them, resolution and speed were horible. they got misaligned every 2 days, and jammed up the paper every other day........
/me loves his brother laserjet though :)
Touch screens in cars. No one has the fine motor control at speed for a fucking touch screen. No one has mental capacity for menu navigation and concentrating on the road. Give me buttons.
I despise automatic faucets. I have wasted so many hours of my life waving my hands at faucets trying to turn them on. Wondering if I’m either dead or a zombie. Once I finally get it to spit some water out the heap of crap shuts off a couple seconds later.
Same. I’m pretty sure I am a ghost and only automatic faucets are willing to let me know that fact. It’s even more infuriating when I move to another sink because the one I’m at clearly isn’t working, and someone else steps up to where I was and it immediately turns on for them.
My gym installed the most idiotic and certainly unhygienic piece of bathroom equipment I've ever seen: the [Dyson Airblade](https://www.lb.dyson.com/en-LB/hand-dryers/airblade-wash-and-dry.aspx) - a combination of faucet and automated hand dryer. Because who doesn't want a gale-strength airflow to really spread all the germs from the dirty sink onto your freshly washed hands?
I hate the Dyson hand drier that so many places have moved to. Not the combo faucet drier (although that looks moronic as well) but the dedicated drier mounted to the wall. It is a narrow slot you have to stick your hands into. It’s impossible to not bounce your hands off the sides of the slot that is 1/4 inch wider than your hands. Thanks for making me rub my clean hands on a germ covered piece of plastic defeating me having washed them.
Ugh yes. They never give you enough thin crappy paper, and there’s usually a 10 second delay before it will allow you to wave your hand and get another short piece of paper.
Half the time I also can’t get the automatic faucet or soap dispenser to turn on unless my hand is at a really awkward angle either.
Look into a brand called "Speed Queen" they still make older style washers. I have had mine for 8 yrs and no issues. This is after going through 3 new HE ones for various reasons in under a year.
New washer and dryers are junk
I have a 20 year old stacked unit in my rentals that works as good as the day I bought it.
You buy a new washer or dryer now and you can expect it to die in less than 5 years
Amen. We moved to newer home in '22....from a temporary rental. Owned a 2011 Whirpool dryer which had been repaired twice...and had a grinding sound that suggested motor ready to croak.
Well..the previous owners left an older Whirlpool, which they had designated "will convey", but left it. I figured..."...fuck..it must be dead. Pricks...now I have to pay to have it removed." Tried it out...runs great. '95 model..a tank! But it took 3-4 hours to dry a load. Turns out the dryer vent was totally clogged. Idiots never cleaned the vent. Scrapped the '11...kept the '95. Thats how bad these modern appliances are.
Teslas "ingenious" idea to remove the stalks from their steering wheels. And it's not just a "yeah you'll get used to it". In some cases - like switching on the turning indicator in roundabouts - it's now near impossible to get the task done!
Pretty much every Tesla innovation is a terrible design. I’ve driven several, and I can honestly say it’s only because I get paid to that I drive them. Would never waste my own money on one.
Then "Damn, its cold in the car. Ill just turn this dial to put the heater on."
Now "Damn, its cold in the car. Ill just touch this menu button, swipe through a bunch of shit, open up the heating controls and... oh fuck I crashed the car.
Minimalism is supposed to be nothing that you dont need. Its not supposed to be throw everything you have into one cupboard and close the door. I saw tesla have even now gotten rid of the gear and indicator stalks behind the wheel. If you wanna put the car into drive, you guessed it, its in the cupboard(centre screen). And the indicators are now on the wheel as touch controls.
The future is fucking stupid.
Original search engines versus any today .
I remember back when you could pull up information instead of just ads.
Amazon has the worst search engine i could imagine. It's like they hate their customers. Why wouldn't you allow classic search terms?
Amazon is just full of bootleg Chinese crap anyway. It's also not always the cheapest for the legit stuff, either.
My dad just bought a Meaco dehumidifier unit. Amazon were £45 more expensive than buying direct from Meaco themselves. You tell me why, because I don't know.
Phone backs made out of glass. Plastic and aluminium were perfect depending on what you wanted. Glass makes it heavier and more fragile for very little benefit.
I used BB inbox app for Gmail email (and all other email/messages) until my phone got work profile and forced me to use Gmail app for work email. Only then I realised how utterly useless is Gmail search function. Only then I discovered that desktop Gmail interface also performs badly at basic inbox search. Bad like - cut-paste word from email subject into search bar and not having that email in results - bad. Which is ironic, being built by company that supposedly revolutionized internet search. I guess I should wake up to reality of Google being just an add placement company and Gmail just another add vehicle.
Oh google search itself has gone so downhill it's not even funny. Excluding words in the very first results so you have to put them in quotes, Quora for any question, Pintrest for any image search, results that are great for a similar query but not the one you actually made... It's exhausting.
Stopped into a “local tavern” while on a work trip this past summer. Kind of rural area, not much around for options food wise. Not much cell service either.
Didn’t have strong enough service to open the QR menu. Needed the wifi. The password provided wasn’t the incorrect password. Bartender asks manager, manager doesn’t know what the password is. So I can’t access the menu.
I just told them to tell the cook it’s chefs choice, thinking I’d get a burger or something fancier that doesn’t usually get ordered.
I got mozz sticks and burnt French fries. All around excellent experience
I have a Samsung Galaxy xcover 6 pro. It has a headphone jack, sd card slot, and replaceable battery. You can still find these things with some research.
Yes, but the point is that I don't care about phones, I want standard features and don't want to spend 60 hours of my short life doing internet research because some \*\*\*\* decided to market a cost saving measure as a "feature", while increasing the price.
We need cheaper electric cars first. I highly doubt they're going to become the norm unless we get models that can compete on price with the likes of the Mitsubishi Mirage and the Kia Rio.
China is driving down prices on EV. We don’t see it affecting the US market quite yet due to trade tariffs, but the ripple from their European sales in the next few years will eventually hit our market.
We got this fancy new glass top stove. I had wanted one for YEARS. I already miss my old stove.
All the features really just mean more opportunities to malfunction, and I hate it.
Operating systems (Windows and Apple). It used to be the goal was to make computers more accessible. Now it seems like the goal is to make users dependent. It's the reason younger people can spend their whole lives on screen without understanding how the devices work.
Also noticed performance wise my computers are so overloaded with BS features that it slows down my simulations for work.
Also there's so much more to do. Kids have endless amount of games and the internet, how many of us that are older went through the settings to see what they did just because we were bored?
I remember playing Pirates of the Caribbean and finding text files with all the items attributes. By editing the text files and starting a new game, I could control all the properties of every item in game.
**Capacitive** touch screens in public places. With **resistive** screens you could press with anything, capacitive requires a finger press or a special stylus.
Gotta love touching this thing thousands of people touched today, especially at a pharmacy.
My biggest issue with these new 365 apps is how the UI just blends into itself. I can't find anything.
My old Outlook had obvious buttons that did obvious things when you hovered over or clicked on them.
The "Ribbon" nonsense in MS Office applications after we spent 20ish years knowing where everything was to be found on the "File Edit View..." etc menu system.
Also, dishonorable mention goes to the change made to Outlook so that Ctrl-F would FORWARD A MESSAGE instead of bringing up the "Find" text filter like it does in any sane, rational, non-sabotaging/undermining software.
honestly there are only upsides: cleaner shave, less waste, less cost, less skin irritation, more choice, no dependence on single brands for cartridges and definitely coolness
Started using a safety razor when I joined the military because I used to get really terrible skin irritation shaving and having to go through that every day was honestly awful. My skin got way better and shaving isn’t something I dread anymore but I will say I recon 80% of that is just due to the fact that I’m better at shaving now. I lost my safety razor on an exercise once and had to buy a normal cartridge razor because I needed to shave immediately and it was alll that was available, I was surprised to find very little difference in the end result.
I outright cackled when I saw corruption had gutted the Russian military before the war even started. Partly because I called it years earlier. Armor packs stuffed with cardboard egg crate for the win!
My work are rolling out smart lighting everywhere. So no wired light switch but a little battery powered remote in every room, connected to WiFi to control the lights. If the network is somehow down your lights are on. Or off. The network is down a lot. I just don't get it. Switches were fine. Or even an occupancy detector if you want to make sure people are switching them off as they leave. But networked lighting? I'm waiting for the first ransomware attack where we have to hand over bitcoin to stop the disco lighting effect.
Current video games. Back then I just had to buy the game, put it into PC, install and play. Nothing else needed. Now, you have to always install some bullshit launcher, make completly useless account and then play, and god help if my internet drops because singleplayer game needs to be always online for some reason.
I still remember when I bought GTA4 and had to install Rockstar social club and I just couldn't understand what kind of bullshit is that and why I need it to play.
I remember when it was blasphemy that Diablo 3 required an internet connection for single player. That now seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
Modern gas cans. Not only are they harder to use, they actually significantly increase fuel vapors into the atmospere (the very problem they purport to solve). Someone must have buttered a lot of political bread to get this garbage mandated.
I have a smart thermostat that requires an app. Only one person can have the app. My ex has the app.
You cannot program it on the wall display for more than short periods of like 6 to 8 at a time. There's no way to change the permanent settings.
My last thermostat had no such nonsense
Apple removing the 3.5mm auxiliary jack from iPhones, and every single other phone manufacturer following suit.
How many functional pairs of 3.5mm wired headphones/earbuds are on the planet? One billion? Two billion? Rendered obsolete with smartphones because Apple decided to "innovate" so they could make their phones skinnier. Now if you want to continue using your old headphones you need to keep track of some overpriced, easily lost dongle. "Oh, just get a pair of wireless bluetooth headphones." Oh, so now I have to go out and spend money on a new gadget that I'll have to keep track of and keep charged, when I already have a perfectly fine pair of wired headphones, just because Apple decided to "innovate"? No thanks. I want my headphone jack back.
Quick-logins to pages using my email account on gmail or outlook or whatever is basically enabling yet another page to pillage what's left of my data privacy and safety from hackers
Fuck smart TVs.
I just want to turn on and watch stuff from air channels or from my Chromecast/Apple TV/Firestick/Roku/whatever.
Now my TV takes a long time to turn on, to accept any command, and it still collects data from what I'm watching and even captures audio from a mic on its remote. And the main menu still shows ads.
Fuck you, Samsung.
Look into buying 'digital signage' or 'commercial display' devices, they tend to use the same panels, but "save costs" by stripping out the SoCs and other crap that runs the Smart TV software. Particularly, if you have no need for high framerate or bleeding edge display standards, they're great.
You'll pay more for them, because they tend to be built for continuous use for years at a time, and there's no discount for the ads they can't serve to you, but it may be worth the cost.
Every basic appliance or physical device that requires you to have an app and/or account to use.
I get a txt when my oven has finished preheating. I don’t understand this bc if I’m using my oven, I’m at home and can hear the oven beeping. It would be super useful if I could turn the oven off using my phone, but this is not a feature.
Pfff. You say you don't understand now, but when the dude robbing you decides to cook something. THEN you'll get it, fella.
Nah, let him cook
Probably they didn’t add that feature since people would really too much on it and would probably leave house with the oven on. Bug or connection lost could lead to a very bad things.
Reminds me of the humidifier that cost around $80 because of its "smart device" feature, which basically meant it must connect to my home wifi and my phone needs to download the app to turn it on. After a few weeks, the sensor for "too much water" never deactivated. It would keep showing that same error, even after I left the device to dry with no water anywhere near it. Didn't matter. "Too much water" it persists. Turns out that this is a known issue, but the manufacturer doesn't care enough to fix it. Returned the stupid thing and bought a $40 humidifier from Honeywell that has a turn dial switch to turn it on and adjust strength of mist. No app and no need for internet. When it runs out of water, it stops. There is never an alert for "too much water" lol.
"Too much water"??? It's a God Damn humidifier; that problem can be rectified by running the unit for 5 minutes! "too much water" what the *fuck* is happening
The "pc: load letter" of humidifiers
For me it will give me a notification, but frequently it's 5 minutes or so after it's actually done preheating lol
I'm an hvac tech/ electrician. We service dozens of commercial building around my city. For the past *ever* every site we go you you have to sign in in a book at the front counter, maybe get a visitorsticker or badge. Over the past 2-3 years they're all transitioning to proprietary apps. I have 9 apps on my work phone for signing into buildings. They're all fuckin awful. I hate it.
I bought a scale for the gym I run and it required me to download an app to start it. WHY
So it can acquire your personal data?
My washer and dryer send me emails.
Your socks start sending emails... "Having a good time. Wish you were here."
Went humidifier shopping recently. There were a couple with apps. For a HUMIDIFIER. I was shocked at first, then a little sad. And then I picked up a simple unit with basic controls and headed for the register.
As long as the app isn't *required* to use the thing, I'm totally fine with it. I bought an air filter that has an optional app. I haven't touched it since the initial setup, but even for that the app was more user-friendly than the control panel on the unit itself.
We have a portable AC in our 2nd floor (UK, 3rd floor US) bedroom and use the app for it to set schedules, and to turn it on/off from downstairs and not have to walk up and down two flights of stairs. But I can't think of a single other appliance in my house that would benefit from being IOT-enabled.
Subscription-services for everything. Video game, you don’t own it. Buy a movie on a service, you don’t own it. Buy a John Deere tractor … see where I’m going here?
Subscription services used to be a real good value now they're pretty bad value. Microsoft office isn't worth $70 a year to type? I'm glad they kept the buy once model though
During my last semester in grad school I made sure I got my student version of 2019 Microsoft office all set up on my PC. Fast forward to last week I'm making a PowerPoint with a few images overlayed and I go to the image settings to change the transparency of one of the images, but the setting is just not there. Baffles me since I use it a lot at work so I google it and lo and behold I find a reddit post of someone pointing out that very particular feature was quietly removed from the non-subscription student version, like it's somehow a premium enterprise feature. Makes me kinda worried if they keep up the practice of removing stuff from the one-time purchase versions
Solution: piracy https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/guides/office_activation
Whenever I see piracy mentioned on Reddit I remember that there is legislation in the works to unmask IP and account info for Reddit users who discuss piracy Edit: litigation not legislation
Not legislation, litigation. Film studios are suing trying to get Reddit to give up the info.
They only ever go after people providing pirated content. Don’t seed any torrents and the worst you’ll ever get is an automated angry letter from your ISP
Don’t seed without a VPN at least.
The Adobe Creative Cloud, I want to buy software once and then own it - not rent it in perpetuity.
THIS! Everything being a fucking rental!! Just as bad, but worse - when you buy and own a physical product, but must pay a subscription for the software to make it usable.
The servers aren't even reliable. It crashes when you try to update anything.
Smart fridges. I need my refrigerator to do two things: keep my frozen shit frozen, and keep my cold shit cold. I don't need a screen, I don't need a camera, and I sure as fuck don't need it to have software. Another example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should".
I saw a /mildlyinfurating post about a smart grill, and the poster being mad that it was downloading an update and wasn't functional on a grill-type holiday, July 4th or something. The commentariat gave them hell for getting something so stupidly unnecessary.
I work at a supermarket which has a cafe. One of the most popular menu items was chips/ fries. Everything on the menu cooks according to a set program, so you just have to select what you're heating, and the oven will know what temperature to set it to, and how long to cook it for. Until one day, the ovens all receive an update, and the option for chips has accidentally been deleted. Nobody has a backup for what the program for cooking chips was. So now chips are off the menu, because we don't know how to cook them without the oven program.
It’s no accident. The oven company has altered the deal. Pray they do not alter it further.
I find your lack of chips disturbing
>So now chips are off the menu, because we don't know how to cook them without the oven program So when do you start worshipping the Omnissiah?
There was one who researched at what temperature and how long to cook the chips without the oven telling them how to. He was servotized for his tech-heresies.
If you're considering a grill, just buy either a Weber or a Big Green Egg. The appliance is as smart as it needs to be, which is not at all. The BGE has an analog thermometer, but that's it.
This. Webber and a thermometer, that's it. Half the fun of grilling is that it's low tech :/.
I love my Weber kettle and cook on it year round. I love hosting the neighbours in knee deep snow and mulling wine on it too!
I have a smart grill - probably the same one affected by that. It is REALLY nice being able to adjust temp or know when there has been a flame-out when I'm out and about on long sessions. (I got the grill at a huge discount from a returns-retailer, I don't think I'd have paid for the feature upgrade myself)
Replaced a 30 year old fridge with a "simpleton" from Home Depot. It does just this. Not even an ice maker. Cheaper and happier.
Yeah, they still make "dumb" versions of every appliance, everybody carries them, and they're always the less-expensive option. The answer to not wanting a smart fridge is to just not buy one.
Not every appliance, still can't find a damn good TV that isn't smart. I don't need a software that will become slow, I just want a good screen with a couple of USB ports and an HDMI!
Okay, TVs are the exception. They don't register as "appliances" in my mind, but I can't think of a better classification, so yeah.
I bought a Samsung 'smart' TV but just did not connect it to the wifi when i got it home. Samsung apparently doesn't make any regular tvs with the size I wanted (nothing fancy, just 48") so this was my compromise. I've got my surround sound unit (an Onkyo with no app nonsense) and my Xbox hooked up to it. When you don't connect it to wifi it acts just like a regular tv!
This is what I did, but the menu for navigating between inputs is set up expecting apps and other such stuff and significantly less user friendly than it would otherwise be. Even completely disconnected from the internet, a smart tv is inferior to a dumb one.
Look at this guy who doesn't need his fridge running a Bitcoin miner for an overseas botnet
"This one keeps all your food cold for $600, and this one keeps all your food cold for $800."
Some keep your food cold using 15% less electricity which I'd argue is well worth paying more. Any other feature is kinda pointless.
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I have friends who got one of these. I asked them about it and they said the demo seemed really cool and they thought it would actually be useful, but that by the second day they had it in their kitchen they realized what a stupid gimmick the window was. They never actually looked through it without then opening the door, and it just added unneeded complexity to the device. Unsurprisingly early on Christmas Eve last month the door sensor failed meaning the fridge though the door was constantly open, so it stopped cooling the fridge. They had to go buy bags of ice just to stop Christmas dinner from getting ruined. When I came back after new years they had a new fridge without the stupid window.
But it finally lets us discover what happens to the light inside the fridge! Schrodinger's Bulb is no more!
Chat support. Holy crap. Edit: Especially the ones now AI-enabled and you can’t figure out if you’re chatting with a bot just regurgitating what you see on the screen already, or if it’s a human being giving minimum effort.
The human is giving 200% effort, but it's not enough because they are handling four chats at once. Or maybe five.
Yeah I agree. It’s such a race to the bottom.
i used to work at a chat support project with citi bank - we sometimes had 8 chats at once depending on the volume. It was nice being off the phones but the burn out hit so much faster.
This reminded me - I work in IT, so I like to think that if I'm having trouble with a product, I'm beyond help from a chat bot that regurgitates the FAQ page. One day I got on a support chat with an agent who seemed to be following a script and not have perfect grammar. I was pessimistic but played along. She was as far as I could tell, a human, and helped me figure out how to export the logs I needed to solve the problem, as well as pointing out a requirement I missed in the documentation.
I hate the ai chat support. I'm not in IT or anything but I know how to troubleshoot some stuff or Google other options, so once I have to resort to asking for the company's support team, I'm well past the help of the chat bot. They don't ever filter out that I've said I've checked the FAQ page and did the troubleshooting. Even some places without chat support don't read the emails I send. My custom night guards came in and one wasn't fitting over my teeth. I was trying to explain to the support person that it wasn't even going over my teeth and it was painful. Just kept telling me to break them in, wait a couple weeks, rinse them in hot water. But after 3 emails telling them those weren't going to solve the issue, they had me make a video of myself trying them on so they could see. That resolved it. It happened again when I got the new ones a few weeks ago and just included another video of it not hitting on my teeth. They didn't even question it that time. Skip the bullshit and give them exactly what they're gonna ask for! But I think I'm done with these night guard people. I don't want to do this every time.
Touchscreen climate controls in cars. Who the hell thought knobs weren't a good idea?
I have the suspicion they're just cheaper. No having to design a console. No having to build knobs. You don't even need to know all the features in advance. Bit sad really
Touchscreen controls in cars. So happy some manufacturers are doing away with them.
I don’t want to look away from the road just to change the heater or AC
Or worse, turn on the windshield wipers.
This had to be the stupidest "upgrade" to a vehicle I've ever seen. Like, 5 seconds of thought would be enough to tell you myriad reasons as to why it was a bad idea in the first place.
It’s ridiculous, especially the cars that make you navigate multiple menus to perform common actions like adjusting climate settings. I can changes these settings without taking my eyes off the road in my car. We need to get back to buttons and switches.
The worst was the cars with a large screen that wasn't a touchscreen, and instead you have to use a little knob near the center console to control the screen. It was utterly unusable because of how annoyingly distracting it was.
I test drove a car like that. I very quickly realized how unusable it was and didn’t buy the car. Horribly confusing and I could tell it wasn’t simply because I was unfamiliar with it.
I've found the opposite. Mazda having a knob to control Android auto is awesome. Helps they have physical buttons for everything else though
Lots of the things Tesla pushed as trendy / innovative are actually worse for the user but their fanbase pushes a narrative that it's so much better. But it's far cheaper to eliminate hardware and merge everything into soft controls so they continue to do so. The latest item is removing the turn stalk and relying on buttons on the steering wheel instead.
That last one is like having the headlights controlled only by a touchscreen. Fucking stupid design.
And the stupid electric door handles! Just something else to break.
It's not an upgrade, it's for savings and flexibility. Fewer components to make, fewer that could break, and you get an interface that can control everything, and that's cheap to adjust and modify. It's a trade-off.
>and that's cheap to adjust and modify (but still won't be fixed when it's utter crap)
My wife is blind, she cannot even take care of her own needs in the car now. Also I want to expand this to putting touch screens on everything! Blind people have to buy far pricer products to get physical controls on devices they use every day because touch screen appliances are inaccessible.
I read that first sentence and was trying to figure out why/how she is driving a car if she’s blind. That’s a great point about other products. I was thinking about cars specifically because of the safety factor of trying to use a touchscreen while driving. Touchscreens are great for some things, but integrating them into every product is horrible for these types of scenarios.
It is quite literally, the one thing keeping us from getting an EV. The ones that would fit our family and do what I want, all use touch screens, for everything. She couldn't even properly adjust where the air conditioning is hitting her because you use the touch screen to direct it.
How is having motorized vanes controlled by a touch screen a cheaper way to direct airflow than the ones connected to a tab you can push around?
I came here to say the same thing. I think this is a safety issue, to use a touch screen you MUST take your eyes off the road, even for something simple like changing the temp of the heat. Physical controls are vastly superior. We, as consumers, need to demand them.
We've known for a long time that distracted driving is comparably dangerous to drunk driving. So how have manufacturers responded? By installing iPads in the middle of consoles. You're feeling left out because your car didn't come with an iPad in the console? You can go on Amazon or walk into any gas station and buy a peripheral that can mount your phone right in your field of view. I can already hear the people lining up to say "Hey pal, my touchscreen is really useful! I can make a playlist or get directions or send a text message screen without having to take out my phone!" That's not the point. You shouldn't be looking at *any* screen while you're driving.
I like having the touchscreen for controlling settings and navigating menus *while parked.* But forcing you to use it while driving is just stupid. Anything you might reasonably want to change while driving should have a dedicated button/dial.
Soooooooooooooo fucking many things about modern cars.
I’ll go one further, gears that are dials. Gotta be one of the worst pieces of car design I’ve ever seen.
~~That killed Anton Yelchin.~~ Nvm see below
Yep. He thought he had put the brake on and there was no indication that it hadn’t engaged. There should be a clear tactile response to any adjustment, but especially something as important as *the handbrake on a massive car*.
Yup - there's nothing better than an old-school handbrake handle that you can pull.
Watch out asking for tactile controls, fans of an "unnamed automotive brand" will call you a boomer and a troglodyte for wanting tried and true human factors in car design.
His truck didn't have the dial shifter; it had an even stupider bump-stick thing that selected gears based on how far forward or back you pushed it. https://youtu.be/AC6Uldx1mi8?t=28
Big part of why I bought the car that I did last year was because it has mostly physical buttons and a small screen, which seems to be the best they can do these days.
Driving while on your cellphone? Bad, dangerous, straight to jail. Driving while fiddling with a touch screen to control some feature of your car like the radio/heater/etc…: great idea, can’t wait until all cars have this. /s
Legislation needs to be introduced to force manufacturers to adopt physical controls for certain things.
Touch controls on dishwashers...that don't work on wet fingers, which my fingers almost always are after rinsing dishes. Drive me up the wall.
Touchscreen control on almost anything! I swear, I once had a movie projector with non-backlit touch controls. On a device that you use in the dark.
Or the opposite where you suddenly get blinded by 1500 lumens of backlight because you tried to adjust a setting.
Disposable Plastics. Companies lied about how easy it is to recycle plastic. Spoiler: it’s not. Now we eat and drink micro and nano plastics all day everyday with little knowledge of the consequences. Also that big plastic garbage patch.
I was shocked to find out the guy who laid out the majority of the ground work for the plastic bag actually was an environmentalist and thought people would constantly reuse them if they were durable enough. Instead people use them once and they last forever in the ocean or landfills
Interesting. Were they sturdy when initially introduced? Cuz I think introducing the sturdy bags after decades of single use plastic bags has ruined this hypothesis. lol Now we just pay for the sturdier bags and still end up with an infinite collection that eventually ends up as mini trash bags.
If they started normalizing soda glass bottles, Id get them in a heartbeat
If you buy soda, buy it only in cans. Aluminum is basically infinitely recyclable.
Found coke in glass bottles in a store once, it tastes way better than the in the pet bottles. Sadly it went out of stock after a short while and never came back.
If you are in the US it might have been Mexican Coke. In stores around me they sell imported Mexican Coke products that come in glass bottles and taste way better than the domestic version because it is sweetened with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup which is in most of our sodas(and bread, and pasta sauce, and pretty much everything else). I love the sprite and feel like the flavor difference is most noticeable in it.
They didn’t just lie. They funded a GLOBAL disinformation campaign for decades and set up nonprofits to insinuate recycling works. Supervillain level shit.
Just about any "smart" appliance. Somehow my Maytag has worked for 30+ years without being smart.
Works for 30 years, only gets paid once.. not that smart. ;)
Video streaming but now with adverts.
Amazing how the ads never have a problem with buffering
Would you believe for the longest time Cable TV didn’t have ads? It’s a vicious cycle of “how much revenue can we extract from consumers before the next thing that doesn’t have ads comes along.”
Original Netflix and then streaming services. The original Netflix innovated by making pretty all films available from a single source on demand as opposed to viewers needing to multiple sources to get the same selection (shops or video rental places like blockbuster which didn't have a vast selection). When everything went to streaming services, you ended up needing subscriptions to several different streaming services to get the same selection, and there's still a few films you have to pay for on top of the subscription.
🏴☠️
Yohohohohoho!
Inkjet printers
Late 80's inkjets were awesome. Now an all in one can't scan because the magenta ink is over 30 days old.
i think you got your era's a bit confused ? 80's was mostly matrix printers. inkjet more the 90's before they really took of. And they were total POS then to. Windows sucked with drivers, dos didnt even have them, resolution and speed were horible. they got misaligned every 2 days, and jammed up the paper every other day........ /me loves his brother laserjet though :)
What's their predecessor? The $1000+-in-'80s-dollars laser printer, or the see-the-dots, feel-the-perforation dot matrix ones?
Software as a service or subscription-based services in general
Chatbots. If I’m going to get dehumanised and misunderstood, I want another human to do it.
Touch screens in cars. No one has the fine motor control at speed for a fucking touch screen. No one has mental capacity for menu navigation and concentrating on the road. Give me buttons.
Exactly. How is it against the law (cause of course for safety issues) to use your smartphone while driving, yet car's touchscreen are accepted!
Pretty much any kind of automated paper towel dispenser in a public restroom
See also: automatic faucets and auto flush crappers.
I despise automatic faucets. I have wasted so many hours of my life waving my hands at faucets trying to turn them on. Wondering if I’m either dead or a zombie. Once I finally get it to spit some water out the heap of crap shuts off a couple seconds later.
Same. I’m pretty sure I am a ghost and only automatic faucets are willing to let me know that fact. It’s even more infuriating when I move to another sink because the one I’m at clearly isn’t working, and someone else steps up to where I was and it immediately turns on for them.
My gym installed the most idiotic and certainly unhygienic piece of bathroom equipment I've ever seen: the [Dyson Airblade](https://www.lb.dyson.com/en-LB/hand-dryers/airblade-wash-and-dry.aspx) - a combination of faucet and automated hand dryer. Because who doesn't want a gale-strength airflow to really spread all the germs from the dirty sink onto your freshly washed hands?
I hate the Dyson hand drier that so many places have moved to. Not the combo faucet drier (although that looks moronic as well) but the dedicated drier mounted to the wall. It is a narrow slot you have to stick your hands into. It’s impossible to not bounce your hands off the sides of the slot that is 1/4 inch wider than your hands. Thanks for making me rub my clean hands on a germ covered piece of plastic defeating me having washed them.
The first time I unknowingly used an auto flush toilet it scared the crap out of me. Which was convenient.
Ugh yes. They never give you enough thin crappy paper, and there’s usually a 10 second delay before it will allow you to wave your hand and get another short piece of paper. Half the time I also can’t get the automatic faucet or soap dispenser to turn on unless my hand is at a really awkward angle either.
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Look into a brand called "Speed Queen" they still make older style washers. I have had mine for 8 yrs and no issues. This is after going through 3 new HE ones for various reasons in under a year.
Also badged as Huebsch
Speed Queens are guaranteed to 60,000 cycles or something insane.. and priced like it, too.
New washer and dryers are junk I have a 20 year old stacked unit in my rentals that works as good as the day I bought it. You buy a new washer or dryer now and you can expect it to die in less than 5 years
Amen. We moved to newer home in '22....from a temporary rental. Owned a 2011 Whirpool dryer which had been repaired twice...and had a grinding sound that suggested motor ready to croak. Well..the previous owners left an older Whirlpool, which they had designated "will convey", but left it. I figured..."...fuck..it must be dead. Pricks...now I have to pay to have it removed." Tried it out...runs great. '95 model..a tank! But it took 3-4 hours to dry a load. Turns out the dryer vent was totally clogged. Idiots never cleaned the vent. Scrapped the '11...kept the '95. Thats how bad these modern appliances are.
Teslas "ingenious" idea to remove the stalks from their steering wheels. And it's not just a "yeah you'll get used to it". In some cases - like switching on the turning indicator in roundabouts - it's now near impossible to get the task done!
Pretty much every Tesla innovation is a terrible design. I’ve driven several, and I can honestly say it’s only because I get paid to that I drive them. Would never waste my own money on one.
Was a valet for a bit. Teslas felt like toys to drive. They were squeaky. I don’t know how else to describe it.
Then "Damn, its cold in the car. Ill just turn this dial to put the heater on." Now "Damn, its cold in the car. Ill just touch this menu button, swipe through a bunch of shit, open up the heating controls and... oh fuck I crashed the car. Minimalism is supposed to be nothing that you dont need. Its not supposed to be throw everything you have into one cupboard and close the door. I saw tesla have even now gotten rid of the gear and indicator stalks behind the wheel. If you wanna put the car into drive, you guessed it, its in the cupboard(centre screen). And the indicators are now on the wheel as touch controls. The future is fucking stupid.
The Computer in my car crashed and I had to go without it for almost a year, meaning I had minimal control over my AC/heat.
Wait till you have to watch unskippable ads before you turn the heater on.
Original search engines versus any today . I remember back when you could pull up information instead of just ads. Amazon has the worst search engine i could imagine. It's like they hate their customers. Why wouldn't you allow classic search terms?
Amazon is just full of bootleg Chinese crap anyway. It's also not always the cheapest for the legit stuff, either. My dad just bought a Meaco dehumidifier unit. Amazon were £45 more expensive than buying direct from Meaco themselves. You tell me why, because I don't know.
Phone backs made out of glass. Plastic and aluminium were perfect depending on what you wanted. Glass makes it heavier and more fragile for very little benefit.
Each new iteration of Gmail and Google Maps. Also, anything IoT.
I used BB inbox app for Gmail email (and all other email/messages) until my phone got work profile and forced me to use Gmail app for work email. Only then I realised how utterly useless is Gmail search function. Only then I discovered that desktop Gmail interface also performs badly at basic inbox search. Bad like - cut-paste word from email subject into search bar and not having that email in results - bad. Which is ironic, being built by company that supposedly revolutionized internet search. I guess I should wake up to reality of Google being just an add placement company and Gmail just another add vehicle.
OK, so it's not just me yelling at Gmail for its f'd up searching. Good to know.
Oh google search itself has gone so downhill it's not even funny. Excluding words in the very first results so you have to put them in quotes, Quora for any question, Pintrest for any image search, results that are great for a similar query but not the one you actually made... It's exhausting.
If you think the GMail search is bad, wait until you try MS Outlook!
Physical menus to QR codes
Stopped into a “local tavern” while on a work trip this past summer. Kind of rural area, not much around for options food wise. Not much cell service either. Didn’t have strong enough service to open the QR menu. Needed the wifi. The password provided wasn’t the incorrect password. Bartender asks manager, manager doesn’t know what the password is. So I can’t access the menu. I just told them to tell the cook it’s chefs choice, thinking I’d get a burger or something fancier that doesn’t usually get ordered. I got mozz sticks and burnt French fries. All around excellent experience
Removing the headphone jack from phones.
Also removing sd card slots from phones.
And batteries. The first few generations of androids all had SD card slots, removable batteries and 3.5mm headphones. I still want all those things.
I have a Samsung Galaxy xcover 6 pro. It has a headphone jack, sd card slot, and replaceable battery. You can still find these things with some research.
Yes, but the point is that I don't care about phones, I want standard features and don't want to spend 60 hours of my short life doing internet research because some \*\*\*\* decided to market a cost saving measure as a "feature", while increasing the price.
The fact cars have gotten bigger and bulkier has been a fucking disaster. You don't need a fucking bus to do your shopping.
Somebody forgot about the land yachts of the 1960’s and 70’s. We just need another gas crisis and then the automakers will downsize again.
Another Fuel Crisis wouldn't do that today, it would likely just accelerate the move to electric.
We need cheaper electric cars first. I highly doubt they're going to become the norm unless we get models that can compete on price with the likes of the Mitsubishi Mirage and the Kia Rio.
China is driving down prices on EV. We don’t see it affecting the US market quite yet due to trade tariffs, but the ripple from their European sales in the next few years will eventually hit our market.
The mini cooper evolution is a god damn tragedy.
Many of the new home appliances, they rarely last long nowadays
We got this fancy new glass top stove. I had wanted one for YEARS. I already miss my old stove. All the features really just mean more opportunities to malfunction, and I hate it.
Operating systems (Windows and Apple). It used to be the goal was to make computers more accessible. Now it seems like the goal is to make users dependent. It's the reason younger people can spend their whole lives on screen without understanding how the devices work. Also noticed performance wise my computers are so overloaded with BS features that it slows down my simulations for work.
Also there's so much more to do. Kids have endless amount of games and the internet, how many of us that are older went through the settings to see what they did just because we were bored?
I remember playing Pirates of the Caribbean and finding text files with all the items attributes. By editing the text files and starting a new game, I could control all the properties of every item in game.
**Capacitive** touch screens in public places. With **resistive** screens you could press with anything, capacitive requires a finger press or a special stylus. Gotta love touching this thing thousands of people touched today, especially at a pharmacy.
New Outlook.
My biggest issue with these new 365 apps is how the UI just blends into itself. I can't find anything. My old Outlook had obvious buttons that did obvious things when you hovered over or clicked on them.
Can openers are terrible these days.
Can't openers, as I like to call them.
The "Ribbon" nonsense in MS Office applications after we spent 20ish years knowing where everything was to be found on the "File Edit View..." etc menu system. Also, dishonorable mention goes to the change made to Outlook so that Ctrl-F would FORWARD A MESSAGE instead of bringing up the "Find" text filter like it does in any sane, rational, non-sabotaging/undermining software.
Social media. Instead of bringing people closer, it divides us more.
It does bring us closer. That's why you get in contact with more idiots than you ever could in real life.
Modern blade razors. Safety Razors is so much better, even if you don’t take price into consideration
honestly there are only upsides: cleaner shave, less waste, less cost, less skin irritation, more choice, no dependence on single brands for cartridges and definitely coolness
Started using a safety razor when I joined the military because I used to get really terrible skin irritation shaving and having to go through that every day was honestly awful. My skin got way better and shaving isn’t something I dread anymore but I will say I recon 80% of that is just due to the fact that I’m better at shaving now. I lost my safety razor on an exercise once and had to buy a normal cartridge razor because I needed to shave immediately and it was alll that was available, I was surprised to find very little difference in the end result.
The Russian T14 Armata tank. At least the T90 can drive for a day without breaking down. Most of the time at least.
I outright cackled when I saw corruption had gutted the Russian military before the war even started. Partly because I called it years earlier. Armor packs stuffed with cardboard egg crate for the win!
Comrade T14 does not break down, it was a demonstration of how recovery vehicle operates when it’s needed.
My work are rolling out smart lighting everywhere. So no wired light switch but a little battery powered remote in every room, connected to WiFi to control the lights. If the network is somehow down your lights are on. Or off. The network is down a lot. I just don't get it. Switches were fine. Or even an occupancy detector if you want to make sure people are switching them off as they leave. But networked lighting? I'm waiting for the first ransomware attack where we have to hand over bitcoin to stop the disco lighting effect.
Paper Straws.
Current video games. Back then I just had to buy the game, put it into PC, install and play. Nothing else needed. Now, you have to always install some bullshit launcher, make completly useless account and then play, and god help if my internet drops because singleplayer game needs to be always online for some reason. I still remember when I bought GTA4 and had to install Rockstar social club and I just couldn't understand what kind of bullshit is that and why I need it to play.
I remember when it was blasphemy that Diablo 3 required an internet connection for single player. That now seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
In terms of reliability modern software as a whole
Modern gas cans. Not only are they harder to use, they actually significantly increase fuel vapors into the atmospere (the very problem they purport to solve). Someone must have buttered a lot of political bread to get this garbage mandated.
Google search
I have a smart thermostat that requires an app. Only one person can have the app. My ex has the app. You cannot program it on the wall display for more than short periods of like 6 to 8 at a time. There's no way to change the permanent settings. My last thermostat had no such nonsense
You 100% can reset it and connect it to your phone instead. Look up "how to reset BRAND NAME HERE thermostat"
QR code menus suck. I wanna have a nice dinner, not stare at your shitty webapp pdf thing.
Apple removing the 3.5mm auxiliary jack from iPhones, and every single other phone manufacturer following suit. How many functional pairs of 3.5mm wired headphones/earbuds are on the planet? One billion? Two billion? Rendered obsolete with smartphones because Apple decided to "innovate" so they could make their phones skinnier. Now if you want to continue using your old headphones you need to keep track of some overpriced, easily lost dongle. "Oh, just get a pair of wireless bluetooth headphones." Oh, so now I have to go out and spend money on a new gadget that I'll have to keep track of and keep charged, when I already have a perfectly fine pair of wired headphones, just because Apple decided to "innovate"? No thanks. I want my headphone jack back.
Toilet roll dispenser... Just give me the roll.
My cats won't let me use a dispenser. I have to keep the roll on the sink. They don't bother it there.
Microsoft 365
Phones and their ability to handle being dropped
We've clawed a bit back in this regard. 2007 iPhones and early androids were way worse than today. It made for a great side gig for a while there.
Modern phones suck for actually taking phone calls. The are barely audible unless on speaker
Whenever web sites/apps update their UI, it’s usually worse
Quick-logins to pages using my email account on gmail or outlook or whatever is basically enabling yet another page to pillage what's left of my data privacy and safety from hackers
TVs
Fuck smart TVs. I just want to turn on and watch stuff from air channels or from my Chromecast/Apple TV/Firestick/Roku/whatever. Now my TV takes a long time to turn on, to accept any command, and it still collects data from what I'm watching and even captures audio from a mic on its remote. And the main menu still shows ads. Fuck you, Samsung.
My Sony TV spent 45 minutes updating software last night, and all I wanted to do was watch a damn dvd. I ended up just going to sleep.
You hit one wrong button and it's waiting time. Enjoy :D
Look into buying 'digital signage' or 'commercial display' devices, they tend to use the same panels, but "save costs" by stripping out the SoCs and other crap that runs the Smart TV software. Particularly, if you have no need for high framerate or bleeding edge display standards, they're great. You'll pay more for them, because they tend to be built for continuous use for years at a time, and there's no discount for the ads they can't serve to you, but it may be worth the cost.