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

[ShortBusDriver]

I kind of understand why the car manufacturers do this- it probably increases wear and tear to ensure that the CVT doesn't last beyond the first couple owners- but do they at least offer actual rational modes like 'max economy' or 'max torque' that you can switch to?

It's actually because consumers didn't like the sensation and expected the feeling of gear changes.

Nissan was one of the first automakers to do this.

 

[The Last Stand]

In a similar vein: the Nintendo DS; it just feels nice to play something on its original hardware compared to an emulator for me. Cartridges are fun to insert and eject.

I like cartridges. Easy to store, easy to print, more space opportunity compared to optical media.

I think gaming could've worked if games were stored in USB drives or something along those lines. There are thumb drives that can have several GBs in them. Why not bring cartridges back in that vein with the advantages of modern technology?

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

If I had to pick a place to store very sensitive data for decades (with the rule that the storage space is inside a comfortable climate and never encounters extreme temperatures or excessive moisture) I'd pick tape. (honestly, any tape.) Failing that, I'd pick 5,25" 360 kb floppies. Both I'd pick over any optical medium or flash any day. I have an obscene amount of these floppies that have been written to a few times in the 80s and remained with their data intact to almost this very day. When people see failures in them it's usually sub-optimal storage conditions and drives that are actually but unoticeably (on a software level) not working correctly who are to blame.

Especially optical media IMO has been always complete garbage. Touchy storage mediums who self destruct and touchy drives which do the same by design and that are also impossible to maintain properly. If you don't give me government-agency budget give me consumer-grade old-school magnetic any time of the day.

On the opposite end of that, I found spindles of soon to be two decades old DVD-Rs, unbranded trash bought from foreign specialty web stores that sprung up to sell in bulk the cheapest recording media China could produce. Blank discs were expensive and topsite mirrors only held new stuff for 7-14 days so lots of them were needed. I think a spindle of 100 mystery discs cost the equivalent of $170 while the cheapest 100 spindle with a brand, even unknown brands, would cost 400-500 bucks.
They still work, it seemed like they had read problems at first but I had just forgotten how slow optical media was.

 

[Jones McCann]

I don't miss 3D or interactive movies.

The 3D effect with the red/cyan glasses was nauseating and cheap, even then. 3D was a fad that was unnecessary.

Who bought a 3D TV and USED the 3D effect? All it did was decrease the frame rate and resolution.

My parents had a 3D tv with the glasses. I used it maybe once or twice but it looked terrible and gave you a headache after 2 minutes.

 

[Darksy DePhil]

How reddit started "archiving" posts and threads older than 6 months, completely disabling comments and even upvotes for them.
I don't even use reddit and i know everyone on the internet has an autistic irrational hateboner for necroposting, but honestly what's the fucking point of this? It's not like imageboards deleting posts once they fall out of the catalog, the posts are all still there. This shit only kills discourse over specific points by forcing you to make a new thread to even TRY to have the same discussion all over again.

 

[Shroom King]

tech trend I hate: Is it really necessary for marijuana vaporizers to have smartphone apps?

 

[AnotherPleb]

tech trend I hate: Is it really necessary for marijuana vaporizers to have smartphone apps?

It's part of the Internet of Things, and it's a creepy way to make sure you're monitored no matter what you do.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

The other day my sister pulled out some old walkie-talkies that my folks found in an old junk box. Back in the olden days before cell phones, that was how my parents would communicate across the road while they drove different cars.

I began to realize that walkie-talkies are a lot more practical to use than cell phones in certain situations, such as two people driving somewhere in different vehicles. Walkie-talkies don't rely on cell towers or Internet connection for example, so as long as you're in range with the other person you don't have to worry about the call dropping out. Plus you don't have to fiddle around with the walkie-talkie if you need to call back the other person; usually with a cell phone you have to navigate a couple of different screens just to call the person back, and voice control can be fiddly to use, especially if the software has a hard time understanding you. Meanwhile with walkie-talkies, as long as you're on the same frequency you don't have to worry about wasting time with the process of calling the other person; just press a button and bam you're talking again.

Granted, walkie-talkies have their limits, but when it comes to short-distance communications I think they can more useful.

Last time I used a walkie talkie, I ended up overhearing someone's Burger King order. For some reason, the Burger King drive-thru was on the same frequency.

 

[AnOminous]

Last time I used a walkie talkie, I ended up overhearing someone's Burger King order. For some reason, the Burger King drive-thru was on the same frequency.

Nextel used to have a line of cell phones that also had built-in walkie-talkie capability. I'm not sure why these don't still exist.

 

[Pizdec]

Nextel used to have a line of cell phones that also had built-in walkie-talkie capability. I'm not sure why these don't still exist.

Honestly, why don't they? I thought it was coolest shit to just be able to speak into your phone and send it as a "text".

 

[Kosher Dill]

Nextel used to have a line of cell phones that also had built-in walkie-talkie capability. I'm not sure why these don't still exist.

"Push-to-talk" seems to still exist and some phones even still have dedicated buttons for it. I've never used one though.

 

[Overly Serious]

Square monitors.

I used a Surface laptop recently and it immediately felt more comfortable to use. 3:2 is so much better an aspect for a lot of types of work. I know if you really search you can still find the odd square monitor but they're not well supported and they're not high quality.

What I wouldn't give for 3:2 ratio to come back to the desktop.

Honestly, why don't they? I thought it was coolest shit to just be able to speak into your phone and send it as a "text".

Install Telegram. You'll have push to talk that works great.

Assuming you can actually get your friends to use it, too. :/

 

[ditto]

I miss these. My favorites, though, were the flopticals the NeXT had. I loved those machines.

They were just soo slow. NEXTSTEP was amazing and I'm glad it's bastard children took over the world and not Windows CE.

 

[sasazuka]

Someone got me a set black air bod knock offs as a gift. I've never been a fan of ear buds. They always end up making my ears feel sore from the sound vibrations. Ear buds also tend to get really unhygienic with people sharing them around in different peoples' ears. I wanted to be optimistic and give these things try. I open them up and everything... They don't fit in my ears. The dubs are larger than the space between the trangus and concha where they are supposed to fit. As far as I can tell they make very good ear wax shovels. There blue-tooth too, so I'm not really looking forward to the concept of having Li-ion batteries in my ears. (Li-ion are the exploding kind)

Aside from not having to worry about recharging them, I still only use wired earbuds for listening to electronics on the go for the not-relevant-to-most-people-anymore-but-still-relevant-to-me reason that wired earbuds don't interfere with AM or weather band radio, unlike Bluetooth.

At home, I use proper over the ear headphones for most things.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

Square monitors.

I used a Surface laptop recently and it immediately felt more comfortable to use. 3:2 is so much better an aspect for a lot of types of work. I know if you really search you can still find the odd square monitor but they're not well supported and they're not high quality.

What I wouldn't give for 3:2 ratio to come back to the desktop.

4:3 was the monitor standard back in the day.

But yeah 3:2/4:3 is a lot better for programing or other wise using something that is limited to 80/120 CHARs (some SSH software/servers, etc) then 16:9 (unless you are able to put the monitor vertical).

Aside from not having to worry about recharging them, I still only use wired earbuds for listening to electronics on the go for the not-relevant-to-most-people-anymore-but-still-relevant-to-me reason that wired earbuds don't interfere with AM or weather band radio, unlike Bluetooth.

At home, I use proper over the ear headphones for most things.

For sound quality wired beats wireless.
Not a fan of earbuds but fucking hell the ATH-E70s are great.

I am curious why do you worry about weatherband? (For me its I want to be able to access it in case shit hits the fan)

 

[AmpleApricots]

I used a Surface laptop recently and it immediately felt more comfortable to use. 3:2 is so much better an aspect for a lot of types of work. I know if you really search you can still find the odd square monitor but they're not well supported and they're not high quality.

Eizo still makes good square ones, they're pretty expensive new but sometimes you can get them for next to nothing off ebay because people generally don't buy these monitors. They have good IPS panels with nice color balance, LED backlight and all the little technical advantages of a monitor manufactured in recent years. Of course you don't get 144Hz or features like freesync and all that other gamer stuff. I use a ~3 year old 1280x1024 one as primary monitor and honestly don't really need more, especially since I prefer the sharpness and predictabilty in rendering of bitmap fonts. I even used to have a 4k monitor so I'm quite familiar with higher resolutions but for me it was a waste of money and most I got out of it was compatibility problems and lots of blank, useless space. 1280x1024 is even ok for most games although some games simply cannot handle anything that isn't 16:9 or have problems fitting their GUI into the resolution. For CAD work, 3D rendering and such though you probably might want something higher res.

If you have about a thousand eurobucks to spare, Eizo also offers a true 1:1 1920x1920 square monitor.

I also have a small and new 12" 800x600 chinese LCD with TN panel as monitor for vintage computers and am really impressed with the viewing angles, color accuracy and general picture quality. That thing also pretty much eats every ancient DOS text mode or old 68k Mac Video signal and gives a crystal clear picture. It's also quite nice for console-only Linux stuff.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Last time I used a walkie talkie, I ended up overhearing someone's Burger King order. For some reason, the Burger King drive-thru was on the same frequency.

That seems like a particularly poorly designed drive through system.

They're all digital now sadly.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Now with all that being said, what really fucks me up about cars is how manufacturers deliberately fuck with maintainability by slowly including parts that are not serviceable by the owner.

Or they put them in places where it's difficult if not impossible for the average person to service or remove. I wanted to clean my throttle body, but there was an airbox in the way and no apparent/easy way to remove it myself, so I had to let the repair shop do it and pay through the nose in labor charges.

Even domestic brands are getting in on this with non-serviceable transmissions. What does this mean? Basically the manual tells you that the entire transmission is "sealed", and should last throughout the lifetime of the car. How long is that lifetime? 90k? 150k? fuck knows! You can't even run a dipstick into the tranny to check the fluid for levels and discoloration, which will give you important information that it will grenade soon.

There's a mechanic on Youtube, Scotty Kilmer, who discussed this very point in one of his videos in that the "lifetime" promise for the transmission means very little because there's no guarantee that it won't fail before the rest of the car is ready to bite the dust. A lot of his recent videos seem to be more clickbaity, but the older ones that discuss DIY repairs are very informative assuming one has the mechanical skill for the repairs being discussed.

My dad worked in construction for years, and they used to have these CB radios(Which we always called a walkie talkie) on the dashes of their pickups with these big ass antennas on the truck and they worked all over town.

Although CB use has faded as mobile phone technology has improved and become more prevalent, CB channel 19 is still used by truckers and others with CB radios and can be useful for long cross-state or cross-country trips. I have no idea how well Channel 9 is still monitored for emergencies, though. There are various forms of walkie talkies; some use CB channel 14 or another one and others may use a separate band.

Failing that, I'd pick 5,25" 360 kb floppies.

5.25" floppy disk drives are all but impossible to find these days -- apart from virtual ones that simply use internal storage to simulate an actual floppy drive -- and those on computers old enough to have them are often not functional. If you're gung-ho on using floppy disks, use 3.5" ones instead. It's still possible to buy portable 3.5" floppy drives that connect via USB and come in handy for erasing old disks or moving data off those floppies onto a more modern storage medium.

 

[AmpleApricots]

5.25" floppy disk drives are all but impossible to find these days -- apart from virtual ones that simply use internal storage to simulate an actual floppy drive -- and those on computers old enough to have them are often not functional. If you're gung-ho on using floppy disks, use 3.5" ones instead. It's still possible to buy portable 3.5" floppy drives that connect via USB and come in handy for erasing old disks or moving data off those floppies onto a more modern storage medium.

..it was a hypothetical scenario with "what if" selection of resources. Actually, I back up my data like everyone else on several modern media that I replace when it goes bad or becomes too obsolete to bother with. If you have a good backup scheme of your current data, one backup media failing should be nothing but an inconvenience.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

wow internet on a smartphone or tablet sucks

It takes 3 times as long (and easily as many attempts) to type or get something done. The (tiny) awkward touchscreen the fingers block. The lack of "fine control" one has on a normal computer.

Being stuck with one of those to surf the internet would suck.