I prefer how Nazis were dealt with in the past
I miss physically owning software, movies, and music, not having to pay a subscription for car features like heated seats or more horsepower. I miss getting a complete game that was usually mostly glitch free on day one you got it on CD/DVD.
Socializing.
No social media to distract people. Nobody staring a phones. Nobody recording themselves for streaming.
You memorized phone numbers or wrote them down. You called or got called to meet up at some place and everyone went from there.
True
Programming. Telling a machine “build x feature” is nervewracking because I do not know what it’s doing and more importantly boring because it takes all the joy out of writing code. Even the LLM completions I do not use because I have seen what it has done to my coworkers’ brains. I will think about the problem. I will write the code. I will know what it does. It will be of me, not of some averaging machine.
May the LLM era end in darkness and the gnashing of teeth amen.
You sound like a C developer complaining about interpreted languages lol
Amen
Photography. Film was so advanced, having a layer for each major colour, every film stock has a different feeling. The only downside was cost, but you only took a picture when you were sure it is a good picture. Now we have tons of digital garbage because we take 100 pictures at once.
I feel the opposite. Film sucked so bad. I love pointing my phone at things and shooting a hundred shots and finding something good there or not finding anything and continueing with my day. Old photography was a pointless torture.
The old family picture books had so much value, now I can’t remember if I ever even looked at any past photos I took with my phone, it’s all just digital waste now
Film is crazy advanced. One of those “how did humanity figure this out?” kind of things. Smarter Every Day YouTube channel did a thorough tour of Kodak and it’s pretty fascinating all that goes into it.
The deliberate act of shooting that the financial and time cost definitely makes better photos. You can do that with digital as well but it takes more discipline. Far easier to shoot a dozen and hope one works than to think and come up with the right one from the start.
Both have their place I think. Any time I shoot a race, wedding, or a once in a life trip I’m so glad it’s digital! Being able to do a 10 shot burst and nail the facial expression is pretty awesome. Then slowing down and going on a local hike and setting up my 4x5 to take one shot, or a photo walk around town with an old SLR is a blast too.
Maybe I just like photography?
Fixing a car.
I’d much, much rather twist some carburetor screws or replace a fuse than have to try to troubleshoot some encrypted CANBUS acceleration sensor that is required for my suspension to work properly.
My last car with a carburetor was decades ago, are they not all fuel-injectors now?
Not the ones from decades ago!
Duplicate post, sorry!
Shaving with a double edged razor rather than a cartridge one. The whole process is much more meditative and rewarding when you actually focus on the moment and take the time to do it properly. Gives a better shave too.
Ventrillo / Teamspeak > > > Discord
I’m a big fan of manual machining over CNC.
I prefer pressing buttons and turning nobs in the car.
It’s actually safer to have tactile buttons, too.
My old civic is so nice.
Don’t get me started on those fucking digital handbrakes
Those fucked me up so much when learning to drive. Ah yes let’s try starting uphill with the handbrake. Could not do it because I had no fucking clue when it was going to release.
First time I had to do it in my dad’s car which has a normal handbrake I had zero issues.
One of the many reasons I’ll hang onto my 2012 Toyota Corolla until I drive it into the ground. It has a touch screen for just the radio and Bluetooth, but it must be some sort of gen one prototype because it’s pretty awful. Thankfully, everything else is tactile. I can’t imagine giving it up.
Fwiw, I’ve just got a '22 corolla and everything has a physical button. I love it.
My 2004 F150 just works, no guessing what button does what, twist the fucking knob.
TV.
I hate the smart-TV workflow, its a terrible user experience: Turn the TV on… wait for the smart-TV OS to load… land on an app menu… navigate around and choose an app… wait for the app to load… select a profile… wait for the list of shows to load… scroll almost endlessly through shows… choose a show, finally… wait for the video to load…
I miss when you turned the TV on and it was just instantly playing whatever channel you last had on, with one single interaction. I miss not having to make the conscious choice of what to watch and feel overwhelmed by so many options. I miss TV programs being a common experience, like an event, that everyone would be talking about together the next day, instead of everyone watching their own thing on their own schedule.
It was truly exciting to look forward to a weekly show on TV.
Except when you couldn’t know in advance when your show skipped a week and they had to play some crappy rerun of a completely different show.
A group of us used to meet every week to watch Twin Peaks. We’d unplug the phone, drink coffee, and eat cherry pie (or apple for a bit of variation). Then we’d watch the episode again having just recorded it and try to figure out wtf was going on. Happy days.
On the plus side people with jobs other than 9-5 can now be included in the experience.
If you haven’t used free Over-the-air TV these days you might be surprised that most cities have a few dozen channels of live TV right now. If your in a large metro area get the simplest of cheapest TV antennas, plug it into your TV, and do a channel scan. You’ll be surprised how many channels there are now.
If you’re in suburbs or rural, you’ll still likely have quite a few but may need a more substantial antenna.
I do have an antenna and get some decent channels with it
You can still do that by paying for cable.
I have cable. It doesn’t really work like that anymore. I used to be able to click through ALL the basic cable channels, catching a frame or two of every single channel, with zero delay between channels, all within like under a minute. These days every channel change or menu selection has a built-in delay of at least a second or two. Channel surfing just doesn’t vibe the same anymore. That form of TV is mostly if not entirely dead.
You’re not wrong, although I think I’d still have to wait for the smart-TV OS to load and navigate the menu to select the Cable input.
Software engineering.
Back in my day(™), it was an engineering role, where science reigned. Anyone even attempting “vibe coding” would’ve been rightfully laughed out of the room.
It’s a task that should take concerted effort, with specific goals and performance metrics in mind. Just getting the task done wasn’t and shouldn’t be good enough.
I think the issue is that back then, you only did important things with software. Now there is so much code doing the same simple things. Like how many ways does a person need to input thier birthday… and every tool we use… if it is good it gets more and more expensive, and more and more cluttered as they try to expand thier market. So now a new cheaper tool that does the same thing gets written. I would bet 90 some % of code is copies of other code with scientifically meaningless difference. But someone has to write it all…
Along a slightly similar vein, I generally prefer CLI and terminal work to GUIs
Uh oh. The ice carvers are complaining about the evils of refrigeration again…
Uh oh, the bad faith AI bros are conflating luddites with anyone that disagrees with them again…
Says the Luddite without an argument…
Because I’m not arguing, genius, because a group of people that categorically reject all dissent as an appeal to nature fallacy is a group not worth engaging.
Sounds like a self-defeating argument. So glad I could stand by while you beat on that straw man for a while. Feeling better after that li’l display, champ?
Again, not an argument. You sure seem to be projecting about strawmen.
Sure, kiddo. Whatever gives you that dopamine hit for being yet-another random internet douchecanoe.
“Hurr hurr… I’m right and I’ve decided you’re wrong because reasons. I’m not going to engage with anyone because everyone rejects my assertions that I’m right and everyone else is wrong.”
Uh huh. Real nuanced perspective you got there.
No this is LITERALLY the same argument made hundreds/thousands of years ago against writing and books. Its the same argument the amish use. It IS the luddit pinnicle argument.
That’s right, the anti AI people are making literally the same arguments about why writing is bad. I am so smart.
You do not understand what quality code is if you think the current or previous generations produce anything but shit when it’s not a 1-1 copy of someone’s project it digested.
You do not realize how many businesses operate every single day and make plenty of money on suboptimal code.
Industrial scale everything does not care, so long as the job gets done and the invoice is paid.
Just like with every other profession made obsolete by technology, the 80% case won’t need your bespoke, hand-crafted, artisanal assembly. There will still be minority cases who will pay a premium for it. And plenty of people will still program as a hobby or for their local community. But industrial scale software will be written by bots.
Because the world runs on good enough. No matter how many elitist neckbeards get butthurt in the process.
many countries need to go back to reasonable inconvenience for superior and ethical product. same-day shipping is accelerating the speed of climate change so no you don’t get to have it actually. no, fruits and vegetables are not available 24/7, seasons matter again. etc and etc. we need to go back to all of this. we have to reduce the strain.
It grinds my gears that programs are called ‘apps’ now. On phones it was normalized immediately, so, sure. Computers run programs, though, god dammit.
Greetings program!!!
Something like 20 years ago, i assumed that every generation that comes after mine, will be so much better with computers, because they grow up with it. So that’s not true at all as it turns out. I remember working with 20is year old guys together and they they mostly had iphones. They told me that they are also into computers, gaming and stuff like that. The more i talked to them the more i realised that they have no idea what i was talking about. I explained one of them how to do a thing on his phone and he was super lost. It was worse thN explaining my mom something. He kept asking where he finds the app i’m talking about and i kept telling him that it’s not an app, it’s something you do on the phone. Yeah i get that, but i don’t have the app for that.
Microsoft have been calling discrete computer programs “applications” since at least the Windows 95 era, when Program Manager was replaced with the start menu. They’ve been inconsistently kinda-sorta doing so since even Windows 3.x, maybe even more, but nobody was closely paying attention back then.
It didn’t become the current situation of monkey-see-monkey-do until Apple started using the terminology heavily with the iPhone, as you have observed. But they actually cribbed it from good old M$, much as they’ve cribbed basically everything else they’ve done in the modern era from someone else and simply painted it glossy white.
Program is such a funny word when you remember it’s an analogy from radio and TV. Radio and TV are just delivery mechanisms for programs, which are the content and point of the medium.
You could define a podcast as an internet-delivered audio program.
In the UK, “programme” is used for events, TV shows, and schedules, while “program” is specifically used in computing contexts.
I feel this.
Why? What is the functional difference between an application and a program?
The term was changed to application when Win 95 came out. An application runs over the API (Application Programming Interface) in Windows, whereas a program in MS-DOS ran straight off the motherboard.
Outside of Unix based programs, probably not a lot.
In terms of their functionality most programs are standalone applications rather than tools where you modify the programming flow of the data.
Dating. It’s hard to manufacture that initial spark in an app.
Lack of third places has been a real thorn in society, especially third places that you aren’t expected to spend money.
EDIT: I’ve just learned I was incorrect in my original comment below. Bars, taverns, nightclubs etc are included in third spaces according to Wikipedia. I guess I learned an alt definition at some point, or perhaps just a wrong definition.
The definition of a third place is that you can spend time there without the expectation of buying something. If you’re expected to spend money to occupy space, it’s not a third place.
(Fully agree that the loss of such spaces is killing us, though!)
Absolutely. Good point.
It’s like fishing. You throw a bunch of hooks in the water, see what happens. I did very well with online dating, until I found my forever girl.
