61–70 of 110 posts
Cars & appliances have regressed into unreliable, overstimulated and unpresonsive disasters. Much of this is how they are marketed and sold. Cars seem flashy until you own it for a few months .
It's up to consumers to make a choice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Doomscrolling, like drug addiction, is largely the product of the holistic social-biological environment of the actor. People generally do not intentionally throw away stimulating, happy, healthy lives to become destitute drug addicts, and a comparison of opening a parking payment application to being offered alcohol seems hyperbolic. Even taking this statement at face value, it's easy to point out how absurd it is…
That wasn't my intent at all. Because we actually /create/ that social-biological environment, it very much places the ball in the court of people creating these things.
But to your point - who creates this environment, or what incentives are there for creating a less antisocial environment? I don't think collective willpower exists; there are only incentives. The ball may be in our court as creators, but due to the prevailing incentives, we've chosen to use the ball to extract as much as we can from every little piece of everyone's life. And such a powerful tool allows for efficient extraction!
Yes, I know remarkable and other products exist, but they really don’t act exactly like a notebook. You can’t flip through the pages or dog-ear them. You can’t just hand a reMarkable off to someone to borrow or keep, it’s a $700 investment that’s tied to your online accounts. It has a battery life, and you need to have WiFi around to sync.
In a truly perfect world I would just be able to lay my $5 paper notebook infused with nanobots or other such future magic onto a smart surface on my desk and my computer would automatically read the contents.
Obviously we are a long way off, if it’s even possible to make something like that practically, but that’s the kind of interfaces I think we should work towards - computing so efficient and subtle you don’t realize it’s digital.
I kind of hated the movie Her but I thought the scene where the main character is designing something by just sitting down at his desk and talking to the computer conversationally was really cool. We can probably get close-ish in the next 10 years with all this fancy AI.
I recently won a water bottle in a raffle. It looked nice, stainless steel, big (probably 2 liters). When I unwrapped it, I saw a QR code that said "Instructions." Weird, why would I need instructions for a water bottle? Then I saw a large rubber plug in the bottom. I realized with horror, it's a bluetooth enabled heating/cooling element controlled by an app I'm supposed to download. The heating element is huge, take…
Anyone who hasn't already experienced a good vacuum-insulated water bottle, you're in for a treat.
Warning: Normally, when you pour hot coffee or tea into a mug, it cools significantly within a minute. But put it in an insulated bottle for the first time, and it might surprise burn your tongue half an hour later. (Or maybe I was the only one who didn't anticipate this.)
I don't have a problem with technology. I have a problem with technology trends that are irrational. For example the smart phone. A physical button or even alexa is easier to turn off the lights. A smart phone menu is just stupid. I want to decouple stupidity away from technology. That's not possible though. Most places where I worked... just a exploring the code for a couple minutes I encounter something stupid. So…
> For example the smart phone. A physical button or even alexa is easier to turn off the lights. These aren’t mutually exclusive. I usually press the physical button for my lights but it’s great to be able to pull out my smartphone and turn off lights across the house, or even in the same room if I’m doing something like holding a baby who is falling asleep. Putting the common light controls on easily accessible phon…
Like, one or two things really make me consider getting into the whole smart home stuff: Turning down the heating when windows are open. Or, controlling a couple of things when I'm not at home (aka my phone isn't on the local WIFI) - turn on the ambient light if it's late/dark and I'm at home, and turn it off otherwise. This would probably add phone controls to stuff, I guess. However, I would very much want these smart features to be "on top" of regular physical control.
But then there are also things like internet connected fridges, or cars playing ads. It'd be nice if my fridge could ping me if the internal temp is rising - though a loud obnoxious beep might work too, but it doesn't need to be internet capable to serve me ads.
> ...visit a friend in Washington DC ... an apartment complex could never be occupied by an Orthodox Jew like me (since I cannot use my phone on Shabbat and the holidays), because at every turn the most essential tasks are accomplished with a smartphone. IANAL, but that sounds like some sort of lawsuit and/or PR disaster just waiting to happen.
While I agree with the general sentiment of over-use of smartphones and useless apps, someone who won't use their phone because someone scribbled something about not doing work on certain days on some parchment six thousand years ago is not someone we should cater to. To each their own delusions.
When I work with Muslims I don't cook with pork for the office pot luck. When I cook with meat I always mark that on the dish so that vegetarians know not to eat it. (To my knowledge I've never worked with someone Jewish - but given some places where I've lived I think I have without knowing, while I have known about some Muslims I've worked with).
I need to use fire (technology) in my life or I'll die in the cold.
That said, I think that there’s a lot to be said for choosing low-tech options. I have the overhead light in my living room controlled by a cheap $5 mechanical timer not unlike what was available when I was a kid in the 70s. It’s near an expensive high tech digital picture frame. I like going for the lowest tech option that’s feasible.
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1. There’s some discussion of this subject in Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman which I won’t get into here.
I recently won a water bottle in a raffle. It looked nice, stainless steel, big (probably 2 liters). When I unwrapped it, I saw a QR code that said "Instructions." Weird, why would I need instructions for a water bottle? Then I saw a large rubber plug in the bottom. I realized with horror, it's a bluetooth enabled heating/cooling element controlled by an app I'm supposed to download. The heating element is huge, take…
> a normal insulated bottle Anyone who hasn't already experienced a good vacuum-insulated water bottle, you're in for a treat. Warning: Normally, when you pour hot coffee or tea into a mug, it cools significantly within a minute. But put it in an insulated bottle for the first time, and it might surprise burn your tongue half an hour later. (Or maybe I was the only one who didn't anticipate this.)
A large vacuum bottle with ice cubes on a hot summers day is hard to beat too.
I don't have a problem with technology. I have a problem with technology trends that are irrational. For example the smart phone. A physical button or even alexa is easier to turn off the lights. A smart phone menu is just stupid. I want to decouple stupidity away from technology. That's not possible though. Most places where I worked... just a exploring the code for a couple minutes I encounter something stupid. So…
A good example of this is the glovebox on the Tesla Model 3. There's no button to open it with. Instead you have to press a button on the steering wheel to activate Google Assistant, then say "open glovebox" in a clear voice so it doesn't misunderstand, then wait a second or two, and then finally the glovebox opens. It bothers us to no end.
I don't have a problem with technology. I have a problem with technology trends that are irrational. For example the smart phone. A physical button or even alexa is easier to turn off the lights. A smart phone menu is just stupid. I want to decouple stupidity away from technology. That's not possible though. Most places where I worked... just a exploring the code for a couple minutes I encounter something stupid. So…
Strong disagree on Alexa. Maybe it's the way I talk, but I find voice assistants wildly inconsistent. There's nothing more frustrating than having to repeat yourself to a robot. Maybe AI will improve the situation in the next few years, but I'm not convinced.
Even if voice assistants worked perfectly every time they would still be worse than the switch by the door for controlling the light as you enter/leave. However if you are in bed it may be that despite the current annoyances Alexa is better for controlling the same light.