Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Nominal Animal]

OK 'virtual assistants' that don't understand anything (I'm looking at you Fedex) and are just a way for the organisation to stop you from contacting people who know stuff.

Yeah, "assistants".

The one class of "assistants" I do like, is the automatic notifications that need no interaction.

I particularly like the email notifications I get from the Finnish Post notifying a package is ready for pickup.
The emails end with "Tämä on Postin robottikaverin automaattinen sähköpostiviesti. Hän ei vielä osaa lukea – älä siis vastaa hänelle." which translates roughly as "This is an automated email from the postmans robot buddy. He can't read yet, so please don't answer him."

I think it is a masterful psychological stroke, defusing any "this has no humanity in it" feelings from the human-oriented people, while at the same time informing the readers that it is just an automated message.

There are large numbers of words in English that are found in print and relatively rarely in speech.  And since I seldom consult a dictionary when encountering a new word if the meaning is clear from context there are quite a few I have mispronounced.  One of the ones that surprised me the most was banal.

My pronunciation is so bad I get surprised when I pronounce one correctly.  That's why I switched from trying to adopt British/American accent to just using "Rally English" years ago: it's clearer.  And I don't mind me sounding funny to others if it means I'm easier to understand; I do that trade gladly.

I do like language puns, like pronouncing bicycle as bi-cycle, just to jest and confuse the listener.
Like asking someone how to pronounce 'y', 'e', 's', and after they say "yes", asking how to pronounce it if you prepend an 'e' to it.  (Followed by the obligatory "I'm so tired I can't keep my ejes open.")

[RoGeorge]

"Tämä on Postin robottikaverin automaattinen sähköpostiviesti. Hän ei vielä osaa lukea – älä siis vastaa hänelle."

Wow, I've read that entire phrase, word by word.   

No idea what it was saying, but anyways it all sounded very trippy.  By the end of it I was already feeling like a true Viking, even believing for a moment that I have a my own dragon for real.   

[Nominal Animal]

"Tämä on Postin robottikaverin automaattinen sähköpostiviesti. Hän ei vielä osaa lukea – älä siis vastaa hänelle."

Wow, I've read that entire phrase, word by word.   

No idea what it was saying, but anyways it all sounded very trippy.  By the end of it I was already feeling like a true Viking, even believing for a moment that I have a my own dragon for real.   

[IDEngineer]

New topic: Rental car companies that revise their billing and refuse to honor their reservations!

WARNING: DO NOT RENT FROM DOLLAR RENT A CAR.

I travel a lot for business and rent a lot of vehicles from a lot of companies. Generally things go well, and I'm not picky about a few percent either way.

Today I'm reconciling my receipts from a recent business trip. I have the reservation printout from their website sitting right here in black and white, for USD 379.64. Yet the bill totaled USD 522.77 - a 38% increase! I just got off the phone with them and their response was "Doesn't matter what the reservation says. Once you sign for the car you agree to what's on the new paperwork."

Yes, I understand that a signed agreement with a later date can supercede a previous reservation. But I have a habit of comparing the reservation bottom line to the rental agreement on the spot, and if there had been a discrepency I'd have raised the question immediately. That tells me what they had me sign - and what they retained - was close enough to the reservation to not catch my eye.

When I returned the car, they gave me a printout. Of course by this time I'm in a hurry to get to the gate, and besides - I compared the bottom line figures earlier, right?

Again, I understand that ultimately I could have been even more anal retentive about this than my usual level. But somehow they knew they could get away with it this time. It's not insulting enough that they bumped the daily rate from a quoted AND PRINTED figure of 70.84/day to a figure of 95.45/day. They also added 52.00 for "an additional driver". Never mind that I specifically asked if there was a charge for an extra driver (some do, some don't, which is why I always ask!) and that their employee said, to my face at the airport, "If they are with the same company there's no extra charge". The 52.00 is on the receipt, and in the words of their phone rep just now, "We do not adjust charges after you return the car".

My last words to Dollar today were "I travel a lot and I rent a LOT of vehicles. Whatever you think you saved today on this transaction, I promise you have lost 100X that amount because I will tell everyone I know to never rent from nor trust Dollar ever again".

YMMV, but there are a lot of rental car companies out there. I suggest you use anyone but Dollar.

[andy3055]

I think I rented from Dollar just once many many years back. Now, I go through Costco and usually they work with Enterprise. On two occasions I got a larger car than what I reserved, at the same price. Never had a problem so far. Even Hertz is not bad. They do the same thing. Never charge extra.

[CatalinaWOW]

My son rented from Dollar recently and had a horrible experience.  Reserved a full size car.  They gave him a sub-compact, which matters a lot because he is NBA size.  Told him tough, that was what they had, and didn't change the rate either.  So your advice to avoid Dollar seems good.

Don't know how to spread that advice to Dollar's owner, Hertz, or their sister company also owned by Hertz, which is Thrifty.  At least at some airports they operate as a single entity, sharing counter help and some other services.

[mansaxel]

I happened to use Alamo on my first US trip back in 93. It turned out nice, and I've used them since. I go to the US perhaps once every three years, on average, and most of the times I've rented. Last time was to NAB in Las Vegas, and since I have no good words to say about flying domestic in the US (there's a peeve if you want one, oh my), I fly to the closest coast and drive the rest. Will investigate train next time if feasible, but then it'll be for the ride an sich.

[Ed.Kloonk]

[PlainName]

Blimey! Currently playing Wreckfest and I thought that style of derby was made up for the game. Didn't realise it was pukka.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Packaging.

That is all.

[mfro]

Many programs still showing a floppy disc icon for "Save" when nobody knows anymore what a floppy disc is and how it's supposed to look like

[james_s]

That's been a standard icon for decades, it doesn't matter if somebody doesn't know what a floppy disk is, everyone knows that icon means save. Does a stop sign look like a stop?

[mfro]

Same thing. Many phone icons show a "classic" receiver (or even a rotary) when real phones don't have that anymore since decades.

Icons were originally meant to give visual feedback of the real thing - somehow defeats the purpose if you've never seen that. People end up deciphering ancient hieroglyphics instead of having immediate "visual grasp".

[Ranayna]

What would be the alternatives to the disk or handset icons?
Remember, icons need to be distinctive.

I sometimes see a cloud icon to represent saving to a cloud service, but that is not universal, since it would not match local saving.
An icon of a harddrive? Almost extinct for most users as well. Also difficult to create a distinctive look for small icons.
An icon of a flash chip? How would that even look?

Abstracted and distincitive icons are in my opinion really good. Yes, it is something you need to learn. But when it is abstracted, as the floppy disc icon is nowadays, it does not need to change with technology. If the save icon had changed with each underlying storage technology, you would have had to learn quite a few different icons.

Same for the handset icon. It is distinctive. What would a generic smartphone icon be? A rectangle with slightly rounded corners?

This touches another "per peeve" of mine. Change for change's sake. There are so many pointless changes to GUIs with a new software version. Many that make usability actually worse. Just look at the disaster that is the taskbar of Windows 11.

[PlainName]

What would be the alternatives to the disk or handset icons?

"Save"

[brabus]

Has "Touch screen car commands" already been mentioned? Wanted to activate seat heating, caught a bump and changed radio station instead.

Oh, and also FM radio. Why is it still a thing, at least in Europe? Loaded to the brim with demential commercials and once you find a good song and skip station (see above), you will NEVER be able to find it again!

[mfro]

That's been a standard icon for decades, it doesn't matter if somebody doesn't know what a floppy disk is, everyone knows that icon means save. Does a stop sign look like a stop?

Even a safe icon would probably be more intuitive for people that never saw a floppy disk (and probably would imply more safeness for people that do).

[TimFox]

Oh, and also FM radio. Why is it still a thing, at least in Europe? Loaded to the brim with demential commercials and once you find a good song and skip station (see above), you will NEVER be able to find it again!

How would a change in transmission modulation from FM to digital change the program content?
I keep my car radio on FM, rather than "HD" (which is "hybrid digital", not "high definition") since signal interruptions (overpasses, etc.) cause any narration to repeat a word or back up further, which is more annoying than just a momentary dropout.

[TimFox]

What would be the alternatives to the disk or handset icons?

"Save"

The whole point of an "icon" is that it is not tied to the local language.  Before retiring, I sometimes had to use a computer in Japan or Sweden on work trips.

[PlainName]

The whole point of an "icon" is that it is not tied to the local language.  Before retiring, I sometimes had to use a computer in Japan or Sweden on work trips.

Yes, but a tiny unknown icon vaguely depicting something you've never seen is a foreign language even in your own language! At least Google Translate can show you what real words mean (and the Lens version is jolly brilliant).

Are you suggesting there should be no menus? Those are localised languages, you know.

[Kasper]

What would be the alternatives to the disk or handset icons?
Remember, icons need to be distinctive.

I sometimes see a cloud icon to represent saving to a cloud service, but that is not universal, since it would not match local saving.
An icon of a harddrive? Almost extinct for most users as well. Also difficult to create a distinctive look for small icons.
An icon of a flash chip? How would that even look?

Abstracted and distincitive icons are in my opinion really good. Yes, it is something you need to learn. But when it is abstracted, as the floppy disc icon is nowadays, it does not need to change with technology. If the save icon had changed with each underlying storage technology, you would have had to learn quite a few different icons.

Same for the handset icon. It is distinctive. What would a generic smartphone icon be? A rectangle with slightly rounded corners?

This touches another "per peeve" of mine. Change for change's sake. There are so many pointless changes to GUIs with a new software version. Many that make usability actually worse. Just look at the disaster that is the taskbar of Windows 11.

I can see it now: "Sorry the save feature is not working because we tried to update the icon to look like the current popular data storage hardware."

One of the things I like about the old icon is this joke I keep seeing: "I showed my kids a floppy disk and they asked me why I 3D printed the save icon."

[TimFox]

The whole point of an "icon" is that it is not tied to the local language.  Before retiring, I sometimes had to use a computer in Japan or Sweden on work trips.

Yes, but a tiny unknown icon vaguely depicting something you've never seen is a foreign language even in your own language! At least Google Translate can show you what real words mean (and the Lens version is jolly brilliant).

Are you suggesting there should be no menus? Those are localised languages, you know.

There is a difference between iconography using language-independent symbols (icons), and using menus using local language.
Once you learn that a tiny image of an object you have not used represents the verb "to save" in your language, you and your international colleagues may proceed.

[PlainName]

That kind of works in theory. I have an app (actual several different apps) with configurable toolbars. I can choose what icons go on the toolbars, and sometimes I can even choose what the icon function will be. But I still seem to be ignoring them and going for the menus instead. The exceptions are the toolbars where I can show icons and short text underneath.

[james_s]

Has "Touch screen car commands" already been mentioned? Wanted to activate seat heating, caught a bump and changed radio station instead.

Oh, and also FM radio. Why is it still a thing, at least in Europe? Loaded to the brim with demential commercials and once you find a good song and skip station (see above), you will NEVER be able to find it again!

I'm pretty sure it has, I certainly loathe touchscreens in cars.

I actually like FM radio and think they should have stuck with it instead of pushing out all this digital nonsense that is using what are now hopelessly obsolete compression standards. Analog FM sounds very good, and unlike digital, the signal doesn't abruptly cut out when it is weak. Now the content being broadcast that is another matter, but there are still several good stations near me, though I rarely listen to them anymore since I have other sources without ads.

[james_s]

Are you suggesting there should be no menus? Those are localised languages, you know.

Who would make such a ridiculous suggestion as that? Well, actually for reasons I cannot fathom, menus have been disappearing on a lot of software, Microsoft is a major offender here. The proper way of doing it is to have standardized icons for frequently used functions in a toolbar below a hierarchical dropdown menu containing all of the commands. A properly designed interface will have tooltips for the icons too so if you hover over that little picture of a mysterious object you have never seen it will say "Save" and then you'll know what that symbol means, problem solved.