You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? Now with 3x more gears...

[undercoverbrother]

Veterans Affairs Grind my Gears

They can suck a bag of frozen donkey dongs.

I've entered 2 claims twice and both times they have gone missing.

[RichieRich]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Why does everything have to get worse all the time? Google maps is just the worst now. It’s all ads and it no longer shows live transit locations. It’s also constantly harassing me to enable location always and notifications or it basically bricks itself. WTF is this bull####?

Reddit sucks. The whole UI is awful.

Prime with ads. Netflix with its annoying location lock.

Buying anything sucks because it’s all doubled in price.

It just seems like everything sucks now. Except maybe CP. it’s about how it always has been.

ok boomer.
you just have a milestone birthday? like 50? or a finer vintage that made you an old codger?

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Spence's Diamonds commercials - what the hell is even going on?

The most recent one is like they dropped you in the middle of a phone call between overseas relatives and it takes until end of the full minute of incoherent rambling to become evident that it's an ad.. sort of.

[topfiverecords]

Where do you (and others) hear these all these Spence diamonds ads? I’ve gone probably twenty years without hearing them but I’ve read hundreds of complaints about them in that time.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by topfiverecords

Where do you (and others) hear these all these Spence diamonds ads? I’ve gone probably twenty years without hearing them but I’ve read hundreds of complaints about them in that time.

I have a very short drive to work so I like to listen to 'Terrestrial Radio.'

And yes. They are awful. I dont know why they dragged a Scotsman and what appears to be his mother into this nonsense.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Lol yup. Hard to believe they spent money to put that to air. Someone get Michael or whoever the guy is into marketing 101...because woo00oow these suck.

[Barnet Flame]

They can’t be that ineffective if you guys are talking about them and spreading the word.

[darockwilder]

Originally Posted by Locke

I have a very short drive to work so I like to listen to 'Terrestrial Radio.'

And yes. They are awful. I dont know why they dragged a Scotsman and what appears to be his mother into this nonsense.

Quit talking #### about Fiona! She keeps Calum and Michael in check so they don't sell "phooony diamonds"!

[Locke]

Originally Posted by darockwilder

Quit talking #### about Fiona! She keeps Calum and Michael in check so they don't sell "phooony diamonds"!

This is the other thing...I ain't no 'Big City Don Draper' Advertising Executive or nuthin'...but I think the rule is supposed to be 'short and sweet.'

Good Lord those ads are interminably long.

[gallione11]

My CEO just ended a large audience email (not company wide, but maybe 30% or so) with "Let's go." Sad that he went to the McDavid School of Leadership

[RichieRich]

Originally Posted by gallione11

My CEO just ended a large audience email (not company wide, but maybe 30% or so) with "Let's go." Sad that he went to the McDavid School of Leadership

yah not as spiffy as "tally-ho old chaps, have at 'em boys!!"
(to the exclusion of women everywhere)


...or even.... "go smash that thang ya'll"

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by Locke

I have a very short drive to work so I like to listen to 'Terrestrial Radio.'

And yes. They are awful. I dont know why they dragged a Scotsman and what appears to be his mother into this nonsense.

I guess I avoid just the right terrestrial radio stations to keep clear of those ads.

[Geraldsh]

Originally Posted by gallione11

My CEO just ended a large audience email (not company wide, but maybe 30% or so) with "Let's go." Sad that he went to the McDavid School of Leadership

He should have told you to “make it happen “

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Why does everything have to get worse all the time? Google maps is just the worst now. It’s all ads and it no longer shows live transit locations. It’s also constantly harassing me to enable location always and notifications or it basically bricks itself. WTF is this bull####?

Reddit sucks. The whole UI is awful.

Prime with ads. Netflix with its annoying location lock.

Buying anything sucks because it’s all doubled in price.

It just seems like everything sucks now. Except maybe CP. it’s about how it always has been.

For tech we lived in a world subsidized by venture capital and the promise of future profitability. We didn’t pay the actual cost for anything. The change in interest rates made this approach much more expensive and several of the area reached the end of their growth phase and the start of their profit phase.

But in general we were heavily subsidized by emerging tech.

[mrkajz44]

Yeah - there was a period of around 10 years or so (maybe the 2010s in general?) where we got a bunch of cool stuff for free. It's now expectation we continue to get these free things despite the clear fact that is costs money to run these things.

[DownInFlames]

People who still refer to new TVs as "flat screens". The term helped differentiate plasma and LCD from Tube TVs, but now it's meaningless because all TVs have a flat screen except a few curved models bought by dummies.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Do people still make curved TVs?

It actually wasn't dumb in some applications, for example a smallish bedroom where you're always going to be in basically the same position when watching the thing. Same reason curved monitors make sense.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by GGG

For tech we lived in a world subsidized by venture capital and the promise of future profitability. We didn’t pay the actual cost for anything. The change in interest rates made this approach much more expensive and several of the area reached the end of their growth phase and the start of their profit phase.

But in general we were heavily subsidized by emerging tech.

Google still gets almost all their money from ad revenue. They're a modern day Mad Men. All their "free" products are simply ad delivery mechanisms/data mining. This is increasingly true for Maps, which doesn't really do a good job of wayfinding anymore.

Amazon mostly makes money from AWS. A little bit from retail. Prime is a gigantic money sink since making movies and episodic media requires a ton of upfront capital (from AWS, natch) and are incredibly risky.

Reddit is another ad delivery/data mining platform. Same as Meta.

None are examples of "subsidized by venture capital and the promise of future profitability". In fact this model is basically gone these days. You get a massively crippled free product and to get anything truly useful you need to pay.

As someone that uses some SAAS products, many subscription prices have gone way up.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by GGG

For tech we lived in a world subsidized by venture capital and the promise of future profitability. We didn’t pay the actual cost for anything. The change in interest rates made this approach much more expensive and several of the area reached the end of their growth phase and the start of their profit phase.

But in general we were heavily subsidized by emerging tech.

While that’s absolutely true, it doesn’t stop me from getting enraged at the en####ification of Amazon. Remember when features like search and ‘related products’ were useful tools for finding something you needed, rather than ways for paid sponsors to push their products to the front of the line?

[Wormius]

I think some examples of “used to be great, then features started getting paywalled” subsidized apps were like Strava and MyFitnessPal. I wouldn’t call Linkedin great, but you used to at least be able to write a note when connecting to someone and more freely message people. Now you’re just inundated with “pay for premium” messages whenever you try something.