Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

news.ycombinator.com

181–190 of 328 posts

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#181

I noticed most of the replies in this thread refer to mobile / desktop software, but nothing compares to the hell that is car infotainment system for me. Using the Audi MMI is painfully clunky, inconsistent, and riddled with subscription-locked features. At this point I just immediately wait for CarPlay and avoid touching anything in the car’s native OS. Honestly they could probably just save a lot of development tim…

VAG has THE WORST infotainment systems out there, right below Nissan and Toyota

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#182
post #70

For me it’s Azure DevOps. We’re required to use it for the project I’m working on. Some things I hate: * Project backlog is a mess UI-wise. Lots of fields, with little to no explanation of what they drive. Generally a bad UI for working with stories. * Reviewing large pull requests is very laggy performance-wise. * Compare branches is broken - I have to start to create a PR, then cancel it, if I just want to compare…

All of these things may be true. Still, have you ever used Jira? Jenkins? Fisheye? Bitbucket?

AzDO is worse than Jira, Jenkins, and Bitbucket IMO.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#183

Signal. I dont like having to tie it to a phone number. I would much rather use email (eg wire) if I need to pick one or the other, but a random session id (eg session, torchat) is much better. I also dont want to be limited to only using it on a mobile device. (Yes I know theres a "desktop client" but it has to be linked to your phone anyway, so it defeats half the point of having a desktop version and it also uses…

Agree. Stop using word "security" or "end to end" encryption and then enforcing me to disclose my phone number to use your "secure" app. This is scam.

The purpose of using phone numbers in many of todays services, is to shift the work of validating the authenticity of the user to carriers. Of course this has given rise to inumerable vendors of accounts or forged prepaid cards, but it raises the barrier just enough to make mass cheating, boosting, spamming unprofitable.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#184
post #179
post #25

Jira, for sure, and it seems hard to run away from, almost everyone use it It seems like the only alternative is to fund my own startup, with me as a sole shareholder, just to forbid Jira forever

Jira is fucking awesome compared to other corporate ticketing systems (CA rally and servicenow)

As a way if enabling corporate bullies and toxic managenent behaviour, I would agree Jira has no peers. Want to ambush somebody in a meeting? Open your jira tickets in the 5 minutes leading up to it. Even better, create some new, obscure category and pile them into there over a week and ask your target why they aren't done during the bi weekly standup.

As a mechanism of abuse of employees it is superb.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#185

Android. When holding my phone up to me ear after answering a call, the screen won't switch off and random buttons will then get pressed because you know, I'm holding it against my ear. Can't find any options in the seeing to fix this issue. My wife has exactly the same problem despite using a different make of phone. How can Android fail at the most fundamental task? The alternative of Apple is too expensive for me.…

That’s incredibly pathetic. My phone’s UI (sxmo) is a bunch of desktop software and a handful of phone specific tools stuck together with shell scripts and it manages to turn the screen off while the proximity sensor detects my ear during a call.

If you’re willing to drop most native mobile apps and maybe spend some time tinkering, you could get the far niche-er alternative of a GNU/Linux phone for as little as $150 (plus ~15% more for shipping all the way from China).

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#186

Android. When holding my phone up to me ear after answering a call, the screen won't switch off and random buttons will then get pressed because you know, I'm holding it against my ear. Can't find any options in the seeing to fix this issue. My wife has exactly the same problem despite using a different make of phone. How can Android fail at the most fundamental task? The alternative of Apple is too expensive for me.…

I have worked on technology related to the proximity sensors on phones (the thing that’s supposed to detect when your phone is at your ear while on a call) and have known people who have worked on several proximity sensors on several different phones and other devices. These are generally simple sensors but they are sort of hard to quality control in the factory and tuning them generally takes some significant amount…

> The problem for phones without a “notch” like what the iPhone does is that the OEMs tried to put the proximity sensor below the screen.

Why not put it next to the camera? That’s what my $200 Pinephone CE does (and the $150 model with the same sensor), and it works well IME.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#187

C programming language for arduino. I could switch to AVR8 assembly but I want a better macro assembly plus the code would not be portable to more capable boards. I guess I could run a soft AVR8 on an fpga board and offload the heavy lifting to the fpga but talk about frying pan to the fire.

Tinygo?

Works great in a lot of places.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#188

Hate is too Sterling for these gripes, but this is relatively the best fit: Windows 10, useful for some games with friends, because of the “nudges” to change my behavior, like asking if I really want to keep using that program, the magic-fingers messages on installation (suggesting I just blindly trust), and the difficulty to install without an online account, among other things. I can’t replace it yet, but the day w…

One of the things that keep me from switching to Linux on my gaming machine is Game Pass.

Switch to Linux and you'll find many more reasons to switch back to Windows... like most of your hardware working as intended most of the time is a big one.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that keep me from switching to Linux on my gaming machine is Game Pass.

With the sheer number of games that exist elsewhere, is it really necessary to fund Microsoft's attempt to monopolize gaming? You can just not have what's on Game Pass. You will survive. It didn't exist a couple years ago, but now you can't do without?

This is a silly take. Game Pass is the best value in gaming today by a huge margin and I say that as a general naysayer of MIcrosoft. It is a reasonable take for someone to stay with MS because of the service.

Re: Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?

#190

MS Teams: What makes it bad: First of all, it uses Electron, thus it is laggy and wastes too much resources. Maybe it is just a pet peeve of mine, but I hate , if an application does not look native on my GNOME Desktop and does not follow any HIG. Another factor is the proprietary nature of MS Teams. If it was open, there would probably be some other client/some way to have a real native client. My preferred alternat…

I feel like the UI on Teams is scaled wrong everywhere. The composing message box is tiny. Just a couple emoji’s for responding look scaled wrong.

The text in the left sidebar almost looks distorted.

It’s weird.

Post reply on HN