this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

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[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 12 points 54 minutes ago

The internet?

Web 1.0 and even before was way cooler than this corpo bullshit web we have now.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 15 points 1 hour ago

Cars used to be cool. Every car company had some kind of sporty car, a couple cheap cars, a big luxury sedan and, a while ago, a station wagon.

Now every car is an SUV or CUV. Sedans are getting phased out. Cool sports cars don't make money so they don't make them. People don't buy station wagons so they don't make them. And they're pushing big, angry trucks on everyone.

[–] Platypus@lemmings.world 1 points 9 minutes ago

Portable consoles. They're dead now or replaced by indie shit. No, the switch doesn't count, if it can't fit in my pocket isn't portable.

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

Pop up headlights! Way cooler that way. I've heard a couple reasons given for why they stopped being a thing, but one of them is that they were considered too unsafe for pedestrians-

Which is a fucking crazy though when you consider what we now blindly accept in automotive design with respect to pedestrian safety 😅

[–] psion1369@lemmy.world 3 points 57 minutes ago

I'm going back to video games that had multiplayer before we had network connectivity. If I wanted to play against a friend, we would have to get together in person and hang out. Game was done, you had a friend over for dinner. Or just a friend to come over and help you with the game. I miss when games were actual social events.

[–] TriflingToad@lemmy.world 22 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (4 children)

I MISS CLEAR COMPUTERS >:(


I mean LOOK AT IT it's so much cooler than just a box!
The SteamDeck community has been cooking with some clear cases which I would buy if I didn't have to risk breaking my beloved $500 indie machine.

[–] john117@lemmy.jmsquared.net 1 points 17 minutes ago

YOOOOO that purple one! I wonder how hard it would be to do this to mine... time to add this to the Christmas list lol

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

I miss plastic electronics. Oddly enough glass and metal feel more fragile.

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 points 38 minutes ago

HTC knew what was up with the HTC One series. Their polycarbonate bodies felt Nintendo 64 controller levels of durable.

[–] thebigslime@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

I bought the translucent nitro purple back plate. Very easy to install.

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 7 points 2 hours ago

YEYEYEYEYEYEYE

One of my dream projects would be to get a dead iMac G3 and make a modern-day sleeper build inside it. It was honestly the COOLEST a computer has EVER looked.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 27 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Ships' sails. I mean, I know some small vessels still use them, but look at any paintings from 1500s-1800s and tell me those huge white pieces of cloth don't look cool.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 1 points 8 minutes ago

They definitely have a look, although I like the sleek, almost solar punk look of modern sails.

We went from bedsheets that get blown around to clean and optimized vertical wings.

[–] bear@lemmynsfw.com 25 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Trains and railways are cooler and better than cars and highways. Imagine making everyone get their own personal vehicle, engine, tires, fuel, service, license, and insurance, just to watch them all crash into each other and die constantly.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 3 hours ago

Yes although I would argue cars and highways are just evolutions of horse carts on dirt roads, a way older technology than trains.

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 7 points 3 hours ago

Trains aren't old tech though. Just tech that got pushed out by auto-maker lobbying. In places (like Japan, or China, or parts of Europe) where they kept evolving they only got better.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

I love that about CRTs, man.

How the fuck could we invent a tiny pocket sized particle accelerator electron beam gun that magnetically aimed its fire with such precision as to hit every individual phosphor, with the appropriate charge to make the right color, across an entire fucking screen, and do that 30+ times a second (for TV, or 60+ for a monitor)..

Yet the LCD is the high tech fancy monitor when its just a little grid of globs being electronically fired? How did the CRT get invented before the LCD?!

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[–] autriyo@feddit.org 19 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Neither sure how to call it, nor is it a technology, more like a mindset. I am just gonna name it: "Prideful Craftsmanship"

Basically the incorporation of "useless" decorations and embellishments, to show off ones skill and maybe market oneself a little. Definitely superseded in the capitalist world. Things were just prettier or more interesting to look at, even stuff that wasn't meant to be flashy.

But with nearly everything being made to a price point, this practice has been somewhat lost.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 19 minutes ago

You've set off something in the woodworker's side of my brain.

There's a style of furniture called Arts & Crafts. The Arts & Crafts movement was bigger than furniture, but in the furniture world there was kind of a clap back at both ostentatious Victorian furniture a la Chippendale, and the mass produced crap the industurial revolution brought forth. So a style of well built, hand made furniture arose. The joinery was often exposed and in fact celebrated as features of the piece; through tenons would stand out proud, pinned joints would be done in contrasting wood exposed on the face side of the piece. I've heard it described as "in your face joinery." The intention is to say "Look at this table. This table was not manufactured in a factory, it was built in a workshop. Look. At. It." In the United States this movement often went for an aesthetic reminiscent of the furniture and fittings of old Spanish missions, so over here we often call it Mission furniture.

Compare this to the shaker style of furniture. The shakers were a sect of Christianity who were so celibate that men and women were required to use separate staircases, which is why this paragraph is largely written in the past tense. They led very modest lives in communal villages, and were known for their simple and yet extremely well made wooden furniture. A shaker table is the universal prototype table. It has legs, a top, and whatever apron or other structure is required to hold it together. Decoration was often limited to choosing pleasing proportions and maybe tapering the legs. I think a shaker craftsman would see the exposed joinery of the Mission style as sinfully prideful.

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