191–200 of 279 posts
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One thing has not improved one iota in the 30 years I've had a cell phone - the voice quality.
At some point we may need a new name for that rectangle shaped thing that we use for everything but hardly for calling people anymore. Maybe smartbrick?
I love it that he uses the payphone to talk to his daughter's phone in her room... or rather that she uses her phone to call him ;) I also just set up a private phone network in my house, and my daughter can also call my room, from her bedroom. But it spiraled very quickly into something more evolved & more fun. It all started when I discovered after buying our new house that most rooms were pre-wired with RJ11 outle…
That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. I think it really highlights the simple joy that technology that literally just works can bring. I'm around the same age as the author, a little younger in fact, but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. Fr…
> That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. That admission was the best part! Everyone here was not goody two shoes in their teens. Accepting this reality can release people from expectations of perfection. Perhaps ironically, kids' behavior can improve when they feel their imperfections are airable.
And yet, it still doesn't sit quite right with me. I suppose its because there doesn't seem to be the slightest hint in the writing that credit card fraud is wrong, or that it's even something you shouldn't do. I looked for it.
And to add to that, what he did wasn't 'a hack', it wasn't particularly clever. It was just theft of services and a lot of lying because he didn't have something he wanted.
I think if he would describe it as a youthful indiscretion or something similar it would go a long way.
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I think the technology itself is 100x better in just about every way(Except for pure novelty, smartphones largely killed true gadgets) The lack of fun, to me, is mostly because of how everything changed around it. I can make a basic website now, no problem, everything is easier than it was aside from the fact we pretty much have to have HTTPS. But, nobody will read it, because it will be lost in a sea of clickbait. I…
because I will be distracted by the sea of clickbait Welcome to the 21st century! One of the 20th century's main themes was humans having to learn how to live in a world of infinite sugar, fat and salt. Here in the 21st century, we have to learn how to live in a world of infinite information. What will you do with your attention today? Will you consume the mental equivalent of broccoli or snickers bars?
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Very true. The old-fashioned telephone handset was a masterpiece of human engineering. I bet with state-of-the-art mic and speakers, it would still be way better than a smartphone for actual phone calls. Of course, I have to admit that my Bluetooth headset is pretty good, and a first-class gaming headset would be even better.
I converted an old rotary phone into a mobile phone ( https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/ ), and the quality is much better than a mobile. Even just the sidetone makes it SO much better to talk on. I have no idea why modern mobile phones have no (or very low volume?) sidetone. It makes the UX orders of magnitude better.
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> but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. That's right -- modern age stuff isn't as _hackable_. Especially not at the hardware level. You get an Alexa or a mobile phone or a camera, it's all just a chip on a PCB in a plastic case, not intended to be fiddled with by anybody (not the owner, not some repair show, literally _no…
> In the past you turned on your C64 and could start write away code, average Joe Teenager needs to install some IDE and pull in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places just to show a hello world. Or he could open a console in his web browser.
Just last month I got the opportunity to assist with an art installation that involved a phonebooth, which meant I got to take one home and poke around its insides. It was some of the most delightfully 90s tech I've seen in a while - 2-layer PCBs, all through-hole components, only a few well-known ICs... I ended up carefully removing all the "brains" and hooking up the insides to a raspberry pi, which could join a Di…
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> That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. That admission was the best part! Everyone here was not goody two shoes in their teens. Accepting this reality can release people from expectations of perfection. Perhaps ironically, kids' behavior can improve when they feel their imperfections are airable.
In the grand scheme of things, what he did is hardly the end of the world. And yet, it still doesn't sit quite right with me. I suppose its because there doesn't seem to be the slightest hint in the writing that credit card fraud is wrong, or that it's even something you shouldn't do. I looked for it. And to add to that, what he did wasn't 'a hack', it wasn't particularly clever. It was just theft of services and a l…
For the same reason you’ll rarely see urbex photographers expressing remorse for trespassing. Getting onto skyscraper roofs and into steam tunnels is just what you do.
Related - I went to college in the late 90s, at the end of this era, where there was a constant game of cat and mouse between the University unix and network admins and the hacker kids. Yes it was technically felonies all night long, but there was legitimate mutual respect for technical skills on both sides and following the unwritten rules of not causing data loss or disrupting services. This is how I learned the skills to start my career, and probably how they learned themselves back when they were students. For them to rat out a student was kind of unsportsmanlike. It would be admitting they weren’t good at their jobs.
I’m told this hacker culture no longer exists at my Uni. If you get caught escalating privileges on a computer you’d be facing expulsion and referral to the police.
Naturally, I imagine he used the stud finder on himself a few times when his wife was in the room.
Nostalgia: Early 1960s near Liverpool UK. Being taken up the street to the phone booth to learn how to make a phone call (coins, dial number, press A button, talk, hang up, press B button to claim any leftover coins). Big thing when you are 6 years old.