this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I used to be pretty into machine learning and AI generation circa 2018-ish. It used to be fun and surreal. Sites like artbreeder were a great novelty, and also a pretty good learning tool. Now that it's "good" I feel that not only has a lot of the charm been lost, it's become much easier for malicious actors to use it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm a sucker for Nixie Tubes

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Ooh, rotary phone switches. This YouTube channel (THIS MUSEUM IS NOT OBSOLETE) has a bunch of videos on them. I can only imagine how a massive exchange full of them must have sounded. They're so satisfyingly mechanical.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKnS0AB2CTN_eu8k8rgaOW0PWFH2Qv9Ui

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Razors. Back in the day you could buy a razor and expect to shave with it every day for the rest of your life. I still have my first razor, a Gillette Slim Adjustable and it still shaves as well as it did the first day I brought it home. The heft and balance are something those new plastic razors and multi bladed monsters can never match.

Thankfully, internet shopping allows me to buy blades from around the world and now I can enjoy my old razor again.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

This may not apply, (as I know I'm simply saying a commercial product got worse as it had revisions) but Jawbone's first earbud/headset used a small rubber conductor to evaluate skull vibration for noise canceling ( and likely there was some ANC using incoming mic audio from external sources). They continued to include a rubber bumper but I think the device leaned more on incoming audio from mics rather than from the rubber bumper. The oldest device presented the best noise canceling even after 3 product changes. I used every version until they stopped making headsets. I miss my Jawbone. I still have my OG.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

BlackBerry (RIM)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The Apple II is still such a fucking cool computer.

Sure, my watch is about a billion times more powerful, but my watch will never be as cool as the Apple II.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's mainly cool to me because of what it represented in its era. It was personal computing available for the masses, yes, but it's also the embodiment of the American dream. Here's these guys soldering and writing code in their garage, and all of the sudden they're in stores across the world, and competing with giants such as Xerox, and IBM. It's a product from a story for the ages.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Sex toys and local multiplayer is a way better combination than cybersex and online matchmaking

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Web browsers about 10 years ago

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (10 children)

Portable consoles. They're dead now or replaced by indie shit. No, the switch doesn't count, if it can't fit in my pocket isn't portable.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The indie shit is great tho. Analogue Pocket is an outstanding gaming device to run a whole bunch of portable console games (and some originally non-portable consoles too, like Genesis/Megadrive)

And folks are still making and sometimes even selling Gameboy games right now in 2024

Indie is great, and honestly vital when so much mainstream/AAA shit is such shit

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Clarke's third law is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I have the notion that any technology becomes uninteresting and not cool once reaches the level of magic. We are tactile and inquisitive creatures, so objects that appeal to our hands and perceptions are cool. Once we can no longer grasp the parts, literally or metaphorically, they're no longer alluring.

Phones, cars, screens, computers, anything. Why is Amiga HAM mode fascinating to many people still, even when they're emulating it on a 32-bit-depth screen that can concurrently play high-quality video streamed over the Internet? That's why.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Video game consoles.

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