The Internet.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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A nixie tube is a bunch of tiny lightbulbs shaped into numbers in a single pack with different pins each turning on a number.
Clearly the modern number display is better in many ways, but you were asking for coolness.
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Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated, and more effective electronic navigational systems.
They were quite important for a long time. We used them for thousands of years, and they're often unique in form, iconic. And they're a good subject for photos and paintings, and I think that the light effect from them is neat. Lots of books and such using them, like ones on remote rocks, to get an isolated setting ("the lone lighthouse keeper").
But the past few decades of technological advancement have probably closed the end of their era.
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BlackBerry (RIM)
A lot of older tech had a way more interesting silhouette. You can see this clearly in how many objects live on in icon form. We still often use handset phones, magnifying glasses, gears, or the infamous floppy disk save icon. I think the staying power of these really comes from how ephemeral and formless digital tech can be.
Any mechanical regulation process that used to be handled by actual machine parts. Think of the centrifugal governor, this beautiful and elegant mechanical device just for regulating the speed of a steam engine. Sure, a computer chip could do it a lot better today, and we're not even building steam engines quite like those anymore. But still, mechanically controlled things are just genuinely a lot cooler.
Or hell, even for computing, take a look at the elaborate mechanical computers that were used to calculate firing solutions on old battleships. Again, silicon computers perform objectively better in nearly every way, but there's something objectively cool about solving an set of equations on an elaborate arrangement of clockwork.
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Sex toys and local multiplayer is a way better combination than cybersex and online matchmaking
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