The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by John F

Doing a search on Amazon under digital music, and the first 2 items are tee shirts.

A similar experience can be had searching for "nofiction" books at Kobo

[ownedbycats]

While updating a program, misclicked and a lot of file associations got reset. Now I have to fix them all. Agh.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

While updating a program, misclicked and a lot of file associations got reset. Now I have to fix them all. Agh.

OH GOD you have my deepest sympathies. Serious bidness.

(I also have this amazing superpower where I manage to click and dump huge sections of dropboxes. I mean, hundreds of thousands of files. That's fun too.)

Hitch

[Renate]

After browbeating us into using Libby, I have put my three library cards on there.
Yes, there is the convenience of everything being in one place.
But the cards are differentiated by tiny little colored icons with no text?
Why can't we use 2-4 letter acronyms?

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Excessively bright status LEDs on gadgets, especially blue.

I strongly agree. It is irritating when you have the device (like a television) in a room that is supposed to be dark when it is turned off. There should be an option to at least have be on or off when the device is off.

[neil_swann80]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I strongly agree. It is irritating when you have the device (like a television) in a room that is supposed to be dark when it is turned off. There should be an option to at least have be on or off when the device is off.

Yep. Trying to watch telly with a sniper's laser pointer aimed at you...

FYI... you can purchase stickers called "LightDims" to cover them.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Excessively bright status LEDs on gadgets, especially blue.

Yeah, it has become popular to show off blue LEDs by having them eye-scorching.

It's actually not too difficult to take those things apart and change a resistor and/or change the LED to another color.

My $25 car stereo has had the lights wacked down to a fraction.
My $25 speaker amplifier for the PC was changed to a mellow yellow.
Generally, the crappier the device, the brighter it is.

[Martinoptic]

Originally Posted by neil_swann80

Yep. Trying to watch telly with a sniper's laser pointer aimed at you...

FYI... you can purchase stickers called "LightDims" to cover them.

Yep. They’re very good.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by neil_swann80

Yep. Trying to watch telly with a sniper's laser pointer aimed at you...

FYI... you can purchase stickers called "LightDims" to cover them.

Another option is duck tape (quack quack).

[ownedbycats]

Playing the Sims leads to conversations that are slightly disturbing and/or alarming out of context.



Yes, that's me. Yes, it took me nearly 15 minutes with the game on pause to realize that my Sim should just call the fire department and have them come put out the giant tree fire in front of their apartment. I'm a bit rusty.

To be fair, I'm using mods that cause fire to spread much more rapidly.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Excessively bright status LEDs on gadgets, especially blue.

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I strongly agree. It is irritating when you have the device (like a television) in a room that is supposed to be dark when it is turned off. There should be an option to at least have be on or off when the device is off.

My television has a 25mm X 8mm red and white badge. Luckily, it can be configured to only light briefly upon power on and to be lit during the 2 minute degradation compensation cycle after power off.

Originally Posted by neil_swann80

Yep. Trying to watch telly with a sniper's laser pointer aimed at you...

FYI... you can purchase stickers called "LightDims" to cover them.

I've used a velcro dot in a pinch, but LightDims might be better. Some of the 1 star reviews are a bit concerning.

Originally Posted by Renate

Yeah, it has become popular to show off blue LEDs by having them eye-scorching.

Generally, the crappier the device, the brighter it is.

Too true.

Originally Posted by Martinoptic

Yep. They’re very good.

I'll give them a try then.

[ownedbycats]

Due to Microsoft changing... something, I had to remove and re-add both of my Outlook.com accounts to Thunderbird to stop getting multiple 'login failed' errors whenever trying to do anything.

It killed all of my filters.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Due to Microsoft changing... something, I had to remove and re-add both of my Outlook.com accounts to Thunderbird to stop getting multiple 'login failed' errors whenever trying to do anything.

It killed all of my filters.

I ran into the same thing but switching to using an app password with Thunderbird fixed the issue. I have the feeling this was due to one of recent security updates requiring 2FA.

[ownedbycats]

I had to switch to OAuth2. For some reason, switching them just failed, I had to remove and re-add them entirely to get the login dialog to come up.

[cc_in_oh]

I have several outlook accounts. Most days Tbird works fine, then I'll have a day where I constantly have to re-enter passwords in the outlook popup. I tried using a primary password but didn't seem to make any difference.