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

[Stasi]

There are a lot of bars that have a similar thing going on. I was at one not even a month ago drunkenly playing Mario Kart 64 with friends.

I went to a bar in Osaka like that, they had a bunch of CRTs set up with Mega Drives and Super Famicoms and a few arcade cabinets, it was pretty awesome drunkenly playing Streets of Rage. If I had something like that near where I live I'd be getting drunk there every night.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I went to a bar in Osaka like that, they had a bunch of CRTs set up with Mega Drives and Super Famicoms and a few arcade cabinets, it was pretty awesome drunkenly playing Streets of Rage. If I had something like that near where I live I'd be getting drunk there every night.

I used to live close to a new hipster pinball bar/pub which had 20-30 pinball machines, some old arcade games(set to free-play to pass time while waiting for your pinball table) and the tables in the bar were cocktail cabinets. Really fun place to go to as an after work or as a warm up on the weekends.

Looks like they have expanded with more arcade games and a second floor, I'm glad they didn't go under during the lockdowns.

If you're ever in Oslo, visit Tilt.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I hate how Youtube detects terms you'd say on your video and just demonetize it. Common examples include "suicide," "COVID-19," and certain swears.

"On April 5th 1994, Kurt Cobain went down the sewer slide. Stop laughing, I need money."

 

[Maggots on a Train v2]

Modem-to-modem multiplayer was fun. First you call your buddy to arrange it, then your modem calls his, then you hope no human instantly picks up the ringing phone, or that someone decided to phone someone just before that, or that you have to call back because plans changed only for his modem to take your call, or...

It was so long ago but I swear that I can remember hearing garbled swearing coming out of the modem whenever an unsuspecting person picked up on the other end.

I used to work at a place that needed an extra phone line for the fax, but wouldn't pay for it, so people had to call in advance to warn me to not pick up the next call. That was a mess.

 

[Becky McDonald]

My offline, fully licensed and paid-for copy of MSWord just got an update adding monetization. "Click here to subscribe to Microsoft Editor!"
I am appalled. It's time to switch to LibreOffice and keep MSOffice only as a compatibility last resort.

I keep a pirated copy of Office 2010 on my machine specifically for this purpose.
Also because some retard made it so >10 page long documents (of which I read and edit A LOT) takes several minutes to load in full on 2016, even if you try CTRL+F'ing through it to get to where you need, whereas 2010 loads them near-instantly.

 

[Adoring Fan]

Not sure if this counts or if it was mentioned before already but I honestly do actually miss the Wii U, sure it has its flaws, but it had both a better network and (to my knowledge) a better emulator than what the Switch has. Oh, and it had the Miiverse which was fun to look through and see the cringe being posted there daily before it shut down. Also you can't forget the classic Meme Run.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I keep a pirated copy of Office 2010 on my machine specifically for this purpose.
Also because some retard made it so >10 page long documents (of which I read and edit A LOT) takes several minutes to load in full on 2016, even if you try CTRL+F'ing through it to get to where you need, whereas 2010 loads them near-instantly.

Sort of related to that, more related to MS, why does it take normal notepad forever to open a one+ megabyte text document or file of any kind? I've thought about that since the 90's.
Other programs have no problems.

 

[Not Really Here]

Smart houses, and retrofit wireless networks, aside from security issues they just make me want to scream 'Get off your fat lazy ass'.
Flip the damn light switch, and run some cat5/6.

 

[I Hate Anime Avatars]

I wish Sony didn't fuck up their mini disk tech because it was pretty cyberpunk

Minidiscs were great, I used them a lot when I was younger. Had a portable player/recoder I used to listen to on the bus and we had a recorder in our hi-fi stack at home. Toslink connection meant you didn't need to mess around with audio levels when you were dubbing a CD. I think Sony probalbly did the best they could to get the cost down but they were never going to match conventional cassettes. Plus ipods and mp3s came along just as minidiscs were really starting to take off.

 

[byuu]

One great benefit of Soviet tech (& also necessity, considering the quality standards & scarcity of materials), was the documentation of electronics. PCB & electrical schematics were readily available for anyone with any technical skill. The general philosophy of design was to keep things modular. I can bet your ass that soviet tech can outlast any western counterpart with planned obsolescence, purely due to repairability.

That was the standard for Western/Japanese tech 20-30 years ago too.
I had wonderful official diagrams for my old tv, with the electrical schematics, pcb layouts, and even a nice illustrated list of all the components.

 

[TurdFondler]

@I hate anime avatars
I think a lot of Sony's issues come from not opening up the tech to 3rd party manufacturers. Their mp3 players had great specs, but the software was junk. I think they had a similar issue with betamax, wanting to keep it all in house.

 

[Spud]

Where exactly are you going to be playing where a cable would limit you? It's long enough for me to play sat on the bed on the other side of my room, so unless you usually sit 25 feet away, the cable shouldn't be a problem.

Now this depends on the brand for controllers. When I got a ps4 controller the cable was barely long enough to reach my chair from my desk, decided to get an xbox controller and they give me a cable that spans a double bed and a half lengthwise. Also Why do companies cheap out when it comes to cable length? I got a midi controller and the cable is about half a meter making it so unless you're really close to you PC it's impractical so I got a USB extension for it

 

[I Hate Anime Avatars]

@I hate anime avatars
I think a lot of Sony's issues come from not opening up the tech to 3rd party manufacturers. Their mp3 players had great specs, but the software was junk. I think they had a similar issue with betamax, wanting to keep it all in house.

Not entirely correct, Sony actually licensed the Minidisc technology to almost any third party manufacturer that was interested, probably because of what happened with Betamax. It was very common to see JVC, Sharp, Pioneer etc. branded equipment. It's true though the NetMD software was a load of shit, like most Japanese software.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Not entirely correct, Sony actually licensed the Minidisc technology to almost any third party manufacturer that was interested, probably because of what happened with Betamax. It was very common to see JVC, Sharp, Pioneer etc. branded equipment. It's true though the NetMD software was a load of shit, like most Japanese software.

It also limited recordings to their audio format(ATTRAC?) and the recordable ones were no better than tapes when it came to putting together a disc. Maybe there was a way around that in the 90's but I never figured it out.
MD was pretty cool but if we are going tape and the limitations of that then DCC was cooler, it was consumer DAT(good for those on a budget), and backwards compatible with regular cassettes. Noice! Being digital it allowed skipping between songs ripped from a CD, it just had to spool the tape a bit.

For both MD and DCC the problem in my experience was that they started to become more available(cheap) when MP3 players came around. A minidisc could hold a whole album but so could a 64MB mp3 player and it was far faster to dump things on it even with USB1 speeds.

 

[SandAthlete]

That was the standard for Western/Japanese tech 20-30 years ago too.
I had wonderful official diagrams for my old tv, with the electrical schematics, pcb layouts, and even a nice illustrated list of all the components.

Interesting. I've been messing with some Panasonic VHS camcorders and it's near-impossible to find any proper schematics for it. It's truly a hit-or-miss sometimes and I've had far greater success with Soviet stuff.

However, I can kind of forgive western technology being compact & harder to take apart purely because it's more advanced.

 

[Densetsu]

Recently went shopping for a new computer case and it's downright criminal how few hard drive bays case manufacturers get away with including. My old case has 5 hard drive bays and space for potentially 4 5.25" drive bays, as well as space for 3 or 4 SSDs. These days I was lucky to find a case with a single 5.25" drive bay and 3 hard drive bays. I guess it's assumed that if you want to hoard storage space or have more than two hard drives you'll just get a NAS instead.

And the hilarious thing is that cases are still as big as ever, they're just using all the now-unused space to stuff in more case fans. But my old case has just as much case fan slots as this new case, I don't get it.

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

Recently went shopping for a new computer case and it's downright criminal how few hard drive bays case manufacturers get away with including. My old case has 5 hard drive bays and space for potentially 4 5.25" drive bays, as well as space for 3 or 4 SSDs. These days I was lucky to find a case with a single 5.25" drive bay and 3 hard drive bays. I guess it's assumed that if you want to hoard storage space or have more than two hard drives you'll just get a NAS instead.

And the hilarious thing is that cases are still as big as ever, they're just using all the now-unused space to stuff in more case fans. But my old case has just as much case fan slots as this new case, I don't get it.

Dang I thought I was the only one, for the prices they're asking I can't even get something with one spot for a bluray and one for a fan controller.

 

[Lightsaber Dildo]

Dedicated servers for multiplayer games. Most games don't even give you this option anymore but I'm aware it's still rarely around in modern games like CSGO and some other relics of the Source engine.

Matchmaking is an endlessly cancerous and consumer-unfriendly practice I cannot see it justified. How is matchmaking in multiplayer games a good business practice? You have to host the servers yourself, you have to make an algorithm for matchmaking, and you (apparently) have to moderate people when they're jerks to each other. I genuinely don't get why this is the go-to for your usual deathmatch/objective shooters.

These issues are all avoided on the dev's end with dedicated servers, and the players are happy because their experiences can be tailored to them based on what server they pick. Tryhards can play with other tryhards, the casuals can find a community for themselves, and the players who like "playgrounds" to fuck around in also have dedicated servers they can play on. I don't know ANYONE who thinks skill-based matchmaking is fun or a good idea since it encourages a 50/50 win rate for everyone most of the time. I really wish I knew what the appeal of forcing matchmaking in games is, it takes away too much freedom from the players.

 

[Becky McDonald]

Recently went shopping for a new computer case and it's downright criminal how few hard drive bays case manufacturers get away with including. My old case has 5 hard drive bays and space for potentially 4 5.25" drive bays, as well as space for 3 or 4 SSDs. These days I was lucky to find a case with a single 5.25" drive bay and 3 hard drive bays. I guess it's assumed that if you want to hoard storage space or have more than two hard drives you'll just get a NAS instead.

And the hilarious thing is that cases are still as big as ever, they're just using all the now-unused space to stuff in more case fans. But my old case has just as much case fan slots as this new case, I don't get it.

To add to this:
It's insane how the general public has been goaded into genuinely believing you don't need an optical disc drive in this day and age.

Of course, CDs have fallen out of favour, but you're telling me these retards stream everything? They have no backup plan in case they lose their internet connection for a day or two? I couldn't fucking imagine using a computer and not installing some of my old physical copies or popping in a Blu-Ray or two, either to emulate modern consoles or simply to watch a movie/box-set ad free and uncut.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

Recently went shopping for a new computer case and it's downright criminal how few hard drive bays case manufacturers get away with including. My old case has 5 hard drive bays and space for potentially 4 5.25" drive bays, as well as space for 3 or 4 SSDs. These days I was lucky to find a case with a single 5.25" drive bay and 3 hard drive bays. I guess it's assumed that if you want to hoard storage space or have more than two hard drives you'll just get a NAS instead.

And the hilarious thing is that cases are still as big as ever, they're just using all the now-unused space to stuff in more case fans. But my old case has just as much case fan slots as this new case, I don't get it.

I had to do a bit of sleuthing to find a relatively cheap atx case with lots of 3.5in bays. The best one I found and the one I settled on is the Cooler Master N400. It's a back to basics case no frills and space for 8 HDDs under $100 usd.