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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?

#401

Post by WalterBright »

jfrunyon wrote: post #381
WalterBright wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not even slightly accurate to what those codepoints do That's what the codepoints do, which causes the renderer to overwrite the earlier text making it invisible and possible to add hidden malware. > and those codepoints are necessary for the correct presentation of LTR and RTL scripts. eurt ton

> which causes the renderer to overwrite the earlier text making it invisible No. It does not overwrite anything nor does it make anything invisible. The only thing the codepoints you're referring to can do is make things appear out of order (and that's a bug in editors for not rendering them as special characters, not a bug in Unicode). There are invisible codepoints (such as ZWSP) but they also have are also necess…

> It does not overwrite anything nor does it make anything invisible

Sure it does. It causes the renderer to reverse direction, which overwrites the previous characters. It's EXACTLY this effect which allows for invisible malware insertion into code.

Errors in ASCII are not justification for going bananas adding them everywhere.

>> eurt ton > I'm not even going to address that other than to say LOL

You could try. Somehow I managed to trick HN into rendering text right-to-left by never stepping outside of ASCII.

Unicode further botched things up by introducing modes.

And how many official Unicode letter 'a' glyphs are there? Somehow Unicode decided it needed to confuse fonts with characters. They're not even always different fonts, they sometimes are indistinguishable.

I wouldn't be in the least surprised if Unicode added a clockwise spiral rendering mode.

    clock
    iralw
    i !si
    ps es
Dare I ask - is there one already?

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

#402

Post by conductr »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #393
conductr wrote: post #264

LEDs. Why does everything need to be lit? I bought a toaster, now my kitchen glows. I bought a toothbrush, now my bathroom glows. Etc, etc. Why do manufacturers insist on making things always glow?

Sales.

Perhaps. Not sure I believe that as I've never once noticed the LED light as part of my buying decision. Now that I'm wary though, I will avoid devices that seems to have bright lights and have returned things specifically for that reason. Not that my behavior is average but feel like at the least, nobody is testing things to see if they blink before they buy them (many small electronics are bought without ever seeing them tested/demo'ed).

I have had many things over the years that have internal lights, for no apparent reason, but they glow out of the box. Eg, like an old DVD player that glows through the case. I'm sure this is for maintenance as it may blink or light a certain way to communicate error codes, but if you're the one building this in - I would think OFF would be default and could enter some debug mode or something from there, or start blinking when errors occur.

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

#403

Post by robotresearcher »

WalterBright wrote: post #396
robotresearcher wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sales pitch for icons is that they can be better than words for some purposes. The play/pause icons on a miniature Japanese cassette player are a good example. No need for localization, efficient use of space, learn them in a couple of interactions. Now universal. ‘Icons are good sometimes’ is not a spit on words. I’ll happily concede that icons are hard to look up. Tooltips are a smart mitigation for this proble…

> The play/pause icons Arrows are indeed icons that work. The square for "stop" - how is that intuitive?

Not harder to learn than ‘stop/parar/arreter/halt’

Even with a dictionary in front of me I’m not sure which German word is right for stopping music. But I know the icon for a German-localized device.

If you move the Safari icon out of the shortcut dock so you can read the word ‘Safari’ it would still not suggest ‘web browser’ to a noob.

Pros and cons. And discoverability has definitely moved backwards since the classic Mac desktop.

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

#404

Post by lolsal »

rco8786 wrote: post #224
lolsal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need technology to solve this problem for you - you can choose not to be available.

You're thinking about it backwards. Technology created this problem. Choosing to not be available is effectively making yourself a social pariah if your social circle is otherwise highly available.

> Technology created this problem.

...No. Your adoption of technology/social media into every facet of your life created this problem.

I work in tech and I am not available when I'm not working. I don't participate in social media, but my social life is thriving during a pandemic.

> Choosing to not be available is effectively making yourself a social pariah if your social circle is otherwise highly available.

This sounds like a problem between you and your social circle. My circle doesn't make me feel like a pariah due to my availability. I suspect it has to do with me setting expectations and exercising discipline. You can do the same thing (though you might have to make changes to your social circle).

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

#405

Post by recursive »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #271
recursive wrote: post #255

Light switches. I like the old kind. There's a position for off and and a position for on. Maybe a slider for a dimmer. But now in my bedroom, the brightness is adjusted by holding down a single button. The intensity follows a slow triangle wave. You release the button at the desired time. That means if you just want the dimmest possible setting, you have to stand there for ~10 seconds and be subjected to the highest…

Why do you tolerate that? "Old kind" light switches are plentiful, as are sliding dimmer, probably multiple kinds at local hardware stores and certainly online. Takes 10 minutes and a screwdriver and maybe a couple wire nuts to replace.

Because I don't think the old kind could communicate with my fancy-ass ceiling fan assembly? I'm actually not sure.

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

#406

Post by rokhayakebe »

jtwaleson wrote: post #397
rokhayakebe wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an age of extreme luxury But hasn't every age been one of luxury for those who lived it?

Heh, it's been trending upward for centuries with lots of ups and downs though. For the last 3 decades it's been mostly upwards. But now the trend might become different. I fear for the future of my kids in 30 years.

Your kids will live an even more luxurious life (perhaps not more fulfilling): be anywhere in the world in less than 3 hours, self driving electric cars, better healthcare services, and much more.

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

#407

Post by dntrkv »

jhickok wrote: post #323
math_denial wrote: post #37

1. Information hoarding, distraction and FOMO The Internet has generated in me an habit of information hoarding. At the beginning I would bookmark useful information and then take notes on paper of the useful things; with the passing of time distraction has started to creep in: more and more useless information, more and more FOMO. 2. Omnipresence of tech and privacy concerns An increasing number of actions require e…

>Information hoarding, distraction and FOMO You know, I used to jump from one thing to the next never giving anything enough time. I would attend digital conferences, watch PARTS of courses on Pluralsight, LinuxAcademy (RIP) and youtube, hoard books, bookmark websites etc. Something happened a few years ago where I was able to just turn it all off. I deleted all my pdfs and removed all my bookmarks. I began focusing…

I did the same thing.

Used to hoard data, bookmarks, pdfs, etc.

Then I put all my data on an external drive and into some bin in the garage, deleted all my bookmarks and stopped saving them. And then realized... I don't need any of it. It's all just mental baggage.

Nowadays if I find an interesting article and don't have time to read it I might leave it open for a day, but then I just close it. I discover new interesting things to read every day, no need to bookmark something I probably won't ever get to.

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

#408

Post by jonnycomputer »

mh- wrote: post #300
jonnycomputer wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes/models do that?

Lots, apparently. Search r/JustRolledIntoTheShop for "headlights". Some of the first few matches: Ford Fusion: https://reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/pw1n0e/t... Tesla: https://reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/pvyq3u/y...

I just found it surprising, because I've changed lots of bulbs on my own cars, and it was never that hard a job.

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

#409

Post by WalterBright »

robotresearcher wrote: post #403
WalterBright wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The play/pause icons Arrows are indeed icons that work. The square for "stop" - how is that intuitive?

Not harder to learn than ‘stop/parar/arreter/halt ’ Even with a dictionary in front of me I’m not sure which German word is right for stopping music. But I know the icon for a German-localized device. If you move the Safari icon out of the shortcut dock so you can read the word ‘Safari’ it would still not suggest ‘web browser’ to a noob. Pros and cons. And discoverability has definitely moved backwards since the clas…

> Even with a dictionary in front of me I’m not sure which German word is right for stopping music

That's because to learn what a word means, you use a German->English dictionary. If you want to learn what the German word is for stop, you use an English-German dictionary, and this is not relevant for labels in German.

> Safari

At least I could look it up in the index of the manual. Or I could ask "What is Safari?" when I call tech support.

> Pros and cons

Definitely. But the main Pro seems to be "it looks pretty" along with misguided virtue signalling. Plenty, plenty cons.

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

#410

Post by rsp1984 »

psyc wrote: post #372
rsp1984 wrote: post #231

The web experience. I long back for those days where you used to be able to just type in a URL or click a link and arrive at a webpage without much fuss about it. If the page wasn't what you were looking for, NBD, you just moved on. The experience nowadays is more like: * Google for thing XYZ, wait for some seconds until the result page layout is final due to additional crap being loaded in the background * scrolling…

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Exactly. Thanks for reminding me.
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