What's something that's seen as Obsolete, but isn't?

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?

I loved netvibes to get daily comics and blog posts. Unfortunately people stopped writing blogs and netvibes is also gone

Everyone is looking to establish dominance at any cost, when you don’t really need to.

You know, I see the rest, but I don't see this. A lot of people are straight-up doormats.

Caring about other people in general really

Hi, number! It’s your colleague: Another number!

That implies it was ever the norm. At best it's had moments.

As if! 😂

Well, you'll be happy to hear that starting next year, to earn a 5 star safety rating for the EU, cars will need to have less of all those things!

Edit: sorry. Not less knobs and buttons. More knobs and buttons, less touchscreen bs.

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.

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.

Eliminating an entire sense (touch) from being used to control things seems to be foolish.

Absolutely hate cars with those stupid big screens on the console. Give me buttons and knobs any day.

Cash

I heard of some drug dealers not accepting cash where I live

Hard drive full of MP3s is love, hard drive full of MP3s is life.

Although ATM my folder is just 1.1GB including the music videos, so I could probably store it on a thumb drive or carefully-chosen dishwasher; it doesn't have to be a hard drive.

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.

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!

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

Safety* $20* newfangled* might*

It's like you consciously added misspellings and bad grammar.

I can't related more on the second one. Slack and Microsoft Teams seems to be the default way to communicate in corporate environments.

Why use IRC when you could use matrix

Man, I really want to get back into IRC. Is there any good client you can recommend?

Forums: great store of knowledge and friendly, helpful people. If you ask a question in discord, nobody will ever see the answer again.

The search functions in forums are notoriously terrible though (although someone will inevitably ask you to try using it), so finding anything useful relies on "outside" search engines.

And the linear thread format has been terrible since it was invented (which is probably why discord uses it). You basically need to ignore half the posts to follow the one interesting side line that might end up with a solution.

Correlary: always test your backups and don't just assume that they will work when you need them.

I'd love to get into tape backups for my stuff. But the price for the drives is absolutely unjustifiable for hobbyists unfortunately.

We used to do tape backups up until about 6 years ago, but our higher headquarters decided they wanted to go all in on Rubrik instead. I will say that it is a lot easier to maintain and conduct restores from, and we have all of our various sites' Rubriks backing up to each other for redundancy. But you're definitely right that tape is far cheaper per GiB of storage than anything else.

Yep plus if you take your phone out you leave yourself vulnerable to being robbed.

I wear a cheapish waterproof one while swimming. The pool has a clock but I can't see it without my specs.

Yep. And it doesn't need to be charged every night like apple watch or similar.

Am looking for a new one if you have any recommendations.

I have one that uses the gaps between chain links to form a 7-segment display and it's dope.

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?

Not only is privacy not obsolete, it's easier now than eight years ago when I started degoogling, there are so many decent alternatives nowadays to all kinds of services and apps.

The latest version of COBOL came out in 2023.

Grace Hopper lives on

Grandma approved 😂

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.

Im obsessed with tape storage, but for audio. Nothing more real than audio on tape! Luckily it's catching on again. Music is so disposable now, I hope we can keep physical formats alive and keep corporations away from it (digital offers them unlimited control over us).

Tape itself is cheap, but buying the other equipment for it costs a fortune.

Tape is rad for long term storage

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.

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)

I don't think a mill can make the copper windings in the motor and isolate them. Same with the power cable.

Honestly, developers shouldn't be the front line for that if you're medium-sized or bigger anyway.

It's even simpler: AI can't really even begin with architecting, and will stubbornly defend nonsense code 5% of the time when you need >99% correctness for the thing to run at a basic level.

Have you tried an auto rotating mechanical pencil?

Other mechanical pencils suck because you get a flat side on the lead. An auto rotating one fixes this problem and makes it like new everytime you pick up and put down the tip to write.

Aren't mechanical pencils incompatible with scantrons?

I put vinyl siding on my house 15 years ago. Still looks brand new. Vinyl is here to stay.

I want tot go one further and say music cassettes. Love their sound and way more compact than vinyl. Sadly, there's no good new hardware being made at the moment, although I really like my We Are Rewind player, it's far from HiFi.

Letting maggots into wounds, too. And bloodletting in certian niche cases. You could make the case for trephination (putting a hole in the skull), even if they put you back together once your brain stops swelling now.

However, mercury as a medicine is right out.

I hate that music nowadays is supposed to go through my phone. I'm on my phone constantly. It's ridiculous that I can't do that while listening to music. A dedicated music player is essential.

Although I eventually gave up on CDs and now I just use an old phone.

Those impracticaly large fragile things, failing in cars with the slightest shock? Never cared for them.
Casettes you could throw around, tape them if necessary.
Later minidisc for a short time and digital mp3/flac... So no thank you, like DVD's spoiling plenty of movies by giving up in the middle due to a tiny scratch these things were a mistake.

I fucking hate that everyone is selling vinyls not CDs. I don't want to buy something that I do not have space for and would have to spend even more money to get a good player. My favorite bands sell vinyls but not CDs.

I love Technology Connections

Alive and... well alive in scientific computing

Because it can do something that the alternatives can't do or because they refuse to use something more modern?

Even worse, the US military, at least, is still using teletype machines and COBOL.

That's basically the answer to the opposite question: what is something that someone thinks isn't obsolete, but really is?

Came to say this. Fax just refuses to die.

...how are trains obsolete to anybody?

Hundred of billions of tonnes of freight are moved by rail each year globally, and people travel hundreds of billions of kilometers by rail.

I can actually game with one, and I've outright worn out 3. They last longer than traditional mice too.

As a stupid american that took a few German classes in highschool many years ago, I must know, do you call it "der Projektor" or "der Bildwerfer"?

Projectors that use actual acetates? Wow.

Counterpoint, fax is not encrypted and wire taps are very easy. At least e-mail can be encrypted so Joe shmoe on the street can't see it.

Besides, all faxing these days is going through VOIP and computers anyways.

Also all of german bureaucracy still works only with fax

Thanks for this, I was so disappointed when Google cancelled Reader.