We talk a lot about enshittification of technology, so tell me about technology that is getting better!
I personally love the progress of electric scooters. I’ve been zooming around on a 400$ escooter for a year and it works so well. It has a range of around 20 miles and top speed of 15 mph, so it works just super well for my uses, and 10 years ago scooters with that range/speed/price were no where near a thing.
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Self hosting is pretty great right now. Immich, Tailscale, truenas, docker, vaultwarden - you can solve so many of your own problems with any old computer you have lying around
You can also literally solve problems with a computer lying around - bitcoin mining isn’t very useful, but you can contribute to science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volunteer_computing_projects
Said like 80 times in this thread already but, Open Source & Free software (papa stallman will murder my family if I don’t make the distinction)
Fifteen years ago when I first got into it, Linux was a programmer/sysadmin’s OS that could cover one’s web browsing needs and run some media players and retro console emulators.
Nowadays it is a reasonable daily driver for high-end gaming, it can cover 85% of the creative tasks I do for work, plus all the shit it did back then, all the while being faster, lighter, and comfier than windows.
There’s good libre applications for pretty much everything I care about.
And now we even have open-source powered social media (hi we’re in Lemmy)
Fuck, even if I’m this close to butlerian jihad thinking in regards to the whole concept, I’ll give it up for the advancement of open source AI models. I might think the whole invention is poison, but better for it to be a public, shared, community built poison than one under the thumb of three megacorps.
Assuming you mean LLM’s and image generation, yeah open source is much better! Cause that way it’ll be used for dumb silly things.
An LLM in a video game? Sure, could be cool. A game like spore where it generates species, and it uses image generation? Could be cool. Also if an artist wants inspiration from AI images, I don’t hate on anyone’s process. All those things I feel like are better if the people using them are in control of them.
Nah, I’ve been using Linux vasy only desktop for over 20 years now, 15 years algo it was already so much more than a sysadmin OS with a browser. Granted, it had little games but everything else was there already.
Gaming mice, in particular those designed for FPS players, have improved a lot within the last decade. They are incredibly light now and wireless mice are as responsive as wired ones. You can get well built mice with great sensors for very cheap, and there are loads of different shapes and sizes to choose from. It’s actually getting really difficult to buy an objective bad mouse now.
Open source NVIDIA drivers (NVK, nouveau, nova) finally being usable for gaming.
Linux phones, postmarketOS
RISC-V CPUs becoming more and more viable
The newest cheapo Raspberry Pi including two RISC-V cores was an exciting surprise.
what Linux phone do you use?
I’ve tried most of the common options (with the notable exception being the vastly overpriced Librem 5). The best option IMO is the OnePlus 6 or 6T (they’re almost identical) running postmarketOS. It is much faster than the PinePhone Pro with way better battery life and has proper modern GPU support (OpenGL up to 4.x, Vulkan). The main thing preventing daily driving the OnePlus 6/6T is that the earpiece audio doesn’t always work for calls and that it won’t wake from sleep when an incoming call comes in. The PinePhones are better to use for voice calling, but slower, lacking many graphics APIs (no Vulkan, limited OpenGL), and have much worse battery life. The camera doesn’t work at all on the OnePlus phones yet, it is starting to work on the PinePhones but the picture quality isn’t all there.
At the moment I have both a OnePlus 6 and 6T, but I have stock Android on the OnePlus 6 and postmarketOS on the 6T. I use the Android one as my daily driver with my primary number SIM but got a second cheap Mint Mobile SIM for the postmarketOS one for experiments and mobile data. I prefer browsing on the postmarketOS phone, and I use it for VPN, SSH access, file management, and some coding on the go which are things Linux phone excels at over Android. I mostly use the Android phone for calls, texts, camera, maps, email (GMail), Discord, and casual browsing. If they fix the earpiece audio issue I would probably be fine daily driving the
Battery tech and self-sufficient energy solutions for a home in general. Being able to provide your own energy and store it for later use is just excellent.
My family has a history of blood pressure problems, so my mother, in order to keep control, has had to buy a couple of devices to measure her blood pressure, which she also uses with my father and grandmother.
I just think it’s fantastic that such devices already exist and are so affordable. It makes me wonder if maybe in a handful of years we will have the ability to do x-rays at home and things like that, it would be great.
I get what you mean, but home x-ray machines should probably never happen hahaha
So once upon a time this was a thing…
I would much rather do x-rays at home with an app or something, than have to go to the hospital to get them done.
for sure, it’s just that xrays are ionizing radiation and as such are extremely hazardouss. xray techs wont even be in the same room as the machine when its on. the glass they’re looking at you through is leaded to prevent their repeated exposure to it.
I mean, the x-ray thing was just a random example, but okey 🤷
Guitar tube amplifier emulation.
I love it because as absolutely horrid as it was when it was emerging tech, those sounds along with every other link in the chain comes with certain nostalgia for music that was created using it in whatever intermediary period it was at in that time. Today we’ve basically hit endgame in that the emulations of today’s tech are so close to the real thing that they’re basically indistinguishable from the genuine article. We have access to the full range of sounds from Boss DS-1’s to the old Line6 Pods to modern Kempers. If you’re a guitar player who likes experimenting with the over all sound of your rig, this is the good stuff.
You talking software or like DSP pedals? I’ve been out of the game a while.
All of the above depending on what your budget is.
Many software emulations are more than serviceable, and again depending on your budget can offer some really advanced parameter controls to mimic different types of speakers in differently sized cabinets being recorded with different types of mics in different recording spaces.
Pedals can still vary widely in quality, but there are some really good ones out there that can serve as a backup in case there’s any on-stage technical problems, or even serve as a completely fine fly rig in and of themselves.
Kemper makes the top of the line stuff these days (so far as I know, it’s been a couple years since I payed very close attention to cutting edge tech). Their profiling amps allow you to make complete profiles of real amps and cabs through recording a series of signals through that rig. These profiles can be shared online and downloaded straight onto their “heads” which can be rack mounted in a studio setup. For stage use they have versions that serve as a typical amplifier head would, or use the form factor of those multi-effect floor units. They sound incredible.
Honestly the apps on my phone that do this are amazing. I bought an adapter that adds a 1/4” and an 1/8” jack so I can listen to it through headphones and it’s beyond anything we had just a few years ago.
E-books
I love having the physical thing in my hands, but love that we’ve gotten to a point where I can log on to Libby and just download one too, or back up digital versions of my favorites on my hard drive so I hopefully never lose them.
Have you checked out using an IRC for e-books?
Nope, but I will.
IRC as in the old-school chat protocol?
Yep! There is a great post on Lemmy about hot to get ebooks from irc
Do you have that post? I was doing it from a reddit post but it recently stopped working for me ( a me problem not an irc problem probably).
Insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. But that’s boring: flashlights these days are AMAZING!
Insulin pumps are way more amazing
But I don’t have the beets and I have ten flashlights
Easier management of potentially deadly medical conditions is super exciting!
This will sound a little mundane but, FLASHLIGHTS! Particularly bicycle head lights. The prices before LED’s were just STUPID. Hundreds of dollars for small amounts of light (which to be fair was the best you could get at the moment). Which were being used for night mountain biking. But all I needed was to get to and from work safely at night, I didnt have $400 for a headlight that would actually let me see the ground in front of me.
BUT, then came the revolution. China started putting out these LED lights that blew everything else out of the water … FOR CHEAP! In two years light prices went from $400 to $100 for top of the line lighting. US bike light companies were a year or two out before they could re-tool to match the lumens coming out of china. Mind you, the Chinese lights were not always the most reliable. BUT they were 1/4th the cost of a name brand light. So even if it died, you could still buy ANOTHER one for less than the price of a high end name brand light.
And since the LED revolution, things have not changed much. Prices either go down or stay the same and the lumens increase OR the burn time increases. Its just a win win for customers/consumers.
By the same token, and I consider these a different category, headlamps. Camping got a whole lot better with a solid headlamp setup. The red light is crucial.
I have an obsession with light. Love the golden and blue hours and I don’t want to know why, it’s just so beautiful to watch. Being like this I’m pretty conscious of lighting and, in general, it has become just wonderful to have that precise dim and warmth in every space for a reasonable price. Not only this, less-intrusive lighting had become something urban ecologists quietly succeeded on spreading all over the world (bat-friendly lighting, for example) thanks to the available technologies.
So, yeah… not mundane at all.
I’ve been biking at sunset after I get the kids to bed and have super cheap lights on my bike to blink for visibility. Each light is powered by 2 CR2032s (BIOS batteries) I forgot to turn them off one day after my ride recently and left it in the garage blinking away, came back the next day to no visible decline in light output after running them for over 24 hours. Honestly those lights are probably approaching 24 hours of actual usage time not counting leaving it blinking in the garage
I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. When I was growing up, incandescent bulbs and massive short-lived batteries made flashlights suck. Now flashlights are tiny, throw a tonne of light, and last a really long time.
Do you use the escooter on sidewalks? What are the laws on that where you are?
Oh I guess I can answer: ebikes, pedal assist electric bikes. I think they really have the ability to change transportation.
Yeah technically you aren’t supposed to ride on the sidewalks here (USA) but there’s barely any safe infrastructure to do otherwise, and I’m sure as hell not going to ride on the street with the death machines honking all over the place, so the sidewalk it is until city infrastructure is less car-brained.
I love my e-trike.
Why’d you go with the trike?
Carrying capacity. I’m a bigger dude, and didn’t wanna drive everywhere anymore. I’ve always been pro-micromobility, so I figured it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.
not the guy you asked, but I just got a trike.
- I have balance issues so I’ve never been able to balance a regular bike.
- carrying capacity with a basket.
there are definitely options to address the carry capacity with a bike, but I haven’t seen anything to assist with balance.
Open source software in general. Seeing Blender become an industry standard was awesome, and it looks like the Godot engine may do the same for gaming. Krita has evolved into a truly wonderful painting program (and not half bad as a Photoshop replacement), and Linux itself has come so far, having become a genuine gaming platform.
Quite happy about all of that. :)
It’s been years since I had to deal with MATLAB licenses, since basically everything in scientific computing/data science uses Python these days!
I love Krita, it’s my go-to layered image editor unless I need to do something more fancy
Active noise cancellation. It’s a bit like magic. Don’t be a wanker and say “Um actually, all you have to do is emit an inverse waveform.” I think it took a hell of a lot of work to get this right, especially integrating it into relatively inexpensive consumer devices. Thanks, scientists and engineers. Well done.
What blows me away is how they fit all of that technology into microscopic earbuds
I bought AirBudz pros to delete an annoying coworker and when I first had my partner try them, they were like “HOW DID YOU TURN OFF ALL THE FANS”
I need hearing aids. My aids are so small they fit completely in my ear, so unless you are standing up close, you can’t see they are in. I’ve had them for about 3 years and I’m still blown away how small they are and how well they help me.
I think the concept was old and fully grasped. Reducing the latency enough to make it work in headphones and earbuds was the magic part.
Battery tech is making a lot of things better/possible. E-mtb for example. Drones, camper van power, etc.
All hail the mighty 18650!
I have soooo many. Lol
Home automation - I love being able to yell at my phone to turn tv/lights on and off when I’m comfortable or its cold
