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Life Improvements Since the 1990s

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Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#341

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

api wrote: post #316
dalbasal wrote: post #81

This reminds me of a golden age blog post, when lists turned out to be an understudied literary device. I'm a fan of "dumps." Some interestingly debatable ones here: " Intellectual Property Maximalism rollback: copyright terms have not and probably will not be indefinitely extended again to eternity to protect Mickey Mouse, and in 2019, for the first time since 1998, works entered the public domain " I think the easy…

I would bet that today's public domain open web is larger than it was in 1999. It's just harder to find because search engines prioritize large closed silo sites and outside those sites search has been largely destroyed by spam. It's sort of like the people who say mobile devices are destroying the more open PC market and replacing it with closed mobile "consoles." There are far more PCs out there today than there we…

>It's sort of like the people who say mobile devices are destroying the more open PC market and replacing it with closed mobile "consoles." There are far more PCs out there today than there were in the 1990s and they are cheaper, faster, easier to use, and more versatile.

Well, there definitely are more PCs now than in 1991, but pre covid-WFH era, PC sales were at an all-time low, following a multi year downward trend, thanks to people moving to those closed mobile devices and consoles.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#342

Post by JeremyNT »

This one stood out for me:

> All-You-Can-Eat Broadband

... in some places, with some providers. My local broadband monopoly imposes metered data usage, with caps and overage charges. You have to pay $30 to have unmetered access.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#343

Post by duderific »

nostrademons wrote: post #294

I don't think the author has kids, but as a new parent the 2020s have numerous improvements over the 1990s: Click & go stroller & carseat systems are magical. Used to be that if your baby fell asleep in the car, you'd have to wake them up to undo the 5-point harness, transfer them to stroller, buckle another 5-point harness, undo it when you get to your destination, and then deal with the screaming baby. Now the cars…

There is a huge downside to the cheapness of toys though. Every house with little kids is now swimming in cheap plastic junk. Even if you take a hard line with your kids, they'll still get piles of garbage on birthdays, holidays and anytime family comes to visit.

When I was 7 years old way back in the day, all my toys could fit in a small bin about 24 x 24 inches.

80% of the crap in our house never gets played with, just sits in the bottom of a toy box taking up space.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#344

Post by IshKebab »

coldtea wrote: post #302

It's unbelievable how inconsequential most of those are... Unlike other things, if you didn't have them, you wouldn't really think twice about them in the first place, except as very minor inconveniences...

It's not really surprising lots of them are fairly minor given that it is meant to be an exhaustive list, not a list of only significant changes.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#345

Post by guntars »

toast0 wrote: post #299
wolverine876 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And not only that, a lot of the improvements in these tools, services, and supply chains means you can design, prototype, and mass manufacture a product without buy-in from a major corp. A great point. While I'm well aware of it, is there a book or guide to how that is done? 'Global supply chain manufacturing for noobs'? I'm looking for something with real expertise and research behind it, not someone's blog post.…

Global supply chain manufacturing for noobs in two parts: Part 1; make a compelling mockup, post to kickstarter etc and other social media Part 2: bide your time with product update mockups until knock offs appear on Alibaba. Make a show about complaining about the knock offs and then return the kickstarter deposits.

This is what's happening with open source hardware. For example, VESC and ODrive both quickly had knockoffs in all the usual places. The maintainers were somewhat understandably irked by this, but if you ask me it's exactly what should be happening. Maybe the issue was the knockoffs not complying with the license or not giving credit, but if that's all good and proper, and we should check as the end buyer, it's a net benefit to the consumer.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#346

Post by mywittyname »

pessimizer wrote: post #322
ghaff wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably in 1991, you're getting in on the ground floor but it's a mixed bag. Your new grad salary is probably going to be around $40K or so in the US. And dot-bomb is 10 years in the future. And that list of companies is sort of a mixed bag. Adobe has mostly done pretty well through the years. Sun Microsystems did have a very good decade through the dot-com years but then didn't. Apple was really struggling at that…

> Your new grad salary is probably going to be around $40K or so in the US. Of course $40K then is $80K now, and you were working at 9-5 at BigCo, with a pension plan. Interest rates were 3-4x what they are now, the value of the house that you spent a couple of years salary on is probably going to quintuple, and the stock market runup over the next 30 years is going to be unreal.

You might also be describing 2021-2051.

Well, except pension, which were largely gutted in the private sector by 1991 (it was the plot of the 1987 movie Wall Street).

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#347

Post by CryptoPunk »

anticodon wrote: post #192
iambateman wrote: post #14

I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. This article explains why I would much rather be young now rather than before.

Destruction of the USSR in 1991 gave a boost to the Western economies by eliminating a strong competitor and opening a new huge market. While you enjoyed your life in 1991, people around me literally died of hunger, because Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their advisors from USA killed almost all the industry on the former USSR territory overnight. People lost jobs, people lost savings, people lost meaning of life overnigh…

The USSR destroyed itself. It was bankrupt by 1989:

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/22/world/soviets-foresee-bud...

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#348

Post by wolverine876 »

guntars wrote: post #345
toast0 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global supply chain manufacturing for noobs in two parts: Part 1; make a compelling mockup, post to kickstarter etc and other social media Part 2: bide your time with product update mockups until knock offs appear on Alibaba. Make a show about complaining about the knock offs and then return the kickstarter deposits.

This is what's happening with open source hardware. For example, VESC and ODrive both quickly had knockoffs in all the usual places. The maintainers were somewhat understandably irked by this, but if you ask me it's exactly what should be happening. Maybe the issue was the knockoffs not complying with the license or not giving credit, but if that's all good and proper, and we should check as the end buyer, it's a net…

> This is what's happening with open source hardware. For example, VESC and ODrive both quickly had knockoffs in all the usual places. The maintainers were somewhat understandably irked by this, but if you ask me it's exactly what should be happening.

That is fantastic (at least as far as I understand it). What a fantasy of open source that not only do people download your code and compile it, but they download your hardware design and manufacture it!

Who doesn't it benefit? The designers and other developers now have prototypes, etc. without having to pay for manufacturing.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#349

Post by CryptoPunk »

Robotbeat wrote: post #171
lotsofpulp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a better graph including the past 5 years: https://cdn.dqydj.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/inflation-m... Source: https://dqydj.com/individual-income-by-year/

That is much better and it shows that median household incomes hadn’t grown much until recently (as the tight labor market and years of boom have pushed up wages). I still think it’s crazy our minimum wage is so low ($7.50/hr today vs $11/hour in late 1960s in today’s money). IMHO, it should be pinned to productivity growth since the 1960s (the question is: should we have higher or lower inequality than in the 1960s?…

Household income doesn't track household prosperity, because household sizes have gradually declined.

>>as minimum wage becomes cheaper through inflation, it makes less sense for companies to invest in productivity enhancing automation and efficiency as they can just hire cheap workers and fire them as needed.

There is a finite number of workers. Once they are all employed, only investment into productive capital raises productivity.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#350

Post by wolverine876 »

owenversteeg wrote: post #306
wolverine876 wrote: post #109

> Fresh Guacamole can be easily bought due to pressure pasteurization Where do I find this? I tried this spring and summer but couldn't find guacamole that doesn't spoil within a day or two, especially after being opened, which is too soon to be practical.

It looks like Wholly Guacamole, with 83% market share of the US guacamole market, is pressure pasteurized, so it should last significantly longer: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/econo... As far as prices go, seems like Walmart has them at $4.89 for 6 mini cups (12oz total or 340g) or a large single package of 15oz/425g for $4.98. An average avocado weighs 136 grams without the pit or skin acco…

Thank you! I've eaten Wholly Guacamole; not really the best, but now that I know it's pasteurized, I might try it again.
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