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Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#411

Post by nradov »

reaperducer wrote: post #113

Communicating. Talking to someone on a cell phone is awful compared with a real land line. There's so much latency. And then if you're talking to someone who is on a VOIP service, it's even worse. No wonder people text more than they speak to one another these days. It's just so bad. And now we have two generations of people who never knew how good landlines sounded, and what it's like to talk to someone like they're…

5G HD Voice has better quality than an analog land line with no noticeable latency. Of course the actual audio quality experience depends more on the handset and ambient environment than on the network.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#413

Post by jfrunyon »

mikewarot wrote: post #298

Ubiquitous networking, and the lack of a suitable operating system to match it. When I started programming, systems with floppy disks that held 360k were the norm. Those disks could be write protected. Diskcopy was a standard DOS command that allowed you to have an exact copy of your data, protected against alteration by the hardware of the machine, and the write-protect tab. You could directly know what data you wer…

You're forgetting a step in your "reasonable approach". How do you expect a user to know whether or not they should grant access for HN.exe to talk to 127.0.0.1 or for mikewarot.exe to access some file?

The reality is the sort of system you suggest almost inevitably ends up being the same as broad permission-based security like current mobile OSes have, because the only scalable decision is "give it access to all resources in a category if it asks and that seems appropriate".

However, those systems DO exist in both Windows and Linux.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#415

Post by ACow_Adonis »

carabiner wrote: post #308
Nextgrid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is cancer and should die, but billboards and real-world display advertising is probably the least bad version of it. I'd prefer if online advertising (and the associated data collection and privacy violations) were nuked first.

That would destroy 90% of the tech industry.

the AD industry. it would destroy the AD industry.

they've been so successful in their advertising they've just managed to get people to call them "tech".

tech would probably be untouched, and who knows, might even flourish a bit once people stop wasting their time and paycheques to make the world a worse place.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#416

Post by ok_dad »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #89
ok_dad wrote: post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

I bet you'll love these before-and-after photos of Sao Paolo after their outdoor advertising ban: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret... Anti-advertising was one of the pet causes of Generation X, back before more pressing things like "the war on terror" and a financial collapse and health care crisis took the stage. And those are bigger deals, but man, advertising is just awful too.

Yea, in my home state, all big signs are banned; billboards, store signs, etc. Only a smallish sign is allowed for any given building or whatever. It's really nice.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#417

Post by gilmore606 »

carabiner wrote: post #308
Nextgrid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is cancer and should die, but billboards and real-world display advertising is probably the least bad version of it. I'd prefer if online advertising (and the associated data collection and privacy violations) were nuked first.

That would destroy 90% of the tech industry.

Sure but there's probably a downside as well.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#418

Post by mikewarot »

jfrunyon wrote: post #413
mikewarot wrote: post #298

Ubiquitous networking, and the lack of a suitable operating system to match it. When I started programming, systems with floppy disks that held 360k were the norm. Those disks could be write protected. Diskcopy was a standard DOS command that allowed you to have an exact copy of your data, protected against alteration by the hardware of the machine, and the write-protect tab. You could directly know what data you wer…

You're forgetting a step in your "reasonable approach". How do you expect a user to know whether or not they should grant access for HN.exe to talk to 127.0.0.1 or for mikewarot.exe to access some file? The reality is the sort of system you suggest almost inevitably ends up being the same as broad permission-based security like current mobile OSes have, because the only scalable decision is "give it access to all res…

Consider cash in your wallet... you quite easily hand out tokens to clerks for transactions.

Instead of a dialog box run by an application to open a document, you have the OS do the same thing, and enforce the decision of the user. As far as the user interface, the same steps would happen, but security would be radically improved.

Broad based permissions are horrible kludges, and make explaining fine grained capabilities much harder to do, but I don't have a better term for it.

If some random application wants to phone home, you could allow it, or not, or give it X amount of bandwidth, the options are limitless. I don't know what the optimal conventions we'll settle on will be. I know if I were to specify them, they'd definitely be the wrong ones. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#419

Post by C19is20 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #394
arprocter wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iirc it happened on a friend's 6th gen Ford Fiesta I doubt there's a big list somewhere as it isn't something the manufacturers are proud about

What? Not sure what years are in that generation but my gf owned a 2014 Ford Fiesta (the final generation) and replacing headlights was a 5 minute job. I did it several times...

I have a 2005 FF...never replaced the headlights (gf has a 2007 fusion - similar): and you say 'several times'?

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#420

Post by aimor »

4ggr0 wrote: post #177
aimor wrote: post #133

Logging in. First I need to make an account for nearly everything. Then I need to link that account to a phone number or email. Then every time I use the service I need to wait for them to text or email me a password. If they email me the password then I have to log in to my email, which means getting another password texted to me. Alternatively if it's work related I have a physical key card, a physical password gen…

What's a physical password generator? Sounds interesting.

A token generator, a little device where you push a button and get a password. Sorry that the language was confusing, I wanted to make the point that tokens, codes, keys, whatever they want to call them are another password.
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