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

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

They used to be around all the way back to radar/computers/microwaves/TVs/electronics in general. That essential oil/a mom knows best type would give you quite a few funny looks if you admitted to owning a microwave in the 80s as it will turn us all sterile and poison your kid by changing your food on an *atomic* level or some other pseudo-scientific BS.
I don't think these people exist anymore

We knew a nutty mom that were insanely worried about the infrared that came out of the remote control to the TV. She didn't understand it was infrared, just that it was invisible radiation of some kind and that's bad.

She also wore a mask outside so she didn't inhale mold. Nutty mask wearers, hmmm.... There's always something that gets these people going.

Goes even further back than that, I remember horror stories about how having a cellphone up to your ear for too long might fry your brain

Absolutely. Some of those people said, or spread the idea, that if you left a Nokia on during a call next to a raw egg the egg will be cooked after [time]. Some women used to go around talking on their phone using the speaker phone function, in public, because of the ~rays~. Some years back that switched to a different group of women that did it because that's how they do it in reality shows.

People didn't buy into the egg boiling myths as hard as the Coca-Cola myth, which is that a tooth will dissolve completely if put into a glass of coke for 24 hours - probably because of the phosphorous that will never leave your digestive tract. The coke myth goes way back and it was easier to be stupid at the time but even then people that should know better believed in some things because it was something that aligned with their beliefs. Like how american products are poison. I had a science teacher that demonstrated the coke-myth with a tooth HIS kid had recently shed and guess what? If 24 hours didn't do it, let's leave it for a week. Oh it's still there and looks kinda the same... but... coca-cola...

Oh god I also used to work in an office full of women and they would step out of the room when they printed anything because it was a Class 1 Laser in the printer and they don't trust the radiation plus they were planning to have children soon so they were only trying to be safe. They were fantastic people but you just give up after a while.

I've also posted in some other thread about when the computer came into the workplace in the early 90's in Sweden, to replace typewriters and such. After health-concerns most workplaces that were heavily staffed by women soon had a screen-filter, it was like a pantyhose mesh stretched around a picture frame that was placed in front of the screen acting as a passive Faraday cage made up of non-conductive material. Yeah I know, just trust the science.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

People didn't buy into the egg boiling myths as hard as the Coca-Cola myth, which is that a tooth will dissolve completely if put into a glass of coke for 24 hours - probably because of the phosphorous that will never leave your digestive tract. The coke myth goes way back and it was easier to be stupid at the time but even then people that should know better believed in some things because it was something that aligned with their beliefs. Like how american products are poison. I had a science teacher that demonstrated the coke-myth with a tooth HIS kid had recently shed and guess what? If 24 hours didn't do it, let's leave it for a week. Oh it's still there and looks kinda the same... but... coca-cola...

Tooth enamel is already full of phosphorus. The clue is the formula - Ca5(PO4)3OH. That's why it's carboxylic acids (excreted by oral bacteria that feed on sugar) that ruin your teeth so much. They glom onto that hydroxyl group and don't let go, and leave you with a water soluble mess. This is why you need to brush with a fluoride toothpaste. Tin fluoride or sodium hexafluorosilicate dissassociates in water and those F- ions are more than happy to replace the hydroxyl group in your teeth. Moreover, fluoroapatite (the mineral with the formula Ca5(PO4)3F) doesn't react with sugar acids anywhere near as easily, and is just as hard and solid as hydroxyapatite.

So, yeah, phosphoric acid does fuck all to tooth enamel.

Goes even further back than that, I remember horror stories about how having a cellphone up to your ear for too long might fry your brain

That's also clearly bollox. Even 5G waves don't have the energy to break the chemical bonds in DNA and lead to cancer. The energy of a wave is proportionate to its frequency. The lowest frequency waves that can break chemical bonds (that is, are ionising radiation) are in the very top end of ultraviolet. And if mobile phones gave off that you'd have more problems than just cancer.

This would only be meaningful if you outlawed owning cars that don't have it.

The EU has been threatening to bring in compulsory pay by the mile black box road tracking for all cars in the next few years.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of tech trends I hate? The company town is coming back. Yes, those gilded age dystopias where a single employer owned all their workers' houses, all shops, and all other places of business, and all theatres and restaurants in an isolated area around, say, a coal mine or factory, and made it a term of your employment that you behave correctly outside of work and a term of your tenancy of your tied accommodation that you don't join a union? Because paternalism was the in thing and the lower orders had to be managed like good little pawns? Yes, I'm afraid "eat the bugs, live in the pod, work in the cage, consoome approved media only, don't ask questions, own nothing, and be happy" is nothing new.

Well. Facebook is building one in Menlo Park called Willow Park, Amazon has all but turned Seattle into one (it's got to the point at which Seattle local government is heavily dictated by Jeff Bezos, and wherever they put their second HQ is already being determined by how shamefully the city will cuck for them), and there's the massive Googleplex in Mountain View which is a city in and of itself.

Okay, none of them have sunk to paying their employees in scrip only redeemable at 80 cents on the dollar in approved stores, but they already have the paternalism down pat, what with Google punishing employees for wrongthink outside of work. And Big Tech does rely on a hell of a lot of cubicle dwellers to keep things ticking over while a managerial / creative cadre get all the credit and glamour.

 

[Toolbox]

Did everyone forget cash for clunkers? This is how you do it.

Yeah, but that still means that they'd essentially just be collecting a ton of material that would then need to be processed. Are they going to set up another massive patch of desert to dump people's cars in or just force the local dump to take care of them?

Wait until your self diving car (which is totally unnecessary tbh) won't drive you to certain places. Oh, and it makes you wonder when will they ban human driven vehicles outside of some expensive licensing, so the rich can enjoy their Ferraries.

The merging of proposed technologies and current trends could paint a horrible picture.

Great Reset future where you rent cars to move around? Nope, you tweeted something bad so the self driving car company don't have to do a business with you. etc.

I wouldn't be surprised. The whole thing came out of nowhere, and had no precedent in even the crazy conspiracy field.

Again, self driving doesn't necessitate a constant internet connection. Comma.Ai, what I mentioned earlier, is essentially just a smartphone with an advanced sensor suite that locally controls your vehicle. It's open source as well, at least the software side. But I wouldn't doubt that this kind of nonsense will occur with internet connected self driving vehicles owned by private companies, and that people will still flock to them just to have another convenience.

 

[Blamo]

It sucks when an image file is replaced with a WEBP file, even when the URL says it isn't. After the pic is downloaded, it's unusable because it's a stupid WEBP. Older browsers may not be impacted though.

WEBP is just basically a way to stop people from reusing the pictures. It can be really annoying to run into them.

Again, self driving doesn't necessitate a constant internet connection. Comma.Ai, what I mentioned earlier, is essentially just a smartphone with an advanced sensor suite that locally controls your vehicle. It's open source as well, at least the software side. But I wouldn't doubt that this kind of nonsense will occur with internet connected self driving vehicles owned by private companies, and that people will still flock to them just to have another convenience.

The open source is a step into the right direction! If you have to work on this thing...

Oh, and while we're on the subject of tech trends I hate? The company town is coming back. Yes, those gilded age dystopias where a single employer owned all their workers' houses, all shops, and all other places of business, and all theatres and restaurants in an isolated area around, say, a coal mine or factory, and made it a term of your employment that you behave correctly outside of work and a term of your tenancy of your tied accommodation that you don't join a union? Because paternalism was the in thing and the lower orders had to be managed like good little pawns? Yes, I'm afraid "eat the bugs, live in the pod, work in the cage, consoome approved media only, don't ask questions, own nothing, and be happy" is nothing new.

It is the smart city. You won't be asked about it because democracy is about forcing things on people.

 

[AnOminous]

Okay, none of them have sunk to paying their employees in scrip only redeemable at 80 cents on the dollar in approved stores, but they already have the paternalism down pat, what with Google punishing employees for wrongthink outside of work. And Big Tech does rely on a hell of a lot of cubicle dwellers to keep things ticking over while a managerial / creative cadre get all the credit and glamour.

Tbh I barely care what Google does to its shitty woke serfs. They should just put them in cages where they can't screech at normal people.

 

[Ita Mori]

The government is utterly fucking retarded, though. Do you even have a grasp of how fucking incompetent the government is?

Dunno. Whoever runs the branch that takes money from people operates like a surgeon.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

A bit autistic but I feel the need to share this somewhere.

So I scored a gigabyte laptop from a pawnshop for cheap due to bad ram and no HDD.

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Laptop/P55W-v6

Got around to popping it open this morning to replace components and holy mother of god the instant I got the rear case off my respect for gigabyte went up by magnitudes. Fucking everything is just RIGHT THERE on the board and trivial to access/replace, even the things like the display that wire in via ZIF connectors. Even the battery is just a 4S2P 16850 socket with exposed cells and the entire rear case attaches in such a simple way I'm tempted to 3D print a case extension so I can cram a massive homebrew battery and serial breakout (there are labelled RX/TX pins on the board!) inside.

Why the fuck can't other companies do this? This alone has sold me on Gigabyte being the company I want to buy from if I ever get a new laptop; It's such a breath of fresh air being able to to trivially clean/refurb/upgrade a laptop without dealing with a hundred tiny screws. Haven't had this easy of a time doing a laptop upgrade since the brick Thinkpad era.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Okay, none of them have sunk to paying their employees in scrip only redeemable at 80 cents on the dollar in approved stores,

Didn't Walmart try to do that a couple years ago? "Hey plebs, we're going to pay you in digital walbucks on a card! You can use it in store and we're working with other vendors too! You can see a movie at AMC theaters with your card right off the bat!" Needless to say, it caused a bit of uproar and they backed down

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

Didn't Walmart try to do that a couple years ago? "Hey plebs, we're going to pay you in digital walbucks on a card! You can use it in store and we're working with other vendors too! You can see a movie at AMC theaters with your card right off the bat!" Needless to say, it caused a bit of uproar and they backed down

My brother's first job in college was a major convenience store chain, his only options for pay were direct deposit or a debit card with fees out the ass.
It seems even in the 2010s there were places where you only got/get paid in these high fee debit cards with no other choice.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

My brother's first job in college was a major convenience store chain, his only options for pay were direct deposit or a debit card with fees out the ass.
It seems even in the 2010s there were places where you only got/get paid in these high fee debit cards with no other choice.

You can go back even further. When I was a broke college kid in the 2000's, I used to do temp labor at these agencies that had us do menial work for minimum wage, and our form of daily payment was either a company debit card (with a $50 service fee to activate), or get our pay from a company ATM that charged us like 10% of our daily pay to withdraw from. I think there was a paper check option, but they took weeks to send out.

 

[The Last Stand]

It helps that the UX that the manufacturers install on top of the OS have gotten better over the years, especially if you look at the disaster that was samsung touchwiz

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One thing I don't miss is when UIs try to be three dimensional and "stylish" with their icons and layouts. It just clutters space. (Save for Windows XP)

 

[Never Scored]

You need 5G for the Internet of things, smart cities and self driving cars. It can also more accurately triangulate you. The amount of data that will be moving around, and the latency will be crucial considering self driving cars etc. will constantly talk to not only each other but the street etc as well.

God damn it's great to live in the middle of nowhere where spying on you is not profitable and none of these companies give a shit about you. I can't even get a cell phone signal in some areas within a kilometre of my house.

 

[Blamo]

God damn it's great to live in the middle of nowhere where spying on you is not profitable and none of these companies give a shit about you. I can't even get a cell phone signal in some areas within a kilometre of my house.

Starlink will be your friend.

 

[Cats]

Video games are pretty much dead to me and it kinda sucks. I miss video game cartridges and 2d pixel art fighting games. The new fighting game graphics are abysmal and even the 2d ones are just way too over the top anime looking. Probably the prettiest pixel art fighter I've ever seen is Real Bout Fatal Fury 2, Samurai Shodown V, or the SF Alpha series.

I miss big box video games where you felt like you were getting a real "copy". Even older CD releases like PS1 and PC had longbox versions. Nowadays most videogames are just digital download or a small thin case...besides, 99% of them are worse rehashes of games that already did what they do better or are just complete trash.

I miss arcades. Big colorful cabinets with pretty artwork and indestructible buttons and levers . Playing an old school fighter or light gun game on a cabinet is an experience I am sad the new generation will not get to have.

 

[Never Scored]

Holy shit, electric tools are complete fucking garbage:

-I went through two electric weed wackers back around a decade ago. One ran plugged in, one ran on batteries both had their electric motor burn out. The plug-in one was a cheapo from Canadian Tire anyway, but the battery one was an expensive job from Home Depot. I bought a little gas featherlite off Kijiji for like $20 in 2013. It was several years old then and it still works perfect.

-I have a little 40cc gas chainsaw I bought in 2008, still works like the day I bought it. My father bought a cordless electric one and it didn't even make it through the birch tree he was trying to cut down in his yard before it broke(He cut a wedge out first. This wasn't due to the chain being pinched. He's not retarded.) He borrowed my saw to cut it down and then got a new gas one himself.

The latest happening that triggered this post:

-I bought a Ryobi 40v cordless mower back in 2019 to replace a 30-year old gas mower that was a hand-me-down from my grandfather and was starting to rust through. I've been storing the battery inside the house out of the cold and keeping it topped up, the battery is gone anyway. New battery is $250. I can get a brand new gas mower for $200 and that's probably what I'm going to do.

So there's a clear pattern here of gas tools lasting several decades, while electric ones make it 2-3 years tops.

Who is this shit made for? Once they finally outlaw the sale of new two-stroke engines I might kill myself.

How is this better for the environment? It's worse for the environment to constantly manufacture this shit that breaks than the small amount of carbon released by small two-stroke engines. This kind of thing sometimes makes me question if the move from gas to electric is less about the environment and more about getting rid of reliable gas tools and getting people onto unreliable electric tools to make them spend more.

 

[Cats]

Holy shit, electric tools are complete fucking garbage:

Planned obsolescence is a motherfucker. So wasteful and stupid.

 

[Autistic AT-ST]

Holy shit, most new items are complete fucking garbage:



Who is this shit made for?

How is this better for the environment? It's worse for the environment to constantly manufacture this shit that breaks than the small amount of carbon released by small two-stroke engines. This kind of thing sometimes makes me question if the move from gas to electric is less about the environment and more about getting rid of reliable gas tools and getting people onto unreliable electric tools to make them spend more.

That is also the point. To make you piss all your money away faster.


I hate the trend that everyone has to be on social media and all the fake exaggerated emotions surrounding it.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

So there's a clear pattern here of gas tools lasting several decades, while electric ones make it 2-3 years tops.

It's the new ones that are the problem, old (and good) electrical products stretching from sewing machines to drills just won't die. But they weren't cheap either.

 

[Blamo]

How is this better for the environment?

Better for the business environment! Carbon counters and hipsters only care about the emissions during the operation, not the overall.

 

[Never Scored]

That is also the point. To make you piss all your money away faster.

It's the new ones that are the problem, old (and good) electrical products stretching from sewing machines to drills just won't die. But they weren't cheap either.

I have to say, I bought a few new gas items, a 3600 watt Hyundai inverter generator was the latest, that have been very reliable, still come with an exploded diagram showing you every part along with a part number to replace it. There are no parts in that generator that I can't get at Canadian Tire or Princess Auto. I've yet to get that with an electric tool.