airplanes, microchips, vaccines, lenses, lasers, windmils, solar cells, ... the list is endless !
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Cars… old cars were indestructible death traps. Crumple zones kill the car and save the human
Not even indestructible, just big heavy destructible death traps!
There's a video floating around of a midsized sedan from the 60s and the 00s in a frontal offset crash and the old car is absolutely demolished.
This is a consistent argument I get into with my mother. She complains that cars are made of plastic now, and I try to explain that crashing a steel body car would mutilate your body but to no avail. This and her hatred of roundabouts.
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that's the kind of positivity I wanted. it is cool how much laser tech has improved in the past few decades
When you hear people saying that technology has stagnated, that person clearly isn't following advancements in medicine. The medical tech I see now just blow me away.
I've heard of lab-grown flesh cloned from a burn victim's own flesh replacing the need for an invasive skin graft retrieval, and a gold nanoparticle mixture placed into an old spinal cord injury to cause microscopic damage and force the body to resume healing the severed nerves. Those are the big two I like to talk about. I'm optimistic about things like whole working artificial organs in the next 50 years
It's not about tech stagnating, but about it not lasting. They say "they don't make it like they used to" for a reason.
That's just an entirely separate matter. Definitely truth to planned obsolescence in some cases and lower quality materials used in many products.
But I have heard many people say technology in general has stagnated. Consumer tech keeps getting more powerful largely without major perceivable changes, and looking at developments in key fields is where we can most notably see developments.
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Devices with touchscreens
Except in cars, for some reason
Physical buttons are a must in vehicles for me. I want to be able to operate things with muscle memory so I don't have to avert my eyes from the road.
Cars are just brutal on electronics hardware, from vibration to heat and cold changes, to sudden bumps and direct sunlight.
That said, they could definitely improve the software that it uses to avoid it responding slowly by not including things like unnecessary transitions or trying to have it do everything and a ham sandwich. Most of the problems with the software remind me of shitty printer drivers with extraneous bloat and lack of optimization.
Car interface design seems like its gone backwards. I'd much prefer a tactile button I can feel and push without looking than having to mess with a touch screen.
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The fucking low fps on navigation maps, the laggy response on touch input, goddamn
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Computer hardware overall i more dependable then it used to be IMO. So is windows itself.
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Engines. 300hp out of 2L is impressive. It scales even better. V8’s can put out insane numbers.
For real, internal combustion engines are made way better than they used to be. Both in terms of reliability and power output.
You can get a small, ICE only (non-hybrid) car that gets 40+ MPG. You can buy a new car with a warranty that makes over 800 horsepower.
The IC engine is at its peak. Electric is the future, but the current crop of ICE are incredible machines.
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Sports equipment has benefited greatly from advances in material science.
I've been snowboarding since they weren't allowed on the hills and a few years ago was finally able to buy a full new setup.
There isn't a single component of my gear that isn't a radical improvement over the prior setup from 10 years earlier.
Thermal form boots, fancy new strong and flexible plastics in the bindings, and who knows all the wizardry in the board itself.
It is all so comfortable and performs so much better I can't imagine going out with my old gear.
I have to believe this is true across the board in football and hockey protection etc.
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Pocket computers
Aka cell phones
My phone's hardware is more stacked than my PC at this point and that blows me away
Houses. Mainly talking about asbestos and lead.
Unfortunately we've also mastered the art of putting a nice facade on shitty, shitty bones
It's nice they've taken the asbestos and the lead out, but older houses used to be built of brick and stone, now they're built of straw and sticks.
A lot of beauty products. Nail polish, makeup, hair dryers, hairbrushes, you name it. Some terrible (and even ozone-destroying) chemicals have been removed, and with the proliferation of online reviews and images you can pick something that won't burn your eyes and will actually work.
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Kids toys.
Back in my day, toys over promised and under delivered, especially if it had any kind of electronics. Everything required extra imagination back then, sometimes stretching it to a point of disillusion.
Not to mention the poisons
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Cars. Some people like to talk about how sturdy cars used to be, but with all of the advancements in safety, if I were in a head-on collision between an old Plymouth and a Toyota Prius, I'd much rather be in the Prius.
I'm going to say "Motorcycles". (At least bikes in the US.)
20 years ago, a lot of bikes still had carburetors with manual choke. Many of them had no pollution controls at all. ABS was basically science fiction. A significant portion of them were air cooled. (To be clear, there are still some air cooled bikes on the market.)
Now it's rare to find carbs on street legal bikes, even the 125cc Grom has fuel injection. And basically any bike has at least a catalytic converter. There are bikes with variable valve timing. There are bikes made by Harley-Davidson (The company always the butt of "muh primitive motorcycle" jokes) that have water cooled engines with variable valve timing that make as much noise, and vibration, as the average Toyota. Most bikes have ABS on them now, and there are plenty with traction control and stability control. They're safer now than they used to be. I recently sold a couple of bikes and bought one nicer bike, and it's uncanny how smooth, quiet, and stable it is.
This thread is helping me realize what a curmugeon I am. Everybody's like "such-and-such is so much better that it was" and I'm coming up with so many reasons why all of them suck way worse.
(Maybe that says more about me than about the state of the world.)
/c/notliketheothergirls
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Computer hardware is constantly improving. Sure, the software is getting worse, but there are good alternatives to that either already existing, like in the PC space, or being worked on, like in the mobile space. Also this is ignoring price gouging of PC hardware.
Display tech has gone a long way since early LCD TVs started being a thing. Granted, I still think CRT is a better technology overall, but modern TV panels do a great job of coming close in quality, while having its own benefits and drawbacks.
Good quality audio is becoming more affordable, with $20 IEMs sounding incredible for the price (Moondrop Chu II specifically) and ~$100 planar magnetic cans being available.
Sure, the software is getting worse
Not in the Linux world. Linux in the 90's and early 00's was rough.
First, getting the system installed and booting, then getting the GUI to work, setting up printer, scanner, wifi, etc...
Nowadays, it's mostly just clicking "Next" a few times, and more stuff works out of the box than after a Windows installation.
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Phone screens.
Porn
rocketry
cost of transport to space (orbit) has dropped dramatically in the past 20 years.
from 8000$/kg in 2000
to about 2500$/kg with falcon 9 in 2010
and still dropping rapidly.
source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-cost-of-space-flight/
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