Author Topic: modern life is rubbish  (Read 21006 times)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #150 on: 01 September, 2021, 05:42:33 pm »
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/07/russian-discounter-mere-confirms-opening-date-for-first-uk-store/

Founded 2009. I'd hazard that more changed in Russia between 1990 and 2009 than between 1953 and 1990. They seem to be stocking Western brands, which might be disappointing to some.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #151 on: 03 September, 2021, 12:31:08 pm »
NX buses are working a paperless 'pretend your bank card is an oyster card' whereby you can only confirm what you've paid by checking your bank account later. I guess ticket checkers are an extinct profession ::-)

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #152 on: 03 September, 2021, 12:47:14 pm »
NX buses are working a paperless 'pretend your bank card is an oyster card' whereby you can only confirm what you've paid by checking your bank account later. I guess ticket checkers are an extinct profession ::-)

TfL does this (you can tie your contactless card or device to an Oyster account and get a journey and payment history, but it's optional).

Revenue inspectors, as I believe they're now called, can still check during the journey that the card has been used.

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #153 on: 03 September, 2021, 02:17:03 pm »
Isnt' it odd that these days improving efficiency usually means taking something away from the end user, rather than adding value for them in some way?
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #154 on: 03 September, 2021, 04:12:43 pm »
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/07/russian-discounter-mere-confirms-opening-date-for-first-uk-store/

Founded 2009. I'd hazard that more changed in Russia between 1990 and 2009 than between 1953 and 1990. They seem to be stocking Western brands, which might be disappointing to some.

Read a report that on assuming power Putin was horrified to discover how dependent Russia was on imports for its food supply.  Since then he has turned the situation round to the extent that Russia is now able to export a considerable proportion of its farm produce. 

It went on to describe how Russia's vast land area and sparse population would be to its advantage as the climate changed since produce could be grown in formerly impossible regions. Emphasis is also being shifted gradually away from dependence on fossil fuel exports.

This was in the FT this morning but i don't have the link now.
Move Faster and Bake Things

SoreTween

  • Most of me survived the Pennine Bridleway.
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #155 on: 26 April, 2022, 08:54:39 am »
Updates. Constant sodding updates. 

Just a couple of days ago when I switched on the tv & river co dongle dismal+ offered an update now/later. As we were just sitting down to watch an episode over dinner I selected later. 3 minutes into the program dismal+ restarted and began the update without so much as a by your leave.

Last night I switched on tv & river co dongle & repaired to the kitchen to serve up. On returning the river co dongle was busily updating. Once complete it rebooted & began optimising storage or some such bs. We finished our meals before that was done.

TVs used to just work. Or not depending on the weather. Sure there was shit all on but you never had to sit & wait more than a few seconds for your Trinitron to get its life in order.
2023 targets: Survive. Maybe.
There is only one infinite resource in this universe; human stupidity.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #156 on: 26 April, 2022, 12:00:29 pm »
Mine occasionally forgets that it’s supposed to squirt its sound to the audio system rather than its own loudsqueakers, which means some tedious button-frobbing to put it back [“I think you want the ‘First World Problems’ thread…” – Ed.]
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #157 on: 26 April, 2022, 12:18:15 pm »
The rot set in when everything became a computer.

Those familiar with anbaric computers will be painfully aware that, on a good day, it always takes about 5 minutes to get them going.  It doesn't matter whether you're waiting for the valves to heat up, for the enginerd to tweak the acoustic delay lines with a wigglescope, for the disk drive to make alarming grinding noises, for the BIOS to check that your improbably large amount of RAM is still there, for things to download, or for the notwork to timeout.

It's one of those physical constants, and every time some clevercloggs finds a way to cheat it, something else comes along to thwart it.  Wirth's Law always applies.

(There's probably a law for distascopes that says that when they work properly, there's nothing worth watching.)

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #158 on: 26 April, 2022, 12:50:31 pm »
Oh yes.  Even on Bruiser McHuge (RIP), with all the mighty resources at his disposal, the backup job – scheduled for 09:00 or immediately after startup – would sometimes cough and die because he had failed to rouse the target NAS from its torpor.  Instead of shouting “WAKE UP, DOPEY!!” at it and polling it until it became accepting of incoming bits.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #159 on: 26 April, 2022, 01:10:12 pm »
The smart television updates as does the smart Blu-ray player.  The NUC, the parlour pc, the dining room pc, the two laptops for work purposes in the office and the three four smartphones in regular use within the Bear-o-drome all regularly though not often simultaneously, update.  We know folk who have cars which update and I've been stuck on a train which needed to urgently update before it could depart.

I'm avoiding expanding our internet of things just in case it all starts updating simultaneously causing an outage of lifeTM ...

TheLurker

  • Goes well with magnolia.
Τα πιο όμορφα ταξίδια γίνονται με τις δικές μας δυνάμεις - Φίλοι του Ποδήλατου

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #161 on: 26 April, 2022, 08:19:20 pm »
Our LG smart TV updates quickly and infrequently, which isn't so bad. Apple stuff does its updates when I'm asleep. One of the things I hated about the Windows laptop is that it was perpetually updating something (and I was never clear which, or indeed if any of the updates were even successful) – I can understand why people seek to preserve their sanity by turning off the auto-update.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #162 on: 27 April, 2022, 12:18:50 am »
FruitCo stuff is supposed to update while I'm asleep.  “Leave me plugged into the mains and in range of ur wifi and I shall perform this 'ere iOS update while you dream of [“trains” – The Invigilator]”.  This is a lie.  In the morning there is invariably 1) no update and c: an error message so cryptic that even poor dead Alan Turing could not parse its meaning.  Telling the fondleslab to retry the update then works.

Windows updates these days cannot be turned off altogether unless you go tinkering under the bonnet with Services or have Advanced God powers, though they can be paused so as not to try to download half a data centre over shit hotel connections.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #163 on: 27 April, 2022, 12:39:51 am »
though they can be paused so as not to try to download half a data centre over shit hotel connections.

...which you will inevitably forget to do.

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #164 on: 27 April, 2022, 06:59:38 am »
Even when electricity was under 10p/unit, leaving a computer on all night seemed rather profligate.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #165 on: 27 April, 2022, 09:15:51 am »
The Apple stuff seems to be quite good at updating itself unattended, I can't remember the last time I manually updated any of the computers, phones or iPads, which is nice, as there are a lot of them (another MLIR, why do have so many computers, when I was at school, we had 4 BBC model Bs for 1,500 kids).

They're not left on, they're sleeping, no idea how much power that uses, apparently a 'power nap.' It can be turned off.

Apparently, the Windows laptop can do the same, but good luck finding that option. I have a mothership Macbook on backorder (we're hiring about 100 people a month, apparently I'm not at the top of the queue for IT). It's learned me that I'm too old for computer diversity.

nicknack

  • Hornblower
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #166 on: 27 April, 2022, 10:19:17 am »
Updating never seems to be a problem with Linux too. I think it's only Windows that is totally shit at it.
There's no vibrations, but wait.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #167 on: 27 April, 2022, 11:01:16 am »
Even when electricity was under 10p/unit, leaving a computer on all night seemed rather profligate.

One of mine stays on 24/7.  But because modern life is rubbish, shutting it down and restarting it is a PITA involving tedious stuff like getting off the sofa to frob the switch.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #168 on: 27 April, 2022, 11:38:41 am »
I have a server on 24/7, but that's actually doing something useful (including logging electricity consumption).

My desktop runs Debian, and is therefore capable of doing updates and backups out of cron.daily without bothering the user (apart from maybe the fan running slightly faster).  If it installs a new kernel, that gets used on next boot, none of this urgent need to interrupt you for a series of restarts rubbish that Windows insists on.

Of course, the one way to make Windows worse is to have it managed by Mordac.  Barakta's $ork laptop is a textbook example of taking an OS that's annoying about updates and making it even more intrusive.  Let's push an update that breaks something people need to do their jobs, then spend the day with everyone waiting for a helldesk monkey to log in remotely and click on things.

Feanor

  • It's mostly downhill from here.
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #169 on: 27 April, 2022, 05:06:03 pm »
Plantronics.
I have a work-supplied Plantronics headset for teams calls etc. Fine.

But not only does it require a driver ( for a headset? really? ), it also has a full-blown desktop app, called the Plantronics Hub. A full-blown desktop app? For a set of headphones? Really Really?

The only function of this app seems to be to update itself, which it seems to do about once a week.
I've never come across such an unnecessarily update-needy simple peripheral device.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #170 on: 27 April, 2022, 05:40:13 pm »
That's the other thing about Windows.  When you've got a driver for some non-trivial piece of hardware you have the choice of:

a) Let Microsoft supply a driver, which - USB shenanigans and such notwithstanding - just quietly gets on with it.
b) Install the manufacturer's recommended bloatware, complete with hundreds of megabytes of video tutorials, a dependency on .NET or Java runtime or similar, so you have to install and update that too, yet another icon that sits in the system tray, and a configuration app that throws any attempt at UI consistency with the rest of the OS straight out the, well, window.

The modern life is rubbish angle being that a decent percentage of the time, you need to jibble some obscure setting that's only accessible using (b), which also inconveniently rules out:

c) The Linux driver, which is probably in the kernel and therefore Just Works with even less hassle than the Microsoft version, but only supports a subset of functionality because it was written by someone who bought the previous model.
d) The OSX driver, which hasn't been updated since 2014.

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #171 on: 27 April, 2022, 05:55:23 pm »
Mac drivers (or the need to do anything) is mostly a non-thing. I did once-upon-a-time have to install printer drivers. HP kindly provided them all in a single convenient and practical and quick-to-download 20-ish GB file or somesuch.

I don't do headsets, every call I'm in features five minutes of someone messing with their headsets. Can you hear me now? they mime. No. I just shout at the computer, something that comes naturally and works just as effectively on minions as it does on computers.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #172 on: 27 April, 2022, 06:14:38 pm »
Yes, OSX is similar to Linux in that most normal things Just Work.

Barakta once found a Braille terminal in a cupboard and plugged it into her colleague's Mac to see what would happen.  It thrashed disk for a couple of seconds, then the pins started jumping around.  Meanwhile a large image appeared on the screen depicting the Braille characters, along with ASCII translation.

Sometimes the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation really do earn their reputation for ease of use.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #173 on: 27 April, 2022, 06:21:17 pm »
though they can be paused so as not to try to download half a data centre over shit hotel connections.

...which you will inevitably forget to do.

After having been caught out back in 2016 by Windows waking my very very slow laptop from hibernation in order to install a humongous update over the jam-filled connection of the Brewers Inn of Keewatin ON, turning off the Windows Update services is on my pre-departure checklist.  This has a bonus side effect, viz. it speeds the laptop up to the point where its performance is acceptable enough to put me off buying a new one until next year.

On drivers: while Windows will routinely claim that no newer driver for $HARDWARE is available this is frequently A Lie, as I discovered while trying to persuade the wifi on my laptop to continue working for longer than ten minutes at a pop.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #174 on: 27 April, 2022, 08:48:59 pm »
For balance, my Linux desktop got in a bit of confusion about python versions recently. I uninstalled and used pyenv, which has worked for now.

My work mac does quite a lot of updating. Despite this, the password manager and browser are only compatible with each other about half the time. And we’ve been warned not to touch the latest OS version.

But it’s still better than any windows machine I’ve seen.