What's your boomer trait?
My boomer trait is that I frequently type in my password where the username is supposed to go. What's yours?
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Comments242My boomer trait is that I frequently type in my password where the username is supposed to go. What's yours?
Menus at restaurants are to be printed not via a QR code and a shitty website.
To be fair, telling people to scan QR codes with their phones is a huge phishing vector. I've seen a few places with new stickers over the first one, which is very easy to do. Is it an updated menu? Or a scam page for a session stealer?
☝️ this is it.
Related - I hate having that goddamned tablet at the table.
I’ll accept a tablet. But the first time it malfunctions, Miss Minimum Wage is standing at the table writing my order down on paper.
I'll accept a tablet, but not that condescending attitude towards restaurant workers.
You misunderstood my comment if that’s what you walked away with.
points to self, former wait staff
Ms. would have come across a little better. Boomer feminism appreciates the distinction.
Honestly those big tablets they have in some fast food places like tim hortons are quite good because they let me see every item and order easily. Of course, that wouldn't be a problem if they hadn't replaced a normal menu with those dumbass tvs that switch off of what you're trying to read every two seconds.
Or worse a PDF of the menu.
That is 500Mb+ because the 'designer' just stuffed the highest quality image in they could as a background on the whole thing
an integrated PDF into the page, not even a stand-alone blob PDF
I'd be inclined to blame the restaurant for that one. The designer would normally be making it for print, in which case higher quality is better. If the restaurant wants a digital menu, they should ask for that.
The worst is the heavily compressed photo "scans" of the paper menu.
A date night is better when both leave their phones at home. Or at least away for the date.
This sucks.
I've seen restaurant where you need to order on a smartphone. That's just ridiculous
That's just less tip for the server if I have to do their job for them.
I know a bar that does this but you can place orders for the table (your friends too and you can see their orders), call the waiter and pay the bill. I was impressed it was functional.
This is the most tech I want to see at the table:
As a patron and as a former waiter, this is both the minimum and the maximum tech I want.
I feel like this is probably common sense. The council of people over 20 have decided this months ago, and it should become law any minute now.
I FUCKING HATE QR CODE MENUS SO MUUUUCH!!!
If your wifi is bad or I just don't want to wait to load a tiny goddamn webpage, I'm gone.
It's really not hard to print a menu for a restaurant. The minimal amount of effort.
I don't mind the qr code thing if there are also paper menus available, but yeah.
Ok, while we are on this one
If you have an online menu, why does it have M.P. (Edit: that stands for Market Price) instead of having the actual price?!?!
I get you can’t reprint the physical menu every day, but if you can update the point of sale computer, you can let me know how much it costs before I order it.
Mp? Mama points or multiplayer?
There is a psychological thing where removing the currency symbol from prices will make people more likely to pay more as they dont associatie the number with price.
I genuinely think you should be able to get a job interview by walking into a business and introducing yourself with a firm handshake
writing a billion versions of my resume with matching cover letters and manually inputting all the information already on my resume into individual application forms and then getting rejected by AI screening scripts is making me wish i was dead
I’d call that boomer-adjacent. You think you should be able to, but boomers believe you actually can.
It genuinely depends on what industry you are in. Every single job I’ve had has either been calling the companies in the area and letting them know I’m moving and want to have employment lined up before I move, or by calling a company and letting them know a shift in management has occurred and I’m looking to transition to a different company. The most I’ve had to do was email a resume, and if there’s an interview it’s a lunch interview that’s super casual.
Basically any trades based industry still operates that way, because most trades are still local businesses. When you get into the national or international businesses they streamline the humanity out of it.
That's actually a viable tactic in my field. The first three jobs in my field of expertise I got by walking into the clinic/office and giving my resume to the manager/owner.
I would absolutely consider hiring somebody who walked in with a smile and a resume. Hell, I've hired somebody who did that. (He turned out to be a turd, but that's beside the point.)
However, I do a job that it seems like most lemmings wouldn't be looking for.
Whats the job?
Not sure but it involves walking up to a stranger, spontaneously making conversation with them, handing over a sheet of paper full of your personal information and they being judged for how well you did which sounds about as anti-Lemmy as it gets.
Warehouse in a commercial/industrial industry.
I really don't want to deal with two factor logins and email verification for an account that doesn't have financial transactions.
On creating accounts everywhere, maybe it's a GenX thing, but I just lie my arse off in all those extra fields. So many websites have my home address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500. I do wonder if it results in much extra junk mail for the processing faculty to deal with.
GenX here. I poison their data every chance I get.
I prefer calling people to texting them.
But I also don't like being called.
I guess those are my two wolves.
You’re a living personification of “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
these aren't mutually exclusive. you prefer communicating verbally, but don't like being intruded upon. that's fair.
now if you go and call people without warning... yeah there's some irony lol
Yeah, I'm fully hypocritical in this regard. I'll call people randomly "just to chat" with no notice haha.
Doesn't that just mean you schedule calls over text? That step is not very boomer of you
Nah, I'll call without warning "just to chat"... or because I get frustrated trying to make plans over text.
But I get anxious and/or annoyed when my own phone rings without warning, and might not even pick up haha.
In person interaction is infinitely superior to anything done online. "Meeting" people online just doesn't hit the same, even with video calls.
Online interactions register a tiny bit above screaming at the TV in socialisation scale.
I guess boomers and Gen z are more alike....
I think this one is just true, but the more life experience you have the easier it is to understand. And it surely depends on your personality and all that.
Doing things "digitally" is cool and futuristic and efficient, and it's totally fine for many types of calls and meetings, especially at work. But it's undeniable how low-bandwidth and restricted of an interface it is compared with in-person interaction.
True but also I don't need to be everyone's best friend.
I work from home, I ain't interested in being "hit" the same so just let me keep doing my own thing.
I'm always amazed at how personal everything still is in Germany. When there was a problem with a tax form, I got a call from a guy at the tax office who gave me his name and number so I was able to call him back with any other problems. When I had to get insurance for my mother in law's car, I got a call from my MIL's insurance to discuss a discount. Referred to surgeon? Doctor called surgeon, made an appointment for later that day and every day for the rest of the week.
I hate cloud based services. I don't want to be reliant on and send my data to someone else's computer. Give me local control and local data storage or get off my grass!
How is that a boomer trait?
The only one who wants you to use the cloud is the man who owns the fucking cloud.
I've actually begun DIYing a syncthing based mesh of my devices plus a NAS I'll make from an old ThinkPad because honestly, fuck those cloud services.
I used to love the cloud, I saw it as really convenient, but now I just see it as a pretty ok way to back up all my old school work, plus OneDrive screaming at me to sign in, then automatically signing me in without asking...
Sure the DIY NAS I'm making is just an old ThinkPad 11e school laptop's board and battery, and some USB to m.2 dongles, but it'll be pretty damn good for a net cost of probably 100 bucks total
Our security group says data can reside on a CLOUDACT-affected resource, and yet remain sovereign.
I hate these deluded wannabes.
I avoid smart home type shit
Okay we need to talk about this because in my opinion this hasnt become a boomer opinion that, as proven over and over again, is just a better and smarter decision. Most of things that are "smart" dont need to be. Why does a fridge, toaster, TV, matress or oven need to be connected to the internet??! For what?!
I've recently seen an add stating that, big brand washing machine have WiFi, we have quality and low pricesbut indeed, it's getting crazy, and what happens when you change ISP?
I do not know what happens during an ISP change, but i do know that during the recent amazon server outage, these smart appliances stopped working. There was a case where someone with a smart matress (yeah apperently that exists), couldnt sleep because the matress was launched into a weird W shape position and heated itself up.
Well that's a new nightmare fuel for me. Glitchy mattresses.
I feel like I'm pretty tech-savvy... which is why I don't want software in anything where plain old physics will do the job. Software breaks.
I see, we understand each other
As a software engineer, my variation on this is
As an example, a smart light switch should be a light switch that everyone is familiar with and works as they expect to turn on and off the light. in addition I might make it accessible on my local network to voice assistant, turn it on or off by schedule or when I arrive at home ir enter the room
My point is that’s not a necessary part of smart devices. That’s user-hostile implementation by the vendor. They have to go through more effort seeding _more money_in order to make them this bad.
Hopefully with the (slow) rollout of the new Matter/Thread standards and smart devices becoming mainstream, more manufacturers will have to add value with their smart functionality instead of looking at them as additional revenue streams or customer lock-in
I disagree. Most of them are shit because they’re designed to serve the manufacturer, provide additional profit streams.
However there’s no reason they couldn’t provide useful functionality to the customer.
The most frustrating part is makers of smart appliances can save money by making them cheaper. Instead of a WiFi chip and vendor portal, just embed a dirt cheap Thread radio that simply exposes whatever is useful and let the customer take it from there, or not. Most smart appliances stuff people would find useful is monitoring and alerting, locally
So they would be useful to you if they were completely different?
I’m trying to make the point that smart devices aren’t inherently bad and can even be a good thing. However currently it’s just another way to exploit the customer. Maybe we’ll see more ethical implementation as these become mainstream. Maybe we’ll even see competition based on who implements smart devices ethically.
Oh man I'd love that level of optimism.
There are different types of "smart" though.
Appliances with required accounts and connections, yeah it's all a corporate enshittification surveillance garbage.
But a smart light bulb that connects over Zigbee to a locally hosted setup so that I can easily dim the lights or set them on a timer or whatever I feel like doing? It's a convenience that nobody needs, but at least it isn't as severely compromised as the "ecosystem" wannabes.
Mattresses?! Yo, they need to stop lol
There's at least one XKCD about this...
As someone who is all-in on smart home kit, I tend to agree. Everyone who visits my home loves how it all works, but I have a strict rule that nothing is connected to the Internet: it's either a local protocol (ZigBee, Matter) or connected to a local-only VLAN and is orchestrated by Home Assistant. It's increasingly difficult to recommend products to people starting out that don't involve some vague cloud service that can't be relied on, and most people don't want to go from zero to Home Assistant.
I refuse to use overly smart devices. Yes, I have a few zigbee light switches and thermostats that are controlled by a local HomeAssistant installation but why would I want to by my fridge, dishwasher and toothbrush to be connected to the internet?
"turns out smart toilet camera is not end to end encrypted after all."
That's not a boomer thing. That's just common sense.
Exactly that. Tech enthusiests will have smart everything, their fridge will tell them when the milk goes bad. Tech workers know where the IoT data goes, if they have smart things, they built them themselves... Except the printer, but there is a loaded gun kept next to it, just incase it makes a noise they dont recognize.
Yea, I don't understand why you need/ want an app for your toothbrush.
I prefer buying stuff in stores rather than online. I need to see it physically before you scam me.
Edit: my back hurts
I don't like "smart" features, I hate being forced to create accounts for everything, I want my data to only be local, I loathe smileys, I'd much rather talk to you face to face, I don't know wtf is an app and why yours is just a wrapper to your webpage, pure html pages with terrible colour choices are fucking class, I say "hacker" to mean "hacker" and not "cracker", I still don't understand the success of tablets, and you look like a dick with your mini doomscroll machine on your wrist.
EDIT: fixing rage induced typos
Agree with everything here, plus I miss cars coming in a wide variety of colors instead of just inoffensive earthy and silver tones.
I miss cars that don't have iPads attached to the console.
It it too much to ask for someone to make an electric vehicle that's only as "smart" as it needs to be?
I understand the need for a computer to control the motor/charging/etc. What I don't understand is why my car needs to phone home or install random software updates.
Until someone makes one of those, I'm afraid that when I have to drive it'll be an older car (as terrible as that is for the environment 🙃) because I don't want something I need to be potentially broken by a bad software update or an aws outage.
I don't use tiktok, instagram, and I deleted facebook, it's all targeted advertising slop. My "friends" on facebook didn't interact with me, they interacted with my posts. I made a post stating I was going to delete facebook on X date, and if anyone wanted my contact information they should reach out before then. 1 person reached out to keep in touch. I refuse to download apps on my phone. I already have an internet browser on the phone; one app to rule them all. Why do I need a fucking app for what I can do on your webpage? I switched to linux because both apple and windows are in a race to see who can be the shittiest walled garden that invades your privacy and steals your data, so yeah, I'm still very much, don't trust strangers on the internet, including corporations. No I will not give you my information to get a discount or bullshit rewards points. I'll pay full price, my data is worth way more than your paltry discounts.
I'm with you.
Same. I will have no phone before I upload my face to verify access to a website, or before I delete my VPN. I will download Wikipedia and go live offline in a hut, idgaf.
The kids' new slang is fucking stupid. My son last night was excited about his skills in the game he was playing and told me he was " cracked " ... cracked?
Man, like, I know we used " bad " to mean good, but come on. Cracked? Cracked is a crazy person. Cracked is how we pirated computer games. Cracked is your engine block after you poured cold water in an overheated car.
This is even stupider than " crashing out " meaning you threw a temper tantrum instead of falling asleep after an up all night acid trip.
I fucking hate it.
Bro you're cooked.
So is crack
Cooked at least makes sense. I can dig that one.
SYBAU
Actually I just remembered that, even some 20 years ago (possibly more) in France, we used to describe OP characters in videogames as "craqués", which could mean "broken" or "cracked", so I was not weirded out by this one, as the meaning is similar enough.
I wonder how "cracked" came to be and whether this is one of the only contemporary instance where some French slang may have influenced the English one somehow? Probably just a coincidence.
It's always some sht black ppl say, that some white middle school aged kid picks up and starts spamming, than the other kids spam it and change the meaining to reflect whatever they want, cracked means fucked
Video game context, it means you're doing hella well, you're tweaking, just seemingly on one with how well you are doing. So like crazy is accurate, but crazy good more like, insanely good to the point you seem unwelll. Idk it's hard to describe, but try hard basically became a compliment and they call ppl cracked now to represent that.
Yeah it's been around for a while. I think op just isn't a gamer.
But he was using cracked to describe how good he was. Cracking would make sense, maybe even I'm the crack or some such, but I'm cracked just doesn't hit with me.
So you could say he was all he was cracked up to be
That is what I meant. OP characters as in "overpowered" characters. We usually were forbidding some characters in 2d fighting games when playing each other because they were too good (craqués). I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm saying it's a weird coincidence that makes it so it never seemed off to me.
Back in my day when we were leet and pwned noobs, it was gg.
Eh, slang was always dumb and obscure. That's the point, isn't it?
Yes, but really no. IDK. I'm not claiming to be right, just giving my opinions.
Edit: I was his age in the 80s.
The obvious solution is to coopt their language to make them hate it.
I have adopted the ones I like, but still just can't help being irked by others. Cracked meaning being good at something just sent me. Yeet, cooked, riz are fine. They make sense. I made him hate gyat with his mother's help already. It's hard to use the ones I hate though.
Lemme axe you why you rizzed bruh or you cooked i cant even thirsty
It was giving smoothbrain so I yote him out the room. Frgr ong. I think I gave myself a headache.
Yeeted
Yote
One day as I was leaving for work, my penultimate daughter said "mom, that fit shreds" and I was like, excuse me, WHAT did you call me?
"Your clothes are great!"
My outfit, it shreds. Apparently.
I don't hate it but don't remember being very slangy as a teenager.
Shreds is what Kerry King does on the guitar.
But "shreds" literally means clothes.
I swear gen-z just doesn't know what certain things mean so they just make up a meaning on the fly.
It's like they speak AI hallucination.
Slang is just new vocabulary, language evolves and what's good stays. It's common in video game slang to say some mechanic or a playable character is "broken" so saying cracked instead is a playful way to use a synonym. I say let him cook.
Crack is also used in weird ways, some of which could crack you or crack you up.
I hate that every facet of human existence is being monetized.
You must have a very left-leaning sample of boomers.
I hate how tech is in everything now. Everything is IOT. Everything can expire because of software abandonment.
You know how you have those 70 year old fridges that still work? I'm sure that new Samsung IOT one will have planned obsolescence after 20 years tops.
You know how we have classic cars? Thing of the past. Locked firmware and phone home capabilities will brick new cars for similar reasons when they become old.
20 years sounds incredibly optimistic for any Samsung appliance.
Heh, you’re off by an order of 10.
Caring about tech issues seems more like a gen X/Millennial thing to me. Most of gen Z hasn't figured out the problem yet; most older people just see a magic box. Obviously there's exceptions at both ends.
Edit: And gen Alpha might be old people all over again in a different way. We'll see.
20 years is ambitious lol
You're probably right 😅
My car’s radio busted last year. Instead of replacing it with a modern touchscreen, or paying $3000 for a manufacturer replacement, I’ve simply gone without it. Thing is, the radio includes the back-up camera screen. It also contains the controls to the car’s clock. So half the year the time is off by an hour, and I’ve gotten used to backing up my car “the old fashioned way.”
Thankfully, none of these are issues I can’t tolerate. But it does make me wonder what would’ve happened if I’d had a newer car. If so many functions can rely on a radio, how many more functions might somebody get screwed out of if this same issue were to happen in a newer vehicle?
I just put in a nice android auto one into my 25 year old vehicle. And added a backup camera 😂. My vehicle didn't have the option back in the day. Did that for about 500$
...i expect institutions to protect me...i call my representative and senators and get platitudes...i keep calling...
I don’t know why I bother doing this, it just gets me signed up to their idiotic mailing list. Hooray democracy
I own a house
Me too! Well, technically, the bank does own vastly more of my house than I do...
I wonder how many people make this distinction. Home ownership should mean without a mortgage. Otherwise you're renting from a bank instead of a regular landlord
I think 99% of tattoos look like shit.
We found the Facebook page of a local tattoo shop a few years back.
Jesus Christ, that person should not have been allowed near a biro, let alone a tattoo gun. Every single one looked like it had been done on himself, with his left hand, in prison.
Was his left hand already in prison for ugly drawing? SCNR
You need to up those numbers, son.
Not all people with tattoos are trashy, but all trashy people have tattoos.
Nigel Farage. Donald Trump. JD Vance. Liz Truss. Boris Johnson.
Oh, wait, did you mean "trashy" to insinuate "poor"? Because also, no.
Those people are all human garbage, but not what I would consider “trashy”. Trashy isn’t just poor, either. As far as I and many others understand it, trashy is a middle and lower class look/attitude which is one of those “you know it when you see it” things. Sounds like I touched a nerve?
Every time you do this change your password immediately. This is shockingly easy to find in logs and match up to the users. You'd be surprised how often application logs are damn near wide open in a log repo to entire IT departments. Just trying to look out for you OP.
And get a password manager. They solve the problem of both password reuse and typing it in the wrong field.
Being annoyed by my friends who can't put their phones down when I'm trying to talk to them because they are doomscrolling on TikTok. Oh and disliking the brainrot that is on TikTok and Instagram. Just hating TikTok.
remember when social media was just stupid shit your friends were doing? and there were no influencers?
I despise the idea of an influencer. I hate the idea. I hate the word. I really do not like people that describe themselves this way. These people are the problem.
A lot of us took those years for granted. Now we're bombarded with people trying to sell us stuff. I'm sick of hearing "this video is sponsored by..." on majority of Youtube videos now and people using the cringy "sell-out" voice over-- the "come with me to blah blah blah".
I miss physical buttons.
I often reference my younger years in the late 1900s about how It was this or that. "Back in my day in the late 1900s" kinda thing
I like "turn of the century".
Last century...
Last millennium....
I've never used Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok. I'm trying to get away from Facebook currently. I've successfully dumped Twitter, which I hardly used anyway. I only use YouTube because I can still block all ads, but if they ever force ads into my videos, I'll drop it in an instant.
I've never cared for social media except as a way to stay in touch with friends and family, and maybe a way to meet new friends. But modern social media is just garbage content pumped into your feed constantly for clicks and reacts.
The only reason I haven't let go of Facebook is because almost everyone I know is still there. If I dump it, I lose contact with 90% of my social group. I don't really use Facebook anymore though, except to contact people.
EDIT: On a related note, I don't believe children should have electronic devices. Maybe around 10 years old, they should be allowed to carry a locked down phone or something, so their parents can reach them, but they can't browse the Internet or send photos to people, etc.
It was around 2010 or so when I first saw a friend hand their iPad to their 1-yr old to keep them distracted. That was a $600 device! Which was a lot of money for a personal electronic device back then.
As an IT professional who had to fix electronic devices all the time, I mentioned to my friend that a child probably shouldn't have unsupervised access to an iPad, and they told me that's why it has a thick padded case; a lesson they learned when their first iPad got cracked by the child. So the baby broke a $600 iPad and they bought another and handed it back to the kid?! Sheesh...
I think that's less a boomer opinion and more of a tinfoil hat lemmy user opinion.
(And I don't mean that as an insult - these days I wear my tinfoil hat proudly. These are dark times!)
Games used to be finished before they were released...bugs me.
Also physical media is hugely important to keep corporations from slurping up everything and charging subscriptions.
I can't keep up with all the social justice stuff so I just quit caring about most of it.
I think Nick Mullen vocalized it best when people started throwing the Ukranian flag in their usernames and he was miffed that he had to remember another type of "gay" again.
Liberals are out here doing victory laps about pronouns in bios while their actual rights are getting systematically stripped away.
Ugaynian
can't agree enough. most of the focus is on the performative bullshit, not enough on actual policy that might result in a positive goal.
i remember how many ukraine flag people were 'against giving ukraine more weapons because war is bad and people will die'...
same with the trans stuff the past few years. most of the people who freaked out about pronouns are the same types who refuse to vote because 'voting is pointless' or voting is 'supporting the system'. also if you actaully wanted to talk about trans issues... you were a bigot. talking about it makes you a bigot.
The word you are looking for is virtue signaling. There is a limited amount of good you can do.
The vast vast majority of those people aren't doing shit. It's like when they wanted us to bang pots n pans outside for nurses. It meant nothing.
Yep. I can't figure out if I think this way cos I'm 48, jaded and somehow not as progressive as I used to be, or if being up to speed with the latest sub-genres of an apparently vast sexual and gender spectrum is really just a waste of time. I don't feel any further right wing, and I hope I'll always subscribe to a 'live and let live' mindset, but who knows.
I value mechanical stuff and in person interactions
I'm grumpy as fuck
I get annoyed when the price tags are too small to read
I hear you and what you say sounds reasonable but I haven't actually met any younger people in real life that do that shit. The kids seem to be fighting mighty hard to me.
Now, closely related but I think different (correct me if I misunderstood you) I do know some real-life accelerationists who felt that not voting would "bring down the system faster so it can be replaced by something better" which is horribly, laughably naive.
I have on a regular basis. So much so I quit a lot of stuff to avoid their endless insane stupidity and their raw emotional takes that are totally delusional.
Conservative-coding of things that are actually just healthy personality balance is a real thing. Bravery, duty and basic acceptance we're mortals in an ugly world also come to mind.
There's enough history written down to say for sure it's going to self correct. Hopefully not in the "everyone like that went to a camp, but some of their ideas found a new audience a century later" way.
Guns are a great example under "accepting we're mortals in an ugly world", actually. Nobody is seriously claiming they're going away, but the way they're talked about by the left, you would think undoing a technology is on the table.
I mean, you can still want more gun control, and most other nations have gone that way, but the only people mentioning they'll still be around in some way tend to be on the right - because that's ugly.
Fun fact, it was leaking into Canada for a while. Unnecessary maple leafs meant you probably didn't like vaccines or Trudeau. Then you guys (well, Trump; we know there's another party) talked about annexing us and made patriotism neutral again. Thanks?
That's an interesting way of looking at it, although I'm not convinced it wasn't just stupidity on their part. The right also have hangups that will self-correct, in their own way.
That's kind of what I was going to say about tribalism as a force, too. Nobody turns their noses up at an Irish name today, and nobody will be impressed by lifted pickups and ill-informed scriptural references in the future. The idea of elected representatives has been around for centuries, though.
Totally agree. I hung a flag for the same reason, why should the right get to "own" the symbol of America. I ended up taking it down though since my wife thought it would give people the wrong impression of us..
We have a pride flag & an American flag. And sometimes a Jolly Roger. I agree, you cannot let the conservatives define themselves as the real Americans. I am here, I'm from here, wanting a better America is patriotic.
Good point. I think I need to pair it with something else to make clear what it means to me.
nah this is exactly why i gave up a lot of social stuff. too many bubble-brain idiots who become violent the second they hear an opinion or an idea that they mildly disagree with. it's not just young people either.
i never dealt with such craziness 10+ years ago, but it started exploding with social media growth and is rampant now.
I'm often slow to adopt new tech. Unless that tech actually demonstrates a benefit to me, I don't really want to deal with.
A lot of this is due to cynicism regarding things like privacy/security, planned obsolescence, and enshittification. I also don't want to adopt something that is then discontinued ("unplanned" obsolescence?), so I often wait until something becomes well-established.
I’m a software engineer that is also deeply uninterested in chasing shiny new things. I think another factor is that tech that I did care about has somewhat stalled out.
I’ve had iPhones since a I think the iPhone 4. I’m on the iPhone 11 which released back in 2019, I only really upgraded because my iPhone 8s battery was crapping out.
There’s just nothing exciting about these newer devices, same form factor, same OS, same basic functionality. And in a similar fashion, anything new is stuff I don’t really give a shit about. Oh it can do some kind of ai thing I don’t want, no thanks.
I’ve tried to see it as a positive. I have lots of stuff that I’ve filled my life up with, things that are meaningful to me. I think that’s what took up the space I used to fill with reading about and getting excited about this new gadget or that one. Now I’m excited to go see my niece’s Christmas recital or bake cookies with my wife to take to a friends of the library event.
Doesn’t hurt that every company seems to be in a non stop contest to see how little they can give the consumer for the maximum price while installing as much revenue generating spyware as possible.
I'm also a software engineer who doesn't care about most new tech. I strongly believe that human made objects and software can both reach a state of doneness. For example, books are a technology that's "done". Both physical and digital books do a great job at delivering written content, so there's no need to keep buying the same damn thing every couple years. Phones are similar, yet the new ones just get shittier (no removable battery, no headphone jack). Kind of reminds me of how Microsoft keeps trying to solve the "problem" of programmers being needed to create programs. Powerapps being one of the latest examples.
Don't leave it too long. My mother law has only just started online banking and it's been an absolute nightmare.
I buy music. Drm free. I don't want to rent it from Spotify. It's Bandcamp Friday today btw, where the people making the music get a bigger cut.
Owning a house
I'm constantly ragged on for still calling remote controls "the clicker".
The reason they were called that is becaus a lot of early models use ultrasonic rather than infrared or radio so they made a loud clicking noise. My grandparents and aunts were familiar with those so they still called all remotes the clicker.
The thing is, growing up we had a Bang & Olufsen TV remote that had clicky buttons - really, very satisfyingly clicky - even though it used RF, but I just assumed all remotes were like that and that's why they were called clickers.
I call people on Teams rather than ask if they are available.
You monster.
And I'm not even sorry.
I don't mind getting called, but I miss having wired desk telephones.
I hate being always "reachable". I can't even take a whiz in peace.
I buy music instead of paying for a streaming service like Spotify
i just use soulseek for my music needs, download it all to 1-2T mSD on my phone tmk most musicians don't really get much from music-sales anyway, they really only make $ from ticket sales and merch from their websites
Your nose ring makes you look like a bull.
I don't see them as much anymore, but ear gauges. Having a fucking poker chip installed in your ear lobe is certainly a choice.
Yeah, I'm still not used to those either.
Your comment makes you sound like a donkey.
Good. That's the whole point of the thread
Fair enough
Being older that some people, which is apparently what 30% of people call a "boomer"
I had kids a bit older, so I guess some of my parenting is old school. I like to think I'm more open with feelings than my dad, and my children mean everything to me. However, I cannot abide other parents who let their kids dominate and interrupt adult conversations. Sometimes it's necessary, like if an infant has hurt themselves or some thing, but otherwise a child should not interrupt an adult who's talking and, if they do, the parent should tell them to hold on a minute while the adults talk.
I use punctuation for texts and IMs and I start my emails with "Hi Steve," and end with "Best regards,".
People don't write emails like that anymore???
I'm now running into a lot of people, usually in they're 20s early 30s, that write them like it's an IM chat with proper wording and punctuation.
For the umpteenth time, my name's not Steve! /s
Which one, lol.
I despise videos in place of text/pic how-to.
I’m starting to run out of fucks to give when it comes to dealing with tech. Doesn’t matter what it is. Overcomplicated car infotainment. Burying features in deep OS menus. Shitty website design that hides info. Phone trees. “AI assistants” in pretty much everything. Etc.
I think most modern popular music absolutely sucks. No art, no ability to sing, all formulaic, a lyrical desert, and autotuned to shit.
It’s gotta be a mental illness, this constant need for public commentary via uploading everything you do to be viewed by others. Particularly things like “this is me crying because I got yelled at” kind of stuff. Vapid. Shallow. Go touch some grass and don’t fucking record it.
Yeah. I’m missing the more disconnected life we used to have.
(No, I’m not going to say it was all better back in the day. It wasn’t. Just our problems weren’t compounded by things like social media)
I agree on the video vs text/image how-to's! The videos are just so tedious and rarely add anything of value.
My joints sound like stepping on a box of Ritz crackers. Does that count?
Yeah, text-speak made sense years ago when the length of text messages was limited and you had to do that to get around it. Nowadays it just makes you look lazy and unintelligent.
It reminds me of that (fake, I know) experiment with the apes that got sprayed with water cannons if they did the wrong thing. They're doing something without understanding why they're doing it, and if they did know why they were doing it and they wouldn't bother.
U ok?
Cooking only from scratch no factory products. Meat also only from the butcher and not supermarket. I know where the butcher gets his meat from. And wanting to learn how to do lots of things myself to be self reliant, less wastefull, enviorment friendly and its mostly cheaper. Dont need no smart toaster!
I've gone away from plastics and only use natural materials, perferable renewable. If something is damaged i can just repair it. Creating less waste, saving money, and the objects have a personal touch and story to it over time.
Leather instead of artificial leather And yes i am building my PC case out of wood and glass if i need a new one
Nothing boomer about that. Boomers buy disposable razor cartridges and throw them away in extra thick trash bags. One use disposable artificially flavored microwavable TV dinner is their objective reality.
Sometimes I look old just by the way that I touch the screen of my phone. Wtf.
I have twice now tried to pinch to zoom a book or something I was reading. Is that the opposite of boomer? Or boomery because it's so stupid?
Not alone.
Yeah, me too. I'm doing the smartphone equivalent of typing with two fingers.
I think you should treat others with respect
except like always treat them how you'd like to be treated, not just when it's convenient for you. which seems to be the boomer way. example: boomers loooove bright ass LED headlights when they're driving behind them, but complain when they're blinded by the exact same car facing them.
so the solution is don't use those fucking headlights, right? but all these motherfuckers out here are just buying that shit up and don't see a problem with it. I nearly hit somebody last week because they were crossing 100 m before the intersection in a spot that pedestrians typically do not cross and I couldn't see shit because of the oncoming car right behind them.
Downvoted by big LED but you speak the truth.
About every 20 minutes or so, I say "That's how they get ya", while looking up something on my 5-years-out-of-date "smart"phone that can't download any new apps.
Since this is Lemmy, I'm required to ask if you've considered a custom ROM.
Two spaces go after a period
I’m more likely to use my computer than my phone unless it’s directly phone-related. And if I can send a text from my computer? Hell yeah
I’m more likely to use an emoticon than an emoji
Two spaces DO go after a period. Is that something old? Just seems proper formatting for readability.
For readability on a screen, I find one space adequate. In print, I typically prefer two spaces, unless it creates visually distracting channels that run down the page. Sort of how serif fonts look better in print, it's a question of comfort.
I'm an editor. The first thing I do is a search and replace for those two dumb spaces.
Replace with what?
I started using brackets instead of parentheses when chat programs auto-replaced them with emojis.
Dear god there doesn't have to be an app for everything.
Make a website and if you really want an app-like experience, make a damn PWA. No, I don't want to download your terribly optimized, huge app to get a receipt...
I'm sorry, but to get my UK ETA for traveling for work I had to download an app that I will literally use 1 time in 2 years because it is valid for 2 years. It could easily be done with a PWA.
It is not more secure, it is less secure for the end user as apps have been caught many many more times stealing data and being malware compared to a web page where you generally have to download malware.
AI will wreck your eyes if you sit too close to it.
The one time I got called a boomer online was because I didn’t understand why artists have “eras” now instead of just albums. I think at the time an artist removed all posts from their socials and the comments are “new era coming soon?” And I asked if that just means they’re dropping a new album
isn't that because of taylor swift?
No idea. But it wasn’t Taylor Swift who I commented on. It was years ago now and I don’t remember who, but it was before the eras tour. I’m not sure when Taylor started using “eras” though
I eat at like 5:30 to get dinner done and beat the crowds if I'm eating out.
All of them. Lol. Things were definitely better 20 years ago than they were now. Kids these days, etc etc.
I also really want to separate from all of technology!!!
I'm racist
I guess I'm realizing some of them aren't so bad (Congolese and Canadians) but I don't think I'll ever learn to like someone from France.
I would say being terrible at using smartphones, but most boomers are probably better at it than me. I'm much better with desktop computers.
Stop recording everything in your life.
i don't record anything. people tell me i'm a selfish asshole or i'm a liar if i don't have vids or pics of stuff that i did.
I cannot play with a controller. My fingers fall on any surface at the exact distance between W, A and D on the keyboard.
I snore
I try tapping when I encounter an unfamiliar mobile app interface. I've not been trained to vertically scroll tiktok style when something looks like a complete page.
Being able to see a different opinion without going completely insane.
that's not a boomer thing. it's a having a developed brain thing.
Having no clue why everyone is so upset all the time and agonizing about how unfair and cruel the world is.
US Millennial here. I get why we’re upset all the time. All my life I’ve seen some sort of progression that has felt like it was going positive even if it was slow as fuuuuuck. However, in the last 11-12 months I’ve seen all of that raped by a bunch of narcissistic, racist, fuckwads who are only looking for power grabs.
I’ve always known the world is cruel and unfair. So I’ve expected it, but I didn’t expect how fast everything here at home would deteriorate. Especially coming from a family where my Grandpa served in the American army in WW2 and married a German survivor and now my parents are all up in Fox News, OAN, and Facebook propaganda.
that's what politics has always been. it's just more transparent now. it's not the act that upsets you, it's the obviousness of it all rather than it being done quietly. it's the quiet part being spoken outloud
Like a few people.commented in this post, I don't use social media
I think electric cars are terrible
I dig electric propulsion.
I don't want a dashboard full of computer screens, bullshit half-baked features that won't ever work right, and controls that are weird for the sake of being weird. Give me a vehicle with the exact same UI as my 2005 Buick Century but with batteries and motors instead of gas tank and engine.
The unpopular opinions are always in the comments.
Are you sure you don't hate modern cars?
They are all connected requiring $2000 to change brakes these days, monthly subscriptions, and in general quite shite.
I'm curious to know the reasoning behind this opinion if you will talk about it.
You don't actually own the car you bought, it's impossible to repair via third party
I think EVs only exist to bail out the failing car industry
I also think fire risks are underestimated and unlike a normal car fire you can't just put it out with an extinguisher. I live in BC and one day there's going to be an EV fire on a ferry and the entire narrative is going to change
I also think they are just plain boring. I hate modern cars entirely but EVs have such a numbed down driving experience that it's just depressing. In the future I'll probably just stop driving cars entirely. I live in a pretty bikeable area but the only reason I drive is because I simply enjoy driving my sports car over a bike
I think this is a valid point, but it isn't just a thing in the electric car industry. Gas engine cars are doing this shit too. My girlfriend's new chevy malibu has an app that lets you start the car remotely from your phone, but you have to pay a subscription to use the feature. The enshitification is everywhere.
You're right, lithium battery fires are more difficult to extinguish.
She should sell that car, and buy the best possible older lexus with the funds haha. That malibu won't be on the road in 5 years
It's less than 6 months old and she's already had two major electrical problems with it, which were thankfully covered under warranty. The malibu she had before this one was amazing though.
your first two points apply to a lot of new vehicles nowadays, I think
I also hate pretty much everything about modern cars
Dad ran an auto repair shop for 40 years and his dad before him and I've had the pleasure of watching it all unfold. My dad refused to allow me to inherit the shop and told me to pursue a different career for my entire life
Maybe it's possible to make EVs that can be repaired, but just with the state of humanity I don't think this is ever going to happen
Because good luck fixing it when it breaks
I still avoid online dating no matter what. Also, I don't take dick picks. Not that I have any dms that would solicit that anyway, but I also just don't do that. There was a major breach for one of the popular dating platforms recently and similar to that, some dude in OZ land setup an evil twin WiFi at airport and managed to grab a bunch of naked photos from people's online activity. Just don't do it guys. It's not worth it. Just go somewhere ffs and bang someone.
Don't lower AC below 68 during the Summer. Don't crank the heat past 76 in the winter. We got a drafty house but it doesn't need to be a summer atmosphere when it's 20 degrees outside.
Also don't run the water continuously while doing the dishes. That one was beat into me as a kid. Watching my brother and his baby momma leave the water running when they're cleaning baby bottles turns me redder than a boiling lobster. Doesn't help that Mom got us all together and said the water bill went up almost 100 since the baby was born. Took everything in my body to not point at those two like a dog snitching on his friend.
we only ever put the heat above 64 if we had comnpany and that was to 68.
never had central AC my entire life.
I thought dinasours were killed by a volcano instead of meteor for years.