Isocat

When I was a kid, the thing you could use to operate your electric garage-door opener from outside, such as from the car, was a little larger than a deck of cards – which, back then, was pronounced "pack of cigarettes". It was kept in the glovebox or clipped to the sunvisor.

My parents called it the "beeper", only and always. It made no noise except for whatever came from the plastic button itself, and it certainly didn't beep; I never associated "beeper" with any kind of beeping. That's just what the thing was called, a beeper.

Another kind of beeper grew common in the '80s, the kind also called a pager. But my folks kept calling the portable garage door button a beeper.

Was it just them? Anyone else ever encounter this usage?

(It was not called a "remote control", and it _definitely_ wasn't called a "remote". I first heard "remote" as a noun in an episode of The Cosby Show in the late '80s, and figured it for an AAVE usage. Maybe or not, but it's ubiquitous now!)

@troublewithwords@wandering.shop @grammargirl@zirk.us

Fucking GROSS. So because »gestures at this timeline«, the first appliance from Cory Doctorow's ( @pluralistic@mamot.fr ) "Unauthorized Bread" is now on the market. A 'smart oven' you buy and subscribe to the company's meals, which bear a QR code you scan so the oven, amidst its ongoing datastream to the mothership, 'knows' how to cook it. The company, which I will not name (and you please won't either), claim you can use the oven to cook your own food, too. But you have to have their app and a wifi connection to set it up and to operate most of its controls, which means at any moment the company can go "lolnope" or put controls (or the ability to cook unauthorized food) behind a paywall, or brick the thing deliberately, or sell your food logs, or do any of the other things Doctorow described better than I, which is why I've linked the story here. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/