LED billboards
This surprised me. What's particularly bad about them? I mean, I don't love billboards, but I wouldn't think them being made of LEDs or not would make them worse.
Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
101–110 of 125 posts
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#102Soft 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,…
> Didn't even have a turntable, and worked just fine without it, somehow. It probably had a microwave "stirrer" -- basically just a rotating metal-bladed fan that the microwaves bounce off and get reflected to all parts of the oven cavity. I believe large commercial microwaves may still use these. Residential models tend to use turntables because they're somewhat more compact.
Few years ago I brought a "fancy" microwave oven because it didn't have a turn table. I figured the lack of moving parts would add to its longevity.
I didn't realise it was old technology being remarketed.
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#103Restricted OS like Android. Awesome hardware has been dumbed down to a pathetic handheld console, turning you into a brainless ad clicking zombie.
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#104Smartphones have had a significantly negative impact on my overall mental health. There's no denying that some of the features they provide clearly give tremendous value namely maps, messaging, and media (pictures/videos). Outside of that and limited utilities it becomes this broadly unfocused time sink that takes copious amounts of self discipline and boundaries to control. Given as an industry we've become so capab…
Delete all social media apps on your phone. You want none. I can access those sites from my home laptop - which provides just enough ceremony to force me to think what I'm doing. Sometimes I really do want to check in with friends and family, but at least there's just enough pomp and circumstance in order for me to do so that it dissuades the infinite scroll.
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#105Glued-in, designed-to-be-non-replaceable batteries, when we all know that they'll start to degrade after a year or two of heavy use. We should have rejected it in phones. We should certainly have rejected it in laptops. I don't have much hope for EVs. With the battery making up maybe half of the value of the vehicle, a top design priority should have been standardised 'battery modules' shared between as many vehicle…
There was a delightful feature in the discontinued Flip™ video cameras. The standard internal battery could be recharged over USB, but it could also be removed completely and replaced with standard AA batteries. The device remains usable even though the manufacturer went out of business years ago.
Xbox controllers do something similar; I love being able to just swap them out from my box of rechargeable batteries without having to worry about if I left the device plugged in to charge recently.
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#106- touch based screen/UI technologies,
- web 2.0 and later,
- widescreen ratios,
- every Google technology/product plus how Google handles them,
- the whole “smart” concept,
- x86 monopoly,
- web browser hell,
- personal systems with active cooling,
- instant messaging,
enough for a first comment.
But CRT to LCD transition was the hardest era until HiDPI + scaling comes to town (a.k.a. retina).
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#107Programming languages! It is ironic because I am a programmer and I write programs and develop software for a living. But proliferation of programming languages has made my life worse. Too many programming languages and every company has their own favorites! It may be an unpopular opinion on HN but I don't enjoy learning new syntaxes every year for relatively few benefits in new concepts or paradigms. In my ideal wor…
I have the same feelings for Lisp, honestly. From Day Zero of my programming experience I dreamt about a “meta” language (overdose of C64’s BASIC V2 caused this symptoms, maybe). I even didn’t know the meta word but years later I found the Lisp and said “yeah, that’s it”.
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drivers shouldn't have to and generally cannot aim their headlights. Cars come like that from the manufacturer and/or garage after maintenance.
Sure, but after market kits for LED lights are pretty common and often are installed by the end user.
Huh, I wasn't aware of that. Shouldn't this be more tightly regulated, given that headlights are security features?
Re: Ask HN: What technologies have made your life worse?
#109E-tickets for concerts:
- need to fumble through awful apps/sites to find them and hope you have signal
- phone dead? no ticket for you
- went with other people? all the tickets are on one phone. good luck getting back to your seat without that phone
- worst of all? no ticket stub to look back at years later