Guillotines
Tape drives. Remember those big reels of tape on mainframes in the 80s? They don’t look exactly like that anymore, but tape is still used for backups/long term archival because they offer the lowest cost per gigabyte and decent longevity without needing to be powered, as long as you don’t need to access the data all that fast or often.
Those dank memes and cat videos you posted in 2010 are probably on tape in a data centre somewhere
Tape itself is cheap, but buying the other equipment for it costs a fortune.
Writing your passwords in a piece of paper. Safer than storing it digitally and easier for people that don’t know how to use password managers or computers in general to understand what to do to access your stuff if you’re under a difficult situation or dead.
Also, physical photos. Yes yes, we all have gigabytes of photos, but almost never check any of them. Physicals catch my glance at home very often, great decoration. I’ve also took to writing the day, place and people on the back, plus any other important bits of context.
I have a reel of photos from our kids’ album on our TV. Cycles every minute or so. Subs for printed photos fairly well.
Gave a digital photo frame, cycling the same pictures to great grandpa though and he died the next day. Make of this what you will.
Grandma approved 😂
Printing out tickets as a backup. I do this for concerts and travel because then I don’t have to worry about batteries dying, wifi/roaming not being available, getting logged out and having trouble getting back to the ticket, etc.
I also print out maps when doing wilderness backpacks because even if you download the map you’ll burn through your battery life well before the hike is over but a paper map is just as good. If I really need to confirm my location I can occasionally turn on the app and shut it off. I keep the maps in a gallon ziplock so water isn’t an issue.
Ticketmaster is doing their very best to make paper tickets unusable with refreshing barcodes. Funny thing is that “anti-theft” feature is needed because of their own systemic failures. I do like tickets that are just sent to my email or similar (e.g. as an attachment that I can save to my phone) though, it’s better than wasting paper when I know my phone won’t fail me.
RSS feeds
I started self hosting my own RSS feed a few years ago, and I couldn’t live without it. It’s the best way to get timely info.
And then you can be the first one to post it on lemmy.
Came here to say this
I setup tinyrss a month or so ago, I just can’t get into it. Any tips?
Into your instance or into RSS in general?
Generally what are you using it for? I’ve had trouble finding uses outside of youtube and a handful of news sites.
I follow some blogs, news sites, and GitHub project releases so I’m up to date to what I’m interested in.
github is a good one, I didn’t think of that. Thank you
I loved netvibes to get daily comics and blog posts. Unfortunately people stopped writing blogs and netvibes is also gone
Blogs are having a timid resurgence I would say. Also not everyone stopped writing blogs, I have been following some since 2008 or so… When Google Reader was a thing lol
I think they are a lot more obscure because we prioritise social networks over blogs, so do search indexers. But they are still there!
Comics are now mostly on Instagram, but you can make Instagram RSS feeds with things like rss-bridge
Friends stopped writing their blogs. I slowly stopped reading most comics, now only Questionable Content and the occasional xkcd remains
He really should bring back blogging and that shit was awesome
Wrist watches. Extremely convenient, even when your phone is buried or you don’t want to be distracted.
Yep plus if you take your phone out you leave yourself vulnerable to being robbed.
- for the wristwatch, if you wear a 10$ casio people will think you’re poor
Oooh nice one. Bonus points if it’s a dirty strap.
Buttons, knobs, plastic bezels.
At least according to the industry those are all in the past. The future is screens that go to the very edge of the device and absolutely nothing tactile.
And it is bullshit. It is less reliable, less convenient, less cool – To say nothing of the safety disaster that nailing a tablet computer to the dashboard of every car has been.
Edit: sorry. Not less knobs and buttons. More knobs and buttons, less touchscreen bs.
I used to be able to send my girlfriend a T9 text just by feel, without taking my eyes off the road. Probably had a 95% accuracy rate, but “I like your bombs” still makes sense.
One of my problems with phones over the last few years is touchscreens that go all the way to the edge combined with UX elements that require swiping from the very edge. It basically becomes impossible to use if you have a case.
Eliminating an entire sense (touch) from being used to control things seems to be foolish.
IRC: simplest way of communicating online, and a bouncer can be availed for free
Forums: great store of knowledge and friendly, helpful people. If you ask a question in discord, nobody will ever see the answer again.
Why use IRC when you could use matrix
Because setting up an IRC server is way, way easier than setting up a matrix server. It’s also a lot more reliable. The downside is that it’s text only
I can’t related more on the second one. Slack and Microsoft Teams seems to be the default way to communicate in corporate environments.
Man, I really want to get back into IRC. Is there any good client you can recommend?
Halloy seems to be a popular choice on desktop. Goguma on android according to https://libera.chat/guides/clients
Thank you!
Fax machines. Government and medical offices would grind to a halt without them. That’s just reality.
That’s basically the answer to the opposite question: what is something that someone thinks isn’t obsolete, but really is?
Because it can do something that the alternatives can’t do or because they refuse to use something more modern?
Because it works. Every part needed to run those machines, even line of code, every possible cause of failure is well documented and there are layers and layers of redundant protocol to ensure that if something does go wrong downtime is minimal.
The entire purpose of these machines are designed to run for as long as they’re needed. They’re not replaced or upgraded because they were never meant to be. A lot of effort went into this being the case.
“It can’t be hacked”
Of course, it can, and a lot more easily than a TLS stream, but try convincing them of that. So, more like they refuse to use something more modern.
Everyone even tangentially related to healthcare is terrified of violating HIPAA in a way that leaves evidence that can be traced back to them. So the corps force dumb shit like this, while the employees are perfectly happy to tell all kinds of private health information to anyone who will listen. Especially if it’s funny or gross.
Believe it or not, Canadian health services do this shit too.
CDs/DVDs/BluRays
I don’t want to support Spotify, which is owned by tencent. I don’t want to spend a fortune on streaming services. I don’t want to sell my data to google by using YouTube, and I want to be able to listen to music/ watch movies when offline.
Spotify is not owned by Tencent. It’s publicly traded, and tencent owns part of it.
There are a lot of reasons to hate Spotify (and Daniel Ek) but this is not one of it.
The short version: Tencent Holdings is about to own 10 percent of Universal, which in turns owns around 3.5 percent in Spotify, which in turn owns around nine percent in Tencent Music Entertainment, which in turn is part-owned by Universal’s two main rivals (Warner and Sony), but remains majority owned by Tencent Holdings, which in turn owns 9.1 percent of Spotify. (And, yes, no kidding, that’s the short version.)
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/who-really-owns-spotify-955388/
I collect all them. Want to get into Laserdisc as well
Is that a recent development?
For me personally? I have been steadily changing the way I source media over the past 2-3 years. Also I lately read more of other ppl going back to physical media for the same-ish reasons.
Just pirate it after you have subscribed to it a few times. The author has got their share. The only party you’re harming by doing this is the streaming platform. Illegal, but not immoral.
Safty razors! Why would anyone spend 20$ on the new fangled 30 million blade razor that mighy last one shave? When you can spend pennies even if you change blades every shave.
Safety* $20* newfangled* might*
It’s like you consciously added misspellings and bad grammar.
Switched to a safety razor recently after years of using Gillette’s… It’s life changing! No more bumps or breaking out. Also it’s cheap!
I recently switched to a Leaf one and love it. It’s about the same as my Harry’s razor, but a hell of a lot less expensive when even Costco is selling their reloads at $27. The leaf blades are way less expensive, and they aren’t even proprietary.
Oh that is a BEAUTY
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I got two of these security razors back in 2017 for less than $50 bucks altogether. Best investment ever. Then, last year I got a Philip razor but I have since just stopped shaving at home. I ask the barber from time to time
That leaf one appears to be $120 lol
But I suppose if you find yourself on the Harry’s marketing train, jumping off for anything that’s actually recyclable is good.
At some point about a decade ago I realized I’m much happier just paying the extra $8 every couple months when I go to get a haircut and otherwise just letting it grow out.
electric razors are just straight up superior though
Electric and safety razors don’t necessarily serve the same purpose. An electric razor can never cut as close to to the skin as a safety razor. I use both
fair, I don’t care about having a close shave so electric does the job for me
Your caveman brain. People think they’re educated an enlightened and everything they do now is so well thought out. Nope, the caveman is in the driving seat for all of us. Even your most high level meetings and interviews are influenced by how hungry, horny, or hurt you are by a teasing comment yesterday. Everyone is looking to establish dominance at any cost, when you don’t really need to.
Caring about your employees as if they were humans.
Caring about other people in general really
That implies it was ever the norm. At best it’s had moments.
Hi, number! It’s your colleague: Another number!
So how about that SPORTING EVENT last weekend?
Something something ludicrous display.
As if! 😂
Pretty much anything in a machine shop made in the last 80 years or so. So many people turn up their noses at anything that isn’t computer controlled anymore. Yknow what a big old mill can do that a CNC can’t? It can make every single part needed to make a new mill. It’s a self replicating machine with the right know how. People don’t respect that kind of quality anymore.
Can a CNC not do that for just the mechanical parts?
(I know way too much about bootstrapping semiconductor production at small scale, which seems to be viable but highly impractical)
Sure, but it’s not as impressive (imo) when you also need a computer control system, a bunch of circuitry and electronics, and a whole mess of software to make it work in the end. A mill just needs enough spin and it runs exactly as intended.
Oh yeah, I have a copy of the Gingery books and I love it.
I haven’t seen Gingery into how much power you need exactly, or what blend of RPM vs. torque is ideal. What would be your guess, since it sounds like you might know?
Torque is the real limiting factor. You can always gear up or down for whatever you’re working on, but at the end of the day you need enough torque to get the work done. And a proper milling machine needs A LOT of torque.
Can you give me some typical values, maybe? That would be a big help.
There are no “typical values” when you’re running a mill or lathe. You could look up “speeds and feeds”, but that’s really just a table that you plug into an equation to figure out how to set the machine. It all depends on what you’re doing and what you’re doing it with. Drilling a hole with a high speed steel drill bit is going to be a bit different than drilling it with a carbide spade, and all that is going to depend heavily on whether you’re trying to run through titanium or tin. You need to fine tune running “x” bit through “y” material for a “z” sized cut.
Essentially, this is the knowledge that separates skilled labor from manual labor, and machining is (was, RIP cnc button pushers) skilled labor.
At the end of the day for most metal machining you’ll need between 50hp and 100hp to be up to modern standards. If you want to get that through steam or electric motors or whatever that’s up to you
Trackballs
You might think of them as this old mouse that you had 20 years ago, but actually the technology is still being used for all kinds of things, including ergonomic mouse
