Minor things that bother you

[Bruce]

If not for the higher chance of vehicle break-ins, having rental cars easily identifiable would be so much better for everyone. Drivers could leave a bit more room or give them leeway because a rental car driver is less likely to be familiar with local roads (and thus prone to sudden and unpredictable actions). I've had some close calls with people who clearly just got off the plane and into a rental car out of Sea-Tac, and the plates are almost always from the Sun Belt.

[SEWIGuy]

Why won't you store the credit card information?

[hotdogPi]

The more databases you put your credit card number in, the more likely it is to be stolen.

[Rothman]

 Y'know their still shippin them over here. They put em in cars, they put em in yer tv. They put em in stereos and those little radios you stick in your ears. They even put em in watches, they have teeny gremlins for our watches!

[SEWIGuy]

The more databases you put your credit card number in, the more likely it is to be stolen.

Which is why I check the activity on my main card every day and have alerts set up with my other one.

[Max Rockatansky]

I had my replacement for an expiring credit card stolen out of my community mailbox a couple weeks ago.  The fraud alert kicked in pretty fast and it wasn't too difficult to shut down.  I copied my Fresno PD report with the USPS. 

[ZLoth]

Fresh on my mind:  The bullshit one goes through to set up an online account to pay bills.  I'm not storing my credit card information; I'm not uploading or downloading PII documents, I just want to pay the damn bill.  First I have to pick a password that meets a dozen criteria, then I have to remember my kindergarten teacher's last name or what was my favorite color or song when I set up the account or what is my mother-in-law's favorite food, then I have to go through the Captcha crap (sometimes multiple times).

Here's a hint... for the "kindergarten teacher's last name", "favorite color or song", or "mother-in-law's favorite food", I use some b-s answers like, "Ringo Starr", "Yesterday's Enterprise", and "Ford Thunderbird", and store the answers in a secure password manager (not LastPass). Noone is asking me for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth here.

[ZLoth]

Either way, emergency responders should have been more Johnny-on-the-spot with handling traffic. They should have started diverting thru traffic onto the frontage road at Exit 81 as soon as they arrived on scene. Google Earth imagery also shows an outlet to the frontage road a short distance East of Exit 79. It may be for DOT/first responder use. Still, that could have helped clear a lot of the traffic blockage.

Before any says "Changeable Message Signs" (CMS) for notification, the accident occurred right at the line of the Dallas/Paris transportation districts per https://its.txdot.gov/its/District/DAL/dms-messages. There is exactly one CMS sign between Royce City and Greenville, and it is for eastbound IH-30 traffic.

[Scott5114]

Fresh on my mind:  The bullshit one goes through to set up an online account to pay bills.  I'm not storing my credit card information; I'm not uploading or downloading PII documents, I just want to pay the damn bill.  First I have to pick a password that meets a dozen criteria, then I have to remember my kindergarten teacher's last name or what was my favorite color or song when I set up the account or what is my mother-in-law's favorite food, then I have to go through the Captcha crap (sometimes multiple times).  Screw it, I'll mail you a check (let's not get into how more or less secure that is) and you can deal with handling it.

See, I had basically the opposite experience setting up my online utility accounts for the house we just bought in Las Vegas. My wife was the one who called and set up all the accounts, so all the bills are in her name. But they had little problem at all with me creating accounts for all of them and the computers don't seem to care that email for someone named Renee is going to an email address to someone named Scott.

Captchas are annoying but they are nowhere near as annoying as two-factor authentication. I don't really care if anyone logs into my Southwest Gas account—what are they gonna do, pay my gas bill for me?—but I still have to fuck about with security codes. The worst ones are the ones where you have to wait for the code to show up. To pass the time you start doing something else, then you forget you were even paying your bill and never get back to it. (Or at least that's how it goes for me, thanks to ADHD. Maybe I should sue them for discrimination.)

I agree that security questions are the worst, though. Especially since they seem to be so great at picking questions that don't apply to me. They always want to work in questions about siblings and children. I have neither. Maybe I just need to designate a fictional character as "my son" and answer all the questions that way.

[J N Winkler]

I really hate CAPTCHAs.  The State of Connecticut contracting platform, which I need to use to download ConnDOT construction plans, now uses Google ReCaptcha not just to protect each file, but also to impose a delay (meaning additional screens with tiles that you have to click before the CAPTCHA is deemed solved) if the algorithm decides you have been downloading too much within a short period of time.  When I caught up with ConnDOT signing contracts last month, this meant I had to use a VPN and hop servers every so often to keep the solve delay down.

[J N Winkler]

Captchas are annoying but they are nowhere near as annoying as two-factor authentication. I don't really care if anyone logs into my Southwest Gas account—what are they gonna do, pay my gas bill for me?—but I still have to fuck about with security codes. The worst ones are the ones where you have to wait for the code to show up. To pass the time you start doing something else, then you forget you were even paying your bill and never get back to it. (Or at least that's how it goes for me, thanks to ADHD. Maybe I should sue them for discrimination.)

One approach to unwanted 2FA I have considered is to have the codes sent to me via email, which in theory allows me to write a script module to monitor the local copy of my inbox for the code and then feed it to the server when it arrives.  I haven't coded an implementation yet, however, because the one server I use regularly that has 2FA also has the ability to detect a command-line user agent (and deny it access to secured resources) even if it supplies the same cookie and headers as the browser.

I agree that security questions are the worst, though. Especially since they seem to be so great at picking questions that don't apply to me. They always want to work in questions about siblings and children. I have neither. Maybe I just need to designate a fictional character as "my son" and answer all the questions that way.

I think there is an expectation that false or fictional answers will be set for such security questions, as this prevents the account from being hacked by someone familiar with the user's biography.  Of course, once you start telling lies of this kind, you need to maintain a bible (in the fiction writer's sense) to keep them straight.

My main concern about such questions is that they cause all kinds of FUD about what answer will be deemed acceptable if they ever need to be used for account recovery.  If the question is "Relative's birthplace" and the answer you type in is "Gypsum, Kansas", then are you locked out if you type "Gypsum Kansas" in a recovery scenario?

[Scott5114]

I think there is an expectation that false or fictional answers will be set for such security questions, as this prevents the account from being hacked by someone familiar with the user's biography.  Of course, once you start telling lies of this kind, you need to maintain a bible (in the fiction writer's sense) to keep them straight.

Thus designating a fictional character as the person you are answering for, since the bible will already exist in some form or fashion. Then the security aspect shifts to which fictional character's biography is being used.

My main concern about such questions is that they cause all kinds of FUD about what answer will be deemed acceptable if they ever need to be used for account recovery.  If the question is "Relative's birthplace" and the answer you type in is "Gypsum, Kansas", then are you locked out if you type "Gypsum Kansas" in a recovery scenario?

And of course, "Gypsum, KS", "Gypsum KS", and just plain "Gypsum" or "Kansas" or "67448" would likely be ruled incorrect, too, despite all being correct.

[kkt]

Y'know their still shippin them over here. They put em in cars, they put em in yer tv. They put em in stereos and those little radios you stick in your ears. They even put em in watches, they have teeny gremlins for our watches!

Maybe "they" do, but I don't.  My car doesn't have my credit card number.  My TV doesn't have my credit card number.  My stereo doesn't, and I don't have little radios stuck in my ears.  My watch is mechanical and doesn't have any credit card information.

[formulanone]

The only plus side (sort of) is that I learned CAPTCHA actually is an anagram:  Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.  Lord, have mercy on us.

Computers suck at drawing the correct number of fingers on a hand. I'm just terrible about getting the correct number of digits to not look like they'd been through a few rounds of a garbage disposal machine.

[kernals12]

Since the California wildfires, news articles have been making it sound like LA is continually building deeper and deeper into the hills when, in reality, few new homes have been built in the Santa Monica Mountains since the 1970s.

[vdeane]

Y'know their still shippin them over here. They put em in cars, they put em in yer tv. They put em in stereos and those little radios you stick in your ears. They even put em in watches, they have teeny gremlins for our watches!

Maybe "they" do, but I don't.  My car doesn't have my credit card number.  My TV doesn't have my credit card number.  My stereo doesn't, and I don't have little radios stuck in my ears.  My watch is mechanical and doesn't have any credit card information.

Me neither.  I've never set up Google Wallet or whatever it's called, and I don't care to.  I don't use autopay for most bills either; the only ones that do are the ones that have to or that had very strong incentives too, namely E-ZPass, Verizon FiOS, Cricket Wireless, my web host, and streaming services.  I think there might be a couple others; in any case, any sign-on that has a saved card gets a stronger than normal password and stays signed out at all times unless I'm using the service's online portal.  My bank account number is even more secure; the only places I authorize direct deposit/withdrawal are my job, my landlord (again, had to and/or strongly incentivized), NYS Tax and Finance, and the IRS (which in hindsight was probably a mistake; such wow).

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Spoiler culture. Last night during the game an internet community I'm in asked users to censor their discussion of the game for those who were going to have to watch it later. It just seemed silly, if the game means that much to you, then the onus should be on you to not put yourself in positions to be spoiled, not on others to not discuss it.

[Max Rockatansky]

How is it even realistic in this day and age to not hear about the result of an event the magnitude of the Super Bowl?  Even in the VCR days my dad almost got spoiled by word of mouth on the result of Lions games. 

[Rothman]

How is it even realistic in this day and age to not hear about the result of an event the magnitude of the Super Bowl?  Even in the VCR days my dad almost got spoiled by word of mouth on the result of Lions games. 

Especially if you read the news.  Typically "front page" either online or in hard copy somewhere.

[mgk920]

Since the California wildfires, news articles have been making it sound like LA is continually building deeper and deeper into the hills when, in reality, few new homes have been built in the Santa Monica Mountains since the 1970s.

The build quality of smaller structures built since at least the 1970s (especially houses,and suburban/suburban-style commercial structures) has been very poor indeed and getting progressively worse, to the point where they are now all essentially 'throwaways', putting up little, if any, resistance to the efforts of a demo contractor, or would have been reduced to nothing more than a pile of smouldering embers while the FD was still en route to the call.

Mike

[kphoger]

Re: 2FA

At some point last year, I had to call the IT department at one of the MSOs we work for, because of some login issue or another.  When I finally got through, the agent attempted to verify my identity by asking me one of the secret questions.  The first one was a question I was surprised I had chosen to begin with, and I answered it wrong.  So he tried one of the other questions, and I got it wrong too.  I couldn't get any of the answers right, so eventually he had to end the call because he couldn't verify my identity.  Well, crap, now I don't know what to do.

When I mentioned it to our manager in that region, he informed me that everyone's account is set up with the same secret questions and answers, and they just keep a list of them at the office.  So for example, if you imagine that my company's name is Alanland, then my childhood pet was named Alanland1, but my favorite pet's name was Alanland4.

So then I was ready to call IT again.  And to give them the aforementioned throw-away 2FA code for no reason, of course.  But then my stuff started working again, so I never needed to call back.  [/anticlimactic]

[hbelkins]

This is definitely a minor thing that bothers me. In the list of regional boards on the home page of this forum, the regions aren't listed in logical order. Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Great Lakes are fine, but then it jumps to Mid-South and then to Central States. Those last two should be reversed for continuity. Go from Great Lakes to Central States, then to Mid-South.

[GaryV]

Another bother: charities that send out "your annual renewal" reminder letters. No charity, I'm not a member of your organization paying annual dues. Yes, I might contribute again sometime this year. But not right now. It'll be my time decision, not yours. And if you bug me too much, I might just decide to give my money to someone else this year.

[Bobby5280]

In regards to paying bills online versus snail-mailing a check, I do all my bill-paying online. It is a rare occasion I fill out a paper check anymore. About the only time I do that is when going to the DMV once a year to renew my tag.

I agree it's kind of a PITA to deal with 2-factor authentication when logging in to pay a bill. But I'd rather the extra step be there than not. A phishing site isn't already going to have your smart phone number. So there's some piece of mind to be had with that. It also takes me less time to type in a security code from my phone than it does to manually fill out a paper check.

Another big advantage of paying online: the payment gets posted much faster than it does via snail mail. You can pay on deadline day and still avoid a late charge. Most credit card companies, utility companies, etc have their online payment systems set up where payments can be scheduled. I have a few accounts, such as my natural gas bill, set up for auto pay. When mailing checks you always have to give a few days worth of time for the check to arrive and get processed.

Also, I do not trust sending checks thru the mail. I sure as hell would not leave a stamped piece of mail containing a personal check in my home mail box for the postman to retrieve. I understand the fears of accounts online getting hacked. But make no mistake: thieves steal regular physical mail too. Here in Lawton we've had at least one or more incidents of people stealing entire post office mailboxes right off the curb side. Fraudulent checks is a pretty big racket.

I really don't like it if I have to receive something like a new credit card into my home mailbox. I ordered a new copy of my birth certificate recently (to get a proper Real ID driver's license). New Mexico's records dept would only send it to my home address. Delivery instructions said my signature was required for delivery. Well, the damned postman left the UPS Next Day Air envelope right on my front porch step. Anyone walking by could have stolen the thing before I got home from work.

Spoiler culture. Last night during the game an internet community I'm in asked users to censor their discussion of the game for those who were going to have to watch it later. It just seemed silly, if the game means that much to you, then the onus should be on you to not put yourself in positions to be spoiled, not on others to not discuss it.

It may be one thing to talk about the outcome of something like the Super Bowl. Someone talking about the results of a game I missed isn't going to bug me.

But I think it's a real dick-move for anyone to spoil movies or TV shows. I couldn't give a tinker's damn about a person's bragging rights of seeing a movie before I did. And if I'm really interested in seeing that movie I'm going to vastly prefer seeing that movie rather than hear some guy tell me the good parts in it. His account will infinitely less entertaining. It won't have the actual production value of the movie.

If I see a movie and I didn't like it and one of my friends asks for my reaction I'll just say I didn't like it. I won't go into spoiling the actual moments of the show.

[Max Rockatansky]

There is a lot of modern media that requires advanced knowledge to fully enjoy.  Comic book movies and shows are infamously bad at referencing stuff that only readers or comics will actually get.  A spoiler video recap prior to watching stuff like that honestly enhances my enjoyment.