Ask Lemmy

A single-furrow plow that was built so that it had to be pulled by a horse.

We didn't have a horse (it was about 50 years too late for that), but we did have a small tractor, and somehow hitched the thing to it. My father drove the tractor. And then I had to guide that plow with a very firm hand. We needed it to dig a drainage ditch on the already flooded plot. It was the only way to do that. Any other machines would have been too heavy on that wet ground. After a day of hard work with the feet deep in the water, it was done.

Any smart TV. Please just let me have a TV without having to navigate spyware or the sluggish UIs.

I truly don't understand how to use an apple computer. It's terrible to use.

Windows 11 in a corporate environment , Jesus wept, what a fucking disaster of a system. It just gets in your way.

One of my friends tried to fix his car, but somehow made the steering wheel wiggly. Turned driving into a terrifying experience, like i was trying to convince this lump of metal and plastic to do what I wanted

One of the original Windows CE-based PDAs. Fuck that thing was a nightmare to use and even worse to sync to your PC. Early mobile technology was a lesson in frustration and disappointment.

My pixel 6a...

Bought new 2 years ago through Google Fi, camera stopped working after 2 weeks. Literal hardware failure. Used warranty and was sent another which was refurbished. (Bullshit by the way, I paid in full for the damn phone new 2 weeks prior.)

About 1 month after that one showed up Wi-Fi and Bluetooth began randomly turning off then on. Then it just flat out failed to even find any Wi-Fi networks unless I rebooted it multiple times. Bluetooth would randomly cut in and out while connected to my car. Reboot multiple times would occasionally fix it. The real problem here is I have unlimited (see -limited to 35 gigs) data. Watching YouTube in bed and falling asleep the phone would say fuck Wi-Fi and stream all night on 5g eating my data in days limiting me to 2g speeds for the rest of the month.

Eventually doing the reboot to fix this shit it would just start randomly boot looping for hours. Had to hold down volume to enter the setup mode or whatever, power off, snack the phone a couple times, restart, and if I was lucky it would start up, and I was really lucky the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth might work.

This led to eventually the phone just randomly restarting itself. Especially if the Bluetooth was working and I was using headphones and someone called me. It would just turn off then boot loop again lol. If and sometimes if I powered it off it would just be stuck on the powering off screen for an hour.

I had insurance and warranty and Google did their fucking damnedest to fuck me around. I called them (Fi) multiple times and had the issue eventually escalated to management or something. Was promised a new phone was being sent out. Never showed up. This happened twice. I filed a complaint and it was eventually (see months) followed up with a call to inform me I was officially out of the warranty period (of course I was, by the time you actually reached out) however they would ship me one if I sent mine back. They would put a hold FOR THE FULL PRICE of the NEW phone on my bank account until they received my faulty device. OR I could just send it in and they would send me a new after it has been received leaving me without a phone for up to 2 weeks. Effectively paying again for the phone I already purchased in full.

I finally broke down last week and just got a Moto stylus 5g which has been great so far. However, I got it through Fi of course because they're simply the cheapest option for me as I've had it since it came out and I am grandfathered in with 3 lines "unlimited" for $65/month. When I ordered the moto I noticed they have a trade in offer... :D I of course choose yes, followed by questions to see if I was eligible...

1. Does the phone have any cracks or damage? A - No! 👍 (A miracle honestly with how often I slammed this thing out of frustration)

2. Does the phone power on? A - Yes! (Technically it does...)

You're eligible for the trade in offer! You will receive a $76 bill credit once we receive your device!

Awesome! Google will be receiving the biggest, most useless piece of shit device I have EVER had the displeasure of owning and I'll receive a credit essentially making my new phone free!

It took 2 years and I suspect they'll try to fuck me out of the credit unless I get lucky and the device actually starts up normally when they receive it. But, in my own very small and admittedly petty way I feel like I'm getting revenge on these fuckers.

Tldr - pixel 6a is worthless. My wife has the same phone and hers is flawless but I was delivered 2 that were both fucked in some way. Google did nothing to fix it.

Soloing an Alaskan Chainsaw Mill. Bro didn't show up one day and I had logs to cut.

One of the early Samsung Android phones. They dropped „support“ less than a year after release and even during that time refused to acknowledge serious bugs.

The community built Android versions managed to fix most bugs, and even made dual touch possible, but then again could only do so much without all sources. And usually they were not the most stable either.

On the one hand having a smartphone with touchscreen, apps etc. was amazing. On the other hand Samsungs bullshit meant I wasted a lot of time chasing a properly working software for my phone that it should have had from the beginning.

I got some video goggles about 10 years ago. The picture on the box? A guy wearing cool shades. Me? It felt like 10 pounds strapped to my face in such a way I had to look straight up to sort of see a blurry, blocky video through a screen door. This had to be plugged into a DVD player or a VHS player (yes, really) with three separate cords, but still also ate four AAs more than once an hour, and had built in earbuds in exactly the wrong size. Also, there was a separate cord to a remote control that managed to get tangled up very easily despite being too short to fit in a pocket while the goggles were on your head, so I just kinda looped it over my shoulders. Claimed to have a 3D mode. Never found it. 300$ well spent.

The Red One, Red’s first camera/the first affordable (relatively speaking) 4K cinema camera. Talk about a heavy, temperamental machine

Trying to find the item I want to fuse to an arrow in Tears of the Kingdom

All the various gardening equipment that was made for someone several inches taller than me. Things to edge lawns, shovels, rakes, just a lot of stuff.

Macbook pro

The aluminum chassis is stupid and has sharp edges so if you use the laptop on the go it's likely to cut your wrists. The screen is so glary you can't use the thing outside at all. The keyboard is really bad and I had one of those with a touchbar which is the dumbest laptop idea ever that would constantly get activated by slight brush or water droplet. And macos is such a terrible operating system full of legacy restrictions and commands you can't customize or animations you can't remove.

I had to use one for a contract I had with an US firm for security auditing and it dropped my productivity in half tho it was fun to explore the apple world on someone else's dime knowing it's temporary but I'm not going back ever.

A tape backup auto loader. It was two racks large and regular would have problems, mostly software related. Commvault was the software. Every month was a cage fight.

The Ensoniq ASR-10. Fuck, that thing is heavy.

Scuba gear.

Pixel Slate by Google

I got it on a black Friday Sale and immediately regretted it.

For something that is supposed to "just work" nothing just works.

It's spent the last several years as a very expensive media player. Which it isn't even particularly good at...

A smartphone... I barely even use it and never use it for social media. Maybe it's because I've grown accustomed to using a gaming desktop computer that still responds instantaneously even in its old age, but I find it very cumbersome to use a device where there's a 3-5 second input lag for everything.

rock bar. It's a pole made entirely of metal with a little wedge at the end. You use it to pry rocks from the earth but because its so heavy you can't just slide it in and pull it up like a prybar. you kinda just puncture the dirt like a spear and lever straight through the soil to get the rock loose first then pry it out.