Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Bassman59]

I realised I'm out of Valium pills so to get to sleep I put on that new ABBA record.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

A new ABBA record was not on my "Things we'll get in 2021" bingo card.

You know you're old when Afternoon Delight refers to a nap.

You know you're old when you know that "Afternoon Delight" was by the Starland Vocal Band, not ABBA.

[mansaxel]

A new ABBA record was not on my "Things we'll get in 2021" bingo card.

There has been some murmurings around the business that they'd met in a studio to do <something>, but the focus was that they'd been quoted saying "it felt better than we thought it would", not any firm plans to record. Björn and Benny have been quite busy all along, with various projects like the Mamma Mia franchise, Kristina från Duvemåla musical, et c.

[brabus]

- Schematics drawn in MS Paint. In 2021.
- "it's" instead of "its". Auto-correct and lazy posters basically eradicated "its" from the internet.
- Same goes for lose/loose.

[Ranayna]

That homophone thing often gets me as well. While i am not claiming i don't make mistakes when writing, these often stand out extremely.

For example break and brake. Or the infamous there, their and they're.

[SilverSolder]

Then, than

[DrG]

I realised I'm out of Valium pills so to get to sleep I put on that new ABBA record.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

A new ABBA record was not on my "Things we'll get in 2021" bingo card.

You know you're old when Afternoon Delight refers to a nap.

You know you're old when you know that "Afternoon Delight" was by the Starland Vocal Band, not ABBA.

Oh yes, you are quite right - my mistake. All I can say in my defense is that I disliked them both.

[Cubdriver]

That homophone thing often gets me as well. While i am not claiming i don't make mistakes when writing, these often stand out extremely.

For example break and brake. Or the infamous there, their and they're.

And of course you’ll get some people talking about brakes who’ll use BOTH, sometimes in the same sentence.  At least pick one and be consistent!

-Pat

[Ed.Kloonk]

That homophone thing often gets me as well. While i am not claiming i don't make mistakes when writing, these often stand out extremely.

For example break and brake. Or the infamous there, their and they're.

And of course you’ll get some people talking about brakes who’ll use BOTH, sometimes in the same sentence.  At least pick one and be consistent!

-Pat

its happening more and moar.

[SilverSolder]

That homophone thing often gets me as well. While i am not claiming i don't make mistakes when writing, these often stand out extremely.

For example break and brake. Or the infamous there, their and they're.

And of course you’ll get some people talking about brakes who’ll use BOTH, sometimes in the same sentence.  At least pick one and be consistent!

-Pat

its happening more and moar.

The boarder between good and bad English is quite thin!

[Bassman59]

- Schematics drawn in MS Paint. In 2021.
- "it's" instead of "its". Auto-correct and lazy posters basically eradicated "its" from the internet.
- Same goes for lose/loose.

The same goes, in triplicate, for "hobbiest" instead of "hobbyist."

For fuck's sake, my web browser highlights the clearly-misspelled "hobbiest."

[PlainName]

Please send everyone an identical PC to yours so they can avail themselves of your browser.

[Bassman59]

Please send everyone an identical PC to yours so they can avail themselves of your browser.

Firefox on a Windows 10 machine? Seems like something fairly standard.

[PlainName]

That will do nicely if you'd like to ship them ASAP.

Or, alternatively, not assume that world+dog shares your experience.

[IDEngineer]

Firefox on a Windows 10 machine? Seems like something fairly standard.

I resolve this by disabling spell/grammar check on the browser. And everything else. While the occasional error slips through, I just hate all the highlighting that comes with someone else's opinion of how things should be written. Not to mention the outright spelling errors as noted earlier in this thread.

Technology is great, but there is such a thing as "being too helpful". Glad they "let" us disable these "features". I sure wish Microsoft would allow us to disable Windows Update. Maybe I could upgrade from Win7.

[james_s]

Firefox on a Windows 10 machine? Seems like something fairly standard.

It's not incredibly rare but I'd hesitate to call it standard, Firefox has fallen down into single digit market share as I recall. I used it for years but abandoned it when I got sick of the constant UI changes and having to find extensions and hacks to re-implement useful features they took away. I typically use Brave and Waterfox now, the latter probably still reports as Firefox so I suspect the actual Firefox market share is even lower than the stats indicate.

[mansaxel]

Firefox on a Windows 10 machine? Seems like something fairly standard.

I resolve this by disabling spell/grammar check on the browser. And everything else. While the occasional error slips through, I just hate all the highlighting that comes with someone else's opinion of how things should be written. Not to mention the outright spelling errors as noted earlier in this thread.

Technology is great, but there is such a thing as "being too helpful". Glad they "let" us disable these "features". I sure wish Microsoft would allow us to disable Windows Update. Maybe I could upgrade from Win7.

A constant peeve of mine is people not upgrading their virus-carrier operating systems to supported, fixed releases. It does not matter if you tell yourself that it's not going to get connected, sooner or later you will, because today, not networking a computer renders it useless.

It is a sad state of affairs that special hardware and software gets written by people not employing more timeless techniques. The lure of the then-greatest soon-to-be-deadend technology (Remember Silverlight? Flash? Any of the Java releases with special features?) is constant. Ten years from now, we'll be swearing over .NET code that cant be gotten to run.  And this means that old, dangerous computer installations out of maintenance will remain alive and connected to the Internet.

In my case, I'm mourning a very nice sound card, that had the misfortune of being

• A FireWire connected device
• A M-Audio piece of hardware, and as such abandoned by them way too early.

It is useless to me, and to most other people, because it's only supported with drivers in OS releases that ought not to run anymore.

[Ed.Kloonk]

In my case, I'm mourning a very nice sound card, that had the misfortune of being

• A FireWire connected device
• A M-Audio piece of hardware, and as such abandoned by them way too early.

It is useless to me, and to most other people, because it's only supported with drivers in OS releases that ought not to run anymore.

MS changed the sound subsystem 4 times during the 90's. Every iteration different from the previous. For no good reason.

[TimFox]

Firefox on a Windows 10 machine? Seems like something fairly standard.

It's not incredibly rare but I'd hesitate to call it standard, Firefox has fallen down into single digit market share as I recall. I used it for years but abandoned it when I got sick of the constant UI changes and having to find extensions and hacks to re-implement useful features they took away. I typically use Brave and Waterfox now, the latter probably still reports as Firefox so I suspect the actual Firefox market share is even lower than the stats indicate.

As of a 2021 report,  Google Chrome is running away with the desktop browser market share at 77%.  Neck and neck behind are Safari at 8.9%, Firefox at 7.7% (down from 2020), Edge at 5.8%, and the rest at < 2.5% each.

[Ed.Kloonk]

What happened to Firefox? I mean, I know, but geez.

[IDEngineer]

As of a 2021 report,  Google Chrome is running away with the desktop browser market share at 77%.  Neck and neck behind are Safari at 8.9%, Firefox at 7.7% (down from 2020), Edge at 5.8%, and the rest at < 2.5% each.

I don't care enough to research it, but I wonder how much of that Chrome percentage is mobile devices. I draw a distinction between the browser I use on real computers vs. the browser I use on a phone or tablet. The former get Firefox; the latter get whatever is native to the portable operating system, which for all portable devices I have is Android and therefore Chrome. Yes, I know mobile versions of other browsers are available.

If that Chrome percentage includes mobile devices, that would bias it up very strongly.

[james_s]

What happened to Firefox? I mean, I know, but geez.

They forgot what made it popular, the fact that it was lightweight and extremely flexible with a very robust extension ecosystem. It got more and more bloated and Chrome-like and while losing more and more features and flexibility. If I wanted a Chrome clone I'd just use Chrome.

[james_s]

I don't care enough to research it, but I wonder how much of that Chrome percentage is mobile devices. I draw a distinction between the browser I use on real computers vs. the browser I use on a phone or tablet. The former get Firefox; the latter get whatever is native to the portable operating system, which for all portable devices I have is Android and therefore Chrome. Yes, I know mobile versions of other browsers are available.

If that Chrome percentage includes mobile devices, that would bias it up very strongly.

This is desktop share specifically, mobile is a separate metric.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide

[Bassman59]

What happened to Firefox? I mean, I know, but geez.

They forgot what made it popular, the fact that it was lightweight and extremely flexible with a very robust extension ecosystem. It got more and more bloated and Chrome-like and while losing more and more features and flexibility. If I wanted a Chrome clone I'd just use Chrome.

I use Firefox for its privacy features. Especially useful is the ability to disable Javascript on a per-domain basis.

Chrome is designed for data mining.

[Bassman59]

In my case, I'm mourning a very nice sound card, that had the misfortune of being

• A FireWire connected device
• A M-Audio piece of hardware, and as such abandoned by them way too early.

It is useless to me, and to most other people, because it's only supported with drivers in OS releases that ought not to run anymore.

MS changed the sound subsystem 4 times during the 90's. Every iteration different from the previous. For no good reason.

And it took them frickin' forever to support USB Audio Class 2.0 for High Speed USB and thus multichannel audio at rates better than 48 kHz. That spec was ratified in 2006 and Apple supported it almost immediately. It took Microsoft nearly fifteen years to add that support to Windows.

It's kinda like how long it took Xilinx to support VHDL-2008.

[james_s]

I was reminded of another pet peeve, the protectionism in virtually the entire HVAC industry. There are a handful of online dealers now that will sell to anybody but prior to that it was virtually impossible for an individual to buy a furnace, boiler, ducting or even replacement parts like gas valves and such. I've heard people say it's about safety but I don't buy that. I can walk into any trade counter, electrical, plumbing, lumber, roofing, etc and buy anything I could possibly need to build or maintain a house, they aren't going to give me the discounts they'll give their regular guys but they're happy to take my money and give me the item I need. I can walk into an automotive supplier and buy any parts they sell for maintaining a car, truck, van, even bus or semi including fuel system parts, high voltage ignition, brakes, suspension, anything. I can even buy medical supplies and parts for medical equipment, a little harder to come by but I've never had a supplier refuse to sell me something. I can buy a gas water heater at any hardware store or home center, I can buy a gas range, or any other appliance, all readily available. All of this stuff is readily available to anyone, except for HVAC. Try buying a furnace, AC condenser, most ducting or anything else and those places will flat out refuse to sell unless you are a licensed contractor.

I have never encountered any other group of tradesmen that are so openly hostile toward the DIY crowd and I can think of no other reason than protecting of their own and feeling entitled to a profit. They act like the work they do is extremely difficult and beyond the abilities of ordinary people but it is not THAT hard and it would be much easier if all of the materials and equipment were readily available like they are with other trades. It requires an attention to detail and combines several other trades but it is something that virtually any engineer or advanced DIY enthusiast ought to be able to do if they feel inclined. Plumbing, electrical, highschool level physics and chemistry, basic math, it's not rocket science. Some of the guys who practice the trade are real craftsmen but a lot of them are just goobers and I've seen some really idiotic sloppy work done by supposed professionals.