Tech you miss/ new tech trends you hate - ok boomers

[Ginger Piglet]

My ISP which used to mock data caps is now forcing data caps in one of their markets, which I am not a part of but its a sign of things to come.
My only choices were Shitcast, ATT, and this ISP.

Fuck bullshit data caps and execs who need more fucking money.

The people responsible for this decision need to get their asses fired and go straight to the deepest layer of Hell.

And, oh look! Software as a service! So in effect your standard usage of your computer even as an office box is rationed.

Yay for the always online superior future!

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

I hate that cars are being reduced to consumer electronic devices with wheels. I resent Tesla in particular for expediting this change.

Future generations will never know what the pure driving experience feels like. For me, a big part of it was the separation from technological distractions and being alone with my thoughts for an extended period of time. It's possible that some of us may live to see such an experience become illegal.

Man, this is why I REALLY want something cheap and "simple" yet fun.... Like an Eagle Talon

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Holy fucking shit, I'm getting sick and tired of junk notifications and how EVERYTHING sends you notifications by default until you turn them off. My phone beeps and makes me think I just got a text message or a missed call, and turns out it's a fucking notification from my flashlight app wishing me a happy Easter. What the fuck? The other day I got a random text message at 3 AM that woke me up, and turns out it was PayPal offering me a deal on some shit at a local business. I went to my PayPal account and apparently they had a whole list of of items checked off to receive notifications for, like coupons and whatnot. I had to go through and uncheck them except for emergency notifications like my account being accessed by an unauthorized device. I think Spotify or Amazon's app did this too, where they randomly send my phone notifications for useless shit like 10% Spotify Premium or Amazon Music. Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble would send me junk notifications about random holidays like Women's Day and shit, when in reality all I care about is getting notifications about new matches or messages.

 

[mitzi]

I miss the times I could go on the internet and not have to worry so much about using a VPN. Or when you didn't get completely swarmed with advertisement emails etc. If I want to eat new york pizza i'll order it. stop telling me about your deals.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

I own an RGB keyboard. I have the RGB set to constant blue on all keys. I got it because it was the least expensive mechanical keyboard wtih clicky switches and no lip so it can be cleaned by blowing it out rather than having to pull off all the keys. It has customisable RGB LEDs, but not in a useful way (like highlighting shortcuts), but in a stupid and puerile way, like rainbow waves, having keys light up all surrounding keys which in turn light up the further surrounding keys and so forth when pressed, slow fade, and other stupidity.

Someone didn't just put a load of colour changer LEDs into the board for a few cents though. They designed, developed and programmed a logic chip to go within the keyboard to do just that. There are no words.

Ohh, I have a GMMK full size mechanical kb with per key rgb. No lip, like yours, hot swap keys, so it's literally plug and play with compatible (cherry style) keys. Nice enough build quality and my key layout is set so it's mostly red with other keys yellow or purple. No "LEET HAXOR XD" cringe branding and the control software is legit a few MB and... Wait for it..... DOESNT REQUIRE A GODDAMN account/email to use.

 

[Totally Awesome]

When I click a picture on Google Images, and the website doesn't actually have that picture. Is there any way I can find the picture on that page? Is it really gone, or is it hidden somewhere?

 

[miata]

I miss highly customizable profiles, even if the majority of users had glittery barf all over it. It was a little obnoxious hearing someone's music play as soon as you load their page, but I feel like the charm of it outweighed the annoying factor.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I think Spotify or Amazon's app did this too, where they randomly send my phone notifications for useless shit like 10% Spotify Premium or Amazon Music.

A couple of months ago, Amazon Kindle woke me up in the middle of the night with a alarm sound to tell me that there was a discount on Obama's gay faggot book. Thanks for that Jeff.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Holy fucking shit, I'm getting sick and tired of junk notifications and how EVERYTHING sends you notifications by default until you turn them off. My phone beeps and makes me think I just got a text message or a missed call, and turns out it's a fucking notification from my flashlight app wishing me a happy Easter. What the fuck? The other day I got a random text message at 3 AM that woke me up, and turns out it was PayPal offering me a deal on some shit at a local business. I went to my PayPal account and apparently they had a whole list of of items checked off to receive notifications for, like coupons and whatnot. I had to go through and uncheck them except for emergency notifications like my account being accessed by an unauthorized device. I think Spotify or Amazon's app did this too, where they randomly send my phone notifications for useless shit like 10% Spotify Premium or Amazon Music. Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble would send me junk notifications about random holidays like Women's Day and shit, when in reality all I care about is getting notifications about new matches or messages.

Having purchased anything on any online storefront signs you up for all their spam even if you click the fucking "don't email me offers" box.

Then they sell your e-mail to someone else and so forth.

Anyhow. I did something extremely dubious today. I bought a vinyl record off greedbay. It was Iced Earth's first album, which I want to get physical copies of the works of because I don't know how long until Jon Schaffer is unpersoned for being photographed storming the Capitol. Also I want to try out the record deck in my Brixton Briefcase so I thought I'd give it a go with something I wanted to listen to.

Why are vinyls so fucking expensive. They have a larger minimum feature size than all optical media and the material they are made from is literally common as muck. They can also, I believe, be pressed at the same rate as pressed optical discs - probably faster, because they have only one material compared to optical discs being sandwiches of plastic and aluminium foil.

"Oh, but they have to be specifically mastered!" No, no they don't. Have you tried mixing and mastering your music properly so they aren't brickwalled like it was before 1995 or so? You can use the vinyl mix to flog your songs on every other format out there - CD, download, cassette tape, even fucking 8 track if you really want to.

Yet at the same time, you can go into any charity shop and find drawers of vinyls for a pound each, so it's not like they're super rare. It's probably that they are charging a hipster tax.

Incidentally, as I went on, greedbay suggested I purchase a vinyl of Bolt Thrower's 1989 "Realm of Chaos / Slaves to Darkness." The seller wanted £90.00 for it. There were bids at that price. I mean, I know it's a good album, but it isn't £90.00 good. I suspect it might be because it had the original Warhammer 40K cover art by John Sibbick.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I miss the times I could go on the internet and not have to worry so much about using a VPN. Or when you didn't get completely swarmed with advertisement emails etc. If I want to eat new york pizza i'll order it. stop telling me about your deals.

I was very pleased when my online profile was so sparse that all the trackers and ad networks only served me ads for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Unobtrusive gray-white and their logo is nice. I actually clicked on it once and the advertising worked. If someone ever asks me to recommend a company to build a nuclear power plant Mitsubishi seems like a fine choice. They also build fighter jets.

When I click a picture on Google Images, and the website doesn't actually have that picture. Is there any way I can find the picture on that page? Is it really gone, or is it hidden somewhere?

Depending on the browser you can try these things.

Chrome: In google image search, right click the image and select "open in new tab". It's exactly the same like the old download button that they had to remove.

Firefox or similar: click the picture in GIS and click "show image". ALTERNATIVELY and this is a feature I don't think many people use and it can be really useful, go to the page where the image is supposed to be, right click and choose "view page info" and then click on the media tab.
It will look like this:

See the scroll list? It's a list of every media element on that page(unless it's one of those fucking infini-scroll pages). Sort by file type, click something, down arrow, down arrow, down arrow...
An embedded image might not be listed as an "image" but you'll figure it out. There's a handy "save as" button for when you've found what you're looking for AND you can resize the scrollable list so it's more than four rows. Fuck Pinterest.

Incidentally, as I went on, greedbay suggested I purchase a vinyl of Bolt Thrower's 1989 "Realm of Chaos / Slaves to Darkness." The seller wanted £90.00 for it. There were bids at that price. I mean, I know it's a good album, but it isn't £90.00 good. I suspect it might be because it had the original Warhammer 40K cover art by John Sibbick.

Some retards broke into my cellar once and stole a stack of old Macs and other useless garbage and they left all the old vinyl albums that were first pressings and in perfect condition. A quick look at Ebay and some of those records are going for €150-€250 a pop.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

The urge to insist on real name usage to use social media or comment on things.

Why would I do that, given that cancel mobs run around ratting on people to their employers and families for real or imagined falsehoods. They claim "but it's to stop CYBERBOOLYING!!!!1" but forget that it also prevents genuine whistleblowing and puts dissidents in repressive societies at extreme risk.

I blame the Chinese government.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

The urge to insist on real name usage to use social media or comment on things.

Why would I do that, given that cancel mobs run around ratting on people to their employers and families for real or imagined falsehoods. They claim "but it's to stop CYBERBOOLYING!!!!1" but forget that it also prevents genuine whistleblowing and puts dissidents in repressive societies at extreme risk.

I blame the Chinese government.

I remember when it was first really being pushed. It was just as normies were getting on the net en mass (late mid-2000s) and facebook was getting popular. It also benefits corporations, as it makes it really easy to track people for ads and as you said prevents whistleblowing.

I don't think it was (fully) the CCP but more big corporations.

 

[Erika Furudo]

A couple of months ago, Amazon Kindle woke me up in the middle of the night with a alarm sound to tell me that there was a discount on Obama's gay faggot book. Thanks for that Jeff.

Why do you own a kindle? I have lots of books taking up space, but it's worth it. Amazon has the right to remove any books your purchase, and they have done so in the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.

"We won't do it again, we swear."
If you pay for books, you might as well own them. Or just lend some from your local library.

If you enjoy a kindle thats fine I guess. I just think people should stay away from them when you don't really own the product.

 

[TenMilesWide]

Not exactly a new tech trend but I don't know where else to complain about this: Fingerprint sensors with limited entry attempts that switch to passcode mode if you fail 5 times. Android has this by default and it's the most monumentally retarded thing I've ever seen. Nobody's gonna brute force my fingerprint, it'd be more secure to just let me keep trying instead of forcing me to come up with a 4-digit code that somebody could crack way easier. I just don't fucking get it.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

Not exactly a new tech trend but I don't know where else to complain about this: Fingerprint sensors with limited entry attempts that switch to passcode mode if you fail 5 times. Android has this by default and it's the most monumentally retarded thing I've ever seen. Nobody's gonna brute force my fingerprint, it'd be more secure to just let me keep trying instead of forcing me to come up with a 4-digit code that somebody could crack way easier. I just don't fucking get it.

I can only assume some one who was involved in that part knew some one who lost a hand or finger, had a finger injury that caused scarring that caused permanent damage to the finger print pattern (i.e. permanent scarring) or, had cancer with chemo treatment involving the common chemo drug capecitabine which can cause finger print change or removal.

 

[TenMilesWide]

I can only assume some one who was involved in that part knew some one who lost a hand or finger, had a finger injury that caused scarring that caused permanent damage to the finger print pattern (i.e. permanent scarring) or, had cancer with chemo treatment involving the common chemo drug capecitabine which can cause finger print change or removal.

If they sandbagged biometrics like this, reducing both security and convenience this much just to account for the small chance that somebody could lose fingers/prints over their lifetime, I'm gonna be pissed.

 

[seri0us]

my flashlight app

Hasn't that been a built-in feature for at least seven years now?

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Hasn't that been a built-in feature for at least seven years now?

I have a Galaxy 10, and some of the basic things like flashlights, notifications lights, and voicemail are no longer standard: they're 3rd party apps you have to manually install, which is bullshit.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Not exactly a new tech trend but I don't know where else to complain about this: Fingerprint sensors with limited entry attempts that switch to passcode mode if you fail 5 times. Android has this by default and it's the most monumentally retarded thing I've ever seen. Nobody's gonna brute force my fingerprint, it'd be more secure to just let me keep trying instead of forcing me to come up with a 4-digit code that somebody could crack way easier. I just don't fucking get it.

Fingerprint sensors are not infallible. It's possible to steal a fingerprint from, say, a glass or similar using a piece of blu-tack and use that to unlock the sensor.

Then again, if anyone ill-intentioned has unfettered physical access to your device, it is already compromised. If need be they could just flash it with a custom BIOS or Android / iOS version that just happens to have the security measures dummied out. Or prise the flash memory out and put it into something else. If they have unfettered physical access to you as well, what's to stop them waterboarding you until you agree to unlock it for them or spill the password or pin.

EDIT:

Why do you own a kindle? I have lots of books taking up space, but it's worth it. Amazon has the right to remove any books your purchase, and they have done so in the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

"We won't do it again, we swear."
If you pay for books, you might as well own them. Or just lend some from your local library.

If you enjoy a kindle thats fine I guess. I just think people should stay away from them when you don't really own the product.

The same for me but with physical copies of music and TV shows and films. Physical media is just better because it has all the things like cover art, a proper feel to it, and similar. Locally stored digital copies are also acceptable, but streaming? No thanks. I do not want to own nothing and be happy.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Fingerprint sensors are not infallible. It's possible to steal a fingerprint from, say, a glass or similar using a piece of blu-tack and use that to unlock the sensor.

And it's much easier to get a new password than a new fingerprint. Biometrics are a bad idea in general.