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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?

#311

Post by handrous »

bufordtwain wrote: post #272
handrous wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite microwave oven is one my Grandma owned for decades, probably purchased in the 70s or early 80s. Two dials. No buttons. Pull to open the door, not even a button for that. Didn't even have the spinny-plate thing (did OK regardless, and I find I have to manually move stuff around halfway through even with the spinny plate, so it's kinda useless). Put power dial where you want it. Put timer dial where you wan…

This is the one I ended up getting when my previous microwave broke. It has one dial to set the time and no spinny plate. Pull to open. Happy with it so far but we'll see how long it lasts... https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZTVIPZ2/ref=ppx_yo_dt...

I do wonder why simple products are often expensive. I think our microwave cost like $30-40 new, but it's got probably 20 buttons and a clock and the spinner and all that junk, and at the time I couldn't find any cheap options that were simple, only ones that were (like this) several times more than the cheapies. You'd think the one with nothing but a dial and no spinner (so, no motor, simpler design for the interior, no extra material cost for the glass plate, and so on) would be as cheap as it gets, but no. Microwaves don't even have the "because spying and ads offsets the price of more-complex sets" excuse that TVs do.

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

#312

Post by maxk42 »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #47
JamesBarney wrote: post #8

I really miss not having a smart phone. I'd totally buy a locked down android that only had maps, sms, and calling.

At least on Android, it's pretty easy to uninstall all the bloatware and leave only what you need. Why are you not doing it if you miss it? All you need is to enable developer options, enable adb debugging, install adb or Android developer tools on the computer, connect phone with USB and do a bunch of "adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 some.package.name" for a bunch of packages. Ok, now that I wrote it, it's not that…

Not true on most phones. Samsung and a lot of other manufacturers package a lot of non-removable apps and customizations to make the OS "theirs". Although I do find Google's line of phones to be relatively bloatware-free. (Although I still can't remove Google Assistant, obligatory voice-to-text, or a few other unwanted features.) Motorola's phones were also pretty good until their recent acquisition. Now they're getting just as spammy as other Android manufacturers. OnePlus is relatively good, but I can't remove Google Pay or their stupid gaming app for some reason.

Does anybody know of any other relatively bloatware-free manufacturers?

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

#313

Post by Freak_NL »

jdofaz wrote: post #187
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #148

Recently I went to a 7-11, and the cashier wanted me to teach me how to use an app to checkout. Instead of putting my items down and having him scan it, I had to pull out my phone, scan items with a line of people behind me, then present a code he scanned to bill me. Took 5 minutes to do something that usually takes 30 seconds. Just as in your examples, imo the key here is not "tech". It's that the tech is being used…

Wow, I would have just left

I can't imagine any shop that wouldn't just ring up your items if you answer “No thank you”.

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

#314

Post by ericmay »

BbzzbB wrote: post #178
ericmay wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that too but a complete ban probably doesn't work well. What else would you be banning? Bumper stickers and logos on cars (get rid of the Apple logo on the back of your Mac), yard signs for political campaigns, newspapers, I mean there's a lot there. And then once you start selectively allowing it then you also create hyper-competitive scenarios for the ads that are allowed and I'm thinking if you do…

>I'd say it's local, and lets people know what your business is and what services you offer. >I'd ban targeted advertising in any form. Aren't these at odds? Genuine question, I just don't see how you can ban targeted advertising in any form while allowing people to advertise locally on the Internet for one thing. Then, similarly to TV ads, no targeting skews the advertising pool to huge players that can overspend (I…

When I say local I'm thinking like, you can have a sign on the sidewalk for your business or you can have a sign in front of your store or something. I wasn't clear on that - my bad.

I so far haven't seen any benefit to me personally from targeted advertising. A lot of companies take information about me and my activities without a true way to consent and then use that to send me ads or try and find ways to make me addicted to their products. If they got rid of targeted ads I think there'd be 0 detriment to my own life and lots of benefits. Certainly open to other arguments though.

> on the other I'm not sure how you make a product, service or SMB known without it and I doubt most of my friends' product, service or SMB would exist without online targeted advertising for finding customers

Yea personally I wouldn't care at all. It's like if you made a business that depended on selling nicotine or selling cigarette filters and then we banned cigarettes. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't here, just that if as a society we decided X was bad and shouldn't be sold, then people who sell products related to X I mean we shouldn't keep something bad around just for that reason.

> IMO the solution is more akin to giving more privacy rights and options than an outright ban, granted I have no clue if that is enforceable or how to implement.

I think this can work on the web or Internet technologies, but I'm also concerned about things like billboards, or the newspaper ad section that even when I call and ask them to stop I still get tossed into my yard or on the sidewalk. I don't want to see the billboard yet I'm forced to. I don't want people to throw newspaper ads on my front yard but I'm forced to. At least with the web though I can just turn on ad blockers and use technology to fight it. I can't do anything about the newspaper stuff. I fantasize about saving them for a year or something and then giving them back. It pisses me off because these things end up all over the street and get washed into and clog up sewer drains too.

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

#316

Post by agiacalone »

cletus wrote: post #66
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.…

> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. People forget how (relatively) expensive products used to be. Example: my family had a very early VHS video recorder. I believe it cost ~$1000 in the early 1980s. I may be misremembering. But that was a lot of money then. So of course it was worth repairing. Labour was considerably less expensive in terms of percentage of…

> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion.

Much of this, I feel, is survivor bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias) and I totally agree with your thoughts on it.

Anecdotal story from my grandfather which occurred circa 1955:

He purchased a "name brand" television in 1955, when TVs were still very new and rather expensive (I don't know the brand, sadly, and he's long since passed to ask him). Got the TV home, plugged it in, and almost immediately the vacuum tubes in the television burned out.

Called a repairman to service the television. Repairman came out, replaced all of the vacuum tubes, ran a few checks on the electronics to see if everything checked out. It did, and the serviceman took care of the billing and left--all the while, the television was on and operating.

As the serviceman was leaving the driveway, the tubes burned out again.

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

#317

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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.

It would destroy 90% of the current version of the tech industry.

I find it hard to believe that a better version isn't possible.

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

#319

Post by MandieD »

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.…

“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” - Stephen Leacock, long before computers, much less the internet, were a thing.

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

#320

Post by ryeights »

distribot wrote: post #277
ryeights wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. We have regulations for noise levels emitting from people’s private property, for example, for the sake of public interest.

A person shouldn't be able to have signage above their business to indicate what it is, the phone number, etc? Not billboards, but literally a sign that says "Johnny's Bakery"

This seems a bit disingenuous. It's an advertising ban, not a ban on any and all forms of signage. In the pictures of Sao Paulo you can clearly see that businesses still have small signs out front, presumably with the name of the business on them.
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