I don’t know if people were really talking much about this kinda stuff back then, but a PC like device that wasn’t a laptop that allowed you to play full-on PC titles at home, either hooked to a TV or on its own, or on the move. Especially a device that also allows you to do normal computer things outside of playing games.
Again, not including laptop since I personally don’t know any people who actually used their laptops for playing games while in a moving vehicle. There probably are plenty of people who did it or do it, but I don’t know any.
US conservatives calling Russia the good guys and electing a convicted felon as president.
And literal nazis marching in the streets
My math teacher: “You can’t walk around with a calculator in your pocket!”
Well well well, look at me NOW, Mr. York!
I have a calculator in my pocket that I can talk to and it’ll talk back. “Hey Bixby, what’s half of five and three-eighths?”
About 33% of the time the dumb bitch comes back with “Okay, here’s what I found on the internet.”
never opens calculator app
Hah, I suck at math so I use it all the time
I don’t know if I suffer from dyscalculia but, man, is mental arithmetic so hard for some reason. I did well in all my other math classes up to college, wtaf, brain.
Electing a convicted felon President of the United States.
That one cuts deep. It’s really weird too because if you asked your parents they would say america would never elect a felon. Then they went on to elect a felon.
I sometimes think about trying to reach out to older folks to better understand their views but then I remember the absolute garbage brain rot they believe.
“Work from home” for so many jobs.
Which is only possible because of this magic technology to let you see and talk in near real time to anyone, anywhere. Used to be that if your sibling / parent / other family member wasn’t in town, you couldn’t see them in real time at any time, usually just a single / couple times a year at holidays.
Sure calling was a thing, but it’s just different when you can see someone.
Working from my bedroom in the US while seeing and speaking to a fellow developer living in Pakistan is really quite awesome.
The fall of America.
Well that was just hubris.
A cure for AIDS
I’m out of the loop, is that a thing? Best I know is that it’s highly manageable with treatment, not cured.
5th person confirmed cured of HIV. Stem cell transplant, apparently. Happened in Düsseldorf if your .de means anything.
Fascinating!
Nah, my .de means nothing, it was just an arbitrary choice of instance for me.
In my pocket I carry a library of Alexandria, an infinite Walk-man, a camera and a camcorder with effectively infinite film, a personal navigator… You get the idea, the list goes on. 80s me would have thought this was impossible, even if I am a bit disappointed about the flying car and hoverboard situation.
… a calculator, an electronic translator, an alarm clock, a video games console, an infinite DVD player, a spirit level, a personal weather forecaster, …
oh and I also think it can make telephone calls
Directly measuring gravity waves, the first measurement using LIGO was back in 2016 and they’ve observed almost a hundred so far. The observations are being used to create newer generations of gravity wave detectors.
Satellite navigation. In my early childhood we sometimes played a street racing video game that had an arrow pointing the direction on the screen. My mom would remark that she wished she had such an arrow when she drove a car IRL, by now she definitely got that wish.
GPS is now like mini maps in racing games.
Wait, how old is consumer satnav? I am pretty sure it was available (albeit not too commonplace) when I was a kid in the late 90’s or early 2000’s. I really do take it for granted… As long as my government doesn’t deliberately scramble it for security reasons, which happened a lot in the past year.
I don’t remember my first gps, but maybe early 2000’s. It was a Garmin, with no route planning, no maps and the position was coordinates
Dedicated units were available from brands like TomTom in the early 2000’s, and cell phones started getting it around 2007 or so (I remember very expensive blackberry plans had it around then). Android launched with it in 2008, and iPhones started allowing apps like Google Maps with turn by turn navigation by around the end of 2012 or so.
I think my family at least got it in the early-to-mid 2000s, a few years after that.
Telling the “computer” to do a thing and it just does. AI has it’s upsides and saves me so much time and energy
For real. Who would have guessed the most realistic prediction from Star Trek was talking directly to the computer. Whereas the least realistic one is that a post-scarcity society would benefit average people.
Burning a CD while using your computer for something else in the mean time.
That’s come full circle as many modern machines don’t even have disc drives anymore
Back in the 90s part of my job was to change the daily backup tape on a computer when I got there in the morning. It was an 8GB cassette the size of a deck of cards, and I remember marveling that I could carry 8 Gigabytes in my shirt pocket. Now you can get thumb drives for $20 that hold many times more, and thousands of times more than my first hard drive. (which cost about a grand)
Lol, that seems like a pain. God bless robotic tape libraries.
I was laughed at on the playground when I got the idea for wireless charging back in the 90s.
Nikola Tesla was working on proof of concept from 1900 until JP Morgan pulled project funding in 1917.
My man Nikola would have invented FTL travel had he lived six months longer
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Phones doing a good chunk of what computers can
A good chunk? My watch is far more capable than my first computer, many times the storage, and its screen has more pixels
I mean it’s almost wrong handed to call something like an iPhone or Android device a “phone” because it’s really a pocket computer that, among many other things, can place phone calls.
For that reason, I like how they are called Hand Terminals in the Expanse (books, I dont think they are referred to at all in the show)
In fact the thing that irritates me is how useless a smart phone is without a connection to the internet. You have to put in actual effort to make actual use of its local power.
Combined with the Internet a “phone” - as we still charmingly call it - does what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy could do.
The mortality of my parents. My mind is often stuck in the future of what ifs; but this is an inevitable event that will come sooner or later and it terrifies me. I do my best to cherish the time I’m fortunate to have with them while channeling energy into my own kids. I know it’s the natural cycle of things, but still… Life is hard man.
watching the decline is hard. I thought my dad would live forever. He’s been gone just over a year. My mom probably won’t be around much longer either. Let them tell you as many boring stories as they can.
I’m sorry, friend. Hope you’re doing well.
Yeah I honestly love the stories. Heard them all a thousand times, of course, but they never get old — especially knowing…
Anyways I can weather a lot of pain, but when it comes to my loved ones I’m a wreck.
I know that feeling and you’re not alone. It’s terrifying and I don’t know how others handle it or if everyone just keeps quiet about it or live in ignorance about that fact. Also doesn’t help that I don’t believe in an afterlive.
Everyone grieves in their own way. My mom died when I was 36. My dad died this year. It was really rough for a while when my mom died, it made my alcoholism worse, which lead to me losing my job, which made my alcoholism worse. I had horrible nightmares that I woke up screaming from for about six months. Eventually, with the help of my wife, I put my life back together.
I wasn’t close with my dad, he left when I was young. Pretty much feel the same since he died.
When it happens just do what feels natural. Your loved ones will understand. If you have kids try to explain it to them once you get a good grasp on it yourself. There aren’t any answers at the bottom of a thousand bottles of vodka though, I can promise you that much.
I’m atheist as well. My mom was a severely mentally ill alcoholic and she’s genuinely better off dead. If there was a hell, my dad would be in it, so I’m glad there isn’t. I think it’s more comforting, not less.
I appreciate your thoughtful and honest comment. Yeah, I don’t know… I’m really close with both my parents. That certainly makes it worse. We’ve been through a lot of shit. My parents separated once in my teens, then fully completed the divorce under COVID under my house with my wife and our first kid. Was a nightmare that made covid orders of magnitude worse — but we got through it. I got my dad out of his suicidal/homicidal mania; I got my mom clean off alcohol with the help of my sister and wife… They’ve both still got a lot of flaws, but at least now my parents are at least on speaking terms for the sake of their grand-kids and us. In some ways, despite all the turmoil of the world, I know these are going to be some of the better years where I can enjoy their company and see the nostalgia in their eyes as they spend time with my kids. We grew up religious but my whole family shifted toward agnosticism over the years, so yeah, I don’t expect much after death but it’s hopeful thought despite my better judgement I suppose…
