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

[AmpleApricots]

I have a few old industrial computers lying around from work back in the day. Nice machines, have entire 486 and Pentium class machines on something the size of an average ISA card. A lot of overclocking those days was FSB-based and you can overclock them quite aggressively, CPU permitting. Always wanted to build the tiniest retro PC with these parts but I have too many projects already. Smallest one I have is a Cyrix MediaGX based one. It has sound, networking and graphics included on the same board as these functions were integrated in the SoC/Companion chip. HDD goes into a CF-Card slot. Everything on a PCB that fits into a 3,5" drive bay. The PCBs of these are often very thick with many layers to get all the routing into such a small space, there's usually not a mm² wasted. Great engineering.

I know it's super autistic but theres one thing I miss from crt tvs. I prefer a square screen over rectangular ones. The rectangle isn't so much adding to the sides so much as taking away from the top and bottom and it's maddening once you notice it since it can never be unseen.

I said it before here but I went back all the way from 4k to 1280x1024 and didn't regret it. If you customize your desktop environment heavily yourself and use bitmap fonts there's nothing sharper and nicer even for long text-based sessions. The Resolution also allows media watching at "720p" (1280x720) which is good enough really. Gaming is good too although a few games just don't support anything that isn't 16:9 and only run at 720p. The most pleasant surprise on this resolution was less wasted space, both on the desk and on the desktop. I wouldn't bother with old 1280x1024 as they don't have nice panels but a few manufactures like Eizo and Dell make new ones with very nice IPS panels that are just as good as your normal mid-range widescreen and come with modern features like LED backlight and light sensors. They're expensive new but if you know what to look for you can often pick them up for like, 20 bucks on eBay. If you're some kind of rich guy, eizo also offers a true 1:1 aspect 1920x1920 screen.

 

[Kosher Dill]

There is still plenty new old stock of chrome and metal tape out there as well. Granted, new old stock Type IV is going to cost but at the above link they will custom wind some for you into a shell and it's fairly economical.

What do you want new blank tapes for? I would think that's been unambiguously superseded by digital.
If it's just to play in the car, I use one of those "CD to tape" adapters on cars that don't have line-in ports or USB.

As for actual releases, I've got a collection of a few dozen tapes (mostly indie stuff) and only two or three of them are anything other than plain old Type I. It just doesn't seem to come up very often, even for stuff released in the heyday of tape.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

What do you want new blank tapes for? I would think that's been unambiguously superseded by digital.
If it's just to play in the car, I use one of those "CD to tape" adapters on cars that don't have line-in ports or USB.

As for actual releases, I've got a collection of a few dozen tapes (mostly indie stuff) and only two or three of them are anything other than plain old Type I. It just doesn't seem to come up very often, even for stuff released in the heyday of tape.

Recording to them, of course. It's far more comfy than assembling a playlist. Try it.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

What I may do if I had to use smartphone for phone would be leaving it at home as if a landline. I'm so used to making calls with things that are tethered to walls.

It's also odd to me how if someone doesn't answer, I'm like "oh they must not be home" - while others now may panic and be all "why aren't they answering?!"...

I just leave mine at home from time to time and people know I do. It's hard to grasp for new people but they learn that I don't use text messages as a chat, I currently have 17 unread messages and I'll get around to it, if it was important I would have had five missed calls from the same person.

Remember when you just went and knocked on someones door hoping they were home? Then they opened and grandma was visiting who already had waffles ready because she dropped a table knife and that means a gentleman caller will soon arrive. Folklore and old superstitions, I love it. All of that is washed away by bugman culture.

Maybe it isn't directly comparable, but modern bluetooth speakers perhaps are a better comparator. They always sound both fuzzy because bluetooth and strained as well. Also, built in Li-ion batteries. Once those are expired, it's all ogre. You can't easily replace the battery because it's a sealed unit. Granted you could plug it in but that precludes the portability of the unit. While with an old boombox (or a Walkman for that matter - and yes, there are original Sony Walkmans from 1979 that are still going today) you just insert a fresh sheaf of alkaline batteries and off you go. Or if you have rechargeables put those on the charger and insert your other set.

I knew an old man who showed me a black and white photograph of himself and his friends holding up their treasure, the first transistor radio sold where they lived, so they could listen to radio in the park. Didn't make a soyboy face, instead they wore their best clothes. Radio probably still works.

In my experience, Boomer, X, Millennials and, Zoomers all do not have an idea on how tech functions, even those in the sweet spot of Late X / Early/early mid Millennial where keyboarding was taught in school and should be the most familiar with computers before Smartphones and tablets took over still have no fucking clue how to type, they peck slowly with one finger and even thoses who do the "home row" hand layout still use caps lock for one letter then bitch about how much of a pain it is, forget about things like "Secured portals" and "Sending SSN and health info via unsecured email is a bad idea"

...

When I was in college when ipads were first coming out I met a CS student who said "pssh laptops I can just program on my iPad!" (this was first gen/second gen ipads before things like "blue tooth keyboards" were a thing)
Dude your fingers are gonna kill you typing on a screen let alone how even a physical keyboard for such a thing layer things programming languages use a lot (i.e. [ ]) under multiple layers.

I've talked about this with other people, we all believed that the younger generation would be more familiar with tech and how it works. They're not, they're fucking idiots, they know nothing and refuse to learn because problems can be solved by replacing the whole thing for a new one. The son of a woman I know got a new gaming computer in parts to free him from his not so good computer. His much older brother, who knew how to put it together, was out of town so he just sat and looked at those components for weeks and never tried to assemble them. Never tried to learn.

It reminds me of a story my father told me about a retired doctor they knew who they found on the floor in the kitchen, clutching a tin can of hotdogs, crying because he didn't know how to open it. His wife was in the hospital and he had never needed to open a tin can by himself so he just didn't know.

I wouldn't bother with old 1280x1024 as they don't have nice panels

A lot of old ones are terrible. I bought a Samsung for around €500 way back and it was a ghost town with horrible colors. The aspect ratio is nice though. Be wary of a lot of 1280x1024 screens with VGA inputs, I think IBM made a couple of nice IPS ones but they also made a shitload of horrible TN screens.

 

[longtimelurkerfirsttimepo]

What do you want new blank tapes for? I would think that's been unambiguously superseded by digital.
If it's just to play in the car, I use one of those "CD to tape" adapters on cars that don't have line-in ports or USB.

As for actual releases, I've got a collection of a few dozen tapes (mostly indie stuff) and only two or three of them are anything other than plain old Type I. It just doesn't seem to come up very often, even for stuff released in the heyday of tape.

Magnetic tape is still used for archival purposes, as it is cheaper than other methods. Weirdos also still buy music on cassettes as well, for whatever reason.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Magnetic tape is still used for archival purposes, as it is cheaper than other methods. Weirdos also still buy music on cassettes as well, for whatever reason.

No DRM, endlessly copyable, and also often better recorded or mixed. The loudness war is real. Digital music formats brought up impeccable fidelity and yuge dynamic range, so what do mixing engineers do? Stick everything at the top end of it like a brick wall so it sticks out more on radio airplay, at the cost of any subtlety or sound quality or similar. This is why the perception is that vinyl sounds better. It doesn't, but because you can't really brickwall on vinyl because the groove walls would collapse, they have to mix it properly.

I just had Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on my new (to me) boombox. The tape is from 1975. It is objectively better sounding because it's been properly recorded and mixed. The loud bits are REALLY LOUD and the quiet bits are really quiet but still audible and in full detail.

Streaming services reportedly normalise the loudness of music on it but that doesn't bring back the subtlety and dynamism that would have been lost when it was mixed by a deaf ape in the first place.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I still buy all my important stuff on CD and DVD. Never owned a Blu-ray

Most of my blu-rays come with a DVD version. Not sure if this is common practice still.

Like I said, it's annoying when I search for how to do something, and it seems all that shows up are YouTube videos on things that could easily be explained in text.


I still have a (worn) old booklet that came with Ecco: The Tides Of Time in that big old Sega Genesis cartridge case.

Was surprised by how thick the booklet for Devil Survivor Overclocked was. Might be the thickest booklet to ever come with a standard 3DS game. Remember being enthralled by Oblivion's. I'd read that one before bed and admire the art. Closest I've seen to a proper game manual is the first print run version of Shin Megami Tensei 4. That was probably only included because of the Minotaur fight.

Tried a patient portal once. Couldn't log in after the first time. I disable ublock origin, nothing. Disable some schizo privacy stuff, nothing. Okay, time to try another browser. Nothing. Try a third browser, still not logging in.

I try my phone. Still can't log in. The hell? Think I tried another browser there, too. Probably tried my tablet, as well. Sadly, didn't think to try my PS3 or 3DS. Doubt those would be the secret to logging in. Who knows? Maybe the long neglected Wii was the solution.

Want to know what the problem was? The log in page would repeat the stuff I put in regardless of device or browser. Instead of dealing with something that may have been made by Big Benzo, I refused to ever touch this nightmare again.

 

[longtimelurkerfirsttimepo]

No DRM, endlessly copyable, and also often better recorded or mixed. The loudness war is real. Digital music formats brought up impeccable fidelity and yuge dynamic range, so what do mixing engineers do? Stick everything at the top end of it like a brick wall so it sticks out more on radio airplay, at the cost of any subtlety or sound quality or similar. This is why the perception is that vinyl sounds better. It doesn't, but because you can't really brickwall on vinyl because the groove walls would collapse, they have to mix it properly.

I just had Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on my new (to me) boombox. The tape is from 1975. It is objectively better sounding because it's been properly recorded and mixed. The loud bits are REALLY LOUD and the quiet bits are really quiet but still audible and in full detail.

Streaming services reportedly normalise the loudness of music on it but that doesn't bring back the subtlety and dynamism that would have been lost when it was mixed by a deaf ape in the first place.

Well DRM on modern music might as well be non-existent as it is, and I can also ctrl-c + ctrl-v between my 100MB/s storage devices.

I'll certainly agree with you (or at least I've come to suspect it myself) that a lot of modern music is poorly mixed by people who have been given free reins and gone a little bit drunk with power. A lot of pop is pretty trashy, and 100% caters to the radio/low quality playback, but I've seen modern niche bands that released albums last year on cassette tape.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Well DRM on modern music might as well be non-existent as it is, and I can also ctrl-c + ctrl-v between my 100MB/s storage devices.

I'll certainly agree with you (or at least I've come to suspect it myself) that a lot of modern music is poorly mixed by people who have been given free reins and gone a little bit drunk with power. A lot of pop is pretty trashy, and 100% caters to the radio/low quality playback, but I've seen modern niche bands that released albums last year on cassette tape.

A lot of the latter will be cashing in on the hipster / influencer nostalgia factor. Though there is a cassette revival in the offing and if they are serious about same it's likely to be properly mixed.

Also, the whole nonsense about "cuh huh huh huh, tapes get tangled and broken in machines" bollox needs to stop. That was usually due to low quality slot-loading decks in cars and where the tape was already damaged.

 

[Cyclonus]

I miss having non aching joints.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

No DRM, endlessly copyable, and also often better recorded or mixed. The loudness war is real. Digital music formats brought up impeccable fidelity and yuge dynamic range, so what do mixing engineers do? Stick everything at the top end of it like a brick wall so it sticks out more on radio airplay, at the cost of any subtlety or sound quality or similar. This is why the perception is that vinyl sounds better. It doesn't, but because you can't really brickwall on vinyl because the groove walls would collapse, they have to mix it properly.

I just had Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on my new (to me) boombox. The tape is from 1975. It is objectively better sounding because it's been properly recorded and mixed. The loud bits are REALLY LOUD and the quiet bits are really quiet but still audible and in full detail.

Streaming services reportedly normalise the loudness of music on it but that doesn't bring back the subtlety and dynamism that would have been lost when it was mixed by a deaf ape in the first place.

Early CD records blew out too many speakers, speakers used for vinyl and tape, so they limited the range(I don't know what it's called in audio). You can still buy a Guitar Wolf cd that doesn't give a fuck about limits and have that "oh I should turn it down so I don't bother anyone" moment even though you're alone listening on headphones. That's their gimmick, being louder than anyone else, so it's not a limit of the medium.

You can listen to their music on vinyl without speakers. They're honestly a fascinating band, japanese punk rock with a confused idea about The Ramones.

 

[FAQnews Correspondent]

Most of my blu-rays come with a DVD version. Not sure if this is common practice still.

They don't nearly as often anymore, but nearly all 4k blu-rays come with a standard HD blu ray these days.

 

[protomartyr]

Having to hand over your email, name, phone number and blood type to 60% of websites these days still horrifies me as someone who remembers when you weren’t supposed to just give that shit out to everyone who asks for it on the internet.

That and the death of forums. I love gawking at cows as much as everyone here but if I’m being honest the thing that drew me in and keeps me here is that it’s just... a community that’s not on Facebook or Twitter. I used to be a member of so many forums back in the day, even moderated one as a kid, and next to none of them exist now. The ones that do migrated to Facebook or Discord. The centralisation of everything is really disheartening.

That and the ability to patch videogames. Sounds great on paper, results in buggy, unfinished trash in practice. A total disaster.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Most of my blu-rays come with a DVD version. Not sure if this is common practice still.

It is. Just purchased a movie that came out two years ago that had both a Blu-ray and DVD disc.

 

[AnOminous]

That and the death of forums. I love gawking at cows as much as everyone here but if I’m being honest the thing that drew me in and keeps me here is that it’s just... a community that’s not on Facebook or Twitter.

I miss Usenet as what was pre-forums. Shit where you didn't even pretend to be a community, just posted shit and nobody could stop you no matter what they thought. It's sad that what we're nostalgic for at this point, if we're not geezers who can remember the anarchy of Usenet, is a few pockets of sanity run by benevolent or at least not actively malevolent dictators.

We need a return to decentralized platforms controlled by nobody.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

No DRM, endlessly copyable, and also often better recorded or mixed. The loudness war is real. Digital music formats brought up impeccable fidelity and yuge dynamic range, so what do mixing engineers do? Stick everything at the top end of it like a brick wall so it sticks out more on radio airplay, at the cost of any subtlety or sound quality or similar. This is why the perception is that vinyl sounds better. It doesn't, but because you can't really brickwall on vinyl because the groove walls would collapse, they have to mix it properly.

I just had Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on my new (to me) boombox. The tape is from 1975. It is objectively better sounding because it's been properly recorded and mixed. The loud bits are REALLY LOUD and the quiet bits are really quiet but still audible and in full detail.

Streaming services reportedly normalise the loudness of music on it but that doesn't bring back the subtlety and dynamism that would have been lost when it was mixed by a deaf ape in the first place.

Older music even some times on the modern CD remasters if you listen closely enough/have a good enough headset/IEMs can hear imperfections (echos from the studio walls, the singer breathing between lines, etc) it just brings more "life" to the music (at least to me). I suspect one of the reasons why they max everything out today is to hide these fine details, resulting more much more bland sound.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Older music even some times on the modern CD remasters if you listen closely enough/have a good enough headset/IEMs can hear imperfections (echos from the studio walls, the singer breathing between lines, etc) it just brings more "life" to the music (at least to me). I suspect one of the reasons why they max everything out today is to hide these fine details, resulting more much more bland sound.

That, and because most modern popular / semi-popular music is made to be consoomed by mindless normies. They don't actually listen to it. It's all just background noise to them. That, and social media has crabbed everyone's attention span so much that songs with dynamics in them are "boring."

 

[AnOminous]

Older music even some times on the modern CD remasters if you listen closely enough/have a good enough headset/IEMs can hear imperfections (echos from the studio walls, the singer breathing between lines, etc) it just brings more "life" to the music (at least to me). I suspect one of the reasons why they max everything out today is to hide these fine details, resulting more much more bland sound.

This kind of shit ruins the experience. Imagine you're a fan of the Beatles. You have all these wonderful moments where they hate each other's guts barely discernible in the recording, even the fabled Abbey Road Studios. Oh yeah let's remove all those little bits digitally so it sounds like it all went smoothly.

This is why I can't really shit on vinylfags. There are reasons to be fond of these archaic modes of storing sound. Also I kind of like those hisses and spits and weird stylus sounds.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

That, and because most modern popular / semi-popular music is made to be consoomed by mindless normies. They don't actually listen to it. It's all just background noise to them. That, and social media has crabbed everyone's attention span so much that songs with dynamics in them are "boring."

Modern pop music is so sterile and I like the imperfections of older and more "rustically" produced music where one chorus is a bit better than the other one beause the vocal line haven't been copy-pasted across the song to make it perfect. There's also some songs that I prefer as the crusty 96kbps/22khz MP3 version that I downloaded in the 90's, some songs benefit from that crunch.

And there's live versions, something like the live version of Cantara by Dead Can Dance is just phenomenal because it's a bit raw and Gerrard's voice breaks boundaries. I don't follow pop-music but have someone like Nicki Minaj ever released a live album? I suspect that they haven't, not a real one at least.

 

[Jones McCann]

I don't follow pop-music but have someone like Nicki Minaj ever released a live album? I suspect that they haven't, not a real one at least.

Doubtful. Those types of music rely on computer generated music, even when playing "live" they usually have a backing track that does all the actual music while they rap. Most of the rap sounds like complete shit outside a studio too.