Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Zeyneb]

Alright, time to get this major annoyance of my chest. 

You know, ebay! A platform where buyers and sellers from around the globe can trade stuff. Private individuals and businesses it doesn't matter. So far so good but now the bad stuff. What would be an suitable language to communicate internationally..... ENGLISH! But then you have this stupid idea emerging out the the ebay company that they think it would be a convenience to have ebay webpages display in your native language. And the result is that when I'm dealing with some dispute with a seller in another country for example, I don't have access to the proper english phrase for an aspect on the ebay website, Like "mark return item as shipped" page, order number, item number, return ID. I do want to communicate clearly and complete and use the exact terminology the seller is seeing on his screen. The same stuff is displayed for me in dutch and for the seller in german for example. My german is bad and I neither want the seller to try dutch so english is the only way. Now we both have to try to guess what the correct english term is for an ebay thing..... Such an annoyance 

Even an downloadable packing list for a return has number descriptions like "return ID" translated in my INFERIOR native language and it is going to Germany!

[SilverSolder]

Alright, time to get this major annoyance of my chest. 

You know, ebay! A platform where buyers and sellers from around the globe can trade stuff. Private individuals and businesses it doesn't matter. So far so good but now the bad stuff. What would be an suitable language to communicate internationally..... ENGLISH! But then you have this stupid idea emerging out the the ebay company that they think it would be a convenience to have ebay webpages display in your native language. And the result is that when I'm dealing with some dispute with a seller in another country for example, I don't have access to the proper english phrase for an aspect on the ebay website, Like "mark return item as shipped" page, order number, item number, return ID. I do want to communicate clearly and complete and use the exact terminology the seller is seeing on his screen. The same stuff is displayed for me in dutch and for the seller in german for example. My german is bad and I neither want the seller to try dutch so english is the only way. Now we both have to try to guess what the correct english term is for an ebay thing..... Such an annoyance 

Even an downloadable packing list for a return has number descriptions like "return ID" translated in my INFERIOR native language and it is going to Germany!

eBay's CEO has been trying to explain to the markets why eBay volumes are falling...    I think they should have asked some long time users instead!

[py-bb]

The phrase "rate of speed" to mean speed.

[pcprogrammer]

... But then you have this stupid idea emerging out the the ebay company that they think it would be a convenience to have ebay webpages display in your native language. ....

In it self not that bad, but the fact that it is enforced on you based on your IP address is bloody stupid. Living in France, being Dutch, preferring English a lot of the time, I get French website presented to me when googling. Even with language set to English. Some big companies are the worst. You try to select the English version, it still reverts back to French.

Not sure if this is also the case for ebay. Don't use it anymore.

Look at the language my computer is set to instead of my IP address, idiot website makers and use that if you must.

I know, I can setup a VPN to overcome this, but it is annoying.

[Ranayna]

That is always annoying when i am in the home office, connected to my compant via VPN.
We have locations all over europe, the VPN client takes any of these location as a potential point of connection, and connects to whichever answers first.
I don't really care which location i'm connecting to, i'm in germany, smack in the middle of the various locations, and our internal network is fast.

I only notice to which location i am connected to when i google something
Because that then uses the location's internet breakout, i get localised results: Swiss, Dutch, French, British, Norwegian, Swedish, you name it Sometimes i need localised results and then i manually connect to our german endpoint.
I really would love for websites to respect my locale settings. Ideally not just the language though, since that is set to en-us for our machines, it also should respect the *configured* location, which is Germany.
On the other hand though, sometimes this was actually useful to circumvent blocks. There are a couple, especially US, sites that generally block european IP adresses since they do not want to deal with GDPR. Then i always was able to connect to a endpoint outside of europe to still be able to access the sites.

[coppice]

... But then you have this stupid idea emerging out the the ebay company that they think it would be a convenience to have ebay webpages display in your native language. ....

If you move countries E-Bay let's you change addresses and phone numbers globally, and maintain the same account. However, they never let you change the original language you chose when you first signed up. It used to be that language was locked to your location. I signed up long ago in Hong Kong and my account was forced to be in Chinese. I moved to the UK, and interact with the ebay.co.uk web site in English. However, all the emails I get from E-Bay are in Chinese. This is OK, until I hit issues like you. If I click on anything in the email I go to an E-Bay page in Chinese. To find the exact wording I need to interact with people in the UK, I have to log in to ebay.co.uk, and go to my account. Then I see the information in English. Its a mess.

[Ed.Kloonk]

So my municipality has begun a 'war on waste' where by us dirty scum residents are apparently not recycling enough waste material, which is bullshit. Don't get me wrong there are some people who live like pigs but I doubt any messaging will change their ways, if we're honest.

A few of us have been chatting and it turns out that not only have we been sorting our rubbish at least as has been specified, we, as rate payers, feel that it is they who should instead be looking at their own resource management and waste in that regard.

I expect this situation is about to spill over on to social media and as I'm not exactly a man of few words, I'll be expected to participate in the dog-pile. I'd like to be able to drop a simple phrase short enough that you could nearly put it on a t-shirt, yet still have plenty of sting in the tail.

The message should be:

...

[PlainName]

drop a simple praise short enough that you could nearly put it on a t-shirt

"Brilliantly fantabulous"

[Nominal Animal]

"Definitively Pegged"

[PlainName]

Did you, perhaps, mean a 'simple phrase'?

[Ed.Kloonk]

Did you, perhaps, mean a 'simple phrase'?

 

 

[pcprogrammer]

"wasted management"

[TimFox]

"not our sort"

[Nominal Animal]

"The most important thing about waste management, is to sort the management out first."

No, not pithy enough.  Quite punny, though.

[rdl]

My "smart" phone needs to do some kind of update and demands is asking to connect to a WiFi network. I pay for 5G internet on the phone, so WTF? I blame google (but it could be idiot Samsung programmers). I don't use WiFi, so it can figure out how to update itself or die trying, I don't care.

[AndyBeez]

My "smart" phone needs to do some kind of update and demands is asking to connect to a WiFi network. I pay for 5G internet on the phone, so WTF? I blame google (but it could be idiot Samsung programmers). I don't use WiFi, so it can figure out how to update itself or die trying, I don't care.

It's set to a data download saving foo mode. Somewhere behind the cogwheel icon, there's an "only update over wifi option", or words to that effect. Select the option that says, "sod-it I don't care if you burn all the gigabytes in the universe!" Sometimes smart phones just need a little education.

[rdl]

I appreciate that information and will check it out. Still, it is a "smart phone" and can't figure this out? Update is needed choose how to connect? These so-called "smart" phones are stupid as rocks.

[Bud]

You WANT updates be done via WiFi because a glitch or out of range event while on a cell service may brick your phone. For similar reasons you want to have the phone connected to the charger when doing firmware updates.

[PlainName]

Losing connection during an update won't brick it - the update won't be applied until it's all downloaded.

By default phones will only do mega-downloads over WiFi because users typically pay per byte for cell data. Around here the cost is stunningly expensive as PAYG and very much cheaper (like, free) if you buy a package (i.e. a subscription). But even then there is likely to be a size cap, after which it either stops or you start paying stupid money again.

This is actually a good example of smart phones being deliberately not too smart and letting the user decide that an available connection is worth the potential cost.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Losing connection during an update won't brick it - the update won't be applied until it's all downloaded.

Yeah, but the security update model enforced by the makers of these things is amateur hour.

[rdl]

Everything said makes sense, yet I still contend that because it's a "smart" phone it should be able to figure these things out on its own. State of charge? Plugged in to a charger? Able to connect via internet 5G? Puleeze...

[Ranayna]

Take that as the learning experience that it is: The vast majority of the stuff that is called - or worse - calls itself "smart" is actually anything but
This stuff is only as smart as those who make it.

And to where this setting/default comes from?
In many locations *cough*Germany*cough* mobile data plans are still very limited. More often than not, you would not even be able to fully download a major update with your monthly "allowance". I think the average on the cheap plans is still around one or two gigabytes per month, even if they are 5G enabled.
At least now you can actually override this setting. On Apple devices that was not possible for quite some time.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Commentator at the conclusion of some football today..   (RIP Italy)

I think he should be man of the match.

....

Player of the match.

What they did there. I see it.

[eti]

VERY FIRM dislike for:

~ Copycat YouTube videos, esp "band-waggoning" when a new product is launched, most of the publishers parroting the same spiel. adding nothing new (no research done, hype hype hype!)

~ "Smash that like button <blah blah blah>" - er, nah, you're alright thanks; don't PROMPT me - if what you have produced is of merit, I'll want to do all this  of my own volition

~ Also on YouTube, "tech" channels using incorrect terminology, the main culprit is "X phone has 1,500 milliamps battery" when they mean mAh! - if ya can't even get THAT right, why would I listen to you?

[Nominal Animal]

The misuse of the term "galaxy". 
I'm constantly seeing Youtubers use the term for a single planetary system, star system or tiny stellar cluster.

Smallest galaxies have about a hundred million stars.  The galaxy next door to us is the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years away.  The closest star system is Alpha Centauri, a bit over four light years distant.  It is a triple star system, three stars orbiting each other, and at least the third, currently closest to us, Proxima Centauri, has a planetary system around it.  There are over a hundred known stellar clusters within our own galaxy, the Milky Way, with the closest ones a few thousand light years away.  In a cluster, the distance between closest stars can be well under a light year, without them being gravitationally bound to orbit each other.

So it's not like it's off a bit, it's off by a factor of million or so.  "Nearby galaxy" involves distances in the millions of lightyears, whereas "nearby star system" is typically in the single-digit lightyears.