Asklemmy

44149 readers

1282 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

255

What's Some Tech That Was Better Than It Is Now? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by wuphysics87@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

323 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When you connect a new device to a 'smart' tv, you must pay homage to the manufacturer with a ritualistic dance. Plugging and unplugging the device. Turning them on and off in the correct sequence like entering a konami code.

Every time you want to switch devices, the tv must scan for them. And god forbid you lose power, or unplug something. You are granted the delight experience of doing it all over again.

I have fond memories of the days of just plugging something in, and pressing the input button. Instant gratification. It was a simpler time.

What is some other tech that used to be better?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] son_named_bort@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I don't know if it counts as tech per se, but phone calls. It used to be the case that many if not most phone calls people received were important, so they would have a good reason to answer the phone. These days most calls are spammers or scammers and a lot of people don't answer the phone because of this. With spoofing, even calls that appear to be from a legitimate number can easily be a scam, and it's hard to trust any calls these days.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 8 points 5 months ago

You can get around that by getting a phone number from a fairly distant location. Spoofed numbers will almost always use the same area code as your number. So if I were to get a phone number from, say, Presque Isle, ME, and started getting calls from the 207 area code, I'd know that I could safely ignore every one of them.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Tbf though it's not hard to differentiate the two unless you're Kitboga's grandma.

"Wow Steve, nice accent. You been spending a lot of time in Calcutta (or a robot factory depending) recently? And why do you know my car's warrantee is about to expire (even though I bought it used and 20yr old)?"