Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?

This is a good one.

Same with daycares. It used to be that the teachers would tell us if we needed to actually do something or bring something in.

Now, our kids miss out on school events because they are buried in single lines in one of the 4+ e-mails a day from them. And the response is always "didn't you see the e-mail?"

Soft buttons and software-mediated knobs replacing real buttons and real knobs that actually do things.

Best microwave I've ever used was made in, I think, the late 70s. Didn't even have a turntable, and worked just fine without it, somehow. No clock at all. The "UI" was two heavy-feeling knobs, one for power and one for time. Turn the time knob, and it starts cooking at your selected power until the time runs down, with the knob itself tick-tocking down to zero and setting off a physical(!) buzzer. Want to add more time? Turn the knob while it's still running, no problem. Realize you added too much time? Ditto, but in reverse. Exactly as you'd expect. Simply pull the door open, no button for that, even.

Intuitive, simple, felt great to use, and did 100% of what I want out of a microwave.

Basically anything that used to have real buttons and knobs that have been replaced by shitty-feeling rubber-covered buttons and knobs that merely communicate suggestions, hooked up to an embedded computer, has a worse UI than what it replaced. And don't get me started on touch-sensitive buttons. At least touch screens have some excuse, some purpose. Dedicated touch-sensitive buttons are like some kind of practical joke, and have been central to several of my worst experiences with products.

Tesla doesn't have touchscreens?

Apple FaceID in general but definitely when driving, wearing sunglasses, or outside in bright sunlight.

I have a mount for the phone at center dash of my car and FaceID rarely works from there. I have to lean over while trying to drive to put my face in front of the phone to get it to work … sometimes. Usually the phone insists on the passcode which is insecure when mounted on dash for passengers to easily view and provides a further distraction.

Good old TouchID worked so much better in most circumstances.

Heh, very weird. Did you get Shimano or SRAM? Shimano generally seem to behave worse in the real world, at least on mountain bikes. Rain, snow, temp swings, grit, mud, etc seems to degrade them more than SRAM. Shimano also drives the upgrade cycle by not having user maintainable parts or even selling parts for older equipment. The shifters in particular are fragile, not user serviceable, and have incompatible changes every few years. SRAM's gripshift are robust, have one moving part, and often survive multiple crashes, also they aren't integrated so you don't have to replace brakes when your shifter dies. Thus the switch from mostly Shimano based XT/XTR for mountain biking to mostly 1x12 SRAM. I found the top of the line SRAM to be very reliable/robust.