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

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Lovely Kin said:
I miss the physical buttons, everything is a touchpad now :(
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It's one of the few reasons why I own a Kia E-Soul, mainly due to its quirky exterior design but very regular, highly intuitive buttons to control all aspects of the car. I mean, look at it, no need to look at a bloody touch screen, navigate to climate and then turn the AC on. Fuck you Kia for discontinuing my hamster mobile, feels bad man.

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Here's a rant where I yearn for "obsolete" technology. I wholeheartedly believe that the "removal" of third-party browser plugins, especially at the API level with NPAPI and PPAPI, was a mistake for the worse. Not just on a "oh no, we don't have Adobe Flash and Java to play old web games that may or may not be malware or porn" or "we have no reason to write ActionScript 2/3 anymore, so what's the point?" level. It's also on a "useful functionality replaced with subpar functionality" level where this removal burns my ass.

Call me an English bumpkin from a farm out in Lancaster with Amish for neighbours, but if my Firefox's extensions, themes, and *plugins* tab isn't lying to me, we technically never got rid of plugins in their entirety! We still have exceptions for OpenH.264 and Widevine. All well and good, but here's where it burns my ass:

OpenH.264 is great, no more flash plugin needed for most web video, but y'know what I had before NPAPI got sunsetted? Sometimes the VLC browser plugin, other times the MPlayer browser plugin, depending on where I was with my distro hopping, but either way: VLC and MPlayer's own browser plugins that slotted in nicely in Firefox, even Chrome before they went all-in on PPAPI, allowed me to play all those JWPlayer and Putlocker streams without much issue. Firefox/Chrome didn't eat up anywhere near as much memory, video playback was technically handled by VLC or MPlayer running in the background on my PC. In terms of processes, it was a noisy, busy mess but it worked well!

Without the VLC or MPlayer browser plugins, I need to rely on *Firefox* to play the damn video itself by invoking the OpenH264 or Widevine plugins (I dunno if that's how it really works under the hood; that's where my head's leaning, could be wrong). Excuse me for a moment here: what the hell makes Widevine more acceptable than friggin Silverlight, which Netflix and Hulu both explicitly used at one point or another?

The worst part is that MPV came onto the scene toward the end of NPAPI's lifespan as a browser API. MPV in conjunction with YT-DLP means that I can outsource video playback, even YouTube video playback (or any other site that YT-DLP supports), to a much better third party player. Unfortunately, there's no clean and easy way of integrating my local MPV installation *into* my damn web browser. Rewind 5 years ago, it would've been possible!

What made sunsetting NPAPI but making the exception for OpenH264 and Widevine acceptable? What makes the latter two plugins more secure than past plugins? Why couldn't we have spent time working on a secured browser plugin API? Chrome had the right idea with PPAPi, it was Chrome exclusive, but ironically we have Google-developed Widevine on every damn web browser on the planet. I get that Widevine and OpenH264 are sandboxed and not technically "plugins" but rather "content decryption modules" or whatever the fucking nomenclature is. To that end... why the hell isn't there a sandboxed browser plugin API? I can't help but feel like we let privacy, security, sandboxing, and all this other crap allow us to throw the goddamn baby out with the fucking bathwater.
 
"buy once own forever" software going subscription based/freemium.

Hello Affinity users hope you like Ai feature and nor owning your stuff and being happy.

Oh owning/downloading older versions is ilegal now because why wouldn't it be? They're also full of DRM.

What will happen when Affinity corp goes bankrupt? Guess you can't use the product you paid for anymore...
 
I don't even know where to post this but I miss when reviews felt at all trustworthy. I have no idea how to find anything of value. if I want to buy a water purifier where do I look? do I just go to amazon and sort by rating for water purifier? it's either that or googling "water purifier best reddit" and reading random replies but I swear to fucking god the quality of Google is so fucking bad now that it's legitimately better to just go to gemini and type "give me a comparison of water purifiers" but then I'm talking to a fucking computer with ZERO anecdotal experience. What I want to see is a review from a guy who is fucking obsessed about water quality and belongs to some religious cult about water with a degree in microbiology minored in hydrowhateverthefuck at Georgia Tech who is named Moses and also enjoys water painting rivers and oceans in his spare time. But where would he post? Probably as u/Stinky_Bracelet2910 on reddit.

it's not just a low trust society it is a zero trust society. I have no faith in anything. I know everything I buy is Chinese shit. Every brand name I recognize is probably a victim of corporate identity theft with an Indian CEO who has already hollowed it from the inside out.

edit: btw I am vaguely aware most reviews are on TikTok now and that's where people go t find water filters. mom searches "water filter" on TikTok and sees @sallymae2910's sponsored review and that's what sell sthe unit.
 
Null said:
Every brand name I recognize is probably a victim of corporate identity theft and has a CEO that hollowed it from the inside out.
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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. Fucking sucks just genuinely not being able to buy a good quality product nowadays, unless it is made by some autist in the swiss alps who makes 5 every year, only takes orders through carrier pigeons, has a 5 year long waiting list and one costs 10k.
 
I miss when tools and devices were just one thing that works the way it should, as in no feature creep.
I don't want to use a phone, wifi, bluetooth etc. for everything.
I don't care about social media integration.
I don't need AI integration.
I miss when technology was built to be used as long as possibl
AND I DON'T WANT TO LOGIN, CHECK MY EMAIL, REGISTER, ETC.
 
Null said:
it's not just a low trust society it is a zero trust society. I have no faith in anything. I know everything I buy is Chinese shit. Every brand name I recognize is probably a victim of corporate identity theft with an Indian CEO who has already hollowed it from the inside out.

edit: btw I am vaguely aware most reviews are on TikTok now and that's where people go t find water filters. mom searches "water filter" on TikTok and sees @sallymae2910's sponsored review and that's what sell sthe unit.
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Yes, it's a world of shit trying to find anything these days. Amazon reviews can be useful if you read them and ignore all the "0 stars, didn't arrive" "5 stars, it has a pretty box"

It can also help being more specific, do you want a reverse osmosis unit, just a particulate filter, water softener? Countertop reverse osmosis, under counter, whole house, pitcher, etc? (I'm happy with my APEC under counter RO unit). You can then take the brand names and shove them into a search engine and see if they're a real company or a chinese rebrand of a rebrand of a rebrand of a design they stole. Of course, like the unit I have, the first link is just an Amazon affiliate scam page. The second link is the actual company who does apparently exist in California.
 
Historical Strelkov said:
I miss when technology was built to be used as long as possibl
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But-but-but how else are the boomer stock portfolios supposed to grow!!!!??? It's all about driving up portfolios.

Null said:
mom searches "water filter" on TikTok and sees @sallymae2910's sponsored review and that's what sell sthe unit.
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The worst ones of this are when they do the whole "Come with me to [insert whatever bullshit they're doing here]" and then tell us a whole fucking story that literally no one cares about. Comments are filled with bot spam or just retarded emoji replies.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
Seems selling electronics stuff -- or at least the newer craptastic stuff -- is almost a scam because such may not work for that long.
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I was looking for new shoes and realized we're so past the point of almost all new products being maintainable I might as well capitulate and settle for something that I think looks cool knowing I'll repeat the whole cycle next year, every year, forever. It sucks.
 
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Remember a time when Nintendo stuff was known to last? Like a Game Boy which still worked after being in a bomb blast in the Gulf War?

Kiwi Farms remembers.

Now a number 3DS vidya are failing because of crappish soldering, and/or other issues, for example. Older Nintendo hardware was made in Japan, but sometime by the '00s, they started "outsourcing" the manufacturing to China, because of course they did. And newer consoles use lithium-ion batteries and literally cannot run without them. Lithium ion batteries can swell can become "spicy pillows" after awhile. And on the Switch (dunno about the Switch 2), there are 3 of the things, and the main battery can not be removed without a specialized screwdriver. And then there's "controller drift" BS: after a few years of use, a controller can "think" you're moving it when it's not, and it worsens.

BTW, to avoid getting a "spicy pillow" battery, I think it's best to turn the system off and not leave it plugged in when not in use. Dealing with the things is a real pain.
 
Null said:
I don't even know where to post this but I miss when reviews felt at all trustworthy. I have no idea how to find anything of value. if I want to buy a water purifier where do I look? do I just go to amazon and sort by rating for water purifier? it's either that or googling "water purifier best reddit" and reading random replies but I swear to fucking god the quality of Google is so fucking bad now that it's legitimately better to just go to gemini and type "give me a comparison of water purifiers" but then I'm talking to a fucking computer with ZERO anecdotal experience. What I want to see is a review from a guy who is fucking obsessed about water quality and belongs to some religious cult about water with a degree in microbiology minored in hydrowhateverthefuck at Georgia Tech who is named Moses and also enjoys water painting rivers and oceans in his spare time. But where would he post? Probably as u/Stinky_Bracelet2910 on reddit.

it's not just a low trust society it is a zero trust society. I have no faith in anything. I know everything I buy is Chinese shit. Every brand name I recognize is probably a victim of corporate identity theft with an Indian CEO who has already hollowed it from the inside out.

edit: btw I am vaguely aware most reviews are on TikTok now and that's where people go t find water filters. mom searches "water filter" on TikTok and sees @sallymae2910's sponsored review and that's what sell sthe unit.
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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.
 
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.
 
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