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

[Pinochet Was Right]

But seeing as how Hollywitz is treating physical media as a red headed step child a new format seems other wordly at this point.

Physical media is incompatible with the 2030 Agenda.

 

[Finder]

Sure Endless September did kill some internet culture, it wasn't as bad (due to the time commitment of needing to sit in front of a computer, boot up, etc, normies stuck to email, CNN, etc) compared to Endless September 2.0 (June 2007) when the iPhone was released, where all you needed was a phone and normies really started to take over.

This is when I pinpoint it all going to shit as well. I didn't make the connection with the iPhone until a few years ago, but things were distinctly different before and after 07-08. The internet has not improved since that point and I dislike how all the sites I used to enjoy got consolidated into apps and shitshows like reddit.

I honestly can't think of any other independent forums left aside from KF that are actually active. They all got sucked up into other platforms and they all suffered massively for it. Of course that's only scratching the surface of how shit things are now.

 

[SalmaoneSlaamper]

windows sucks and with the amount of guides, support, and compatibility tools Linux is much better

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I honestly can't think of any other independent forums left aside from KF that are actually active. They all got sucked up into other platforms and they all suffered massively for it. Of course that's only scratching the surface of how shit things are now.

They withered on the vine, or moved their operations over to reddit, which in particular has proven to be a forum killer. Why bother paying for servers, forum software, when you can create a forum on the fly and outsource the moderation to a bunch of troons? Many of the dumber subreddits would never exist as forums.

Some of the forums I used to go to several years ago have gone private as well, an increasingly common move for right wing outlets.

I made the connection to smart phones awhile back, but it took a few years to totally germinate. One could find cracks earlier of course (Facebook and other cancerous social media), but I still think 2016 and the aftermath of the election was the death knell of the old internet.

 

[Stasi]

Honestly miss how nice VCRs could be for recording shows. When I was a kid I would have mine set to record pretty much all my favorite shows each day so I could fast forward through the commercials, great for stuff like Dragonball Z with its obscenely long recaps and previews each episode.

Now you have streaming services you have to pick through to find which ones are carrying the shows you might be into or get a recommendation so you can pirate it off rutracker or whatever. Means not really paying much attention to what's showing on regular cable television, which has resulted in stuff like my thinking It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia was cancelled years ago because I stopped seeing clips of it posted anywhere since they were clamping down on those clips with copyright restrictions.

I miss recording songs off the radio on cassette. I remember when my parents first got a boombox I would sit around waiting for songs I like to come on and record them. Actually, I miss cassettes in general (and CDs to a lesser extent). Think I mentioned in this thread already but having thousands of songs on my phone just doesn't have the same magic to it as carrying around a couple of tapes for your walkman.

 

[MirrorNoir]

I just want backward compatibility in my consoles. Sony should be Tutsi/Hutu'd for pulling it and never bringing it back. Now if I want to play Suikoden V I need to rely a machine whose hardware has been degrading for ~20 years. Fucking assholes.

I have to think that backwards compatibility was a fluke in terms of the PS2 and Gameboy Advance. The former was done entirely due to the fact that Sony got super fucking cold feet that the PS2 wouldn't be a hit based solely off the novelty of a super cheap DVD player built in and wanted the added bonus of people playing their old PS1 games on the PS2 to keep people sated gamewise until the PS2 built up a decent library and most own games (FF10, GTA3, Metal Gear Solid 2). And the later just happening by pure accident/snuck into the GBA without anyone noticing.

 

[Toolbox]

I miss screensavors. You can still get them but they don't seem the same from the ones 20 years ago.

Always liked the Flying Toasters but I've never been able to find one that works with Win10.

Also, do relatively cheap MP3 players (hopefully with microSD support) exist anymore? The only ones I've seen are 4 GB tops and my music stash is 5 GB.

Screensaver files are surprisingly timeless, and seem to have support on most versions of windows after they were made, including Windows 10. I somehow managed to get even After Dark to work on my system a few years back, and regardless of how many updates have went by, it still works. Just requires a little bit of manual tinkering.

Internet Archive Search: creator:"Berkeley Systems"

You should be able to grab any archived version of the program from here and find a way to have it functional. I believe my system has the files from 4.0 installed. The only thing that does not work is the selector for the screen savers, but you can skip it by editing a text file to manually select the one you want to use.

I've also managed to find random 90s screensavers from obscure devs and just slapping them onto my system and selecting them in screen saver settings lets them run.

Oculus being bought by Facebook. I want a VR set and borrowed a friend's Rift S to see if it was worth it.

Going to vent my frustrations here:

Spent most of my morning re-arranging my room to make space, then waited for Oculus' shitty program to download (slowly inching at 1.5 mbps versus my normal 105.6 mbps internet connection), then after waiting for it to install, I have to make a facebook account just to use it. I wasn't even going to use the shitty Rift store, just SteamVR. But I literally can not use it as a headset unless I have a FB account or use an Oculus account (that you can't make anymore). Facebook instantly locked my fake FB account I made, so now I'm stuck unable to use it.

Either I'm saving nearly double for a used older headset, or I'm just not going to mess around with VR at all.

From experience, just DO NOT bother with Oculus at all these days. Facebook is increasingly try to lock the system down and try to force Facebook usage rather than the old Oculus account logins. 'Needing' a login to use VR at all is ridiculous, but their system is just completely worse than just using Steam's VR platform. If you're looking for something cheaper than the Index get a mixed reality headset. It should be more functional than buying an Oculus Dev Kit 2 and especially better than attempting to use the DK1, and you're still forced to use their garbage ass software with them anyway to run any recent VR titles. Took me hours to find out how to even get the DK2 I purchased years ago to work with the modern implementation of their drivers, which again, requires a login to work. I eventually had to make a second god damn admin account and it magically functioned under that. Never had this many issues with Steam VR alone. Even now it continually complains that I've got old hardware and I should buy their shiny new system, even though it works with Steam VR. Not ever going to attempt to use the Oculus store and launcher.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

I have to think that backwards compatibility was a fluke in terms of the PS2 and Gameboy Advance. The former was done entirely due to the fact that Sony got super fucking cold feet that the PS2 wouldn't be a hit based solely off the novelty of a super cheap DVD player built in and wanted the added bonus of people playing their old PS1 games on the PS2 to keep people sated gamewise until the PS2 built up a decent library and most own games (FF10, GTA3, Metal Gear Solid 2). And the later just happening by pure accident/snuck into the GBA without anyone noticing.

Even the DS and DS Lite were backwards compatible, through only with GBA games. Luckily, with new consoles truly being just PC's, we should hopefully see it return

 

[AnOminous]

windows sucks and with the amount of guides, support, and compatibility tools Linux is much better

Linux has been going absolutely to shit thanks to woketards and troons raping every open source project with their shitty CoCs.

 

[SalmaoneSlaamper]

Linux has been going absolutely to shit thanks to woketards and troons raping every open source project with their shitty CoCs.

Fair point, I mostly just ignore them and move along

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

Linux has been going absolutely to shit thanks to woketards and troons raping every open source project with their shitty CoCs.

It's a worse trend their philosophy of trying to be "user friendlier" by COPYING PHONES.

But phones are moving away from hamburger menus while Linux is increasingly adopting them. The guy behind elementaryOS, despite gearing the system towards Mac refugees, refused to put a global menu in it because "it's not the future" and jumped full into hamburger menus. KDE just released a framework for integrating them into the desktop environment. GNOME went full retard and it feels like the desktop is a glorified Android recent app switcher. Independent apps are bringing their own phone-like window controls. All this coming from a community that spent too many years stuck cloning Windows 98. How do you do, fellow kids?

 

[Sperghetti]

This is when I pinpoint it all going to shit as well. I didn't make the connection with the iPhone until a few years ago, but things were distinctly different before and after 07-08. The internet has not improved since that point and I dislike how all the sites I used to enjoy got consolidated into apps and shitshows like reddit.

I think Facebook can be given a lot of the credit, too, since they opened to the general public in 2007. I consider that to be another Eternal September event, since it attracted a hoarde of people who really didn’t participate in the internet before as they saw no reason to talk to strangers in another state or country, but were now using it to connect with people they knew in real life. And since “everyone” was on Facebook, many people saw no need to use any other site for communication: Why go through the effort to join a forum when you could just set up a Facebook group?

I think that’s really what destroyed the old culture of online anonymity, too: Tons of people who just started out with giving their real name and posting a picture of their face because they reason “What’s it going to hurt? I’m just talking to old classmates and Aunt Ethel.”

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

They withered on the vine, or moved their operations over to reddit, which in particular has proven to be a forum killer. Why bother paying for servers, forum software, when you can create a forum on the fly and outsource the moderation to a bunch of troons? Many of the dumber subreddits would never exist as forums.

Some of the forums I used to go to several years ago have gone private as well, an increasingly common move for right wing outlets.

I made the connection to smart phones awhile back, but it took a few years to totally germinate. One could find cracks earlier of course (Facebook and other cancerous social media), but I still think 2016 and the aftermath of the election was the death knell of the old internet.

Eh it was some what immediate with phones, discussions went from "you made the claim you need to back it up with sources" to "I am on mobile google it your self" it ruined online discourse.

I think Facebook can be given a lot of the credit, too, since they opened to the general public in 2007. I consider that to be another Eternal September event, since it attracted a hoarde of people who really didn’t participate in the internet before as they saw no reason to talk to strangers in another state or country, but were now using it to connect with people they knew in real life. And since “everyone” was on Facebook, many people saw no need to use any other site for communication: Why go through the effort to join a forum when you could just set up a Facebook group?

I think that’s really what destroyed the old culture of online anonymity, too: Tons of people who just started out with giving their real name and posting a picture of their face because they reason “What’s it going to hurt? I’m just talking to old classmates and Aunt Ethel.”

Before Facebook groups Facebook had forums, for a bit when it opened to the public. But yes Facebook was part of the issue.

Before Facebook there was also a movement at least on some forums (and not even ones were you could understand some logic like professional forums) to move to real names instead of nicknames/handles, this didn't even come from the admins/mods but members. Interestingly enough at least the people who advocated for it that I knew of, became SJWs.

 

[Stasi]

I think the tape talk up thread triggered my nostalgia and I picked up a walkman at a flea market today. Turns on with batteries in but no tape spin, cracked it open and the belt has turned to goo so ordered a new one off ebay. Spent £10 all in and if I get a working walkman out of it I'll be pretty happy. Worst case I'll sell it on ebay for parts, model seems somewhat sought after and working ones go for ~£50.

I am kind of surprised how easy it was to find a PDF of the maintenance manual and spare parts. Assume Guardians of the Galaxy triggered a big boom in walkman collecting a few years back.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Before Facebook there was also a movement at least on some forums (and not even ones were you could understand some logic like professional forums) to move to real names instead of nicknames/handles, this didn't even come from the admins/mods but members. Interestingly enough at least the people who advocated for it that I knew of, became SJWs.

Some tried it before and was met with intense resistance. I think it was Blizzard, Bioware or both that tried to change into a real-name policy way back. The difference is that back then the backlash was seen as "the customers are revolting!" while now it's "your customers are revolting nazis!"

 

[Thiletonomics]

Some tried it before and was met with intense resistance. I think it was Blizzard, Bioware or both that tried to change into a real-name policy way back. The difference is that back then the backlash was seen as "the customers are revolting!" while now it's "your customers are revolting nazis!"

IIRC, it was Blizzard that attempted to do it, but quickly dropped that change after massive negative response from the community.

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

Today nobody "needs" to force you to give up your real name, they just put a "Sign Up with Facebook" button and if you make a facebook with a fake name, at the first faux pas they block your account and demand "you give a picture of a government-issued ID to validate your identity" to get unblocked.

 

[Stasi]

I've just found out something very unsettling. Was wondering why I almost never see used electronics in UK charity/thrift shops. Apparently they have to comply with some EU electrical safety laws and for most of them its too expensive to test donations and they just toss them out/"recycle" with third party companies. I dread to think how many vintage electronics have been destroyed here over the years because of this.

You could say its for the greater good, safety blah blah but more likely than not its one of those cases where one idiot burned his house down by overloading a socket or something so an anti idiot law is put in place which has unforeseen but disastrous consequences. Like that King of the Hill episode about low flow toilets.

 

[Pee Cola]

I've just found out something very unsettling. Was wondering why I almost never see used electronics in UK charity/thrift shops. Apparently they have to comply with some EU electrical safety laws and for most of them its too expensive to test donations and they just toss them out/"recycle" with third party companies. I dread to think how many vintage electronics have been destroyed here over the years because of this.

Sounds very similar to Australia's regulations, where used appliances need to be tagged and tested before they can be resold. The thing is that virtually any bozo with around $1,000 dollarydoos and a couple of days free can get themselves certified to tag and test stuff, with enough change to buy themselves an entry level test and tag kit.

That's why there are a few thrift shops over here that still sell used electrical gear, usually the ones that run some sort of workplace training programs and/or have access to the old dudes from their local Men's Shed, thus enabling said thrift shop to get their items tested and tagged for free. If they had to pay someone else to test and tag every item, it'd be uneconomical.

You could say its for the greater good, safety blah blah but more likely than not its one of those cases where one idiot burned his house down by overloading a socket or something so an anti idiot law is put in place which has unforeseen but disastrous consequences. Like that King of the Hill episode about low flow toilets.

Yep.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

God dammit Adobe, why do I suddenly need to use two-factor authentication and get a code sent to my phone to START Photoshop on my computer? Dongles, come back, I apologize for being mean!