What opinion just makes you look like you aged 30 years
Music in restaurants and bars is just too loud. I know why the music is loud, but I am still going to shake my fist at it like Grandpa Simpson.
Same. It’s getting worse over time too, I can hardly hear anything anyone is saying in restaurants and bars anymore.
I felt my inner boomer grow stronger after writing that.
I think many grey hairs suddenly sprouted on peoples’ heads after commenting on this thread.
I’ve thought this since I was young. Background music? Cool, keep it quiet so we can talk.
Does this mean loud music is bad? No, I’ve been a put my head in the PA speakers metal head since I was young too. But I don’t expect a waiter to serve me then.
Beyond that, it’s a known problem that as you get older audio distractions become more severe, and I’m sure there’s a neurodivergent dimension to it too, so it’s one of those things where we are actively punishing people for wanting to be out and socialise. Also sure it’s one of those things where everyone thinks they have to do it but don’t
If I know I’m going to one of those extra loud bar or clubs, I always being some earplugs. I have some pretty stealthy ones in a mint tin. I can’t hear people talk either way, might as well not hurt my ears.
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Single player modes in games shouldn’t require internet connection.
That fact that’s considered a boomer take makes me sad
Exactly this
Cars shouldn’t be loaded with user-facing technology. Bring back analog dashboards and buttons for climate control!
I just want to be able to adjust the stereo without looking away from the road. Is that too much to ask?
Interesting fact: I just got a new ev (so a battery hooked up to a computer with wheels) - and it has buttons! It also has dials for sound and climate.
Now to be fair it also takes interacting with a touchscreen to turn on the heated seats, but I’d say it’s progress in the right direction.
What EV did you buy?
Iconiq 5. I can honestly say I really enjoy it (and I’m not a car person).
I hate the touch screen climate control, especially when’s it’s cold and it takes the touch screen awhile to get started…
Bring back stick-shift, too. People shouldn’t be driving if they have no grasp of the mass and inertia of their car. We should be able to disengage the engine at will. And we should have to pay attention when we drive.
I’m not subscribing to anything. If I buy something, it’s fully functional, and it’s mine. There is no ongoing relationship between me and the manufacturer. Done.
Especially when it comes to expensive equipment like cars, computers, printers, etc.
who doesn’t want a subscription for heated seats on their $100k car? /s
I’m working on this, the subscription model has gotten so expensive now that literally everything uses it. Do you have any tips besides “just pirate everything”?
Unfortunately the only alternative for some things are becoming very tech literate and running an objectively worse mediocre open source software
This is what I’m resorting to. Instead of pirating Lightroom, I’m using RawTherapee for my (non-professional) photo editing of my x100t photos. In the old days, I’d have done it (I still have a very old version of LR exe in one of my hard drives) but today I’d rather not have a ton of keygens and crap on my laptop.
Use free or at least alternatives without a subscription model where possible
For cars? Just buy one that’s a bit older
Movies etc? Pirate
Depends on the media, buy from bandcamp, steam
Bandcamp is the move.
Just pirate some of the things?
I mean, that’s basically what FOSS is about.
Anything that doesn’t incur an ongoing cost to provide should be legally prohibited from being sold as a “subscription.”
Not everything needs a law against it. I’m just not going to buy into their fucked up system.
Except more and more companies are hopping on this gravy train because they can get away with it. At some point (and that point may be now already, depending on the sector), it’s going to be difficult-to-impossible to buy anything without this subscription bullshit.
I don’t want to have a subscription for everything. It used to be possible to pay a one-time fee for software and use it as long as I want. Now I have to pay a monthly fee and once I finish paying, I can’t use the software anymore. And it’s not like I constantly get updates for the software. Often it stays the same for months or years.
I understand that software has a price, but no way these prices are sometimes justified…
I agree, but from a !piracy perspective
I’m always on the hunt for self hosted/open source solutions.
I have three:
- They don’t make things like they used to
- We don’t need all these damned computers in everything
- Modern music sounds like crap
I’m 17.
I think two out of those believes stem from survivorship bias. You think of old music and consumer products as superior because the only ones that “survived” are the good ones. No one remembers bad music from 50 years ago, and for every old thermos flask/blender/knife that you see around there are dozens that broke years ago.
That’s fair.
There was song from the 60s (supposedly the best music everyone tells me) called “7 little girls”. The chorus went “7 little girls sitting the back seat kissing and hugging with Fred”
Thankfully a mostly forgotten song now, but a clear example of how bloody awful pop music is not a new phenomenon.
I say yes for the music one, maybe not for the first. There are literally different materials being used and increasingly optimised-for-profit-to-effort-ratio processes. Many things are just straight up made more cheaply because we have the technology to do that.
Although for the music one, a relevant lyric comes to mind:
Hip hop? Buddy, don’t get me started
So how do you get yourself charted?
Kids love this stuff 'cause it’s so new
Put in a sample from a pop song too
You’ve got a hit, how come it sold?
The melody and it’s 30 years old!
Hip hop is pretty mainstream now but it started as counter culture. And I don’t think a sample in a song makes it similar to the sampled song. A lot of tracks that rely on samples completely create something new. Look at J Dilla who relied almost entirely on samples. His music isn’t a collection of old songs, it’s entirely new songs. I guess this thread is for boomer takes.
Or the Prodigy, who relied almost entirely on samples yet made some of the most exciting music we had ever heard.
My theory on the first one is that it’s usually hard to make things cheap and consistent, so it often starts off as bad, then good but expensive, and then trends towards and past “good enough”
Modern music is fire when you know where to look but I’ve always felt like pop music has been taking a very slow weird turn. It seems like 1970s and earlier it was mostly good, and mostly good after, but at this point I’m just confused
- The internet was way better before it became a giant shopping mall.
- Those cars that don’t have the flecks in the paint look like children’s toys.
Then, I have a couple that pre-date even boomers by many years 😅:
- Handkerchiefs kick the shit out of paper tissues.
- Cars have made the world a worse place.
I miss the era when the web was just this
Handkerchiefs are the bomb. I carry one everywhere I go (when I don’t forget 🥲). Really feel like they could make a comeback with the right marketing.
Go pick up a heap at your local hospice shop. I’ve gotten a lot of mine there and made a few more out of scrap fabric. I use old flannelette cotton sheets for our spill rags.
Those cars that don’t have the flecks in the paint look like children’s toys
Actually, why do so many modern cars straight up look like oversized toys?
Electric cars are the worst for this IMO. Aside from the Tesla model 3, Nissan leaf and a handful of other ones… everything else looks like an oversized replica remote control toy to me. Some are nice, like the VW minivan, but most look like cheap wannabes. I can’t quite put my finger on it
Those cars that don’t have the flecks in the paint look like children’s toys.
Finally I can out my finger on what bothers me about them
I always bring half a dozen hankies with me camping. They’re so useful on a limited inventory. They help you grab hot things. As napkins. Allergies. Wounds. Cleaning knives. Storing spare fish hooks/lures i.e. pocket tackle. I handwash them in the river and they sun dry quiet quickly.
Love hankies. I miss the old web too.
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Digital privacy is important, and it’s important to be anonymous on the internet
I feel like this could go either way whether it’s a boomer opinion or not. Real boomers are not very tech literate and probably don’t have much of a notion of online privacy.
On the other hand for those that were adults in the early years of the internet, they likely think we’re all giving away too much of our private information.
Boomers (my parents’ generation) were telling us 90’s kids how dangerous it was to put your information online, but then it seemed once social media happened they all forgot about such privacy concerns entirely. They were right the first time!
You’re right, i guess i am mistaken
I shouldn’t have to subscribe to software. And I have only made one exception due to the exceptional functionality of the product.
99% of software asking for a subscription isn’t exceptional and could be done as a stand alone item.
I bought FL Studio back in 2017 and have received free updates since then.
Meanwhile, most other software companies: “nooo, you can’t own the software, you have to pay for a subscription and you can’t keep using it when it’s over! Also if you want updates you have to pay for the premium subscription”
(this comment is not sponsored lmao)
The only exceptions I can think of are streaming services that simply couldn’t exist as standalone one-off products (Spotify, Netflix etc). But yeah, there’s no logical reason something like Photoshop should ever require more than one transaction.
Smart TVs are stupid and only exist to make ad revenue and sell user data. I’d pay extra for a TV like an LG C2 OLED but with no OS. Just a monitor that displays sources plugged in.
Look at commercial displays… and look to pay a lot more for them, which is probably what you’d expect.
Had a samsung TV I caught with a pihole trying to call home. Had no way of disabling it.
Switched to a sony TV that lets you turn off smart TV mode. So far data from the router and pihole shows no attempts to bypass that and I don’t think it has hidden mobile network connectivity.
What was really worrysome was that the thing tried to connect to one of those services that scan whatever you’re watching - I am just using my TV as a playstation screen, even watch Netflix on playstation
also my boomer opinion on a tangent topic is that I should be able to rearrange or delete the bloatware that comes on my PS (or any device for that matter) angry fist intensifies
- In cars knobs are better than touch screens.
- VR was a gimmick 20 years ago, VR is a gimmick today.
I’ve never met someone who prefers touchscreen climate controls in a car tbh. Everyone I know agrees that it’s stupid and unsafe
Strong agree on the first, and on the second VR is like most over-hyped technology: useful and unique, but not for the reasons people believe
As over-hyped tech goes VR is bad, but 3D cinema is not far behind.
Basically any opinion of the modern Internet I give.
I’m a certified computer expert, but I sound like a Luddite when it comes to anything mainstream.
I noticed a lot of people who pay attention to modern internet privacy seem to sound like Luddites these days…
I’m a certified computer expert, but I sound like a Luddite when it comes to anything mainstream.
I thought it was pretty well known that the magnitude of one’s ludditism related to their computing expertise as a U-shaped curve. That is, (actual) experts and non-experts are equally Luddite. It’s the mediocre and peri- technologists that drive hype. Right?
Hah, I haven’t heard that analogy before, but I see what it’s getting at. I wouldn’t say it’s a rule to live by, but as you learn more about technology you (usually) also learn more about its constant abuse and its critical flaws.
It’s the mediocre and peri- technologists that drive hype. Right?
I’m not sure exactly who you mean, but never believe the hype:
- Steve Jobs didn’t know shit about computers and took the fame from people who did, just like Edison and Musk.
- Most people studied in machine learning hate the term “Artificial Intelligence”, it’s a marketing gimmick used by marketing.
- There’s a similar, but lesser, sentiment in security being called “cyber”.
- Anything saying “better privacy” or “more secure” without giving a specific threat scenario (like, more secure against [x] attack) - they don’t know shit. Privacy and security are not linear values you can have more or less of.
- Internet of Things (‘smart devices’) is a privacy and security NIGHTMARE, and we’ve known that since day 1. Companies don’t care. It’s easy money.
- If you can’t (hypothetically) run it yourself, you’re the product.
If you can’t (hypothetically) run it yourself, you’re the product.
This is the nightmare of everything today, technology exists to prevent you from “doing it yourself”. Try to repair anything modern.
You should be able to repair your own things, without too much money and effort
Right to repair for life!
let me see:
- physical media is Just Better (cds, game cards, etc.)
- the Internet is a technological dumpster fire
- devices are too “smart” nowadays
I don’t think most modern physical media counts for that though, if you buy a new game on a disc theres a decent chance that it still has to download the game from the internet
To a certain extent physical media is already dead, they’re just waving around it’s corpse and making it look like it’s alive
i know, and i’m really ticked about it
Remeber guys to buy your intelligent smart home frigde freezer that sinks up to your phone and uses the latest GPT models to… I would certainly be inclined to agree on that last point
not only that, but “smartness” and longevity seem to be inversely correlated. your grandma’s alarm clock she bought in the 70s most definitely still works and will still work fifty years later, while that fancy smart display your rich neighbor has is going to break after three
Even worse, the fancy smart display doesn’t even have to physically break to become inoperable.
Most smart devices connect and are locked to a single company’s servers and become e-waste the moment they decide to pull the plug.
If you’re lucky, you or a techy friend can flash an open firmware to them, but that’s not always possible.
A recent job change caused me to revert back to my old G-Shock watch instead of my Apple Watch. I was setting the time and date and noted that the date “only” goes up to the year 2039. Even though it is already over 20 years old, I fully expect this watch to work well past 2039; I have no expectation that the Apple Watch will. Even if it technically functioned, the software and protocols would have been long abandoned.
I signed for a storage unit this week, and they require me to use an app to access the unit. Of course their servers were down when I first tried using the app. 🤦
what do you mean by technological dumpster fire? too much tech?
yes exactly. there’s so much tech that it’s literally impossible to make a new browser engine from scratch
Physical media generally has less aggressive DRM. Buy a DVD and the movies your’s for life, you can even rip it and put it on a media server to make your own little streaming site.
“Buy” a movie/audiobook on Amazon and it’s yours as long as the company wants you to keep it.
As always, there is an relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/488/
I bought a gas stove/oven a few months ago. Took me a couple of weeks to notice that I can connect it to my wifi for some reason. I haven’t, and don’t intend to, but I am a little curious what features could possibly be in there.
it’s probably something like remote control, which is handy but ultimately not worth it imo
Cities are too car-oriented
I agree with the sentiment, but this feels like the least boomer opinion ngl
I think it’s simultaneously an opinion held by very old people who remember when they could just walk to the store and younger urbanists that want us to return to that. The people in the middle grew up in a car oriented society that hadn’t completely lost small businesses and been locked down by traffic. And they now have a house way out in the burbs with a disdain for the traffic of the city. Urbanism threatens their way of life now. That’s my opinion.
Most of the US has dug a hole that can’t easily be fixed with its car-centric developments, people living there pretty much need a car for everything.
Driving there may be a pleasure, but I personally wouldn’t want to live in that situation at all. I’m glad and lucky to have the equivalent of a mall just a 10 minute bike ride away, 25 minute walk, 5 minute bus trip.
America is definitely pretty deeply invested in car-centeic living. But I don’t think it’s impossible to get out of it. There’s rising pressure to lower housing costs, traffic, and improve infrastructure quality. My city (which is about as car centric as it gets) is growing fast and most of that is with infil development. It’s going to be a slow transformation but I think it will happen. I don’t think American cities will look like European or Asian cities because they won’t evolve the same way. But they will look different to how they look now.
Yep I agree - It’s definitely possible for the US to shift away from it, some cities have even been transforming some of their busy central roads into pedestrianised boulevards (such as times square in NY, and a couple others I can’t remember off the top of my head) and from an outsiders perspective been successful.
The difficulty is mainly going to be places like Culver City where some just don’t get that cars don’t scale well in dense urban areas like cities - they’ve voted to remove a 2 year old bike lane just to get back an additional driving lane. That’s just going to move most of the bike riders back into their cars, filling that brand new driving lane (and the other existing driving lanes) with traffic that previously didn’t exist. Hopefully over time positive changes will return though!
Depends on the city. In my city, you could walk across the whole thing in maybe an hour, and anything major the furthest you would have to walk is about 30 minutes.
Come to europe you’ll like it here
