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

[Ginger Piglet]

I dug out my boombox the other day and listened to a CD on it for the first time in years. I forgot just how crisp and clean a good CD player can sound. I usually use my car's CD player, but there were details within the song I was picking up with the boombox that I simply wasn't with my car. My car's sound system is good, but it's harder to appreciate the finer details, especially when you're on the road and have to focus on other things.

I guess I just miss good CD sound systems.

That's also going to be because CDs are an order of magnitude better in sound quality than the 128 kbps MP3 that streaming insists on using. Their only downside is that they can be buggered quite easily into unplayability. That, and disc rot for older burned discs (i.e. CD-Rs and CD-RWs, as opposed to commercial and pre-recorded discs which are pressed; it's to do with the fact that burned discs rely on chemical alterations in the dyes to simulate the pits and lands that are physically stamped into a pre-recorded disc and some of the earlier dye formulations weren't that stable.)

I've been getting into taping and with my big ol' Sharp ghettoblaster from 1983 you CAN hear the difference between 128kbps MP3 and FLAC, whether you play it directly via the aux port from a digital device or stick it onto a tape (even alternate sides of the same tape). It really does make a difference. But alas, by penny pinching on bandwidth and you owning nothing and being happy, people are being conditioned to think 128kbps is acceptable.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Not really, they still build a profile of you from websites you visit, info they buy/get on you, and your friends "leaking" your info via apps and spyware on phones.
Basically Dale got it spot on

I miss when what he said seemed extremely out there, now its the truth.

Something that really scratched my head was when I went to the Tiktok site for the first time ever and the recommended videos were all from my old and small hometown that no one cares about and I haven't visited it in a decade. It was very odd.

 

[moocow]

Personally, I hate ISPs that literally fucking lock down your router settings. Which means you can't access your admin page, edit the password, forward ports to host any sort of server, etc. This shit should be lawsuit-worthy.

It varies by ISP, but you can often just ask the installing tech to put the damned thing into "bridge mode" and be done with it. In bridge mode, it connects to the ISP and routes packets in and out between the internet and whatever router or switch you plug into it. Nothing else. No firewall, DHCP (your router gets its IP straight from the ISP), no wifi, no QoS (your router can do that just fine and it gets passed right along), no nothing. Literally just the equivalent of a big fat phy that adapts the ISP's network medium (i.e. cable or fiber) into whatever your router eats (usually gigabit). Everything that comes in from the internet goes to your router and vice versa without interference.

If the installer can't or won't do it, it's worth calling tech support to ask nicely. Tier 1 won't know what the hell you're talking about, and convincing them to transfer you to tier 2 is the hardest part of the call. Tier 2 will generally understand what you want, and will try to caution you away from it claiming "blah blah less secure no antivirus plus all dem features, man!" but you can usually just talk past them and get transferred up to tier 3, which is staffed by the people who can actually "flip the switch" on their end to set your modem to bridged mode. Tier 3 will basically ask you a couple questions designed to make sure you're not a fucking idiot and you have a working router ready to go, then ask you "you're not going to do nasty things with this are you?" and assuming you say "nah, it'll be fine" they'll usually flip the switch.

In my experience the only kind of filtering/blocking they do with this mode enabled is outbound port 25 because SMTP abuse for spamming purposes is widespread and commonplace (and often used by malware to send spam via botnet) so they just stop you from sending anything out on port 25 at all. They'll let everything else in, including 80, 443, 22, you name it.

 

[The Last Stand]

Video game instruction manuals. I remember when some games would be creative with their manuals. They would connect with the atmosphere of the game it's presenting.

Saints Row, an open world gangsta GTA clone, for instance.

Now physical games either come with one page pamphlets or nothing at all. Saving paper is the excuse. I think it's laziness.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Video game instruction manuals. I remember when some games would be creative with their manuals. They would connect with the atmosphere of the game it's presenting.

Saints Row, an open world gangsta GTA clone, for instance.

Now physical games either come with one page pamphlets or nothing at all. Saving paper is the excuse. I think it's laziness.

Oh god yes. My favourite was the manual to Battlezone 1998. The setting was that in the 1960s the Americans and Soviets had discovered this intelligent bio-metal in meteor showers which allowed them to build super technologically advanced hovertanks and shit and the Space Race was a cover for exploring other planets to find this stuff. So the manual was designed to look like a top secret NSA briefing guide. In keeping with that, it put all the manually things like installation and controls and suchlike at the back and how to make multiplayer work etc. It instead kicked off with a rundown of the various sides and the story, pretend letters from the President and suchlike. It also contained deliberate inaccuracies to reflect the fact that intelligence was not, shall we say, 100 percent reliable.

Unfortunately that's gone the way of the big-box games that allowed for it. I miss big box games.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

I miss having a burner flip phone and I hate having a smart phone. I genuinely don’t like having the internet so readily accessible. I don’t know maybe it’s just me but I don’t think it’s healthy. I used to go months at a time without internet, just traveling and enjoying nature and now I can’t imagine going without this stupid hunk of plastic. It’s convenient sure but it eats up time, money, and my patience.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I genuinely don’t like having the internet so readily accessible.

It's basically destroyed my attention span

 

[The Last Stand]

Unfortunately that's gone the way of the big-box games that allowed for it. I miss big box games.

Actually, I don't miss big box games. They take up too much space. Regular sized cases are perfectly fine.

 

[Coffee Shits]

Video game instruction manuals. I remember when some games would be creative with their manuals. They would connect with the atmosphere of the game it's presenting.

Saints Row, an open world gangsta GTA clone, for instance.

Now physical games either come with one page pamphlets or nothing at all. Saving paper is the excuse. I think it's laziness.

It's the constant corner-cutting by meddling middle manager types that killed the software manual. Why bother professionally typesetting a physical document when you can get some junior (outsourced, natch) to hamfistedly jam in tutorials inside the product itself?

It's this constant disregard for product quality that's sucked the soul out of software and replaced it with unskippable aggressively friendly popups.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

It's the constant corner-cutting by meddling middle manager types that killed the software manual. Why bother professionally typesetting a physical document when you can get some junior (outsourced, natch) to hamfistedly jam in tutorials inside the product itself?

It's this constant disregard for product quality that's sucked the soul out of software and replaced it with unskippable aggressively friendly popups.

No one on both sides took Clippy as a warning. Clippy had the last laugh.

 

[The Last Stand]

It's the constant corner-cutting by meddling middle manager types that killed the software manual. Why bother professionally typesetting a physical document when you can get some junior (outsourced, natch) to hamfistedly jam in tutorials inside the product itself?

It's this constant disregard for product quality that's sucked the soul out of software and replaced it with unskippable aggressively friendly popups.

Speaking of which:

You buy a physical version of a game only for the box to just include a download code.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

Speaking of which:

You buy a physical version of a game only for the box to just include a download code.

View attachment 2238402

Console gamer are now feeling the pain of PC gaming when steam was first becoming popular.

I am surprised Scott didn't mention the Collectors edition of Wolfenstein the New Order, it didn't even come with the game at all, no digital code or anything.

 

[Cool Dog]

Other worlds in the Solar System suck.

Interstellar travel may be impossible.

The best approach to living off of this crazy planet could be to live in a space station that has Earth-like conditions on board. Like a rotating wheel-shaped thing with plants and air. Biosphere 2 showed that may not be possible though. We may truly be trapped on this crazy planet, with death being the only out.

(that sucks)

I think we might get o'neil cylinder colonies and shit, specially as earth goes to shit since in those colonies you're basically in one giant climate-controlled environment, tho it must be weird looking up and seeing an upside-down city instead of the sky every day. You could attach a bunch of ion engines to one and accelerate it to high enough speeds that a few centuries down the road it reaches proxima centauri, but the real problem is getting an energy source since these colonies would likely run on solar and good luck getting any of that beyond mars

And that only if space manufacturing and mining takes off, else the rich people will move to arcologies instead which are basically like a shopping mall with skyscrappers all joined together into a single sealed environment thats mostly self-sustainable with shit like water recycling, vertical farms, lab-grown meat and solar panels everywhere. So basically our future is all of us living in gigantic malls of different quality while the very poor live in slums that make current slums seem fancy

Or maybe we just create a gigantic matrix-like MMO and move there. I certainly would if I get to live in a world of my own choosing, fuck reality.

 

[seri0us]

Console gamer are now feeling the pain of PC gaming when steam was first becoming popular.

I've been using Steam for so long that whenever I talk about how bullshit DRM is, the irony is almost always lost on me.

 

[AnOminous]

Unfortunately that's gone the way of the big-box games that allowed for it. I miss big box games.

I miss the goofy shit Infocom sometimes put in their text adventure games, like Hitchhiker's Guide.

I've been using Steam for so long that whenever I talk about how bullshit DRM is, the irony is almost always lost on me.

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

QR codes have been around for years now, but they were pretty fringe at first, and always a secondary, if not tertiary method of parsing an online account, accessing a form, etc. Now it seems like more and more companies and businesses are not only using them more, but assuming that everyone has the means to use them.

I have an old ass Samsung that doesn't even have QR reading capacity on it, unless I download some shady as fuck free reader. Why do I have to scan some faggot square just to confirm my account. What was wrong with clicking a fucking link, like you know, we did for the past 25 years?

I mean shit, it's not even the code per se. It's how everything is increasingly stacked and dependent on keeping up with the Joneses-style new gadgetry and consoomerism. The Luddite of today, whether by choice or by circumstance, is being increasingly fistfucked by needless tech adoption.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

Old first party joysticks that basically last forever, the drift issues are ridiculous given the cost of modern first party joysticks.

 

[Erika Furudo]

Speaking of which:

You buy a physical version of a game only for the box to just include a download code.

View attachment 2238402

This happened to me with Deus ex mankind divided and Divinity Oiriginal Sin II, playing a big role in me moving away from games. DOSII was just a steam code in a box. DXMD had the disc, but you needed to use the code and DRM to install it. Anything after 2012 or so is pretty much trash now imo. Meanwhile your local charity shop has lots of old games where you just put the disc in, install and you're good to go. Don't even get greeted by "We need to install a fucking huge patch", it's so much better.

Console gamer are now feeling the pain of PC gaming when steam was first becoming popular.

I am surprised Scott didn't mention the Collectors edition of Wolfenstein the New Order, it didn't even come with the game at all, no digital code or anything.

Remember the old argument that due to not needing to physically produce, package and ship games the price would go down? Fuck steam. All the Valve fanboys get what they deserve crying over no HL3 when Valve can just get fat off steam sales, they have no otivation to make games. So they dont.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

fuck reality

Earth sucks because the people often - if not usually - suck. Especially among those running the show.

(the laws of nature being so limiting certainly doesn't help either)

That said, I don't think I'd want to live in a simulation. Mind control and hacking are too easy there.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Old first party joysticks that basically last forever, the drift issues are ridiculous given the cost of modern first party joysticks.

It's the price that pisses me off. Modern controllers cost as much as a new video game, sometimes even more, and yet they have nowhere near the durability of controllers 20 years ago. I've got a PS1 controller from like 1999 that still works perfectly. And back then, a new controller was in the ballpark of $20-30 so you weren't breaking the bank if something went wrong. Meanwhile, my PS4 controller can barely read L3 inputs anymore.

It's especially egregious because little kids ain't exactly gentle with controllers. I know I abused the shit out of mine growing up. But now the controllers are way more fragile than they used to be so there's a better chance of kids irreparably destroying the controller.