space travel is nice, still early
The good things in the current age in tech
21–30 of 120 posts
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#22My unfiltered additions: * SpaceX. I have lots of reservations about the company but the fact that they are consistently doing things previously thought impossible is very important for humanity in general. * The new Dune movie was downright amazing. The CGI was believable and an important part of the story. * AI-generated art. Fascinating. * Wikipedia. Wow. * I can invest in lots of different assets relatively easil…
For cities with a dense urban core (of which mine, Philly, certainly is) I'm really hoping we lean in on bikes (electric or not) moreso than electric cars. Even less carbon-intensive to produce, and in a city with this level of density it's shocking how quickly you can get around by bike. I would go so far as to say it's often faster than driving if you consider the time you spend looking for parking.
It's just that with our current car-centric infrastructure, it's way too dangerous.
Plus with some e-bikes, you can detach the battery and carry it with you indoors to charge it back up. Try that with an electric car!
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#23My 8 year old son has a Nintendo switch. I recently showed him a video of the 80' "Mattel Electronic Football Handheld Game" which is essentially just a handful of dim LED's and some control buttons. I used to fight my brother to get time playing on that old thing. My son may never truly appreciate how far we've come with respect to technology. The other thing I'd like to point out is that you either could afford som…
The next generation is going to be a bunch of talentless game addicts.
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#24We have reasonably powerful single board general purpose computers. Open source desktop operating systems have surpassed windows and Mac in terms of quality. It's true. AMD is stronger than ever. Mice and keyboards have improved massively. TVs finally allow higher than 60 Hz input. Took them 20 years. Electric vehicles are about to become the norm. Not just cars. I could go on for a while but frankly I am way more ex…
> keyboards have improved massively Features such as RGB lighting/doubleshot keycaps, Bluetooth, and USB are nice, but for me the massive improvements have been retro features from the 1980s (or earlier), such as electromechanical switches, tactile feedback, keybed curve/sculpting, and well-made, swappable keycaps (including ones made from PBT as well as ABS plastic.) And excepting Apple laptops (I still have the "bu…
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#25My unfiltered additions: * SpaceX. I have lots of reservations about the company but the fact that they are consistently doing things previously thought impossible is very important for humanity in general. * The new Dune movie was downright amazing. The CGI was believable and an important part of the story. * AI-generated art. Fascinating. * Wikipedia. Wow. * I can invest in lots of different assets relatively easil…
Not just electric cars but electric vehicles! Cities could be designed around electric bikes and scooters!
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#26As much as people complain about the walled gardens of Google and Facebook, overall the barrier of entry to computing as fallen significantly.
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#27My 8 year old son has a Nintendo switch. I recently showed him a video of the 80' "Mattel Electronic Football Handheld Game" which is essentially just a handful of dim LED's and some control buttons. I used to fight my brother to get time playing on that old thing. My son may never truly appreciate how far we've come with respect to technology. The other thing I'd like to point out is that you either could afford som…
Yeah, imagine not knowing some factoid, and it not being practical to find it out... That's completely different pre-internet vs. post-internet.
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#28My take: fusion will change everything. I don't think people understand that controlled fusion is actually on the horizon finally, and it is going to change absolutely everything.
Just to be clear, I don't personally have a position on this; I don't know enough about the field. But I'm very interested in understanding developments in energy production, as at the end of the day, this is humanity's only real source of leverage.
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#29Or if we’re sticking with tech = computers, I can sculpt for free in blender (the software) and print it with a 3d printer. Or paint in procreate/photoshop on my ipad with this fantastic not-really-a-pencil (and somehow procreate is only $10??). Or learn to draw from the internet.
Or the fact that nothing like D&D Beyond existed for a game I’m playing, so I was able to put up an app based on free software (react + yjs) on cloud servers god knows where for dirt cheap without knowing much of anything about any of those things.
Hobbies and leisure activities seem to be pretty accessible (in price). The downside for me is that all the accessible addictive stuff (like this site) makes it hard to actually dedicate time to the hobbies I want to spend time on.
[0] Unfortunately, I couldn’t find data on prices of various art supplies going very far back.
Re: The good things in the current age in tech
#30Failure to install, or crashing on startup, sometimes even requiring a reinstall of the entire OS.
This would happen in the open source community too, but that was to be expected.
I haven't experienced this in many years though, so I suspect we are doing something better.
Also package management has come a long, long way. Everything has a package manager now, that creates a new kind of problem but it's better than before.