I prefer pressing buttons and turning nobs in the car.
It’s actually safer to have tactile buttons, too.
My old civic is so nice.
One of the many reasons I’ll hang onto my 2012 Toyota Corolla until I drive it into the ground. It has a touch screen for just the radio and Bluetooth, but it must be some sort of gen one prototype because it’s pretty awful. Thankfully, everything else is tactile. I can’t imagine giving it up.
Don’t get me started on those fucking digital handbrakes
Those fucked me up so much when learning to drive. Ah yes let’s try starting uphill with the handbrake. Could not do it because I had no fucking clue when it was going to release.
First time I had to do it in my dad’s car which has a normal handbrake I had zero issues.
My 2004 F150 just works, no guessing what button does what, twist the fucking knob.
Software engineering.
Back in my day(™), it was an engineering role, where science reigned. Anyone even attempting “vibe coding” would’ve been rightfully laughed out of the room.
It’s a task that should take concerted effort, with specific goals and performance metrics in mind. Just getting the task done wasn’t and shouldn’t be good enough.
Uh oh. The ice carvers are complaining about the evils of refrigeration again…
Uh oh, the bad faith AI bros are conflating luddites with anyone that disagrees with them again…
Says the Luddite without an argument…
Because I’m not arguing, genius, because a group of people that categorically reject all dissent as an appeal to nature fallacy is a group not worth engaging.
Sounds like a self-defeating argument. So glad I could stand by while you beat on that straw man for a while. Feeling better after that li’l display, champ?
Again, not an argument. You sure seem to be projecting about strawmen.
Sure, kiddo. Whatever gives you that dopamine hit for being yet-another random internet douchecanoe.
“Hurr hurr… I’m right and I’ve decided you’re wrong because reasons. I’m not going to engage with anyone because everyone rejects my assertions that I’m right and everyone else is wrong.”
Uh huh. Real nuanced perspective you got there.
No this is LITERALLY the same argument made hundreds/thousands of years ago against writing and books. Its the same argument the amish use. It IS the luddit pinnicle argument.
That’s right, the anti AI people are making literally the same arguments about why writing is bad. I am so smart.
You do not understand what quality code is if you think the current or previous generations produce anything but shit when it’s not a 1-1 copy of someone’s project it digested.
You do not realize how many businesses operate every single day and make plenty of money on suboptimal code.
Industrial scale everything does not care, so long as the job gets done and the invoice is paid.
Just like with every other profession made obsolete by technology, the 80% case won’t need your bespoke, hand-crafted, artisanal assembly. There will still be minority cases who will pay a premium for it. And plenty of people will still program as a hobby or for their local community. But industrial scale software will be written by bots.
Because the world runs on good enough. No matter how many elitist neckbeards get butthurt in the process.
TV.
I hate the smart-TV workflow, its a terrible user experience: Turn the TV on… wait for the smart-TV OS to load… land on an app menu… navigate around and choose an app… wait for the app to load… select a profile… wait for the list of shows to load… scroll almost endlessly through shows… choose a show, finally… wait for the video to load…
I miss when you turned the TV on and it was just instantly playing whatever channel you last had on, with one single interaction. I miss not having to make the conscious choice of what to watch and feel overwhelmed by so many options. I miss TV programs being a common experience, like an event, that everyone would be talking about together the next day, instead of everyone watching their own thing on their own schedule.
It was truly exciting to look forward to a weekly show on TV.
Except when you couldn’t know in advance when your show skipped a week and they had to play some crappy rerun of a completely different show.
A group of us used to meet every week to watch Twin Peaks. We’d unplug the phone, drink coffee, and eat cherry pie (or apple for a bit of variation). Then we’d watch the episode again having just recorded it and try to figure out wtf was going on. Happy days.
On the plus side people with jobs other than 9-5 can now be included in the experience.
If you haven’t used free Over-the-air TV these days you might be surprised that most cities have a few dozen channels of live TV right now. If your in a large metro area get the simplest of cheapest TV antennas, plug it into your TV, and do a channel scan. You’ll be surprised how many channels there are now.
If you’re in suburbs or rural, you’ll still likely have quite a few but may need a more substantial antenna.
I do have an antenna and get some decent channels with it
You can still do that by paying for cable.
I have cable. It doesn’t really work like that anymore. I used to be able to click through ALL the basic cable channels, catching a frame or two of every single channel, with zero delay between channels, all within like under a minute. These days every channel change or menu selection has a built-in delay of at least a second or two. Channel surfing just doesn’t vibe the same anymore. That form of TV is mostly if not entirely dead.
You’re not wrong, although I think I’d still have to wait for the smart-TV OS to load and navigate the menu to select the Cable input.
I don’t like electric can openers. I strongly prefer to just use a manual one. I just see an appliance that has but one use and requires electricity to be tremendous waste.
I love my P-38 can opener. It was made 80 years ago and it’s still opening cans like tin foil.
Came here to rep the P38. What a boss of a can opener.
Not to mention they’re kind of hard to clean! Electric can openers are the worst. When the top pops off, they often send the contents of the can all over, too.
I didn’t even know electric can openers were a thing
Making things electric was the “adding AI” of 20 years ago. Make something that works more complex and difficult to use, but the future!
More like 40 years!
That said, I loved my electric opener from 92’.
There was a knack to it, but I could be done opening a can before someone even started with a manual opener.
Never seen back to the future? One in the opening scene.
3000% honesty, you are right. It is a waste, using a good manual can opener is far more satisfying. Like the electricity needed for the electric one is miniscule at best but its still wasted since it rakes 10 seconds to open one with a manual. I get people who are differently abled and need these, but the average person gets no real value from an electric one.
Wow I have never had an electric can opener, are they common in home kitchens?
I was given a manual one a few weeks ago with no instructions, check out this horror show:
I open cans with a flat head screwdriver and find it easier
As a software and electrical engineer who has worked in life system critical projects as well as foundational financial systems with strict uptime and performance requirements…
My home is as basic as humanly possible, no automation, manual systems for everything. Anything that must be digital is untrusted, isolated, and has a backup. A cabin in the woods off grid is the only way I feel comfortable
No… this is me
it's me
This is kind of niche, but I mix concerts for a living and newer consoles and shows are all scene based, every song has a scene, and most of the time every verse and chorus in the song has a sub scene. It is a breath of fresh air to be able to mix with no scenes and have to rely on pure skill and intuition. Those shows tend to have a better feel and be more energetic, albeit less polished. They are also more fun, and a little bit more stressful.
It is 1000 times more enjoyable to actually mix a concert than just click to the next scene.
Cool. I had no idea this was a thing.
many countries need to go back to reasonable inconvenience for superior and ethical product. same-day shipping is accelerating the speed of climate change so no you don’t get to have it actually. no, fruits and vegetables are not available 24/7, seasons matter again. etc and etc. we need to go back to all of this. we have to reduce the strain.
Using Windows - before onedrive, online integration, new control panel, telemetry. Using the internet - before tracking, bloated sites, paywalls, cookie boxes and ai garbage. Using my car - before telemetry, beep, driver “aid” systems.
Yessss
Dating. It’s hard to manufacture that initial spark in an app.
Lack of third places has been a real thorn in society, especially third places that you aren’t expected to spend money.
Absolutely. Good point.
EDIT: I’ve just learned I was incorrect in my original comment below. Bars, taverns, nightclubs etc are included in third spaces according to Wikipedia. I guess I learned an alt definition at some point, or perhaps just a wrong definition.
The definition of a third place is that you can spend time there without the expectation of buying something. If you’re expected to spend money to occupy space, it’s not a third place.
(Fully agree that the loss of such spaces is killing us, though!)
It’s like fishing. You throw a bunch of hooks in the water, see what happens. I did very well with online dating, until I found my forever girl.
I prefer how Nazis were dealt with in the past
I miss physically owning software, movies, and music, not having to pay a subscription for car features like heated seats or more horsepower. I miss getting a complete game that was usually mostly glitch free on day one you got it on CD/DVD.
Socializing.
No social media to distract people. Nobody staring a phones. Nobody recording themselves for streaming.
You memorized phone numbers or wrote them down. You called or got called to meet up at some place and everyone went from there.
True
I daily drive a clapped out 80s sports car with no AC and a broken radio. The true connection you can feel to a classically engineered machine when there’s zero distraction or convenience is hard to describe. You learn every noise, every smell, every quirk of handling and weight transfer, gain intuition about how the chassis will react to every abnormality in the road surface, have the shifter and clutch become subconscious muscle memory where you don’t even realize you’re doing it, etc. There’s a variety of reasons the average person should drive a newer car but I personally love an old hooptie.
I’ve never brought a computer/laptop to class in uni except when I needed to do a presentation. I vastly prefer to take notes by hand because I find that I retain info much better. And I’m a massive doodler. I’m pretty pen and paper playing ttrpgs as well.
I am the complete opposite. My notes were terrible in college, such a mess.
I bought a laptop for grad school and took all my notes in outline form. Changed everything. School was easy now. I was super organized and studying was trivial. No crap in the margins, no weird arrows pointing around because the prof added some comments to earlier info.
Just wonderful,clean neat notes.
Also, others wanted copies so I would sell them, wasnt a lot of money, but it kept me in donuts.
Agreed. I have ADHD and need that tactile feedback to commit things to memory.
The only downside is that I can type so much faster than I can write by Hans.
Tell Hans to pick up the pace, your education/job is at stake
I’ve basically developed a system of shorthand-ish where I shorten a lot of common words into a few letters or even symbols and threw grammar out the window lol. I never compared it with my type speed but it works for me
Paper boarding tickets and having someone who works for an airline actually be able to help you directly when something goes wrong.
Print the qr code and take it with me as a backup. I get funny looks, but if my phone dies I can still take my trip.
Funny story, my phone died while traveling last year…
