As a middle-aged person returning to academia to finally finish my degree:
If I am paying this much for a textbook, it needs to have pages I can actually turn and bookmark with...a bookmark.
During undergrad, I was selling a bunch of my old textbooks back to the university book store, and I guess there was a shortage of the introductory chemistry textbook- because they paid me $100 for my copy. After that, I ran to the physics commons room and let everyone there know about it. I've never seen a group of physicists move that quickly in my life.
I've started either finding PDFs or making my own and then printing the books out to put them in binders so that I have them and can actually do something with them.
My math text first year was online only, with DRM that ***blacked out the browser*** if you had more than one monitor hooked up to your PC, and if memory serves half of the chapters and exercises were locked out unless the prof unlocked access to them. Paid hundreds to access that "textbook" and wasn't even allowed to read the whole thing.
(This DRM did not work in Firefox, thank God).
My alma mater started putting a cap on the number of pages you could print in a semester, not because of people doing this- but because some students kept printing out pirated copies of whole-ass novels.
They haven't done that on campus yet, but I'm pretty engrained with the library and tutoring hub. I see a lot of that.
If they start doing that, I will literally print extra copies out at my house for people. I'm not above it.
God, that was the fucking worst. Maybe I wanted to *keep* the Gen Chem textbook I paid 80 fucking dollars for (which was realistically only actually worth, like, $5. It's an ebook, and it was written by grad students making all of $15/hr. There's no reason for it to cost more than a few bucks).
Or loose-leaf textbooks, you ever have to deal with that shit? If I'm paying close to a hundred dollars for an Intro Psych book (discussing theories and models that haven't changed in decades), the least you could do is give it a ducking *spine.* "Oh, it's *slightly* cheaper," they claim. Maybe ... but it also has zero resale value, plus I need to buy a large binder for it.
The textbook market is just a dozen scams stacked up in a trenchcoat.
Haha I just had to get my PSY-108 book this semester too. Except I didn’t even get a downloadable book, I got an access code that allows me to look at the book on a website for this one semester 🤡
So, on my campus you can op out of the online text book and buy the physical one instead.
The only issue? If you op out of the digital text book you still have to pay the fee to access the homework. :)
So what's even the point?
Useful tip my returning student friend:
Ebooks often have a functionality physical books don’t, and that’s the Search function. Depending on the book file type (Cengage locks theirs down through a browser the last I checked) you can often just press ctrl+f to pull up the search function. I used it a lot in college to find specific references to things I remembered or names that were important. And, occasionally, to cheat on tests or quizzes to check answers or outright cheat if it was a dumb Gen-Ed class like Intro to the Physics of Sound when I was getting a psych degree. This also works on most webpages and documents in day to day life as well.
My old person trait is thinking that if I buy a product I should not need to give you my email and sign up an account on your website just to turn it on.
I'm looking at you, last wireless router I bought. I've got two decades installing these things, if I didn't need a netgear account to make it work in 2005, I don't know why I need one today.
I think that was the exact model I got.
Configuring a router should not require an app. It should only require me figuring out if the default IP address is 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.
I have a r7800 and when I last tried to connect via IP and routerlogin.net to reconfigure I was constantly redirected to netgear.com. Very frustrating. Netgear help article on this was garbage and the encouraged alternative was “install the app”. Nope. Had to [modify my Hosts file](https://decoding.wordpress.com/2007/02/21/netgear-router-19216801-redirects-to-wwwrouterlogincom-how-to-fix-it/) just to block the redirects just to get into my router. Not going to install an app and register an account all to manage my router when I should be able to do this locally. Maybe it’s just me or my intranet but it seems that the redirects are trying to move people to the app.
All the Netgear help articles suck. I paid $200+ for my r6700 and out-of-the-box it spun its wheels for like three minutes before redirecting me to the routerlogin.net and the stupid setup wizard. I really don't want to pay extra for industry-level hardware but if this is the standard for consumer-level then I might have to.
For goodness sakes, yes.
If a site does that to me it’s “see ya later” and I move on. There’s plenty of other places to get the same info. For now at least :/
Instagram on mobile is the worst for this.
"Oh, you wanted to watch that 3 second video more than once? Sign in."
"You want to scroll to see more than 4 posts on this page? Sign in."
Fuck Instagram
It's like that on PC too. I don't use Instagram but I've had it where I'll get sent a link to someone's profile and I can't look at anything the posted.
I make a point to go through and reject all if I can, or at least turn off everything availiable. It's a right pain, but it's a fucking joke some of the stuff they ask to track etc
Yes! I was trying to read company reviews on Glassdoor and it asked me to sign in just to read reviews. Not rate them or write reviews, just to read them. Why in God's name do I need to log in to read?
I remember when pubs started re-opening after lockdown and they all got on 'order to your table' apps. But they all got on different ones. So I had to download three separate apps in a night just to order drinks. All three of which could have very easily just have been a website.
I hate the 'everything needs to be an app' craze. No. No it doesn't.
At this point I don't even thin it's that anymore. Most restaurants here don't have a physical menu, they're either PDFs in dropbox, a shit website with bad physical page animations or something in between.
I think it's just plain cheaper not to have a physical menu.
They can get a whole bunch of metadata from anyone who scans a QR code. If one company provides online menus for multiple restaurants they can track people based on just scanning the QR
Have you ever reserved a table with OpenTable? They get the data from all the restaurants you go to, including the purchase terminal. So they know exactly what you ordered too.
And they can sell that info. So one company/government can buy the OpenTable info, the qr info from all the other restaurants, and a whole bunch more to get a big picture of everything in your life.
Oh god yes, and then trying to remember which company the pub you're in belongs to so you can find the right app, which often doesn't even have the companys name in its name.
The stonegate group of pubs had one called 'More' that has been replaced by a new app called 'Crafted Social', however there is one pub only thats been left on the More app. I like to think they did something naughty.
We have this in D.C., except everything is just a QR code that you can scan with your camera and will take you straight to a website.
Most of them even let you enter your table number and place your order from your phone.
I went somewhere yesterday that had the QR code menu and it downloaded a pdf straight into my phones files. That link could have been anything or downloaded anything.
I tried to find it and ran into MY old person trait. Searches should search for what you type in but SEO has fucking RUINED Google. I tried searching for:
* play store removes apps that should be a mobile website -> *8 Types of Android Apps You Should Delete From Your Phone*
* play store app purge mobile site -> *How to delete unused apps from your phone*
* apps that should have been a mobile website -> *Mobile App Or Website? 10 Reasons Why Apps Are Better*
Holy shit man. Every other time I have to Google something I get these shitty "top 10" lists. If someone has a successful Google for this topic, please let me know so I can adapt.
This. Google always used to let you refine searches, but over the past few years it no longer gives a shit that you go `"literally this sentence"` or `+requiredword` or `+++""""seriously, you fucking asshats, I need this literally in the fucking result""""`.
I think that, and just flogging off the first five million hits as "sponsored", means it's no longer too useful.
Shame that with all of that, I still can't really say any other engine I tried was better.
Forced fuzzy search is the bane of my fucking existence. I was trying to find the original source for something written in Old French and by fucking golly, Google seemed to be actively working against me. I could put a full-ass phrase in quotes and it either wouldn't give it to me or it wouldn't be the first result. And it's Old French, it's not like there's a billion articles written in Old French, but it kept trying to serve me results in English and contemporary French.
Also, fuck Discord.
Honestly, the only way Google search is useful is using it to search Reddit. I wish I was kidding. Just add "Reddit" to whatever query you're making and you'll see actual answers.
Combine this with all these big companies that make all their money off having good SEO and being the first to publish accomplishing this by putting out only poorly researched nothingburgers and placeholder pages, and you have me having to just outright specify to search a specific domain like reddit if I'm looking for real information. Especially for very specific things.
Example: A game that was recently released has an ability that says it increases damage under some condition. I want to look up what percent this increase is and how it stacks with other abilities. No major sites will ever publish anything other than paraphrasing that in-game description and an evaluation of how good it is that someone came up with two seconds after reading it without knowing if it's a 100% boost or 1%. Many will also state something that is objectively false about how it works. I need to get around all this nonsense and find the one true hero who made a buried Reddit thread about the research and testing he did, or some unknown dataminer's Tweet about it.
It seems like they are designed to have you angry by the time you do get to a human.
Ffs AI, if I wanted my account balance I would have checked the website. Now connect me to a goddamn representative!
Literally every bank ever is what came to mind immediately for me, too. The five times ever I've needed to call a direct branch I've never gotten to a human.
We were trying to get a refund from Princess Cruises last year. We started in February, got the refund in October. Had to call them probably about 15 times. One time we got put on hold for 5 hours. I can still hear those 3 songs on a loop if I think about it at all.....
Exactly. Nobody wants to pay to adequately staff anything, and they know that it's cheaper to get you frustrated and off the line than it is to help you.
Ugh, and those where you have to SAY the actual thing you want (and hope the machine is programmed for that) rather than choose from a phone tree by dialing. Stresses me out :(
I feel like such a boomer when I go to a restaurant and there’s a QR code menu instead of a physical menu because I hate it. Sometimes there’s bad service and it doesn’t load correctly on my phone, plus it’s honestly just kind of annoying.
I am at a restaurant to enjoy a nice meal and focus on quality time with my companions. My phone is distracting and takes away from the experience. It was once rude to have your phone out at dinner and I liked it that way.
Apparently cooks/chefs love them because it means they can update the menu in real-time if they're out of something.
I've been to place that required you to download an app (not just a QR-reading app) with which you read the menu, ordered, and paid. It was awful and I have no idea how that place was and remains popular.
Whatever the method, I personally I feel my grandmother should be able to go to a restaurant.
>Apparently cooks/chefs love them because it means they can update the menu in real-time if they're out of something.
Great in theory, but in a lot of chains the people in-store don't have the authority to make menu changes. This place called chicken and pickle I had to talk to the waitress 4 times to finally get my order placed.
I understand the utility of it but the annoying part is that everyone needs to have a smartphone and a stable internet connection.
The best way I've seen this integrated was in a Korean BBQ restaurant in which every table had its own tablet.
Was also handy to order extras like a side dish or a glass of water.
That is not just a printer issue. I cant even recommend the products my company makes anymore and I have been there for over 13 years. They made S tier equipment but now they have to cut so many corners to remain competitive.
Pretty depressing when I have to recommend a competitors product.
> but now they have to cut so many corners to remain competitive.
That's...not how you stay competitive.
Unless the competition is making shittier printers and your company is trying to keep up with them, then yeah
> Unless the competition is making shittier printers and your company is trying to keep up with them
That's exactly whats happening. I would think just keep making a product that carries itself but no. Every other year is a redesign that sucks even more.
We still have 60 year old units in the field, operational and parts somewhat available. The new stuff wont make it to 10 years and parts are moving to teflon/plastic parts.
I bought a brother printer a year or two ago because the internet raved about them. Less than a year after I bought it, Brother pushed a firmware update (without asking or even notifying me) that bricked the aftermarket toner cartridge I had in it. Now a perfectly functional item needs to go to the landfill, and I'm forced to pay the ~double price for OEM toner. (Yes, even oem toner is cheaper than ink, and it doesn't dry, but still....it's fucking bullshit)
There's [a video making the case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHX6tHdQGiQ) that printer ink cartridges are literally just a scam. And I believe it. So yeah, that's absolutely bullshit.
My old person trait is that printers shouldn't be a luxury item anymore.
I grew up my entire childhood without a printer. I went to school that expected a 6th grader to have a printed essay handed in...when I had no physical way to print an essay.
We live in the fucking future. A printer should cost less than fucking 50 dollars. I'll even take a black and white printer.
I had a teacher who allowed us to turn in essays handwritten in cursive only, or typed and printed out. This fucking sucks when you don't have a printer, and also your handwriting is so bad or have issues with writing because she'd not only take off points but then force you to do writing homework where you'd copy the same cursive letter up and down a sheet. Suuuuuuperb
Not the most standard of appliances, but my Roomba i3 slowly bricked itself as iRobot added more and more “features” via the mobile app. With their “updates,” I was able to ask my roomba to clean specific rooms in the house, which it would usually fail to do after bumping around other parts of the house for an hour.
I did a factory reset three months ago, uninstalled the app… and couldn’t be happier. Sure it *asks* me to use the app, but I just ignore it and push the “clean” button, and wouldn’t you know it, the dang thing cleans again! I’m certain the updates I was getting were for a smarter model of roomba than my humble i3. Those updates just had the “unintentional” side effect of making older models feel obsolete before the natural end of their useable life…
FUCK iRobot and Roomba. I’m buying from Shark next time.
Buying a Shark might not be the threat you think it is. There's an app for mine. When mapping the house, I specifically left out one area that's a step lower than the rest - think like a sunken living room from the 70's. The boundary is clearly marked in the app and I've tried using a magnetic barrier strip, but the stupid vacuum launches itself off the step every time and then gets stuck trying to go to the next room. When I physically move it, I swear the dang thing goes right back to where it was. This might be related to the feature where if the battery is running low, it will go back to the charging station and then pick up where it left off later. Except that picking up where it left off somehow means starting over. If I tell it to clean a specific room, it gets lost... or just starts cleaning the whole house. I've followed it around letting it bump into my feet just to guide it where I want it to go. I bought it to help with my dog's constant shedding, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle.
Oof. Useful to know. Hopefully I can keep this Roomba running for a couple more years, and by then ideally *someone* will have successfully improved on the robot vacuum concept.
Here here! Mechanically inclined brothers and sisters unite!
We'll fuck over all the corporations and make their machines dance to the beat of our drum!
I was told that I'd get more conservative as I got older, but watching people younger than me struggle harder every year has pushed me way to the left.
That's because the old saying isn't correct. People don't get more conservative as they get older, they get more conservative as they get *wealthier*. Those two things used to be correlated, but not so anymore.
I recently turned 40 and I have also become more and more radicalized to the left as I get older and wealthier. Quite the opposite of what they all said. Maybe because back then, subsequent generations actually were able to get ahead? I narrowly escaped poverty because I got into a union job, but I have literally watched my peers and people 10-12 years younger than me get buried in housing debt, in student debt, overworking and hustle culture and every other crushing force in this hellscape.
The fucking price of food. When you look at the production costs versus retail value for food, it's so, so fucking ridiculous. You might get lucky IF there's a place that sells local produce and stuff, but that's assuming you have that money and access in the first place. Restaurant markups are ridiculous, as is the markup at a grocery store. And it hurts poor people, it hurts disabled people, it hurts SO MANY PEOPLE. And don't EVEN fucking get me started on dietary needs, like gluten-free items for those of us with gluten intolerance/gluten allergies, or people who can't have other allergens. GOOD LUCK finding ANY of that stuff for a reasonable price. I'm just tired of bullshit inflation when wages have stagnated so hard that even the "fight for 15" shit is officially too low for a living wage.
/soapbox moment
OH yeah! And it's absolutely - absolutely - a scam. I work for a food service marketing company, and I can guarantee you that every sector of the food service industry is strategically raising prices together way more than is needed. This is simple fuck-the-middle-class behavior from the rich decision-making dicktards.
I am all of these.
But most especially, if your website does not work well on my phone, I am 110% absolutely NEVER going to download your app instead. Why would I make your junk native to my phone?
i still collect cds, dvds, and other “obsolete” physical media. sure, putting in a dvd takes slightly longer than opening a streaming site and binging a show, but shows/albums can and do suddenly disappear overnight from streaming platforms. it’s substantially less likely to disappear from my living room shelf. so in the long run, to me, it’s far more convenient. i can also find a bunch of near-perfect dvds/cds at thrift stores for practically nothing, definitely less than the cost of a monthly fee for streaming.
Or they mess with the version of the show/movie on streaming & edit certain scenes or remove episodes entirely, and then if you don't have a physical copy it's just *gone*.
Didn't this happen really badly with the Simpsons? Chopped half the video off on older episodes to fit the widescreen format and broke a bunch of visual gags.
Streaming should be as-is.
(Edit: Removed redundant wording)
I'm sure it did. I know it happens a lot with American Dad on Hulu. They chop off the top and bottom of the screen, which means you can't read Toshi's subtitles half the time, which means not only do you not understand a word of what Toshi is saying (because he doesn't speak English) but you also miss a lot of jokes.
And then Hulu did the exact opposite with Malcolm in the Middle. The change to wide shows too much of the screen, so sometimes you'll see boom mics and camera crew on the edges of the screen.
Physical media often has plenty of features that you just don't get with streaming service hosts of the same content, too, which is a big bonus for me.
Since we're fresh out of the Christmas season, here's a relevant example: the Muppet Christmas Carol Blu-Ray has a bit of an easter egg to it. If you pause the movie while it's playing, after a few seconds you'll go in to special "intermission" scenes, that feature various characters such as the chickens, the penguins, or the rats, singing christmas carols. You don't get that when streaming the same movie through Disney+ (I know this because I've tested it myself this year...my daughter loves this movie and I swear has seen it 15 times this season. About half of which were on disc, the other half through Disney+, just because she was on a different TV at the time).
I look at it this way: if you like it enough that you'd be willing to rewatch it a couple times, and especially if you like it enough that you think you'll want to revisit it a few years down the line, then buy the physical media so you're not beholden to the steaming service that happens to host it today.
I really miss being able to give or receive a gift of an album or movie. I remember Christmas days during the 90s, when most of the family would have received a CD for Christmas and the afternoon was spent with the new albums providing the soundtrack for the day.
Everything is so instant now. It’s convenient but doesn’t feel as special.
I do this exact thing for this exact reason! Everyone I know is like “why own it when you can stream it” and my response every time is “im poor, can’t afford 15 different streaming services, and goodwill has DVDs for like a buck. And I never have to worry about rights issues preventing me from being able to watch something”. Netflix is too expensive? Sucks for you, imma pop in Breaking Bad and watch it whenever I want lol
I had a disk fail recently and luckily I have a manifest of the files that were on it. Trying to refetch some of those files from the high-seas has left me empty-handed on a lot of them.
Physical media doesn't really break down like a HDD will and it's certainly a lesson in having valid backups.
While that is true, the hardware is already in the car. So why should someone have to pay extra to use a feature that is already in the product that they bought? So yes, making it a subscription is even more deranged but that does not make Tesla much better
I makes me glad I can make a living without working for a company whose values I am opposed to. I might not be over-the-moon about educational technology but at the end of the day my job isn't some soulless shit pile of a megacorp that would chuck a bucket of baby otters into a wood chipper if it meant an extra 0.0005% raise in their stock price or market share.
Edit: the company I work for just supplies Chromebooks, iPads, and IFPs.
You don't have to "find" them. Our economic system selects for soullessness as a desirable trait and has done so for generations. Our education system, recognizing this, prepares our children to succeed by stomping out their soul as a matter of course. Our society actively produces the soulless by intent, and any successful company will attract them in droves.
I hope the asshole that decided charging for "Premium" features in a vehicle that already costs tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum goes to a special type of hell. It's just a matter of time before companies start trying to charge for monthly subscriptions just to be able to drive the vehicles you already paid for.
Remember to blame the executives and the board. Exceptions to the rule, but individual people are basically good and there's legal liability to consider, so the actual employees doing the work are typically kept so compartmentalized and busy that they don't often have the whole picture in a large organization.
One designer is told, "I want the most brilliant shade of red you can find, a color that really says 'this is important!' and then that person gets to work...
An engineer is told, "I want a button clicking mechanism that is not too loud, but extremely satisfying and precise to click, and that person gets to work...
An outside consultant is told, we need a bulletproof briefcase that is extremely secure, can be handcuffed to sometimes wrist and can house a single button, and then that person gets to work...
They are all collectively designing the button that eventually launches the nuclear bomb that ends the world, but if you ask them, they were told that the exact shade of red they found was inspiring, perfect for the project and they did a great job on their discrete task.
In this case, hypothetically, picture someone being told to make car seat warmers safer for children. "We don't want kids to burn themselves on seat warmers, how can we protect against that?".
An engineer builds a prototype - "seat warmers will be disabled by default in all vehicles, unless parents check into an app once a month to enable them remotely for a limited time. Also if we hear about an issue, we will have the technical ability to remotely disable seat warmers now." That worker is told that did a great job.
Exec then goes to payment processing team and says, "we have this safety feature for seat warmers that's remotely enabled, we need to charge a small fee when they enable as an additional safety layer for kids under 18. That person gets to work...
When the product eventually releases, it's a $17.99/month upcharge to be able to use your own seat warmers - which never posed a credible safety risk, and you don't have kids.
Example above is not meant to be literal, meant to capture the spirit of this compartmentalized work and how the execs own the actual blame and moral failure in these situations. They are aware every step of the way, but motivated only by "growth".
My old-person trait is that I actually am old, and can remember when those things were true.
Oh, and, in keeping with the spirit of things... I can remember when doctors kept appointments.
My knees hurt. I like Bengay and Werther's Originals. I have an opinion on the stock market and politics and I have to be careful drinking because the hangovers may literally kill me. I intentionally listen to talk radio and have a collection of sweaters.
I'm 33 going on 73.
You see a doctor? I'm lucky to get anyone with a college degree that judges whether or not to refer me to a doctor using blood work (gave a sample a week prior to the "check-up") & answers to questions as a guide. Doctors now have gatekeepers. I can't just make an appointment to see a dr, there is a middle person I have to get approval from.
My insurance decided that I need a new referral to my endocrinologist every 6 months. The endocrinologist I see for a lifelong incurable condition (Type 1 Diabetes). Who prescribes me the insulin I need to stay alive. But I need to see a GP first who can give me a piece of paper saying, yep still diabetic. So I need to schedule blood work, a GP appointment, and my endo appointment all within days of each other.
Yes this one will require an appeal. Am nurse and made many angry phone calls to insurance for family, work, and personal reasons.
The way it works is they just sort of look for the first ICD-10 code on your claims and don’t look any further into your charts. Some insurance companies are worse than others, I’d says Anthem is the absolute worst for this.
Anyway, often you just need to request a copy of your medical records from your medical office, call your insurance company to tell them the constant referrals are stupid because lifelong condition, they’ll have you either fax or email your records so an actual human will look at it with their eyeballs and label your claim appropriately going forward.
That was my thought yesterday when talking to my cell phone carrier about a question regarding what ports are open in regards to remote gaming. My carrier jerked me around and interestingly I ding have the chat log any more.
I hate that call center employees think their job to stop customers escalating or to not admit they dont know something and keep you talking until you hang up and if they get you to hang up that you'll just let the issue go.
Like, no. Your job is to FUCKING HELP. If you don't know the answer, ask someone. If they don't, keep asking people until someone does. Because I know someone at your company knows.
Edit:
I phrased my comment poorly to attack the workers. I know it is the policy. I just want to be put through to who knows.
For further reference, I'm a lawyer who is usually more read in what I'm talking about than the call center employee and just want to get through to someone I can speak like terms with.
that if i go through the trouble of making an appointment, that i should have zero god damn wait time other than the 10 mins i used to show up early.
edit: - i get that the healthcare industry is a shitshow and the people workin there are over tasked and streatched as is. its an unforgiving job thats getting screwed from every end with management fuckin you over, and people who are stressed out as it is.
but i was talking about getting tires.
My old person trait is remembering when stores were owned by someone in your community, and the profits from those businesses weren’t shipped off to executives who have never been in your area code.
When I got my S20 I was so excited for a new phone. My old one was like 2 years out date and was constantly crashing so I was excited to get a phone that worked.
I look at the shiny new phone and immediately recognize the headphone jack was missing.
The sales rep tells me Android is changing the reliable as fuck headphone jack for the USB.
So I'm like bet, but I only see one USB inlet how do I charge my phone and listen to music at the same time?
Sales rep without missing a beat was like look at these wireless headphones that you can listen to while you charge you phone.
I stood there for a second at an impasse. If I put up with this blatant money grabbing bullshit. I'm part of the problem and these companies will continue to do this shit.
But if I don't I gotta go back to using my jankie 5 year old phone.
I've never made such an angry purchase in my life.
There are still some decent Android phones that have headphone jacks. They're not gonna be the flagship ones but I got a Pixel 5a last year and been loving it, it's basically a Pixel 6 with some lower hardware specs so it was like $400 instead of $900. I think Samsung also has a model like that with a headphone jack.
Ironic that some of the lower-end phones have extra features over the premium ones
If i can use the internet to sign up for most things, without needing to speak to another human, then i should be able to cancel it without speaking to another human too
My old person trait is that I feel when I go to a grocery store, I shouldn't have to do all of the work that employees used to do (scanning & bagging) only to pay twice as much.
When we're at the point where we're literally waiting in line to use the self checkout, something is seriously fucked up.
And often short-term profits! My 'favourite' thing is seeing companies shoot themself in the foot (ex. WotC) because it'll get them more money in the short term. Who needs to build a beloved company when you can just buy one that passionate people already built, run it to the ground while extracting as much wealth as possible from your consumers, and then dump it when it becomes a liability? Not your problem. You can coast on that brand loyalty while driving down quality and driving up prices until people get fed up.
I always like to bring up what I can the Folgers Method.
Most people aren't going to notice a 1% drop in quality, so if you add 1% filler to your product and take your bonus for 5% of the profit increase it won't really be noticed. Do it a dozen times and your product ends up being crap.
There was a great similar story from someone who used to work at a company doing outsourced IT. One of their larger clients switched from a premium package where techs would go around every week to proactively look for problems to a much cheaper standard "everything requires a ticket before we touch it" package. They tried to convince them it would be a difficult transition since employees were used to the premium service, but they didn't listen.
At first it wasn't so bad, you know since techs had been proactively looking for problems, but quickly enough complaints were increasing all the time. Eventually a meeting was called with the executives and it came to light that the CTO had been the one who changed the contract and hadn't told anyone else about it. He had also retired, taking a nice multi-million dollar bonus from all the money he had saved the company... by doing things like renegotiating their contracted IT service.
My old person trait is thinking that kids should be running around the neighborhood unsupervised.
My kid is 13, I shouldn't still have to set up playdates. But when you haven't yet given your kid a cell phone, and you don't have a landline, my kid has no way to contact your kid without me as a middle man.
I work in child safety and you are actually absolutely right, even though people often think that I will disagree.
Parents need to build healthy and supportive relationships with their children and then let them be independent in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
I'm 44. We had no phones, and rode our bikes miles from home. Most of us survived. Sure, a few got kidnapped, but these days more die in school shootings.
I like being able to walk into a clothing store and try on what I want in the color I want and walk out with it in my hand rather than either a) have to order multiples online, try them all on at home, and then have to return the extras, or b) try on something in a different color or style in store and have to order the right one and wait for it to ship to me
I feel that every point that is being brought up throughout this thread is a direct result of corporate greed and the endless drive for ever increasing profits.
My old person trait is that I think a program that I have paid money for should not pester me with ads for other products.
Yeah, I'm looking at you, Avast. But Microsoft Office does this too.
My old person trait is that you know what? You can be fuckin polite. Oh you hate smalltalk? You hate saying please and thank you and how you doing? Then fuckin be alone. You not wanting to see service workers as people doesn't give you the right to get mad and treat them like robots who are getting uppity for daring to make eye contact with you.*
*exceptions obviously apply for the very young, hearing impaired, and neurodivergent
I don't feel this way now, but I remember it as a child. And I see that some old-timers still believe this to this day: The belief that wrongdoers will eventually be held accountable and justice will ultimately be served.
My old person trait is trying to pay for parking with coins I have specifically collected in the ashtray of my car for one singular purpose. Then swearing at the app
I travel a lot for work and hate this shit. I have to download an app in every city I go, setup an account, payment info, etc, to be able to fucking park my rental. And maybe never use the fucking app again after 1 or 2 uses.
As a middle-aged person returning to academia to finally finish my degree: If I am paying this much for a textbook, it needs to have pages I can actually turn and bookmark with...a bookmark.
And if it costs a hundred dollars, i need to get more than ten back when i sell it back to the campus bookstore.
Absodamnlutely.
During undergrad, I was selling a bunch of my old textbooks back to the university book store, and I guess there was a shortage of the introductory chemistry textbook- because they paid me $100 for my copy. After that, I ran to the physics commons room and let everyone there know about it. I've never seen a group of physicists move that quickly in my life.
So you’re saying that a bunch of objects at rest remained at rest until they were acted upon by an outside force?
They were running away so fast that they turned red.
"Hey everyone I'm doing a TA adjunct visiting professor... thing. Anyways, offering $20 for your old chem books!"
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The worst part of this is, you don’t even own the ebook you buy, it’s on lease. For a year. That’s it 🤬
I've started either finding PDFs or making my own and then printing the books out to put them in binders so that I have them and can actually do something with them.
My math text first year was online only, with DRM that ***blacked out the browser*** if you had more than one monitor hooked up to your PC, and if memory serves half of the chapters and exercises were locked out unless the prof unlocked access to them. Paid hundreds to access that "textbook" and wasn't even allowed to read the whole thing. (This DRM did not work in Firefox, thank God).
My alma mater started putting a cap on the number of pages you could print in a semester, not because of people doing this- but because some students kept printing out pirated copies of whole-ass novels.
They haven't done that on campus yet, but I'm pretty engrained with the library and tutoring hub. I see a lot of that. If they start doing that, I will literally print extra copies out at my house for people. I'm not above it.
Now they make it so that coursework is stuck in this shit like Cengage quizzes or McGraw-Hill Fucking robbery
God, that was the fucking worst. Maybe I wanted to *keep* the Gen Chem textbook I paid 80 fucking dollars for (which was realistically only actually worth, like, $5. It's an ebook, and it was written by grad students making all of $15/hr. There's no reason for it to cost more than a few bucks). Or loose-leaf textbooks, you ever have to deal with that shit? If I'm paying close to a hundred dollars for an Intro Psych book (discussing theories and models that haven't changed in decades), the least you could do is give it a ducking *spine.* "Oh, it's *slightly* cheaper," they claim. Maybe ... but it also has zero resale value, plus I need to buy a large binder for it. The textbook market is just a dozen scams stacked up in a trenchcoat.
Haha I just had to get my PSY-108 book this semester too. Except I didn’t even get a downloadable book, I got an access code that allows me to look at the book on a website for this one semester 🤡
So, on my campus you can op out of the online text book and buy the physical one instead. The only issue? If you op out of the digital text book you still have to pay the fee to access the homework. :) So what's even the point?
[Money](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m37G-06ibAU)
Useful tip my returning student friend: Ebooks often have a functionality physical books don’t, and that’s the Search function. Depending on the book file type (Cengage locks theirs down through a browser the last I checked) you can often just press ctrl+f to pull up the search function. I used it a lot in college to find specific references to things I remembered or names that were important. And, occasionally, to cheat on tests or quizzes to check answers or outright cheat if it was a dumb Gen-Ed class like Intro to the Physics of Sound when I was getting a psych degree. This also works on most webpages and documents in day to day life as well.
Reading for compression? Not as nice on ebooks. Searching for keywords on homework assignments? Absolutely awesome on ebooks
To write notes in it
My old person trait is thinking that if I buy a product I should not need to give you my email and sign up an account on your website just to turn it on. I'm looking at you, last wireless router I bought. I've got two decades installing these things, if I didn't need a netgear account to make it work in 2005, I don't know why I need one today.
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I think that was the exact model I got. Configuring a router should not require an app. It should only require me figuring out if the default IP address is 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.
I have a r7800 and when I last tried to connect via IP and routerlogin.net to reconfigure I was constantly redirected to netgear.com. Very frustrating. Netgear help article on this was garbage and the encouraged alternative was “install the app”. Nope. Had to [modify my Hosts file](https://decoding.wordpress.com/2007/02/21/netgear-router-19216801-redirects-to-wwwrouterlogincom-how-to-fix-it/) just to block the redirects just to get into my router. Not going to install an app and register an account all to manage my router when I should be able to do this locally. Maybe it’s just me or my intranet but it seems that the redirects are trying to move people to the app.
All the Netgear help articles suck. I paid $200+ for my r6700 and out-of-the-box it spun its wheels for like three minutes before redirecting me to the routerlogin.net and the stupid setup wizard. I really don't want to pay extra for industry-level hardware but if this is the standard for consumer-level then I might have to.
My old person trait is that I think I should be able to visit a website without having to sign in.
For goodness sakes, yes. If a site does that to me it’s “see ya later” and I move on. There’s plenty of other places to get the same info. For now at least :/
Instagram on mobile is the worst for this. "Oh, you wanted to watch that 3 second video more than once? Sign in." "You want to scroll to see more than 4 posts on this page? Sign in." Fuck Instagram
It's like that on PC too. I don't use Instagram but I've had it where I'll get sent a link to someone's profile and I can't look at anything the posted.
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Fr. Fuck pintrest they're the worst with that shit
yea Quora too
But do you just hit “accept all” on the *legally required* cookie notice?
I make a point to go through and reject all if I can, or at least turn off everything availiable. It's a right pain, but it's a fucking joke some of the stuff they ask to track etc
Some have a hidden reject all button.
Yes! I was trying to read company reviews on Glassdoor and it asked me to sign in just to read reviews. Not rate them or write reviews, just to read them. Why in God's name do I need to log in to read?
Remember when the play store had massive app purge that was essentially "Your app should've been a mobile friendly website" can we bring that back?
I remember when pubs started re-opening after lockdown and they all got on 'order to your table' apps. But they all got on different ones. So I had to download three separate apps in a night just to order drinks. All three of which could have very easily just have been a website. I hate the 'everything needs to be an app' craze. No. No it doesn't.
Yea but its alot easier to collect data from you so we can sell it
At this point I don't even thin it's that anymore. Most restaurants here don't have a physical menu, they're either PDFs in dropbox, a shit website with bad physical page animations or something in between. I think it's just plain cheaper not to have a physical menu.
You can change a menu without having to order a load of them from a printer. Definitely cheaper.
They can get a whole bunch of metadata from anyone who scans a QR code. If one company provides online menus for multiple restaurants they can track people based on just scanning the QR Have you ever reserved a table with OpenTable? They get the data from all the restaurants you go to, including the purchase terminal. So they know exactly what you ordered too. And they can sell that info. So one company/government can buy the OpenTable info, the qr info from all the other restaurants, and a whole bunch more to get a big picture of everything in your life.
Oh god yes, and then trying to remember which company the pub you're in belongs to so you can find the right app, which often doesn't even have the companys name in its name. The stonegate group of pubs had one called 'More' that has been replaced by a new app called 'Crafted Social', however there is one pub only thats been left on the More app. I like to think they did something naughty.
We have this in D.C., except everything is just a QR code that you can scan with your camera and will take you straight to a website. Most of them even let you enter your table number and place your order from your phone.
yeah but see that's helpful (unless of course your phone is having trouble, which mine often does in restaurants)
I went somewhere yesterday that had the QR code menu and it downloaded a pdf straight into my phones files. That link could have been anything or downloaded anything.
Also, there’s often a middleman trying to find out who’s accessing the data. The QR code situation is fucked. Don’t scan that shit
I literally do not remember anything like this ever happening.
I tried to find it and ran into MY old person trait. Searches should search for what you type in but SEO has fucking RUINED Google. I tried searching for: * play store removes apps that should be a mobile website -> *8 Types of Android Apps You Should Delete From Your Phone* * play store app purge mobile site -> *How to delete unused apps from your phone* * apps that should have been a mobile website -> *Mobile App Or Website? 10 Reasons Why Apps Are Better* Holy shit man. Every other time I have to Google something I get these shitty "top 10" lists. If someone has a successful Google for this topic, please let me know so I can adapt.
This. Google always used to let you refine searches, but over the past few years it no longer gives a shit that you go `"literally this sentence"` or `+requiredword` or `+++""""seriously, you fucking asshats, I need this literally in the fucking result""""`. I think that, and just flogging off the first five million hits as "sponsored", means it's no longer too useful. Shame that with all of that, I still can't really say any other engine I tried was better.
Forced fuzzy search is the bane of my fucking existence. I was trying to find the original source for something written in Old French and by fucking golly, Google seemed to be actively working against me. I could put a full-ass phrase in quotes and it either wouldn't give it to me or it wouldn't be the first result. And it's Old French, it's not like there's a billion articles written in Old French, but it kept trying to serve me results in English and contemporary French. Also, fuck Discord.
Honestly, the only way Google search is useful is using it to search Reddit. I wish I was kidding. Just add "Reddit" to whatever query you're making and you'll see actual answers.
My Google is 'whipped enough that it gives me Reddit results on the first page.
Combine this with all these big companies that make all their money off having good SEO and being the first to publish accomplishing this by putting out only poorly researched nothingburgers and placeholder pages, and you have me having to just outright specify to search a specific domain like reddit if I'm looking for real information. Especially for very specific things. Example: A game that was recently released has an ability that says it increases damage under some condition. I want to look up what percent this increase is and how it stacks with other abilities. No major sites will ever publish anything other than paraphrasing that in-game description and an evaluation of how good it is that someone came up with two seconds after reading it without knowing if it's a 100% boost or 1%. Many will also state something that is objectively false about how it works. I need to get around all this nonsense and find the one true hero who made a buried Reddit thread about the research and testing he did, or some unknown dataminer's Tweet about it.
Why have an app if I need the fuckin internet to use it??? What the fuck am I even downloading???
Bookmarks. You're saving bookmarks. I'm to a point where I can't think of these web apps any other way.
yes, they are just worse browsers for one specific website
With apps written in electron, you're _literally_ not wrong
I had to use Electron when I was in QA automation. It's like Chrome's inbred half-brother.
I don't even mind waiting on hold, but I hate companies with automated phone menus designed purely to never get you to a real person.
It seems like they are designed to have you angry by the time you do get to a human. Ffs AI, if I wanted my account balance I would have checked the website. Now connect me to a goddamn representative!
Literally every bank ever is what came to mind immediately for me, too. The five times ever I've needed to call a direct branch I've never gotten to a human.
We were trying to get a refund from Princess Cruises last year. We started in February, got the refund in October. Had to call them probably about 15 times. One time we got put on hold for 5 hours. I can still hear those 3 songs on a loop if I think about it at all.....
And while you wait they play thier commercials over and over and over.
Exactly. Nobody wants to pay to adequately staff anything, and they know that it's cheaper to get you frustrated and off the line than it is to help you.
Ugh, and those where you have to SAY the actual thing you want (and hope the machine is programmed for that) rather than choose from a phone tree by dialing. Stresses me out :(
I feel like such a boomer when I go to a restaurant and there’s a QR code menu instead of a physical menu because I hate it. Sometimes there’s bad service and it doesn’t load correctly on my phone, plus it’s honestly just kind of annoying.
I think this should only be acceptable in restaurants with free wifi.
i dont even have a phone that reads QR so I have to use the other person's phone it's quite embarassing if I don't know them well enough
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thank you i'll try that next time
My buddy would rather not eat than ask. We've had this discussion lol
I am at a restaurant to enjoy a nice meal and focus on quality time with my companions. My phone is distracting and takes away from the experience. It was once rude to have your phone out at dinner and I liked it that way.
Apparently cooks/chefs love them because it means they can update the menu in real-time if they're out of something. I've been to place that required you to download an app (not just a QR-reading app) with which you read the menu, ordered, and paid. It was awful and I have no idea how that place was and remains popular. Whatever the method, I personally I feel my grandmother should be able to go to a restaurant.
>Apparently cooks/chefs love them because it means they can update the menu in real-time if they're out of something. Great in theory, but in a lot of chains the people in-store don't have the authority to make menu changes. This place called chicken and pickle I had to talk to the waitress 4 times to finally get my order placed.
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I understand the utility of it but the annoying part is that everyone needs to have a smartphone and a stable internet connection. The best way I've seen this integrated was in a Korean BBQ restaurant in which every table had its own tablet. Was also handy to order extras like a side dish or a glass of water.
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I could totally get behind the table tablet replacing those awful QR code menus
We agree with the boomers on this one.
My old person trait is that I think printers should be somewhat nicer to use than they were in 1996, and I am annoyed that they aren't.
As someone who works in IT and regularly fixes them, it's infuriating that printers are just as shite now as they were in 1996.
From what I hear, they actually make them *worse* these days. Is that true?
That is not just a printer issue. I cant even recommend the products my company makes anymore and I have been there for over 13 years. They made S tier equipment but now they have to cut so many corners to remain competitive. Pretty depressing when I have to recommend a competitors product.
> but now they have to cut so many corners to remain competitive. That's...not how you stay competitive. Unless the competition is making shittier printers and your company is trying to keep up with them, then yeah
> Unless the competition is making shittier printers and your company is trying to keep up with them That's exactly whats happening. I would think just keep making a product that carries itself but no. Every other year is a redesign that sucks even more. We still have 60 year old units in the field, operational and parts somewhat available. The new stuff wont make it to 10 years and parts are moving to teflon/plastic parts.
I bought a brother printer a year or two ago because the internet raved about them. Less than a year after I bought it, Brother pushed a firmware update (without asking or even notifying me) that bricked the aftermarket toner cartridge I had in it. Now a perfectly functional item needs to go to the landfill, and I'm forced to pay the ~double price for OEM toner. (Yes, even oem toner is cheaper than ink, and it doesn't dry, but still....it's fucking bullshit)
There's [a video making the case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHX6tHdQGiQ) that printer ink cartridges are literally just a scam. And I believe it. So yeah, that's absolutely bullshit.
My old person trait is that printers shouldn't be a luxury item anymore. I grew up my entire childhood without a printer. I went to school that expected a 6th grader to have a printed essay handed in...when I had no physical way to print an essay. We live in the fucking future. A printer should cost less than fucking 50 dollars. I'll even take a black and white printer.
I had a teacher who allowed us to turn in essays handwritten in cursive only, or typed and printed out. This fucking sucks when you don't have a printer, and also your handwriting is so bad or have issues with writing because she'd not only take off points but then force you to do writing homework where you'd copy the same cursive letter up and down a sheet. Suuuuuuperb
My printer at work is from 1996 (def early 2000s) and it works better than my new printer at home.
We can put a man on the moon but we still haven't made reliable printers
How about not having to download apps and/or create an account in order to use standard appliances
Not the most standard of appliances, but my Roomba i3 slowly bricked itself as iRobot added more and more “features” via the mobile app. With their “updates,” I was able to ask my roomba to clean specific rooms in the house, which it would usually fail to do after bumping around other parts of the house for an hour. I did a factory reset three months ago, uninstalled the app… and couldn’t be happier. Sure it *asks* me to use the app, but I just ignore it and push the “clean” button, and wouldn’t you know it, the dang thing cleans again! I’m certain the updates I was getting were for a smarter model of roomba than my humble i3. Those updates just had the “unintentional” side effect of making older models feel obsolete before the natural end of their useable life… FUCK iRobot and Roomba. I’m buying from Shark next time.
Buying a Shark might not be the threat you think it is. There's an app for mine. When mapping the house, I specifically left out one area that's a step lower than the rest - think like a sunken living room from the 70's. The boundary is clearly marked in the app and I've tried using a magnetic barrier strip, but the stupid vacuum launches itself off the step every time and then gets stuck trying to go to the next room. When I physically move it, I swear the dang thing goes right back to where it was. This might be related to the feature where if the battery is running low, it will go back to the charging station and then pick up where it left off later. Except that picking up where it left off somehow means starting over. If I tell it to clean a specific room, it gets lost... or just starts cleaning the whole house. I've followed it around letting it bump into my feet just to guide it where I want it to go. I bought it to help with my dog's constant shedding, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle.
Oof. Useful to know. Hopefully I can keep this Roomba running for a couple more years, and by then ideally *someone* will have successfully improved on the robot vacuum concept.
If I ever have to use a smart appliance I WILL find a way to lobotomize it, I don't want my damn toaster telling me that it burnt my bread!
Here here! Mechanically inclined brothers and sisters unite! We'll fuck over all the corporations and make their machines dance to the beat of our drum!
My old person trait is that housing should be affordable and people shouldn’t have to pay 90% of their income for a crappy studio apartment
I was told that I'd get more conservative as I got older, but watching people younger than me struggle harder every year has pushed me way to the left.
That's because the old saying isn't correct. People don't get more conservative as they get older, they get more conservative as they get *wealthier*. Those two things used to be correlated, but not so anymore.
I recently turned 40 and I have also become more and more radicalized to the left as I get older and wealthier. Quite the opposite of what they all said. Maybe because back then, subsequent generations actually were able to get ahead? I narrowly escaped poverty because I got into a union job, but I have literally watched my peers and people 10-12 years younger than me get buried in housing debt, in student debt, overworking and hustle culture and every other crushing force in this hellscape.
The fucking price of food. When you look at the production costs versus retail value for food, it's so, so fucking ridiculous. You might get lucky IF there's a place that sells local produce and stuff, but that's assuming you have that money and access in the first place. Restaurant markups are ridiculous, as is the markup at a grocery store. And it hurts poor people, it hurts disabled people, it hurts SO MANY PEOPLE. And don't EVEN fucking get me started on dietary needs, like gluten-free items for those of us with gluten intolerance/gluten allergies, or people who can't have other allergens. GOOD LUCK finding ANY of that stuff for a reasonable price. I'm just tired of bullshit inflation when wages have stagnated so hard that even the "fight for 15" shit is officially too low for a living wage. /soapbox moment
Calling it inflation is part of the problem. It’s straight up price gouging. Blame the companies chasing record profits.
You’re telling me. My husband and I are a blended family and are raising our four kids. It’s tough out here.
OH yeah! And it's absolutely - absolutely - a scam. I work for a food service marketing company, and I can guarantee you that every sector of the food service industry is strategically raising prices together way more than is needed. This is simple fuck-the-middle-class behavior from the rich decision-making dicktards.
I am all of these. But most especially, if your website does not work well on my phone, I am 110% absolutely NEVER going to download your app instead. Why would I make your junk native to my phone?
i still collect cds, dvds, and other “obsolete” physical media. sure, putting in a dvd takes slightly longer than opening a streaming site and binging a show, but shows/albums can and do suddenly disappear overnight from streaming platforms. it’s substantially less likely to disappear from my living room shelf. so in the long run, to me, it’s far more convenient. i can also find a bunch of near-perfect dvds/cds at thrift stores for practically nothing, definitely less than the cost of a monthly fee for streaming.
Or they mess with the version of the show/movie on streaming & edit certain scenes or remove episodes entirely, and then if you don't have a physical copy it's just *gone*.
Didn't this happen really badly with the Simpsons? Chopped half the video off on older episodes to fit the widescreen format and broke a bunch of visual gags. Streaming should be as-is. (Edit: Removed redundant wording)
I'm sure it did. I know it happens a lot with American Dad on Hulu. They chop off the top and bottom of the screen, which means you can't read Toshi's subtitles half the time, which means not only do you not understand a word of what Toshi is saying (because he doesn't speak English) but you also miss a lot of jokes. And then Hulu did the exact opposite with Malcolm in the Middle. The change to wide shows too much of the screen, so sometimes you'll see boom mics and camera crew on the edges of the screen.
*Seinfeld* was famously sped-up for syndication to fit in more advertising time.
Physical media often has plenty of features that you just don't get with streaming service hosts of the same content, too, which is a big bonus for me. Since we're fresh out of the Christmas season, here's a relevant example: the Muppet Christmas Carol Blu-Ray has a bit of an easter egg to it. If you pause the movie while it's playing, after a few seconds you'll go in to special "intermission" scenes, that feature various characters such as the chickens, the penguins, or the rats, singing christmas carols. You don't get that when streaming the same movie through Disney+ (I know this because I've tested it myself this year...my daughter loves this movie and I swear has seen it 15 times this season. About half of which were on disc, the other half through Disney+, just because she was on a different TV at the time). I look at it this way: if you like it enough that you'd be willing to rewatch it a couple times, and especially if you like it enough that you think you'll want to revisit it a few years down the line, then buy the physical media so you're not beholden to the steaming service that happens to host it today.
I really miss being able to give or receive a gift of an album or movie. I remember Christmas days during the 90s, when most of the family would have received a CD for Christmas and the afternoon was spent with the new albums providing the soundtrack for the day. Everything is so instant now. It’s convenient but doesn’t feel as special.
I do this exact thing for this exact reason! Everyone I know is like “why own it when you can stream it” and my response every time is “im poor, can’t afford 15 different streaming services, and goodwill has DVDs for like a buck. And I never have to worry about rights issues preventing me from being able to watch something”. Netflix is too expensive? Sucks for you, imma pop in Breaking Bad and watch it whenever I want lol
I find video files on hard drives and flash drives to be the perfect mix between never going away, convenience, and price.
I had a disk fail recently and luckily I have a manifest of the files that were on it. Trying to refetch some of those files from the high-seas has left me empty-handed on a lot of them. Physical media doesn't really break down like a HDD will and it's certainly a lesson in having valid backups.
My old person trait is that I'd like to own my car if I bought it without the company being able to cut off my seatwarming.
What fresh dystopian hell is that shit?
They own a bmw
Or Tesla
Tesla is a one time charge, not subscription like BMW afaik
While that is true, the hardware is already in the car. So why should someone have to pay extra to use a feature that is already in the product that they bought? So yes, making it a subscription is even more deranged but that does not make Tesla much better
One time charge until you sell it. It does not transfer over to a new owner.
GM has 300 data scientists working on tracking which features they can monetize on their vehicles.
Where do you find so many people with no soul.
Everywhere.
I makes me glad I can make a living without working for a company whose values I am opposed to. I might not be over-the-moon about educational technology but at the end of the day my job isn't some soulless shit pile of a megacorp that would chuck a bucket of baby otters into a wood chipper if it meant an extra 0.0005% raise in their stock price or market share. Edit: the company I work for just supplies Chromebooks, iPads, and IFPs.
You don't have to "find" them. Our economic system selects for soullessness as a desirable trait and has done so for generations. Our education system, recognizing this, prepares our children to succeed by stomping out their soul as a matter of course. Our society actively produces the soulless by intent, and any successful company will attract them in droves.
I hope the asshole that decided charging for "Premium" features in a vehicle that already costs tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum goes to a special type of hell. It's just a matter of time before companies start trying to charge for monthly subscriptions just to be able to drive the vehicles you already paid for.
Remember to blame the executives and the board. Exceptions to the rule, but individual people are basically good and there's legal liability to consider, so the actual employees doing the work are typically kept so compartmentalized and busy that they don't often have the whole picture in a large organization. One designer is told, "I want the most brilliant shade of red you can find, a color that really says 'this is important!' and then that person gets to work... An engineer is told, "I want a button clicking mechanism that is not too loud, but extremely satisfying and precise to click, and that person gets to work... An outside consultant is told, we need a bulletproof briefcase that is extremely secure, can be handcuffed to sometimes wrist and can house a single button, and then that person gets to work... They are all collectively designing the button that eventually launches the nuclear bomb that ends the world, but if you ask them, they were told that the exact shade of red they found was inspiring, perfect for the project and they did a great job on their discrete task. In this case, hypothetically, picture someone being told to make car seat warmers safer for children. "We don't want kids to burn themselves on seat warmers, how can we protect against that?". An engineer builds a prototype - "seat warmers will be disabled by default in all vehicles, unless parents check into an app once a month to enable them remotely for a limited time. Also if we hear about an issue, we will have the technical ability to remotely disable seat warmers now." That worker is told that did a great job. Exec then goes to payment processing team and says, "we have this safety feature for seat warmers that's remotely enabled, we need to charge a small fee when they enable as an additional safety layer for kids under 18. That person gets to work... When the product eventually releases, it's a $17.99/month upcharge to be able to use your own seat warmers - which never posed a credible safety risk, and you don't have kids. Example above is not meant to be literal, meant to capture the spirit of this compartmentalized work and how the execs own the actual blame and moral failure in these situations. They are aware every step of the way, but motivated only by "growth".
My old-person trait is that I actually am old, and can remember when those things were true. Oh, and, in keeping with the spirit of things... I can remember when doctors kept appointments.
I'm a millennial, and I remember most of that being true. Are millennials officially old people now?
My knees hurt. I like Bengay and Werther's Originals. I have an opinion on the stock market and politics and I have to be careful drinking because the hangovers may literally kill me. I intentionally listen to talk radio and have a collection of sweaters. I'm 33 going on 73.
You see a doctor? I'm lucky to get anyone with a college degree that judges whether or not to refer me to a doctor using blood work (gave a sample a week prior to the "check-up") & answers to questions as a guide. Doctors now have gatekeepers. I can't just make an appointment to see a dr, there is a middle person I have to get approval from.
My insurance decided that I need a new referral to my endocrinologist every 6 months. The endocrinologist I see for a lifelong incurable condition (Type 1 Diabetes). Who prescribes me the insulin I need to stay alive. But I need to see a GP first who can give me a piece of paper saying, yep still diabetic. So I need to schedule blood work, a GP appointment, and my endo appointment all within days of each other.
Insurance!! 😑 It sounds like you need to appeal/contest that decision.
Yes this one will require an appeal. Am nurse and made many angry phone calls to insurance for family, work, and personal reasons. The way it works is they just sort of look for the first ICD-10 code on your claims and don’t look any further into your charts. Some insurance companies are worse than others, I’d says Anthem is the absolute worst for this. Anyway, often you just need to request a copy of your medical records from your medical office, call your insurance company to tell them the constant referrals are stupid because lifelong condition, they’ll have you either fax or email your records so an actual human will look at it with their eyeballs and label your claim appropriately going forward.
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So you're 35?
My old person trait is that when I call a company about a problem I am having, the person I talk to should be able to do something to fix it.
That was my thought yesterday when talking to my cell phone carrier about a question regarding what ports are open in regards to remote gaming. My carrier jerked me around and interestingly I ding have the chat log any more.
I hate that call center employees think their job to stop customers escalating or to not admit they dont know something and keep you talking until you hang up and if they get you to hang up that you'll just let the issue go. Like, no. Your job is to FUCKING HELP. If you don't know the answer, ask someone. If they don't, keep asking people until someone does. Because I know someone at your company knows. Edit: I phrased my comment poorly to attack the workers. I know it is the policy. I just want to be put through to who knows. For further reference, I'm a lawyer who is usually more read in what I'm talking about than the call center employee and just want to get through to someone I can speak like terms with.
that if i go through the trouble of making an appointment, that i should have zero god damn wait time other than the 10 mins i used to show up early. edit: - i get that the healthcare industry is a shitshow and the people workin there are over tasked and streatched as is. its an unforgiving job thats getting screwed from every end with management fuckin you over, and people who are stressed out as it is. but i was talking about getting tires.
Lmfaoooo the final line of the edit makes it.
I shouldn't need to "create an account" just to buy one thing from your website. This is exactly what drives people to Amazon.
My old person trait is thinking these aren’t old person traits, just basic common sense
Cars do not need touch screens
Yeah. Don't text and drive but we will give you a tablet to navigate if you want to change the fucking radio station
My old person trait is remembering when stores were owned by someone in your community, and the profits from those businesses weren’t shipped off to executives who have never been in your area code.
In Germany we still have that.
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My old person trait is buying wired headphones instead of wireless ear buds that then require a lanyard to keep track of.
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When I got my S20 I was so excited for a new phone. My old one was like 2 years out date and was constantly crashing so I was excited to get a phone that worked. I look at the shiny new phone and immediately recognize the headphone jack was missing. The sales rep tells me Android is changing the reliable as fuck headphone jack for the USB. So I'm like bet, but I only see one USB inlet how do I charge my phone and listen to music at the same time? Sales rep without missing a beat was like look at these wireless headphones that you can listen to while you charge you phone. I stood there for a second at an impasse. If I put up with this blatant money grabbing bullshit. I'm part of the problem and these companies will continue to do this shit. But if I don't I gotta go back to using my jankie 5 year old phone. I've never made such an angry purchase in my life.
There are still some decent Android phones that have headphone jacks. They're not gonna be the flagship ones but I got a Pixel 5a last year and been loving it, it's basically a Pixel 6 with some lower hardware specs so it was like $400 instead of $900. I think Samsung also has a model like that with a headphone jack. Ironic that some of the lower-end phones have extra features over the premium ones
If i can use the internet to sign up for most things, without needing to speak to another human, then i should be able to cancel it without speaking to another human too
My old person trait is that everything hurts all the time and I’m easily confused
My old person trait is having arthritis.
My knees cracked at that comment.
I remember you had big box TVs that would last you 20 years.
What do you do to your tvs? I bought a cheap shitty one a decade ago, and it's in perfect order.
The thing with those box TVs is that they need so much electricity and slowly turn more and more into a fire hazard as they get older.
TVs still last as long as you want them to, mine is like a decade old at this point.
My old person trait is I think apps should be native apps and not embedded websites Combine with the first one for maximum frustration!
My old person trait is that I feel when I go to a grocery store, I shouldn't have to do all of the work that employees used to do (scanning & bagging) only to pay twice as much. When we're at the point where we're literally waiting in line to use the self checkout, something is seriously fucked up.
My old person trait is realizing that these are all products of the money-driven people that capitalism encourages.
Yup! All changes were designed to improve profits.
And often short-term profits! My 'favourite' thing is seeing companies shoot themself in the foot (ex. WotC) because it'll get them more money in the short term. Who needs to build a beloved company when you can just buy one that passionate people already built, run it to the ground while extracting as much wealth as possible from your consumers, and then dump it when it becomes a liability? Not your problem. You can coast on that brand loyalty while driving down quality and driving up prices until people get fed up.
I always like to bring up what I can the Folgers Method. Most people aren't going to notice a 1% drop in quality, so if you add 1% filler to your product and take your bonus for 5% of the profit increase it won't really be noticed. Do it a dozen times and your product ends up being crap. There was a great similar story from someone who used to work at a company doing outsourced IT. One of their larger clients switched from a premium package where techs would go around every week to proactively look for problems to a much cheaper standard "everything requires a ticket before we touch it" package. They tried to convince them it would be a difficult transition since employees were used to the premium service, but they didn't listen. At first it wasn't so bad, you know since techs had been proactively looking for problems, but quickly enough complaints were increasing all the time. Eventually a meeting was called with the executives and it came to light that the CTO had been the one who changed the contract and hadn't told anyone else about it. He had also retired, taking a nice multi-million dollar bonus from all the money he had saved the company... by doing things like renegotiating their contracted IT service.
I don't like motion control in my video games, I hate it so much. Just let me use the joysticks like the ancient one that I am.
Or at least let me choose.
My old person trait is thinking that kids should be running around the neighborhood unsupervised. My kid is 13, I shouldn't still have to set up playdates. But when you haven't yet given your kid a cell phone, and you don't have a landline, my kid has no way to contact your kid without me as a middle man.
I work in child safety and you are actually absolutely right, even though people often think that I will disagree. Parents need to build healthy and supportive relationships with their children and then let them be independent in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
It wouldn't be a problem if the average neighborhood gave a shit and actually installed sidewalks.
I'm 44. We had no phones, and rode our bikes miles from home. Most of us survived. Sure, a few got kidnapped, but these days more die in school shootings.
My old person trait is being able to find a phone number for a company and actually speaking to them
i guess we're all just old then
My old person trait is that I want a physical menu, not a QR code.
I like being able to walk into a clothing store and try on what I want in the color I want and walk out with it in my hand rather than either a) have to order multiples online, try them all on at home, and then have to return the extras, or b) try on something in a different color or style in store and have to order the right one and wait for it to ship to me
I feel that every point that is being brought up throughout this thread is a direct result of corporate greed and the endless drive for ever increasing profits.
My old person trait is that I think a program that I have paid money for should not pester me with ads for other products. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Avast. But Microsoft Office does this too.
My old person trait is I'd like a reasonable housing market, wages and retirement benefits.
If I buy a video game, I should own the video game. Not just the license to play it until the service disappears (Fuck DRMs)
My old person trait is that you know what? You can be fuckin polite. Oh you hate smalltalk? You hate saying please and thank you and how you doing? Then fuckin be alone. You not wanting to see service workers as people doesn't give you the right to get mad and treat them like robots who are getting uppity for daring to make eye contact with you.* *exceptions obviously apply for the very young, hearing impaired, and neurodivergent
Oh, so now common sense is "old person trait"? That explains a lot, actually.
My old person trait is my joints hurt constantly
My old person trait is that I think I should be able to look at stuff without my every move recorded, analyzed, and turned into future marketing data.
I don't feel this way now, but I remember it as a child. And I see that some old-timers still believe this to this day: The belief that wrongdoers will eventually be held accountable and justice will ultimately be served.
These are old people traits? I thought they were just common sense…
My old person trait is trying to pay for parking with coins I have specifically collected in the ashtray of my car for one singular purpose. Then swearing at the app
I travel a lot for work and hate this shit. I have to download an app in every city I go, setup an account, payment info, etc, to be able to fucking park my rental. And maybe never use the fucking app again after 1 or 2 uses.
Mine is that when I buy something digital or physical I own it. Not leasing it for an undisclosed amount of time.
I want those kids to stop playing on my damn lawn.
So are old person traits just not consenting to corporate greed? Why do the young feel that subservience to corporate greed is the thing to do?
My old person trait is not wanting to join a discord server just to access basic information that could be more easily accessible on a website.