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

[ToroidalBoat]

Modern tech is planned obsolescent trash that is built to CONSOOME PRODUCT, THEN GET EXCITED FOR NEXT PRODUCT.

That's not quite fair.

I think it's both.

Smartphones can't not be built like crap. And when stuff can be built like not-crap, it's usually built like crap anyway so people have to keep buying more stuff.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

I miss DVD being standard and Blu-ray being this newfangled thing. Back when VHS was still kind of a thing. Back then, no streaming to "smart" TVs that watch you.

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

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

That's not quite fair. Smartphones have to pack a lot of tech into a tiny space - it's impossible to make it as easily repairable as a boombox (manufacturers do a lot of things to make repairing harder than it needs to be though).

Consumers want those ridiculously thin flat slabs of glass and metal instead of buying a rugged phone in the first place.
These have always been available and aren't expensive.
But the retarded consoomer just cries about the bevel and the thickness even though they're often thinner than your "sexy" new iPhone in its much-needed protective case.

Side rant, my boss (who claims to have a background in IT before getting an MBA) thinks its best we buy some shit grade consumer "thin and light" laptops for our workers instead of going to Dell or what ever and getting proper business laptops (and a rep) where we could replace the HDD/SSD or RAM if needed, instead we need to procure a new bloody laptop instead of just swapping an SSD or RAM stick.

Its bullshit that consumers and now businesses think "We want this wasteful bs that only benefits the company we are paying money to!"

 

[Kane Lives]

More a cultural thing than anything, but holy fuck, can we stop making guides only in video form? I much rather not spend twenty minutes having someone read the guide for me when I can do it myself in five. And looking up text is infinitely much more user friendly than having to rewind to the exact timestamp of a video.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

That's not quite fair. Smartphones have to pack a lot of tech into a tiny space - it's impossible to make it as easily repairable as a boombox (manufacturers do a lot of things to make repairing harder than it needs to be though).

Consumers want those ridiculously thin flat slabs of glass and metal instead of buying a rugged phone in the first place.
These have always been available and aren't expensive.
But the retarded consoomer just cries about the bevel and the thickness even though they're often thinner than your "sexy" new iPhone in its much-needed protective case.

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.

Either way, it all dovetails with my point about the throwaway nature of modern tech and society in general. Like you say, your iPhone is designed to make repair difficult. And we know that this is intentional because Apple got in hot water for retrospectively bricking all iPhones that were repaired by people other than them - which is low. I mean, I can accept that it might void the warranty to do that but bricking them out of spite? That's low. Those bluetooth earbuds? What happens to those when the Li-Ion batteries wear out? Fancy fixing those? Not gonna happen.

Alan Sugar (yes, that one) made his first successes in the 1970s selling hi-fis. He had a phrase to describe his products - the Mug's Eyeful. Basically, in the 70s the hi-fi system of choice was a big ol' stacker. You had your amp, your speakers, your tape deck, your reel to reel deck if you were into that sort of thing, your radio, and your turntable, and they were all designed to be in flat metal cases so you could pile them up and with standard plugs on the back. They sounded pretty nice and used quality components. They were expensive, but if you were at all serious about listening to music in general and not in just a wanky audiophile kind of way, they were sought after. For the more budget oriented listener there were all in one systems, like say a battery turntable, a tape and radio receiver, and suchlike. However they looked (and were) cheap, but if you were on a budget or undiscerning they were good enough. Alan Sugar's innovation, such as it was, was to make an all in one hi-fi with a turntable on the top, a twin tape deck in the middle, a radio and amp on the bottom, and two speakers thrown in, but styled to look like it was separate components all stacked up. So you had a cheap and not particularly nice sounding system, but to the untrained eye and ear it looked like you had a proper stacker hi-fi. That is the Mug's Eyeful - to a mug, it looks more impressive than it is.

Those modern Crosley Cruiser turntables that all the teenagers seem to like are a mug's eyeful. Techmoan did a video about how he imported the mechanism for it from China for ten quid. But one of those Crosleys costs seventy or eighty quid. They cost probably almost nothing make (economies of scale, using cheapshit turntable mechs and speakers and a few feet of thin gauge wiring, then podge them into a cheap looking briefcase and off you go) but are sold for way more than that. And most of the cost of manufacture is the styling. Like I said, the Mug's Eyeful.

The same applies to clothes for this matter. Marks & Spencer here in the UK used to be middle of the road clobber that was solid and well made. The suit I wore to my first job interview for a training contract was a pinstripe from M&S (I got the job, if you must know) and it lasted for three to four years. But replacement M&S suits have been shit. The fabric is like tissue paper. And they still cost the same as they used to, but they look sharp and fashionable.

I cannot afford a Savile Row jobbie, much as I'd like to (when the coof is over and we've got more money coming in I am going to save up for one) so I go to a local menswear shop near me. I spend about two to three times as much as I would on an M&S suit. It isn't quite as sharp looking or trendy and they don't have impeccably groomed male models in the posters showing it off. But it's tough and hardwearing and feels robust. Once again, the Mug's Eyeful.

Sites like Wish and Ali Express trade almost exclusively on the Mug's Eyeful.

 

[Vixenstar17]

Late post but I miss CDs, VHS tapes and even DVDs now. I find more enjoyment in watching content I like on a physical format. Its the same with physical video game copies as well when they had the little handbooks inside. They bring me so much nostalgia.

I miss having a portable CD player that you used to walk to school with etc. I have my old one still but I think I miss it because it was easy solution for me to use back then.

Also, Motorola and Blackberry phones that were specific colours and had keyboards. I loved putting cute phone charms on mine as it was my first phone

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Well that is a great way to piss people off. That is what most people want/need yet another fucking log in for some unimportant BS they need to keep tract of, tech savvy or not.

I think part of the issue might be that younger generations are so ingrained in technology that they can't function without it or don't know how to function without it when it's unavailable. To them, submitting and receiving information via client portals seems natural. Older generations and practical people prefer traditional means (in person drop-off, postal mail, etc.) and will resist the push towards technology for the reasons you mention.

I once got an email saying my doctor left a message for me on the patient portal, I was expecting a message from him on something important, only he didn't it was a fucking ad for the hospital system I was pissed.

Earlier this week, my credit card company sent me an email with a subject along the lines of "Avoid mail delays!" With how shitty US mail service has been lately, I thought it was a legit warning that payments sent to them via postal mail might not arrive as quickly as usual. Instead, it was an ad encouraging customers to set up automatic bill payment withdrawals. I was equally pissed.

(Edit to avoid double-post)

Yesterday I picked up from a local seller a classic boombox. It's a Sharp VZ-2000 if you must know. The bloke found it in a house clearance from some old chap who had died and who was a dance instructor. He bought it back in 1983 to teach his tango classes because it was portable, loud enough to fill a large gymnasium and still remain audible and good quality, and could play both vinyl and tapes. Also the linear tracking / auto music search meant that he could cue up a song without having to wind back and forth to get to it.

That sounds like a radio (albeit a different model than what showed for your Sharp VZ-2000) my next door neighbor got as a gift from his brother 30-some years ago when the latter was stationed in Germany. Seeing a boombox with a fully functional turntable (aka record player) was absolutely mind-blowing. It also had a feature where he could pop a tape in, listen to it, and the press both play and fast forward together (or play and rewind) to move back and forth between the next and previous songs on the tape.

That kind of ties into another point: older technology wasn't just built to last, but it was also functional with items that the manufacturers knew consumers wanted or would find useful. Now, devices are little more than something made on an assembly line (cookie-cutter style) with little or nothing that distinguishes them from a competitor's line of devices.

Side rant, my boss (who claims to have a background in IT before getting an MBA) thinks its best we buy some shit grade consumer "thin and light" laptops for our workers instead of going to Dell or what ever and getting proper business laptops

I first remember when "thin" machines and software were a big buzz phrase a good 20-plus years ago. Sometimes, old school ideas become so ingrained that it's hard to let go of them even when they aren't the best idea in the current year. Even the large corporation I once did consulting work knew enough to have standard practices in place for its desktops and laptops to make sure everything was to spec and that data remained relatively easy to migrate.

Either way, it all dovetails with my point about the throwaway nature of modern tech and society in general. Like you say, your iPhone is designed to make repair difficult.

It's even getting more difficult to do simple DIY repairs on cars. I have a vacuum hose that I'm convinced has a hole/leak in it, but there's no way for me to easily get to it to remove it or even inspect it properly, so I'll have to have the repair shop do it and pay a bundle for something I could have done much cheaper had I been able to do it myself.

It's part of a larger trend, though. A mechanic on YouTube (Scotty Kilmer for those curious) mentioned in one of his videoes that the increased complexity and computerization of vehicles and their engines has resulted in people needing a mechanic for almost anything involving engine components that plug into the main computer.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

can we stop making guides only in video form?

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.

same with physical video game copies as well when they had the little handbooks inside

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

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Not even that old tech pieces since I was kept off technology by my parents for a while, but god damn I miss the iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano, not because they are useful, but because they were basically my first encounter with technology aside from dad's acer pc with windows xp (fucking Rover the dog)

I lost the iPod Nano in the airport, not sure where the shuffle (2nd gen) is and I gave the decade old iPod 5 to my cousin, no idea if she still has it, it was a white one

p.s fuck apple nowadays their shit is overpriced, bought an iPhone 8 in 2017 for 3600 lira (around 1000$ back then) and now it is 6000 lira (820$)

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

I think part of the issue might be that younger generations are so ingrained in technology that they can't function without it or don't know how to function without it when it's unavailable. To them, submitting and receiving information via client portals seems natural. Older generations and practical people prefer traditional means (in person drop-off, postal mail, etc.) and will resist the push towards technology for the reasons you mention.

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"

Then fucking lawyers and doctors, How the fuck is a unencrypted fax that only "protection" is a cover sheet (That gets printed first so it doesn't even "hide" the privileged information), acceptable for client/patient privacy and privacy laws?! Oh and the generic end email signature of "The information is private/confidential and intended only for the intended recipient if you are not them you need to delete this email under plenty of law" (what law, we have had no prior agreement you can't hold me to shit with a made up law) You tell me this after I went thought the email? If it was to hold any weight it would be the first thing you see in the email.

In theory Gen X/Millennials were as good and knowledge about tech as the stereotype makes them to be, these two generations of lawyers should have been able to get that shit (even if just the hard on for faxes) to stop by now for the companies they represent/work for.

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.

Earlier this week, my credit card company sent me an email with a subject along the lines of "Avoid mail delays!" With how shitty US mail service has been lately, I thought it was a legit warning that payments sent to them via postal mail might not arrive as quickly as usual. Instead, it was an ad encouraging customers to set up automatic bill payment withdrawals. I was equally pissed.

I mean automatic bill payments kind of do solve that issue (for your other bills) they might have needed that to be phrased differently though.
The message I got was just "X hospital system is still up and running though COVID!", No shit Sherlock its one of the largest systems in my area if you were not up and running shit would hit the fan COVID or not.

 

[Harvey Danger]

Not even that old tech pieces since I was kept off technology by my parents for a while, but god damn I miss the iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano, not because they are useful, but because they were basically my first encounter with technology aside from dad's acer pc with windows xp (fucking Rover the dog)

I lost the iPod Nano in the airport, not sure where the shuffle (2nd gen) is and I gave the decade old iPod 5 to my cousin, no idea if she still has it, it was a white one

p.s fuck apple nowadays their shit is overpriced, bought an iPhone 8 in 2017 for 3600 lira (around 1000$ back then) and now it is 6000 lira (820$)

I loved the Shuffle, once they updated the software. Built-in USB so you don't have to carry any cables, extremely lightweight, and decent audio quality. I never used it in "random songs from your library" mode, just kept it loaded with specific tracks for work or working out. You could drop it in any pocket and never feel it there until you wanted it.

It's probably been said here before, but that's a trend I really hate: we spent decades going for miniaturization on consumer tech like phones and audio players, reached some kind of peak... and then the companies gave up on tiny and switched to making everything bigger again. Yeah, phones are thinner than ever, but they're also massive slabs that feel bulky in my pocket and require 2 hands to navigate across the entire screen.

The wearables and IoT trends are transparent bullshit; companies trying to get back into miniaturization, but not their flagship, full-featured tech. Instead we get gimped single-purpose knick knacks, or privacy-destroying trackers, or 50 iterations on a basic bitch pedometer whose only difference is which app it connects to.

And all these gadgets still require you to carry a phone to connect and do the real work anyway.

Look, either give me my Dick Tracy self-contained wristwatch phone, or admit you can't innovate. Don't give me this Bluetooth enabled bullshit whose main draw is "you don't have to reach into your pocket to answer the phone now!" If you can't get a cell radio into a wristwatch without giving me cancer, then stop doing launch events pitching lazy crap until you figure it out.

While I'm on it, laptops appear super thin now, but they haven't made real laptops that thin, just some sealed case ultra-fragile toys with more style than computing power. Thermal throttling is a failure of computing design. And they're all 15-17 inch anyway, instead of giving me a paper-thin 11" foldable I can drop in a portfolio, yet still handle serious computing/rendering tasks.

I'm not asking for flying cars and hoverboards, I just want tech that makes my job and my life easier, instead of tech that wants to be the center of attention.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

flying cars and hoverboards

That's how it should've been. Instead we got "smart" TVs, "smart" phones, "Internet Of Things", and "social" media.

I just want tech that makes my job and my life easier

Tablet or smartphone typing is a potentially enraging rigamarole.

 

[AnOminous]

I also hate that it's like every year there is a new USB port I need to go buy USB cables for. Its gotten to a point I have a gallon BAG of these bitches and idk what half of them go to anymore. I enjoy charging stations way more rather than fumbling around with a chord I'm bound to either loose or snap 5 minutes after I get it.

What I hate is when "USB" cables have identical looking connectors but the pinout is different so two identical looking cables may be missing a necessary wire. So if you plug them in to a device they aren't made for, jack shit happens. This is especially the case when they use USB cable connectors for something that is just a charging cable, but your device actually needs to communicate. This is especially common with the really shitty generic Chinese cables that just have the +5v and GND wires. So try to connect your phone to your computer with one of these pieces of shit and spend an hour trying to puzzle out why fucking nothing is happening.

I once got an email saying my doctor left a message for me on the patient portal

If they can even send you a message to tell you that bullshit, WHY NOT JUST SEND YOU THE ACTUAL MESSAGE? My guess would be some HIPAA bullshit but it's still stupid.

 

[b0o0pinsn0o0tz]

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.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

That sounds like a radio (albeit a different model than what showed for your Sharp VZ-2000) my next door neighbor got as a gift from his brother 30-some years ago when the latter was stationed in Germany. Seeing a boombox with a fully functional turntable (aka record player) was absolutely mind-blowing. It also had a feature where he could pop a tape in, listen to it, and the press both play and fast forward together (or play and rewind) to move back and forth between the next and previous songs on the tape.

That kind of ties into another point: older technology wasn't just built to last, but it was also functional with items that the manufacturers knew consumers wanted or would find useful. Now, devices are little more than something made on an assembly line (cookie-cutter style) with little or nothing that distinguishes them from a competitor's line of devices.

That probably was a Sharp VZ-2500 or VZ-3500 then. The former was like a more compact version of the VZ-2000, while the VZ-3500 was a boombox but the speakers could be detached and replaced with any other speakers via a line level or other output if you wanted to use it as a stationary component in your hi-fi.

The music search is brilliant and was on a lot of Sharp stereos because it meant you could listen to the same song again without having to whirr back and forth trying to find the start. Their GF-777 had an even better version where you could hold in the play button and tap FF or REW a number of times and it would skip over that many songs. The turntable on those Sharps also has music search via its linear tracking but since mine needs new belts and I don't have any vinyls I can't test this out.

You're also right about the useful functions. The radio on the VZ-2000 has a slider that if you push it over the VU-meters change to show the current battery charge and radio signal strength. The tape deck can record from any of the other functions simply by shoving in a tape and hitting record while it's playing a vinyl or the radio or an aux input so you can kill music even faster (I have tested the recording with Classic FM because classical music is kind of an acid test for audio gear since it has lots of dynamic range, and as long as you set up the deck properly with Dolby and the proper tape type and get the record level just so - and it is a proper three-head tape deck so you can use the VU-meters to monitor it - it is damned good). The only useful feature it's missing that I'd like for it to have is auto reverse on the tape deck (it has that on the turntable by having two styli that play each side of the record, and you can switch between playing both sides once or put it on endless loop.) These aren't just gimmicks, they are useful things.

Compare and contrast a modern "retro style" boombox, the GPS Brooklyn:

Costs £199.00 right now. That is, I can definitively tell you, a mug's eyeful. I know for a fact (thanks again Techmoan) that the tape deck will be almost certainly a Chinese knockoff of the 1986 Tanashin mechanism because all modern tape decks are. The original Tanashin mechanism wasn't brilliant when it came out but it got the job done. The Chinese knockoffs will have been costed down to buggery. That means one stereo head (if you're lucky) and a permanent magnet erase head, which in turn means noisy and muffled recordings. No auto reverse. No full logic controls (note the piano keys - now there's nothing wrong with piano key controls but it precludes things like music search and one touch recording from other sources). No record level controls. No Dolby (though that's not their fault because they won't licence Dolby noise reduction any more). No tape type select (it does make a difference). Note also that the speakers are significantly smaller than the grilles, though I'm told it doesn't have fake tweeters.

Like the Crosley Cruiser turntables, they spent more on the styling than on the internals to try to capture the hipster / "influencer" market who will make a video of them unboxing it and going all "cuh huh huh huh, 'member tape decks, they were SHIT" when they've never actually heard a good tape deck in action.

 

[Mr. Skeltal]

Ahh, I see you too are a man of culture. I had a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Edge in 2014, and kept it until it literally expired in 2019 (it refused to charge any battery). The Note 4 Edge was I believe the very last Sammy to have an actual removable battery. Replaced it with an LG V40 (blue) which I still have - I got it on a special offer as it was an end of line clearance. It also had three cameras before the iPhone did. I do like to have a big phone because I have big clumsy trotters.

I fully expect though that by 2024 it'll be on the way out though. And that brings me on to a trend in modern tech that really fucking gets right up my nose. Devices, and indeed society in general, is so throwaway. Now I'm no Greta Thunberg fan but it just feels wasteful to chuck a slab of glass and rare earth metals every year even when it's still functional and even if it has terminally died given the scarcity and Chinese monopoly on such minerals and that you need to crush literally hundreds of tons of rock to get 1 kg of some of those metals, surely it can all be broken down and recycled at the very least. Also, the energy used (read: in practice, oil) to extract those minerals and form them into a hipster executive toy.

Yesterday I picked up from a local seller a classic boombox. It's a Sharp VZ-2000 if you must know. The bloke found it in a house clearance from some old chap who had died and who was a dance instructor. He bought it back in 1983 to teach his tango classes because it was portable, loud enough to fill a large gymnasium and still remain audible and good quality, and could play both vinyl and tapes. Also the linear tracking / auto music search meant that he could cue up a song without having to wind back and forth to get to it.

It is 38 years old. That's older than me. Yet despite this, it is still pretty much 90% functional. Okay, the medium wave radio on it doesn't work but there's nothing on medium wave here in bongland anyhow. The vinyl turntable I think needs new belts but the tape deck just needed some isopropyl alcohol rubbed on the heads and the capstan and pinch roller and it was as clear and loud as you like. It sounds bigger, richer, and "fuller" than the speakers linked up to my PC or any of my modern audio gear, and that's from frickin' cassette tapes and shit tier Type 1 cassette tapes with no Dolby at that. It can run off the mains or from 10 D-cell batteries and I've not tried running down the batteries to see what total play-time one gets from it, but I bet it's considerable. It also has a really thick plastic case (at least 3mm all around) and a steel frame. It has probably survived being bashed around gyms, dance halls, town squares, and milongas for 10-15 years and then 20+ years in an attic somewhere. And other than the aforementioned issues with the belts and dirt and possibly rust on some of the switchgear (it crackles a bit when switching between radio, tape, and vinyl modes), it is still in excellent nick.

I also own a bluetooth speaker that I used to play music from my phone onto. Do you think that in 2060, that bluetooth speaker will still be functional?

Will it fuck.

The best bit? That wasn't even Sharp's flagship model when it came out. That was the GF-777 which is even louder and even more indestructible.

Old tech was built to last, and to be easily repairable. Modern tech is planned obsolescent trash that is built to CONSOOME PRODUCT, THEN GET EXCITED FOR NEXT PRODUCT. Your £1,000 iPhone 12 or whichever one they're up to is the landfill fodder of 2025. My £375 ghetto blaster (that was its price on release - about £1,200 today) is still happily annoying the neighbours nearly 40 years later.

You want a head trip? The B-52 Stratofortress will outlive both the B-1B Lancer AND B-2 Spirit with an estimated retirement date of 2045. There are pilots serving right now that are flying the B-52s that their fathers and even grandfathers flew. A plane that was so overengineered when it was designed and built in 1954 that the Air Force has gone through 8 retrofits to land on the H model in use today. There's BUFFs in the air today that have gone to the boneyard and come back to service due to Air Force need (an airframe named "Wise Guy" was one). It's crazy how tough old tech from yesterdecade is when compared to the new shinies.

On the information technology side of things, the Air Force only recently upgraded from 8" floppy media to a new format for use in ICBM control rooms. Turns out the reliability and impenetrability of such old systems proved more useful than hindering when nukes were at stake. They only made the change due to deterioation of commonly used discs and difficulty procuring new ones.

It really is a shame to see reasonably useful tech get scrapped because it's mildly out of fashion or is missing some bells and whistles. I'd gladly take a beige behemoth sound system from the 1980's over the newest bluetooth proprietary extravaganza. If I wanted bluetooth compatibility with my modern shit I could just get a cassette to aux/bluetooth adapter. Those dongles are dirt cheap and work almost flawlessly.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

You want a head trip? The B-52 Stratofortress will outlive both the B-1B Lancer AND B-2 Spirit with an estimated retirement date of 2045. There are pilots serving right now that are flying the B-52s that their fathers and even grandfathers flew. A plane that was so overengineered when it was designed and built in 1954 that the Air Force has gone through 8 retrofits to land on the H model in use today. There's BUFFs in the air today that have gone to the boneyard and come back to service due to Air Force need (an airframe named "Wise Guy" was one). It's crazy how tough old tech from yesterdecade is when compared to the new shinies.

On the information technology side of things, the Air Force only recently upgraded from 8" floppy media to a new format for use in ICBM control rooms. Turns out the reliability and impenetrability of such old systems proved more useful than hindering when nukes were at stake. They only made the change due to deterioation of commonly used discs and difficulty procuring new ones.

It really is a shame to see reasonably useful tech get scrapped because it's mildly out of fashion or is missing some bells and whistles. I'd gladly take a beige behemoth sound system from the 1980's over the newest bluetooth proprietary extravaganza. If I wanted bluetooth compatibility with my modern shit I could just get a cassette to aux/bluetooth adapter. Those dongles are dirt cheap and work almost flawlessly.

Yep. I know all about the B-52. At the end of the day, unless there is a shooting war with China it is still good enough to drop large numbers of bombs on enemies, because most asymmetric wars (which is what the US is likely to fight over the next 30 years) will be against people who don't have the massive web of air defences that the Soviet Union had when the B-2 was in development.

Speaking of old IT, in industrial computing they still use the 486 and the ISA bus. Why? Because there's a little thing called PC-104. This is basically a 486 system on a square board with a big socket on the front and a row of pins on the back, and those pins and socket form your 16-bit ISA bus. You can then stack an arbitrarily large number of these boards with metal spacers and nuts joining them together and have a ready to go computer system with well tested and well known hardware and software in a form factor that is intrinsically physically robust.

Why the ISA bus, I hear you ask? Why not a modern PCIe solution?

Well, the ISA bus doesn't have a limited number of PCIe lanes, and most industrial computing devices still rely on it because upgrading your computer to a more recent system means closing down the factory which means lost production time which means lost profit which means you don't eat. With PC-104 if you need, say, a controller for a particular machine or suchlike you can just plug it in to the stack, install the software, and be back in business within the hour. It's also easy to write for because it's been in use for decades and all its foibles are well known by now.

Industrial computing is fascinating. For instance, redundant power supplies. They're basically two 750W ATX power supplies in a single box so if one of them craps out you can run off the other one, pull out the dead one, and insert a fresh one (and the dead one is probably repairable anyhow), all in a hot-swappable manner.

 

[The Real SVP]

I'm not asking for flying cars and hoverboards, ...

We have those now. We even have jet packs with almost 20 minutes of flight time. It's just that nobody needs them, and they are illegal to use almost everywhere, anyway.

No tape type select (it does make a difference).

No, it does not. Because nobody makes quality tape anymore.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

tape

A sign of how "tech-behind" I am: when I think of recording something from TV (if I had it), I think of taping it, and wonder if any tapes with space are left.

It also sucks how personal flight is so tied down by laws to the point where it's pretty much legally impossible.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

We have those now. We even have jet packs with almost 20 minutes of flight time. It's just that nobody needs them, and they are illegal to use almost everywhere, anyway.


No, it does not. Because nobody makes quality tape anymore.

Wrong.

Twice wrong even.

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.