I don’t think this makes sense.
I’ve seen very minor “door prizes” that say, thanks for attending this event, etc. But this “participation trophy” canard has coasted for 30+ years now.
If you go to some youth sports league, it is common that every kid will get a medal or trophy regardless of which team in the league won or lost.
But it also exists for adults. Go to the NYC marathon? Everyone gets a medal. I’ve participated in a lot of organized bicycle rides. The rides aren’t even competitive like the marathon is. They are not races. But at the finish line everyone gets a medal regardless of what distance they rode, or how quickly.
The harsh truth about the participation trophies is that boomers complain about them the most, but they are the ones responsible for them! I’m a millennial. I remember being in a youth basketball league in middle school. Our team did not win. At the final day, every kid on every team got a tiny trophy. I was very confused by this at the time. I expected only the best team to get anything. But who was running that league and decided to hand out those trophies?! Our boomer parents!
Not everyone that starts at the line gets a medal because there are people that don't finish and they don't get their medal.
Once you start moralizing about only winners should get medals or trophies, then you have to start looking at arbitrary distinctions like men's and women's different divisions, age divisions, weight divisions, pro versus amateur, college versus high school.
Really the extension of logic is that only the champion of a given sport or event at the very highest level should get a trophy.
I think what rubs a lot of people about youth sports participation trophies, is that you're basically rewarding just showing up, well devaluing actual focus training preparation or genetic advantage of the better players.
I see folks get "participation trophies" all the time, they come in different forms.
Most people get A's and don't learn that much, teachers are punished for giving bad grades, a lot of people graduate without much added knowledge or skill.
I would prefer no grades, but telling so many people they're doing top notch work when they aren't is a problem.
Part of my brain thinks it is a racket. The organizer buys them for $X and sells them to the event for a multiple. If that isn't the case, it still makes sense for whoever makes them to promote the idea, because they get to sell more of them that way.
But yeah, it mostly gives proof / bragging rights that you finished it.
At least race participation shirts have some utility.
Doing stuff is great. Doing stuff and sucking at it is great. Who cares?
It sure as hell didn't happen in most places in Kentucky or Georgia.
This was back in the 90s.
In something like a foot race, I get it. Most people running a marathon aren’t trying to win, they are just trying to finish, or hit their personal targets. They can still have a “win” without coming in first. But in a sport where there is a clear winner and loser, I felt insulted getting a trophy just for showing up. At 11 or 12 I already felt too old to be treated like that.
LED headlight retrofit kits are probably what should be illegal, that’s where you get the poorly aimed and overly bright headlights.
I haven't replaced my lights for an extended period and am wondering if that's why they are dim, but if they burned out that fast they were probably getting some kind of contamination on the bulbs (which concentrates the heat).
https://www.theautodoc.net/blog/why-do-headlights-become-clo...
The other problem is that some bulbs are just not very good - the filaments aren't properly positioned, or they don't have a good spectral output.
3M has a kit for polishing the haze off headlights with a drill, and for restoring the UV protection layer [0]. Dan Stern [1] told me it's really better to just get a new OEM headlight.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/3M-39008-Headlight-Restoration-System...
But I generally agree - ever since I got PRK eye surgery ultra white car lights are hard for me to handle. My wife has always been sensitive to light (she has lighter eyes), so that goes to show that there's certainly a range of tolerance for this and it's really a safety issue.
Inspections are a good idea, but I'd like to see some control over what can be sold to prevent the installation in the first place.
Blue-white headlights are actually much less functional for human vision than yellow/amber headlights, so the engineers had to use the regulatory loophole to exponentially increase the output of their marketing-imposed blue-white lights.
Inspections don’t help; any slight variations in road angle puts someone in direct sight of correctly adjusted headlights. Unadjusted headlights aren’t the problem, and probably never will be, unlike the old headlights. Most LED headlights are relatively new and perfectly adjusted (and are designed to stay adjusted forever.)
I don’t know the whole story, but I heard that Europe has widely adopted dynamic masking on LED headlights and that in the US, lobbying of some sort is preventing adoption. I would LOVE if we had such a thing… or some fancy night goggles that could mask all bright points without masking anything dark (or maybe even boost the darks)… I would be willing to pay a lot of money for that.
Edit: a search just informed me that the headlight laws changed in 2022, and dynamic masking is coming here. https://www.mcnicholaslaw.com/adaptive-driving-beams-on-the-...
If so, they are widely adopted here in the EU but only for full beams not the regular headlights.
Ah too bad if it doesn’t apply to low beams… LED low beams are still extremely problematic.
The search results are telling me that dynamic masking in the US will only apply to low beams and not high beams. Maybe that’s a good thing? I’m just hoping the situation will get better somehow.
Definitely, I'd love for that here in the EU as well. With it being pitch black half of the year here in Sweden I'm constantly blinded by LED low beams to the point that high traffic country roads are becoming very difficult.
However, LED matrix / dynamic high beams is also a godsend. On a country road, you can keep your high beams on and they will disable the pixels that would blind the other drivers, but still light up the side of the road where deers and moose appear.
Maybe one day we can have both
Until they do (because everything has a failure rate) and cost thousands for an entire new projector assembly. Compare to the cost of a halogen bulb every couple 10k miles.
https://vw.oempartsonline.com/v-2024-volkswagen-gti--autobah...
The F150 lights are so high that they're blinding even when properly pointed down. We need proper regulations for maximum height too. And while you're at it, regulations for maximum hood height so that they stop killing so many pedestrians.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/1mshs0v...
You know that you're the second part of that social interaction and can veer off the memorized track?
As a 50+ year old in tech maybe I’m overly sensitive to this?
The younger generation also has a lot of advantages today that the baby boomers didn’t have, they built them. Like the devices and protocols we’re communicating with, which have also made investing in the economy more accessible than at any other point in human history. And then Gen X made social media for them, when was reduced the barrier to entry for starting a business to next to nothing.
The world is as good or as bad as you want to see it.
I am gen x and have had a ringside seat to boomers wreaking societal, fiscal, political, and environmental destruction to serve their inherent narcissism and selfishness my entire life.
It really just means someone I don’t like who’s older than me.
Anyway: it doesn't really matter because this "generations" split is bullshit. The cut-off dates are arbitrary, and there are all kind of people in all generations.
I couldn't have stated the 2FA thing better... Same with scare tactics (and forcing your hand) about software updates in the name of security. You can't just invoke security as an auto-win card! "Think of the Children."
This already exists, called money, and obviously won't be used because it's easier to realize how low the number is, but also harder to cancel/inflate away.
Broader than that - is there any big generational divide about subscriptions (or, for that matter, many other points on the list)?
Dude. Photoshop was like $700 back in 2008. You weren’t buying that anyway, you were pirating it or using an old unregistered copy of Paint Shop Pro.
I’m not gonna argue that every single app being either a subscription or an in-app purchase funnel now doesn’t suck, but you were not buying that for $30 unless it was from Bob’s Totally Legit House Of Burnt CDs.
I'm not a fan of QR code menus either, but printed menus are not necessarily cheap. The owner of one of my favourite restaurants told me that he couldn't raise prices on his menu to match inflation because the cost of re-printing all the menus with increased prices would eat up the difference. IIRC, the restaurant later shifted to a cheaper and simpler menu design.
At best doing that will do absolutely nothing useful, as anyone who's accidentally driven off with it set will know. At worst it'll spin you, since the hand brakes only lock the rear wheels. This is used deliberately to perform a "handbrake turn", but if you're yanking it like your life depends on it you're turning a front impact with big crumple zones into a side impact.
iso1631•2h ago
In all cases it should be a website, not a "download our app"
There are no adverts on netflix, and I have a lot of subscriptions, but its still less (pro-rata) than I paid for satelite tv with adverts in the 00s.
swiftcoder•2h ago
The base ($7.99) Netflix plan does indeed have ads.
thenthenthen•2h ago
AtlasBarfed•1h ago
I'm surprised there isn't the complaint about over tipping. And the fact there is now inflation in tipping percentages.
clickety_clack•2h ago
zarq•2h ago
Yes, and please make the website one that actually works on mobile.
In some restaurants, I've seen the QR code go to a full-page PDF version of the menu. Like, thanks, but I can't read that on a mobile device.
jmclnx•1h ago
If a restaurant does not have a printed menu, I leave and go elsewhere. Luckily were I live, QR Menus are very rare.
fallinghawks•1h ago
Increasingly often, it is "download our app". And they will try to force it by sabotaging their website. I did a pickup order from Walmart once. You're supposed to take a numbered parking place and check in, but if you try it from the website on a mobile, it'll redirect you to download the app. There's no getting around it. I don't recall if I tried desktop mode on the website, but the website is a pretty cluttered widescreen mess anyway. (Fortunately at the parking area there's a phone number for checking in posted.)
I run into similar sabotage issues with Facebook (yes I am just a year or so shy of being a boomer). You can no longer use messaging on mobile, it tells you to download the app. Desktop mode does work, though (for now; I'm sure someone will try to take it away). All this stuff used to work on phones.
AtlasBarfed•1h ago
Amazon prime has ads.
Just wait
al_borland•48m ago
I worry about bad actors placing their own QR codes over the official ones to redirect people to sites to steal the money, payment day, or both.