#technology rant

[conveniencestoreman]

im about to flip my fucking lid, dude. my phone forced an update that has made my ui like an iphone and has force installed a bunch of ai shit i cannot remove. i now have 'bixby' and 'gemini' installed and i cannot remove them, only disable them. and also 'galaxy ai' which has no opt out or anything, its just fucking there in my settings.

if i wanted an iphone i would have bought one. if i wanted ai features i would have bought a device that had the capability. im genuinely considering swapping back to a flip phone and a laptop. stop forcing these things on me!!!!

[amber-averlong]

Dear Kindle,

Please add a filter that can be applied to searches that will not give me results on pre-order. (Y'all please let me know if this is sunbathing that exists that I just haven't found.)

I understand that you're trying to help by showing me stuff I might want to read when it comes out. HOWEVER, if I'm searching on my kindle (or in the kindle app on another device, I suppose), 99.9999999% of the time, I'm searching for something to read. RIGHT. NOW.

I'm searching because I finished a book and would like to start another. I'm searching because reality is creeping into my hard won solace and I'd like to get my brain engrossed in fiction as quickly as possible. NOT because I'd like to find something to read in 6 months. I follow the authors. You send me emails (that I, admittedly, don't read). I've even pre-ordered books on occasion. BUT NEVER ON MY KINDLE DEVICE.

Please make this happen? Thanks!

[raincheckow]

We're losing knowledge

This week's millennial technology take: we're closer than ever to becoming the Adeptus Mechanicus. Maybe the world of Horizon Zero Dawn, if we're lucky.

Not to be all "Kids these days..." but

Kids aren't learning how to use actual computers anymore... just Apps(tm). I'm not quite 30, and yet my generation is already stuck telling older AND younger people how to save as PDF. Concepts are taught at such a high level that kids know how to code, with no idea of what the code is actually *doing*.

If you're a freshly graduated software engineer, it shouldn't be a big ask for you to know where files get saved. Copy/Paste shouldn't require using a mouse+menu each time. Efficiency shouldn't be left to the IDE or compiler. You're an engineer, you should be hungry to understand how things work... don't just sit around and wait to be told. Core skills are not being passed on anymore. "The system/library/pipeline takes care of it" and suddenly nobody is looking under the hood.

Convenience is killing our ability to create.

Break things. Figure out how to fix them. Repair your stuff, even when corporations tell you that's not allowed. Be proud of your knowledge, chase it down and find more.

A lot of the wonder and amazement around technology seems to be fading. Everything we do is stuck inside data-harvesting apps and nobody is learning the pieces that make the whole thing work.

One day things will break and we'll have nobody around who can fix it. We'll follow old guides, telling us these obscure steps to follow, having no clue what we are fundamentally doing. One day the ritual of "OffAndOnAgain" won't restore the Tech. Troubleshooting will become the job of the lorekeepers. Fixes will rely on auras more than logic until the system falls apart.

Generations of genius created the world we live in. Keep their knowledge. Be amazed that anyone could come up with what is now the mundane. Keep asking "but how could it possibly do that?" because they poured their very lives into these precious ones and zeroes.

I want to be wrong. I want the next generations to create wonders beyond the limits of my imagination. I want to be amazed by what was never possible before. I want my proudest creations to look like child's play compared to what the future holds.

I desperately want to have someone complain about teaching me how to save as a PDF

[this-is-where-i-hide-my-bullshit]

I swear to GOD whatever idiot added that useless annoying split screen thing to ipads deserves to have every part of their body slowly amputated joint by joint starting with their fingers and toes until they're just a torso with a head because I JUST WANT TO DRAG FILES INTO A FOLDER WITHOUT CLICKING THE SAME SET OF OPTIONS IN THE MENU OVER AND OVER AND OVER GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!!!

NO I DON'T WANT TO SPLIT THE SCREEN. THAT FEATURE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A PRACTICAL FUNCTION.

EVERY DAY MY SELF RESTRAINT GETS WEAKER AND WEAKER AND ONE DAY I'M GOING TO SNAP AND I'M GOING TO TRACK DOWN THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE AND I WILL SHOVE MY IPAD SO FAR UP THEIR ASS IT'LL FILL THE EMPTY SPACE BEHIND THEIR EYES.

Apple products are SHIT. They are GARBAGE. Every Single One. And the people designing this trash needs to be punished for their sins.

[raincheckow]

Computers are insane. Microprocessor lithography is magic.

We use lasers to hit microscopic falling droplets of molten metal to produce a magic light that reacts with a photosensitive layer that then gets etched by acid and transforms a silicon wafer into a rock that can think.

It’s wild.

Much of that complexity comes from just the generation of the EUV light… but aren’t there readily available resources that produce RF emissions with an even shorter wavelength?

We know how to generate X-rays and gamma rays with a certain degree of reliability. I have only the most basic understanding of these systems, which is why I can only approach it with major oversimplifications.

To me, it seems like the general methodology of processor production has remained very similar over the decades. Obviously, techniques and precision have been refined to near perfection… but when was the last real disruption to the process?

Why not stack layers of components etched by the laser itself? Why not include layers of copper to act as ground and power planes that behave as a capacitor to even out voltage spikes from a psu, while also wicking away heat to the packaging?

With the extreme precision available, and the insane capital backing an AI arms race, I would love to see some novel changes that revolutionize computing again.

I’m tired of incremental progress. We just got solid state battery production, humanity should match with more efficient, revolutionary computing as well.

[scribeofmorpheus]

impermanent/cloud storage fad rant coming along:

why is everything so hell bent on making me store my data in the cloud?

like the PS4 was designed to work beside an external HDD or SSD if you ran low on space, the PS5 on the other hand *really* wants you to use their cloud storage (the options to back up data are so limited when you try to back up PS4 data vs PS5)--for which you must be subscribed to PS+ also!

computers come integrated with OneDrive storage on them for easy backing up of files (sure, I've lost files to corruption or deletion before, this is nifty for things that *should* be backed up continuously like a thesis or a research paper--but then again, space is finite, so to get more space, that's more money!) but they also word the storage options so weirdly. what do you mean "free up space" frees up the physical space and not the cloud storage backup?

and now my antivirus has removed the interface for me to choose *where* to store my back ups, and has now renamed and re-shopped the "backup" panel to "cloud backup"--for which they have their own specialty server--which you have to subscribe to on top of your anti-virus.

I'm just so tired of the cloud. it's so impermanent. it's not practical in the long run. and so many devices are now hardwired to best back up on cloud software than hard-drive to hard-drive. maybe I'm just getting old but this doesn't seem sustainable or fiscally applicable.

[rachymarie]

I've got a lot I'm wanting/meeding to get done today, but I'm finding myself stuck feeling especially pissy about the enshittification of every damn app and service.

It feels like the enshittification is all coming to a head

Not to mention the TikTokification (my own coined term lol), which is actually a big part of the enshittification

Anyways i got my Twitch app rolled back

Idek how people can use iPhones since you can't install apks etc etc.

Then again one can't escape the influence of iPhone on Android, with many of the former's "features" (read: removal of ACTUAL helpful features) slowly invading/infiltrating Android phones over the years, enshittifying it to the point where we can't even access System files/Android\data anymore!!!? Wtaf.

Starting to think what is even the point of Android anymore if it's just gonna take away all the customizability (is that a word lol) that made it stand out in favour of becoming a wannabe iPhone/iOS device??

Make it make sense!

[beedreamscape]

such modern technology evolutions, super developed ai, and google still won't let us view our google meet history