What is something that you pay attention to that most other people do not?

Digital privacy.

It was very recently revealed in unsealed court documents from I believe 2013 that the Facebook app pushed a certificate to mobile devices that funneled all of everyone's decrypted traffic through their servers. That means every webpage visited, every file sent and received, every word typed passed through and was stored on a computer at Facebook HQ. One engineer was quoted as saying that Zuckerberg had a particular interest in looking at people's Snapchats. It was also revealed that Facebook had a data exchange partnership with Netflix where Netflix had open ended access to user's private messages.

Now you don't have to be a Snapchat or Facebook user to see how wrong and downright creepy that is, but if you bring it up with the average person you can see their eyes immediately glaze over. It's hard to blame them, it feels like a hopeless situation and it's much more convenient to pretend it's not happening. People have been completely indoctrinated into abandoning their right to privacy. It's a real shame because if we were paid as individuals what our data is apparently worth I'm sure that perspective would quickly change.

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I pay attention to credit card readers.

I have gotten to know their makes and some models. I have developed preferences. When I go to a run down establishment and they have a nice reader, I am pleasantly surprised. I know that walmart uses ingenico isc250s, and they do not support tap. I know that dunkin has high quality readers, and sometimes tim hortons does too, but less frequently.

When leaving a place, I might say something like “damn, you don’t see that model of verifone very often”, and my friends will look at me funny.

Semi-related, did you know that most receipt printers have embedded telnet servers in them?

When some but not all bullets end with a period in a PPT. Drives me nuts! Either have none ending with a period, or all need to have a period, but please don't mix.

Civil asset forfeiture in the U.S.

We're supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty" but they get around this by saying that they're essentially accusing the money (or car/home or whatever) of being used for crime. Then they confiscate it and the only way to get it back is to go to court and prove that your money is innocent.

The fact that cash/possessions can be taken away from you at anytime by federal agents (or by police in almost every State) without having to follow it up with any sort of case to prove that a crime occurred is ridiculous. And on top of that you can't get the money back that you spent on attorney fees, so it's pointless to spend money on an attorney if what was taken was less than a few thousand dollars.

Most people don't know that this can happen or don't seem to care enough because, "it would never happen to me, right?"

https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/

I was into Geocaching for a while and was always amazed at the things out in plain sight that people casually walked by and never noticed every day

What's on random screens in the background of movies / TV shows. People hate watching stuff with me because I'm always pausing it to look at that stuff.

Birds. Even in urban areas you wouldn’t believe how many birds there are. Not just pigeons and sparrows, but hawks and falcons will readily live in many urban areas too. Herons and egrets are particularly adaptable to urban areas and easy to find along rivers and ponds. In the spring and fall warblers will pass through as well, and I even see them on busy urban streets sometimes if there’s a few bushes or trees along the path. I’ve even had a few lucky owl sightings while walking in the suburbs at night.

Delightfully since I live in the southwest and grew up on the east coast, where they’re incredibly shy of people, we also have tons of bold urban ravens. In the late spring and early summer sometimes I see big flocks (recently independent juveniles?) just soaring and diving for the fun of it.

The count of cars with single occupant on the highway. It's crazy how inefficient our car transportation is.

Fucking time zones and daylight saving/summertime. I live in a place that doesn’t change my clocks twice a year, but constantly deal with people that do. The number of times I have people say EST when they mean EDT is too damn high. Worse when they say MST, cause then I have to ask “are you in Arizona?” to which they look at me confused and say no. Then I about blow a gasket cause “then you’re not in MST!” If you’re going to live in a place that always changes your clocks, get your own terminology right dammit.

License plates.

I memorised most of my friends' and coworkers' plates, and sometimes recognise plates of random people if I see them often enough.

Looking for things on the ground or the side of the road. Some notable items I have found:

1. Unmarked envelope with ~$400 in it.
2. Change purse filled with random international coins
3. Pair of knipex channel lock pliers that have dog bite marks on the handles
4. Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket i727
5. Ticket for a festival which I then attended
6. Many sunglasses
7. Many cool rocks and sticks

I take the time to find the original owner whenever I find something but it's pretty rare. These are only the things that I have kept because the original owner couldn't be found.

The fact that "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire has someone playing the bongos in the background. Once you hear it, you cannot unhear it.

I notice lefties. Im right-handed and when I was little and much dumber I wanted to be left-handed. So I did a bunch of weird shit to force it. Stuff like wrapping my right hand up for whole day, trying reverse controls for video games, wearing my watch on my right hand, etc. Some stuff did take, like the watch on my right hand, which ironically made my right hand more dominant. Being a lefty is the club that I was never able to join but think about subconsciously all the time I guess.

Camerawork in film and tv. I have been volunteering doing camerawork for a small broadcast tv station, so whenever I watch stuff I'm always teeing to see how all of the shots are taken, and also the color grading and stuff like that.

You know when people are in a group and they are all chattering all joyously and stuff and you see a person of the group trying to say something and raise a bit their voice and then they recoil and then don't say anything?

Or when you are walking around in a Group and everyone is talking about stuff and one of them just sort of swaddles a bit out and little by little tries as if running away from the group?

Yeah I witnessed you

Any movie that is acting out one of my hobbys. I always appreciate it if the writers/producers actually took the time to research it. Stuff like:

-boardgame setups

-videogame gameplay

-musical instruments/singing being performed

I also always look in a carscene wether they are actually driving or if it's a video/screen playing Basically I look a lot for clues behind the scenes with movies instead of enjoying the movie as is.

"Is this so-called news credible?"

The types of shoes a person is wearing, and if they're polished or not. Forest Gump's mamma was right, you can tell a lot about someone by their shoes.

Whether or not people say “yes,” or “no” when responding to others or if they say “yeah,” or “nah”. And whether or not they say please or thank you.

How my actions affect other people.

The total stairs a staircase has. I cannot walk up or down a staircase without counting, and it makes me satisfied when the number ends in an even number.

I'm an artist, and I'll gaze at seemingly trivial things like reflections of a cup on a semi glossy surface, and then do an analysis of it in my head along the lines of "hmm...the reflection is at maybe 30-40% opacity, and the reflection falls off at more of an oblique angle, falling off completely by the time the reflection gets to half the cup's height...the glossier the surface the less falloff there is and the sharper the reflection is!"

Dude sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that pays attention to anything, bruh. Like how can certain things pass people by.

Typos in published books. Though it's involuntary. It's a bit of an (undiagnosed) OCD kinda thing.

But also, consciously, how much my presence affects others. I hold doors for strangers, I make space on sidewalks, I try not to talk loudly in public, etc. It's the people who don't notice these things at all about themselves that really drive me nuts. Like people speaking loudly on a phone that's on speaker. I hate that type of behavior.

I read the terms of service everywhere I go.

The amount of space cars take up. I’m not alone in this but as an adult, I’ve only lived in cities/neighborhoods built out before cars and I’m always looking at a street with cars parked on it and imagining the street without them there.

In newer cities/neighborhoods/suburbs, I notice the car infrastructure but cars in a neighborhood built before 1910 or so really makes them stand out.

Armor and clothing in movies and shows with historical settings. I really appreciate when they get the details right and it can be really jarring when it's bad. The Northman is a good example of what vikings probably dressed like, which is basically the same as how all medieval people dressed. Simple wool and linen tunics and big cloaks fastened with broaches. No fur capes or leather armbands or cornrows, looking at you Vikings on the "history" channel.

When websites could theoretically track me.

I keep my browser on "delete all my cookies/cache/local storage/history/everything (except bookmarks and addons, basically) every time I exit" mode. And I never log into anything without closing out of my browser entirely first to get rid of anything they could use to correlate "you visited this blog" with my specific Google (or whatever) account. When I'm done with whatever I logged in for, I close my browser entirely again.

My phone browser doesn't have a "delete everything on close" feature, so I just use the "delete all data on this app" feature liberally.

The lab equipment in television "science labs", no your fid detector didn't get the mass spectrum of that "unknown sample", past the question of how much information you'd hope to get from that test, why are you using a gc on organic samples? you want to be using an LC you maroon.

I can't watch murder porn for many reasons, this is the least of them, but I like to poke holes in my in-laws immersion when they watch it and I'm around.

The sky, clouds, atmospheric optics, stars, satellites. People should look up more.

I'm the kind of person that knows exactly how many stucco stalactites are on the ceiling of my bedroom.

You know when you are walking or doing stuff be it outside or indoors and you pay attention to that ceramic tile in the floor or the wall or you pay attention to that wooden veneer door or a tree or bit of paint or rust and you start noticing a pattern and you end up seeing a face?

Yeah that too

What's happening in the area, I.e. a view of the overall scenery. This vast perspective is different, and it's like looking at a live painting. When I'm on the move, such a observer perspective shrinks to few tens of meters, which kind of makes sense.

I don't think this is anything most people don't do however. I do remember places quite vividly though, and I practically never get lost. People however in the scenery, I forget in about a minute.

When the light changes from green to yellow most of my community somehow fail to notice the change in color or from what lights it's being emitted, it's baffling to me. If the intersection isn't passable you don't enter when the light is yellow, sorry to delay your trip 1 whole minute, but the gridlock you cause delays everyone's trip, and causes more assholes like yourself to block the intersection at a yellow light, and cause more gridlock.

Not blocking intersections when at a stop on a street.

The kerning between the number 1 and other numbers.

Birds.

Head shape. Nose shape. I also pay attention to whether or not people have level collarbones, or collarbones that slope downward as they near the shoulders. I often notice what eye color people have. My eyes are grey, and not really a blue color. It’s really rare when I meet someone who has the same eye color as me.

Which way the wind's blowing, if ya catch my drift...

The effect of computer software on human culture, especially on cognitive development, crowd collaboration skills, methods of democracy, and economic systems. We had such a great start until ~1983: My answer to "Who invented the modern computer look and feel?" on Quora