Are you a Grumpy older person?

I think search in general has been getting worse, at least on platforms like Google and Amazon, for a long while due to context overload from years and even decades of profiling of users. AI has just accelerated that process. I remember going through my Amazon recommendations on my original profile (from 1998) and marvelling at how it was still recommending stuff that I'd lost interest in back in the 2000s. It's amusing in a way, these companies have worked so hard to stop competitors, yet they've also sown the seeds of their own destruction at the same time.

ASDA recently revamped their website, making searching for things a lot worse in the process. No more multi-item search for instance, so clearly none of the designers have ever used a shopping list. And some searches turn up completely different things depending on what words you use.

I don't use iPlayer that often, so I've not run into that problem, but yeah it's not good. I think they do an advert before starting playback anyway, so perhaps that's just hard-coded even if you're restarting a program from partway through? I get why the BBC feels they need to remind people of all the stuff they get for the TV licence fee, but it seems they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Any Kindle made in 2012 or earlier is getting cut off completely from May 20th. They already couldn't connect directly to the Kindle bookstore, but could still download purchased books. After that date, they won't even be able to do that.

Having said that, there's nothing to stop you connecting the Kindle directly to your computer and transferring ebook to it that way, as the Kindle appears as an external drive. No jailbreak required for that, I think.

AlanRalph said:

Amazon's announcement that they'll stop supporting older Kindle devices entirely from next month

Oh no really? I'll have to go look that up, that's such a shame. It's all greed, they see people being forced to upgrade their phones because they aren't supported, and they want to force their customers to do the same. 

If they cut mine off at some point, I'll not be getting a new one. I can be grumpy too.

AI. So many managerial types have been brainwashed into thinking AI is necessary, when it is definitely not. AI used in spell checkers, just presents your habitual mistakes as being correct and search engines 'infected' with AI become no longer fit for purpose. On an online supermarket search engine, I was looking for something eatable, searched for it with its name and got a selection of wristwatches as the result. On another occasion I was searching for the antihistamine Loratidine, with the word 'Loratidine' (which is what it was called on the supermarket's own listing) and got 'nothing matches your search'!

I think Amazon have just got greedy and don’t care about their customers. Most people just want a device that displays black and white print, which the older models do adequately. 

I am so sick of advertisements too. Also, the BBC keeps advertising programmes on iplayer that I don’t want to see. If I pause iplayer for five minutes, I can’t just resume viewing by pressing play any more, it wants me to see an advertisement for something first. I have to go back to go forward, in order to restart the programme. It’s spoiled the whole viewing experience. 

All FAQs are NOT, frequently asked questions! 

I’m only shouting at you because I know you can take it (LOL).

I'm usually grumpy about computers, and in particular how we seem to have gone backwards in terms of usability and accessibility. It's somehow assumed that everyone knows how it works already, so no need for any but the tiniest scrap of 'documentation' with a new laptop or phone. (Seriously, I have post-it note pads thicker than what came with my MacBook Air.) But no worry, you can go online to learn how to use it… assuming you can get online, of course. Meanwhile, user interfaces have been drained of any sense of what's a button and what's clickable, and instead of terse error messages we now have apps silently failing to do stuff and giving no clue that anything might be wrong.

The latest insult was Amazon's announcement that they'll stop supporting older Kindle devices entirely from next month, citing cost. But I know it's really because the older Kindles don't have the power to let Amazon track what you're doing and shove adverts in your face. Well, joke is on them, I liberated my ebooks from my Kindle, then learnt how to jailbreak it and use it however I want for as long as it'll keep going.

I try not to be grumpy, I do seem to have less tolerance of people. My pet hate is ticket machines in car parks, I used to put a coin in the machine and then put the ticket on the dashboard, now I need apps or debit cards, the instructions are impossible to follow and just create anxiety.

Are FAQ's really frequently asked questions? I read them and wonder how old they expect the user to be, 5?

Trump is a pain in the worlds bum!

Oh yes! I’ve just been having a good grump to poor Cinnabar_wing in another post. 

TheCatWoman said:

Why can't you just plug things in and have them work anymore? Everythings such a faff and no I don't want a relationship with my fridge, toaster, other household appliance, I just want it to work and do as it's told

That annoys me too. It’s design gone mad, supposedly to make life easier and simpler when it does the exact opposite. If you need to speak to the appliance manufacturer, it’s either by email and wait a day or days for a response, or a chatbot which tells you stuff you don’t need to hear before telling you that all their agents are busy but there is information on the website… it’s so time consuming.

I’m really annoyed about several other things too at the moment.

”Yer man” because petrol and energy is costing so much and he decides that if the US can’t sail through the Strait of Hormuz, the rest of the world shouldn’t either. The other guy who said it would be just “a little pain” short term etc., when it seems the US is barely affected, meanwhile innocent people are being killed and the rest of the world suffers. 

I’m cross about the state of the NHS.

And I’m just grumpy! 

Maybe this thread will keep going and people can add their grumps as needed. A problem shared/get it off your chest etc. seems therapeutic in short blasts only.