We talk a lot about enshittification of technology, so tell me about technology that is getting better!
I personally love the progress of electric scooters. I’ve been zooming around on a 400$ escooter for a year and it works so well. It has a range of around 20 miles and top speed of 15 mph, so it works just super well for my uses, and 10 years ago scooters with that range/speed/price were no where near a thing.
I know it’s dumb, but cellphones. They went from bricks to pretty much super computers. I’m amazed at the stuff I can do on my phone. Music, games, drawing, texting, phone, video call, camera, recorder, ebook, audio book reader, etc.
Headphones. I’m not an audiophile so I’m sure there are varying qualities, but there are so many different headphones now, almost all Bluetooth. Most are pretty good because the base standard seems higher overall. I remember getting cheap headphones and having then sound awful. Now I buy cheap headphones and it’s really not that bad. And now there noise canceling? Like magic. Hell, getting my first Bluetooth headset made me feel like I had made it (I in fact did not make it, they just became lower in price).
Video games. There are a llllooootttttt of issues with the gaming industry, but the variety, accessibility, and quality is nuts. My first console was a my grandma’s SNES. My first handheld device was a Gameboy. Not game boy color, just game boy. I’ve watched my grandma and I go from black and white / basic graphics, to being able to see the peach fuzz on someone’s face. I was playing a game and felt the rain from the vibration in my controller. I thought VR was something I might be able to see towards the end of my lifetime, not pretty much at the start of it. I also think how easy it is to connect and play with people is amazing. I can play with my friend across the country, and speak with her, and share my screen, and have her play like she was on the couch with me.
Headphones was my answer. The sound quality, the true wireless in ear? Holy shit. I’m someone to whom music is super important. And someone whose brain is always overworking, and not in the best way. Now I can stick one earbud in my ear no matter what I’m doing? Holy shit. I love it.
Our phones are such amazing pieces of mobile, personal technology. We’re using them for all the most mundane details though and they’re detracting from some of the better things we could be doing with our time and intellects.
I feel it’s a problem for all of us but as an elder millennial at least I have experienced a world without them. I feel for the younger generations - they’re all consuming for them.
When I noticed it encroached on something I enjoy - trying to guess or remember a bit of trivia - my partner and I now have a rule that we must spend at least 5 minutes trying to guess who that actor is from, or who sings this song before we look it up. The technology was robbing us of imagination and rifling through the mental files.
I don’t disagree with you at all though - we’re using star trek tech and it’s fucking cool.
Video games are honestly incredible. The prices have stayed relatively the same for a very long time, despite inflation, and yet the quality has shot up immensely. On the one end you have the AAA games like Cyberpunk, Jedi: Survivor, and RDR2 which look absolutely stunning. I’ve spent significant amount of time in games like those just being in awe with the graphics, taking screenshots. These worlds are so big and immersive, and there are so many tiny details.
Then you have the huge indy/smaller game scene. There are so many good games these days, it’s impossible to play them all. Factorio, Satisfactory, Celeste, Stardew Valley, Valheim, BAR, the list goes on and on. And all for a low price or even no money at all.
The change in cell phones is truly unreal.
Just really hope the cell phone software catches up and is less trash as time goes on.
Headphones is a really good one.
I have a set of Sony MDR-7506 which are widely agreed to be the seriously good entry level audiophile headphones. They cost me £80. That’s quite a lot of money for some people, especially for just wired headphones, but they really are incredible.
But at the other end of the scale, you can now pick up really good Chi-fi IEMs for £20. When I was a teen 30 years ago, you were either paying £15/£20 for dog shit earphones that fell apart after a month, or £50+ for anything that was half decent, but still only lasted a year. Basic £10 wired buds sound pretty damn good these days. You might not hear the bongo man on Earth Wind & Fire, but you’ll get a good idea he’s there.
I’m excited to see the progress of 3d printers becoming more user friendly, reliable and inexpensive. I’ve been keeping an eye on the development of consumer printing and there are so many types of materials to print with at higher and higher details with less troubleshooting needed. I’m thinking I’ll finally jump in this year but I’ve had very little time for hobbies lately.
I’ve been following 3d printing since the early 2000s, when it was all homemade machines printing with weed whacker line, slicers weren’t a thing, and resolution was garbage. Now I have a resin printer that cranks out tiny detailed tabletop miniatures no problem. What a time to be alive.
I’m still using an Creality Ender 3 for FDM because it was cheap and does the job, but a lot of great FDM printers have come out in the past few years at competitive price points. I use this for larger items where fine detail isn’t important (tabletop buildings, terrain, vehicles, large creatures, etc)
For resin I’ve got an Elegoo Mars 3 Pro, but anything 4k is going to give pretty good results. Keep in mind though, resin is more involved than FDM. You’ll need gloves and a VOC respirator to handle fresh prints, and I sprung for the wash/cure station to make my life easier. I use this for small prints with thin parts or fine details (character minis mostly).
FDM is where most people start to get their bearings, but if your use case is exclusively small detailed prints, it may be worth it to jump straight into resin. Just prepare for a slightly steeper learning curve.
Yes! I grew up with Warhammer, and I can’t tell you how many times as a teen I wished I could just make my own minis, or print something specific to add on while kitbashing.
Fast forward to today and I have a resin printer, unfortunately my free time is a bit less than it was 20 years ago so it doesn’t see as much use as I’d like. God I feel old.
I recently purchased a bambu labs p1s after many years of fighting with an Ender 3. I’ve printed so many things and not had a single fail, it prints so fast I actually don’t know what to do next… The AMS also opens up a whole new world, I’ve printed book marks (I know it sounds silly) but these things look amazing, something I never would have thought of ever. My only gripe is not having all the filament colours I want due to cost haha.
NZB360. Lovely piece of software :)
Also uBlock originI googled what nzb360 was and it said it was an app to manage your radarr, sonarr and lidarr. But I don’t know what any of those are either. You’re welcome
It’s exactly that.
In essence a companion app to control those self-hosted applications.
You know uBlock Origin is good when Google is trying to kill it.
I could not think of one initially but actually my washing machine is better than yesteryear.
Yes and no.
Modern sensors and timing cycles are a FUCKTONNE better and you get much cleaner clothes in less time with less water.
BUT
It will die in 5 years while your grandma’s Whirlpool washer dryer stack will outlast the heat death of the universe.
true. it was more about the cycles and just it pausing and starting in a nice way when the lid is opened. Oh and I love it has a soak cycle.
I don’t think that’s all that true. There’s a lot of survivorship bias at play, a whole lot of cheaper models failed long ago and were replaced. Older washers have less protection against user error too, stuff like load balancing alerts. Finally the market has widened, washer/dryers are much less of a luxury as they once were, so the low end of the market has filled out with poorly constructed models.
What is definitely the case is that they are harder to repair. Part of this is cultural, part of this is companies being dicks (looking at you samsung) and part of this is genuinely more complexity.
Do you use the escooter on sidewalks? What are the laws on that where you are?
Oh to answer your question: ebikes, pedal assist electric bikes. I think they really have the ability to change transportation.
I will use the sidewalk when approaching a busy high speed intersection so I can cross as a pedestrian using the cross walk. These are always larger sidewalks and I slow down a ton so I haven’t had any problems and seems like what the bikers do.
Otherwise I am in the bike lane/bike path/gutter/road. For places I go to a lot I’ve found routes that are mostly along non busy roads where it’s more chill. Where I am the rules are just the same as for bikes. I have considered ebikes, since the range on those are comically long.
Yeah technically you aren’t supposed to ride on the sidewalks here (USA) but there’s barely any safe infrastructure to do otherwise, and I’m sure as hell not going to ride on the street with the death machines honking all over the place, so the sidewalk it is until city infrastructure is less car-brained.
Its kinda fun locally because drivers just have no clue what to do around bicycles and just stay way the heck away and avoid passing, so I just bike a bit more aggressively, owning the lane when I need to and whatnot because that’s the best way to make sure drivers have any clue what to do and keeps us both out of eachother’s way
Why’d you go with the trike?
not the guy you asked, but I just got a trike.
- I have balance issues so I’ve never been able to balance a regular bike.
- carrying capacity with a basket.
there are definitely options to address the carry capacity with a bike, but I haven’t seen anything to assist with balance.
Synthesizers and music technology in general.
I could write an essay or two about how much has changed in the past fifty years. Most of it for the better.
The level the “hobbyist” music producer can reach now days is mind boggling with the free software they can get on their phones and pcs.
According to Rick Beato on YouTube this is why music is shit nowadays. He’s got real “old man yells at cloud” energy and he’s fucking wrong. The fact that someone can make music easily means that there is tons of great music being produced because the barriers to entry are not prohibitive anymore.
He’s especially wrong because music is shit EVERYDAY we just have the privilege of looking back on decades of music we can sift through.
For every Led Zeppelin there are 50 Whingers. We just don’t remember them because they are lost to time.
Anyone who claims ‘music today sucks’ will change their tune in 10 years when the real classics of today are remembered.
I imagine you missed the nuances of what he describes as the human elements of music. Humans fluctuate tempo. Humans can play music with other humans impromptu based on common repertoire or musical templates, themes, and styles. Humans can call and response based on riffs or quotes. Music and dance are quite literally on the few cultural pillars of humanity across all cultures and time for its social uses. Often, all this music software is used in solitude, never to be utilized in a social way. New music tech and music instruments are just tools. It is about how one uses them.
Often, all this music software is used in solitude
Beethoven composed in solitude, too.
Yes, there’s something about a live performance that can’t exactly be reproduced jamming with yourself in your bedroom, but that doesn’t mean that great music can’t come out of both processes.
Beato is definitely channeling a little “git offa mah lawwn!” vibes. The reason we don’t get any more Led Zeppelins or Pink Floyds or whichever brand of classic rock he worships at the altar of isn’t because there aren’t talented musicians making music. It’s because the circumstances that those artists thrived under no longer exist, and likely never will again.
Something being accessible usually means that the results have a lower low-end and higher high-end, no? In the context of music, it would mean that there are bigger heaps of trash with a few hidden gems
Haha yeah we have seen some wonderful singers come out of nowhere with fully produced songs.
Yes there are a lot of people who are having fun, but people producing songs for fun doesn’t make songs you enjoy worst. It’s amazing that someone can from the comfort of their home and stuff off amazon they can produce a song in about 6 months with equipment/software that would require a studio 20ish years ago. Also probably never been more satisfying to produce a song. Even if it’s not “Great” it still adds to the joy of music.
The music equivalent of ‘everyone has a novel in them, and god willing that’s where most of them will stay.’
My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio
You know the funniest thing? Smartphone charging has been made much more powerful in the last years. Now, instead of 10W, they can seep 80W and charge really fast.
However, due to smartphones also using way more power than before and having way bigger batteries, all those improvements are completely offset.
I have a phone from 2017 and another one from 2023. Both take the same time to charge, and the new one needs a 40W brick, while the old one is happy charging on a 2.5W computer PSU. But the old phone lasts longer than the new one!
I find the time a battery keeps going to be almost irrelevant when I can charge from 0 to 100% in 25 mins.
And because I only charge from around 20 to 30% up to 80%, it’s a 10-15 minute wait at most.
My biggest battery drain is sot, with a large battery it’s not inconvenient at all.
Old phones can’t compete and iPhones are a joke.
Yes, wireless charging is the pinnacle of design and totally isn’t a huge waste of power for a slight increase in convenience. Also I’ve haven’t read it myself, but I’ve hearsay’d some amazing(ly awful) things about the USB-C spec (or lack thereof).
Steam deck everyday
Storage. SanDisk recently announced an 8TB SD card. I remember back when all I had was 1.44MB floppy disks in like the 90s.
We have some pretty amazing drugs today. Both commercial and recreational.
I’m happy you like your scooter, but it’ll soon be a piece of toxic garbage like most outdated technology.
I mean technically smartphones. I have watched the smartphone world start, and BLOSSOM, and now we’re certainly seeing some enshittification here & there but I have started to fully embrace the budget Samsung phones. Knowing that except for the insulting, glaringly bad exception that is battery life, it is better than the SGS3 of old I had in almost every other way.
I really appreciate LED lights. They used to be so expensive, and yet so basic!! $10/bulb, back when the USD was worth even half a damn, and quality? Ehhh you buy what we have, go fuck yourself. Now… I can buy a pack of quality LED bulbs where I can shift the tone/shade on each one via toggle switch, an 18-pk is $37? A little over $2/bulb?? 😌 Very, very cool
I just picked up TWO solar panel, rechargeable, D-Cell battery Duracell LED lanterns for $16 each (Costco). USB-C cable included. They can also be use to charge small electronics. Pretty nifty, and for not much money at all! You couldn’t get that 10 years ago.
Security cams & recordings, obviously there’s also a massive uptick in abuse/deception/people being shitheads. Comes with the territory. But take the shitty people out of the equation & objectively speaking, picture/video/audio quality is soooooooo much better. And digital storage has never been cheaper! So many good options! I saw a $30 security camera you can stick on your WiFi smart garage door opener. Again, looks pretty slick & it costs just a little more than eating out at a nice restaurant. Crazy.
CNC milling & creating art, structures, whatever with lasers & machines is fucking amazing & getting better, more advanced with each passing day. We can mill pieces to screw or friction fit…precisely…together. It’s so simple but I’m telling you guys, this is going to lead to a lot of really cool stuff! And some scary stuff. But again, comes with the territory.
On the point of Samsungs, maybe dont get them. They have the worst battery management of any android phone out there. Thats even after detailed usage management on the user’s part. I.e. turning off GPS/Bluetooth, deleting and disabling bloatware.
Lesser known brands like Sony and Motorola have mid range phones with excellent battery life.
I’m going to keep an open mind, but I haven’t seen much positive about Sony & Motorola smartphones. Haven’t even looked at them for probably 10 years.
A big thing that kept me away from them, aside from their reputation for lackluster/poor performance, was the lack of root/ROMs.
But I’ve gotten older. Specific root benefits have become much fewer, punishments for rooting are more common, well maintained custom ROMs just aren’t a thing (and for what phone?). So all of the rules have changed on me…and maybe it’s time to take another look at Sony, Motorola. 🙂 Do you have any specific recommendations?
I want USB-C, I mean they all should be. I want microSD expandable storage. I’d sure like an aux port but I can go without.
Medical things, mostly. Everyone experienced the speed that mRNA vaccines can be developed and deployed at scale. A lot is coming from that tech. One of the objectively good uses of AI is protein folding and discovering new compounds. Just being able to target a virus’s weak point is so new, stupid people are freaked out by it.
Consumer tech stuff like batteries and whatever the hype cycle is promoting — crypto or LLMs — gets all the attention but the life sciences field marches on. There are things that are going to revolutionize the way we think about certain diseases. In my lifetime, AIDS went from death sentence to something more like expensive diabetes.
And with emergency care, there are things that even an ER doctor with $200,000 in equipment can only hope to triage today that will be something an EMT can begin to triage on the way to the hospital with something simple. (NARCAN exists now but it’s an example of slow and steady progress. Imagine a NARCAN for heart attack or stroke where we just keep it in our first aid kits.)
I’ve been an EMT for over 15 years. It’s now common place that ambulances carry battery powered devices that do cpr compressions for you. The things are incredible, really. Freeing up a person from needing to do it, no longer worrying about fatigue, and not having an extra person to do compressions in the way of moving around the patient is just fantastic.
Just looked this up and found Lucas.
That looks straight up from Scifi, that is amazing.
The Lucas looks more Sci fi, but usage wise, I prefer one called AutoPulse. It looks less “brutal” when being used in front of patients family/bystanders, isn’t as loud, and the newer ones have a built in tarp with straps to pick up the patient and carry them so the stretcher. Also has a much lower profile.
Ooh watched an AutoPulse one!
AutoPulse looks almost Star Trek. Very sleek and usable. It looks so unassuming when they pull it out, then it makes that chest COMPRESS. I’m aware that you have to press hard enough to get the ribcage moving, but I was not prepared for such an unassuming device to have that much force. I can see them slipping a vest onto someone in star trek that pumps their heart and helps carry them to sick bay.
Lucas is more star wars. It looks like a rib cracker.
So I think I’d prefer an auto pulse XD
Lol. That’s a good take.
I’ll catch downvotes, whatever.
Is there too much hype in the AI space? Yes. Is it still absolutely incredible, the advancements we’ve made since 4chan made gpt2 racist?
We got LLMs that can one-shot code up simple games like snake and minesweeper. I can throw 12 pdfs at a single prompt and ask which of them talks about an idea that might not be explicitly mentioned in any of them and not only can it identify it, it can summarize it and expand on it.
Am I sick of seeing it shoved into everything? Yes. Is it basically magic? Also yes.
Yeah definitely this. The improvements are insane compared to 10 years ago. It’s just annoying that techbro’s and CEOs have decided that it’s the next big thing and will shove it into anything. To too many people AI is a tool that’ll solve any problem, even if it’s usually a very wasteful and unpredictable solution.
Luckily we seem to be hitting the hype plateau and people are getting increasingly sceptical. I’m just hoping it won’t lead to another AI winter. There’s still plenty to gain and figure out, but we don’t need the insane hype that exists now.
The funniest part is Hollywood thinking it’ll shave a fraction off their costs, and not obliterate their entire industry. We now have a CGI studio that runs on your video card. (Or at least everyone can see the path toward making that. The ingredients for this machine are a pirated movie collection, their Wikipedia articles, and obscene amounts of computer power. So it’s not like we could stop people from rolling their own.) You feed in some greenscreen footage, and out comes a whimsical enchanted forest or whatever. Currently still gloopy and samey… but right now is the worst it will ever be, again. And the tools that take off will be the ones that let humans guide the idiot robot around those details.
It’ll still take work to make anything worthwhile, but it won’t take an army of animators eighteen months, let alone a set, a crew, and a cast. The next big gay cartoon will come out of fucking nowhere. And it’ll be cheap enough that it won’t live or die based on merch.
Linux is pretty sweet. I haven’t got a new computer in over a decade, and don’t plan to, and this OS just continues to work like a dream.
this is the year of the linux desktop after all
I may become a Linux boy once windows 10 is EOL.
The enshittification of Windows seems to be accelerating at a crazy rate. Haven’t used linux in like 15 years when I tried using uBuntu, and I’ve heard it’s only grown exponentially better.
I also bounced off of Ubuntu, when it first came out and nowadays it is even more ridiculously simple to I install and start using.
No guarantees that you won’t have to do a bit of research of you’ve got particular hw or sw that you want to use, but as far as a general purpose os it has it all
“AI”, especially art. I’ve spent years trying to learn to draw on and off and have never gotten good at it, but now I can use words to create illustrations I want in a level of quality and detail I could never dream of.
Now I just want the interface to be easier and more able to understand natural language and be capable of making directed changes better.
Have you check out the stable diffusion plugin for Krita? The in painting technique seemed very cool watching someone work with it.
