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Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?

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31–40 of 125 posts

Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?

#31
post #9

IMHO Juicero was a scam. Here's my list. * Too many remote controls. One for TV, one for AppleTv, one for PS5 if I want to see a movie on bluray, one for the Denon AMP, etc... There should be a standard for that. Something with a touchscreen and an API manufacturers should support. * Touchscreens in cars (already mentioned). My Toyota is not even capacitive and it's a car from 2017. More generally... Touchscreens whe…

> More generally... Touchscreens where they're not needed, like ATMs or vending machines: with all this covid fear, they're not hygienic

I'll go one further and say touch controls. I hate my stove with a passion. It's absolutely horrible to use if my fingers are a tiny bit wet (I know, who has wet hands in the kitchen, right?!). Sometimes, even with dry hands, the on/off button will not register.

I need to press 3 different buttons to turn it on. I need to press two different buttons to change the power, one of which repeatedly if I want to change by more than one step – say to turn one burner off, if I want the others to stay on.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?

#36

Modern thermometers to take my temperature (fever). I bought already a couple of them, and somehow none of them seems to work well, or they are too sensitive and I can't figure out where to measure my temperature and what counts as fever. I finally found some thermometers that I used when I was younger, and now I can reliably measure my temperature and I can tell what counts as fever. They didn't actually made my lif…

Not dramatic at all, those new thermometers are trash.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?

#38
post #32

LED vehicle headlights. How long will it take before they figure out how to make them without burning out the retinas of the general public?

Emergency vehicles around here seem to be in some arms race to put more and more lights on them in every direction. So late at night as you head down the highway, you can suddenly see nothing except emergency vehicles, at the expense of seeing the road, debris, and unlit vehicles.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?

#40
post #15
post #9

IMHO Juicero was a scam. Here's my list. * Too many remote controls. One for TV, one for AppleTv, one for PS5 if I want to see a movie on bluray, one for the Denon AMP, etc... There should be a standard for that. Something with a touchscreen and an API manufacturers should support. * Touchscreens in cars (already mentioned). My Toyota is not even capacitive and it's a car from 2017. More generally... Touchscreens whe…

> Too many remote controls. One for TV, one for AppleTv, one for PS5 if I want to see a movie on bluray, one for the Denon AMP, etc... There should be a standard for that. Totally agree, although just as an anecdotal experience: I was very surprised this weekend when I set up a soundbar with my TV, which immediately recognized it and did some configuration which allowed me to control the soundbar volume with my norma…

Had a similar good experience a while ago with a Fire TV. The remote can be configured to control my audio amplifier, although it's a rather obscure brand [0] and not even an AV receiver at that (it only does stereo audio, and has no HDMI or video inputs / pass-through).

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[0] They are, however, very open and publish the remote codes.

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