Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them] @hexbear.net

4d ago

Wireless earbuds be like:

Boy I love paying a fuck ton of money for poor audio quality and shitty battery life.

Man I love being forced into technology that isn't better than the old thing and solves no problem (rather creating new ones) for the sake of keeping up with the Joneses because everyone was told this is the cool new thing so eat up piggies or FOMO.

Call me old (I'm not), call me a Luddite (I'm not), I don't care. You're wrong.

Sometimes new things being pushed by the market aren't the next leap in technology. Sometimes they are shit or pointless and should be abandoned, like 3D TVs. NEW DOESN'T ALWAYS EQUAL PROGRESS.

I feel the same about AI or touch screens being bundled into everything. Instead of the products they infect becoming better, they simply waste processing power that could have make the product perform better at the job it was originally designed to do.

A good example of this is when I once house sitted for a wealthy person. Their stovetop was all touch controlled. You want to know what doesn't work well with touch controls? Heat and water. What do kitchens and cooking on stove tops involve a lot of? FUCKING HEAT AND WATER.

So here I am cooking, shit, waters coming to boil. Shit, a tiny droplet of boiling landed on the touch controls and it thinks it's a finger. Shit, it thinks the finger is turning the temperature to max. Shit, it's not responding to my actual finger now until I wipe the water off. Shit, the pasta is now starting to overcook. I could just turn the element off, but shit, the off button is also touch operated. I how have remove the pot off the element. Wipe the control. Wait for it to cool. Hold my finger on the touch controls to readjust it to how I want. And turn this fucking thing off. It's all so slow. Why do this when a physical dial is so much cheaper and gives you instant control over the temperature with none of these problems?

Fuck it. Roast me for complaining about this. You know I'm right.

The annoying thing is there is a lot of cool things we could be developing, I actually like the progress of technology when it's done right. But the problem is it's all being developed with impressing the market in mind, not for actually making things better.

72 comments

buttons and wires are good

Fuck it. Roast me for complaining about this. You know I'm right.
I'm trying but the touchscreen is wet

Their stovetop was all touch controlled.
This is apparently normal now. My grandmother had to replace her stove recently and apparently all the budget stoves were those dogshit glasstops with shitty touch control buttons instead of just like cheap exposed coils and physical dials. I don't get it at all, everything about it is awful and so much worse than the cheaper established options it doesn't make any sense.
- I like the glass tops because they're easier to clean than exposed coils. With you on the touch controls, however.
- Heh, you're stuck in the past! BTW we just replaced your car's wheels with AI powered touchscreens. Wheels are like thousands of years old, after all. Don't be outdated!

Fuck it. Roast me for complaining about this
Your water splattered touch screen oven is doing that for us already
- AAAA

Excited for the day my car finally is done for and I'll have to buy a car with a touch screen steering wheel or some shit
- Fucking hell, Tesla's in particular sound like a nightmare to control. Aren't all the controls on a touchscreen in an awkward place to the point where people are crashing? Lmao hell world.
  
  It feels like Manufacturers are burying the functionality behind dozens of menus in hopes it will promote the voice assistant nonsense.
  My current car has carplay and the music app doesn’t let you browse all artists or albums in an A-Z list. You can ask Siri to play the band on shuffle tho…
  I hate it so fucking much.
- I will never do that, I'm too bull-headed. I'll drive my old Corolla til I can see the tarmac through the floor.
  
  til I can see the tarmac through the floor.
  and then you will be made to drive with a touch screen

Wireless earbuds are generally bad and are pushed too much, but they do have usecases.
Touch controls for a stove is pure madness.
- If I ever come across touch controls for a bathroom I am going to screm and cri
  Touch controls are good for some things, but keep them away from humid places FFS that should be common sense.
  
  I am entirely anti touch control. Buttons are good.
  "I want to cover the screen with my hand so I can smudge my grubby little fingers on it." - a nitwit
  
  There are fancy Japanese toilets that have them lol

Yeah the new ones are super cool they--right ear falls out straight into a sewer

I used to hold this opinion but my wireless headphones are really good, plus they have a spot for a jack in case I need it. I used to go through cables like every month because they would get twisted and the cable would snap. With my wireless headphones I don't have that problem anymore. I do think that wireless headphones should come with an option for a jack though.
- Yeah I think people are forgetting how inconvenient cables of wired heaphones dying really were. Sure wireless headphones have their drawbacks but overall IMO they're an upgrade.
  
  I don't think it's always that so much as remembering how infuriating earlier wireless headphones were, every single pair I used to get in my teens lasted barely a year before something started making them unusable.
  And compared to when wired headphones start experiencing problems there was way less of a dying period, when the wireless died it was just the end of the line right away, which sucks if you dont have the money to get another pair right away.
- Wireless headphones are great cos they stay on yojr head. Earbuds/earphones are tiny and shitty and fall out :/
- I find it really hard to find good ones, but then most headphones in general are balanced terribly for Early Music. The PXC 550s are decent throwaways, I've found, but yet to find any I'd consider "good". Earbuds proper are pretty much universally trash.
- Wait, those sound actually good. Can you tell me the model?
  
  They're Skullcandy something or rather, not sure of the model. I think they were like $50, which is expensive but easily worth the cost given the money I was spending on cords alone. They last for about a day, used to be two days a few months ago but the battery life is going down I think. I charge them while I'm at work so I generally never have to worry about them being dead.
  
  Nothing Ear(open) is what I use, and it solves almost all of the problems I've ever had with earbuds, wired or not. They have a loop that goes over your ear so they'll only fall out if you try putting something like a sweatshirt on, they don't actually go in your ears so you can still hear other things and they don't get gross because they aren't actually touching your inner ear. The only big issues are that they won't go super loud, and they don't have noise cancellation.
  
  Jabra elites are pricey but I have no complaints about the quality.

Call me old (I'm not), call me a Luddite (I'm not), I don't care.
Fuck it. Roast me for complaining about this. You know I'm right.
You are both old and a Luddite, and also are correct, sorry. The tech sector has nothing new to offer, so desperate not to drown it latches onto any trend it can trying to make it the next big thing. Or like any old business, does everything to minimize cost and maximize profit. I wouldn't say this rant is pointless, it's good to vent about this stuff.
- Thanks and fair point, but I've always been like this though no matter what age. I like new technology when it's actually good. Sometimes I feel the old Luddite accusations are done to get people to accept an inferior product and to mindlessly consume whatever new thing is thrown at them.
  Like, trams and trains are older than cars, I still think trams and trains are superior, both these things were invented before I was born.
  Edit: I just want people to know that autocorrect turned "trams and trains are superior" into "Trans are superior". I almost wanted to keep it lol.
  
  I know that feeling very well. I know I'm just a twenty something year old, but the Free Software, Right to Repair, and similar crowds got to me at the age of 13. I study IT currently and I hate my college, I hate the people around me, I hate this sector and I "hate" computers. I'm not in it really for the money, nor from the love I have for computing, but from the hate I feel towards how shit everything is. When people ask me why I chose to study IT, that's what I say and I do get looks. I most likely will hate an IT job as well, I haven't even gotten started yet and I'm already tired.
  I'm already known by my friends as the one who constantly complains unprompted about how capitalism ruins computers, so keep being that Luddite, hammer into others how really bad things are and that they can be better.
  we won't win quickly, but we will
- The Luddites were cool and good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
  
  Yeah, the Luddites were objectively correct in their predictions. Just like the tankies.

I will scour the internet for old phones with headphone jacks

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=sony+wi-c100&ia=web
AU$50
25 hours battery life
i can skate in them and they only kinda fallout when i do a 360
sound quality is fine, but im old and cant hear for shit/grew up on 128kbps mp3
range is great, can leave phone in bag when i skate at the park
- Thank 🙏

Wired Headphones with a little solid but flexible bar in them (so they maintain their shape and don't tangle) would solve like, 75% of the problems wired headphones have, it would be way cheaper to manufacture too. But no one listened to me when they designed these things.
And at the risk of doxxing each other, I was also housesitting in that same kitchen (we probably know the same people who own it! Not like two different people would add such a thing to their house or anything.) And had exactly the same problem you did with it. And this is when it is brand new as well. I wonder how all this fancy "touch control" stuff is going to look in 5-10 years when the sensors are starting to die due to years of grease, water and heat. Hell, their oven "on" button already barely works and is really finicky. Just feels like they got completely scammed to get the "latest and greatest" kitchen stuff without actually planning for the future.

Yeah but have you tried wireless bone conducting headphones? It's like having a soundtrack for your life!
- Yeah but those can make some deaf people actually hear music which is fucking cool
- Ok I hear those are good. Like I said not everything new sucks, but there are some things that really fucking suck That are pushed anyway.
- They invented CODEC?
- They're nice but I'd like an option with better higher registers and an even balance than the current ones. Nice to bike with though.

Not as annoying but still, some monitors have touch sensors instead of buttons. Very easy to activate unintended function. If they are actually cheaper than regular buttons, they are not that annoying but I doubt it. I also how pc cases are ditching somewhat old functions for rgb stuff. A new case I bought doesn't have reset button, it is replaced with rgb button. What is the purpose? If user cares about rgb, they are gonna synch with rest of the case with argb cable. If user doesn't care about it, we'll the button is useless now. This case is not a budget case either. Also it doesn't have a hdd led but tbh even I can not say it is that useful

How could I roast you when I agree with everything you just said

You probably already know this but you can use IEMs (they have cheaper ones now) or regular old earphones with a DAC if you don't want to use bluetooth earpods but I bet it would be annoying to use on the couch as your USB port on the phone is probably at the bottom and use still have to pay extra for the DAC
- Or just buy a secondhand iPod, pop a new battery in it, and replace the hard drive with a micro sd adapter. Cheap, revitalizes old tech, and pushes certain nostalgia buttons for those of the right age

Might be skill issue but they always fall out for some fucking reason. I have no idea how to make them fucking stick there 🥲

My bluetooth earbuds are great, they can run 8 hours with ANC on before needing to go back in the case, the case holds another 32 hours of charge for them, and even if they do die it only takes 10 minutes to get an hour of charge on them. The sound isn't quite as good as the wired headphones I use at home, but I only use them when I'm out and about so they're competing with background noises anyway, and it isn't that much worse that I'd particularly care if I were using them somewhere quiet.
Really the only downside I've found is the ever so slight lag when watching a video, and even then I'm watching something on my phone so I'm not looking for perfect audiovisual fidelity.
Also wired earbuds dug their own grave, I only bought the wireless ones because a wired set had caught on something and the jack broke off in the audio port. I'm not buying a whole new fucking phone just so I can get wired earbuds caught on something again.

I had some wireless buds, but they just permanently died after sitting in their case in my desk drawer. My partner had the same model but she never used them and they were dead too. (yes, we tried charging them). Bought a cheap pair of wired earbuds for 10 bucks and life is great.

personally i prefer wired earbuds, but i do have a nice set of cheap bluetooth ones from a six-letter that cost me ~$25 equivalent and are perfectly fine for things like audiobooks and podcasts
battery lasts about 6 hours on a 40 minute charge and the little charging box thing is good for about 5 charges before it's dry

Touch screens are used because they're cheaper than dials n buttons. It's just another way things get shittier for the sake of profit
- They're cheaper? Huh, weird I thought they'd be more expensive.
  In that case no wonder. Gad dang capitalism at it again.
  
  Fewer moving parts. Fewer people needed to install them

Wireless earbuds fall out of your ear too easily. I had these ones years ago that were like earbuds with a band between them like headphones would have that went behind your head, and they looped over the top of your ear. Stayed on really nicely, and were still wireless without being easy to lose.
Another thing that drives me crazy is when earbuds or headphones have touch controls. I have a pair of wireless earbuds that i will try to push back in my ear when they fall out and itll pause the music, and then i wont be able to get it to play again, so i have to take out my device and play it again from there. Its horrible. Why put touch controls on something so tiny that you have to touch constantly?

I hate all the other stuff you mentioned but you can still buy wired earbuds. I will buy the wireless ones for work please don't take them from me
- Legit the catalyst for this rant was it was impossible to find a decent pair of wired earbuds without going online or driving to a shop miles away.
  My local had none.
  
  im sorry to EAR that

Bought a pair for conference calls cos office loud and work doesn't supply shit.... Literally roll of a dice if the audio or mic works or maybe one will and the other won't or both say connected but don't do anything. It also takes 2 minutes to pair.... Why. The set i have basically came damaged on arrival the right earpiece bit that detects being in the ear doesn't work properly and always thinks its in an ear. Support said to reinstall the firmware which takes like an hour to do and sets my phone on fire for some reason. Pairing on linux and can't get aptx codecs to work so it constantly goes into low power mode and cuts off audio etc.
Cable... Just works

I used to be angry I couldn't have wired earbuds for running, but I eventually kinda just gave in. Now if I'm using wired, it's for music moments. Listening to Chapo wirelessly right now as I do chores and I don't give a fuck about fidelity.

You're right. They installed a POS system at my work today, I'm not back til Wednesday and am already certain I'm gonna be not hyped on fucking touch screens and some nerds computer programs instead of chits that you can pass from one person to another and write on with pens when mods are missed and the updated verbally or whatever. There is a lot of paper waste there but I'm happy to do the entire thing verbally. Probably cause part of my job is actually needing to have all the orders for the near half hour in my head at any given time where others get to double check. I just don't want nerd shit running my life.

my old pair used to piss me off but they broke recently and i begrudgingly got new ones and I actually love them. connection is really seamless, remarkable battery life, actually good noise cancellation. audio quality is up to scratch. more comfortable and secure in my ears than the old ones too. i always hated wired earbuds and could never ever go back. the convenience factor is just too high. i think they're just very hit and miss, like i said i kinda hated my old pair but honestly delighted with my new ones.

72 comments