“They Brought Pure Evil On This Earth”: 50 Everyday Inconveniences That Still Haven’t Been Solved

Minor everyday inconveniences plague us all. We've put a man on the Moon and managed to do surgery on a grape, yet we still can't figure out how to make dialogues in movies louder than the background music? And don't even get me started on TV remotes. Why don't they have the "Find Me" function built in?

One Redditor probably had some similar gripes with everyday small things. They decided to ask other netizens "What's a small, everyday inconvenience that you believe should have been solved by now?" People had many qualms, from poor audio quality in drive-thrus to the never-ending mystery of bacon packaging.

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BWPV1105:

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So, let's delve into some of these problems, shall we? First, the issue of background music being louder than the voices on TV. According to PBS, it's not your TV's fault. Usually, there is a problem with the production of the television show or movie.

They do have some tips on how you can try to solve the problem and lessen the irritation. "Try switching from stereo to mono whenever there is such a problem, or switch off the 'surround sound' or 'enhanced' feature on your television."

Other people in the thread expressed similar exasperation with their TVs when certain scenes seemed too dark. Remember people's reactions to that GoT The Long Night episode? Well, the cinematographer of the show cleared himself of all guilt when he told Wired UK that it's not the show, it's your TV settings.

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othybear:

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"A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don't know how to tune their TVs properly," cinematographer Fabian Wagner explained. "A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway."

The Verge's TV expert Chris Welch said there are several more factors why a show might be too dark on your TV. Specifically for GoT, it might have been HBO's compression of the episode. The network may have chosen a lower bitrate "to help smooth over the streaming process for millions of viewers with varying connection speeds."

Then there are the more simple reasons like the brightness and picture mode settings on your TV. The way your room is lit up can influence the viewing experience, too. If there are nearby lighting sources on the screen, they might reflect on the screen and make it harder to focus.

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Another minor problem that people seemed to agree with was how almost every website nowadays annoys us with their "Accept Cookies'' pop-ups. What's even more infuriating is that experts say these pop-ups, meant to simplify data protection, actually just make people's lives harder.

"Cookie consent banners are a joke," co-founder and CEO at software development firm PrivacyCloud Sergio Maldonado told Wired UK. "Rather than helping people protect their future choices, cookie consent requirements are extremely annoying and often run counter to accessibility guidelines on mobile devices, making life harder for people with all sorts of disabilities."

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So, what can you do to make your life a little bit easier? There are browser extensions that automatically fill in your preferences when a popup appears. Some of the more well-known include Consent-O-Matic, Consent Manager, and NinjaCookie. The latter two automatically decline all cookies by default.

The most popular extension is ‘I don't care about cookies,’ and it differs from the others in that it only gets rid of the cookies. The other three extensions mentioned take extra measures to ensure privacy by not collecting user data. The "I don't care about cookies" creators presume that "users protect themselves by using other tools, extensions, and browser settings."