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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?

#461

Post by naturalauction »

rco8786 wrote: post #423
uoaei wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that reliability is weakly inversely correlated with repairability (reliable things may be more complicated and thus harder to fix without specialized tools or knowledge), I'm sure there are subjective optima that balance the two and are more practical than the current extreme of maximizing reliability but being completely crippled at the slightest disturbance.

Again, any concrete examples of "being completely crippled at the slightest disturbance."? I've had lots of cars both modern and old and never experienced a disablement due to something that wasn't truly disable worthy.

A 2010 (not sure about other models) Toyota Prius has to be towed to and serviced by a dealer if it runs out of fuel and battery. An older car would have been able to be jumped and refueled.

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

#462

Post by _oghd »

magicroot75 wrote: post #449
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 work in digital advertising. I manage several billion impressions a year in ads spend and over $15M a year. I think it's easy for engineers to undervalue the importance of advertising. Without marketing, many many well-engineered products would never be discovered. This is why marketing is considered a core function of business. It speeds up the integration of new products and technologies into the general society.…

99.9% of products aren't needed in any way by anybody.

90% of products are created to fill an artificial demand manufactured by advertising in the first place.

these products and their manufacturing comes at a massive carbon cost for meaningless gain.

i also worked in digital advertising. for some of the biggest brands out there. i quit.

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

#463

Post by pillefitz »

skim_milk wrote: post #129
jacquesm wrote: post #29

I think there is an 'optimum' level for technology of all kinds, below that you really want more and it is clear that there is room for improvement. But once the optimum has been reached any further additions will degrade the experience. Examples: Car controls: pre: direct taps and gauges plumbed into engine parts and such, real switches and levers. optimum: does what it should, not more, not less, more reliable than…

I don't think we can have 'too much' CPU or RAM. The stuff I'm working on as a single software consultant, give me a budget of 100k and I can put out software using .Net Core and Angular that you would have needed a 10 million dollar budget in the 90's to make due to code being tied up around the restrictions of hardware. The productivity improvements from fast CPUs and large amounts of RAM are enormous and enables s…

Most Win95 applications were way snappier than any recent Webapp I've used or developed.

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

#464

Post by aimor »

dijit wrote: post #241

I grew up in the 90's, when I turned on the TV the audio was being output immediately and the actual display took a second to warm up. a second. Now my TV takes about 30s to start up, it's actually constantly on standby mode. It takes a good 5-10 minutes to actually boot from cold. using the UI feels sluggish, there's proprietary "applications" which clog up the main screen and I'm told it spies on me. Not to mention…

Oh I like this answer. It immediately reminded me that so many things used to just be instant on. Touch surfaces are slow to respond (think modern kitchen appliances vs older digital buttons), things like car radios have startup delays, even led lights are delayed turning on and slowly fade off (especially annoying if two bulbs on a switch turn on at different speeds). It's comparable to an OS with animations turned on or off, the difference is striking.

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

#465

Post by ivank »

cwkoss wrote: post #222
codazoda wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just last night I was thinking about how much of my life is wasted watching advertising on TV. 15 minutes is worth more than a few dollars to me. I was watching a movie on the Roku Channel. Because the channel is free, it's got commercials. The more I watched, the longer the commercials got. At some point I gave up and turned it off. The movie is 132 minutes long and there are 10 stops for commercials. The last comme…

We need to start a collective action where audiences punish advertisers. How can we lower the ROI on advertising as a society? Harass customer service lines with complaints about the advertisements? Organize focused boycotts of worst offenders? Form a journalistic non-profit that investigates unethical and illegal business practices, ordering targets by ad spend? Maybe we should mock friends and acquaintances that pu…

We could try to make competitive web services that are not funded by advertising.

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

#467

Post by muzani »

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.

Those photos remind me of the contrast in software too. Compare today's Lemmings, with any other Lemmings that didn't run on an ad-based business model. Level design is significantly worse to allow it to run as many ads as possible.

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

#468

Post by throwamon »

jfrunyon wrote: post #351
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…

Reddit used to be amazing. "Just pick a username and password. Give us your email if you want to be able to do a password reset." Now an email (with verification) is required and you'll still get insta-shadow-banned.

Actually, no, an email is not required. It's a dark pattern. You just need to click "Continue" without entering any email address.

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

#469

Post by teddyh »

hidden-spyder wrote: post #456
teddyh wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

What? How can Maps, Google Search, and Youtube becoming worse be a good thing?

“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” Or, in other words, monopolies have benefits, but also have a cost. And, usually, at least in the long run, that cost outweigh the benefits.

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

#470

Post by I_complete_me »

radlad wrote: post #160
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Getting a bit off-topic now, but I'm reminded of the song Logos by Faded Paper Figures looking at the photos of empty signs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO_e7Qq2WKg Signs on every mountain side, Line highways, stitching desert thread ... My soul goes with your logos, There's no place left to dream tonight

This is what jumped into my mind:

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree

Indeed, unless the billboards fall

I'll never see a tree at all.

Ogden Nash

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