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

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I hate when vintage technology gets a resurgence in popularity, and thus prices for used tech gets gouged and sours to absurd prices by sellers looking to cash in on the wave.

Biggest example by far is CRT televisions. Before the demand for CRT TVs, the prices were cheap as hell. Sometimes you might get a CRT for free on classified places like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

But then the retro gaming and VHS communities, along others started popularizing CRT due to it making vintage media look much better and with better clarity then modern televisions/monitors. This of course caused demand to skyrocket, and sellers took notice.

I can't find a CRT television that as cheap as they were before, and sellers are now adding tags like "retro gaming" and "RARE". I understand that CRTs are not produced anymore and there is only so many of them on this planet, but damn.

Thankfully, demand and hype has lowered (though I'm not quite sure), and prices have since lowered by then with the average prices for most average CRT TVs being around 100-150 bucks, which is not the worst pricing ever. But CRT TVs not being seen as throwaways anymore, means they are not as dirt cheap as they used to be.
Unfortunately, this was predictable. 2010s was the transition from semi-digital/semi-analog to digital in full force. 2000s was a good mix between both of them still, and then eventually it was full digital and modern equipment. I knew a few people who started collecting from the people dumping their old equipment so they could eventually cash in on this (or just keep it for themselves). I couldn't because I had no physical room for any of it and now in the same boat as you trying to find a good deal for the stuff I used to own that was foolishly discarded because my parents wanted to declutter. I remember even in 2016-2017 visiting retro shops for games, you could still find that good deal, but the prices eventually got to the point where they were the same as the original price. Pokemon Black/White copies were going for sometimes more than the original price. Refurb consoles were almost original price. Years prior, they were practically giving them away. I remember as a kid in 2008-2009 taking allowance money to the local card/game store and would be able to buy 3-4 bargain bin deals for games released like 2 years before.

and the main battery can not be removed without a specialized screwdriver.
I miss the days of removable power sources from devices. My old HP laptop has a quick change battery where you just unlock a slide latch on the bottom of it.
 
I hate when vintage technology gets a resurgence in popularity, and thus prices for used tech gets gouged and sours to absurd prices by sellers looking to cash in on the wave.
Reminds me of how GameCube vidyas can be absurdly overpriced now, because "Zoomers" -- and the later "Millennials" -- had really late childhoods in the '00s, and like to get GCN vidya. And of course it being Current Year, people with a scalper mentality like to cash in on that fad, possibly selling GCN vidya as "retro" or "vintage" and "rare" or the like. Back in the '00s and maybe early '10s, one could get GCN vidya for cheap because it was "freshly outdated" by that new Wii and Wii U. But by 2020 or so? Good luck.

Before the demand for CRT TVs, the prices were cheap as hell.
I recall a brief time where you'd see a whole area of CRTs at thrift stores.

I miss the days of removable power sources from devices.
It should be illegal for companies to make electronics with non-removable batteries.

Being unable to remove a rechargeable battery can be a fire hazard.
 
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Noticed this when looking for a vacuum around half a year ago. All of the trustworthy brands have been bought out and quality run into the ground.
I've gotten burned on this more than once to the point I automatically check whether a brand I previously trusted has been bought out by subhuman chinks and turned into complete garbage.
 
I'm so happy I collected all my electronics junk when nobody ever heard of "retro-anything" and it was just what it really is, old junk. I guess I'd just skip owning old computers then, but they are fun.

The cycle people observe comes with any company and didn't only happen to the classics. A new company is born. Company makes a decent product. Product gains popularity. New people come on board, hire beancounters. Beancounters figure out how to slice off costs, the quality of the product goes into the toilet as a result. Company rides the wave of inertia and some people cash out for a while until people figure it out. Many such cases.
 
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>Auditing C to find out why it doesn't have any space on it THIS TIME
>Fucking Adobe doesn't clean up its own update files
68 files totalling 32 GB of useless fucking data. You'd think people would care enough to respect the end users storage and not fill it full of garbage.
 
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In Australia there’s a consumer choice website that’s called choice.com.au

Their reviews of products are very trustworthy and because of everything being internationally homogenised, you could probably get reviews of products there that are applicable to America.
Consumer Reports in the US is a similar subscription.
Paper monthly magazine - but a searchable website. Run by quality engineers and knowledgeable editors.
 
Apparentally Macbooks don't have normal USB ports now. The fuck? No, I'm not using anything Apple, just had to deal with a technical issue of someone else's that's now been made worse by Apple's "courage". How about I couragously shove gallium thermal paste your ass, Tim Cook? I wish Microsoft had allowed Apple to die in the 90's.
 
Search engines are useless now. Sadly, I've resorted to asking grok to search the web for me. Which is nice that I can ask for "LCD Display less than 42mm in height and compatible with raspberry pi" and get something somewhat useful. Still hallucinates products quite often but more useful than any normal search engine at least.

Yes grok, I would like that small HDMI LCD bar display you imagined.
 
"To skip the ad and activate the brakes stand up from the driver's seat and shout 'McDonalds'"
Stellantis™ Dew™ It Right

Tax: I hate how every website now needs to look like a mobile app where everything is dynamically loaded. That's bad enough already, but it also needs to have a billion animations as well. No, I don't care that you just found out what a CSS transition is, stop making my browser chug like hell. Even old websites eventually get enshittified like this.
 
I hate the aggressive RCS rollout.

The rollout of RCS messaging is more or less the death of custom roms on Android phones. Since the security checks for RCS do not pass on custom roms without hacks in some cases, you either have to be okay with only partaking in SMS conversations with individual people with no group MMS threads, or convince everyone else in your life to allow SMS chats on their phones via the message settings menu. My family is all on iPhones, so of course when they got opted in RCS, my group MMS conversations with them just broke, and it took a couple days for me to figure out why because I'm a massive retard I guess.

When it comes to LineageOS and other custom roms, the proposed solution to the RCS rollout is to use modules in root, which I do not believe is a real solution since there is no way that's permanent, and all it takes is a single update to break compatibility, and you may not even be aware that happens. As for GrapheneOS, all we got is a forum thread that is multiple years old with no actual update to make it work reliably, and temporary fixes that only get it working until an update comes out.

As for the solution being "just use Signal", okay, good luck getting your normie friends and family members to sign up for Signal and use that for texting just for your benefit.

I understand that RCS is inherently more secure than SMS, but I don't think the ability to make texting act more like iMessage is worth having such restrictions on your device.
 
I hate the aggressive RCS rollout.

The rollout of RCS messaging is more or less the death of custom roms on Android phones. Since the security checks for RCS do not pass on custom roms without hacks in some cases, you either have to be okay with only partaking in SMS conversations with individual people with no group MMS threads, or convince everyone else in your life to allow SMS chats on their phones via the message settings menu. My family is all on iPhones, so of course when they got opted in RCS, my group MMS conversations with them just broke, and it took a couple days for me to figure out why because I'm a massive retard I guess.

When it comes to LineageOS and other custom roms, the proposed solution to the RCS rollout is to use modules in root, which I do not believe is a real solution since there is no way that's permanent, and all it takes is a single update to break compatibility, and you may not even be aware that happens. As for GrapheneOS, all we got is a forum thread that is multiple years old with no actual update to make it work reliably, and temporary fixes that only get it working until an update comes out.

As for the solution being "just use Signal", okay, good luck getting your normie friends and family members to sign up for Signal and use that for texting just for your benefit.

I understand that RCS is inherently more secure than SMS, but I don't think the ability to make texting act more like iMessage is worth having such restrictions on your device.
Most Android devices these days are so locked down that you're not getting a custom ROM on there. Your choices are use a custom ROM and deal with the hoops or just use OEM Android and have it work. There are ways to remove system apps through ADB with no root required, and you can do this without a separate device.

 
Most Android devices these days are so locked down that you're not getting a custom ROM on there. Your choices are use a custom ROM and deal with the hoops or just use OEM Android and have it work. There are ways to remove system apps through ADB with no root required, and you can do this without a separate device.

That's why generally speaking once they became so locked down that in America, your only reasonable choice for custom roms was the Google Pixel lineup, I just bought those - but even then you had to make sure you bought the correct version, and made sure the seller had the ones with no carrier imposed OEM unlock restrictions since most people had no idea of the differences. But now even that's not a good option anymore. Plus I believe it's only a matter of time until Google does away with side loading, and once that happens, there's really no point in staying with Android unless you just hate Apple more for whatever reason.

That's really the only saving grace for me at least, that if nothing else, if my phone is stuck on the crappy OEM rom just so my family text threads will work, I can at least side load BraveNewPipe, and all the open source apps I like.

The Pixel 7 Pro I've been using is the last one I will have bought. If/when it eventually goes, we'll see.
 
I believe T-Mobile is the friendliest carrier for unlocking, then AT&T. The only requirement is that you fully own the phone. They have sites and shit that will do all that, you just input the IMEI.


I'm not talking about SIM/network unlocking, I'm talking about the OEM unlock, which is what allows unlocking the bootloader - this is what allows root, custom roms, etc.

The carrier versions of Google's Pixel phones (or really any of the phones they sell at their stores) have this option restricted on the Android phones they sell. I've heard stories of people online claiming they got the carrier to remove the restriction, but I've never seen any actual proof of this. Also the carrier has no incentive to do this for the customer, since they probably view it as a potential security risk, or something like that.

But the point is, even that doesn't really matter anymore if you want a texting experience that just works now. So yeah, the RCS rollout, it's bullshit and I hate it.
 
I'm not talking about SIM/network unlocking, I'm talking about the OEM unlock, which is what allows unlocking the bootloader - this is what allows root, custom roms, etc.

The carrier versions of Google's Pixel phones (or really any of the phones they sell at their stores) have this option restricted on the Android phones they sell. I've heard stories of people online claiming they got the carrier to remove the restriction, but I've never seen any actual proof of this. Also the carrier has no incentive to do this for the customer, since they probably view it as a potential security risk, or something like that.

But the point is, even that doesn't really matter anymore if you want a texting experience that just works now. So yeah, the RCS rollout, it's bullshit and I hate it.
I heard that it's not even the carriers it's just how the hardware and how the OS is loaded. Some bootloaders you can unlock but you weren't able to relock it. I think most modern phones just brick when you attempt to root them now.
 
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