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

[Zeftax]

people who literally just buy books as decoration

This just seems like pure retardation, I don't think I'll ever understand it. Some people tried to explain it to me as "they wanna look smart", but does anyone just go to someones house and judge their intelligence based on the amount of books they have? I'd assume you have to know someone pretty well to get invited to their house, and before that you'd already make your opinion of their intelligence, no? To me it seems more like funko pop collectors, I have to admit I like the look of a full bookshelf. But if I'm buying a bunch of books they may as well be something I actually want to read (or if I don't like reading, just buy a painting instead, cheaper and wastes less time with the same decorative function).

there's nothing more satisfying than cracking the spine on a new paperback

To me it's mildly annoying because I'm trying to damage it as little as possible lol, but I guess it is just a matter of taste.

I miss the feel of texting with buttons on a phone.

A few of my friends have went back to normal cell phones in the last year or so. I still use my smart phone although I have experimented with not taking it with me outside and had no issues. I carry a paper day planner with me anyways because I find it more convenient than a calendar app, I do have a watch but don't carry it when I have the phone with me. I do have a (VOIP) landline that I plan to switch to full time in the future (I don't believe just getting rid of google is good enough, phone companies constantly triangulating my position is still bad, not to mention who knows if the phone isn't recording 24/7 anyways...), but for the time being I still use the smart phone because I do not have a good camera, and I like to take pictures of funny/weird shit I see - have this candy I found last week.

 

[Neodanthril]

It's even more nuts how incredible Windows 7 was:

View attachment 7988925

The only reason I'm not running Windows 7 on my gamer PC is because Windows forced motherboard manufacturers to stop putting mouse drivers on the things, which you need to install Windows 7. There are workarounds but I'm too lazy to do them.

 

[Thiletonomics]

I don't understand how power banks became popular in recent times. Are people that desperate to keep their phones charged that they carry them around? Chinese-made ones in particular are very prone to overheating and catching fire:

Chinese brand Anker also had numerous recalls for their power banks in the US:

 

[Troonski]

god i love the windows phone I miss it unironically, chuds.

 

[Troonski]

I don't understand how power banks became popular in recent times. Are people that desperate to keep their phones charged that they carry them around? Chinese-made ones in particular are very prone to overheating and catching fire:

I live somewhere where there's a lot of hurricanes so they're useful if the power goes out. Also if I forget to charge my phone during the night. I gotta have my phone when I'm out and about.

 

[The ATF Disliked That]

I don't understand how power banks became popular in recent times. Are people that desperate to keep their phones charged that they carry them around? Chinese-made ones in particular are very prone to overheating and catching fire:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9OEOs9ZDZmw
Chinese brand Anker also had numerous recalls for their power banks in the US:

View attachment 8026785 View attachment 8026786

View attachment 8026787 View attachment 8026790

Too much reliance on their phones. Ever since not needing to use my phone constantly, I've never dropped below 50%. Once I pay this phone off, I'm getting a cheaper one that just does the essentials and keeping the old one as a camera, which was initially a primary reason I bought it for.

 

[agent_donkey]

I'd assume you have to know someone pretty well to get invited to their house

Consider hookup culture. But also, they feel smarter when strolling by their bookshelves.
That's what I would suppose anyways, I never met someone so retarded.

I don't understand how power banks became popular in recent times. Are people that desperate to keep their phones charged that they carry them around?

Yes they are.
If you think about it, it is just the poorman's removable battery.

 

[Gamepads]

I don't understand how power banks became popular in recent times. Are people that desperate to keep their phones charged that they carry them around? Chinese-made ones in particular are very prone to overheating and catching fire:

Yes, because they also don't want to look like a poor person that has to jack an outlet. A nigger tethered to an outlet at a station hoping to get a few % up while waiting for a bus looks silly.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

windows phone

I miss the feel of texting with buttons on a phone.

I miss being able to use a rotary dial.

(Not that old: touch-tone was already around when I was little. But rotary phones were still sorta around.)

 

[Tharzidün]

miss the pebble steel smartwatch

hate basically every other smartwatch

 

[Dissapointed Grandma]

miss the pebble steel smartwatch

hate basically every other smartwatch

No steel bands yet but at least somebody is trying to bring it back https://store.repebble.com/

 

[Shig O'nella]

Carburetors.

You can shove this ECU controlled fuel injector shit up yer arse.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Why is "magic sparkles" () the usual icon for AI stuff?

Is it "social engineering" to try to BS one to think search engine "assistants" and "ChatGPT" are "magic", and "cannot be questioned"?

 

[Loris Yeltsin]

I fucking hate Canva so fucking much...

Spoiler: Announcement as text

We want to share an important update about the Affinity Forums.

Hi,

On October 6 2025, we’ll be transitioning the forums to read-only mode. This forum will remain available as a searchable archive so you can continue to access the wealth of information shared here, but new replies will not be allowed.
These Affinity Forums have been an incredible part of our journey — a space where you’ve supported each other, reported bugs, shared inspiration, and shaped our products with honest feedback and thoughtful discussion. To everyone who’s contributed, thank you. Your time, energy, and passion have been invaluable, and we’re deeply grateful for this community.
We will continue providing fast, high-quality support. If you need help or have a question, the best way to reach us is through our Support Form — it gets your request to the right team quickly so we can help you more efficiently.


A New Community Space
As we continue to grow, we’re introducing new spaces for our community to connect, collaborate, and share feedback.
Join us on our new community space, Discord (affin.link/dc) — where you can continue sharing ideas and connecting directly with the Affinity community.

We’re excited about this new chapter and can’t wait to see you there.

Ash

Context:
Last year, Canva acquired Serif whose Affinity suite (Designer, Photo, Publisher) was a flawed, but still pretty great, non-subscription-based alternative to Adobe's Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. Canva pledged not to turn everything into poop and misery, but now they've locked down the forums, redirecting everyone to goddamn Discord, while also removing all of Serif's products from their website. Instead of the Serif shop, you now see this:


I'm scared and pissed off. Affinity Designer really is a good piece of software. Why can't I have just one nice thing?

 

[Merton J. Dingle]

I live somewhere where there's a lot of hurricanes so they're useful if the power goes out. Also if I forget to charge my phone during the night. I gotta have my phone when I'm out and about.

Not to mention that if you're playing music off a phone or tablet and it is far away from an outlet, you pretty much need to have a power bank attached to it to make it last for hours upon hours the way that a real radio operating on standard batteries does. That's especially true if you're keeping the screen on to see what song is playing.

 

[Legalize Asbestos]

I now officially cannot login to several websites anymore via VPN without being trapped in the Cloudflare-Human-Verification-Hell. I can either disable it, or forfeit them completely. Fucking wonderful new tech world. KiwiFlare is infinitely better than this jeet-technology.

I went searching around the farms for a thread like this, to complain about this thing specifically.

Coinciding with LLMs taking off and the OFCOMs of the world doing their OFCOM shit. My VPN and Browser are being increasingly refused access to websites. The problem is proliferating.

I worry about it because if I go live in an 'enemy country' and try to access my former country's government or financial services - they're gonna fuck with me, 100%. The same way they fuck with you for donating BTC through a big crypto-exchange to null's address.

These cunts have never met a metric they didn't want to track and the main impulse seems to be know what you specifically are doing at all times and to profile it - so they can predict you and manipulate you. There is a very old adage - I can't remember it's origin, something Greek - that goes : 'if a man knows more about you than you know about yourself, you are under his power.' So we should always endeavour to keep our privacy. People without private lives are just prisoners on parole.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I was expecting a call, but I had to turn my ringer off because in that space of just half an hour, I got 2 or 3 scam calls. And one with a definitely Indian-sounding voice.

So yep, a tech trend I diss yet again: endless scam calls. I can't have a phone on without getting endless scam calls in Current Year.

 

[Picklechu]

I've seen a lot of people say that scam calls have been increasing again this year. A week or two ago I got six within an hour.

 

[888Flux]

Why is "magic sparkles" () the usual icon for AI stuff?

Is it "social engineering" to try to BS one to think search engine "assistants" and "ChatGPT" are "magic", and "cannot be questioned"?

stuff that science fiction authors could only ever dream about is here and its the gayest, most retarded thing imaginable.

That's the worst part about this timeline. Just how gay, bland, and sterile everything is. Corporations are too much of faggots to go full Bladerunner and instead they give you a little faggot emoji instead. Why have anything cool when it can just be safe and sterile instead. Everything needs to be a blob with round edges for the retard goyim retard cattle

 

[ToroidalBoat]

stuff that science fiction authors could only ever dream about is here and its the gayest, most retarded thing imaginable.

It is 2025. Computer speech should sound like stereotypical robots, there should be flying cars (if drones are possible than I think flying cars are), and power from nuclear fusion -- or at least from more nuclear fission -- should be in use. There should also be more spaceflight which is cheaper and safer, and maybe even a moon colony. Politics should be common sense and based in reality. Oh yeah and popular trends and everyday life shouldn't be influenced by "influencers" on "social media" on "smartphones" at all.

But instead, this future now looks just like the 1990s, except that political situation sucks, LLMs are trying to sound human and derp out or "hallucinate" way too much, and I've already mentioned how "social media" on "smartphones" has led to Clown World. At least on the plus side, electronics are more developed, and can do some amazing things.