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I need a new car and keep hearing that cars are getting more expensive because of a shortage of CPU parts so yay. I don't think cars need even half of the computers they're built with nowadays. I had to rent one recently. They tell you not to text and drive or get distracted and the first thing you see is a giant loving television screen in the center console.
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Jun 18, 2021 17:40
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Somebody wrote something along the lines of "inventing problems to justify the solution" or something like that and it felt pretty apt. Connecting everything to the internet makes no loving sense and at least half the time makes the "convenience" of the tech more of a pain in the rear end. I don't like keyless cars and don't see what was so hard about putting a key in the ignition. It doesn't solve a problem. I've also left them running more than once. What "problem" is this solving beyond remembering to bring your keys with you or take them out of the car? I live in NE FL and have ridden out 3 hurricanes. Each time, I've never lost power for any significant amount of time but you know what I DID LOSE every time? Internet. I was very grateful for my DVD library and actual books and also thankful that my stove and fridge didn't need software updates. I did get a taste of not being able to play certain video games though because they needed to be online always. I recently couldn't schedule a lab appointment because my phone wasn't cooperating with the log in system even though I was standing right there in the office. The solution was for me to go home, grab my laptop, create and account, register and then drive back in for an appt 3 or 4 hours later. It was like not being able to order food in a McDonalds because the kiosk was down. Even though there were 8-10 workers there. It's real "your floor is now clean" Idiocracy vibes. I don't mind using tech to make things more convenient but more and more it feels like it just makes things more complicated and opens up all sorts of security problems. I think the next big "terrorist attack" or nationwide "national disaster" is going to be internet related. Something or someone will cripple the power grid, the web or air traffic control. That, or we're going to get a serious, major, untraceable security breach on some big banks, telecom or Twitter, FB or Google.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:36
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enki42 posted:Keyless entry / ignition seems like a different sort of thing than internet connected devices. I definitely like never having to take my keys out of my pocket, makes it easier to just know they're always in my jacket and I forget about them. I suppose it's possible that you could forget to turn the ignition off, but it's mostly a matter of getting into the habit of turning it off, and at least for my car it won't let you lock the door using keyless (and beeps really loudly) if the ignition is on. Fair enough but it's still not really solving a problem. I've been driving for *mumble mumble* years and can't recall anything key related that really upset my apple cart aside from maybe misplacing my keys at a party, in which case I had the same problem until I found the fuckers. Carrying a set of keys and inserting them into the ignition has never been something I'd considered to be a major inconvenience or serious time sink that required computers to solve. However, these things DO make it easier for someone to rip off or find your key and immediately know which car is yours within a city block or a parking garage, which is a HUGE time saver for a car thief.
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Jun 23, 2021 19:52
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TV's are another great example of trying to invent a problem to fit an unneeded solution. I've gone through CRT to Plasma to HD, etc etc and increasingly higher resolutions but the last really great jump in picture quality was VHS/CRT to DVD/HD. I haven't clamored for better picture quality in some time and Blu-Ray just felt like a luxury. I don't think the leap and the improvement was much more than incremental and I still watch and enjoy my five to ten year old non smart tv's just fine. The blu ray player I have gives me more problems than my regular DVD player and also seems to have more sound issues. Red Box costs me like 2 bucks and doesn't gently caress with me if the internet connection is wonky. Do we really need curved screens, 3d Tv's, 4k, always online "smart" TV's or 6 more inches of screen? IMO not really but the intent now seems to be to just create artificial demand (see, PS5, Xbox-Series whatever the gently caress). The new game consoles main selling point seems to be slightly faster loading times and slightly better graphics (with the RIGHT tv). Maybe I'm just too old to give a poo poo, a leisurely activity suddenly becomes complicated and I don't notice a huge leap in quality since my eyesight isn't what it used to be but really I think it's just that all the new shiny stuff doesn't enhance my experience enough to really bother with it. I still can't get sound balanced properly on any of my entertainment systems since things go from teeth shatteringly loud to what-the-gently caress-did-she-say from scene to scene no matter what the media.
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Jun 26, 2021 15:06
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Solkanar512 posted:https://twitter.com/mannistom/status/1408825918559293446?s=21 The Internet Makes you Stupid. Or so I've heard it said.
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Jun 26, 2021 22:49
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I guess I could picture that cpu screen door thing could help deter shoplifting somehow but that seems like a pretty expensive way to go about it
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Jun 27, 2021 12:26
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Baronash posted:Oh goodie, nothing is quite as tedious as the reasoning of “I don’t understand why people value different things than I do.” You’re arguing against the existence of a switch on a lamp because you could just pull the plug out of the wall. People enjoy minor conveniences. They’re willing to pay for them. Do you go through your friends’ cabinets and shame them for taking up a whole shelf with a salad spinner, or owning an oven with a built-in timer? It’s like listening to a Seinfeld set: “what’s the deal with smart devices?” I think we view the situation very differently but I can't be entirely sure since you seem kind of all over the place here.
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Jun 27, 2021 22:39
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LibCrusher posted:How does one clean they’re teef w that thing You don't have to brush your teeth if you don't eat I guess. Also, yeah, how long until the self driving cars make us listen to/watch commercials on our center console screen like most gas pumps do now? Mercury_Storm posted:looking for a TV that doesn't harass you. Decent thread title
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Jun 28, 2021 23:12
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BlueBlazer posted:So what they will do is optimize their plan to take advantage of the lowest possible consumer prices available at whatever their plan specifies. Thats the thing with the Texas power plan market, you can choose among 300+ different ponzi schemes of power savings, I would think you could write a super restrictive one for certain times a day and piggy back them off each other with a pretty straight forward service switch gear. And Texas deserves them.
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Jun 30, 2021 01:06
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I was thinking about this yesterday but aren't almost all of our modern problems a direct result of the industrial revolution and our pursuit of efficiency, speed and easing our burden of labor through technology? I recognize the incredible advances we've made in medicine, transportation and construction but it all comes at the cost of pollution, global warming, privacy concerns, automation eliminating jobs, disinformation and cyber crimes on the web, and things like infrastructure issues to support it all that no one wants to pay for. I don't know too many people that feel like they have a ton of free time on their hands or that much of this is all that convenient or makes our lives easier. In fact, it seems quite the opposite where most of us are beholden to the machines and almost dependent on them. I'm not suggesting we all live in grass huts with no electricity so much as noticing that it seems like a never ending chase to finally be able to relax that never comes.
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Jun 30, 2021 13:08
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The technology isn't the problem. It's the assumption that work-saving advances need to be compensated with more work. Well put. But then what's the point of the innovation? Ostensibly, it's always been designed and created with idea in mind that people can work less. Even leaving work out of it, almost all of the other poo poo designed to ease the stress in our personal lives, the mundane chores we have to do or managing the things we have to do in our lives - poo poo like that. None of it seems to have delivered on that promise. Tehdas posted:Seems to me this is just glorifying the pre-IR times. I was worried about that and didn't mean to come off that way. I was more thinking about how we poo poo in our own nest by filling our oceans with plastic, our air with carcinogens and that sort of poo poo. Supposedly so our free time when we're not working frees up our time. But I don't feel it. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jun 30, 2021 |
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Jun 30, 2021 23:22
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Fair enough. But stuff like that wasn't what I was really trying to make central to my argument. I'm not stressed out about any of those things either and tried to go out of my way to point that out with examples. I dunno. Could be I'm just an old grouch but it seems to be going around.
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Jul 1, 2021 00:31
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A Brand-New $130,000 Tesla Reportedly Caught Fire Days After Being Delivered https://www.vice.com/en/article/93ynbe/a-brand-new-dollar130000-tesla-reportedly-caught-fire-days-after-being-delivered quote:A Tesla Model S Plaid, a limited-edition $130,000 vehicle capable of going stupidly fast, erupted into a fireball just days after being delivered to a customer in Pennsylvania, according to lawyers representing the unnamed customer.
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Jul 3, 2021 12:32
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MickeyFinn posted:I object to these jobs being referred to as healthcare jobs. Spending nearly 1/3 of our healthcare expenses on administration is bureaucratic bloat. I always wonder what the cost of advertising is as well. I never understand why hospitals put up billboards or drug companies telling me to "ask my doctor" for poo poo. If I need to go to a hospital, pretty sure my brand loyalty is "the closest one please" and as far as drugs go, shouldn't me doctor be telling me? EDIT: Sorry not really tech related On topic, what does everybody think about the increasing move towards telehealth? I'm kind of mixed on it. On the one hand, certain stuff can be diagnosed over the phone and it seems like therapy sessions can too. But things like strep throat and what have you...I don't know. I had something a month back that kicked my loving rear end for 2 weeks. The doctor refused to see me due to covid symptoms even though I was vaccinated and had to teleconference 2x. First time they said bronchitis but when the meds didn't work they ramped it up to pneumonia. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jul 7, 2021 |
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Jul 7, 2021 23:52
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Well, that still seems weird. It's not a resort or a vacation spot. It's a god damned hospital and I'm only going to one if something's broken or poo poo like that. I started a healthcare thread somewhere because it comes up in SO MANY threads here but it died on the vine for some reason.Doggles posted:https://twitter.com/DeanTrantalis/status/1412563013383737344 Wait. Wait. An underground transportation in loving FLORIDA? On the COAST? Houses can't even have basements here. Our entire foundation is limestone and we get sinkholes all the time. Our Republican leadership vetoed high speed rail which we desperately need. What the gently caress is this? Jesus Christ.
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Jul 8, 2021 00:06
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Thought I asked this already but don't see it. What's the thread's general take on telehealth and video conferenced doctor visits? I'm sort of on the fence about it and can see upside as well as downside.
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Jul 9, 2021 11:04
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Solkanar512 posted:Personally I think there are a ton of use cases that are really legitimate. It’s really easy to make therapy appointments when it’s on your phone or computer, and those services where you call contact a nurse if you’re unsure of the severity of a problem are only improved if you can see each other. Not to mention cases where folks are in remote or poorly served areas. Yeah, I'm of 2 minds on it. I can totally see how it can save time, eliminate unnecessary office visits, keep sick people away from mingling in tight quarters and stuff like that. Certainly safer for the healthcare workers too. But I recently caught something that had every Covid symptom but the fever and it wound up lasting 2 weeks. The office wouldn't see me at all because of my symptoms, even though I was vaccinated, and they diagnosed me over the phone with bronchitis and gave me meds. 4 days later and I feel even worse so now it was apparently pneumonia. More meds. I can't help but think that sometimes actually seeing you in person leads to a much more accurate diagnosis, for obvious reasons. Rashes, strep throat...poo poo like that. Also, I'd imagine that there'd be some cost savings to the doctor's office which I'm CERTAIN will be passed on to the patients, right? There's also the issue of elderly people who see doctors more often not being incredibly tech savvy. RIGHT??
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Jul 9, 2021 23:00
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Why would anyone ever willingly turn on Google notifications (or ANY notifications) unless it's for work or they really like having their phone blowing up 24/ with poo poo nobody cares about?
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Jul 14, 2021 23:24
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Shrecknet posted:I've been think about writing a story about this, actors should be freaking the gently caress out because once deepfakes are good enough, there will be no need for new actors. We can just have boomer faves like 40 year old Harrison Ford and Warren Beatty starring in everything forever and paying a $250 day rate to a guy in a ping-pong ball suit to do the actual work. Once deepfakes really hit the landing, basically any and all news will be suspect. You think political ads are bad now and taken out of context? Also, every celebrity will be an unwilling porn star. Basically what the poster above me wrote. I think this particular tech is going to cause some really serious problems very soon and in many ways that we haven't even considered yet.
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Jul 16, 2021 02:26
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Looking forward to a ton of poo poo like that oven moving forward. Everything doesn't have to be connected to the loving internet. I generally prefer when it isn't and sure as poo poo don't need my fridge or toaster to be "smart". Even games, which are driven a lot by internet connectivity, can become poo poo pretty quickly once you have to register, sign in and always be online to play.
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Jul 24, 2021 17:51
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withak posted:It's a small convection oven that sits on a countertop. That somehow makes it even worse.
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Jul 24, 2021 18:15
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goatsestretchgoals posted:Touchscreen controls are the dumbest thing ever, even ignoring internet connectivity. I’m typing this on a phone with one thumb and I’m doing it a hell of a lot slower than I would be on an actual keyboard. Obviously I’m not going to be able to put a full 104 key in my pocket, so this is an acceptable trade off. Right? Analog tuning and volume controls are far superior ways of handling the "what am I looking for and how loud do I want it" problem.
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Jul 24, 2021 21:44
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Stexils posted:i would like to submit my new smoke/co2 detectors to this thread https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj7XA3tiGUg&t=54s
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Jul 25, 2021 12:12
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I can make coffee with zero help from the internet. PM me on details as to how.
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Jul 26, 2021 00:48
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Mister Facetious posted:Curious how they plan to implement this in Guess we'll find out soon enough!
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Jul 28, 2021 02:25
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Isn't one of the hugest obstacles to renewable energy for transportation the issue of freight?
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Jul 31, 2021 18:14
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I read an article yesterday that was talking about car makers having to put that DUI blower thing in it in order for it to start. I mean, preventing drunk driving is great but for some reason I can see this device becoming a problem. https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvk9z/every-car-made-after-2027-may-have-drunk-driving-monitoring-system
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Aug 4, 2021 23:46
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The breathalyzer thing sounds like an idea that's filled with good intentions but will practically become a nightmare on several levels. Wonder how much it might cost to repair, for instance, when the sensor chip or whatever shits the bed?
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Aug 6, 2021 00:02
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So...people would have to their cars in once a week to re calibrate their starter?
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Aug 6, 2021 01:59
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Stolen from the cursed images threadMemento posted:https://i.imgur.com/D0D7Q09.mp4
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Aug 6, 2021 23:23
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Blut posted:Being able to afford $10k for a car is not remotely "privileged" unless you're a teenager/student/live in a third world country. Most reasonably competent adults in the US, if they need a car, can and do easily afford that. I wouldn't say it's "easy" to afford. Probably easy to FINANCE, which may be what you mean, but as far as the hit a typical person takes in to their day to day life purchasing a 10 or 15k car (along with insurance) is hardly "easy". To get us back on track and re-rail us a bit, I probably mentioned it before but I'm going to need a new car pretty soon and I wish I could purchase one without a million bells and whistles that will cost me a fortune to repair when they inevitably break. Not the regular stuff that computers do with the car but all the other "shiny" poo poo. I really dislike the huge gently caress off TV screen in most modern cars and find it incredibly distracting, for instance.
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Aug 11, 2021 22:55
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Ethics_Gradient posted:My 07 Yaris feels like a luxury car to me, because I upgraded from a mid-90s Starlet Life last year. It has power steering and airbags! A what now?
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Aug 13, 2021 01:59
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HootTheOwl posted:finally, a phrase older than you. Nothing is older than me. At least around these parts. And, man, those roughly 50% of bankruptcies filed by people with crushing medical bills sure are failures. My 10 year old epileptic son (who's on also the spectrum) sure did let me down with those two seizures he had that both resulted in trips to the ER. loving loser doesn't even have a car. EDIT: On topic and speaking of tech. Anyone else notice their ad blockers not working as often? Youtube has managed to force feed me at least a 10 second intro ad lately. It's a god damned arms race trying to avoid advertising. I started a thread about it but it died on the vine about a year ago. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 22:46
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thecluckmeme posted:Seconded. If you're still using Adblock Plus, IIRC Google actually bought it out years ago and it lets Google adsense stuff through. I haven't watched a YouTube ad in years FWIW I'm using UBlock but maybe I need to update it. Some company called "VRBO" really wants me to do...something I guess. I've always thought it was weird that since so many ads are skippable after 5 seconds that more advertisers don't take advantage of that to really swat you hard from the get go and sink their hooks in or get you invested right away. There was a super bowl ad I think it was that started out totally silent. It proved to be very effective at getting people who were listening in the background or having a conversation to stop and look because of how much the quiet stood out. I was streaming some youtube audio once where an ad did the same thing and it had the effect of making me stop and look to check my connection. EA started doing this a long time ago by having really simple game cover designs with a lot of white area with simple black text that actually made them pop out against all other colorful, noisy titles on the shelf. Blut posted:I never said financial incompetence is a character flaw, thats your (and/or some other posters) reading of it. Its much the same as being dyslexic - some people are bad with words, some people are bad with money. Neither is a character flaw, but theres no point in denying people with these capability issues exist in society. Hey, dude. The 52nd best player on an NFL team is better at football than less than 1% of the population. The slowest runner on a track and field team will blaze you in a foot race. You're trying to be sabermetric and analytical here to come off smarter than everyone else, got probed for your bullshit and are now claiming that people are putting words in your mouth. I'll use your framing and suggest that when 99% of people posting in a thread are saying you suck, then you are by definition a failure at posting. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Aug 14, 2021 |
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Aug 14, 2021 15:25
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Arsenic Lupin posted:You are aware that technology has been destroying nature pretty much forever? Well, OK, but nothing on the scale of what the industrial revolution brought on. From a pollution standpoint alone, I think that impact is pretty unprecedented.
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Aug 15, 2021 18:49
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Gettin a whole lot of "your floor is now clean. your floor is now clean" vibes from some of these recent posts.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:55
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The amount of availability and contact we're assumed to have as workers and just as normal people has been really loving weighing on my mental health lately. I'm pretty old by SA standards and remember when it could it be a TAD difficult to get a hold of somebody, for instance. But by and large, none of those times really amounted to anything resembling an emergency and it almost always worked out. Even giving people directions to a party or job interview or something. People usually managed to find it and show up. The sheer volume of email, texts, calls (robo or otherwise), spam, passwords between my job and my personal life is overwhelming and I feel like Jake from Shawshank Redemption talking about how the world is in such a damned hurry. None of it feels incredibly convenient so much as distracting and annoying. Like, at my job, all of our order forms are done online but they're all subdivided into like 10 or 15 different categories with little instructions everywhere. If I want to search for a job, there's nowhere for me to search every job in the house. There's also a google drive for images I need (I work in graphics), another place for OTHER images I need, messenger, another messenger within that order entry system that lists notes in 5 different areas, email (4 different ones) that use gmail which kind of sucks for staying organized IMO, texts of course plus a regular old landline office phone and good old post it notes and verbal communication. And of course the 5 or 10 apps I need to know just to manipulate work. The idea behind all this is one of self containment but it's anything but and the word I keep coming back to is "overkill". None of this feels streamlined or convenient to me. It's just always paying attention to the next noise and, TBH, it distracts me from my actual work. My eyes get dry from staring at a CPU all day, I lose track of what I was working on and my posture is terrible. Lately, I've started going in to work super early and when I do, without the distractions, I just CRUSH poo poo and crank out work.
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Aug 18, 2021 22:58
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Motronic posted:You are not alone. MickeyFinn posted:Ditto. Thank you both for the empathetic replies. I felt like I was on an island as a lone oddball. I'm fairly old by SA standards I guess and have been here a while but still like it here a lot. I seriously feel like the world is beginning to pass me by, professionally and socially. I'd love to do the math sometime on how much time I spend responding to digital communications, incompatibility and wrestling with "updates" and poo poo like that compared to the time all this at my fingertips convenience actually saves me. I don't have a ton of money to spend on phones, laptops, Adobe Creative subscriptions and LOATHE the idea of coordinating all my log ins and bill paying with Google or whoever. My phone and inbox(es) just never shut the gently caress up and, like MickeyFinn posted, all the jobs I've had lately seem hyper focused on "efficiency" through almost CONSTANT messages, inboxes, texts and what have you. The managers are the worst. I spend at least as much time responding to this poo poo as I do actually WORKING at the job they ostensibly hired me to do in the first place. There's nothing streamlined or efficient about any of it. So much of it is noise and half the time the information given to me is incomplete, inaccurate or just outright missing. I'm not a "get off the grid and go live in the woods type" (but I'm close, baby) because I like SOME of what modern tech offers me and am not really all that "handy" when it comes to the skills needed to do that sort of thing. But the big problem for me is that the new normal EXPECTS me to be all in with my phone, laptop, car, bill paying, doctor visits, etc. If I don't answer a text within an hour, people think I'm dead or something, rather than just driving, napping, listening to music, at the movies in my yard or doing ANYTHING else under the sun than babysitting my little mini computer and constantly checking my email. It's taking a serious toll on me, my mental health and my job prospects. I can't imagine what it must be like for a 70 year old or, worse, what it'll be like when I'm that age. Just put the loving chip in me already and be done with it.
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Aug 19, 2021 21:30
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Motronic posted:For the things outside of work: you need to lay down your own expectations for family and friends. I've tried. I've made it clear to my employer(s) that unless I'm on salary or on the clock, expect nothing and that I prefer to come in early if possible. My ex wife sent me 18 texts yesterday because my son wasn't "following the morning rules" and refused to wear something or another. Clothes or some poo poo I dunno. Hardly an emergency. He's 10. I got out of the shower and thought he's had a seizure or some poo poo. She thinks I'm failing at our co-parenting agreement after the divorce if I'm not on call 24/7 and I'm just....NOT. I don't keep my phone by the bed because gently caress that. It's either her texting me something about Prince, some news I already know about, my son not eating his pot roast or one of my friends trying to be funny because they don't keep the hours I do (in bed at 9pm and up at 4 or 5) and are sending me something stupid. If there's a real emergency, I told my ex to send a squad car or a neighbor out my way to roust me out of bed and I'll be on it. Except it's NEVER an emergency. True emergencies are pretty rare but you'd never know it. Nowadays, EVERYTHING is treated with the same gravitas as a true emergency and a failure to respond in a timely fashion is viewed as a shortcoming on your part instead of the nothing burger it usually is. It's all just speeding up the way we communicate but robbing of its essence. I don't need an app for every store I buy things from, not constant reminders that they still sell things. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 21:54
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All hail, Lord Bezos. King of the bathroom and business model examples for any business owner employing anyone anywhere. They ALL seem to want to emulate how he fills orders.
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Aug 20, 2021 00:42
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