Before, say 2015, technology seemed to be constantly improving itself. Becoming better and faster with each new model that came out like, idk like 2 years apart.
Now, I have a smart tv full of apps that can’t play a single movie without stuttering and buffering every 30 sec for at least 5 minutes at a time. Either the os on the smart TV needs an update, or the app needs and update, or they’re both on incompatible versions, or my router needs an update, or the internet is dicey because my neighbor is vpn-ing around the world to watch BBC, or technology is just ass now. I’m sick of them constantly pushing forward and not maintaining and perfecting what we already have.
I miss 90s and early 00s cable. Just turn it on and watch. No updates, usernames, passwords, or subscriptions required.
I don’t have a point to this post just wanted to vent. Thank you watching. Eat the rich.
Edit: I have a sick kid that just wants to watch Bluey and I almost threw the remote through the screen because I have no control over how technology works now. I can’t pop the back off and check the connections and muck around until I see an issue. And his big snot cover face asking why I’m getting so mad at Bluey is breaking my heart. So now we’re on the laptop and he’s happy so the world is that much brighter.
What you’re experiencing is that the technology used to be the product, and now, you’re the product.
The technology is still improving, it’s just not improving with you in mind. it’s becoming better at serving the people who are paying the bills for these tech corporations, and that’s not you, that’s the massive conglomerates who want to show you advertisements on your fucking refrigerator.
Bingo
Yahtzee!
This.
A big part of the problem is consolidation of tech companies. google controls most of the internet now. there is very little competition now so things have stagnated and enshittified.
this has happened all across american society. for example, food distribution is controlled by like 4 companies, Sysco being the largest. most restaurants get their food from sysco, so they serve frozen foods offered by sysco, and a lot of restaurants now offer the same things. sysco also pushes out smaller producers who can't provide quantities sysco wants. etc.
The fries all suck now. Coated garbage grease sticks. They have spread like a virus and I blame Sysco.
I'm kinda surprised that Sysco doesn't get the hate it deserves on reddit. Rhey are monopolizing most of the restaurant food now. it makes going out to eat at most restaurants predictable and boring since it all really does taste similar. Unless you go to a higher end restaurant that sources their food on their own locally.
Cold, mushy, bland, usually skimpy portions.
Just bring back potato wedges..
French fries are filler. I don't eat them anymore.
But they shouldn't be. Pommes de Frites can be fucking awesome. Poutine is damned near a national dish in Canuckistan because it is awesome. The Syscoifaction of eating is why fries are shitty filler.
Yes and I would eat them as standalone dishes.
Ordering fries with a burger is like getting the warranty on some piece of crap you bought on Amazon. You know you got scammed into buying something you don't need.
Every fucking place serves lightly batter-coated, seasoned fries. They are straight curly fries. I hate them. They are extra greasy and anyone with a wheat allergy or gluten issue can’t eat them because they cover potatoes in fucking batter. Restaurants like them because they cook crispy fast, but they never tell you they are serving shit covered in flour.
Exactly and the same idea applies to tech. When a few companies control the majority of hardware, software and streaming platforms, they don’t have as much pressure to fix things that are broken. If your smart TV stutters or an app glitches, they know most people will just deal with it because there aren’t many alternatives that are easy to use. Innovation slows down when profit matters more than user experience.
Also, modern technology has gotten way more complex. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, your cable TV worked because it was basically one system doing one job. Now, TVs, apps, routers, and internet connections all need to communicate perfectly. If one piece is off—like a firmware mismatch or a slow server—it can make the whole thing frustrating. It’s not just the hardware anymore; it’s the ecosystem that has to work together, and any weak link causes headaches.
Finally, companies focus on pushing out new features instead of maintaining old ones. Every year there’s a new TV, a new OS, or a new version of an app, and older models often stop getting support. This planned obsolescence makes devices feel broken even when they technically still work. The upside is, like you found with the laptop, sometimes simpler solutions exist. It’s a pain, but finding the easiest, most reliable workaround can save your sanity—and keep your kid happy while you vent.
Not entirely true. It’s just that Google doesn’t show you the internet anymore. There’s a false collapse happening to the general population, but the internet is still a thing.
How do you reach it?
You are aware of other search engines, duckduckgo, ecosia, etc.
Ask jeeves, lycos, alta vista...
You wouldn't have any fun there.
You should ask google. /s
Sounds like entropy to me.
Friend, I build it. It’s designed to suck. Happy on the outside, insidious on the inside.
But you might take comfort in the fact that the business has us beer bonging everything to get their bullshit out to market faster than everyone else.
Fintech and retail are the worst offenders.
I humbly submit boofing as a more apt metaphor.
"Beer bonging"? I'm not sure what it means in this context but I like the way you write haha
Instead of taking time to enjoy the beverage (ie, taking time to build the right thing the right way) they get the alcohol into the system as fast as possible (shipping some executive’s dumb idea that no customer asked for as fast as possible).
Design it better then
I'd like to say a good part is the shift from getting customers to buy a products to services.
Why sell an ipod where you save purchased music when Apple can sell streaming of that music instead? Why sell you Photoshop as a software pack on disc for a one time fixed price when a monthly license to selected features is an option?
You're so right. We built a house in 2015 and I put gigabit ethernet in every room, installed a professional antenna in the attic, got the whole house set up for a modern smarthome then decked it out with 50+ hue bulbs, Google Home Hub, logitech harmony remotes, a Nest, just about everything except for cameras in my house and door/garage locks because no way am I putting THAT on the internet.
One by one, things started going unsupported, then when the AI train hit a couple years ago, Google went all-in on Gemini and I just refuse to let that shit manage my home so now I have a ton of e-waste and am currently on a mission to install and configure Home Assistant which requires a little DIY box (I bought the Home Assistant Green) and I'm shocked at how well it all works. It basically helps you move away from always-online services by putting your own little smart home server in the house.
It is truly shocking how easy it is to set up, but all the more reason to be so pissed off at the biggest, richest, resource-rich companies in the world choosing that 10 years is too long to support a thermostat. Like seriously - can you buy any other thermostat that dies after 10 years? I'm pretty sure that makes it the worst thermostat ever created since I know plenty of people with working thermostats from the 60s and before.
The constant need to drive profits is just fucking every part of life and I think we're all going to witness a massive economic downturn as everyone gets sick of buying the same, barely-upgraded shit because of forced obsolescence, at worse quality, for far more money. We're all going to have to deal with the fallout while all of the fat cats roll around in hookers and money.
Yes. I feel you. I'm so sick of technology and oftentimes wish I hadn't made it such a major focus of my education and career. We're now looking at moving to a new home for various reasons, and I've told the realtors that a top-3 criteria is the home was built in the 80s or 90s because it was around the time the quality was high but before forced environmental policies and the 2007 recession caused everyone to do things like cheapen home materials to fit new guidelines.
I think the best example of how greedy companies make life worse for everyone is cars that have an auto-engine-shut-off at stoplights. That isn't there for any other reason than it just slightly raises MPG through an arbitrary system that wears on your engine more over time and is super annoying to deal with.
Yes. I feel you, my friend. Rage against the machine.
I fucking hate Gemini
I used to be able to just tell my phone " play Seinfeld" and it would do it. Now it is upgraded to Gemini and has no idea how to open Netflix or even play anything once it's open.
Just wanna pop in to say fuck Jerry Seinfeld, he’s a pig.
He really did turn out to be a garbage person didn't he
That wasn’t a turn, more of a slight veer
This is also sooo clear to me. I feel held hostage to this bullshit while also feeling like there are only 2 options: live completely off the grid OR roll over and just keep letting all these greedy ass corps squeeze me for every penny and bit of data I have while spending more and more time updating things and trying to reconnect them.
I want to revolt aggressively but ffs, I can’t just start a new life on a farm.
There HAS to be some way to get back to reliable products worth buying while also remaining connected to basic digital systems. Pleeeease someone fix waves hands this whole fucking mess!
This reminds me of the if you build it, they will come thing just because the point underlying that premise is that the builders know or care what people want. These days, particularly where tech is concerned, it's kinda shoved down your throat and the mantra is consume this or 'be' consumed. AKA. two sides of the same coin.
None of that ever went away. It's just that technology gradually percolated into the mass market, and became a part of everyone's life, not just techies and geeks, so it became extremely lucrative to target mass-market products and naive end users who want things to be "easy" -- after a certain amount of time, it became evident that those users don't know or care enough about how things actually work to worry about their privacy or maintaining control over their own experience, and that led to the anti-patterns that we see today.
But the earlier type of tech is still around -- it just never stopped requiring a learning curve, and still needs a certain investment of thought and effort, and willingness for the end user to take responsibility for their own usage experience. Most people don't want that, so this is all a in a niche.
Use FOSS software. Switch to Linux. Buy products that use standard, open protocols and don't require SaaS for core functionality from vendors who don't make their revenue from subscriptions. There are many options in every category -- you just have to be willing to look for them, and be willing to learn how they work so you can control them yourself.
You can do it if you just get off the hamster wheel. Don't buy new shit that has all that shit on it. I still have the flat screen we got in '08. No smart nothing. I buy appliances that don't have any of that fancy shit on. If it has wifi don't buy it. Although to be fair I did start a new life on a farm back about 10 years ago.
An upvote for Home Assistant.
Home Assistant is open source, so can't be taken away, and supports most smart systems. You can control everything from Home Assistant.
Why the hell does a home need an assistant? Does it do the dishes? or mop the floors? I think you missed the point of this rant?
I think you underestimate how stupid and short-sighted people truly are.
R/HomeAssistant is the way (as I see you are discovering).
I have added an insane amount of functionality and monitoring to my old (1930s) home, and it’s 100% local. There are no internet services to eventually be killed.
I can so relate to your post. We bought a house in 2020 that was built in 2015 as a ‘smart house’ and none of the tech worked (was supported) a year after we moved in. I asked to just have regular light switches again and was told that would be thousands in repairs. We had to update just to use the lights! A smart house is the damn dumbest thing!
I grind my teeth every time I hear one of those engines turn on. I never want to sell my 2015 truck.
The engine auto shut down thing now makes sense of what I’ve been seeing in drive-through, I thought people were just manually shutting off their engines while they were stopped at the drive-through at a fast food restaurant, turns out I guess it’s primarily automatic, that is a terrible idea that does put more wear and tear on the engine!
You had me in the first half, but lost me along the way. Yes a lot of tech is junk. The easiest way to identify the junk is if it has a low upfront cost but requires a subscription.
I do think your point about building quality of housing is accurate, and yes for most the auto start/stop feature is a net negative.
I also work in tech, use home assistant and have been burned by making poor tech decisions, but I'm not willing to go as far as you did saying that tech is forced down our throats. To me it's more of a buyer beware thing.
I'm right there with y'all!!
I love the sub "buy it for life". Tech, appliances, clothes, etc... everyone sharing their tips on which brands to go with. I too miss just the kitchen stuff alone, all things that were made with real metal and steel, never malfunctioned.
These products still exist. However, they are definitely the expense options. Think heavy stand mixers versus a handheld mixer. They both do the job but the expensive stand mixer made of metal is way more consistent and versatile while the hand mixer has 2 speeds with attachments that break. Scale that to everything. Stoves, ovens, cars, bikes, clothes and furniture. Why sell one every 10-15 years for 2x the price when you can sell 5 over 10-15 years for half the price of the good one.
We’re approaching limits of conventional physics with chip processing
In 2000 transistor size was measured in microns (micrometers), so a 0.25 micron core was equivalent to 250nm. We got significantly smaller over the years down to 14nm before things stalled for a little while. Now we’re at 2nm, and are going to start measuring transistors in Angstrams (10A = 1 nm). Cutting transistor size allows to you to put more transistors on a chip, but you start hitting the limits of conventional physics at these sizes.
CPU Frequency (simply put, the speed of the processor) increased rapidly in the 90s and 2000s when we went from about 33 MHz in the early to mid 90s to 4000Mhz in the mid 2000s and then stalled out since the faster the frequency the greater the heat generated at a given transistor size. The focus switched to packaging multiple processor cores in a single die. Problem is the more cores you cram in with the faster cores you, use more power and the chips generate more heat. Going to smaller and smaller transistors have been the go to for mitigating these impacts, especially in small battery powered devices such as phones and slim laptops. Desktops and larger devices that are plugged in all the time still have to contend with the heat aspect.
Today we are at about 8 Cores and 5400Mhz for a higher end consumer level desktop computer on the CPU.
A lot of tasks have been offloaded to other components such as the GPU (this is where nVidia has made their AI trillions) but that’s for another post.
This is an under-realized statement: we are hitting the physical limits of computing.
The progress of the last 30 years has gone lock-step with chip development, but now that we are nearing the physical limits of what can be done, because transistors are getting to the size of single electrons, we will stop seeing the crazy increases.
And the low-hanging fruit is gone. Maybe AI will usher in a new wave of innovation, but I doubt it.
So instead of innovation creating cool new products, companies will turn to squeezing money out of the existing ones, and in doing so they make the products suck harder and harder.
I’m starting to think we will stop using this stuff as it stops serving us.
Yup, pretty much hit a wall. Cycle time has been relatively stagnant for generations. Density is still increasing but perf. gains from new nodes aren't there anymore. Things like leakage becoming huge issues. Can keep stuffing more devices in a space with things like GAA but how far will that take you?
https://preview.redd.it/n6avrvfjbw6g1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b6dce57955e2df322bc54c0a000488ed1acca2d
I’m going back to analog a lot these days -Smart tvs disconnected from internet
-only watch physical or personally owned digital media and play games I have physical copies of, I was never big into multiplayer anyways . On the rare occasion I watch TV, it’s OTA.
-Reddit is the last social media app I have on my phone and probably gonna dump that also. My phone use pretty much limited to GPS for my car and YouTube tutorials on how to fix things.
-reading more in my free time.
-exercising more in my free time.
-relearning how to be bored.
-These are all things I’ve done or things that I’m actively working toward. I don’t really want to live a digital life anymore.
-Turning off my phone completely at least 2-3 waking/downtime hours a day. If I don’t have something else to distract me, this has been the hardest.
Trying to do the same and trying to model that and implement it for my kids (but it’s hard because the shitty schools have invited tech in everywhere even at very early grades).
The reason Xennials are proud is because we had the great bored upbringing where there was only scheduled tv on a few channels, books, and outside.
There hasnt been an interesting development in actual tech hardware in a long time. Theres literally nothing left to be amazed about. No more first super slim laptop, no more first touchscreen, no more first mp3 player, no more first wireless headphones, no more first wifi etc. Its all behind us now. Now its just going to be lame ass VR stuff and holograms and AI that get less interesting by the second.
Come on bro you don’t want to fold your phone screen in half?
People don’t give a shit anymore.
People are waking up to the reality that they no longer want to work their asses off for the 1%er.
Even the “happiest” countries in the world are starting to crack.
I’m in Canada, and we just received the “most unaffordable housing in the world” award while dropping to being the 15th richest country in the world. We have people with full time jobs living in homeless shelters.
It’s very hard to find people with drive and incentive and hope right now.
Let me give you a different sense of wealth inequality: I’m at 8%er, meaning I’m worth more than 92% of Americans.
You would assume I’d be living in a giant house and have a lavish lifestyle. Fancy meals, nice cars and the like.
The truth is- I’m just middle class. I don’t have a crazy house and we go out to a moderately priced restaurant maybe once a month, because that’s what we can afford. I’m just about to pay off my 5 year old car which we plan to keep for another 10 if we can.
There is SO much wealth at the top, that even those that are doing “well” are not doing that great.
Tech sucks because it became widespread. Companies wanted to find ways to dumb it down for the average fucking dipshit. And they have. And then they found ways to manipulate the dipshits too.
I find myself becoming more and more irrationally annoyed with modern tech, mainly because everything has to hold your hand and patronize you. Like...I understand that not everyone gets technology, but I was programming the family VCR when I was 8 or 9; fuck off with the ELI5 when filling out a form.
At least give me the option to control which prompts or notifications I get.
Irrationally annoyed is my default mode with tech now as well. It has one job to do, please just do it when I ask it to.
Enshitification is a very real thing.
This. This. This.
There's your problem, all smart TVs suck, they all have the worst processors. Stop using them, never connect a TV directly to the Internet, just use it as a dumb TV. Get an Nvidia Shield TV. Or if you can't swing the price then a Google TV, maybe a Roku, or an Apple TV if you are really plugged into the Apple ecosystem. All these devices are fast and work well. No TV has good internal software/processors.
I work in memory care and hate smart tvs. Before smart tvs, my residents were able to watch TV independently for much longer. With smart tvs, some of our residents in personal care and the independent wing struggle with trying watch what they want to. Probably about half the call bell alerts in my unit are because a resident wanted to watch TV, turned it on, and got overwhelmed when they saw the first screen with all the options. Or they don't know how to change inputs when the tv starts on an input that isn't used.
It's also no longer sufficient to turn your tv off to reset it for some models. When trying to stream something feels like you accidentally time traveled back to the 90s, some of my residents have tvs where you have to go 2-4 levels deep in the settings menu to reset it.
Definitely! I’ve been a cord cutter for over 10 years. The only time I have issues like that is when my dongles (Firesticks, chrome casts) are so old they can’t handle the latest app upgrade or technology changes. Also, make sure you get enough speed from your ISP.
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Absolutely this. I have an LG CX and it’s still working flawlessly since I got it. There’s definitely a couple more years in it before I need to upgrade. It was expensive but worth it. “You get what you pay for” etc.
LG CX crew represent. Every year I get tempted by the shiny new TVs coming out, then I turn on my CX and am still wowed by the picture. I expect to go through this again next month during CES.
This is why I use a monitor with my AppleTV.
This is the answer. Low-powered smart TVs with various OSes and the apps keep upgrading with future tech in mind. The problem is, OP, you aren’t upgrading your TVs every 2-3 years like a smartphone, nor should you. Google TVs are better with a more mainstream OS for app developers to mostly get it right and last for a few years. You can also de-bloat an Android/Google TV. Other than that, do what u/LazarusDark suggested.
For now, OP could try factory resetting the TV and make sure there is some free internal storage for processing and cache/buffering for streaming.
OP, your neighbor's VPN streaming BBC won't affect your connection. High-speed over coax might lower during peak times if you are in or around an apartment building. If that is the case, get fiber or Starlink.
Lol, or maybe sell the high seas, put it all on an external drive and plug it into your TV that has the Wi-Fi turned off!
I don't want any of those smart appliances. More parts to break. I don't like having processsors in my car either, just another expensive part to replace if it breaks.
Mine works great
Everyone seems to forget that cable fucking sucked. To watch a 30 minute tv show, you’d suffer 10+ minutes of ads. A ~90 minute movie? Try 2+ hours. It was only good once dvr happened but that’s another charge. I don’t suffer any of the issues on any of my tvs/smart devices that you’re claiming. That said, I’ve also got great internet, and a decent router.
Thank god streaming services haven't started playing aggressively loud ads /s
I’ll take 90 second ads once a video over a 10 minutes of commercials during 1 episode.
They’ll just get worse and worse
Not to mention 2/3 of the cable boxes on the market took a good 10+ seconds between channels if you just used the channel buttons on the remote, and most of them had this extremely shitty slow guide filled with ads on the upper half of the screen the entire time you were scrolling your way to whatever you could find that you didn't really want to watch but was the only thing on.
Having rose colored glasses for cable TV sure is a wild take.
I cancelled my cable about 7 or 8 years ago and don't miss it one bit. If they offered to give it to me for free I'd say no. I wouldn't watch it because of the ads.
My mom still has cable and on the rare occasion that we watch it when I'm visiting her, it is absolutely unbearable how many commercials there are.
Agreed. My cable bill was like $250 and climbing. I dumped cable and went to streaming on an enormous dumb tv a friend gave me. My Firestick might need replacing but the array of commercial free choices I have is amazing. It really is a golden age for TV.
My $3500 Samsung tv cuts on to some dumb ass Samsung free tv channel shit, then I have to switch to hdmi1, TWICE, to get back to Direct TV (I’m so old, but I love my DVR)
Don’t give your TV Internet access. The dumber you can make your Tv the better.
Enjoy your HdMi1 and move on.
Most people should be using Apple TV plus whatever panel they like without internet connection. Smart TVs are evil.
Apple TV really is dialed in. It’s very smooth and kinda just works unless you watch a ton of Netflix
My Samsung tv was doing this out of the blue, switching to the Samsung Free TV after I got done gaming. There is a setting to turn that off, I can’t remember what it was, but I did stop it!
Don’t knock that Samsung TV til you play with it a little. There’s some delightful shit to be found.
My Samsung free tv is set to Ancient Aliens. Don’t even need other streaming but the family has their stuff.
I’m stuck on MST3K and Rifftrax, but the Alfred Hitchcock channel is a nice diversion.
Do tell please, I’m scared to mess with the settings because a couple years ago every few months it would be pink with no sound, then it just stopped, I hate this fucking tv
Fuck them clouds.
Off topic but did the Simpsons come up with the whole old man yelling at clouds thing or did that exist before this episode?
Existed before
Fuck the cloud!
Two things,
1) Enshittification, they're trying to nickel and dime everything
2) Moore's law stopped working (transistor count doubling every 18 months on microchips) due to hitting physical limits of how much we could shrink them
Because of 2, things don't actually advance as rapidly, they still are improving but it's harder to do so.
Beyond that most of the complaints you made just aren't true.
Fiber / Gigabit internet is widely available (compared to DSL / dialup)
I use Apple TV with a wired connection and it never stutters (do you have bad wifi?). Get a bluray player and you don't even need the internet. Now you can also just use a single remote to turn on your tv / apple tv / receiver (surround sound) which you couldn't do before (yay CEC).
We used to be constantly infected with malware (napster / kazaa) the app updates prevent those to a great extent and can be set to auto update.
Wifi is a train wreck these days. 25-ish years ago you had those affordable firewall/gateway/ap devices and their density was low. Maybe a handful in an apartment building with thin walls and you couldn’t hear your neighbors from inside a suburban house. Fast forward to about 5 years ago and this arms race of “mesh networking” WiFi backhaul devices starts with every device screaming at maximum power, so I can not only hear my neighbors from within my suburban house, but each house has 4-8 of these stupid devices burning every last bit of spectrum (the access points in my house can hear 243 APs broadcasting in my suburban neighborhood right now, and 23 of those have stronger signals than the next strongest AP in my house, which is fucking ridiculous). There are no channels that aren’t packed around me, especially in the 2.4GHz band. It’s no wonder that WiFi sucks for everyone. My house has 5 wired APs all broadcasting as low as possible for smooth roaming, but that’s work and/or money and creating a tragedy of the commons is an easy way to make money for these repeater companies.
I feel like enshitification gives tech bros hardons.
Enshittification is basically the process of charging more to deliver less. Of course the boards of the corporations of the people building and selling things love it.
enshittification gives guys with MBA's a hardon, tech bros just want to make tech do things and get paid.
MBA's are the ones with their KPI's and OKR's that you have to hit and that means ship faster and cheaper until the company runs out of things to fuck with and people stop buying their product, so they use their MBA knowledge to hire consultants to lay people off by the thousands, sell the company to private equity and they either harvest the brand for cash to someone going for a nostalgia play or for the patents to sue people around the world for copying their shitty tech.
I had a remote in 2008 that would control all of my devices. You had to program it a little bit but it did everything.
It turned on my projector, receiver, and whatever input device. It changed everything to proper settings. It would change the audio settings on the receiver depending if we were playing video games or watching movies or TV.
It was a great device.
Capitalism. It's the problem with just about everything.
Self hosting is liberation. Fuck big tech and their enshittificated rental economy.
If buying ain't owning-
Then taking ain't stealing-
Host your own local media, your own cloud, and your own music. Dig out your old iPod and rip your old movies and DVDs. Stop paying big tech to fuck your wallet and spy on your movements.
The old Internet is still here and the old guys that used to make it all work from our basements and closets are still here. We're still hosting websites and fooling around with tech for free, we're just not on your social media propaganda feed showing it all off.
Big tech sells you what you could have always had for free, they just did the half hour of learning for you.
Want not shitty tech? Stop using shitty tech and roll your own.
Primarily, the reason is the need for constant growth in profits. C-Suites are Hell Bent for Leather to get 5%+ annual growth without understanding math at all.
They want this growth every single year without realizing that it very quickly becomes impossible to achieve in real word settings unless everyone in the C-Suite become psychopaths.
They reduce the range of products offered, then they reduce the quality of products offered.
Then they go after employees. Stagnant pay, fewer benefits, no avenues for promotion. Worse working conditions and ever declining benefits and pay. Sure, some companies treat their employees like gods, but that is less than a dozen out of hundreds of thousands of companies.
...that is what is left of anyone who hasn't been outsourced, off-shored, near-shored or H-1B'd into oblivion....which is a number of Americans that grows smaller by the day. What, 300,000 Americans in tech lost their jobs in tech in the last two years?
The decent into madness continues as avenues of revenue have been wrung out. Then everyone wants to go to a subscription model and tack AI onto everything that has an electron in it or a pulse.
Windows 11 with Copilot enabled? It is fucking everywhere, and NONE OF IT WORKS. Try to build a PC at home with Windows 11 and don't have internet? You can go get fucked is exactly what you can do. It will NOT install without internet. Kind of a neat trick that it has universal WIFI drivers but they don't work on most machines.
These days, the only way to get a working homebuilt PC is with Linux. Drivers? Fuck that. They are in the kernel. Full load out of apps and codecs? Standard. 15 minutes from plugging in USB install drive to a patched and operational OS....no account somewhere or internet needed.
And it just goes fucking on and on. I hate using my Iphone because I have to learn new swipes and trying to figure out what pixel to balance my thumb on to get some fucking window to pop up.
My TV? Every single time I turn it on, something has to do some system update or app update or some FUCKING THING. Major releases change the UI because let's try to make Irina jump off a cliff for laughs is what.
I bought a house a few years ago, and it had some fancy All In One alarm/HVAC system. Front door had a key code. Doorbell had a camera on it. IT NEVER FUCKING WORKED. The HVAC would shut off at 2AM with no way of turning back on. -20F outside? Fuck you. 95F outside? Fuck you. It also worked the garage door...which never worked. I spent half a day ripping that crap out, and replaced the "smart" thermostat with a $20 unit from Lowe's. I also threw away the electronic locks on the front door. Suddenly, my house was comfortable and I could GET INTO IT.
So anyway, everyone is pursuing smaller dollars. Movies are shit because Netflix will buy pig shit and charge steak prices for it. Tiny profit upfront for the people making the movie because no one sells blu ray anymore. Blu ray and DVD is where productions made their real cash. All that is gone, so all we get are lazy prequels, sequels, reboots, and cheapo horror movies.
This whole thing isn't limited to tech. Movies. Groceries. Cars. Housing. Insurance of all types. Clothing. Dear god clothing sucks ass these days. Expensive disposable trash.
Don't even get me started on health care. My mom had cancer, and 15 minutes worth of radiation treatment. $75,000. She has excellent health coverage, but...damn. A simple ambulance ride+surgery for appendicitis can deduct $100k from your bank account if you aren't insured.
And we have Orange Doofus telling me I am stupid and affordability crisis is a myth and the economy is going gangbusters.
I am actually quite numb with disbelief over all this....and why is Rod Serling narrating my life.
I agree with the sentiment in general.
But in your specific instance, the main source of the problem is the “smart” TV. The built-in parts that handle the streaming tasks are usually garbage. The control and interface for streaming on smart TV generally suck too.
Get a Roku (or similar product) with HDMI cable that connect to the TV, and save yourself all those headache and frustration.
Note: I only mentioned Roku because that’s what I have. It is many years old (can’t remember exactly when I got it, but definitely over 6) and still works just fine with my TV that is pushing 10. I don’t follow the current market of the streaming device since I don’t need a new one. (I saw in passing that the stick style that plugs directly into the TV doesn’t function quite as well. Not sure if that’s true, but a quick research is all you need.)
If you have some money, you can access the better and best tech. If you have skill and knowledge, it's the fucking golden age of technology.
Grew up building and working on computers in the early 90's, ran a BBS, got out of it for a long time until the last 5 years, got back into it.... And holy shit, the free, open source options to do so many cool things combined with AI to help learn very quickly is fucking insane. At 45, I am doing things with my home lab my 17 year old self would not believe. Plus the games.
Eh, but shit breaks on purpose now. Doesn’t matter what skill or knowledge you have. A lot of products built today are built to be broken sooner than before. Corporate greed has exponentially gotten worse twitch the private equitization of everything.
I must admit, it is on a lot of fronts. I can buy an old (by that, I mean it was released in 2021) Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for $15, which is about the size of a stick of gum, that is roughly equivalent to an under-clocked Raspberry Pi 4 B with less RAM. One of these with a decent sized microSD card, some basic electronics & programming skills, and a little patience, and you can control virtually anything in this modern world. It has about the same processing power as an average computer from circa 2010-2012 and about the same amount of RAM as circa 2007. This is substantial for most “cloud” services the average person uses and plenty for a light Linux distro.
I have cheap WiFi connected outlets, power strips, and bulbs everywhere that have a dead simple API exposed to the local network and therefore they can all be easily controlled with a simple OSS Python library.
A Pi5 with an NVMe drive is ridiculously powerful for something so cheap and tiny. It’s mind blowing what I did with slow ancient embedded platforms that would be a piece of cake today for virtually anyone with the slightest interest.
Ok! I am now the owner of a Raspberry Pi 2 W. I used to dabble 30 years ago. What should I learn, and then do with it?
Yeah, guys like us live in a completely different world. It's just so fucking hard to quantify without sounding like a massive douche nozzle:
"Everything you think you know about tech and how it works is wrong."
Basically! I am a high school teacher, and while many adults think kids are super tech savvy these days because they use apps on a phone, they are almost completely tech illiterate. It blew their minds when I showed them how to nest directories in their Google Drive, or that you can highlight an unknown word in Google docs and hit ctrl+shift+y to define it. They know next to nothing.
When I told one class that if they banned Tiktok, android users can still sideload an APK (tough luck Apple users), they glazed over. I figured that would spark SOME curiosity about how it all works. But nope. Ehh. Whatever.
That's a smart neighbor you have if hes VPN-ing to London so he can unlock geolocation on the BBC app. Amazing way to get free TV! It also gets you all the free PPV boxing and UFC matches. PLUS! British tv and crime dramas way better than ours!
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1pl90c7/the_plan_is_to_make_the_internet_worse_forever/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Subscriptions
No idea why you’re having issues with your tv. Never had any trouble with my Roku tv. I’m a moron too. If I can work it then anyone can. Otho has ever stuttered or buffered and I have almost all the paid streaming services.
Look up enshittification and planned obsolescence. That is why. Manufacturers also purposely sell shitty low quality versions of things for Black Friday sales. It's just not that profitable to sell good things to people. And in the USA, publicly traded companies have to keep increasing their profits or the shareholders will sue their asses.
The Enshittification of everything continues.
Once a handful of megacorps took over every market segment they all started to suck.
Technology sucks because everything has been bastardized, sold out and tuned into a for-profit vessel for engagement. The internet was only pure when it was curated by basement dwelling weirdos.
Edit: eBaums World pwns u.
The tech has outpaced out abilities so it’s flattened.
I’ve read that Sony really wants to make a PlayStation six but the developers are like we can barely maximize the PS5 capabilities so we don’t know if we could even develop anything that would push that far to warrant a new like chip.
Same thing with phones there are plenty fast enough wireless speeds are plenty fast. Enough cameras are more than good enough. Video is 4K. We don’t need anything larger, but we just don’t have the need for more tech in someways.
Kind of thought this AI thing is the most forcing us to like we need to use more processing power, but it’s not really giving anything back to value
Even when the PS5 Pro came out my first thought was “why are you releasing this when nobody has figured out how to fully utilize the base model?”
The only change in tech that made the PS4 Pro a valid upgrade was the widespread adoption of 4K TV’s. But nothing has really changed during the PS5 era.
Raise the colors!
Microplastics, the systematic destruction of democracy, the rise of Javascript-everything. Take your pick.
I still believe technology is what we make of it. When everything sucks there is ripe opportunity to make something better. Remember when software was empowering? When hardware wasn't riddled with spyware and designed to be obsolete in a year? Yeah, we should be making products like that.
Smart tvs suck. They toss cheap parts in them to call them smart. My Apple TV is a champ. The tv it’s plugged into sucks though.
There are a lot of issues with modern technology, but what you’re describing is not one of them. Just plug your TV into the router with an Ethernet cable. We have the Google mesh network, and got an access point with an Ethernet connection that we put near our TV for this purpose.
Nope. Peacock, HBO and others still fucking suck even when my TV is connecting via Ethernet. We have 1gig speeds and it still fucks up. I don't know if it's a shitty CDN system the streamers use or what it is, but it sucks.
Don’t connect with your TV. Get an external streaming box.
It’s possible to get a TV with good internal processing. But it costs more. It will eventually go obsolete.
TVs are so cheap now. Like stupid cheap. So yeah. Get a cheap TV and external streaming box. It get a nice TV. Use the internal stuff for a few years. But know that one day you need to factory reset it. Not connect to the wifi. And use a streaming box.
Because people moved away from hardware to develop apps and more software. There really hasn’t been anything revolutionary since the iPad
Technology doesn't improve itself. People improve technology. I might be nervous if technology gains the ability to improve itself, as who knows what decisions it might make..
It's because we went from analog to everything digital. In the analog works you tune into a frequency. In the digital world it'd either on or off. Either it works or it doesn't
I ran into this trying to replace my kindle recently. I have a Kindle Voyager from 2014, and there is literally not a device on the market today that can match it, which just seems insane. I make decent money, I’d pay a premium for it if one existed. Everything they have now is plastic construction and you have to tap the touch screen to turn pages. The one I have now is metal and has pressure sensitive page turn sensors on the bezel so you can just squeeze and don’t get finger prints on the screen.
I think I’m just going to find a way to replace the battery in my old one instead, but I would have happily plunked down $250 to get a new one with USB C charging if such a thing was available.
Ya the whole needing a subscription for everything sucks, and nothing can communicate with each other sucks. Can't just plug and play anymore. What really sucks tho is needing to take out a second mortgage if you want tech other than bottom of the barrel Walmart brands. I mean $2k for a top of the line iPhone is freaking stupid!
Enshitification…there’s a good book on this.
I have a Sonos that after I changed my password I cannot reconnect for the life of me. I hate “modern tech” so much. I recently found my n64 from ‘97 and after taking it apart controllers as well I have it working like it’s day 1 of ownership.
Late-stage capitalism and enshittification.
Look up enshittyfication.
Because everything is on a subscription service and it’s also tracking everything you do and everywhere you go. The data industry is a billion dollar industry. Our attention is the target demographic now. Whatever they can throw at us to engage us and take up all of our time.
r/enshittification
It's all product from release to release with little inovation and even less privacy.
They want to produce it cheaper. And sell it to you for more. Also software as a service.
Wtf do I have ads on my smart TV that I paid full price for. That's some bullshit. I avoid smart appliances everywhere I can.
And the constant app updates just to justify people's jobs. We don't want the software to change. We don't want the UI to get overhauled. We just want it to work.
I’ll be honest, it doesn’t suck. Most of it is great, as long as one pays a little attention/buy the higher quality stuff.
Smart tvs are POS, they ar just there to monitor your habits.
Get an Apple TV or a blue ray, or plex home server. All are great pieces of modern technology.
Anything’s that’s free/ad supported is probable a POS.
But yeah I feel you, there’s a lot of bullshit out there. I see people using instagram, facebook, google products etc just becaue that’s all they knoe and i feel bad for them.
Like those things have their place, but don’t be a sucker on social media 24/7 or uploading all your data to Gmail
About a year ago I swore off subscription services aside from my daily, physical newspaper. I self host wherever possible. I have a blog on a Raspberry Pi. I have a NAS acting as bulk storage and serving my music and movies, and I'm looking at migrating to Home Assistant, having unplugged from Alexa.
It's a fun learning experience, and going self-hosted is one way of avoiding complete enshittification, but it would be so much more convenient if we could just rely on off the shelf tech.
The thing that pisses me off is the broken bullshit that companies do to make you give up. I have an included subscription to HBO Max with my phone plan. It is an old plan but they can’t take the subscription away. Instead, it stops working every 1-3 weeks and won’t log in or verify with the carrier. I have to play with it for a while until it finally cooperates, sometimes across multiple days, then log all the devices back in.
I wish I never let my wife know it was included, because it’s miserable. The crazy thing is that before it was dropped from new plans, it just worked for years.
My wife also subscribes to Spotify and it skips randomly while using it in the car. There’s nothing I can do to even diagnose it, let alone fix it, it’s just this persistent annoyance. It doesn’t affect my phone with Apple Music.
Her car also likes my phone instead of hers and it pisses her off that it connects to mine by default even if she’s inside the car and I am outside.
For the most part, I don’t have the issues you describe, though. My TV rarely experiences random buffering, but I’m on fiber, the TV is wired, and I have an unusually decent home network (wireless is just everywhere inside, all the time, like in a tech company office). I did a similar setup for my kid’s school and everyone there is just blown away to the point they have nearly doubled their daily peak device count since I did it, adding more frequently.
This is definitely a concern of mine & I think its only going to get worse. Smaller companies who make quality items get squeezed out by Amazon & big retailers, and they have minimal incentive to make something that will last. Eventually its going to be impossible to purchase things new that arent online, and dont have AI.
My sister asked for a pet food feeder for Christmas, I have one from around 2019 that is fantastic. I wanted to try to buy the same model, and the manufacturer has now “improved” it - the new model now requires an app and Internet connectivity just to function! Reviews are people saying over and over won’t connect, won’t connect, etc. They no longer even make an unconnected version.
I managed to find someone selling a new in box version of the older model on eBay and snapped it up, but that’s not going to last forever.
I relate to this a lot. Too much of a "good thing" has also poisoned people to being completely impatient & entitled.
I feel you. As an example, I really don't care for computers. I've often said that hardware development could have stopped cold in the '80s and it wouldn't actively affect my lifestyle—this is what I'm talking about. I could roll into Babbage's in 2025 to buy whatever Bizarro World NES games Hideo Kojima, Hidetaka Miyazaki, or Ed Boon dreamed up within this technologically frozen reality, and be perfectly satisfied. But yeah, don't really care for computers or all the headaches they bring, either at home, the bank, the supermarket, etc.
Note that this extends to consumer goods, I still would want software advancement and design philosophy to move industries forward, medical and otherwise.
I believe it coincides with the shutdown of most accessable customer service.
Once they figured out how to seperate out the clients from actual people when seeking help, and once they were able to make obtaining a refund or service difficult, they stopped caring about quality in product.
Technology is way better now. It’s just that it’s better at achieving its goals. Serving your sick kid Bluey without squeezing as much ad revenue as possible out of both of you isn’t the goal. Serving the customers (the advertisers) the product (your and your kid’s attention) was always the goal.
Once they figured out they could make more money harvesting your information and using paying customers as market research they focused on maximizing this ability in technology rather than improving the actual product itself.
Because Maximizing value for shareholders!
Every single thing has to make money in every way possible. Even post-sale. Your fridge needs ads. Your air freshener needs ads. Your pen needs ads. Even your doom-scrollable ad engine (Instagram/FB/Twitter/Reddit) needs ads while you're being fed the ads you actually wanted to see.
It doesn't really. It's a bit of confirmation bias mixed with nostalgia and selection bias.
The problem today is shitty business models more than sub par tech. Many things are harder to repair. But planned obsolescence was a thing back then too. You're not remembering all the junk back then. Like super expensive plasma TVs and burn-in. Constantly failing power supplies and capacitors. MP3 players with shit flash memory corruption. Printers that hardly lasted a few years. Dead pixels on LCD displays were considered normal. Etc
With TVs, the difference in the best panel tech today compared to just ten years ago is night and day.
Depending on what tech you're into it could be a golden age. Like networking gear is making tonnes of progress in the consumer and small business space. I'm currently connected to a gig speed on wifi and 10g hardwired with a Ubiquity access point and router/gateway at pretty decent prices. This would be insane ten years ago.
A ubiquitous example is the reliable ,tiny and super fast solid state storage today compared to crap flash memory and click of death hard drives of the 90s and 00s.
I get what you’re saying about control, and I do what (little) I can. I stay small with my footprint and as much in the Apple ecosystem as possible. Not that Apple is better or worse, I’m just consistent with it.
Our fridge, lighting, washing machine, all the things are dumb, just like me. We use our iPad Pro’s as our TV’s. We’re on an old mom n pop cable company for internet access, and honestly it runs pretty great.
A laptop is still technology.
You can still buy DVDs/Blu-ray and players. Some are portable for about under $100. I have a few of my favorite series and a player for when the Internet goes out.
If you get that mad about things, maybe invest in the old school version to avoid the issue in the future.
Capitalism
Every one firess the QC department first. Also - control your kids temper or they'll get worse
Capitalism. That's all.
Honestly streaming apps just suck. Lol Poor design, buggy, repetitively showing the same shows you already scrolled by three times..
Enshittificarion. If things really were simple to use, accessible to all, and free, tech and media companies couldn’t make money on them.
smart tv's have never been good. Spend a tiny amount of money for a box. Apple TV works great, zero problems. I'm sure there are others that work great too.
technology is generally great, if you don't buy bad tech.
you also have to learn the tech and not just go off 20 year old back in my day nonsense about why this and that can't be good because things are good, they're just different. Different doesn't mean bad, it just means you have to understand the new thing same as you understood the old thing.
What do you think happens when everyone has a gadget that connects to the internet. It's not just the home computer anymore. It's the pet feeders, fridges, ovens, garage doors, door locks, tvs, pads, etc. If we don't improve the infrastructure delivering the internet service, then the system is going to get bogged down.
Greed.
Because technology nowadays is designed to fail, and turn a profit. There’s no money in reliable technology, if it’s not going to break, and cost you more money to fix, it’s not worth producing. Manufactures have zero integrity anymore.
Same reason why all of our vehicles are basically disposable, they’re designed to keep you alive, and mostly satisfied for the shortest time possible, and be replaced after a bad accident.
It for reasons like these that I devoted my career to supporting FOSS like Linux. Which is designed by people who are passionate about what they do, and release their applications for free. Don’t get me wrong, there’s bad open source software out there, but it typically doesn’t last long, as the community doesn’t tolerate it, and someone forks the code and makes it better.
Check out the podcast Better Offline. He describes exactly how big tech enshittifies their products to maximize profits for shareholders.
I have grown up making a living the capitalist way and life has been good to me. I always thought I was doing what you need to do to get ahead for your family and retirement and all that.
After turning 40 it has been apparent that I just hate this system even as a benefactor. Late stage capitalism is very real. It is very clear to see how this ends up with very few at the top and so much capital and resources are burned on shit that does nothing to improve our civilization, but rather extract as much as possible from the wage earning populous who is livestock to be farmed for their income.
Tech is the greatest offender in this, and I believe that profit seeking ad nauseum is the main reason for it. All empires fall and not to get too political but this year has been pretty eye opening to how very real that impossible thought about America is.
We produce debt and consumerism while china has reinvested in infrastructure and lifting many out of poverty and the Cold War feels like a rabbit and hare situation. Their version of socialism for the proletariat and gov regulated capitalism for corps/billionaires has more staying power than our version of communism for corporations/billionaires and raw screwing of hard ass capitalism for the lower class proletariat. Health care is Americas greatest example of our greed before citizens policy. The surge in gambling (kalshi/polymarket/sports/options trading/crypto) is very telling as well. The focus of tech isn’t to make our lives better anymore, it is to further extract capital from the citizens until there is nothing left.
Maybe your nearby neighbors use their microwave a lot, which disrupts wifi signals. Streaming apps often suck at recovering from disruptions on their own, but seem to manage when you close the playback and start it again. Another possibility is that your rounter’s electronics are broken.
I have replaced my wifi router probably three or more times in about 15 years. The standard evolved, but not so much it would make any perceivable difference. Features increased, but nothing that I need was added. Updates stopped, but they were so rare anyway that they did nothing for security. The only reason I had to keep replacing them was that the electronics in them rot. Or rather they dry. Some of the incredibly cheap components depend on tiny amount of liquid in them. When they are produced to be even cheaper, the liquid drys in a few years and the device starts to work poorly.
Back then the tec was the focus. Were as now its all profit. Why spend a load of money on r&d to make something really good when you can just make something not very good, charge more for it and ppl will buy it anyway.
Then add to that you are now the product that the company’s want so they can sell your data and make yet even more money.
Its comes down to 💰
Enshittification. We're just used to things sucking as the standard of living continue to nosedive.
At least if a "good" version of something existed I'd know how much to pay for it. 😂
Welcome to Capitalism
Enshittification.
Enshitification.
Corporatisation.
You will own nothing from five companies and it doesn't matter if you like it or not. There are no other alternatives.
We did have to blow Nintendo cartridges to get them to work. And then slide them in just so, but hardly ever all the way. I think all technology has their own quirks.
That being said, you do bring up valid points about buffering and intermittent weak signals. There has been a shift recently where people want physical media again. There has been a steady rise in CD, vinyl, DVD ownership. This rise is being contributed to both nostalgia for some and frustration for most.
Google pooped the bed on their TV products.. that's why we went to Roku finally and it's great.
The greatest thing we ever did from a TV perspective is get those $50 digital bunny ears so we can watch the four local channels being broadcast in our urban area. No fees because it's just radio waves being broadcast to our house. There's not a whole lot of incentive for anyone to advertise free TV but it's still there!
The answer is corporate greed. Everything can point to it.
Smart tvs suck. Get an AppleTV
Google that video of the tech critic that went around yesterday explaining exactly why. The enshitification of the internet is what he was talking about—specifically how it is now more profitable to make things worse because capitalism is a stupid fucking system.
Technology sucks now just like everything else because they went full bore profit mode on every tiny aspect of every single device and/or service. They've been able to find newer ways to monetize and invade your privacy and just constantly blast you with ads in one way or another. I love the speed of the modern internet but I mean I've had a 1gb connection for a decade plus now so I'd gladly go back ten years to a slightly calmer tempest.
I've been learning more Linux, backing up everything I can offline. Im anticipating a future where I have to pay for each toilet flush (and our grandkids might have to pay an Oxygen Fee per person) so it might be good to have a system that can do /some/ things in case the Internet Falls. I trust most of us have our CDs still, hang on to those! Im intentionally using a computer from 2010 for its CDROM. Luckily external USBs are around. Rip your CDs. Archive for Those Who Come After! I once digitized a cassette from a friend's Dad, talking to his French grandma in the 70s. They were happy but I felt it was historically important to save that. /end nerd talk
Enshitification. Cory Doctorow made an excellent podcast about this. Who Broke The Internet?
Corporate culture demanding endless profit growth. If you can’t get more sales you have to increase margins.
Tech companies are started by engineers but eventually handed off to a second generation of c suite sales and marketing people.
Capitalism is indefensible.
I have computers or a Roku connected to every tv in my house. Way better than using the built in smart tv crap.
It's because 4K TVs require more bandwidth to play 4K content, and your Internet service may not be fast enough. The other problem (if you have 5G home internet) is how many other people are streaming at the same time on your ISP's network. In rural areas, 5G can sometimes be faster, but usually even the higher-speed DSL is faster.
Enshitification is a real thing.
But tvs are stupid cheap now, so there's that.
Everythings built to break so you could buy new things. Its a pain
Money money money. The more you can monetize a thing the more its gonna suck. Rocks were awesome until the 80’s when they sprouted googly eyes. Since then people pay so much for shitty rocks. Its in all walks of life and the internet is just rocks talking thru air using telepathy (invisible data waves??)
I’m with you. Also I get pissed off why I have to press so many buttons to do things. Companies have decided what they want you to see and the process they want you to follow….. not the fastest and most efficient way to do what you want… and it ‘s shit
Planned obsolescence & own nothing.
I thought this would be about the fact that after smartphones were invented it seemed like nothing else new is invented. The market is even mad you are not buying new smartphones that are the same as your old one (or worst)
Tech is fucking amazing nowadays…if you’re actually a technologist.
For example, let’s say I want to build my own alarm clock. Why? Who would do that? I would! I can freely download a thousand open source packages to help me make it happen. I can freely watch a thousand YouTube videos to show me how. I can cheaply equip my garage with equipment like 3D printers. I can cheaply and easily manufacture parts by just submitting a couple files online. You can do it all on this whole operating system that’s free called Linux; you might have heard of it.
The tech utopia that you all want is readily available. You’re just too addicted to convenience to try it.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
It didn't work that well back then either, lol. You want Bluey!? Tough! It's not on right now! You want Wi-Fi? Tough! Doesn't exist at all. Like you're claiming that technologies that didn't even exist were better back then, that wasn't the case at all.
You could wire your TV to your network, you could configure your Wi-Fi properly, you could complain to your ISP. It probably has little to do with your neighbor using a VPN.
The term is enshittification. Coined by Corey Doctorow, it describes exactly the trend you describe. He just published a book by the same name.
Going to digital OTA broadcasting has caused so much rage for me.
I used to be able to watch less than perfect reception shows and just ignore the slight fuzziness.
Now it’s just pixelated and laggy audio or straight up frozen screen.
As someone who lives rural this has been a terrible experience. I pretty much don’t watch TV anymore.
Because profit and growth matter more than users. Things ship half-finished, get "updated" constantly, track everything, and optimize for engagement instead of usefulness. Simpler, stable, user-first design stopped being the goal.
I have a preschooler and an elementary aged kid. They are perfectly happy with physical dvds checked out from the library, watched on a Sony tv from 2008. They have old iPads with games i installed that do not need to be connected to wifi. Great for plane and train rides. We are far from off grid, but I don’t see any need to live with smart devices/in a smart home.
Mass produced technology needs to be backed by money. Big business doesn't care about how convenient something is unless that convenience helps their bottom line. Technology now is being fine tuned to create money with no regard to making our lives easier.