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

[ToroidalBoat]

Another tech trend that annoys me is freeware that needs other freeware to run, but the other freeware isn't included in the download. Or the software is only in source code and it's a pain in the ass to compile and run unless you're a programmer or an IT expert. Bonus points if both.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

My mother used to work in a flea market back in the day and she'd bring home some extreme-bootleg videotapes she got where every single voice line in the movie, regardless of age or gender, was re-dubbed by a single bored, monotone sounding guy with questionable audio quality. Shit was surreal.

In Russian or German maybe? I've heard that they still do that in Russia to some extent, one guy reading the subtitles instead of having subtitles.

Bootlegging and pirating VHS depended heavily on where in the chain the tape was. If it was a copy of a copy, fine. Getting the great grandcopy of the original tape was not so fine.
Fun video showing this, just watch a bit and jump forward a couple of times to see how it degrades.

One very tedious thing many people missed when reusing tapes was to record all black before copying something on to it.

 

[donjulio]

I guess this is more of a general topic but anyone else notice how just about everything seems to suck these days?

Spoiler: Everything is shit : the rant

The Software sucks; I can’t a find a damn phone app that can do more complex invoicing and billing the way I need (it comes close at least but god damn) and getting programs for resolving other small annoyances on my pc is a terrible game of minesweeper as even after weeding out the malware riddled crap I might still end up with an over invasive yet ultimately useless application with the only solace being in the 1 gig in HD space I somehow saved. (Then something took up 3 gigs)

Like others covered before, not being able to outright buy some software instead of subscriptions is bullshit, but not being able to install the things into secondary hard drives without them loading shit into the main drive anyway is also bullshit.

And I’m trying to find replacements for various appliances or electronics but then I’m trying to find actual GOOD versions regardless of the cost but can’t because all the shit review sites keep trying to shill overpriced garbage. On top of that you can’t tell which buyer reviews are legitimate since it’s either bots, Chinese or other 3rd world paid reviewers, or just people with terribly lower standards that appear to make up the majority of the population.

I just bought a bunch of heaters since the boiler at our new place isn’t cutting it in this frozen hell, the cheaper lasko brand heater somehow out performs both of the more expensive vornado space heaters I got of which one died immediately after plugging it in, in a fun sparkly manner and the other tried to gas us with some awful plastic smell. Jesus just what the fuck?

 

[AnOminous]

Death of RISC-powered Unix workstations. Apple might make them cool again, but I'm still not confident in ARM.

Particularly the Sun workstations with Sparc processors. Especially with huge monochrome monitors.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I guess this is more of a general topic but anyone else notice how just about everything seems to suck these days?

Everything New Sucks

(can't have a cyberpunk dystopian "future" without just about everything new sucking)

 

[I.B. Niggin]

What I've been missing a lot for the last year is being able to put a disc in my console or PC and being able to play it immediately or install it without the hassle of an internet connection.

Minor powerlevel here I suppose, but since the beginning of last year I've been living in a community that's housed in the mountains. There's no way to get any form of wired internet here and I've had to settle for the only choice, satellite, and good god is it the drizzling shits. So when it comes to modern gaming, I'm shit out of luck and usually have to wait two days or so to play a fucking game I just purchased.

 

[Un Platano]

Everything New Sucks

I don't believe this, but many intelligent people do: in addition to the lead and mercury, fluorescent lights cause cancer directly from radiation in the form of very-low-frequency (VLF) electromagnetic fields (EMF). Put an AM radio next to a fluorescent light and turn the light on and off. It's enough radiation to interfere with 50,000 Watt radio stations!

Energy-saving bulbs radiate this because they force electricity to float through the gas in the tube on its own, instead of conducting it directly and safely in a wire. Some of the energy floats out of the tube, and causes cancer.

All I can say is wow

 

[Bongocat]

I don't believe this, but many intelligent people do: in addition to the lead and mercury, fluorescent lights cause cancer directly from radiation in the form of very-low-frequency (VLF) electromagnetic fields (EMF). Put an AM radio next to a fluorescent light and turn the light on and off. It's enough radiation to interfere with 50,000 Watt radio stations!

Energy-saving bulbs radiate this because they force electricity to float through the gas in the tube on its own, instead of conducting it directly and safely in a wire. Some of the energy floats out of the tube, and causes cancer.

I don't know what level of parody this is, but florescent lights are actually a serious problem for me and I wish they didn't exist. They give me awful headaches in the absence of other light, and they're used almost exclusively to flood cubicals with blinding whiteness.

Maybe I should look at increased working from home as a blessing.

I guess this falls under "new trends I hate". GO BACK TO CANDLES.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

I stopped using CFL bulbs a long time ago when LED lights became cheap enough to use in every room in the house. Back in the early 2010's LED bulbs were hella expensive (like $20 a bulb), and now for the same price you can get a pack of 4 at Home Depot, which is good enough for my apartment. They're also bright, use little electricity, last for years, and can be dimmed.

 

[General Tug Boat]

I hate the trend that every monochrome of software that exists these days relies so heavily on the cloud. An instance of this was when I started college for software development, we needed to use Illustrator and Photoshop for this one class. Now for years I haven't touched anything Adobe, and whatever I had Adobe wise I hardly ever used. Just because its bulky software that would throttle the fuck out of my machine.

Though I ended up having to go with this cloud, pay piggy subscription bullshit. Now I can't for the life of me figure out how to cancel my subscription on this software, because I no longer have this class, and I don't feel like pissing away 30 bucks a month for over priced Adobe shit, that I can accomplish the same tasks with open-source software. The constant updates also grind my gears with this software.
Not to say I hate Adobe software, the opposite actually. Though I don't like this never owning my own software bs. On top of that, having to swallow the possibility of a shit update to the IDE.

 

[AnOminous]

I don't know what level of parody this is, but florescent lights are actually a serious problem for me and I wish they didn't exist. They give me awful headaches in the absence of other light, and they're used almost exclusively to flood cubicals with blinding whiteness.

I detest fluorescent lights as well. I don't miss those fucking things at all. Their light is absolutely ugly and oppressive and makes me feel like I'm in prison. I miss the clear Edison bulbs (which you can still find here and there) but I don't mind LED bulbs at all.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

Why are we still listening to music in 128kbps MP3 in 2021.

Why are we still using MP3 at all in 2021? If you need lossy compression, Opus is transparent at 128 kbps. The only reason not to use Opus is if you need to use some ancient device that doesn't have support for it.

I've seen people criticize paying for spotify and get met with the "what are you poor? It's $5 a month bro" response. Same thing with streaming. People bitch all the time about the selection and dealing with netflix, hulu, and several other services, but never move to pirating for some reason. Half the people on Netflix just use it to watch The Office or whatever anyway. You could just download it once and not worry about the contract expiring. I feel old when I think about how the ethos used to be "why pay for something if you can get it for free," because it seems like that attitude is totally gone.

If you're paying for Spotify and you're not listening to the popular stuff then you are subsidizing the people who do listen to the popular stuff. Maybe if Spotify's recommendation engine wasn't total shit, that might justify the cost, but that's not the case. There is no reason to use Spotify, and many reasons to not use it.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

this cloud, pay piggy subscription bullshit.

If you're a large company using it for mission critical stuff I can just about get behind it because you are paying for the 24/7 phone or remote support as insurance against downtime which directly equals lost revenue. But for consumer / enthusiast / prosumer stuff there's no excuse.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I guess this falls under "new trends I hate". GO BACK TO CANDLES.

This may sound nit-picky, but I like incandescent bulbs because the light given off is a natural spectrum. LEDs just aren't really the same since they use blue light that's converted to white light with a phosphor. Too bad incandescent is being phased out because Current Year.

As for fluorescent, it sucks ass, and I'm glad CFLs aren't really a thing anymore.

Also at least candles are widely available, though they're usually that overpriced scented stuff.

 

[AnOminous]

Too bad incandescent is being phased out because Current Year.

You can still buy incandescent bulbs. They're just more expensive but more efficient. It's hard to justify them outside of maybe one or two for a room you spend a lot of time in though because LEDs are just so cheap over the long run. Also not having to replace them for 20 years is nice. If they could just get the spectrum a bit nicer.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

What I've been missing a lot for the last year is being able to put a disc in my console or PC and being able to play it immediately or install it without the hassle of an internet connection.

So much this. The main software I use for my long-time job used to have a full setup available via CD (for $50) or a full downloadable version available for free after logging into their support site. Now, half of the porgram is installed on demand via internet download and it's a pain in the ass if one doesn't have an internet connection or it's acting unreliable. Earlier this month, I tried to install the new version and it claimed I had installed everything I needed. I opened up the program and the on-demand portion of the install wasn't there. Apparently, there was an error downloading it, but ti was reported as a successful install instead of an error or failure . I'd much prefer full offline installers for archival and backup/emergency purposes whenever possible.

Hand in hand with this, I miss software that was simple and focused on one purpose or collection of related ones. With the internet becoming so pervasive in everyday life, it seems more software acts like a Swiss army knife of disjointed features when its totally unnecessary and adds to the bloat or bugginess of said added features.

I stopped using CFL bulbs a long time ago when LED lights became cheap enough to use in every room in the house. Back in the early 2010's LED bulbs were hella expensive (like $20 a bulb), and now for the same price you can get a pack of 4 at Home Depot, which is good enough for my apartment. They're also bright, use little electricity, last for years, and can be dimmed.

I've been slowly switching to LED bulbs and fixtures as fluorescent ones go bad whenever I can. The longer life and lower electricity costs seem to pay for themselves and then some over the lifetime of the LED bulbs.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

By the way, you can still find small incandescent light bulbs at Home Depot since they're still commonly used in refrigerators. I know this for a fact because it's the type you also use in lava lamps, and I've got an old school one!

 

[ToroidalBoat]

the hassle of an internet connection

I hate the trend that every monochrome of software that exists these days relies so heavily on the cloud.

Even more annoying is when soy technophile hipsters tell you "it's Current Year so everything is going to the cloud bro". Like other crap they say, it boils down to "you gotta accept the bullshit bro".

 

[AnOminous]

By the way, you can still find small incandescent light bulbs at Home Depot since they're still commonly used in refrigerators. I know this for a fact because it's the type you also use in lava lamps, and I've got an old school one!

https://www.amazon.com/GE-Lighting-66247-43-Watt-620-Lumen/dp/B00AGZ1AEY

The replacement for the old 60 watt bulbs is a 43 watt bulb that is supposed to emit the same amount of light.

Amazon.com : Clear Light Bulbs

And those are clear light bulbs, which give some of the nicest lighting of any bulb imo. You can even get 100 watts still. They never really actually "got rid of" the old style bulbs, just incentivized the new ones and regulated that newly manufactured ones be 20% more efficient.

That's the U.S. though. I believe the UK is more nanny state about this shit.

Even more annoying is when soy technophile hipsters tell you "it's Current Year so everything is going to the cloud bro". Like other crap they say, it boils down to "you gotta accept the bullshit bro".

Argument from inevitability fallacy and on top of that anyone who trusts something even called "the cloud" will inevitably get the dicking they deserve.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Even more annoying is when soy technophile hipsters try to convince you that "it's Current Year so everything is going to the cloud bro". Like other crap they say, it boils down to "you gotta accept the bullshit bro".

Yep, I have a personal anecdote about this exact problem:

A few years back my iPod Classic finally died, and none of the Apple repair shops in my town would fix it. I decided to just fork the money over and get a new one, so I went to Best Buy. The teenage clerk didn't know what I was talking about, and instead kept coaxing me to buy an iPhone. I told him I specifically want a regular iPod, and he said they stopped selling them because iPhones are now the default MP3 players. When I asked him how much space they could hold, he said some insanely low amount like 8GB or something, and his reasoning was that modern Apple products barely have any hard drive space because they want you to use streaming services and the cloud. The whole fucking point of why I needed an iPod in the 1st place was for driving or riding on trains when I used to commute to work -- both of which give me shitty cell phone reception. I couldn't get a signal in a subway train, so why the fuck would I stream music? Just give me my damn iPod with 120 GB of storage, damnit.