I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.
An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.
If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.
That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.
Portable consoles. They’re dead now or replaced by indie shit. No, the switch doesn’t count, if it can’t fit in my pocket isn’t portable.
Cell phones, when they had personality. The 2000s was such a good time for them, you had so many designs. Slide out keyboard, panels that can slide, sleek designs, some had actual buttons .etc
But we’re now relegated to just a varying series of rectangles and squares. Yay…
I got one that slid up to reveal the keyboard after watching The Matrix, and I thought it was the coolest phone ever. I still have it, and I still think it is pretty cool.
Edit: it’s not an actual keyboard though, it’s a phone keypad for dialing or sending texts with t9 input.
It was the Samsung A737.
It looks like this closed
And here it is open
I fell in love with slide phones after watching Densha Otoko!
I still have my Sony Eriksson W580i, also thought it was the coolest thing.
Still works and holds a charge, pulled photos off of the memory card recently, cameras have gotten a lot better… Had the red one, have had some very brightly colored phones, my favourite being the bright yellow Nokia Lumia 1020
Had an amazing camera on it.I think my favourite thing about those old Lumias was the dedicated camera shutter. The 1020 even had a battery grip case so you could hold it more like a digital camera.
Those are cool phones too, especially the red one! Yeah, the old digital cameras used to be junk. I have some old digital photos that look like they were taken on a potato.
When the Vengabus has poorly shielded speakers.
Micheal Fisher’s kbin account.
Mine folds in half, so that’s kinda cool
Pictures under glass: literally the only affordance anyone has now for device interaction
A bunch of tiny lightbulbs that use twisted light and quantum mechanics to turn on or off.
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.
To add, there is something about those old 40s and 50s era technical films like you linked that is just so… I don’t what exactly it is, but I find them fascinating and genuinely informative, even though they are explaining tech that is decades obsolete.
It’s pretty awesome that they are still available 70+ years later in excellent quality!
H model C-130s, the ones with the 4 square blade props? The engines and props are mechanically governed. There are electronic corrections applied, but the core of the systems are purely mechanical. Still flying.
Source: former flight engineer on them.
Centrifugal governors are possibly one of the origins of the phrase “balls out” or “balls to the wall” (although many say “balls to the wall” has to do with the ball-shaped handles on old aircraft throttle levers)
Also somewhat similar to governors are centrifugal switches, which are used in just about anything with an electric motor to disconnect the motor from a capacitor which gives the motor a little extra juice to get it going (I like this video for an explanation of how they work)
I didn’t know that was a thing. Thanks! I’m honestly surprised some MBA bean counter hasn’t replaced those with a chip of some sort by now. Really cool!
The idea of punch card programming blows my mind.
He’s not talking about punch card programming, that’s way more advanced and requires a Turing machine, what he’s talking about is computers as the term was using before what you would think as a computer existed.
The example in the video is for the computer on a cannon in a battleship. If there wasn’t a computer you would need to adjust the angle and height of the cannon, but that’s not something a human can know, what humans can know is angle to the ship and the distance to it, so instead you put two inputs where a human inputs that and you translate that into angle/height. Now those two would be very straightforward, essentially you just rename the height crank to distance. But this computer is a lot more complex, because wind, speed, etc can affect the shoot, so you have cranks for all of that, and internally they combine into a final output of angle/height to the cannon.
That’s cool, but punch card programming blows my mind.
Someone showed me a record turntable with what must have been a centrifugal governor! What an ingenious device. (I got the impression from him this was unusual for a turntable, at least…)
I was under the impression that all wind-up turntables (I.e.: from the shellac records and steel needles and mechanical reproducers era) were using mechanical governors
Maybe I’m wrong though.
Oh I know little to nothing about turntables, so you’re probably right :-)
Pre LCD/LED tech for numeral displays. Nixie tubes kicked so much ass, shame they are hard and expensive to source now.
Oh man…I have an entire ten page paper on the go about this topic and it just keeps growing. One day I’ll publish it in a blog or something, but for now it’s just me vomiting up my thoughts about mass market manufacturing and the loss of zeitgeist.
The examples that I always use are a) Camera Lenses, b) Typewriters, and c) watches.
Mechanical things age individually, developing a sort of Kami, or personality of their own. Camera lenses wear out differently, develop lens bokehs that are unique. Their apertures breath differently as they age No two old mechanical camera lenses are quite the same. Similarly to typewriters; usage creates individual characteristics, so much so that law enforcement can pinpoint a particular typewriter used in a ransom note.
It’s something that we’ve lost in a mass produced world. And to me, that’s a loss of unimaginable proportions.
Consider a pocket watch from the civil war, passed down from generation to generation because it was special both in craftsmanship and in connotation. Who the hell is passing their Apple Watch down from generation to generation? No one…because it’s just plastic and metal junk in two years. Or buying a table from Ikea versus buying one made bespoke by your neighbour down the street who wood works in his garage. Which of those is worthy of being an heirloom?
If our things are in part what informs the future of our role in the zeitgeist, what do we have except for mounds of plastic scrap.
The technology behind telecommunication.
Today everything happens inside your router, fast and silent. My father was a telecommunications engineer. When I was a amall boy (late 1980s) he once took me to his workplace (it was in the evening and he was supposed to troubleshoot). What today fits onto a few silicone chips inside a router took much more space back them.
I was in a room that was filled with several wardsobe-sized cabinets. Inside there were hundreds of electro-mechanical relays that were in motion, spinning and clicking, each time someone in the city dialed a number (back then rotary phones were quite common). It was quite loud. There also was a phone receptor inside one of the cabinets where one could tap into an established connection, listening into the conversation two strage people had (it was for checking if a connectiion works).
I still remeber the distinct “electrical” smell of that room (probably hazardous vapors from long forbidden cable insulation and other electrical components).
So when you dialed a number at one place with your rotary phone, you were able to move some electro-mechanical parts at another place that could be located somewhere else around the globe (hence long distance calls).
Video games. Way back then there was imagination involved, and companies took risks. Nowadays every game seems to iterate on the same tired formula. The only recent entry I can think of that bucked this trend in the past few decades was maybe Portal, but there have been few to no other recent games that come to mind. Fight me.
The imagination came from the limitations of the hardware.
Computers today are too powerful for gaming. Its resulted all the famous studios racing to the bottom with graphics their primary and generally only concern, and everything else coming a distant second.
But at least it left the door open for indie devs, whose lack of resources and experience are still capable of keeping that ember of imagination and innovation burning.
If you’re only talking about AAA games, sure.
Not a fan of indie games are you?
Baba is you, is a pretty original puzzle game. I’m not really into factorio, but it made tower defense cool again. There’s lots more that are weird and interesting like brigadore, airships conquer the skies, cruelty squad, superliminal.
As far as I remember, portal was a mod or indie game that valve picked up because they thought the idea was really good. It was really good.
A student project, actually. Valve saw a college student doing fun/weird shit inside their engine and went “You’re hired”.
That only makes it cooler
Alan Wake 2 and Control are fantastic!
Along with the others I’d also mention Outer Wilds and Viewfinder
Literally play any indie game.
You’re talking about the AAA space. Fuck those games. Play indies. There are so many creators carrying out the legacy of game development you’re talking about. Don’t buy the games directed by suits. Currently I’m playing Factorio: Space Age, which is great. I recently played Lorelie and the Laser Eyes, which is a really cool puzzle game where you’re actually going to want to write notes on paper, which feels very classic. There are so many out there, but you actually have to look because the don’t have the marketing budget of Ubisoft or EA.
What is the formula you’re talking about? Games are so diverse it’s pretty hard to see what single formula there could be that covers them all.
CDs and DVDs, because ownership beats convenience when you can get them second hand for pennies on the pound
I miss the satisfying act of slapping a cassette into a tape deck, then snapping it shut.
And the technology has evolved that I can actually record and re-record to these plastic discs using lasers and it all fits inside a 1cm-tall drive that sits on my desk. And if the manufacturer uses high-quality materials, the disc will last hundreds of years.
Also some discs I can then either ink-print or laser-print on the top of it? Simply amazing.
Also:
FUCKING LASERS DUDE! Lasers will never NOT be cool.
Why are the kind of holograms made my lasers not cool anymore? They’re just on credit cards and currency now. I always thought those were awesome. There used to be a hologram museum in Chicago when I was a kid. We went up there a few times and I always insisted on going.
The best ones were holograms of microscopes or telescopes and you could actually look through the eyepiece and see something through it!
I’m going back to video games that had multiplayer before we had network connectivity. If I wanted to play against a friend, we would have to get together in person and hang out. Game was done, you had a friend over for dinner. Or just a friend to come over and help you with the game. I miss when games were actual social events.
Cars used to be cool. Every car company had some kind of sporty car, a couple cheap cars, a big luxury sedan and, a while ago, a station wagon.
Now every car is an SUV or CUV. Sedans are getting phased out. Cool sports cars don’t make money so they don’t make them. People don’t buy station wagons so they don’t make them. And they’re pushing big, angry trucks on everyone.
I could mention toasters or pinball machines or flickering light bulbs or unusual people movers, but instead I’ll save some time and just link the whole obligatory channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
Technology connections is the gent that inspired this thread. Was watching one of his videos about old camera flashes (LITERALLY TINY FLASHBANG GRENADES. WE USED TO USE FUCKING BOMBS TO TAKE PHOTOS IN THE DARK HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT???) and figured “huh… There are a lot of old inventions that might suck to use but are conceptually really cool, aren’t there?”
Fun fact, he’s in the fediverse! He’s @[email protected] over on mastodon.
CD players/walkmans. Wearing your headphones and jamming out music on your CD player makes you 10X cooler in my eyes.
Most weapons. Bows and swords are cooler than guns and knives. Trebuchets and catapults are cooler than any form of modern artillery.
Modern warfare, when it becomes necessary, should be fought purely with weapons designed prior to the 16th century. Just replace horses with dirtbikes and ATVs.
Dune style personal shields can’t be invented soon enough.
Then knife fighting will make a big comeback.
Guns are pretty neat once you start to understand the engineering and extremely precise tolerances that go into them.
I disagree, firearms are way cooler than bows or swords. Sure, swords are cool but there’s only so many ways you can make a pointy sharp metal stick, or put a string on a piece of wood. But firearms in the early 1900s where absolutely wild when it comes to internal mechanics. Same thing goes for siege weapons and artillery, a trebuchet, catapult or ballista are cool at a medieval exhibit, but they ain’t a Schwerer Gustav railway canon.
But this is a statement on its own. Now every gas operated gun is either a AR-15 or AK. Every “new” gun is a “Tactitech Eaglefire XK-34-1050-Superbadger Ultradog”, and at the end its just another AR-15 with some sharp bits added to it.
Older firearms where way cooler an they don’t make them like that anymore.
Surprisingly, 3D printing is where most of the firearm innovation is happening now. Some use off the shelf parts from common guns like the AR-15, others are completely printed. It’s a weird rabbit hole to fall into, but definitely interesting.
The “should this be legal/illegal” debate is its own rabbit hole as well.
It always struck me as weird that serial numbers and therefore the weapons tie to the owner are printed on the receiver. A receiver can be milled with a simple CNC mill or as recent development shown using 3D printers. We should rather serialize and register barrels, the one thing that needs highly specialized equipment to manufacture and what defines the guns caliber, potential muzzle velocity and has unique thread profile.
While yeah, AR and AK patterns are everywhere, there’re still neat things to find. The Kriss Vector has their innovative approach to recoil control, the Boberg pistol reverses the usual way rounds are stripped drom the mag.
The magic is still out there, but it never was nor will it ever be common.
Yeah, the most intricate gun in my eyes is the AN-94, canted magazine, recoiling barrel, specialized muzzle device, pulley system, 2 shot hyperburst. What were they smoking when developing this thing?
When you break it down, yeeting a small piece of metal, accurately, up to a mile, through the use of handheld controlled explosions, is way cooler than just yeeting a pointy stick with another stick and a string. So, I am inclined to agree with you.
From an engineering standpoint, firearms are so much more fascinating.
Still amazes me that at the end of the day, most of them are fired by what is essentially a mouse trap. I’m curious when electronically activated cartridges become acceptable. Imagine how much space/bulk you can relocate from a pistol without the need for a mechanical hammer/striker. Think about getting a crisp and responsive trigger on a bullpup style setup. How much more accurate could you be with a long range rifle if you eliminate the trigger pull from moving the weapon (have it disconnected from the firearm, like a remote camera trigger).
Modern warfare, when it becomes necessary, should be fought purely with weapons designed prior to the 16th century. Just replace horses with dirtbikes and ATVs.
You do not want this, the level of suffering that came with these battles was insanely worse than the fighting we have today with guns/explosives.
Interchangeable automotive/bicycle parts.
Or for that matter, interchangeable anything parts.
Both cooler and better at the same time. Interchangeable parts made it easier to both customize and repair your own stuff…
I love that Replaceable Parts is a technology you can research in Civilization. The first time I saw it I thought it was kinda stupid until I thought “Oh wait, does that mean that there was a time when replacement parts just wasn’t a thing?”
The concept of having interchangeable, standardized parts is actually kind of a new idea from the Industrial Revolution. Before then, everything was custom-made to fit. The example that comes to mind is firearms. All of the muskets and rifles used in the revolutionary war, for example, were hand-made and hand-fitted. The lock from one rifle wouldn’t necessarily fit on another. If your stock broke, you couldn’t just go get a new stock and slap it on - you had to bust out the woodworking tools and make a new one.
Used to be where Mongoose, Huffy, Schwinn, etc bearings and stuff were interchangeable. Used to be where NVidia GPUs could run in an AMD motherboard. I happen to own older things on both ends of that compatible spectrum.
Used to be where an Idle Air Control Valve from a Chevy would fit an Isuzu…
Used to be where NVidia GPUs could run in an AMD motherboard. I happen to own older things on both ends of that compatible spectrum.
I don’t know what you mean by that. The protocol for communication of computer parts is open source. Desktop computers are a great example of interchangeable parts. An Nvidia GPU that can’t run in an AMD motherboard is either not from the same era (so an equivalent AMD GPU wouldn’t work either) or a different form factor (e.g. trying to plug a laptop GPU on a Desktop)
The protocol of communication of computer parts is open source? Since when?
What the fuck is USB? And why is that proprietary?
Regardless, AMD vs nVidia might work together, but not optimally these days.
Regardless, AMD vs nVidia might work together, but not optimally these days.
And yet most of the time in the past 2 year the best choice for a gaming PC would be a 3D cache Ryzen with an Nvidia GPU. Is there something particular you have in mind that supposedly doesn’t work with an AMD chipset and an Nvidia GPU?
PCI-Express is not an open standard but both AMD and Nvidia are members and it’s what both use for their GPUs and AMD for it’s chipsets (as well as Intel). It’s certainly not a secret cabal.
It’s all in the same family, literally…
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/05/tech/nvidia-amd-ceos-taiwan-intl-hnk/index.html
This supports your claim of AMD vs Nvidia not working optimally together how?
The protocol of communication of computer parts is open source? Since when?
Since forever, which protocol do you think it’s not? For a few examples here’s PCI and DDR5
What the fuck is USB? And why is that proprietary?
USB is a standardized connector, with again an open source protocol. Here’s the specification in case you’re interested https://www.usb.org/document-library/usb-20-specification
Regardless, AMD vs nVidia might work together, but not optimally these days.
I would need a source for that, I’ve had AMD +Nvidia up until very recently and it worked as expected.
USB is absolutely not a standardized connector, otherwise it would only be one type of connector, not the dozen or so they’ve made over the decades. There’s nothing universal about it.
And if it was open source, then why doesn’t VirtualBox release the source code for their USB extension package?
USB is absolutely not a standardized connector,
USB is absolutely standardized, I even sent you the 2.0 spec, you can get the spec for the other versions on the same website.
otherwise it would only be one type of connector, not the dozen or so they’ve made over the decades.
Different versions/connectors have different specs, all of them open, otherwise different manufacturers wouldn’t be able to create devices that use it.
There’s nothing universal about it.
That’s ridiculous, first of all the name relates to the fact that it can be used for any data transfer as long as it’s serial. Secondly the sheer amount of different devices from different manufacturers that can be plugged via USB should give you a hint of just how universal and open the standard is.
And if it was open source, then why doesn’t VirtualBox release the source code for their USB extension package?
The standard is open, implementations of it are not, it’s like OpenGL or Vulkan.
Being able to build something with off the shelf parts is an art.
Used to be where NVidia GPUs could run in an AMD motherboard.
They still can.
Oof, wait. I mean when AMD processors were actually compatible with nVidia motherboards.
A8N-SLI Deluxe
But that’s not a thing for intel CPUs either, at least not anymore.
I’m not sure why, but Nvidia hasn’t been making chipsets/motherboard sfor quite a while. Or was there a point in time when it only made chipsets for intel CPUs?
Probably not as well as used to be though.
No, they work fine.
