/tech/ - Technology★

>>910697 (OP)

all sorts of electronics#

Keyboards. Now run back to /g/

>>910697 (OP)

Dishwashers!

They suck now. I think due to (((environmental protection))) reasons.

>>910712

no idea dishwashers suck now

i also think modern toasters now are also shit

>>910712

Not at all, it's due to planned obsolescence.

why dont they make crazy whaky electronics anymore

like they used to in the 80s

>>910727

#modern

>>910730

I forget what that panel in Mac OS 9 was called, but it was indispensible. Much better than the current Dock or the Taskbar.

Real time systems.

Not exactly in performance but in security.

???

>>910734

This

keyboards.

Bought a Leopold just to swap out the gritty newfaggot cherries for some Kailh orange box switches.

>>910742

none of them were rubber dome, the fuck are you talking about?

actually, anything that now has IoT, like fucking light bulbs.

>>910746

i also notice old portable radios are better than new radios,they function in a much more smood way

>>910742

Yes, I know (I have an Unicomp). What matters is that it's a spring mechanism hitting the membrane, not my fingers directly, so it doesn't feel like a shit membrane keyboard a la ZX81.

>>910744

But that's correct: some variants of the Model M did use rubber domes rather than buckling springs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard#Features_by_part_number

>>910749

I had a chance to get an old portable tube radio from 1946, I still hate myself for not taking up that offer. Everything in those things are serviceable. Even the electrical sockets could be unscrewed and repaired. And its easier to tune than people realize. They were all of course AM-only but they were also all built for AM so it doesn't sound as bad.

>>910751

yeah dude,i always enjoyed radios.

I found out modern radios tend to be complete shit and dare i say even break down easily.

While old radios(hell not even that old,like from the 2000s) are much more durable/last longer,have better more smood transmissions,better sound quality and are just much better

>>910757

Thinking of what Creative has done, it's good to see them fall into irrelevance.

>>910759

what did they do

>>910761

They drove Aureal bankrupt with frivolous lawsuits.

Early TFTs was incredibly shitty

bad colors, bad viewing angles, ghosting.

Didnt matter IT WAS FLAT so corps bought them in bulk.

Keyboards and mouse

todays 100$ premium used to be standard

>>910759

They bought and canned soundstorm

a integrated audio chip that was better then their 150$+ cards

apart from those nice mp3 players creative has always been a cancer company.

Webpages.

Browsers became better, but websites became worse.

Look at the source of Facebook. There is a depth of 20 child elements just for the default homepage heading.

T W E N T Y.

It's a blue rectangle with a picture and a form in it.

>>910801

People are always saying this, but these people also don't realize 90 percent of website bloat is completely optional. You can browse a lot of websites in less bloated forms with older browsers. The problem is security issue. We need a browser that lets you target different feature sets in a more in-depth way than just user agents

>>910804

Have you tried ...?

a lot of pages simply refuse because outdated browser and outdated security certificates

>>910697 (OP)

>Was there any particular piece of technology that downgraded throughout the years and was at a higher level lets say in the 80s-90s?

Monitors. LCD and LED is shit. I want high refresh rates at high resolution like good CRT monitors in the 90s.

>>910697 (OP)

>>910727

>>910730

https://youtu.be/0wDtxYeJdzg

>>910712

I'm not sure which is worse - the "water savings" crap that means I need to wash twice to save 10% of the water, or the soy soap that can't clean anything. And, if you don't want everything to look like a spotted mess, you need (((Jet Dry)))

>>910804

Why in the world would anybody want to browse bloated google amazon botnet website on an old browser without uMatrix?

>>910743

are they drop in replacements? I have a Leopold board that's in need of some replacement switches.

>>910801

>websites became worse

Going to have to disagree here:

>now

JS botnet mobileshit layouts

>late 2000s

Morass of plugins and noncompliant CSS

>early 2000s

Spacer GIFs and static invisible tables

>late 90s

Proprietary crap like IFrames

>early web

Naked CSS-less HTML that's more bloated, uglier, and less functional than preexisting formats, except for its hyperlink feature

While web browsers did improve to the point where it became possible to write decent site when CSS gelled in the Netscape 3 era, 99.999% of sites have ALWAYS been utter trash in period browsers on period hardware.

>>910801

>Browsers became better, but websites became worse.

Wrong, Browsers are at fault for enabling javascript by default in the first place.

>>910833

GIMMIE THAT JET DRY

>>910850

And (((they))) also made sure to not add certain features to html so that everyone relies on (((JScript)))

>>910833

>not having soft water

>not having a bult-in water softener like European machines have

>>910781

>overpriced placebo is a bit cheaper now

>>910828

Buy gaymer monitors. They go up to 144Hz these days.

>>910892

As long as they're IPS, old TN has shit color quality.

>>910894

Some are IPS. Then again, modern TN panels ain't that bad anymore.

>>910892

>he doesn't have a 240Hz monitor

How do you even live with yourself?

>>910697 (OP)

Almost every kitchen appliance except maybe the fridge and freezer.

>Handheld mixer: Grannies one still works while she is in the grave. Worn out two modern ones due to plastic gearing and bushing. The were also name brand and reasonably priced.

>Furnace. Shitty plastic knob broke down, eventually oven didn't work anymore. Old funice was all full metal.

>Microwave. By some miracle my parent lucked out and probably bought one before planned obsolescence hit. Fucker is at least 15 years old. Looking on amazon for combi microwave oven. Review, 1 stars galore. Some part of the door mechanism is prone to failure. Note this was an expensive samsung model.

>Light bulbs, used to be just glass and metal, cost peanuts, now stuffed with polutants to reduce "muh co2 emissions"

>Years ago, trying to find an mp3 player to my liking. Insane amounts of background noise. This was, back then, a high end 250 euro device. Returned it and got money back. More noise than my 10 year older walkman.

>Typewriter my parents bought when they were young. Probably at least 40 years old by now. Get it from the attic, put paper in, everything works. Probably been there for at least 10 years since last use.

I just did maintaince on my parent's air conditioner units. They have an older model and a new model. The older cooled the downstairs and the newer model cleaned the upstairs.

>The newer model used "radiator hoses", basically a hose for freon with metal frays pointed outward in all directions. These hoses are stacked like a cake. The older model used the classic "car radiator" style. When cleaning these units, the newer model was extremely sensitive to water pressure, while the older one was more tolerant.

>The older model was more suspecitable for collecting fibers, since its coils were denser the newer model suprisingily wasn't.

>The older model had its exterior broken into pannels. Getting these lined back up was a bitch. Its also when i discovered that the screw holes are not that well matched compared to the older unit.

>It took me over an hour to work on the newer unit. The older unit took me 20 minutes.

>>910931

Consumer fridges might be arguably better, but they are bordering impossible to do matainance on. They are now "sealed units" where it trys to trap freon leaks.

>>910925

I believe IPS panels don't go faster than 144Hz today. Faster ones are all peasant TNs.

>>910929

Bullshit. I remember reading about US Navy doing experiments with that. They concluded that humans improve their motion estimation up to at least 600Hz, and that cutoff was only because they didn't have equipment to try higher refresh rates.

>>910944

bullshit it was something like 120-150 fps in that test

The problem, I have discovered, is that sety at large have grown an intensive adversion to things older than 5 to 10 years, and the more stupid people in society get aggressive and judge people based on your choices.

I bought a series of stereo equipment, and was mocked for buying it component by component rather than a self-contained unit like you'd see in the thrift stores.In fact, I was violently mocked and judged. Apparently, to metion a "Wired" network results not only in comfusion but commentary that you are "stuck in 1912", and to watch television older than 10 years is also met with violent reaction and judging. In fact, to write things down such as even notes is a primary example of being a fuddy-duddy.

Modern people can't afford electric bills (which they let reach $800), but decide to buy a $900 4K tv because 1) It's black friday and 2) their 1080pi TV has a lose wire which disables the blacklight. They choose to pay $12.50 for netflix and hulu, and yell when you put an antenna in their television, accusing you of planning to break it or put "wires in my tv".

If you don't own a cell phone, you are beyond a lost cause. Also, to them the internet is only Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and everything else is something they can not explain. Communication apps aren't the Internet, but a mode of Cellular (such as something called "Marco Polo", which is the stupidest thing I have ever seen).

To collect something from a bygone era such as Audio Cassette or records, and to actually listen to music through it, shows YOUR incredible arrogance and ignorance to the modern worl. You will be eincouraged to in-fact burn your collection, and will be yelled at repeatedly and verbally berated for oering to share the collection with your peers.

This is the new normal. I have been victim to these normalfags, and I never knew it to be so bad before this. This is where Society is.

>>910953

120-150fps was the threshold at which people stopped noticing a difference. However, they still improved their performance at the test task when framerates were raised above that.

>>910968

Supersonic flights were expensive though, even when fuel was cheaper back then.

>>910968

Moon missions.

>>910968

That's because the Concorde was ridiculously expensive to operate and was flying at a loss for its entire time.

>>910968

>Loud

>Expensive

>Still operated at a loss

>heavily restricted to certain airports for sound pollution reasons

It's not worth it. Even if you do ignore the sound pollution problems and the general logistics of operating it, it still would never have survived the early 2000s downturn of the aviation industry.

>>910972

That crash in 2000 was bad, and there was only 12 or 11 of them after that.

toilets, dishwashers, MIDI (usb midi is shit), turn tables, 90s tape decks were the best decks, vehicle ignition switches, consumer video interconnects (component > HDMI & DRM), AT&T dual-ringer home phone was a tank, multi-sync monitors.

Also, in general, digital electronics is overused. It's used to build cheap, shittiy, just-good-enough circuits for functions that used to be analog. So now we get 32 or 255 quantized steps instead of smooth analog transitions: dimming and volume control etc. It's not better. It's cheaper and "good enough".

>>910968

Turned out people hated sonic booms even when they do not literally shatter windows. Also ridiculous operating costs due to huge fuel consumption - inherent problem of going fast - and poor return due to very thin body with very little room for cargo and passengers, to allow that speeds in the first place. So it was only allowed to fly supersonic over the ocean and even then the tickets were so ridiculously expensive that not even wealthy were standing in line for them. Subsonic airliners are inherently superior in that they're greatly more fuel efficient as well as space efficient, making them more economically viable by several orders of magnitude, for both airlines and the passengers.

>>910757

Lag is a function of overuse of digital electronics and "smart" circuits.

Those fucking power buttons on monitors that don't work the 1st or 2nd time you press them. Noticeable lag in new digital circuits that used to be analog controls. It's not better. It's cheaper with digital. So we get digital.

>>910993

>Early 2000s

meant to say early 2010s. But looking it up the plane was introduced in 2016 so even that;s a misnomer.

don't forget survivor bias

electronics used to draw so much power, even when not in use, because everything was dumb and big and power supplies were mostly kludge designs, but this meant that the basic electronic components usually lasted longer, as they were overbuilt and underutilized

microprocessors can't handle voltage ripple or voltage spikes without frying, ergo, we need to use power boards on everything nowadays

>>910697 (OP)

User Level Computers

We had to program them to make them do shit in the 80s, now we buy them all loaded up with shit. In that way I think that they were, "Niggered-Down." We had to program in Basic and Machine Language. Oh yeah, Cobol and something else I can't remember

Ham Radios

Who owns a ham radio? a white guy whose wife is constantly on the rag

Those are the only two items that come to mind.

- - - -

>>910723

My first computer was a teletype machine in 1979 - we were able to play stuff like RPG's over the phone lines after we connected to Columbia University's computer - Kept my programs on a yellow paper ribbon held together with a rubber band. Computer guys now are light years ahead of me.

I remember Radio Shack / Tandy put out the TRS-80 (We called it the Trash-80 back then.) It was basically an over priced hunk of metal. Then I remember the Commodore 64 - I had one of those, but I didn't have a printed manual, so I sucked at it.

>>910697 (OP)

Cars, in general. They fired all the good mechanical engineers and replaced them with pajeets. Now, if a mechanical part can be replaced with a computer-controlled component, it is. This is not a good thing.

>>911066

>Who owns a ham radio? a white guy whose wife is constantly on the rag

>Those are the only two items that come to mind.

>- - - -

What did he mean by this?

>>911079

<I'm tired

>What did he mean by this?

1. Equated, 'Downgraded,' with, 'Niggered.'

2. Autism kicked in and said, 'No niggers operate Ham Radios.'

>>911081

2b. - Terry Davis

bump

>>910832

will watch

>>911066

Ham Radios

Who owns a ham radio? a white guy whose wife is constantly on the rag

Those are the only two items that come to mind.>>911066

i wish i had a ham radio,always loved that shit.to bed i dont know how to make one and havent found anything decent

>>911100

What do hams talk about in their communities?

>>911101

>Amateur Radio Emergency Service (prep)

>Storm chasing

>DXing

>making local QSOs

>Gear Queers

This is basically sums up my local radio club.

Typical chatter on the repeaters:

Are you still alive?

How are the wife and kids?

Miscellaneous EE / Radio questions.

What is the furthest contact you've made this week?

Miscellaneous old fart political opinion.

>>911111

its a shame all this subcultures have been lost,not its just internet and the online world instead of trading info/tech drives irl

>>911111

>Miscellaneous old fart political opinion.

What would be their reaction to fashing it up a bit?

>>911121

You will get your license pulled if you aren't the perfect gentleman/woman. Anything which could be deemed as offensive, or any vulgarities are strictly forbidden. You must also announce your callsign, which is tied to your name and address on the FCC registry, every ten minutes while transmitting. All of the fun stuff is forbidden. Amateurs can't play music. You can't have anything resembling a radio show. You have your license to further the art of radio and spread international goodwill. This is why HAM is dead and pirate radio is so attractive.

>>911127

This is also why HAMs have nothing better to do than look for pirate stations and report them to the FCC btw.

>>911128

>>911128

>>911128

>>910746

this. I sometimes work in an auto shop that has a lot of machinery and tools from the (maybe) 50s, definitely 60s, 70s, and 80s onwards, and made in USA. these things are all built very well. they may not have modern tolerances for fit and finish (and for modern chinkshit, any fit and finish is gone pretty fast anyway) but they are all solid. they need some basic maintenance and that's it. still using them for work 50 years later. I don't think you can say the same for most similar tools made today.

>>910727

Midrange sound cards. You now either get a full on "audio interface" or just use your shitty onboard card. In a lot of cases they aren't even sold for internal use anymore.

>>910757

This is true. Display lag and software bloat are a problem. We keep making bigger and faster devices only to keep what is essentially the same user experience because programs keep getting less efficient.

>>910801

Definitely this. Bloat is an issue here too. I love coming across an old webpage that would have taken a minute to load in the 90s and have it load in a fraction of a second. And then I go to a more mainstream page and my load times start showing me how little things have changed. Throwing more crap onto a website does not make it better.

Browsers are their own shit show for shure, but they are decidedly better than they were a couple of decades ago.

>>911066

ICOM makes some fancy ham radios. I don't know how those would be worse. Hell, software defined radio is pretty kicking in some communities. I think there is even a thread up here on making a really cheap ghettorigged one.

For user level computers you gotta look at microcontrollers.

>>911100

look into software defined radio. You can get cheap chinese radios from amazon for a fairly inexpensive price too.

>>911128

Which is ironic since they are helping to kill the interest of the younger generation in ham. FCC rules regarding content need a fucking rewrite.

>>910746

Build quality is fucking junk now. Very true.

>>910956

Got any stories about this? I'm interested in hearing.

>>910697 (OP)

>teh internetz

it used to be much faster before everything was filled with Js, especially around '05. actually, all software has done that. computers have gotten more and more powerful, yet software gets slower and slower

>>910697 (OP)

God, why did we ever stop using translucent plastic? Shit's so cool.

>>910956

Beat them with their own stupidity*. You will rapidly find they are unable to take being berated, and only think it is OK for you to be berated. You will also find yourself friendless, but in most cases they were pretty shit as friends since they could never accept you for who you are anyway.

*The way I do this is asking questions that expose their ignorance indirectly.

>So you think this is bad? So how do you mitigate the issues with non-wired networks?

>WTF are you talking about response/10

>Oh sorry, I thought you had an informed opinion on the matter.

This implies their opinions are retarded - which they are, and if they have any sense they will quickly stop the mocking.

>>911597

Don't respond to namefags. It's obvious they're an attention seeker who tries to shove it in people's faces. They mock him for it and he has a victim complex. Namefags are cancer, do not believe their lies.

Lightning got way worse and is only getting more fucked up over time. We're switching to shittier light bulbs that increase people's eye strain. It's bizarre but here we are.

>>910697 (OP)

Windows OS

>>911597

Talk radio is often enjoyable, but radio stations, depending on your location are mostly junk.

>>910730

A major change is when "user interface" became "user experience". It was understood in those days that the interface was a gateway to the experience, which is why it was so simplistic and (for the time) fast. Now that the act of using the computer at all is considered to be part of the "experience" we need all these showy animations and cartoons playing before what I ask it to do is done.

>>911602

Yeah. And what's worse is that it's happening everywhere. I remember moving to Linux just to keep this old laptop I love alive and usable, but now everything (even with XFCE or MATE) is so slow that I'm considering going back to Windows 7 while I still can. How did we get to the point where something faster that even bloated Linux software was faster than Windows XP to the "light" software being heavier than Windows 7.

It's like we're in some sort of JRPG. You're in one area and struggle to defeat certain enemies, but then you level up and can defeat them easily, but then you move on to the next area and you're struggling again, so you've basically made no progress at all in real-world terms.

>which became even more troublesome as devices became permanently networked.

I'm sure many people would consider a device that is purposely not connected to the web to be only half a device at this point. Imagine a computer that can't access the web, "what a waste, right?"

>>910832

> Indian tech support joke

Nice

>>911626

In 10 years it will be "Imagine a fridge that can't access the web". The horror.

>>911685

I don't even think this is a proper joke. I can think of a few implementations that would make modern life more convenient that I couldn't have a year ago.

>>911626

protip: XP has fewer features than any modern desktop system

>>911708

it wasn't a joke

>>911614

sometimes i tune in random radio stations in the dawn and its fucking hilarious,its like the radio of those gta games but only irl

>>911626

are you sure you have the cpu and gpu microcode and drivers loaded ?

xfce is snappy ...

>>911626

If your PC was made in this century, something in this list must work well:

https://thishosting.rocks/best-lightweight-linux-distros/

https://archive.is/dwSW6

>>911617

This poster knows what's up. You should listen to him. Read more here:

http://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE

>>911846

kys namefag

>>910712

>>910715

>>910833

How are Dishwashers, Toasters and soap inferior?

>>910712

Also, how is environmental protection bad?

>>910723

>>910742

>>910744

>>910748

>>910750

>>910755

The jury's out on if the modern Buckling Spring keyboards are inferior to the original or not. see: https://www.hooktube.com/watch?v=D7wmMZmMinM Also are inferior to modern mechanical cherry switches in some application such as gaming.

>Inb4 >Linus Tech Tips

>>911855

didn't mean to namefag, it was still in the field from when I needed to identify myself last week.

>>910978

How is the newer plane of the two inferior other then aesthetics?

>>911889

I do think there was a sense of purity in such a system. Even the TTY of Linux doesn't have that level of deep-down interactivity.

>>911710

Just imagine how much worse things are going to get.

>>911889

>terminal beep

Fuck this shit, particularly the beep everytime you happen to inadvertently position your cursor beyond the beginning or end of the line. Even if you tame the bullshit in the shell by changes in input.rc it's still other programs like vi that do this. You sit late at night, it's quiet except for the typing noise, and then it goes BEEP BEEP BEEP which at the late hour might be audible in the apartment next door. Shit pushed me to radical measures such as disable BEEP in BIOS.

>>910956

just ignore em, that's what I do.

>>911571

>Midrange sound cards. You now either get a full on "audio interface" or just use your shitty onboard card. In a lot of cases they aren't even sold for internal use anymore.

Last time an appreciable number of people cared about the soundcard in their PC was when, Audigy 2 days?

I'm not old (19) but I ==HATE HATE HATE== how everything is now just mashed in one device and I can't even buy a proper fucking model for that. Phones ==A SHIT==. Everything has shit build quality, shit battery, shit speakers and inevitably breaks down with a software update or a shitty hardware issue. There are LITERALLY NO PHONES which have

>less than 4.5 inch screen

>no accelerometer

>no camera

>only cellular + wifi

Literally NONE! And every phone either looks tacky or is a piece of shit that clicks photos every x seconds and collects metadata and sends it all somewhre to be assessed.

I remember how my dad had a pager and it was the coolest thing ever. We had walkie-talkies and they were amazing. Good at one thing, and flawless. I remeber the Zire I had and you could load small games on it and take notes. That's it. No internet capability, and no other faggy bullshit. Hell, I got a zune 30 when it was released and I've only had to change the battery and HDD ==ONCE== and it still works flawlessly, even the original cable does. And yet I can't buy a decent laptop that makes it through five years.

The entire reason this is happening is because of the internet. Guess what, no one actually NEEDS all those functions on a phone. most sheep don't know what they want before they're given it. But analysts see this and forsee a great future in IT , so everyone starts upping the stakes in he stock market and the government gets greedy and artificially allows more than possible which leads to a crash. AAAAAAND then companies get scared and all the good people either leave or take a back seat because new hip ceo #5 says they need to focus on agile goals and short-term benefits to fuel long term growth and that competing with their enemy is now imperative because they don't want an antitrust on their heads and they also have to comply with shotty regulations based on bullshit while at the same time reducing taxes and making something useful. So these fucks just focus on the short termand cut deals with the gubmi t who in turn uses them to spy on the citizens and then turns the tables on them and tells them to keep going otherwise they'll """expose""" them. And the tovernment ahs infinite bargaining ability because it's literally legalized muscle and makes sure a significant % of the pop is either wasting lives for """the greater good""" or being at the end of the receivng stick. And the good men all get filtered while the snakes get to climb the ladders and push shitty agendas which was what led to a bubble in the first place.

>>911907

A long time ago, sadly.

>>911947

SpaceX is going to begin taking astronauts up to the ISS starting this year. So get hype and hope to Christ nothing goes wrong. I'm confident Musk is competent enough to pull it off after that stunt where he launched his fucking car into space and landed the first stage. But if he fucks up this one time, we may never escape the Soyuz.

Still, you gotto give the ruskies props for the Soyuz, most reliable launch vehicle in history, and made from spare ballistics missiles. That's what I would call practical engineering. It's the AK-47 of rockets, cheap, expendable but just werkz,

>>911953

>putting your faith in private company

Amerilards lol...how low you have come.

>>911964

man on the moon

>>911964

This, you should always trust the government.

>>911571

>Midrange sound cards. You now either get a full on "audio interface" or just use your shitty onboard card.

That's because "shitty onboard cards" became much less shitty over the years and are actually surprisingly good these days provided you have a decent PSU with low noise on the power rails. Not only they produce decent quality signal (more than enough for a normalfag), they often provide 7.1 surround output and even digital outputs.

This, coupled with the trend away from specialised audio DSPs (the CPUs have gotten so fast that it makes no sense anymore), killed the discrete card. Kind of like increasingly capable iGPUs killed low-end discrete graphics cards and are slowly exterminating the mid-range as we speak.

>>911919

>There are LITERALLY NO PHONES which have

>>less than 4.5 inch screen

>>no accelerometer

>>no camera

>>only cellular + wifi

>Literally NONE!

Dumbphones are still a thing, anon. You can get one for under $30.

>>912001

This mentality is exactly how we wind up with bloat.

> Great fast new tech.

> Lets despecialize it and put a bunch of shit on it.

> Fast tech is now slow tech.

> more than enough for a normalfag

Normalfags are normalfags because they eat whatever shit you give them. Moreover if you want to upgrade your sound card, then you have to get a new damn processor and potentially motherboard.

> surprisingly good

Call me back when you have an out of box laptop that doesn't require a DAC to prevent clipping when I am watching a stream of someone playing a vintage synth.

>>911919

they can still track you by cell phone tower triangulation bud. the only winning move is not to play.

that being said simplicity is a gift.

>>911919

>The entire reason this is happening is because of the internet. Guess what, no one actually NEEDS all those functions on a phone.

also, you're wrong here. for a sizable portion of the world people have access to smartphones before they even have a bank account. phones need to serve a wide range of purposes now. they are essentially passports and wallets and ID's

>>912055

>shitskins

>people

>>912011

>>912005

I used to have one but it basically excludes you from society now

>>912055

> they are essentially passports and wallets and ID's

yeah but they don't need to be

>>912074

fuck society

>>911858

modern toasters are clunky,dont heat/toast the bread as good,brake down easier and also have less functionalities

>>911812

>FORTRAN

Nah, I'm talking 1980

To be honest, I think we called it "Machine Language"

>>911973

MOST UNDERRATED POST HERE

>>910734

fucking purple abomination.

>>910751

Collecting AM radios now is something of a fool's errand, unless you have your own AM transmitter to use them with... AM radios--at least in the USA--are basically a dying media. CFL lights cause a lot of AM noise now, and CFLs are everywhere.

Some years ago I bought the GE portable radio that was supposed to be the best one around for AM radio. Worked pretty good at first but after a couple years it sounded like total shit, like maybe a capacitor had died or something. I kept it in case I felt like fixing whatever went wrong, but it's still just sitting. Even new, the reception was pretty poor. There's just too much AM band noise for me to care now.

>>911626

Puppy Linux. Or a similar type of DSL distro. If it ain't broke, no need to fix it.

>>911904

>terminal beep

>Fuck this shit

LOL! I missed it so much I configured my system to restore it. It depends on what you do. It is great to alert you to warnings.

<glowniggers detected on your network?

>BEEP!

<long script finished while away from the terminal?

>BEEP!

<script about to cause fukushima like CPU meltdown?

>BEEP!

>>912883

Turns out you can program the PC speaker in OpenBSD to play music like oldschool BASIC.

https://man.openbsd.org/speaker

I tried to make it play Pengo, but it doesn't sound quite right. So dunno. Maybe the notes I got are wrong (can't remember where they're from).

[code]

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

#include <fcntl.h>

#include <unistd.h>

#include <sys/ioctl.h>

#include <dev/isa/spkrio.h>

int main (int argc, char **argv)

{

int fd;

tone_t t;

fd = open("/dev/speaker", O_WRONLY|O_NONBLOCK);

if (fd == -1) {

perror("can't open /dev/speaker");

return(1);

}

write(fd, argv[1], strlen(argv[1]));

}

./a.out "O1T192>ca#>cgd#gcp>ca#>cgd#gcp>c>d>d#>d>d#>c>d>c>da#>ca#>cg#>cp"

>>911904

>disable BEEP in BIOS

You can just unload the kernel module for the pc speaker on most distros.

>>912898

Neat!

>>912898

There used to be a linux driver that exposed the PC speaker as a normal sound card. You could literally play all your MP3s and gaymes as if you had a real sound card. CPU usage while playing was horrible though, almost as horrible as the sound quality.

>>912898

>write a C program that is literally a half-assed cat command

why.bmp

>>910697 (OP)

CRTs got replaced with calculator screens. CRTs had better response rates (microseconds instead of 10ms) and latency (0 instead of 4ms-60ms; calculator screens only finally really got down to 4ms recently). then around 2009 they took it a step further. now all calculator screens take 5-10 seconds to turn on / change input source, they're super bright and you can't make them low enough to be viewable at night, they're full of annoying LEDs, shiny black frames, and other various nigger technology. also calculator screens have fundamentally worse motion blur because they hold a pixel for an entire frame which blur across your eye as it moves, as opposed to CRTs which only hold a "pixel" for microseconds

vehicles got ECUs and recently they took it a step further by making them "smart". now you have the uConnect vuln which allows controlling a car by logging into it through its cell IP address from anywhere in the world

>>910828

calculator screens are up to 144Hz and 240Hz now but they way they refresh is different than CRTs

>>910929

daily reminder that once psychology is mentioned the tech discussion has ended

>>911889

terminal beep was the stupidest shit ever. it pretty much highlights all the problems of *nix in one feature

>>910730

this. all there is to UI design is to properly place a few rectangles here and there, but that's not good enough for people working in corporations who need to make it look as if they're innovating the product

Do modern operating systems need all the features they have? Is there a way to simplify it all to remove the bloat? What is wrong with Windows XP(besides Microsoft) that is modernized for high def and modern hardware?

>>913321

They make new versions of Windows so they can have a new product to sell. No other reason.

>>910697 (OP)

Cars.

>>911919

it's consumer mismash. once a product is too successful, all the companies producing it need to "add value" so they start adding a bunch of unnecessary bullshit to the product and the overall quality starts degrading, as all the power of the company is diluted onto pointless features

>zune

wasn't that some shit that could only play some special snowflake proprietary microsoft format requiring a windows system with drivers to use? that said my samsung mp3 player from 2008 needs this Microsoft MTP garbage to use and also sucks dick

>>912054

i don't have a phone myself but you can just turn it off or unplug the battery to avoid tracking

>>912055

that's not true, that's just what hipsters want you to think. corporations imagine the present as what you say, a "sophisticated" society of people augmented by their cell phones (will be replaced with brain implant in the future for added convenience). unfortunately phones are both botnet and shit. in reality i've never needed a phone once except for pointless non-internet services like gmail and facebook

>>913321

>What is wrong with Windows XP

A video driver model that makes it impossible for multiple programs to efficiently access the GPU at the same time.

t. former driver engineer

water heaters used to run much higher - high enough to actually kill shit in the water

vastly more water used to come out of showerheads

baths used to be separate from showers - what we have today is an evil chimera that murders old people and yet isn't even comfortable as a bath

we used to have space heaters that were warm af, and fast

toilets used to work reliably

CRT monitors had crazy high resolutions in the 90s - there was a mini dark age of low-rez flat screens before the technology caught back up

CPUs used to get faster over time through engineering improvements, rather than 'faster' over time through voodoo practices that turn into massive vulnerabilities

wages used to rise significantly as capital investment increased in an economy; what we have right now is an effort to raise the wages of the entire world (boiling the ocean) at the expense of the actual citizens of the investment economies

governments used to be headed by people trained from birth to rule, who could plan on their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren ruling in the future in their stead. Rather than "fuck you I've got mine" citizens of the world who could leave any sinking ship of a shithole country, we had people who knew their progeny's futures were tied to the success of the country.

upper classes of people used to promote their actual practices as worth emulating, as elevating, to the lower classes. Today the upper classes secretly practice beneficial behaviors while preaching madness--as virtue.

land sales used to have clauses like "can only sell to nice white people". Since such things are no longer possible, we have carefully elevated property tax, limits on public transit ("you want to extend the bus system? not to *my* neighborhood!"), and all manner of weird-ass zoning and school and local bureaucratic shit, all trying to claw out a living space for communities families--who have given up, in the end, and keep their children on a leash so short that even the parents are shocked.

>>913632

>toilets used to work reliably

What is with that push-button plastic shit that is everywhere now? There was nothing at all wrong with the old cistern model of just having a lever that opens the channel to the basin.

€U has alot of limitations on stuff

like compare latest vaccuum cleaner prices and power to ones from 3 years ago

and those so called "energy saving lamps" the fucking cartel fucked everyone up the previous bulbs were 100% energy efficient in cold climates

>>913574

the solution would have been for Microsoft to patch XP

>b-b-but muh business

>>913725

You can't patch that. It requires redesigning the entire graphics stack from scratch, down from the kernel bits up to the d3d{number}.dll the application calls into. And the drivers themselves need to be redesigned from scratch to fit the new model.

This, by the way, is the reason Vista required new drivers for video hardware.

:)

>>910832

What we called "computers" back in the day, are actually now called microcontrollers. Now I can buy a raspberry pi running a 10x more powerful OS, and it runs faster for a fraction of the cost of buy those old computers back in the day, and even today.

>>913753

>you can't patch that

yes you can

>>912054

>the only winning move is not to play.

That's not even wrong. This game is such that if you don't play you already lost.

The only way is to feed fake data to the botnet so it doesn't know it is being fed fake data. If you feed it true data or none at all you're screwed either way.

>>912055

Nobody needs a "passport and wallet and ID" which can be arbitrarily remotely controlled and meddled with by third parties (such as the cell network operator and whoever they gave access to like gobmint agencies, as well as corporations who made the OS and apps).

>>914616

Also no one should have to walk around with a passport and ID like we're in some Soviet dystopia with terrible guys in uniform demanding to see our papers.

>>910978

2000-2007 cars might just be shit.

I drive a 2000 chevy malibu and literally everything is wrong with it in some way.

>>914688

>turbo button

>actually makes computer go slower

That was a bit weird until I was told why.

Shaving razors have gotten much worse. A double edge safety razor costs significantly less and shaves much better. But you can now buy 7 blade disposable razors that cost 100 times as much and rip your hairs out of your face.

Washing and drying machines have gotten worse too, in the sake of efficiency. I bought a nice setup a few years ago, and spent a ton of money on it. And it doesn't clean my clothes as well as my parents old machine.

>>910929

This is easily disproven by how people seem to think things shot at 60hz look "ceaper" than things shot at 24hz or 30hz. The only reason modern movies tend to be shot in 24, 26, or 30 is because people came to associate the way that framerate "feels" with big budget productions, while associating 60hz with home movies, since their cheap digital camera now records in 60hz.

>>912001

>the CPUs have gotten so fast that it makes no sense anymore

LARP.

>increasingly capable iGPUs killed low-end discrete graphics cards

Nope. What actually happened is they actually work now and before they were completely useless. This was enough to make normalfags flip over, but there's literally no advantage to getting a core series when you can just get a 50$ cheaper xeon with the same underlying cpu but lacking the integrated gpu and put that money into a dedicated low end gpu.

>slowly exterminating the mid-range as we speak.

Straight up made up.

>>914715

>edge case

>cold climate

>europe

Fucking americans thinking they're people.

>>914868

>LARP

Tell me what complicated sound effects are you going to do that require more than a few percent of a single modern CPU core to calculate.

>Nope. What actually happened is they actually work now and before they were completely useless.

If they were useless, nobody would be selling them. Lots of officeboxes and facebookstations ran happily on integrated grashitcs since the Pentium III era.

>there's literally no advantage to getting a core series when you can just get a 50$ cheaper xeon with the same underlying cpu but lacking the integrated gpu

Where do you find those K-series overclockable Xeons?

>and put that money into a dedicated low end gpu

why.jpg

Why would you want another piece of cheap shit discrete hardware when the integrated one does the job just as well, and with less watts wasted?

>Straight up made up.

Check out the benchmarks on the Ryzen APUs, faggot. It is only the beginning.

>>914868

>they were completely useless

>they actually work now

how is that not an increase in capability

>>914874

Get raped and kill yourself, you retarded fucking faggot sack of nigger shit with down syndrome.

>>914899

>oy vey

In general software and hardware, especially software, has gotten more and more antiuser and low quality. I type this from Windows Botnet in an inherited notebook and I keep noticing it's shit. From the touchpad, the keys, to the software. There's lots of little details that simply do not let the user parametrize it. For example, w10's implementation of redshift is shit, as you're unable to even change it to make it warmer or less so. The wifi seems to connect even when I told it not to connect automatically, and even when the GUI in the taskbar says it not to be connected DRM/steam doesn't go into offline mode, so I take it that it's still connecting, overall unresponsiveness, lack of configurability, etcetera. There are many details which are simply poor quality software. It's disgusting. In the same manner I notice things like this in common proprietary software like steam, etc.

This all from a user perspective, which is what I adopted with this piece of shit until I backup the old owner's data and give it to him and delete everything and install some distro on it. I can only wonder how shitty the code internals must be.

Sadly, such a shit perspective is also affecting some open source/free software projects, like firefox, ubuntu, etc. It's all anti-user, which is what happens when software stops being made by a user group and starts being made by a big organization. Corporativization of software is what destroys its usability.

In the same manner, hardware I notice has become anti-user too. I notice, for example, that this notebook, which might not be top of the line for current standards but is still nothing to sneer at, has a shit keyboard, for example. Or a touchpad with no buttons, which is annoying as it's a way too common trend among notebook manufacturers. They expect the user not to think for themselves. It's truly annoying. Everything is "smart", turn off your brain. It's obnoxious, stupid, anti-consumer and such shit. I really wish the corporate heads which caused this all get impaled.

Voltmeters.

Good luck finding one that lasts more than 6 months and gives usable results, you'll have to buy a second hand one from 1960.

>>911858

'environmental protections' is a buzzword to excuse the use of lighter, cheaper parts that wear out faster completing the same job, cost much less to source, produce and deliver (very important) and require regular maintenance. They don't protect the environment if they require frequent replacement. Older dishwashers are very inefficient in terms of water use and electricity, but they can be modified.

inefficient hardware lasts longer, that is a given

but there has to be a domain where better digital designs allow parts to last much longer than before, right?

The UX of the biggest sites is definitely worse than it was 15-20 years ago.

>>910712

>>910715

Dishwashers suck in longevity / durability due to cheaper parts being used. But they suck in cleaning ability for another reason: In the late 80's there was a push to ban phosphates. An important component of dishwasher detergent (and laundry detergent) was TSP (trisodium phosphate). It's job was to help the dirt / food particles you were washing away "float" out better during the rinse cycle. For a few years, you could by "commercial grade" Cascade that still contained it. Now it's completely gone from commercial detergents. You can still buy TSP (the pure chemical) in the paint prepearation department of paint / home improvement stores. You can add it back to your dishwasher / laundry soap. Only takes a small amount per load (About 3% by volume of powdered detergent).

For a fun experiment, wash two loads of equally dirty dishes with your favorite brand of dishwasher soap. Add a half-teaspoon of TSP to one load. See how much cleaner they are. Also good for your clothes.

Pro tip: Do not use the "TSP substitute" sold right beside it. It's crap.

>>913632

>wages used to rise significantly as capital investment increased in an economy; what we have right now is an effort to raise the wages of the entire world (boiling the ocean) at the expense of the actual citizens of the investment economies

>

>governments used to be headed by people trained from birth to rule, who could plan on their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren ruling in the future in their stead. Rather than "fuck you I've got mine" citizens of the world who could leave any sinking ship of a shithole country, we had people who knew their progeny's futures were tied to the success of the country.

>

>upper classes of people used to promote their actual practices as worth emulating, as elevating, to the lower classes. Today the upper classes secretly practice beneficial behaviors while preaching madness--as virtue.

>

>land sales used to have clauses like "can only sell to nice white people". Since such things are no longer possible, we have carefully elevated property tax, limits on public transit ("you want to extend the bus system? not to *my* neighborhood!"), and all manner of weird-ass zoning and school and local bureaucratic shit, all trying to claw out a living space for communities families--who have given up, in the end, and keep their children on a leash so short that even the parents are shocked.

"But comrade, we must be miserable now to usher in the utopia of tomorrow!"

That's basically the lie we're still being told, same old jewish BS.... yup, jews created communism (citation: putin himself), they created monotheistic religion, and usury. It's all about keeping the goy down with lies and promises of a better future.

>>913655

>>914874

He's right you know, in the European homeland (that's Europa, faggots) waste heat is very useful. Incandescent bulbs used to be useful to keep the water pipes from freezing over here, too, my dad did that when I was a kid. Solution in 70's? Spare lamp, free. Solution in 2010? Purchase special $80 pipe heater, goy!

Fun story from coworker: He told his son to put a light bulb in the pump house on a cold night, pipes froze anyway, dad went to check, son had used CFL bulb. Bonus fact: son works for water company.

t. American

>>914703

his post is easily disprovable by the fact that it's a psychology post.

on the other hand, 24 fps film is not comparable to anything else since it's produced a certain way and there are all kinds of different things that happen for example judder from 3:2 pulldown (some frames are duplicated to fit the 24fps to your 60Hz screen)

>>914703

>>915148

Is this bait, or are you really THAT autistic?

>>910697 (OP)

Handheld tools. I have tools that used to belong to my grandpa, made in USA, Germany and UK. Their modern day gook equivalents you can buy in big box stores are plastic polymer crap, that breaks apart after a couple years of use. While I will concede that battery powered tools are an advancement, the build quality of the basics has suffered greatly.

>>915134

1 light bulb is not gonna keep pipes from freezing unless it's like a 12" bulb but even then I have doubts

>>915158

>1 light bulb is not gonna keep pipes from freezing

I'm not sure about this but it keeps chickens alive during the winter which is fine for my purposes. Plus, it looks a lot better than CFL ever will.

t. Farmerfag that never switched to new bulbs

>>910697 (OP)

The Web. The amount of cancerous JS you have to load nowadays is absolutely disgusting.

>>915159

Those are two completely different use cases. You'd need to heat an entire room for the pipes.

>>914868

dedicated graphics are literally only good for a certain genre of art in gaymes. for a 2d game opengl/d3d are near useless unless you want your game to look like all the new gay shit (like awesomenauts)

he's right that mid range is being exterminated because almost all gaymes after 2000 "require high end systems" and will get 20 fps on a mid ranged system and spend half an hour loading for 2 hours of gameplay.

>>915150

i have no idea what you're implying

>>915194

No sensible person would think that "30fps" joke was serious.

>>910697 (OP)

Electric lawnmowers seem to be gone to shit. The old ones worked fine, but now there's new ones made of plastic shit that looks like JS in the form of power tools. These new ones make no sound and don't seem powerful at all. The old ones I have got through anything and are as loud as gas-powered. One has a dead motor the other just needs some to have the shitty plastic wheels replaced. I'm trying to look up whether these new ones are any good but you just get a bunch of clickbait pages full of Amazon referral links, and some guy who claims "electric lawnmowers make no noise" (http://www.thelawnmowersite.com/Articles/Type/Electric-Lawn-Mowers), yet I have two of them right here that are loud as fuck, just worked for years, and costed $0. All these new ones are 10-12 amps, and the one I tried in person was 15 amps (according to the dude selling it) but decided not to buy because it seems like a toy.

>>915199

i would because people have been unironically saying that for 20 years, and /tech/ is full of misinformed people in the first place

>>910730

>ywn cluster 100 files on top of each other again

>>910730

lol mac in the 90s looked like ass too. it's like microsoft had a patent on showing text inside plain rectangles so everyone had to make some crap that was different just for the sake of being different. windows 9x etc were the only good GUIs i've ever seen really

>>910872

what is soft water?

>>915305

In some localities, the water has a naturally high concentration of minerals (calcium and magnesium) so you use a device to filter them out. Basically it's a big mesh, which automatically cleans itself with a saltwater solution periodically.

>>915308

Perhaps I should say "resin" instead of mesh, or in other words, "ion exchange media".

>>915256

Hey kid, Win95 GUI was just a pale copy of NeXTSTEP. Except it crashed constantly and just plain sucked in countless ways. People used it anyway because it was the "standard".

>>915313

Oh good the geriatric hipsters have woken up from their afternoon nap.

>>910697 (OP)

Try finding a good hyperspectral police / evidence camera now. They were all over the place a decade ago or so, now it's extremely difficult to find one.

Shortwave radios are now utter shit compared to ones from 10, 20, even 30 years ago, unless you're willing to buy a multi-thousand dollar communications receiver.

TVs typically no longer have nice 3D comb filters to handle your analog composite inputs properly, which really hurts people who play older vidya.

HD digital broadcast television is a shit show, many channels cram 3-4 subchannels in there so you're looking at worse resolution and sound than old NTSC, and unlike NTSC the signal doesn't degrade gracefully, it just breaks up completely if there are signal issues.

Home appliances are built really shoddily, most blenders sold these days don't even have a metal chassis inside.

The best AM radios reception wise were built in the 1980s.

I could go on, shall I?

>>910715

If you buy a $1200 Bosch like I did you'd have a different opinion, but yeah most dishwashers suck.

>>911973

>man on the moon

that was a hoax to cover the vietnam war cost though

>>915352

lmao, you're mentally retarded

>>915313

Please go on and tell us about all the work you did on your proprietary workstation in the early 1990s. I'm sure everyone here will be thrilled to hear about your various exploits on the obviously superior GUI. Do go into detail describing every reason why it's so perfect and Win95 was shit.

>>915360

You wouldn't understand anyway.

>>915359

He's right though.

>>915451

PCs did have OS2 and Windows NT, as well as various Unix ports and early versions of Linux. There was also the Amiga and Atari ST, but they were mostly dead by that point.

>>910697 (OP)

>Was there any particular piece of technology that downgraded throughout the years and was at a higher level lets say in the 80s-90s?

The Human Mind and Critical Thinking

>>915482

Downgraded since the 80s and 90s, not continuously since the dawn of time.

>>913632

Yeah, but think of all the diverse cultures we get to experience now, think about all the food choices!

>>915492

GAS

>>915360

Carmack bought a NeXT to make Doom with. It was popular with engineers at the time, and other people who wanted to get work done without OS problems constantly.

Later on, Carmack moved to WinNT, because it worked good enough. Maybe he would have chosen OS/2 if that had survived. But either way Win95 would have been a really shitty choice. It was barely good enough for secretaries to run Word on.

>>915547

This. XP was really the master race of Microsoft Operating systems. Plagued by problems certainly, but it's been downhill since.

>>915654

>the master race of Microsoft Operating systems

in other words, the king of niggers

>>915360

what do you mean? win9x _was_ shit, it just had a decent GUI (visually)

Books if they're Print On Demand. It is getting better, but there's many shoddy POD printers out there who'll happily sell you a textbook that looks like it came out of a low end inkjet printer.

>>914906

>In general software and hardware, especially software, has gotten more and more antiuser and low quality. I type this from Windows Botnet in an inherited notebook and I keep noticing it's shit. From the touchpad, the keys, to the software. There's lots of little details that simply do not let the user parametrize it. For example, w10's implementation of redshift is shit, as you're unable to even change it to make it warmer or less so. The wifi seems to connect even when I told it not to connect automatically, and even when the GUI in the taskbar says it not to be connected DRM/steam doesn't go into offline mode, so I take it that it's still connecting, overall unresponsiveness, lack of configurability, etcetera. There are many details which are simply poor quality software. It's disgusting. In the same manner I notice things like this in common proprietary software like steam, etc.

microsoft here,please wait for your update that you didnt ask for but will take 2 hours to complete in the middle of important computer work that will prevent you from doing anything else

also ligthers also got much worse

>>915932

They probably use regular DSLRs and split the spectrum post process

>>916084

Is that Soylder?

>>915323

>I could go on, shall I?

yes

>>916093

you just created a new meme

congrats

New MP3 players suck. It took five days for mine to stop playing sound through one of the headphones (but it was internal, not the cable). Then in a month or so, the other gave out. Of course it also had less options than my 12 year old one that unfortunately died (for example, couldn't fast-forward as fast as that one).

>>916096

Laptop keyboards stink, the only new laptop with a good keyboard is the Thinkpad 25. Laptops themselves stink. CD players are shittier than they were in the 1980s. Every piece of home electronics is built to the lowest possible standard, even the expensive stuff. Electronics are submitted for inspection but RFI-suppressing parts are left off when they run the actual items for mass market.

>>915158

Different farmerfag here

You're ignoring a lot of things going on in that scenario. A small incandescent bulb doesn't need to heat an entire pump house, it needs to keep ambient air temps near the pipes up. pump houses are typically buried, so you already have a decent starting temperature when the sun goes down, and an okay amount of thermal load in the ground around the pump. The goal of the bulb is just to slow the temperature drop, till the sun comes back out and warms the ground again. All my neighbors use incandescent bulbs to heat their pump houses, and my well driller installed a plug in my house JUST for running one. North Montana. Just werks.

Most of the complaints I'm reading are coming from a generation who's buying second hand retro appliances and gear. Yea, shit was great back in the day, because comparatively, things like a toaster cost 300 bucks by modern standards. If you spent the extra money to buy a kitchenaid/sunbeam/cuisinart professional series (don't get the cheap shit just because it has their brand on it) mixers and blenders, you're gonna have a great machine that'll last you years. There's almost always a brand/series of machine that meets or beats older tech. The biggest downfall of the modern equipment tho, would hands down be serviceability. We've completely fucked ourselves as the consumer by being lazy idiots who can't be bothered to open something up, and to work on it should something go wrong. My 50s fridge is super simple to work on, my deep fat fryer from the 50s can be opened up and serviced in minutes should anything happen, and every one of my vehicles has a service manual, and a set of tools to get everything field stripped, should I need to. In our efforts to make things safer, more efficient, we've given up our ability to work on most systems. fridges are lock boxes, cars require proprietary scanners/tools/code clearing equipment. You can't even change your own oil in many of the newer vehicles, and almost all have a clause that you'll lose your warranty should you. Doesn't help that mechanical things have all fallen wayside to their digital counterparts. If I flip a switch to turn on my headlights, and the computer goes retarded and kills all my lights, that annoys me.

>>916288

>no nub

>shit battery life

>glowy crap all over the thing

And incels wonder why they aren't getting laid.

>>916270

>If you spent the extra money [...] you're gonna have a great machine that'll last you years.

No, that is no longer the case, and has not been for twenty years. Everybody is selling the same cheap chinkshit now. The only way to get quality products nowadays are craftsmen who still employ traditional methods and materials (i.e. paying $1500 for a pair of shoes) or buying antiques.

>>916310

I think this is basically a discussion of home grade equipment v contractor/professional/artisan/commecial grade equipment. You can buy pro level equipment from most box stores/any big internet site that are spec'd similarly/better than their old world counterparts. you can still get band saws/drills/skill saws/etc that are just as good a workhorse, albeit slightly easier to damage since no one liked carrying a 30lb skilsaw all day made of quality steel. You can still get a fantastic mixer/blender/oven/microwave/dishwasher that's built to outlast you, but expect it to be unserviceable. Honestly, I don't like arguing this point, because I feel that the american made brands have indeed gotten shittier/cheaper as a whole after outsourcing all their manufacturing, but the points are still true that the upper cusp of goods is still dependable and reliable and good. It's also comparatively cheaper than what those same goods were back in the day.

All that aside tho, I still scavenge anything good from second hand stores. Lots of great stuff goes for pennies because everyone assumes its wore out and dangerous.

>>916326

I'd also like to point out that was no such thing as home grade in the past. Everyone used the same tools, unless done on a larger scale (example: 5 quart mixer v 50 gallon mixer). There was a drop in quality to produce cheap goods for occasional use, since they didn't need to high grade for hobbyists/housewives.

>>916326

>slightly easier to damage

>unserviceable

Dude, you are trying to justify why you pay more for the same shit. Professional and enthusiast grade products no longer exist, just like consumer grade equipment did not exist in a lot of fields back then.

>>916270

>You can't even change your own oil in many of the newer vehicles, and almost all have a clause that you'll lose your warranty should you.

what the fuck

>>916101

my mp3 player is from ~2007 (Samsung P2) and has a shitty slow GUI but is a somewhat decent product. i can't even imagine how bad they must be these days. they're probably just an Electron app running on some massive proprietary OS stapled onto an SOC

>>916288

gamer laptops are nigger shit

>>910723

>>910781

My sound system is worth more than my car. At least some of us have our kevlar cone'd priorities straight.

>>910993

Probably a victim of (((economy))). 90% of personal aircraft I've encountered are like 80's Cessnas. Literally just leftovers from the Big Hair, Bright Lights & Every Cunt and his Dog has a Corvette era.

We're the 'gotta pick up the pieces of that shit' generation unfortunately.

>>916183

kek,funny my keyboard is already getting all fucked up(and built in mouse) on my laptop aldo this pc is like 2 years old,your right

>>916752

Ten to fifteen year old Thinkpads are going up in value for a reason. If you're not a gamer or video editor they're quite powerful enough for most uses, and they have nice keyboards and build quality.

>>916341

I'd appreciate it if you posted some examples so I could get a better idea of which area of craft you're applying this all to.

>>910757

>What HAS gone downhill is realtime PC sound spatialization, first with Creative's killing off superior competitors like Aureal's A3D, then with the entire PC industry collectively murder-suiciding Creative.

Yes this is huge. In the Pentium II era you had A3D and EAX which did good positional audio. A3D was superior because of the much more advanced positional/occlusion/reflection processing, EAX did good reverb and environments. All the AAA gaymes supported one or both technologies and it really added another lever of immersion not seen since. Some consoles are finally taking advantage 5.1 home theater setups but not very well, and usually just use the basic shitty dsp that comes with miles audio.

If any anons get the chance, build a Windows 98-capable system (440bx or i815 chipset, or the AMD K7 equivalent) and go full retro gaming with a Sound Blaster Live or Diamond MX300 (or any other Vortex 2-based card) and at least a 4.1 setup. Then load up Unreal Tournament or Half-Life (try to get the original release versions). The sound will blow you away.

>>915654

>XP was really the master race of Microsoft Operating systems.

Fuck off Millenial, XP was Windows 2000 with a layer of aids added in. Windows 2000 was the master race of Microsoft operating systems. But the true Patrician prefers Windows NT (WITHOUT IE6 kernel) specifically because it was even more purpose built and normalniggers had no idea how or why to use it and that's if they ever heard of it.

>>917118

Yep, a real binding which allows one to open a book up and lay it flat is very rare to find these days.

I try to buy leather bound books if at all possible, too. If you shop for gently used ones they're about the same price as a new hardback.

>>917118

even apples at every grocery store have glossy coatings now. fuck this gay earth

>>917340

Why are you shopping for apples at a lamestream grocery store?

Go to the farmers market or your local co-op. Better yet, u-pick a bushel and store them properly, they will last all winter in the proper conditions.

I agree though that modern long-haul produce procurement and delivery has drastically reduced the quality of one's produce. Meats also suffer but you can still find good stuff if you look. Try to buy air-chilled chicken, pork without added hormones, and grass fed beef raised without antibiotics.

>>917344

meat is botnet

Everything went down the drain. The best example is laptops, as some anons already said. But I'm prepare, I have an x201s, a x61s, a latitude e6430 and an e6440.

>>917354

cancer, the post

>>917354

Go back to /leftpol/, meat is the healthiest food.

Soyboy.

>>917369

better just eat nothing but meat then

>>917357

What steps have you taken to make use of the x201 bearable?

>>917455

Why would it be unbearable?

>>917461

- Management Engine / AMT

- early Core i (Arrandale) CPU getting hot

- stock wireless card (Intel 6200 in most models I think) getting hot and possibly extra botnet (driver doesn't allow you to change the MAC address and you have to use external methods, go figure)

- later BIOS versions have some AMT-related changes which possibly extend botnet

- possibly more

>>917442

No problem. Did it for three months.

>>910968

Fighter jets too. The F22 was far superior to the F35. All the problems are what they get for switching from Ada to C++.

>>910715

Nearly every household appliance my parents received as a wedding gift in 1978, including the toaster, was working into the 2000s. Now I consider myself lucky if my toaster or electric tea kettle lasts over a year.

>>916734

>My sound system is worth more than my car.

What do you play on it? The mastering of modern music destroys its range and vinyl was never good.

>>917468

>- Management Engine / AMT

Not like there's real choice. I guess you could coreboot it if you have the stuff needed.

>- early Core i (Arrandale) CPU getting hot

I was wrong, it's a x200s with a SLxxxx CPU not a x201s. Pretty okay if you changed the thermal paste.

>- stock wireless card (Intel 6200 in most models I think) getting hot and possibly extra botnet (driver doesn't allow you to change the MAC address and you have to use external methods, go figure)

Flashed a patched BIOS to use an atheros card.

>- later BIOS versions have some AMT-related changes which possibly extend botnet

Didn't know.

Still prefer my latitudes.

>>917563

I taught myself Ada at the beginning of the year. While it is a very well designed language, it's far too nuanced for pajeets, so unless they go back to hiring white programmers for complex tasks, that situation sadly won't change. Funny enough, C++ isn't exactly simpler than Ada, in fact C++ it is arguably more complex, and with a disjointed feature set, probably more difficult to master. The reason Pajeet can do C++, is that it's quite easy to work with a very limited subset of C++, but with Ada you have to deal with more complexity upfront. The end result is a language with less safety, in the hands of a programmer who barely understands 10% of his language of choice. If the performance were there, I bet they'd switch to Java ASAP.

>>917479

We just need to revert back to the old ways of communicating, and carve out our own normie free networks. Until the ISP limits you to which servers you can communicate with, there is no reason not to do this.

>>917844

no. ada is better in every way, and is simpler. literally anything is better than C++. inability to copy and paste some retarded shit to get your instance of NignogManager to give you access to the clipboard is not the definition of a complex language

>>917847

>Until the ISP limits you to which servers you can communicate with

that's not a thing. look at tor, it can't be blocked because people use bridges to bypass blocks. bridges are just an implementation of steno

>>917857

All I said, is that Ada presents much more upfront complexity to the programmer than using a simple subset of C++. The Ada complexity is a barrier to getting a Pajeet coding quickly, which is why they do not like it (typically they fear typing systems). Of course I much prefer Ada, and use it often.

>>917859

>Until X occurs

>That's not a thing

No kidding. It isn't a thing yet, but of course it could be, and in the future I'm almost certain it will be. The average user of a facebook station has very limited sites that they need to access, and the ISP would only route to those predefined servers.

>>917069

like seriously i bought this pc 2 years ago and it already has 2 loose keys,keyboard is all tangled(fucked up) and i dont even use the pc for gaming tbh

>>917563

>Nearly every household appliance my parents received as a wedding gift in 1978, including the toaster, was working into the 2000s. Now I consider myself lucky if my toaster or electric tea kettle lasts over a year.

thisx10

>>917956

no what, i'm saying they can't block servers since you can get around any form of blocking that exists. and yes, sites already are blocked and have been since the beginning of the internet and people have always bypassed them

>>917999 (checked, but not deserved)

Of course an ISP could block you from arbitrary servers, what makes you think they couldn't? Think about how IP actually works.

>>918067

what are we even talking about anymore? blocks are trivial to get around. more advanced techniques can be worked around as well.

>>918140

> blocks are trivial to get around

Here's a simple and contrived example. If your ISP only routed packets to Google, Facebook and Twitter, tell me how you'd access 8chan. Don't think about DNS, think at the IP level.

>>917999

>people have always bypassed them

>people

>not just a small pack of massive autists

the eternal normalfag will comply, as always

This trend is more recent than the 90s, but I imagine that camera manufacturers are seeing a massive downturn in sales due to smartphone cameras being just good enough for a normie's photos, and convenient enough to carry around. Perhaps some camerafags will argue that the digital SLR is inferior to the classic, but I cannot comment on that. Olympus E-m5 master race

>>918165

To be fair you got a trade off with smartphone cameras instead of a straight downgrade. They are literally more convenient than standalone cameras will ever be.

>>918154

encode over facebook messages/gmail emails you stupid nigger

>>918157

even normalfags are using VPNs to get around blocks today. but this discussion wasn't really about normalfags anyway

>>917272

but just plain NT doesn't have the compatibility to play muh win98 games

>>917479

what if we ported a search engine that would automatically exclude any non-comfy sites from its results?

>>919456

>Was there any particular piece of technology that downgraded throughout the years and was at a higher level lets say in the 80s-90s

>80s-90s

anon do you know how to fucking count?

Fucking everything made in China. Holy shit. Things like a KitchenAid mixer used to last so long they would get handed down, they move production to China, and they start falling apart instantly. A lot of those companies had to move part of production back to the US of components like motors and then leave assembly to China because otherwise the product is dogshit. Anything with a motor was particularly affected by China's incompetence - blenders, vacuums, etc.. Mice are trash because of China and trying to get a good WMO from before China is difficult because China counterfeits old WMO mice.

>>910697 (OP)

No. It's all nostalgia hipster bullshit.

>>919456

I can emulate that shit and use better controller on machine simultaneously streaming Xi Jinping's latest address to party in fullhd and wholesome hentai on third screen.

>>921269

based.

>>921343

Indeed. And PCSX2 can improve quality, has way lower loading speeds, unlimited save slots and can output via HDMI or DP. PS2 is clearly inferior to it. Same applies to other old consoles. It's all nostalgia.

>>919456

Those things were hot garbage when they came out.Their biggest selling point was it was (at the time) the cheapest DVD player then available.

Everyone rags on the Xbox Three Niggy for having an abysmal failure rate, but the first model PS2 was as bad if not worse.I was working in a game store when they hit the market, and they cost $500 plus tax brand new, but at least 3/4ths of the ones we sold in the first year were either returned or traded in because the laser quit reading the game discs.

>>910723

My dad had that exact same stereo.

I wish I had taken it when he asked if I wanted it before he threw it out.

The main thing I remember about it was how it felt to use.

The nobs rolled so smoothly and the buttons had this nice satisfying click when pressed.

I really miss that kind of build quality.

>>921541

this same,i regret having got rid of stereos before

>>921269

>No. It's all nostalgia hipster bullshit.

t. millenial

>>919195

that was http://wibr.me (can't remember the new domain name) until it got died

>>921239

There is no problem with that statement, what are you on about?

Handheld cassettes

>>910757

What if I told that your car is not controlled by you, but a laggy computer, and this computer doesn't even have to do something if it doesn't want to?

>>910757

Yes, the latency of today is egregious. What made LAN parties so great was playing with a 1ms ping on a CRT using ps/2 keyboards and mice. The gaymers of today are used to 100ms+ of latency.

>>910757

>computers are faster

on a software level no. but like you say maybe the main problem is just latency instead of throughput, but then again throughput is affected by latency in relevant cases, for example most file browsers will take 5-20 seconds to load up a folder with merely 4000 files, often because of all the latency added up for making a bunch of shell calls to `file` to get the filetype, some program to get thumbnails, and other nonsense

>computers are easier to use

on a software level, no, but marketers want you to believe this so you can get their latest Windows release and updates for Firefox and Chrome

>computers are more elegantly designed

on a software level, no

CPUs? no

LCDs? no, they now take 10 seconds to switch modes (refresh/resolution) and start up and have terrible web scale menus

>>930917

i would believe you

>>910730

>guess we're all partial to the 'industrial' design they used to have

They didn't attract attention like a statue of Stalin coming to life to crush capitalist piggus making a trade in a public park in Russia.

What's there not to love?

>>910748

>It was basically a keycap on top of a spring that was designed to "buckle" under force and press against a membrane

Literally a fully mechanical keyboard with a protective cover.

When a membrane keyboard fails you just get a permanently lowered key. When the membrane of the buckling spring fails you still have a buclking spring and a key that stands up.

There's not a single thing that's not mechanic about buckling springs.

Modern computers are Goldberg machines in every aspect, except for the part that Goldberg machines work.

>>931727

Get a job, computers!

>>921254

>China counterfeits old WMO mice

So that's why the USB connector on my thirty dollaroo WMO arrived with rust spots and looked used. At least it has worked since I bought mine a few years back, but I guess I knew something was off. I actually had to reseat the USB cable recently.

>>931131

<computers are faster

>on a software level no.

Depends on the software, the software most people used (i.e.: Win 3.x, *N*X X server running on a 1MB M68k, etc.) was molasses-slow garbage. Good software (Mac, Amiga, Atari, Psion, Grid, Be, etc.) has almost invariably been niche, and picking good software on a modern computer is a zillion times faster.

>most file browsers will take 5-20 seconds to load up a folder with merely 4000 files

>thumbnails

That is almost invariably the entire problem

<computers are easier to use

>on a software level, no

Do you remember using old normalfag computers? Do you remember ISA/IDE/serial/parallel/network devices that required extensive constant manual reconfiguration at the BIOS, driver, and program level? There were intelligent features on saner platforms that went extinct, like AppleTalk, but those were the exception.

>CPUs? no

How can a CPU be inelegant? I guess the need for thermal paste is annoying, no upgradable cache is stifling, and the constant socket changes are a ripoff, but that's about it. If you're referring to ISA, that meant x86 same as now, except the CISC trash took up the entire core instead of being restricted to a CRISC decoder.

>LCDs?

Tru dat, LCDs are garbage, but OLED surpassed CRT in pixel lifespan just this year, now we just have to wait for gaymur dynamic-sync DisplayPort desktop monitors, and for panel prices to fall.

>menus

Most CRTs didn't have menus at all until the late 90s, and were almost all fixed-sync until the mid-90s. Also, anything nice (aperture grille, >1megapixel, >19") was thousands of dollars.

>>931844

It was better when you had to manually configure jumpers on cards and disks tbh. Stuff like that is what kept the software leaner and simpler. When they started doing "smart" stuff, the problems immediately happened. I remember sitting for hours at a friend's relatives house while they fucked around with his new Win95 PC that had PCI cards. They ended up in an endless loop while trying to install some driver.

Meanwhile on my ISA bus 486 that had DOS and Linux, I never had any problems like that. You put the card on whatever free IRQ you want, and then it works.

>>932053

ISA Plug-and-Play was the beginning of the end of reasonable PC hardware. USB delivered the final blow.

Washing machines.

https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/are-new-washing-machines-made-as-well-as-they-used-to-be/

>>931982

Your post is full of shit.

>"Direct" fuel injection

Real GDI is a thing now for 20 years in cars.

>"direct" fuel injection is basically an overly complex carburetor anyway.

I think you are referring to injection before each intake valve. That still has benefits over carburettors with regards to control over the mixture.

>Diesel style direct injection which would be purely mechanical.

I suspect you don't mean modern common rail diesels, which account for probably every diesel you can buy, and use electronic pumps and injectors.

The better control electronic systems give over mechanical ones is also the reason research into camless engines is a thing.

>>930948

There is nothing wrong with a well designed electronic system, as long as the software isn't shit (toyota unintended acceleration) and connected to your 4G in car entertainment, so that anyone can change your engine tunings.

Just air gap that please.

And lag for such a system should never be an issue.

>>932087

Top loading machines with a horizontal rotating drum are the only sane option.

They combine the better washing performance of front loaders without their major design weakness of having to support a drum from only the rear.

And you have gravity helping you to keep the water in, so no more dirty rubber door seal.

>>932101

Yes, and on top of that, the load stays balanced for the spin cycle which means that your machine doesn't start shaking. But I live in a concrete bugbox so I'm stuck with a side loader :(

>>910723

It's weird, too, because the audio market got killed by "audiophiles".

>>910723

There's no way you could sell that to the average consumer today. The average soy boy would shrivel up if he saw the amount of options a basic equalizer presented him. They would demand a zero config "SMART" device, which connected to an internet service to download the "perfect" equalizer settings for each song.

>>932053

That's because PCI (like everything from Intel) and Win95 (like everything from M$) was hot garbage, so it took years before it became even semi-functional. The idea that user-hostile design by lazy devs is the path to some sort of laudable minimalism is braindamage from the masochistic *N*X/DOS dumpsterfire that eventually engulfed all PCs.

There were other busses, like the Mac's NuBus and Amiga's Zorro, that did autoconfig right from day 1 on far humbler hardware, with far better written software.

>>917844

>>917563

>>917857

>>917954

Ada is too slow. The F-35 required a fast language with zero cost abstractions, so they chose C++.

>>932408

You're talking out of your ass, that had absolutely nothing to do with the decision. You are a stupid person, so I won't even waste my time proving you incorrect.

>>932425

Nice retort. Full of ad hominems and entirely lacking in facts.

>>910751

No they're not all AM. I have a Zenith from the 50's that has FM, and a GE from the early 60's that has FM. Commercial FM broadcasting began in the late 30's, so they had to make radios that would receive it.

>>910781

>easier and cheaper

That is true, but that is largely due to cutting corners in the design and build quality. Today's "kick ass" audio system will be in the dumpster a few years from now.

>>910931

>except maybe the fridge and freezer.

Wrong. Current fridge and freezers are absolute trash. They have a life expectancy of about 5 years.

>>932464

No, it's better and cheaper than ever. In particular, high-end headphone gear is massively advanced over anything that existed in the past, and discrete surround encoding is much nicer than the matrix encodings needed in the past.

There's a lot more faggy coaxial bookcase speakers and integrated-synth/amp "digital" speakers stinking up normalfag audio now, but that hasn't made a dent among audiophiles.