Tech you miss/ new tech trends you hate - ok boomers

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I remember a system I had to assist in maintaining had something like a 30 volume manual in those 3-ring binders, so you could swap out sections as they were updated (this part was not fun). I actually read them cover to cover in my first couple months so while I obviously didn't retain all this, I knew where to find it if I needed it from then on.

In many ways that is still preferable to situations you can encounter today where you are using v1.37 but the online manual have been updated to 2.04
The most fun one is when you at least have a CD with documentation. It might say "v1.37" on it. Permanently written to the disc is an HTML file and some other crap that fetches and displays the 2.04 docs from the internet.

The opposite of this is when software gets updated and they completely squander the true potential of instant web publication by not updating the docs for a month or so.

 

[CumDumpster]

I sort of miss when you had one device that could do one task well, compared to now where everyone has a phone, but it's a master of everything, save for making calls.
Phones killed the DAPs for all, excluding the enthusiasts (but then modern USB-C capable DAPs can unpack audio very well).

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Are there "crazes" in tech anymore?

In the '90s, there was the "multimedia" and "make electronics transparent" crazes. In the early 2010s, there was that 3D TV craze.

Now it seems it's just a bland endless malaise of flat smartphoney graphics and social media. Then again, I don't keep up as much.

 

[AnOminous]

Are there "crazes" in tech anymore?

In the '90s, there was the "multimedia" and "make electronics transparent" crazes. In the early 2010s, there was that 3D TV craze.

Now it seems it's just a bland endless malaise of flat smartphoney graphics and social media. Then again, I don't keep up as much.

RIP Terry Davis, RIP John McAfee.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Are there "crazes" in tech anymore?

VR? A few months ago I can still remember reading posts even on this very forum that it'll totally have it's breakthough this time. Haven't heard much recently besides Zuckerbots plans, but who still uses Facebook anyways?

There's also this idea to cram computers into smaller and smaller spaces and people even starting to use tablets as their main computer, with keyboard and stand for the tablet and everything, not sure if I'd call that a craze though as it isn't that big.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Are there "crazes" in tech anymore?

"The Metaverse"

 

[SevenEightNine]

I found these things last night and my nostalgia knows no bounds.



My entire life makes sense now
I was 7 when I started playing with this

I won't even allow Apple products in my house now. Times have changed so much....

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

"The Metaverse"

Don't say that, NFTs will be eternal fusion reaction powering the metaverse.

 

[Picklechu]

Are there "crazes" in tech anymore?

In the '90s, there was the "multimedia" and "make electronics transparent" crazes. In the early 2010s, there was that 3D TV craze.

Now it seems it's just a bland endless malaise of flat smartphoney graphics and social media. Then again, I don't keep up as much.

If we're talking hardware, RGB, but that's been going on for awhile. I actually taped over the side of an external hard drive because it has a fucking LED strip down the side, which is completely separate from the indicator light.

 

[BowsersRectum]

If we're talking hardware, RGB, but that's been going on for awhile. I actually taped over the side of an external hard drive because it has a fucking LED strip down the side, which is completely separate from the indicator light.

RGB ricing is awful IMO. I would rather focus on the screen than have random lights change beside me. I find it looks awful almost every time I've seen it and I don't see the point in using up even more electricity just for oooh shiny

 

[SevenEightNine]

RGB ricing is awful IMO. I would rather focus on the screen than have random lights change beside me. I find it looks awful almost every time I've seen it and I don't see the point in using up even more electricity just for oooh shiny

I spent a long time working in disgusting back corners of industrial facilities. Now I get to work indoors and pick my computer configuration. It's all rainbow lights all the time, dammit. Shiny is nice sometimes.

 

[AmpleApricots]

The only place where RGB actually makes sense is behind the screen. I had a Philips TV with "Ambilight", the idea behind that is bias lighting - basically tricking your brain into thinking the screen has more contrast and better blacks than it really has. Yet, I haven't ever seen it outside DIY kits. I guess Philips is blocking others with patents?

 

[AnOminous]

The only place where RGB actually makes sense is behind the screen. I had a Philips TV with "Ambilight", the idea behind that is bias lighting - basically tricking your brain into thinking the screen has more contrast and better blacks than it really has. Yet, I haven't ever seen it outside DIY kits. I guess Philips is blocking others with patents?

I have some of that but luckily the opaque part of the case faces me so I don't get annoyed. It's pretty mellow as this kind of bling goes (GTX 1660 Super), but it's still pretty much superfluous and useless. I would like it if it actually coded for information.

Being a computer room monkey back in the time computers were noisy, you could actually sometimes tell something was wrong just because the background hum was off, and if you were really lucky, even what it was.

 

[seri0us]

Being a computer room monkey back in the time computers were noisy, you could actually sometimes tell something was wrong just because the background hum was off, and if you were really lucky, even what it was.

Teach me about this.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Being a computer room monkey back in the time computers were noisy, you could actually sometimes tell something was wrong just because the background hum was off, and if you were really lucky, even what it was.

With the older and louder mechanical drives (the mechanical drives that are made now I wouldn't consider loud and it's not only my aged hearing) you could literally hear if the booting process was alright, as it always was the same sound, or rather, the same sequence of noises. My Amiga had a loud one I can still hear the booting process of in my head when I think about it. Something off there and you immediately knew something was wrong, usually before the computer started complaining.

The 80s drives I still have some lying around that work, but man, the 90s drives died often. If you got 2-3 years out of them that was good and you started replacing them before they inevitably failed. I can't even really remember when I had a HDD die last.

Well in theory most mainboards nowadays have RGB headers and in theory they're programmable from the OS, usually driven by some kind of MCU. In practice it's all gay proprietary shit that only works with equally proprietary software that only has one buggy version written by some chinese engineer who doesn't know wtf he's doing. I remember the story of one graphics card having such a programmable MCU which invariably ended up bricking the card because it kept writing to it's flash memory. (flash memory in these controllers usually only has a pretty limited amount of writes before it becomes unusable) The guy who implemented whatever software did this apparently literally did not know this, yet this was his job. Think about that for a moment.

 

[SevenEightNine]

Different cable insulation has different melting smells.

Operating machines in complex, automated systems normally set up into a handful of defined "states." Anything with moving parts oscillates and creates heat. Once you get a feel for the symphony, the defined operating states, you can tell when one instrument is out of tune.

Often when it is way too late to fix

 

[AnOminous]

Teach me about this.

You gotta just hear it man. Machines talk.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

The only place where RGB actually makes sense is behind the screen. I had a Philips TV with "Ambilight", the idea behind that is bias lighting - basically tricking your brain into thinking the screen has more contrast and better blacks than it really has. Yet, I haven't ever seen it outside DIY kits. I guess Philips is blocking others with patents?

Philips probably have the patent and I don't know how long it lasts, I first saw their Ambilight TVs in 2007 so they have been around for roughly 15 years. Pretty decent.
They sell kits with strips to mount behind the screen so any screen or TV could get ambilight.

 

[talk talk talk]

Teach me about this.

Back when hard disks were the size of washing machines, you could easily tell the level of the system load by the sound of the heads moving. Extra fun was if the drive wasn't leveled right and a big job like a database re-index made them "walk" around.

Pulling a solo overnight, you could sometimes catch a snooze while a big batch job ran by leaning against the line printer and letting the sound of the job report printing wake you up.

 

[AnOminous]

Back when hard disks were the size of washing machines, you could easily tell the level of the system load by the sound of the heads moving. Extra fun was if the drive wasn't leveled right and a big job like a database re-index made them "walk" around.

Pulling a solo overnight, you could sometimes catch a snooze while a big batch job ran by leaning against the line printer and letting the sound of the job report printing wake you up.

I'm not that old, I'm more of the hard drives were the size and weight of a lead brick, the ancient full height 5 1/4" bay occupants, and came with a handwritten label on them for the bad sectors so you could manually enter them. The only thing I miss about that shit is how they sounded like a jet engine revving up.

That was another giveaway, the telltale sound of endless swapping. That could wreck a drive in a few months so was worth keeping on top of. Or something beeping constantly that is supposed to beep only periodically, or something that is usually noisy but is now suspiciously silent.