[HN Gopher] Life Improvements Since the 1990s
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Life Improvements Since the 1990s
Author : janhenr
Score : 341 points
Date : 2021-08-12 11:52 UTC (11 hours ago)
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| blfr wrote:
| _Clothing has become almost "too cheap to meter"_ and _we have
| things pretty good now_ when it comes to food yet people seem to
| be poorly dressed and obese. Many other technological and social
| improvements also feel hollow to me for that reason: they 're not
| making our lives meaningfully better.
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| incremental. Most notable changes? fast internet. LED
| monitors/tvs ... trying to think of something that is not a waste
| of time ... OS updates and program isntalls are fast, those took
| a lot of time, electronic payments .. maps/yelp/tripadvisor when
| you travel ... human interactions are dysfunctional though
| adventured wrote:
| This note at the bottom, about high mortality rates in the past,
| is always striking to remember:
|
| "My grandmother casually horrified us a few years ago by going
| through the list of her dead siblings: 2 died on the farm of
| 'summer diarrhea' (bovine tuberculosis from unpasteurized milk)
| as infants, an unremarkable fate in the area, and then 3 died in
| their teens-20s after moving to the city to work in textile
| factories. The rest died later. For comparison, she lost 1 child
| out of 5 (stillbirth), and 0% of her >12 grandchildren/great-
| grandchildren."
|
| Several years ago an older friend of mine recounted to me that
| his father was one of three siblings to survive the influenza
| pandemic of 1918-1920, six of his brothers and sisters died from
| it.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Indeed. What I found interesting is that when I looked up the
| stats, the death rates for under 1 year olds has continued to
| decline even in recent decades. I had previously thought it
| would have stalled after the things you mentioned had been
| solved. My guess is premature births have much higher survival
| now than 20 or 40 years ago.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would assume that the birth rate going down considerably
| amongst poorer people is a big factor too.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-
| pov...
| germinalphrase wrote:
| A side effect of the abortion debate has been significant
| financial investments by the pro-life in premature birth
| research. The earlier it is possible to define viability, the
| earlier abortions can effectively be banned.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Neat list.
|
| I have issue with this one in part:
|
| > Not Watching crummy VHS tapes, period
|
| The rewind button actually worked 100% of the time.
|
| I also have an issue with the like for USB. Yes, it's better than
| most 90's tech, but USB-C in its various guises/disguises and
| it's horrible relationship with Thunderbolt is a travesty. The
| cables and ports can't reliably be distinguished and various
| things just won't work, or become unreliable. It's just so
| unhelpful to have so many identical specs in in form factor.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I travel a lot for work (well, I used to) and changed all my
| peripherals and devices (even my shaver) to usb-c
| interface/charging, in some cases by hacking it in myself. It
| took an annoying amount of research, and Nintendo switch was
| the worst offender, but eventually I have one charger, and a
| few cables for ALL of my stuff in a tiny bag. Everything in the
| bag is worth about $50, and I have the same bag duplicated in
| my backpack, desk and trip luggage (in this one also
| international adapters that snap onto the charger).
|
| One caveat is I only used macbooks for years. I was shocked
| when I built a Ryzen desktop and one usb-c port was standard,
| without thunderbolt support. So I had to begrudgingly use a to
| c cables there.
| 271828182846 wrote:
| ( "Not Rewinding VHS tapes before returning to the library or
| Blockbuster" ... how about going to some video store was kinda
| cool and added some social aspect to sitting on your couch alone
| and watching a movie? how can you even add crap like that on such
| a list with such a title and not realize how delusional this is?)
|
| there are no material life improvements - only more efficient
| dopamine triggers. but that's not an improvement because before
| the 90s - guess what - they had their own triggers.
|
| in that spirit you could add how access to more diverse
| pornography brought happiness to so many lonely men considering
| how especially a hundred years ago they were so starved they
| would get aroused at the sight of women's knees. poor bastards.
|
| guess what, your mega-tittie-porn isn't really an improvement
| over some picture where a woman lifts her skirt you can see her
| ankles. it's just a fucking going round in circles what you all
| confuse with "improvement".
|
| life for many people fucking sucks and most of those
| "improvements" only come at the expense of removing people
| further from any kind of meaningful spiritual fullfilment.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| >there are no material life improvements
|
| I don't know about you, but having cheap access to climate
| control and refrigeration is a pretty big deal. Even animals
| appreciate a warm place to sleep and fresh food.
|
| Your reasoning seems ascetic. If a fellow says he's happier
| with the mega-titties than the ankles, who are you to tell him
| otherwise? _Every human experience_ can be categorized into a
| dopamine or cortisol trigger. Who vested the authority in you
| to decide which of them constitute "meaningful spiritual
| fullfilment" and which do not?
| megameter wrote:
| Access to sexual experiences is something I would count as a
| great liberation of the past decades. When a man got desperate
| for release not all that long ago, they didn't hop online for
| an outlet, they drove to the seedy part of town and visited a
| strip club, went to a porno theater, solicited hookers, etc.
| Those things are still around, and there were some
| possibilities to "phone date", but lack of options made things
| overall less secure and discreet for everyone involved relative
| to today where the man can just look up an Onlyfans or prowl
| Tinder profiles. 1980's teen movies like "Sixteen Candles" were
| OK with date rape as a concept, and that was just the tip-of-
| the-iceberg. We're doing better.
|
| This goes even more so if we speak of the spectrum of LGBT
| identities, which in 1991 was in the midst of losing all
| continuity with the past because so many died from AIDS; many
| folks then would stay closeted and quiet because coming out was
| just too threatening. Casual homophobia was everywhere, and the
| "gay neighborhoods" of larger cities were somewhat exceptional
| even within that city. Now it's hardly unusual to be out,
| though generational acceptance remains rocky.
| LightG wrote:
| Enjoyed that list, but nearly lost me at "leaf blowers" ...
| uhtred wrote:
| I never thought Brussels Sprouts tasted bad in the past -- always
| delicious! Also, JFC, at least make your own Guac -- it's like
| the easiest thing to actually make yourself. I can't think of
| anything easier.
| mr-ron wrote:
| Adding a point to this: Toll Booths.
|
| EZ Pass type devices has made long distance traveling so much
| easier and more efficient. Anyone travel the Mass Pike in the
| 90s? It would be stopped for a quarter mile for the privilege to
| pay 75 cents in a line.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I don't think the author has kids, but as a new parent the 2020s
| have numerous improvements over the 1990s:
|
| Click & go stroller & carseat systems are magical. Used to be
| that if your baby fell asleep in the car, you'd have to wake them
| up to undo the 5-point harness, transfer them to stroller, buckle
| another 5-point harness, undo it when you get to your
| destination, and then deal with the screaming baby. Now the
| carseat base stays in the car, you unclick the carseat, pop the
| whole thing into the stroller, get to your night out, pop the
| carseat on an inverted high-chair, and the kid can sleep the
| whole way or join you at the table.
|
| Cheap plastic has dramatically reduced the cost and increased the
| safety of toys. Also, electronic toys & learning aids are super
| cheap now - my kid's got a Mandarin/English pictionary where you
| hover the pen over the pictures and it tells you the word for it
| in either Mandarin or English, and it cost < $20.
|
| High-end preschools are better. There's been a lot of research on
| how to support children's social & emotional development that's
| now made its way into the classroom.
|
| Traveling is generally better. There've been large improvements
| in travel cribs like the Pack'n'Play or Lotus, many hotels have
| them stocked, and there's the aforementioned improvements to
| carseats. Also airfare is cheaper. My kid went on more plane
| trips before he turned 2 than I did in my whole childhood.
|
| There've been vaccines developed for many common childhood
| illnesses. No more rotavirus, no more chickenpox.
|
| The big bugaboos for parents today are housing and work. You need
| 2 incomes to buy a house now, which makes everything else much
| more pressed for time. But if you can ignore that, there've been
| a lot of conveniences invented to help improve the efficiency of
| that constrained time.
| duderific wrote:
| There is a huge downside to the cheapness of toys though. Every
| house with little kids is now swimming in cheap plastic junk.
| Even if you take a hard line with your kids, they'll still get
| piles of garbage on birthdays, holidays and anytime family
| comes to visit.
|
| When I was 7 years old way back in the day, all my toys could
| fit in a small bin about 24 x 24 inches.
|
| 80% of the crap in our house never gets played with, just sits
| in the bottom of a toy box taking up space.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| But are people happier and more fulfilled? Are they more able to
| have a meaning-filled life surrounded by people with whom they
| have close and lasting relationships?
|
| What should we be measuring when we measure improvement?
| tarr11 wrote:
| At the most basic level, life expectancy has increased
| everywhere [0] and so quality of life has increased for a large
| number of people who would otherwise be dead.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
| marricks wrote:
| Life expectancy has already lowered quite a bit from the
| pandemic we can't put a lid on, and when (if) that settles
| down cataclysmic climate change will continue its work. Sorry
| but the future seems quite bleak.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| One human constant through history is that the future
| always seems bleak to most of it.
|
| This seems like an understudied thing to me.
| xyzelement wrote:
| At any point of human history, one could convince
| themselves that the future is bleak. There had been
| pandemics and plagues, cold and hot wars, revolutions and
| dangerous technologies and -isms.
|
| And yet in retrospect humanity's trend has been of greater
| ingenuity, connectives, safety and well-being. Sure, it's
| possible that THIS is the high point and it'll all go down-
| hill from here, but that's like being a broken clock - if
| you think every thing will kill you, you will eventually be
| right.
|
| But I see no reason to think like that. For example, sure
| the pandemic sucks but relative to what it could have been,
| especially in such a connected world, humanity is handling
| it pretty well. There seems to be resilience in our
| economies, supply chains, and people - that when they are
| tested they have bent and strained but not broken. Like a
| ship that gets rocked but doesn't sink in a storm that's
| actually a GREAT sign.
|
| I can related to your emotional state though. I remember
| walking in NYC a few days after 9/11, and seeing a half-
| completed building on 42nd street and thinking: this will
| never get finished. Nobody will ever dare come or invest or
| live in NYC - we're doomed and dead.
|
| That building is worth a billion dollars now and that
| neighborhood is thriving. It's important to remember that
| feeling of gloom and realizing that it doesn't always (in
| fact, most of the time) pan out as we feared the worst.
| marricks wrote:
| I think the tragedy of 9/11 is distinctly different from
| this one. That one was covered non stop by media networks
| and lead to titanic shifts in the US and to US foreign
| policy. Comparing emotional states between now and then
| seems pretty useless. And sure every new crisis can seem
| bleak but just considering climate change when the field
| of people studying it have observable depression I
| imagine things are a bit gloomier than the average person
| may imagine.
|
| The pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths just
| in the US hasn't had the same sort of coverage. Nor the
| fact that we haven't had hurricanes in the Gulf but
| massive flooding everywhere... my response doesn't come
| from emotion but from the lack of emotion I see in our
| leaders to the catastrophes.
|
| We haven't even begin to cut emissions enough to slow
| down the climate catastrophe and I doubt we ever will.
| While I imagine the US will start protecting its own
| supply chains I imagine it will act as it always has,
| protect the wealthiest and best off and leave middle and
| lower classes to fight for scraps. Just look at our
| healthcare system, best in the world for the richest, and
| one of the worst in the western world for lower classes.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > The pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths just
| in the US hasn't had the same sort of coverage.
|
| Sorry, but where are you living/getting news from because
| I am jealous and I want to be that isolated.
|
| Literally every new story, list of headlines, broadcast,
| tweet, and conversation today includes COVID. CNN used to
| have daily death counts and totals. Every single person's
| life, from the way we study, work, shop etc has changed
| because of COVID.
|
| If your thesis is that somehow this big crisis hasn't
| been sufficiently publicized and people aren't aware, I
| just have a really hard time connecting to your
| perspective on the world.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| * One of the worst in the _developed_ world.
| minikites wrote:
| >Sure, it's possible that THIS is the high point and
| it'll all go down-hill from here, but that's like being a
| broken clock - if you think every thing will kill you,
| you will eventually be right.
|
| It's not about present society being a global maximum,
| it's about present society being a local maximum. The
| lessons from history are often that things can and do get
| worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again
| later. It is absolutely possible (and I would argue
| probable) that life will get worse for a long while
| before improving.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > (and I would argue probable) that life will get worse
| for a long while before improving.
|
| Sure. Like I said, you can do this at any point in time
| and if enough people do that it becomes a self-fulfilling
| prophecy so it's better not.
|
| Out of curiosity, I took a look at your submission
| history (which is vast!) and it's 90% doom and gloom
| across a vast array of topics. I do think living with
| such a negativity bias is very disempowering - and not to
| mention not fun. I don't mean to be stupid and blindly
| optimistic (I manage risk for a living among other
| things) but like I said, living with certainty that
| everything will be terrible will ruin your life.
|
| Like I said, since dawn of man, people had reason to
| believe what you believe. And those who really believed
| it would have no reason to build anything, learn
| anything, invest in anything, have children etc - why do
| any of that if the world is ending.
|
| But the world is inherited by those who DO do those
| things - everything we have, everything we are,
| everything we're investing in - is there because someone
| in the past believed that the future is worth the work.
| So just be careful how much of this your let into your
| psyche because it will lead to you to a dead end
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| In general I think low expectations for the (near) future
| of humanity and depression are correlated, but
| intriguingly to me, it's not an extremely tight
| correlation. Some people think the ship's going down and
| manage to party and have a good time. Others aren't
| particularly extreme in either emotional direction even
| as they evince extreme pessimism. And I imagine the
| reverse is true too, although I don't recall seeing it.
| minikites wrote:
| >I do think living with such a negativity bias is very
| disempowering - and not to mention not fun. I don't mean
| to be stupid and blindly optimistic (I manage risk for a
| living among other things) but like I said, living with
| certainty that everything will be terrible will ruin your
| life.
|
| I think it only seems overly negative -because- so many
| people are blindly optimistic and assume things just get
| better naturally with no action required on our part.
| That's why I have such a negative outlook, I can envision
| the immense work we need to do to address climate change
| (and many other issues) and I'm seeing such a small
| amount of work being done that it's basically a rounding
| error. Watching people reject even the small amount of
| work required to personally address COVID (a free shot)
| does not fill me with hope that we can make big changes.
|
| >But the world is inherited by those who DO do those
| things - everything we have, everything we are,
| everything we're investing in - is there because someone
| in the past believed that the future is worth the work
|
| I think this is the disconnect between us. The future is
| worth the work, but we refuse to work on the future. We
| instead work harder to prop up the unsustainable present.
| xyzelement wrote:
| You're talking about human nature. You're seeing the
| problems only. But humans were "like this" forever.
|
| EG: you're dismal about covid because some people won't
| get the shot. But in the 80s/90s you'd be dismal because
| people weren't practicing safe sex despite AIDS, and
| you'd draw that line to a depressing conclusion. And yet
| in reality, somehow the world moved towards a much better
| place despite those things.
|
| Same with COVID - you are obsessing on a small number of
| people not getting vax and getting depressed, but you are
| ignoring for example super-fast vax development, global
| awareness, willingness of governments to move in and out
| of different disease control regimes, etc. Those are
| wildly optimistic things, but you don't let those things
| encourage you, instead you seem to seek out the bad stuff
| no matter how small and and form your view on that.
| minikites wrote:
| >And yet in reality, somehow the world moved towards a
| much better place despite those things.
|
| It's not "somehow", you're glossing over the very real
| losses and very avoidable tragedies (fed by bigotry and
| fear) that happened during the AIDS crisis, which is my
| whole point. Progress isn't free and by ignoring the real
| losses and avoidable tragedies we repeat the same
| mistakes. That's why we have to confront the
| uncomfortable parts of the past and present. If we only
| focus on the superficial elements of success and
| progress, we make problems more difficult to actually
| confront.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| But isn't the point that despite the very real and
| avoidable tragedies along the way, things have continued
| to improve quite quickly? So as we continue, we can
| expect more preventable tragedies (whatever "preventable"
| actually means), but also more progress to benefit the
| vast majority of us who do make it?
|
| I don't think we need to get bent out of shape about the
| aspects of human nature that cause horror and tragedy,
| since they seem so greatly overshadowed by aspects of the
| same nature which are driven to continuously improve. The
| good guys are winning, by a lot.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Thank you for explaining my post in different words - I
| agree with your summary of it.
|
| I don't think you're living up to your name though!
| minikites wrote:
| >progress to benefit the vast majority of us who do make
| it
|
| So what level of sacrifice should be required of those
| that don't make it? Going back to the AIDS example,
| government involvement was delayed because of bigotry,
| because it only affected people who didn't make it. Our
| economy is currently propped up by low wage workers both
| locally and globally who aren't making it. We don't do a
| good job at taking care of the sick and the poor. We're
| doing a terrible job at taking care of the environment.
| As you both have said, none of this is new, but it
| doesn't have to be this way. We know how to solve many of
| society's problems and we choose not to do so. If the
| core reason for these things is "human nature" and we
| shouldn't try to change, I don't think I have the
| defeatist attitude in that case. My attitude comes from
| seeing solutions that we aren't even trying to do, not
| that we -shouldn't- try.
|
| >The good guys are winning, by a lot.
|
| I don't see the good guys winning. The good guys
| currently have the high score, but the bad guys are on
| the upswing and scoring points on the good guys, who are
| just standing around.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I'm generally an optimist but do think this time might be
| different. Never before have so many people had such
| access to information that they could become convinced
| they understand anything after a little research, and
| never before have producers of fake news had such reach.
| Yesterday's predominance of political apathy seems to
| have been much more stable than today's predominance of
| vehement polarization.
|
| Conspiracy theorists used to be everywhere, but in small
| numbers and not very homogeneous; now they are plentiful
| and coordinated enough to lead to outcomes like the Jan 6
| insurrection or the vaccine denialism gripping something
| like 30% of Americans.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| >The lessons from history are often that things can and
| do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving
| again later.
|
| The example I like to think about for this is imagine
| being born in the eastern European bloodlands - Eastern
| Germany, the Baltics, Poland, Byelorussia or Ukraine
| around 1895-1900. Things are pretty good up until the
| Great War starts, which back then you would be old enough
| to be considered an adult for, and then it is wars,
| famines, repressions and totalitarianism for the rest of
| your life as you likely die just short of the Iron
| Curtain falling. That's a pretty bleak life. Yet many
| people lived it, and found love and purpose and had
| families under it and those civilizations as a whole
| eventually recovered.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| That love and purpose can be found in the bleakest of
| circumstances is indeed true and amazing.
|
| That Belarus recovered is not obvious.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| Yeah good point. Although I think it is pretty safe to
| say they are better then they were in the 1930's and
| 1940's. Are they better then they were in the 1960's
| 70's? Not as clear.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Or, most of Afghanistan in the period 1979-99
| jrsj wrote:
| Most HN users are going to say "yes" because we are generally
| much higher income earners. Have things gotten better for
| everyone? Definitely not. Looking at continued increase in
| "deaths of despair" it seems like some of the changes that have
| made some of us richer have also made a larger % of the
| population more miserable than ever.
|
| We've also built a highly sophisticated surveillance state and
| generally reduced our basic freedoms and individual rights
| post-9/11, and despite bumps in the road for this program
| thanks to Snowden etc, nothing has fundamentally changed and
| things continue to get worse on this front.
|
| To me, this list of improvements is really just a list of
| improvements absent broader context which paints a very
| different & disturbing picture.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Indeed. We've traded cheaper better widgets for political and
| economic regression.
|
| Mobile phones are the pinnacle of tech - and also a superb
| tool for mass surveillance.
| dalbasal wrote:
| "Happier and more fulfilled" is a good question to ask about a
| person, but I think it gets too squishy in regards to people.
| Too abstract.
|
| If you're going to broaden person to people, I think it's best
| to narrow to "happier and more fulfilled" in regards to
| something. Marriage/personal economics/profession/social
| life/spiritual life/etc.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| I think a set of metrics would be if people's stressors have
| been reduced. Like Do people spend less time worrying about
| paying bills, job security, etc. I agree that a "happiness"
| metric is not great.
| JackPoach wrote:
| Should we be measuring at all? Claiming that people have to be
| more happy over time is a weird proposition for a biologist
| like me. Not only happiness does not exist (see reification),
| the idea that it can be 'measured and improved' is silly.
| Should the next generation of birds be more happy and fulfilled
| than the previous one? Should the next generation of chimps
| have stronger lasting relationships? Does it even makes sense?
| To me it doesn't. We are biological creatures and each one of
| us chooses to construct meaning of life (or lack thereof)
| individually.
| laserlight wrote:
| I can tell whether I am happy or not. What do you mean when
| you say happiness doesn't exist?
| JackPoach wrote:
| Do you understand the concept of reification? If not, see
|
| https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/reification#:~:text=R
| e....
|
| So if you feel happy (or miserable) it means just that -
| that you feel happy (or miserable). It doesn't mean that
| happiness or misery actually exist literally.
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| So by your logic, everything that doesn't literally exist
| (laws, businesses, emotions, software, governments,
| money, etc.) are all things that can't be measured or
| improved?
| barneysversion wrote:
| Reification is usually a fallacy when we take the
| abstraction too far. The canonical example being "the map
| is not the territory" where someone confuses every mark
| on a map with actual features of the terrain.
|
| One could argue that abstractions "actually exist
| literally" without being physical. Gravitational fields
| don't exist physically but do exist and they're a valid
| abstraction that's useful to measure. Maybe happiness is
| a phenomenon that could be useful too (though I would say
| to a lesser extent.)
|
| A little tangential but... even things that we would say
| exist physically are not on closer inspection. Does a
| chair actually exist or is it a platonic ideal that we
| apply to a collection of atoms assembled to form four
| legs, seat and a back?
| JackPoach wrote:
| You are absolutely correct. Moreover, reifications can be
| useful or harmful - purely based on how they are being
| used. That's why maps are actually useful, except for
| several individuals that died in Australia and other
| places by trusting their navigators more than their own
| eyes and actual surroundings. I've been in situations
| where GPS malfunctioned and when I quickly realized it I
| understood that I should not follow the map.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| That's a silly strawman. Nobody is claiming that
| happiness exists literally.
|
| And it's intangible nature does nothing to prevent us
| from measuring or maximizing aggregate happiness.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| Doesn't happiness exist in the sense that there is a
| complex set of chemical combinations happening in your
| brain emitting the feeling of happiness?
| cataphract wrote:
| If you grant that is possible to "feel happy" (for
| whatever definition of "happy" you choose), then
| happiness can be defined the state (or the "emotion") of
| feeling happy. Sure, happiness is not a concrete entity
| (though it does have concrete/physical underpinnings in
| people's brains), so in this sense it doesn't "exist
| literally", but I don't know where you're going with
| that. You can still measure it and devise strategies to
| have people experience more of it.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| On the whole, I think people's happiness depends on those
| people, rather than their material circumstances. After all,
| there's only so miserable you can get (or so cheerful). Most
| people are wealthier; but even very wealthy people evidently
| think they don't have enough money.
|
| I don't mean to suggest that miserable circumstances don't
| make you miserable; just that circumstances that are twice as
| awful don't seem to make people twice as miserable. I suspect
| that most mediaeval peasants were about as cheerful as most
| ordinary people today.
| throwaway-x123 wrote:
| As I understand, happiness is free time from necessary work.
| Quote from book Hunnicutt, Free time:
|
| Benjamin Franklin, agreeing that "the happiness of
| individuals is evidently the ultimate end of political
| society," offered his vision of Higher Progress: If every man
| and woman would work for four hours each day on some- thing
| useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all
| the necessaries and comforts of life, want and misery would
| be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twenty-four
| hours might be leisure and happiness.
|
| Also Epicur: "Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to
| seek modest, sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of
| ataraxia (tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (the
| absence of bodily pain) through knowledge of the workings of
| the world and limiting desires. "
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism
| [deleted]
| acituan wrote:
| > Should the next generation of birds be more happy and
| fulfilled than the previous one? Should the next generation
| of chimps have stronger lasting relationships? Does it even
| makes sense?
|
| Happiness is a proxy for successful adaptation to reality. So
| yes, if they are successfully adapting to the changing
| environment, they should be happy. The very least, failing at
| it will make them pretty "unhappy".
|
| > We are biological creatures and each one of us chooses to
| construct meaning of life (or lack thereof) individually.
|
| A weird level of resolution to stop at. We're also atomic
| creatures, maybe we shouldn't care about death? But we're
| also conscious creatures that _suffer_ and maybe at least
| avoiding that is pretty meaningful? I don't think any
| nihilist is nihilistic enough to self-immolate for example.
|
| You _could_ DIY your meaning individually, as is the
| fashionable belief in this age of post-modern, but it's
| liable to crumbling tragically with an inopportune contact
| with reality. Normativity of reality seeking is a strongly
| built instinct in any species that knows they have to survive
| in it, and their meaning emerges from this relationship.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I can't speak for "people" at broad, but improvements have
| certainly made a difference for my household. Gwern mentions
| hearing aids. They haven't just gotten smaller, but more
| capable. My wife couldn't have conversations with people at all
| in 1991. She can now. Universal subtitling opens up the full
| catalog of film and television that she couldn't experience.
| Spinal interbody fusion existed before 1991, but it wasn't very
| reliable. Procedure quality has improved rapidly, and that is
| the only reason my life right now isn't hopelessly miserable or
| possibly over, as the amount of pain I used to be in made death
| pretty tempting.
| stopnamingnuts wrote:
| This. I think innovation real-value is spikey. A low band of
| timesavers bumps along the bottom but is punctuated by
| occasional leaps in particular domains. From what I've seen
| the cochlear implant can offer an amazing difference to
| quality of life for those that choose it. I can only imagine
| the difference the implant, or the improved aids, would have
| made to my hearing-impaired college roommate in the early
| 90s.
| coryrc wrote:
| On that latter note, my friend has an electronic device
| implanted in his spine to reduce pain. Non-opioid, effective
| pain relief!
| dougmwne wrote:
| I sure am! We have family and friends spread across 2
| continents. We can travel freely to spend time near them, take
| our jobs with us wherever we go, rent a well appointed home
| with a tap, and when not physically present, have a video chat
| at a moment's notice and hop into a round of VR golf. In the
| old world we would have had to choose career or having
| relationships with our parents and extended families. No more.
| treis wrote:
| This is definitely a marked difference. Grandma/pa get a near
| daily stream of pictures & video of kiddo growing up. They
| get video calls on a (relatively) big screen to interact on a
| weekly or so basis.
|
| When I was growing up camcorders were expensive so video is
| limited to special occasions. Have a good amount of pictures
| but a lot fewer than we have of kiddo. Cameras were more
| expensive and each picture cost money in film and
| development. Long distance calls were short and infrequent
| because they were expensive.
| minikites wrote:
| Our society is not structured in a way to value or measure
| this, our society is optimized for wealth generation and
| extraction. If a human activity can't be bought or sold, we
| don't value or measure it. For example, stay-at-home parents
| aren't accounted for in GDP calculations, but outside daycare
| providers are, so we structure society to encourage parents to
| work and pay for daycare instead of staying home.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| No matter the improvement, including social improvements like
| you're suggesting, people just adjust their expectations to the
| new normal.
|
| We seem to be designed to not be content with what we have,
| because that would eliminate motivation to make things better.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I wonder if happiness is influenced more by some absolute level
| of joy or is it more influenced by the rate of improvements.
| jscipione wrote:
| More of a criticism of the Harvard Innovation Lab photo than the
| article, but the "1980's" desktop computer pictured is a rough
| facsimile of the Macintosh Classic released October 15, 1990.
| This machine represented the one of the first products produced
| by the Apple Industrial Design Group which had replaced the
| iconic '80s Snow White design from Frog Design.
| betamaxthetape wrote:
| I don't want to detract from the article, but that picture is a
| bit odd. You've got a Macintosh Classic (or Classic II, which
| shares the same case) with the Apple logo and model name
| covered over (why?).
|
| Then there's the keyboard / mouse combination. The keyboard is
| an Apple Keyboard II [1] (or a minor variant - there were a few
| different models, with adjustable height and different
| switches), which came with the Macintosh Classic and uses the
| ADB connection. But the mouse is a Macintosh Mouse (M0100) [2],
| that uses the DE-9 connector, a connector that the Classic /
| Classic II did not have.
|
| I know this is being pedantic, and in the end it doesn't
| matter, but it does annoy me that the computer / keyboard /
| mouse combination presented would not work together. Like the
| above poster, I expected better of the Harvard Innovation Lab.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_keyboards#Apple_Keyboard...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_mice#Macintosh_Mouse_(M0...
| Fricken wrote:
| We are social animals. Other people make me happy. Other people
| make me miserable.
|
| Quality of life depends far more on the integrity of a person's
| human relationships than these trivial material gains.
|
| I can remain bright eyed through all kinds of horribleness if I
| believe my suffering is meaningful and valued.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This is crucial.
|
| I used to be very excited about technology and I really
| believed it could fundamentally improve humanity in some
| way(s).
|
| Now I'm excited about prosocial things, interconnection,
| anything which allows humans as a social animal to truly
| connect, find meaning, and uplift each other. Everything else
| is likely a distraction.
|
| This is the hard part though. Technology lets you make
| incremental progress, occasional breakthroughs, and rarely has
| any major setbacks that aren't purely monetary. Humans having
| healthy social lives at the micro and macro scale is something
| we arguably understand and can affect much less than technology
| at the moment.
| newbamboo wrote:
| War on drugs lost, war on smoking won: people smoke the herb too.
| Because it's not yet monopolized the incentive to not use weird
| chemical pesticides and whatnot is lower than it is with tobacco.
| Still I mostly agree. I just worry there will be long term health
| impacts that weren't there when weed was grown organically and
| much lower in thc. The vaping pandemic of 2019 comes to mind as
| one example.
| luckyorlame wrote:
| huh? Nothing compelling here.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| With the exception of a few (very important) services (e.g.
| college tuition, healthcare, childcare), increases in income have
| actually outpaced inflation for most other goods and services
| over the last 20 years [0]. This is something I almost never see
| discussed; almost everyone seems to believe that real incomes
| have totally stagnated.
|
| That said, given current inflationary trends, it will be
| interesting to see if this still holds up in a decade or two.
|
| [0] https://www.aei.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/01/cpi2020.png?x...
| crymer11 wrote:
| Average hourly wages have, but what about the median?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not understand why averages are so often used rather
| than deciles or even quintiles.
| Clubber wrote:
| Not always, but a lot of times people pick the number that
| supports their conclusion. For example, worker pay. If you
| want to make it seem higher, include the executives and do
| a mean average. Life expectancy works the same way. It's
| not that adults typically died at age 30, it's the number
| is a mean and includes child deaths which was a lot at the
| time. If you have 4 people, 2 are 60 and 2 died at birth,
| the mean age is 30. (60 + 60 + 0 + 0) / 4 = life expectancy
| of 30.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I cannot see any non cynical reason why the source
| of the data would want to only release the average. And
| even then, they usually do not specify what kind of
| average!
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Average vs. median have grown fairly proportionally since
| 2000 [0]. Note, this chart is adjusted for inflation.
|
| [0] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/gs-
| live/uploads%2F1527022...
| tedheath123 wrote:
| Would it be fair to say that this chart shows real US
| median incomes to be stagnant since the late 80s?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This is a better graph including the past 5 years:
|
| https://cdn.dqydj.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/inflation-m...
|
| Source:
|
| https://dqydj.com/individual-income-by-year/
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Looks like that despite the top <=10% seeing a
| disproportionate increase in their income, the overall
| average and median are still growing relatively
| proportionally, though not to the same degree as 5 years
| ago.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That is much better and it shows that median household
| incomes hadn't grown much until recently (as the tight
| labor market and years of boom have pushed up wages).
|
| I still think it's crazy our minimum wage is so low
| ($7.50/hr today vs $11/hour in late 1960s in today's
| money). IMHO, it should be pinned to productivity growth
| since the 1960s (the question is: should we have higher
| or lower inequality than in the 1960s? The most
| conservative answer would be "the same", in which case
| you tie the ratio of GDP per capita to minimum wage to
| the same level it was in the 1960s.), which would put the
| federal minimum wage somewhere north of $20/hour. (Or
| perhaps a regional approach where a minimum wage of
| $15/hour is universal and then above that, minimum wage
| at 40hours/week is three times what it'd need to support
| a two bedroom apartment rent at median local prices.)
|
| I'm also convinced that stagnated wages has caused
| stagnation in productivity growth, because as minimum
| wage becomes cheaper through inflation, it makes less
| sense for companies to invest in productivity enhancing
| automation and efficiency as they can just hire cheap
| workers and fire them as needed.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Household income doesn't track household prosperity,
| because household sizes have gradually declined.
|
| >>as minimum wage becomes cheaper through inflation, it
| makes less sense for companies to invest in productivity
| enhancing automation and efficiency as they can just hire
| cheap workers and fire them as needed.
|
| There is a finite number of workers. Once they are all
| employed, only investment into productive capital raises
| productivity.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Isn't the fact of rapidly climbing, market-driven
| compensation for typically-minimum-wage jobs such as food
| service, hospitality and labour sufficient to dispense
| with minimum wages all together? Yes perhaps the market
| takes X years to adjust, but it does in fact adjust. Why
| not just wait the years and save all the bureaucracy.
|
| > they can just hire cheap workers and fire them as
| needed
|
| But doesn't increasing the minimum wage just price these
| people who were formerly being hired/fired completely out
| of the labour market?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| No, because usually we aren't in such an extremely tight
| labor market driven by high federal spending.
|
| If you want to argue for indefinite high federal spending
| to guarantee a tight labor market for decades, then sure,
| a higher minimum wage might not be necessary. Is that
| what you're arguing?
|
| Because if a tight labor market is transitory (and
| minimum wage keeps dropping due to inflation), then
| businesses won't be given a firm enough pricing signal to
| make productivity investments.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > This is something I almost never see discussed; almost
| everyone seems to believe that real incomes have totally
| stagnated.
|
| Real people need to pay for tuition/childcare, housing, and
| healthcare, so what would be the point of excluding those from
| the calculation of real income?
| kiba wrote:
| All of these are fundamentally related to the structure of
| our society and land use policy, not anything technological.
|
| There's no real reason to have to pay for college when we're
| already paying for public education.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Well you can't remove things and then say "See, inflation is
| fine!"
|
| If you want uneducated children with no healthcare and no
| affordable place to live I guess things are fine, and that's
| pretty much what we see now.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Exactly, it's like saying "wealthy homeowners are fine"... no
| shit?
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| The point of Gwern's article is to highlight specific things
| that have improved since the 90s. I'm pointing out that this
| is supported by looking at inflation stratified by various
| goods and services. Nowhere in my post did I say that
| "inflation is fine"; I'm just saying many goods and services
| have gotten dramatically cheaper since the 90s, which is
| still counter to the prevailing narrative.
| manux wrote:
| Well you did say that
|
| > almost everyone seems to believe that real incomes have
| totally stagnated.
|
| suggesting that this is a false belief. I think this can
| easily be interpreted as you saying "inflation is fine"
| (even though that may not have been your intention).
| cwoolfe wrote:
| This is a refreshing perspective. Thanks for sharing!
| legrande wrote:
| Every personal homepage should be like Gwern's, but not
| everyone's as prolific or has the time to document their whole
| digital life and document every neat research type thing they
| found online.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > Car Theft is rarer, and in particular, we no longer have to
| worry about our car windows being smashed to steal our car radios
|
| > Remember when physically detaching your car radio to avoid
| leaving it in the car was considered a 100% normal thing to do?
|
| Why is it rarer, I wonder? I do recall having a detachable
| faceplate on my car radio. I sold that car in ~2010 or so but
| stopped bothering with the detaching long before then.
|
| > All Day: because you won't be yelled at for tying up the (only)
| phone line
|
| ... missing phone calls because I was occupying the phone line.
| My university claimed to have been "wired" but it was always
| "going to be enabled 'next year'".
| [deleted]
| namdnay wrote:
| For car radios it's because they no longer exist in their
| previous modular form. Now a car infotainment system is tightly
| coupled to the exact car model itself (because you also use it
| to manage lots of other stuff, and it's tied to various
| controls (wheel, touch, central console etc)
| ghaff wrote:
| >Why is it rarer, I wonder?
|
| There are various ani-theft technologies that can kick in if an
| infotainment system is removed. Electronics are also just
| cheaper in general so there's less value in stealing them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Why is it rarer, I wonder? I do recall having a detachable
| faceplate on my car radio. I sold that car in ~2010 or so but
| stopped bothering with the detaching long before then.
|
| I imagine the value of a stolen car radio has plummeted since
| the combo of smartphone + CarPlay/android auto/3.5mm aux
| jack/Bluetooth is ubiquitous in any car made in the past 10 to
| 15 years.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Why is it rarer, I wonder?
|
| All crime is down significantly, except murder and gun crime in
| the last year or two.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Norway had a lot of car infotaintment theft as late as a couple
| of years ago.
|
| I think some Eastern European gang perfected a way to smash
| windows and grab the valuable parts because at some point
| arrests were made and after that I haven't heard about it.
| throwaway-x123 wrote:
| Life improvement is more free time. Free time is time free from
| necessary work. This includes free time from cooking, cleaning,
| etc, life support activities at home, too. In total, the number
| of working hours on average is higher than in 1990, I think, for
| full time workers. For some workers the work day increased to 12
| hours/day, from 8 hours. It is unlikely the worker will be able
| to use his free time after long work day so even with non-work
| productivity improvements, he may not see the improvement. It
| might be that just 1 hour of additional free time is a better
| life improvement than anything. Universal cable, he list as a
| life improvement, is hardly worth longer work day.
|
| I want to say that IMO: the workday should be lowered. It is
| possible to produce all necessary things for living in just 2-4
| hours/day, including houses, cars and many more. See productivity
| growth. Free time can be work too, but it should not be seen as
| necessary work, everyone should be able to make a choice: work
| necessary time (2-4 hours/day) or longer. If you think something
| worth your free time, OK, work at your free time. But what happen
| is that you try to tell me that I have to work each day 8-12
| hours/day so you can have an universal cable or a new video game,
| etc. Not cool.
| nradov wrote:
| There's nothing stopping you from having more free time. Move
| to a low cost area, get a part time job, and live a frugal
| lifestyle. However most people have different priorities, and
| prefer to chase social status and material comfort at the
| expense of free time.
| throwaway-x123 wrote:
| Why frugal lifestyle? Was it frugal lifestyle in 1970? From
| 1970 productivity increased a few times, so the work day can
| be reduced a few times.
|
| I've spent some time looking for a part time job, there is
| none/rare. Also part time wage likely will not be enough for
| life support.
|
| Almost no one have a choice in how many hours to work so we
| do not know what people prefer.
| [deleted]
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Had a faster broadband connection in the 90s than right now. It
| was also cheaper.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Food has gotten much better, and Wikipedia exists. Those are my
| favorites.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's nice not having to worry about someone stealing your car
| stereo anymore. But these days they saw off your catalytic
| converter, which is a plague in Seattle with organized gangs
| doing it.
| coldtea wrote:
| It's unbelievable how inconsequential most of those are...
|
| Unlike other things, if you didn't have them, you wouldn't really
| think twice about them in the first place, except as very minor
| inconveniences...
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's not really surprising lots of them are fairly minor given
| that it is meant to be an exhaustive list, not a list of only
| significant changes.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Sorry to be that guy, but there have been anti improvements as
| well. All this came with a financial cost, things seem much more
| expensive than back then. Society as a whole is much more
| sedatery and physically lazy and this is reflected in overweight
| numbers, contributing factor to increased health care cost. And
| ever since corona struck, life quality rapidly decreased for
| those who like to get out and do things.
| jacob019 wrote:
| I like how the EU is listed under technology.
| nivenkos wrote:
| And then brings in legislation like the Cookie notices and Link
| Tax, but does absolutely nothing to protect and drive the
| European Tech industry (where is the European FAANG?), allowing
| monopolistic American corporations to ship all the high-paying
| jobs to the US.
|
| Europe had ARM, a whole slew of microcomputer companies (and
| still the Raspberry Pi foundation today), Nokia, Linux, MySQL,
| etc. - all largely sold off or destroyed. Such a loss of
| potential.
| the-dude wrote:
| Isn't this openess forced upon the EU by their strongest
| ally?
| nivenkos wrote:
| The EU has long been run by neo-liberals, so they actually
| choose the policies deliberately.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Perhaps 'technology' is defined as 'anything but can fall off'?
| the-dude wrote:
| Well, they are technocrats after all.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > airplane flights no longer cost an appreciable fraction of your
| annual income12 , and people can afford multiple trips a year.
|
| I routinely flew in the 80's and 90's: shorter lines, more cabin
| space, and food every flight (and fewer yokels airing their
| stinky bare feet). I'd go back to that in a heartbeat.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You can still get that by paying the same fraction of your
| income and flying business class.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| Domestic flying in Japan (on the non-discount airlines) is
| still great. Published regular prices (not based on number of
| seats left), virtually no security, no ID required, liquids
| allowed. No problem checking in 20 minutes before the flight,
| and since the prices are regular, no problem to call 30 minutes
| before a flight because you're running late, and change to the
| next flight. If you're nice, probably no problem to flat-out
| miss a flight and get put on the next one.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup
|
| These times of algorithmic flight loading and
| canceling/combining 'underbooked' flights really stink.
|
| I once ended up flying a Seattle - Boston redeye on a 747 with
| a total three other passengers, and the flight crew said that
| they (Braniff Air, bought by Northwest, etc.) were still making
| money on the flight because the hold was full of US Mail.
|
| That was a quality experience we'll likely never see again.
|
| (Then again, I also once flew London to NYC one row in front of
| the smoking section - that's also a quality experience that I
| won't miss never seeing again)
| asdff wrote:
| I never got why they still have ash trays in the bathrooms of
| the planes. They have a nonsmoking sticker right above the
| ash tray with a cigarette logo. If you aren't going to
| replace the door, why not just put the sticker on top of the
| little ash tray and cover it up?
| notdang wrote:
| So this means that people with less disposable income can
| afford to fly now.
|
| And the people with more income are feeling that their comfort
| has to suffer.
|
| So for those with more income, maybe it makes sense to pay for
| first class or hire a private charter plane?
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Trains are nice too. Cheaper, and you get to move around and
| mingle at lot easier. Maybe try one of those? Busses are
| cheap as well, but you can't walk around as much. But I know
| some people think trains and busses are gross and "lower
| class", which is why they have so much trouble getting
| funding. It's a catch-22: people won't use them, so lines
| don't get funded, so people don't use them.
|
| I'm quite fond of Amtrak's Adirondack. It is a lovely way to
| visit relatives during Thanksgiving and see the foliage.
| Cheaper than planes and less stressful.
|
| https://www.amtrak.com/routes/adirondack-train.html
| asdff wrote:
| No one wants to sit in a train for 10 hours on what would
| have been a two hour flight
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| What if they can't afford a flight?
| d_burfoot wrote:
| >having Fansubs available for all anime (no longer do anime clubs
| watch raw anime and have to debate afterwards what the plot was!
| Yes, that's actually how they'd watch anime back in the
| 1970s-1990s
|
| This actually sounds really fun and makes me feel nostalgic for
| the 90s
| pessimizer wrote:
| In the late-80s/early-90s my supply of animu was supplied by a
| HS friend from Singapore who still had friends and family there
| who would tape things off TV for him that would get to me 2nd
| or 3rd generation. I also generally got what I got.
|
| I'd be so happy when I got my hands on something that VIZ
| reprinted, like Baoh, Grey, or Outlanders. Then, I'd know what
| was going on.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| If you know a bunch of people who do not understand Japanese
| you could still do that. Could be fun, I'd try it once at
| least.
| memco wrote:
| > All-You-Can-Eat Broadband: Faster
|
| > ...
|
| > Indefinite: not worrying about running out of AOL hours,
| liberated from the tyranny of time metering and (mostly)
| bandwidth metering
|
| Except that some ISPs _do_ have caps and going over results in
| throttling or extra charges. I thought those days were behind us,
| but no. It is better than it used to be, but it 's still a thing.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| He missed the elephant in the room that due to further
| digitisation people with less social kills came into positions
| with power to decide what is good and bad for society.
| Furthermore due to labour shortages the culture of those
| companies got bad
|
| Second thing is that the quality of the universities especially
| in the us are declining to the woke/BLM movements
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| This one has if anything gotten worse rather than better:
|
| > Car Theft is rarer, and in particular, we no longer have to
| worry about our car windows being smashed to steal our car radios
|
| Yes, car radios have been made harder to steal, but now our car
| windows are smashed to steal laptops and other valuables. And
| catalytic converter theft is also rampant.
| perardi wrote:
| _And catalytic converter theft is also rampant._
|
| Well that sure seems to be true.
|
| https://www.motortrend.com/news/catalytic-converter-thefts-n...
|
| "According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, the pandemic
| has seen a rapid rise in catalytic converter theft. In 2019, an
| average of 282 catalytic converters were stolen every month; in
| 2020 the average had risen to 1,203--and that's just an
| average. In December alone, 2,347 catalytic converters were
| stolen."
|
| And anecdotally, living in Chicago: I know of so very many
| people who have had their convertors stolen. The wonders of
| outdoor parking.
| JimTheMan wrote:
| I wonder how much this is an American phenomenon. I've been
| reading about it on here quite a bit, haven't really heard
| any news of it in Australia.
|
| It feels unreal to read. Like, crime must be higher in
| Chicago/LA etc than I realised.
| telesilla wrote:
| Great we're doing better however I notice most of these are
| benefits experienced by the middle class and up. How about we do
| better and also give a leg up for the those in poverty? Even if
| Macdonalds is serving healthier food, I wouldn't pat ourselves on
| the back quite yet.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The greatest change to the world from the last X decades is the
| lifting of billions from extreme poverty in Africa and Asia.
| Changes to middle class life have been insignificant in
| comparison.
| telesilla wrote:
| For those reminding me of that poverty has been greatly
| alleviated with the last decades, I understand very well
| however this article completely lacked this info and it came
| across to me as ignoring this important demographic.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The smartphone, value engineered window A/C unit and all manner
| of other things have given the poor a massively better
| lifestyle than they did in the 1990s.
|
| Go watch some early 90s movies and look at the kinds of
| apartments and houses normal "not material to the plot" people
| live in and how they are furnished and compare to today.
| dougmwne wrote:
| We can add camera drones to this list. They would have been a
| sci-fi fantasy in 1990. Now you can get incredibly stable and
| clear aerial footage for a few hundred dollars that would have
| required a film crew, a helicopter a pilot and a flight plan a
| few decades ago.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> remember how advertisements always had to say "no batteries
| included"?_
|
| Hmm. Perhaps this is a regionalism, but I remember the phrase as
| being "batteries not included":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batteries_Not_Included
| RegBarclay wrote:
| Obligatory Louis CK riff:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U
| dalbasal wrote:
| This reminds me of a golden age blog post, when lists turned out
| to be an understudied literary device. I'm a fan of "dumps." Some
| interestingly debatable ones here:
|
| " _Intellectual Property Maximalism rollback: copyright terms
| have not and probably will not be indefinitely extended again to
| eternity to protect Mickey Mouse, and in 2019, for the first time
| since 1998, works entered the public domain_ "
|
| I think the easy indicator may be the wrong one here. Defined
| more broadly, the public domain is not being enriched. For
| example, the web was a lot smaller in 1999, but it was a much
| more public domain. Today's web and post web internet is more
| centralised, controlled and therefore private property. Google
| could crawl pages, links, forums, because they were public, and
| use that access to create a search engine. Content, connections
| and signal are, today, proprietary. You can't order the world's
| information if that information is facebook's, only facebook can.
|
| Or patents, more stuff of the last generation is patented than
| the previous'. Does that mean we invented more or we patented
| more? What happens to stuff that doesn't get patented? It's
| public.
|
| Old copyright expiry deadlines might be a symbolic lead
| indicator, but they're determining the location of a fence post
| in county scale land dispute. A tiny, legible, part of the whole.
| In real terms, Disney's copyright portfolio is worth more, not
| less.
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| You're only arguing against the claim about copyright terms by
| equating two separate definitions of "public domain." public
| domain is being enriched by that stuff from the early 20th
| century. The "public feeling" stuff of the 1999 internet wasn't
| actually in the public domain then either.
|
| The public domain has gotten larger _as has the private
| domain_. But all that private stuff is now on track to expire
| one day, while in 1999 it was not clear that that would ever
| happen at all.
|
| Compared to 1999, a lot more of that "private domain" stuff is
| also being made freely available, price-wise.
|
| I support copyright expiration, but making Disney's copyright
| portfolio worth less _when they continue to create a bunch of
| stuff_ was never an explicit part of that goal for me.
| cma wrote:
| New public domain on the internet probably peaked with
| flickr's height.
| dalbasal wrote:
| As I said, "defined more broadly," which I'm also arguing is
| the pertinent way to define public and private domain.
| api wrote:
| I would bet that today's public domain open web is larger than
| it was in 1999. It's just harder to find because search engines
| prioritize large closed silo sites and outside those sites
| search has been largely destroyed by spam.
|
| It's sort of like the people who say mobile devices are
| destroying the more open PC market and replacing it with closed
| mobile "consoles."
|
| There are far more PCs out there today than there were in the
| 1990s and they are cheaper, faster, easier to use, and more
| versatile. The reason people think mobile has eaten everything
| is because _growth_ in mobile has outpaced growth in PCs and
| there are now far more mobile devices than PCs. The PC market
| has still grown though, so there are more PCs than ever.
|
| Mobile growth is plateauing too. The mobile explosion was the
| creation of a new computing niche more than the displacement of
| an old one, though low-end and narrower PC use cases have been
| displaced by phones and tablets. PCs have become more like
| trucks vs. cars, machines for "real work."
|
| We also have a lot more OS and architectural choices in PCs
| today than in the 1990s. Linux is pretty usable and MacOS no
| longer sucks, so with Windows there are now three major choices
| available. Others like FreeBSD and OpenBSD are also viable but
| not as popular. You can even get an ARM laptop or desktop in
| the form of Raspberry Pi style boards in laptop form factors,
| larger ARM64 "server" chip boards that can work as desktops
| running Linux, or in the form of Apple Silicon Macs (that can
| also run other OSes on ARM in VMs), so you now have two CPU
| architectures in the mainstream PC market instead of just one.
|
| Lastly there's a huge market today for cheap single board
| computers like the Raspberry Pi that did not exist at all back
| then.
|
| A similar comparison by the way applies to the metal server
| market vs. cloud. There are far more racked up servers today
| than there were in the 90s. Cloud has just grown really
| quickly, so there's even more cloud deployments.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> It's sort of like the people who say mobile devices are
| destroying the more open PC market and replacing it with
| closed mobile "consoles." There are far more PCs out there
| today than there were in the 1990s and they are cheaper,
| faster, easier to use, and more versatile. _
|
| Well, there definitely are more PCs now than in 1991, but pre
| covid-WFH era, PC sales were at an all-time low, following a
| multi year downward trend, thanks to people moving to those
| closed mobile devices and consoles.
| api wrote:
| Slowing sales were also due to PCs lasting longer and
| remaining useful longer. Mobile sales are slowing for the
| same reason. A five year old phone is fine.
| ghaff wrote:
| >What happens to stuff that doesn't get patented? It's public.
|
| Or it's kept as a trade secret.
| dalbasal wrote:
| True. I considered clarifying, but didn't to be concise. I
| think publication as a reasoning for granting patents is
| superseded. It's mostly relevant to the history of patents,
| not the present.
|
| You can't be secretive about a UI, or the chemical
| composition of a drug.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| WD40 formula is famously still secret.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I guess that's an example in both directions. WD40
| formula is secret despite the existence of patents.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are competitors with less name recognition, but
| arguably a better product (WD40 is great for water
| displacement, but it isn't very good for most of the
| things people use it for).
| echelon wrote:
| Take GC/mass spec/NMR to it and find out. The tools are
| available.
|
| Do it to Coke/Pepsi while you're at it.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Wired did it back in 2009:
|
| https://www.wired.com/2009/04/st-whatsinside-6/
| Clewza313 wrote:
| One other big change since the 1990s, though, is that Creative
| Commons is now a real thing. Many publications/sites including
| Wikipedia, Stack Overflow and open-access journals release
| everything as CC by default, and Wikimedia Commons has become a
| treasure trove of materials that can be freely remixed.
| ghaff wrote:
| >can be freely remixed
|
| The type of CC matters.
|
| NC can't be used commercially--whatever that means.
|
| ND, rather ironically, essentially forbids
| derivatives/remixing therefore prohibiting one of the reasons
| CC was created in the first place.
| dminvs wrote:
| > stoves
|
| You'll pry my gas range from my cold, dead hands
| bob1029 wrote:
| What property of the gas range do you most enjoy?
|
| I have recently swapped gas for induction and it dropped my
| meal prep time by 20~30% because I'm not standing around
| waiting for pans to get hot anymore.
|
| If I was big into wok cooking, I'd probably keep the gas range.
| 99% of the time I just want to get a pan to 500F or boil a pot
| of water ASAP.
| __s wrote:
| Likely our experiences of electric stoves varies. I recall
| electric stoves which take a few minutes to heat up & didn't
| get very hot at that
|
| Another nice situation was during the 2003 blackout my father
| was able to crank a turn table to play some records while
| lighting the stove with a match to cook dinner
| bob1029 wrote:
| > I recall electric stoves which take a few minutes to heat
| up & didn't get very hot at that
|
| You should try induction sometime. Convective electric is
| very slow by comparison and I have struggled with it myself
| for many years. My current cooktop can take a 10" iron
| skillet from dead cold to smoking hot in under 30 seconds
| using the maximum setting.
|
| Only caveat with induction is the distance to element &
| cookware material constraints, both of which can usually be
| overcome with little difficulty.
| dminvs wrote:
| The fact that I was able to continue feeding my family hot
| food in the freezing cold 72-hour blackout in Texas! Big
| plus.
|
| Electric or induction will never win me over unless I somehow
| end up in a house with a Powerwall.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I went through the same TX freeze shitstorm too. Not a fun
| time.
|
| I have a cheap 1500w portable induction cooktop I used for
| this exact purpose. On the lowest setting, it only pulls
| ~300W AC, so you can run it on the smallest of generators
| or portable power stations without any problems.
|
| I have a 12,500W generator as well that could _easily_ run
| my main induction range, but I reserved loading on this for
| making sure the furnace blower was moving. Didn 't want to
| play games with fuel supply at the time.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Get better pans, then heating up isn't an issue.
|
| I think it's nice to have an induction burner but I prefer
| gas for many reasons. One is the visual feedback from the
| flame. Another is that a flame is a 3D surface to cook on so
| I can tilt the pan to get certain sides hot when needed.
|
| Induction is good at boiling water though.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| As a general rule, the better the pan, the thicker it is
| and the longer it would take to heat up.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Conductivity matters. Copper pans that are thick heat-up
| really fast. This is one of their primary benefits in
| that they change temperature quickly based on the input.
| The heat-up and cool down quickly. This is why they are
| popular with chefs - fine tuned control on pan heat which
| you generally want to change while cooking.
|
| Cast iron is the opposite. They take a long time to heat-
| up and a long time to cool down. Steel is somewhere in
| between.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Precisely. This is why I started moving towards induction
| after I became obsessed with the capabilities of cast
| iron cookware.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Cast iron is excellent for storing a lot of heat and then
| releasing it over a long period of time for searing
| things, etc. I love my cast iron cookware. But it's not a
| good choice for more delicate cooking where you want to
| change the temperature of the pan quickly and temperature
| control matters. Copper is noted for this and is popular
| in professional kitchens for precisely this reason. And
| gas allows you to tilt a pan to blast one side which is
| important when reducing sauces or when you want the oil
| to rise up the side of something to crisp it, etc. Alas,
| copper won't work on an induction stove.
|
| I've never heard a chef say that getting a pan hot and
| staying hot quickly is their number 1 optimization.
| Except for boiling water, which induction is great for.
|
| But every home cook has different things they like I
| guess.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > I've never heard a chef say that getting a pan hot and
| staying hot quickly is their number 1 optimization
|
| I am certainly no chef. Just an engineer trying to
| optimize my time as much as possible, especially in areas
| where I do not really enjoy spending it.
|
| Reduction of delicate sauces, et. al. is not something I
| am strongly concerned with. Fast meal prep is the name of
| the game for me. I do still have the ability to use gas
| if I really wanted to, I just like the speed of
| induction.
|
| Do you prefer the cleanup required for a gas range as
| well? My induction cooktop can be perfectly cleaned
| within 10 seconds and I don't have to wait for it to cool
| down either.
|
| When you look at all of this through the lens of time-
| value, I think it gets much more complex.
| nemo44x wrote:
| For sure - different tools for different jobs. We use
| different software Dev tools for different projects.
|
| I'm a hobby home chef so I guess my optimizations are
| different. I insist on an offset smoker when a pellet
| smoker would use much less of my time, for example.
|
| Awesome you cook though especially when it's not your
| preferred way to spend time! It's so easy to fall into
| the pattern of just getting delicious restaurant food all
| the time but cooking for yourself and family builds
| something.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > I'm a hobby home chef so I guess my optimizations are
| different.
|
| Yep there you go. If it's something you enjoy, you almost
| _want_ to slow things down a bit.
|
| > It's so easy to fall into the pattern of just getting
| delicious restaurant food all the time
|
| Absolutely. Virtually all of my friends & family are 100%
| addicted to other people cooking & bringing them food
| now.
|
| I try to eat out rarely, especially any sort of cheap
| fast food. The quality & nutrition you get out of a $5
| burger these days is absolutely appalling.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Gas stoves creates high amounts of indoor pollution. The amount
| of pollution gas stoves creates inside are often illegal
| outside, the US doesn't have indoor pollution standards.
|
| Children living in homes with gas stoves are 40% more likely to
| develop asthma for example, according to some studies. Other
| studies have it closer to 10%.
|
| Anyway, it's clear that indoor gas combustion isn't advisable
| from a health perspective. Not to mention the climate, burning
| methane for energy should be phased out, full stop.
|
| https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602...
|
| https://qz.com/1941254/experts-are-sounding-the-alarm-about-...
| nemo44x wrote:
| Those claims have been debunked as being misinterpreted. If
| you ran a gas stove for 24 hours then yes the amount of NO2
| would be illegal outside. But this doesn't consider time-
| adjusted emissions but rather peak emissions. So you'd have
| to combine all of that into a single continuous blast, which
| isn't the case.
|
| As for asthma, current U.S. federal agency involvement on the
| subject does not identify a connection between cooking with
| natural gas stoves and the risk of asthma development or
| direct association with asthma attacks.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Please link some science papers debunking it, something
| real that isn't just YesToGas lobby talking points. Don't
| forget US Federal agency recommendations aren't always
| trustable, especially with lobbying and lots of money
| involved.
|
| Here's a recent study from Australia for example:
| https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:727186
| anthk wrote:
| Wut, people has been using gas stoves since... forever.
|
| And no asthma has found or correlated in Europe.
|
| With pollution around industry, cars and wastes, yes.
|
| Gas stoves? that sounds tacky as worst.
| basseq wrote:
| My ideal range is 2 induction burners + 4 gas. Induction has a
| lot of the benefits of gas (e.g., instant temperature control),
| but gas is still superior for sauteing and continuous
| temperature control.
|
| Whenever I cook on gas, I miss the fast-heating of induction
| for things like pasta or potatoes.
|
| I also don't understand why all induction ranges have to be
| "high-tech" touchscreen crap. I'd love an induction stove with
| big, substantial, tactile knobs. Cooking on a Wolf range is
| such a pleasure for that experience alone.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > Whenever I cook on gas, I miss the fast-heating of
| induction for things like pasta or potatoes.
|
| In the UK, every kitchen has a fast-boil kettle (and has done
| for decades now) and those still boil water faster than an
| induction hob.
| kristofferR wrote:
| US kettles are much slower than UK kettles though, due to
| the voltage difference in the power outlets.
| basseq wrote:
| Apparently I need to look at Gaggenau, which has both knobs
| on some induction models and a series of models that are
| designed to be combined together. So I can actually have an
| integrated workspace with gas and induction options!
| lostlogin wrote:
| Knobless induction is a travesty - I'd pay a lot more to have
| knobs.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That was me, then induction changed my life.
| anonleb4 wrote:
| For me it's the fact they don't work everywhere. Electricity is
| not a given in all places, be it outdoor or in a country where
| the current isn't stable.
| ozim wrote:
| My point of view is that I live in the future now.
|
| When I was a kid in the 90's when I think about life back then it
| sucked, compared to nowadays.
|
| I think we could list a lot more than what is in the article.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Interesting. My first thought was, 'HIV is not a death sentence',
| and looked for the section on medicine. Randomly:
|
| - Mapping the human genome has led to many applications of
| genetic medicine.
|
| - Polio was eradicated in India.
|
| - Cancer death rates declined 27% since 1999...
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's good to reflect on improvement as it's so easy to start
| taking stuff for granted. The two I often think about are smoking
| and food.
|
| The smoking ban happened in England in 2007, so I didn't have to
| put up with smoking for that long. But I can definitely remember
| the time when going out meant your clothes and hair stunk of
| smoke. It was disgusting. In Germany it is still legal for
| smaller establishments to have smoking, and smoking is still
| _very_ popular in Germany, unlike the UK and US. A few of us were
| looking for a place to have some drinks one night and found it
| really difficult because going into a smoking place was out of
| the question.
|
| Growing up in the UK we always had the cheapest food. In the 90s
| supermarkets started having value brands and we had a lot of
| "Tesco Value" stuff. Today you just cannot find food at such low
| quality. If you buy the cheapest today, you are getting what
| would have been a premium product back then. The bread was like
| tough foam, the crisps like burnt potato skins, the beans were
| mostly watery sauce.
| iambateman wrote:
| I often ask people: "if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or
| 2021, which would you pick?"
|
| An incredible number of people pick '91. Some people even ask to
| go back to the seventies.
|
| This article explains why I would much rather be young now rather
| than before.
| bambataa wrote:
| I'd pick 20 in 1991 just to be there for the original rave
| scene!
| nivenkos wrote:
| '91 would be better though - better salaries in a lot of jobs,
| and lower house prices.
|
| GPS on the phone is awesome, but I'd still prefer financial
| security.
| ghaff wrote:
| >better salaries in a lot of jobs
|
| Factory jobs that is probably true in general--though you're
| still into the period when a lot of traditional union
| manufacturing jobs were leaving (or had left) the country.
|
| As an engineer/software developer, you're probably going to
| be paid about $40K for an entry-level position [ADDED: For
| the US at a "tech" company]. And there is basically no
| equivalent to routine FAANG SWE salaries.
|
| Housing is cheaper (relatively) in some locations although
| the Bay Area was still relatively expensive. Manhattan was
| considered the high-priced place to live at the time.
| nivenkos wrote:
| My entry level software job was $35k in 2015 in London!
| Outside the US, jobs across the board paid a lot more
| before 2008.
| mech422 wrote:
| I was making $50K/year as a developer on Wall St. with 2-3
| years professional experience...and it was awesome. And
| yes, the HFT guys got 'FAANG' salaries. HFT was in its
| infancy, and those guys were making bank!
|
| While the absolute numbers may seem small by today's
| standards, it was more then enough for a single 20something
| to have the time of their lives. Even paying Manhattan
| rents, we were out 5-6 nights a week clubbing and partying
| nemo44x wrote:
| There are many factory jobs today and companies have a
| difficult time filling them. They are not the monotonous,
| repetitive jobs of assembly line work (that has been
| outsourced) but rather involve some skill that you'll be
| taught. But it's hard to find people to fill these roles as
| qualified candidates in many cases think the jobs are below
| them (college educated but can't find work in their field)
| or they simply don't want to show up every day and work.
|
| Many people today choose lifestyle centered work (gig
| economy, part time roles for short term, etc) rather than
| work that lets them build a life. I have multiple friends
| that have gone this route out of high school with no
| college and started at the bottom and have over the years
| acquired more skills and knowledge and some have moved into
| supervisory and management roles after their companies
| financed some additional skills like using spreadsheets,
| basic management, etc.
|
| The endless stories of people that start, work a week and
| get a check, don't show for 2 weeks and then come back
| thinking they are still employed is amazing. The jobs exist
| and they pay well, but not enough people want them.
| nivenkos wrote:
| If people don't want them, then they don't pay enough (or
| have other issues - work safety, etc.). That's how the
| market works...
| nemo44x wrote:
| It could be, but really I think it's more than that.
| These jobs pay really well and they offer a career
| ladder. You will be able to buy a home, have children,
| take vacations. But you need to show up every day and
| work. A lot of people who would be qualified for these
| types of jobs don't want to do that. They'd rather pick
| and choose and float around at places for less money and
| less financial security.
|
| This isn't like fast food restaurants having trouble
| hiring people at minimum wage because stimmy checks pay
| more than working. People come in and they want the job
| and they work a week or 2 and then disappear after they
| get paid and then come back when they need money again.
| That type of work ethic just isn't compatible with this
| kind of career so they end up at an Amazon warehouse,
| driving Ubers, and delivering food instead since that
| does support their lifestyle choice.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > These jobs pay really well and they offer a career
| ladder. You will be able to buy a home, have children,
| take vacations. But you need to show up every day and
| work.
|
| They obviously do not pay commensurate to the risks of
| job loss, lack of quality of life at a job, and/or to
| make up for the undesirability for the location they are
| in.
|
| The proof is the data showing wages for factory type work
| stagnating for many decades now (until the recent few
| years). People incorporate that knowledge, and let their
| kids know that those jobs are not worth investing in. How
| many factory towns are there where the factory closes or
| downsizes and the whole town goes into economic decline?
| You need to pay a lot to offset that kind of risk.
|
| The other proof is also that I bet they can get lots of
| qualified applicants that will "show up everyday and
| work". Just offer $200k per year. Or $500k per year.
| Obviously the purchasers of that type of labor are not
| offering enough money.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > They obviously do not pay commensurate to the risks of
| job loss, lack of quality of life at a job, and/or to
| make up for the undesirability for the location they are
| in.
|
| I mean, there's a lot of alcoholism problems and drug
| issues too.
|
| >People incorporate that knowledge, and let their kids
| know that those jobs are not worth investing in.
|
| I'm not sure the wisdom of the crowds is a great example
| here. How many kids are in many thousands of debt and
| working at dead end jobs or as a barista, etc. because
| they got a useless degree from a third rate university?
|
| > How many factory towns are there where the factory
| closes or downsizes and the whole town goes into economic
| decline? You need to pay a lot to offset that kind of
| risk.
|
| I don't think I'm describing factory town style jobs of
| yesteryear. There are many solid jobs in tool and die,
| machining, etc that are mainly run by small to mid-sized
| shops. Literally thousands of these around the country.
|
| There are a lot of people making a great living in these
| places, it's just that there's a shortage of qualified
| labor. Similar to software companies - there's a shortage
| of labor and it isn't because they aren't paying enough.
| Additionally, a lot of people think this kind of work is
| below them because they went to a university to study a
| field that they can't make it in.
|
| > The other proof is also that I bet they can get lots of
| qualified applicants that will "show up everyday and
| work". Just offer $200k per year. Or $500k per year.
| Obviously the purchasers of that type of labor are not
| offering enough money.
|
| Yeah probably but I'm not sure that's economic. Also, the
| starting pay won't be the best but you rise fairly
| quickly through the ranks where the money improves. But
| like I said before, there are a lot of people making a
| good life for themselves with a home, a family,
| vacations, and a solid American life in these places.
| This life exists for people. But you would think it isn't
| even available - but it is.
|
| Kids complain that they are 50k in debt from school,
| can't find a job that pays well and will never be able to
| afford a home or have kids. But that's not true. There's
| a career out there in modern manufacturing if they are
| willing to humble themselves.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Additionally, a lot of people think this kind of work
| is below them because they went to a university to study
| a field that they can't make it in.
|
| People think it is "below them" because they saw the
| people who went into white collar professions in their
| parents' generation come out ahead. Pay enough (and
| advertise the pay) and people's perception will change.
|
| >But you would think it isn't even available - but it is.
|
| Where are the job postings showing the pay and benefits?
| Why do the stats indicate the wages not increasing much?
|
| >There's a career out there in modern manufacturing if
| they are willing to humble themselves.
|
| The situation might have changed recently, but those jobs
| have definitely not paid sufficiently for the past few
| decades to make it a worthwhile investment. This is shown
| by definition, since they are complaining about lack of
| candidates for the job positions. If they paid
| appropriately and competitively, by definition people
| would have opted to work those jobs.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I'm not sure and maybe the type of work I'm describing
| isn't traditional manufacturing. Machining and welding
| for instance are skilled trades but a big part of modern
| manufacturing. Tool and dye press setup is another and
| one of many entry paths.
|
| We hear the same things in other non-manufacturing trades
| though like plumbing and carpentry and HVAC, etc.
| companies struggle to find reliable people when the money
| is good and prospects are stable.
|
| One contractor I had was a Ukrainian man with a math
| degree but went into tile work when he moved here because
| he found he could make more money doing it. Smart man in
| our conversations and humble but is massively in-demand
| in the general area because he's so good at it and he's
| paid like it.
| jasode wrote:
| _> I often ask people: "if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or
| 2021, which would you pick?" An incredible number of people
| pick '91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies._
|
| There's a podcast by Jason Feifer (was called Pessimists
| Archive) where the repeated theme across many episodes is the
| recurring fallacy of the _" good ole days"_:
| https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/
|
| E.g. you ask today's generation and they say the "good old
| days" was 1991; but if you ask those in 1991 what the good old
| days were, they wouldn't say _" right now!"_ ... they'd say
| 1970s. And if you ask those in 1970s... they'd say... (you get
| the point).
|
| So the conclusion is either...
|
| - the _true_ good old days after connecting the survey across
| centuries was actually the prehistoric cave man days of hunting
| & gathering
|
| ... or ...
|
| - every generation repeats the rose-colored glasses narrative
| because we bias the past with positive memories and the bias
| the present with negative current events
| aqsalose wrote:
| > but if you ask those in 1991 what the good old days were,
| they wouldn't say "right now!"
|
| Is this sourced? In Europe, 1991 was when the Soviet union
| fell. Sure, in many now-ex-USSR countries 1991 wasn't the
| best of times because the collapse wasn't very well managed.
| But in West, suddenly the impeding doom of nuclear war near
| disappeared overnight.
|
| 2021 has ... exciting climate events and Covid.
|
| _edit_. What is the soundtrack of 2021? In 1991 it
| supposedly was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RjJKxsamQ .
| TIL the year ended with band donating bunch of royalties from
| the single to Gorbachev 10 days before he resigned and the
| USSR disappeared. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(Scorpions_s
| ong...
| ghaff wrote:
| That's one of the themes in the film _Midnight in Paris_.
| (Yes, it 's a Woody Allen film.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| A 3rd option is society (or parts of society) can go through
| rough patches where 30 years before year X was better than
| year X + 30. Trajectories for different populations within
| the society can differ themselves and so individuals will
| have varying answers.
| __s wrote:
| Alternatively, it's a bit of Future Shock
|
| I grew up in the 90s, & maybe I'd do better as a 20 year old
| in 1991 rather than 2031 _(too young to say 20 in 2021; I 've
| succeeded already close enough to there)_, but I'd rather
| grow up in the 2000s than grow up in the 80s
|
| There's a kind of arbitrage, where if I could take my
| technical abilities from 2010 back to 1990, I'd probably do
| pretty well. I'm not so sure about taking those abilities to
| 2030. So you need to frame your question more clearly: at
| what age does the time travel occur? For simplicity I assume
| the only age you've given: 20. If it's about when we're born,
| then that's a completely different human being
| wazoox wrote:
| I was 20 in 1991 in Europe. I was flying regularly without
| any flygskam. The USSR was just falling and we were all sure
| it was an unmitigated good (we still didn't know that the
| Russians will die by scores and see their life expectancy
| drop like a rock); Germany was just reunited and we thought
| the EU was a great project, not a bureaucratic monster
| working for the oligarchy; Hell, I even believed there were
| nice guys and bad guys in the Yugoslavian wars. I probably
| even believed that voting counted. Future was bright, and
| open. Year 2000 was still ahead, with its wonders.
|
| My mother was 20 in 1968, and it was the good old days. They
| believed the revolution was around the corner. Present was
| somewhat grim, but future was bright; in her years of
| political activity she saw the pill come, abortion rights,
| women rights enhanced, the end of dictatorships in Spain and
| Portugal, the end (in civilised countries) of death penalty,
| the crumbling of USSR.
|
| My children are in their 20s; my son refuses to learn to
| drive because cars are evil and he doesn't want to own one,
| ever, because they're _bad_ ; he's hell-bent of enjoying the
| now because he's pretty sure that there is no future, except
| climate catastrophe, incessant wars, and electronically-
| enhanced surveillance; he thinks that democracy is a complete
| scam and he forgets to vote if I don't nag him weeks in
| advance. He's just as disillusioned as I am, but 27 years
| younger.
|
| So I think the picture is more complex. The global direction
| of evolution is much more important than the objective
| starting point.
| z77dj3kl wrote:
| I'm extremely interest the general feeling and views
| societies had in the past: how they perceived the present
| and the future, as a whole.
|
| Objectively life has become better and more comfortable for
| the vast majority of humans since then (Hans Rosling does a
| beautiful job of exploring this).
|
| But I do think that perceptions and feelings matter, and
| even though material wellbeing is a prerequisite to that,
| so is also the general feeling and view that those around
| you hold, and in many ways I feel we've gone backwards in
| that.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember 1991, even if I wasn't in the
| workforce then, and IIRC the mood then was kinda depressed.
| We were in the midst of a recession. We'd just come off the
| hangover of the first Gulf War. Nobody really knew what the
| fall of the Soviet Union would mean for America, and there
| were real fears about nukes falling into the wrong hands.
| Grunge was the hot new music, and pop culture was all about
| Gen-X alienation.
|
| If you asked then what the good old days were, they'd
| probably say 1988. There's a reason Bush 1 was the only
| 1-term president between 1980 and 2020. Things didn't start
| perking up until around 93-95 with the WWW.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I was in my early 20s in 1991, and I'd easily pick 2021. The
| 1990s were a great time to have as my formative period, and it
| was fun to ride the web from gopher to mobile.
|
| But the 2020s are going to be a transformational decade too,
| with a lot to learn and experience, and a ton of opportunities.
| Far more chaotic than the 1990s, but honestly that suits me
| personally. I thrive on that.
|
| I would pick the 90s over the 2000s or 2010s though.
|
| Well, I'd go back to the 2010s and buy even more bitcoin than I
| did, but other than that, I could skip that decade.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Definitely depends on race. As a white guy '91 would have been
| easy sailing.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Being a white guy in 2021 is easy sailing.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| I 100% agree. I was mostly referring to the fact that '91
| was more difficult for other races, genders, and
| sexualities.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In the USA, perhaps. Though I doubt it even there, a lot of
| the rural underperforming regions are mostly white.
|
| In Belarus or Moldova, definitely not.
|
| People somehow forget that being white is not the same as
| being white American. There is a lot of dirty poor whites
| living under dubious regimes elsewhere. _Whiteness_ is not
| really a thing.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Early 90s Eastern Europe would be a tough environment for
| a 18 year old. There was a lot of friction moving away
| from from the old system (not that Belarus living in 2021
| is that much easier)
| whitepaint wrote:
| https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Oh my! Poor white people.
|
| White people live on average 77 years white black people
| live 72 years on average. The HORROR! The white man's
| burden to have more money and live longer! Truly the
| catastrophe of the 21st century.
| Clubber wrote:
| To use your logic in another period, in 1300, the king
| was white, all the nobles were white, the clergy was
| white. White people in England in the 1300s must have had
| it pretty easy.
|
| "Having it easy," is about class not race. Making it
| about race is a political motive to divide the lower and
| middle class to keep the status quo. You might thing what
| you are doing is virtuous, but it's just maintaining the
| status quo for all races in the middle and lower class.
|
| Go visit Appalachia. Wanna see poor of all races, go
| visit just about anywhere outside a city / metropolitan
| area.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| Wow. You clearly are not connected with the broader white
| community, even if you're white yourself. Or just too
| young to see reality yet. I'm from the midwest, which
| removes a lot of the privilege on the coasts, normal
| people live here, not nearly as many silver spoons and
| generational wealth. Opioid and suicide death is through
| the roof compared to decades before. I knew many people
| personally that are now gone. If you hate white people,
| you should be very happy in 2021. Because as the backbone
| of America by default as the majority, they're under
| assault by corporate America to squeeze them for
| everything they're worth. Whether that's reducing their
| wages through offshore labor or effects of NAFTA, or by
| default as the majority group pushed pain pills by
| unscrupulous docs and big pharma.
|
| Your generalization may be reality in your area, if you
| go outside at all and not just reading regurgitated
| politically motivated crap online. But I'm not seeing it
| on the ground, in the broad swaths of middle America.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Indeed, now white men are discriminated against in a lot of
| Tech companies under the guise of fighting "white privilege"
| and promoting diversity (note this does not include class or
| background) - meanwhile class differences (inheritance, home
| ownership, etc.) are more important than ever.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > Indeed, now white men are discriminated against in a lot
| of Tech companies under the guise of fighting "white
| privilege" and promoting diversity
|
| Tech is 2% black, but white people are being discriminated
| against? You mean by being promoted, having huge salaries,
| and getting all of jobs? oh my!
|
| The historically disadvantaged white american community
| should really organize together. Maybe under a white flag.
| I know. White robes. Maybe pointy hats? I wonder if anyone
| has tried that before?
|
| When you start from a position of extreme white privilege,
| even the smallest gains by others which don't affect you
| (there are endless tech jobs, no white man left behind
| here) seem like a catastrophe. I'm sure this is how white
| people in the south felt too!
| nivenkos wrote:
| I'm not American, yet almost all Tech companies have
| inherited this Identity Politics culture.
|
| It feels like such a huge step backwards to have
| scholarships, fast track programmes, etc. rule out great
| applicants solely based on their skin colour.
| [deleted]
| hncurious wrote:
| You're clearly not familiar with hiring in tech. It's 2%
| because the available pool is tiny. It's not for lack of
| trying to hire non-white, non-asians in tech. Tech
| minorities are in fact prioritized in hiring AND there
| are countless programs to increase the pool. Aimed at
| girls and tech minorities, not white and asian boys.
| sodafountan wrote:
| It's almost like biology and aptitude play a big part in
| what you end up doing in life.
|
| Here's a definition of aptitude from Google:
|
| What is an example of an aptitude? Aptitudes are natural
| talents, special abilities for doing, or learning to do,
| certain kinds of things easily and quickly. They have
| little to do with knowledge or culture, or education, or
| even interests. They have to do with heredity. Musical
| talent and artistic talent are examples of such
| aptitudes.
|
| Our industry has things backwards, rather than trying to
| cattle chute "Women and Minorities" into tech, which is
| bad for the industry and bad for people who land roles
| they won't be happy in, we should simply not discriminate
| against those who show aptitude towards the roles they're
| applying for - which in all of my experience has been the
| way things are.
|
| As an aside, wouldn't it be weird if we were all required
| to be artists to make a living?
| LightG wrote:
| Interesting point, meine Obergruppenfuhrer.
| sodafountan wrote:
| Does the word "Aptitude" trigger you, comrade?
| dang wrote:
| If you post flamewar comments again we will ban you.
| We've had to warn you before.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| LightG wrote:
| Does the phrase "get f*cked you absolute bivalve, no
| wonder your girlfriend dumped you" have any resonance at
| all with you?
|
| (Edited for spelling)
| dang wrote:
| If you post flamewar comments again we will ban you.
| We've had to warn you before.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| I don't work for tech companies, but I've never been
| "discriminated against" as a white guy.
| hncurious wrote:
| That misdirection is convenient for the upper class, not so
| convenient for the rest of us.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| You sound like one of those politicians clamoring on about
| how oppressed Christians are while being part of the 88% of
| congress that identifies as Christian.
| seanc wrote:
| I was in my 20's in the 90's. It's tough to say. On the one
| hand I feel like I was the last generation to take a mid-level
| software salary and pay off a degree and a "short commute"
| detached house before I was 40.
|
| On the other hand, since I was in my 20's in the 90's I was a
| young child in the 70's and 80's when nerds were to be bullied,
| gay people were to be beaten, and God help you if you were
| Trans. That's still the case in much of the world, but looking
| at how my kids grew up, vastly improved since then.
|
| So as a nerd, yes, the 90's were probably better for 20 year
| old me, but the 10's were definitely better for the 10 year old
| me.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I _was_ 20-years old in 1991. It was good.
| mech422 wrote:
| yeah - I enjoyed it...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| For a sexually active 20 y.o., 1971 was probably better than
| 1991. The threat of HIV had an enormous chilling effect on the
| casual dating scene.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I was 7 then, and just getting into computers - playing with
| BASIC on the CPC464) so being 20 then would have been awesome,
| although I'd be proper old now ;)
| mech422 wrote:
| _sigh_ So I 'm 'proper old' now ? :-P
|
| When can I be 'improper old' ?? :-D
| RegBarclay wrote:
| I was 23 in 1991. It was OK, but just yesterday I was talking
| with a twentysomething guy who was playing for me a song he'd
| written using GarageBand on his phone. I told him, man, I wish
| I'd had YouTube and GarageBand when I was his age. It's really
| hard to say what I'd do. I'd probably not change anything. I've
| noticed that computer technology isn't really anything special
| to my kids. I'm not sure I would have taken up an interest in
| programming as a youth in 2021 as I did in the 80s and 90s.
| jjav wrote:
| > An incredible number of people pick '91.
|
| Not so incredible I guess. I was 20 in '91 so can relate.
|
| Computers and the internet were seriously exciting at the time,
| uncommercialized and pure hacker culture of exploration. We
| were building technology because it was exciting. The concept
| of building adware or spyware didn't exist. Today a startup
| going to "make the world a better place" is a sitcom joke, back
| then it was truly the feeling.
| Clubber wrote:
| 1991. Less Orwellian. Back then, 1984 was a warning, not an
| instruction manual.
| alexshendi wrote:
| Today, 1984 feels like an Utopia.
| ggreer wrote:
| In 1991, distributing encryption software was a violation of
| US munitions controls.[1] At the time, it was not at all
| clear whether encryption software would remain legal for
| individuals to own and use. The US government was considering
| mandating backdoors in all consumer encryption, culminating
| in the development of the Clipper chip.[2]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_
| th...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I'll take 91. I get to experience all the exciting personal
| computing technology again before it all becomes web appliances
| and dark patterns. Back when the internet, if you could get it,
| was a place of wonder instead of terror.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| If 1991 why not 1919? You'd want the world transition from
| the horse age to the space age. It might be a good while yet
| beforw we see any new changes as profound as that one.
|
| Okay I guess I'd rank crispr as highly. But the list of
| changes that profound is short.
| the_only_law wrote:
| 1991 still feels modern enough to have a decent chance at
| participating in that transition I suppose.
| lostlogin wrote:
| If you are going back Marty, there are a few timelines I'd
| like altered.
| version_five wrote:
| Fun fact is that the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future
| II where Biff ran Hill Valley was actually based on what it
| would be like with Donald Trump (as the sleazy casino
| developer) in charge.
| pessimizer wrote:
| In '91 nothing followed you around. You could go to prison in
| Tennessee and Arkansas wouldn't be able to find out without a
| cop or two putting in a days work and making phone calls.
| People would get arrested, give a fake name, plead and do
| time, and be released without their identity ever being
| verified.
|
| Young adults in 2021 are hopelessly trying to outrun that
| time they tweeted a slur when they were 12.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Do you have kids? Sounds like you don't. All people would go
| back in time until they become parents. After that, faced
| with the harsh reality that going back in time would alter
| your decisions hence not getting the same kids, they,
| admittedly begrudgingly, back off.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I'm going 91. I was there. I wasn't 20, but I was closer to 10.
| And 10 years old in decades past is about equal to 20 years old
| today, we experienced more. We had more freedom, we made more
| mistakes. More of us were likely beaten/raped/killed or
| otherwise died.. but we simply were less childlike, the
| generations that had analog childhoods. Less coddling. That was
| more true the further back you go, but there was a steep
| decline for children born around 1990 or after due to many
| factors. At least that's what I've observed.
|
| Those quality of life improvements on that list are in reality
| pretty sad compared to the loss in social cohesion and quality
| of life in ways that matter more. You would think we didn't
| have indoor plumbing or antibiotics. We were in good shape. But
| the difference in pre and post 9/11 America is stark. This
| place was basically ruined on a social level, pure fear and
| panic, and it remains in different forms.
|
| Now if you asked me if I'd rather be born in 1971 or 2021? I
| would say 2021. Because the last 20 years have been throwaway
| decades. Someone 20 years old in 2021 missed ALL of the good
| times, never saw America as it was, and has and will spend most
| of their life behind the 8 ball.
|
| If you're born today, while there could definitely be more
| calamity, there's a good chance things turn up from the malaise
| of 2001-2021 in the next two decades. At least as it pertains
| to the working class. Which is most of us. Its been a great two
| decades for those that were running the show. But there's a
| reason why overall sentiment is and has been negative.
|
| I'll take 20 in 1991, or 20 in 2041. But not 20 in 2021.
| nemo44x wrote:
| 2021 if only for the health improvements without trying: - You
| grew up in an era of not inhaling cancerous smoke everywhere
| you go - Even unhealthy foods are less unhealthy due to
| removing hydrogenated fats from foods (god were they tasty
| though) - Cars are safer than ever - The environment is cleaner
| than it has been in decades
|
| The past always looks better. People still want to return to
| the 50's and most of them were not alive then.
|
| However, I believe every generation has had it "better"
| generally speaking than the previous and that's how it should
| be. Certain era's had things that were probably better but this
| era has things that future generations will envy as well while
| also having it "better" generally speaking.
|
| Today is this best time to be alive and I'm optimistic tomorrow
| will be even better.
| Clubber wrote:
| >You grew up in an era of not inhaling cancerous smoke
| everywhere you go
|
| A recent study (2013) suggests that the idea that second hand
| smoke has a direct link to cancer wasn't entirely accurate.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/105/24/1844/2517805
|
| >Even unhealthy foods are less unhealthy due to removing
| hydrogenated fats from foods
|
| I would say food is far more unhealthy today than in 1991.
| There is sugar and bastardized sugar in everything. Sugar is
| addictive and food manufacturers use it to get people
| addicted to their food. Instead of eating for nutrition,
| people eat for that sugar hit, and you almost can't escape
| it. Try finding prepackaged foods in the grocery store
| without some form of sugar in it.
|
| https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/sugar-addiction/
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I'm trying to imagine being back in the late 80's living in the
| squat or in the animal house I lived in during the early 90's
| and having this guy time travel back to tell us about the
| future.
|
| "You mean we don't all die in a nuclear war or from AIDS or
| global warming?"
|
| "No, the future is much better! Riding lawn mowers are cheaper,
| teddy bears are much more cuddly and silky, board games have
| been revolutionized and you can get goat cheese at Walmart!"
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It might go a little something like this:
| https://sfdebris.com/videos/special/timewalker2020.php
| titzer wrote:
| The more I think about this, the more I realize that you pick
| almost any time in history and if you were wealthy and
| powerful, it was _freaking awesome_. Can you imagine what the
| life of a Roman Caesar was like? Or a Rockefeller or Windsor?
|
| Similarly for life at the bottom. In almost any period in
| history, life at the bottom sucked hard.
| anticodon wrote:
| Destruction of the USSR in 1991 gave a boost to the Western
| economies by eliminating a strong competitor and opening a new
| huge market.
|
| While you enjoyed your life in 1991, people around me literally
| died of hunger, because Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their
| advisors from USA killed almost all the industry on the former
| USSR territory overnight. People lost jobs, people lost
| savings, people lost meaning of life overnight.
|
| It's a biggest case of genocide since 1940s, that is silenced
| and undocumented.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| The USSR destroyed itself. It was bankrupt by 1989:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/22/world/soviets-foresee-
| bud...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The political dangers are orders of magnitude worse now, plus
| there is climate change (a product of the same political
| problems). I'll take 1991, but without this future.
|
| Also, IME, the culture has become hateful, poisonous, and based
| on trauma, despair, and survival rather than hope and dreams,
| freedom and self-actualization.
| devnull3 wrote:
| > I'll take 1991, but without this future.
|
| May be with memory wipe of currently what you know and the
| way the world is
| jrsj wrote:
| I'd just like to go just far enough back to not be around for
| WW2 so I have to spend the least amount of time in the 21st
| century as possible. So I guess stick me in 1946.
| hiddencache wrote:
| Nevermind came out in 91, and it did feel like the beginning of
| something...
| creaturemachine wrote:
| This was the first thing that came to mind. Rock & Roll may
| have died in this decade but the innovation of the 90's made
| it worth it. I fear for 2031 once the tik tok-ification of
| music has run its course.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Going to be another person commenting that they'd seriously
| consider 1991 (as long as I had the smarts to still go into
| software). Jump back to 1991 as a 20yr old and head to the
| recruitment fair stalls of Sun Microsystems / DEC / Apple /
| Adobe / Microsoft.
|
| Google search and showers that stay hot are pretty nice, but
| the relative difficulty of accessing quality education, jobs,
| and housing probably turn out to be much more significant as
| you exit your 20s in 2031 and think about starting a family.
| bcantrill wrote:
| You may want to reconsider before you step into the time
| machine. First of all, 1991 in particular is a tough year --
| it was a crushing recession in the US, and young people were
| having a _really_ hard time finding jobs. So you wouldn 't be
| "heading to the recruitment stalls" for any of those
| companies except potentially Microsoft. And this is
| absolutely the "why-are-manhole-covers-round" era of
| Microsoft, and it's the DOS era as well -- so not only is the
| company smarmy, its products are buggy, demoralizing piles of
| death-marched junk. Read the (excellent) _Showstopper!_ for a
| hint of what awaits you at Microsoft.
|
| There's a big difference between 1991 and just a few years
| later of course, but even when I graduated from college
| (1996), Microsoft was absolutely suffocating. I had decided
| that I wanted to work for a computer company and that I had
| zero interest in working on Windows NT(or Copland). This left
| one company, Sun Microsystems, which even in 1996 was not
| really recruiting at universities. I got a job there by cold
| e-mailing a Sun engineer (Jeff Bonwick) based on a Usenet
| post in comp.unix.solaris. (Cold e-mailing to get a job was
| so unusual that a friend of mine who was a reporter for the
| AP wrote a story about my job search -- and it was broadly
| picked up nationally![0]) At Sun, I was the youngest person
| in OS development by a decade, and the industry broadly
| thought Sun to be foolish for insisting on innovating in the
| operating system. Conventional wisdom was wrong, of course,
| and I had a great 14-year run at Sun that I wouldn't trade
| for anything -- but it would be a mistake to overly
| romanticize what was honestly a pretty crappy era.
|
| [0] I talked about this briefly in
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IznEq2Uf2xk, including an
| (embarrassing) photo of me ca. 1996 that ran as the front
| page of many business sections around the US
| namdnay wrote:
| Now I could understand this as a blue collar worker, but
| you're saying you'd prefer to be a software engineer in 91
| than 2021? Come on, of pretty much all the professions were
| the ones who have reaped the most benefits of the past 30
| years
| ghaff wrote:
| Arguably in 1991, you're getting in on the ground floor but
| it's a mixed bag. Your new grad salary is probably going to
| be around $40K or so in the US. And dot-bomb is 10 years in
| the future.
|
| And that list of companies is sort of a mixed bag.
|
| Adobe has mostly done pretty well through the years.
|
| Sun Microsystems did have a very good decade through the
| dot-com years but then didn't.
|
| Apple was really struggling at that time.
|
| DEC was on the way down and would be bought by HP a few
| years later.
|
| Microsoft was about to launch Windows NT so that was a
| pretty good place to hop on but obviously went on to have a
| long period of stagnation.
| mech422 wrote:
| I moved from Wall St. to the West coast in the 90s. Both
| paid above average programmer salaries for the time, but
| S.V. was the place to be for tech. So much going on, so
| much demand.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Indeed it predates my entrance to the industry by a half-
| decade but one thing that's notable about this period is
| the technology stacks being built during it would in
| large part be heavily de-emphasized later when the web
| exploded.
|
| If you were at Apple, you'd be working on a platform (Mac
| OS classic, or Copland, or Newton) that would be thrown
| away by the end of the decade.
|
| If you were working at DEC, likewise. (VMS, VAX, even
| Alpha)
|
| Sun is more complicated, as they pivoted better and took
| longer to die. That would be a good place to be maybe.
|
| 1991 is an awkward year since it's about 2-3 years before
| the HTTP/browser revolution.
|
| One thing though is that to my eye when I look at what
| these companies were working on then, it all seems more
| interesting to me now. The actual employment of a
| programmer (who wasn't stuck in finance or insurance etc.
| doing COBOL) had the potential to do some stuff that we
| at least _thought_ Was going to be groundbreaking back
| then. NewtonOS and Alpha and Copland, CORBA, PowerPC
| /PREP, OS/2, research projects like Sun's "Self", etc. it
| was all exciting stuff. Just very little of it went on to
| be used later.
| ghaff wrote:
| For me, Sun definitely looks like the most attractive
| company on that list. (Though Microsoft might well have
| been a perfectly good job.)
|
| For one thing, you'd have been much more plugged into the
| coming internet revolution broadly than any of the
| others. You'd also have been at least connected to the
| open source world although Sun resisted aspects of it in
| many ways.
|
| They were also primarily in Silicon Valley unlike the
| others.
| namdnay wrote:
| I guess if you had hindsight it would be great, just live
| very frugally, choose the right company and above all buy
| as much real estate as possible in SV :)
| bluedino wrote:
| The 90's had all kinds of tech companies starting. Many
| of them didn't last, but there was a lot of exciting
| stuff going on.
|
| Early cell phones. PDA's like Palm. Printer market was
| hot. Businesses were networking their computers like
| crazy. The PC accessory market was hot. Video games like
| the Playstation were about to come out. Dial up online
| services and then ISP's. The web appeared.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Your new grad salary is probably going to be around
| $40K or so in the US.
|
| Of course $40K then is $80K now, and you were working at
| 9-5 at BigCo, with a pension plan. Interest rates were
| 3-4x what they are now, the value of the house that you
| spent a couple of years salary on is probably going to
| quintuple, and the stock market runup over the next 30
| years is going to be unreal.
| ghaff wrote:
| >the stock market runup over the next 30 years is going
| to be unreal
|
| Not counting the stock market plunge especially in tech
| in the dot-bomb era when there's a good change you'll
| also lose your tech job and very possibly be very
| underemployed for a few years. Of course if you hold on
| through that (and 2008), you'll come out well on the
| other side.
|
| And if you were 20 in 91, you probably don't have a house
| in ten years in pricey (just not eye-watteringly so) SV 9
| years later when the bottom falls out of the market.
| mywittyname wrote:
| You might also be describing 2021-2051.
|
| Well, except pension, which were largely gutted in the
| private sector by 1991 (it was the plot of the 1987 movie
| Wall Street).
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| That's almost an unfair comparison. I don't know how old you
| are but 1991 was an incredibly optimistic time in western
| history with the fall of communism in Europe. Maybe a closer
| comparison would be 2000 vs 2019, both years right before a big
| global event.
| saltcured wrote:
| Overly simplifying my memories as a west coast US teenager in
| that era, the very late 1980s were a time of cautious
| optimism with news such as the solidarity movement in Poland
| and the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, 1989 in many ways
| felt like the peak. Soon after, such global optimism was
| soured by the Gulf War, Serbian civil war, etc. We weren't as
| aware or focused on other positive changes that may have been
| happening elsewhere.
|
| Edit to add: in many ways, the apparent close of the Cold War
| just removed that one bilateral threat from center attention.
| In its place, we gained a new awareness of much more
| fragmented conflict scattered all over the world...
| ghaff wrote:
| There are a lot of things that younger people in particular
| take for granted today that were basically not available in
| 1990. I occasionally think that if I had to go back to 1990 and
| do my job as a product manager, I'd probably quit in
| frustration over just not having the information I needed to do
| my job.
| everdrive wrote:
| But you'd only be competing against other similarly hampered
| project managers. Depending on how well you worked without
| the modern internet, you'd simply find your same place in the
| bell curve.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, sure. It would just be incredibly frustrating. As
| would lack of information generally.
| thorwasdfasdf wrote:
| Look at the essentials and you'll see we've actually been going
| backwards, ever since the 1970s:
|
| Housing: Now less affordable than ever. It takes more hours
| worked to afford any kind of shelter than ever in the last 50
| years. According to an interview I once watched: in the 60s, a
| painter could afford a single family house and six kids and the
| wife didn't even need to work. today, two painters working
| together can barely afford shelter, even with no kids.
|
| Cars: MPG has not improved. Look at a corolla from the 70s vs
| today, it's about the same. Comfort is roughly comporable, at
| least since the invention of AC. It now costs more to buy a car
| today than in the 70s, in terms of average number of hours worked
| in order to afford a car.
|
| Education has seen the greatest amount of inflation. Whereas a
| high school diploma could give you a great enough salary to
| afford a house in the 60s. Now, not even a bachelors or masters
| is enough to afford basic shelter for many people living in the
| first world.
|
| Yes, we have a gazillion more computers, iphones, smart watches
| and toys to play with. We can fill our entire house with plastic
| now. what goood is that if you don't have a house to stay in?
| where will you plug in all those electronics and your massive 70"
| tv, when you're out on the street?
| akomtu wrote:
| On the other hand, sport cars, helicopters, private jets,
| yachts and mansions have become more affordable than ever: when
| your net worth jumps from 100M to 200M this year alone, the 25M
| jet that seemed a bit pricey, now looks cheap. In the upcoming
| decade we're going to tackle private islands and recreational
| space ships.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| Large grocery stores are amazing. A well-traveled person from the
| 70s would have their mind blown walking into a Canadian
| Superstore.
| hiddencache wrote:
| Two words: plaid shirts.
| aldress wrote:
| I do think that the biggest life improvement of this decade is
| the smartphone. To think that we have so much computing power and
| limitless things to do on a very small device makes this
| improvement the most revolutionary one.
| jacobmischka wrote:
| I can't pinpoint what it is specifically, but something about
| this website visually makes reading it seem unpleasant.
|
| I think the lines of text are too wide, the font is too large and
| thick, the line height is too small, and paragraphs really need
| to be padded vertically, the indentation instead makes it seem
| like a high school essay and made me want to close the tab
| immediately.
| tylerjdurden wrote:
| On the other hand, I really liked the way the links behave when
| you hover over them.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Imagine dealing with the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in 1989
| instead.
|
| I've wondered about this. No vaccines presumably. But, also, the
| sort of work from home, online shopping, remote school, etc. that
| many people/companies were able to more or less adapt to
| basically wouldn't have been possible in 1990--and, arguably,
| much before 2000 if that.
|
| It's true that there was less air travel, including international
| travel, in 1990 than in 2019 but I'd need to be convinced this
| would be an important factor.
|
| Comparisons to 1918 are hard, if only because of WWI and
| associated secrecy, but from what I can tell having read a bit,
| it doesn't appear as if there were widespread or long-lived
| closures of schools and other places. I assume, we would have
| acted likewise in 1990; i.e. we wouldn't have done a lot because
| there wasn't a lot we could do.
|
| ADDED: This was not intended as a political comment. Merely
| speculation about how the world may have reacted differently in a
| world effectively without internet or (likely) a rapidly-
| developed vaccine.
| [deleted]
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| Chinese geneticists didn't have the ability to do it back then.
| victorbstan wrote:
| 1796 - Edward Jenner develops and documents first vaccine for
| smallpox.
| ghaff wrote:
| For one thing, a very different disease. For another, how
| long did it take him?
|
| And depending upon how you count, it took decades to develop
| a polio vaccine.
|
| I would not bet on a COVID vaccine being developed and tested
| in about a year in 1990.
| kiba wrote:
| Variolation already exists back then, but with a survival
| rate of 1-2%. What Edward Jenner did was to confer scientific
| status on the idea of vaccination and investigated cowpow as
| a much safer method of inoculation against smallpox.
|
| Heck, decade earliers, George Washington inoculated his
| troops against smallpox against the wishes of the continental
| congress.
| anticodon wrote:
| _Environment: air quality in most places has continued to improve
| (and considering the growing evidence on the harms of air
| pollution, this may well be the single most important item on
| this whole page), forest area has increased , and more rivers are
| safe to fish in_
|
| Because almost all the industrial production that pollutes water
| and air moved to third-world countries, where people suffer from
| pollution. Same for thrash that is taken to China, India,
| Indonesia for "recycling", but is actually burned in fires or
| thrown into the ocean. I wouldn't consider it an improvement due
| to advances in technology.
| nwah1 wrote:
| He referenced the Environmental Kuznets Curve. This provides a
| mechanistic understanding of what is happening. It isn't that
| modern industrial civilization requires a certain amount of
| pollution per unit of production which can be offloaded.
|
| Rather, pollution is largely something that occurs in the
| production process in locations where desperation for
| production is so high that they are not willing to put in any
| personal effort or social policies to curtail it at the expense
| of production.
|
| However, once you become richer, air quality and so on moves
| higher in our collective list of priorities. Production can
| occur without pollution. It is just more expensive, and
| requires care.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| To me, the article seems panglossian
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide).
|
| Some of the "upsides" (e.g. improvements in patent regime) just
| aren't there. Some aren't as wonderful as they are described.
|
| I'm in my mid-sixties; I'm very much a candidate for the "things
| were better in the old days" brigade.
|
| But I do think many (most?) things have improved. Housing is
| better; healthcare is _immeasurably_ better (unless you can 't
| afford it); and mobile telephony has improved the lives of at
| least a billion people worldwide.
|
| Because I'm not miserable old git, I'm not going to list
| downsides.
|
| [Edit] OK, I'll list one: permanent war.
| ggreer wrote:
| > [Edit] OK, I'll list one: permanent war.
|
| Depending on who you ask, conflict deaths per capita have
| stayed the same or declined since 1990.[1] 1991 had the first
| Gulf War, The Troubles, the Yugoslav campaign in Croatia,
| Mozambique, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and many more.
|
| 1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/conflict-deaths-
| per-10000...
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > permanent war
|
| Not exactly a new thing though is it? Plus the actual
| percentage of people worldwide exposed to war or directly
| affected by it has dropped significantly. The world is more
| peaceful than it has ever been.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| >[Edit] OK, I'll list one: permanent war.
|
| Before 90's US was in permanent war just as well. It was called
| the Cold War. So that one downside is actually non-existent -
| from "before" vs. "today" point of view.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| "Non-existent" is a bit hyperbolic. I have no idea how many
| casualties resulted from the Cold War, I'd guess a few
| thousand. Even if 20,000 died, which I doubt, that's pretty
| good going for a war that lasted 30 years.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| You seem to forget that Vietnam war was a side effect of
| the Cold War. USSR and US fought through proxies in Cold
| War, Vietnam being just one instance. Another one before
| was Korean War which resulted in splitting that peninsula.
| I'd say your 20k is a bit low, might want to reconsider it
| with at least one order of magnitude.
|
| Oh, and since we are splitting hair here about numbers, US
| started a 20 years war as result of just 3k deaths during
| 9/11. You and US government have another order of magnitude
| disagreement about what constitutes a "good" number of
| deaths as war causalities.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| I wonder if permanent war was around in the 60's it was just
| easier to keep things under wraps because of smart phones. From
| what I have heard the CIA has been involved in some unsavory
| activities since before the 60s. I also believe that life lost
| by war and violence have decreased dramatically since then. It
| might be an ignorance is bliss thing.
|
| But the music was definitely better back then!
| scollet wrote:
| > But the music was definitely better back then!
|
| Objection!
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Permawar: I don't think lives lost by war and violence have
| diminished. If our leaders want us to support wars, they need
| enemies, and we're encouraged to hate them. The number of
| civilians killed in just Iraq is comparable with the number
| of combatants+civilians killed in Vietnam. But the Vietnam
| war lasted about 12 years, then it ended. It was confined to
| Indochina. The "War On Terror" has killed huge numbers of
| people in Afghanistan, Iran (if you include the effects of
| sanctions), Libya and Pakistan.
|
| We now make bigger, more-accurate bombs and missiles, but we
| sprinkle them around just as carelessly. We still have to be
| made to hate people if we are going to support a war; and we
| don't pay a lot of attention to the casualty-count of people
| we hate.
|
| Music: If you're referring to the 60's and 70's, I agree -
| the seventies were my formative years, musically. But we're
| speaking of 1991, I think. [checks 1991's hits] In among the
| dross, there are some good tunes - Clash, Should I Stay Or
| Should I Go; James, Sit Down. And there was some great Acid
| House, which didn't make the charts (clubbers didn't know the
| names of the songs or the artists).
| nradov wrote:
| Actually lives lost by war and violence have diminished.
|
| https://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-
| natu...
| philwelch wrote:
| There was a very prominent "permanent" war in the 1960's and
| 1970's.
| aaron695 wrote:
| Time between 1990 to now is not linear.
|
| The web kicked off in the late 90's, picked up the 2000's but not
| real fast, and now is really flying and one assumes it will
| continue to accelerate.
|
| Power tools are amazing. And that's the internet pushing them. I
| can see reviews with each new advancement anywhere in the world.
| They can see R&D around the world. Each company has to keep up
| and so do the counterfeiters. I'll order from overseas if they
| are not available local. Power tools augment humans, you can see
| people's home improvements getting more complex which is also
| pushed by the internet. Everything is in hyper mode.
| gbrown wrote:
| What major power tool innovations have happened since 1990?
| Battery tech is the only big one I can think of.
| D_Alex wrote:
| Brushless motors, variable speed controls on everything,
| keyless chucks... new tools such as 3D printer... or this:
|
| https://www.shapertools.com/en-us/
| aaron695 wrote:
| Brushless Motors
|
| Power Tool KickBack Control (and just safety, were dB
| warnings big in the 90's? Ergonomic's are improving)
|
| Drill bit/blades/disk composition/tech.
|
| The fact I can (almost) throw out tools that you'd never have
| seen in a garage in the 90's.
|
| And if we are not children and can talk about such things,
| they can look good. (Although the 90's tools are now retro
| and also have an aesthetic)
|
| Track down a power tools catalogue from the 90's
|
| Like computers, every thing was invented before the 80's. But
| now it's usable and accessible.
|
| And yes, the 80% is probably batteries and cost. But there's
| a lot in the 20% too.
|
| Going off topic but putting a clear window on stick vacuum
| cleaners literally gamified vacuuming. What that means for
| asthma for instance we will see over the years.
|
| Battery adapter's (ie. Milwaukee to Makita) went from 3d
| printed on ebay to injected moulded over a short period.
|
| The female market has been increasing since the 90/00's and
| is continuing to increase.
| buescher wrote:
| The big refinement other than going to lithium batteries is
| the adoption of brushless DC motor technology.
| eropple wrote:
| Saw brakes. Both Bosch (outside the US) and SawStop have
| technology where a current in the blade can detect the
| resistance of something that isn't wood and throw a brake
| before the blade can damage your hand. The Bosch one doesn't
| even break the blade, though the SawStop one does. The
| patents are still snarling it up, but it'll happen
| eventually.
|
| Also, accuracy and precision on smaller/cheaper tools. I have
| a "jobsite table saw", which is a thoroughly budget one by
| comparison to a big ol' cabinet saw. And being a smaller saw
| has a lot of problems, but one that stopped being a problem
| is a rack-and-pinion fence even on fairly cheap (~$300) table
| saws that provides really, really solid accuracy.
| lostlogin wrote:
| For me: The auto spooling weed eater. The hinges hedge
| trimmer than means I don't need a ladder and can just walk
| along with it and cut the top. And to go with the tools,
| decent and readily available safety equipment. Not really a
| tool - home automation via ESP chips to water the garden.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Substantial cost decreases as east Asian manufacturing
| matured. I'm not sure if that counts as an innovation.
| dboreham wrote:
| That's not a small factor though as it reduces size and
| weight considerably. Also motor and motor control tech has
| improved significantly.
| hit8run wrote:
| No one can afford a house in or close to the town anymore. So
| actually life quality for most people went down south.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I think he kind of missed the elephant that is modern
| communication technology has reduced the marginal cost of skilled
| services enabling pretty much every object designed in an office
| and manufactured in a factory to benefit from a broader array of
| engineering and design professionals and methodologies. The
| average product and service that the average actor in the economy
| interacts with is designed and optimized to a far greater degree
| today than they were historically.
|
| Look at the bottle of Elmers glue on the table. Today the glue
| probably works better (barring regulation that forces compromises
| to product efficacy) and comes in a bottle that uses half as much
| plastic. Something like a bottle revision that would have
| formerly required expensive salaried employees to come up with
| multiple options, send them to the supplier, supplier has to
| respond to each with details and quotes, etc, can now be
| accomplished in a fraction of the man hours thanks to email and
| CAD being ubiquitous in the entire supply chain from marketing,
| to engineering, to the vendor's contractor who will actually
| design the tooling. Sign off might take days instead of weeks.
| This sort of efficiency improvement allows more engineering,
| design work, or other optimization to be done to every good and
| service in our economy allowing it to penetrate into even the
| most thin margin use cases. From farming to high finance products
| and services are substantially more influenced and optimized by
| specialist professionals than they were in 1990. Increase
| efficiency like this throughout the national and global economy
| is how lawnmowers and A/C units can be sold on sale for $100 and
| still make a profit. (yes I know that example isn't perfect but
| you get the point).
| dougmwne wrote:
| I had a moment like this recently with, of all things, a
| snorkeling mask. It was one of those full face masks with a big
| snorkel sticking out the top like a unicorn's horn that popped
| on the market a few years ago. It is a marvel. It took all the
| downsides of the old masks and ingeniously fixed them. Full
| mouth and nose breathing so you can breathe naturally and
| comfortably, an airflow pattern that pulls dry air over the
| lens and keeps it fog free, a wide-angle lense for a better
| view and less claustrophobia, and an ingeniously designed
| system of valves that keeps water from flowing into the snorkel
| and uses your exhalation to push any leaked water in the mask
| out the bottom. All together, it eliminated the underwater
| panic I would usually have to fight through while snorkeling
| and made me feel like a dolphin. No way a product like this
| could have been made without the collaboration of a lot of very
| skilled professionals.
| tcpekin wrote:
| The real problem with these masks is that unless you are
| quite good at equalizing with your jaw, it will be hard to
| relieve pressure if you dive down more than 6-8 feet or so.
| nradov wrote:
| Be careful with those. Diver's Alert Network states that full
| face snorkeling masks can cause dangerous hypercapnia unless
| they have tight seals and working one-way valves.
|
| https://blog.daneurope.org/en_US/blog/are-full-face-
| snorkeli...
| dougmwne wrote:
| Thanks, yes my mask is properly designed with the one way
| valve system and small sealed breathing pocket around the
| mouth. I definitely appreciate that this product has a
| complex design to ensure safety and that a knock-off could
| be dangerous.
| pbronez wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for sharing.
|
| > So how to know a mask is safe? Check whether the mask has
| a one-way breathing system, verify that one-way valves are
| in place both in the snorkel as well as in the orinasal
| mask section, and last but not least check if the orinasal
| mask makes a good seal on your face. If these checks are
| positive, then it is a good indication the mask is safe to
| use.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Alright, you have me sold - link me to the mask?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| In France you can find them for instance here:
| https://www.decathlon.fr/browse/c0-tous-les-
| sports/c1-snorke...
|
| (Decathlon is a very prominent sports shop in France, I
| believe that others now sell the mask as well)
|
| EDIT: I noticed that we apparently have the anti-unicorn
| version (with the tube pointing to the back) :)
| dougmwne wrote:
| These all are essentially the same design:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/full-face-snorkeling-mask/s?k=full-
| fa...
| david422 wrote:
| That's got to be some person with a snorkeling hobby and they
| are just thinking "there's got to be a better way than this".
| ghaff wrote:
| Those types of masks actually existed in the 1960s though I'm
| sure the newer ones are more sophisticated. My mother had one
| of those.
| treis wrote:
| These are somewhat dangerous as the additional airspace
| allows CO2 to build up. I haven't seen good studies either
| way, but there's lots of anecdata out there of people
| reporting symptoms.
| dougmwne wrote:
| There is a system of valves that keep the air flowing in
| just a single direction. Also, there are additional seals
| inside the mask that keep the exhalation dead space to a
| small area just around the mouth and nose, not the entire
| inner area of the mask and snorkel.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Is this really dangerous? We are naturally armed against
| CO2 and there will be a lot of warning signs (headache,
| short breath, ...) before anything happens.
| treis wrote:
| It's not like they're execution devices. But the symptoms
| include dizziness and disorientation which isn't ideal in
| the ocean. Plus it can exacerbate pre-existing conditions
| where you might skip the mild symptoms and go straight to
| serious ones.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Anything that compromises respiration while in the water
| is very concerning to me and I wouldn't use them, though
| it seems to be resolved in newer models. I prefer a basic
| but high quality J snorkel with a comfortable mouthpiece
| but I understand why these types of masks are appealing
| too.
|
| Your thought that we're naturally armed against CO2 build
| up is generally true, but what we aren't armed against is
| a lack of O2 in the presence of a lack of CO2. Our urge
| to breathe occurs not because we're losing O2, but
| because we have too much CO2 in our bodies. I think this
| is critical to understand in the context of snorkelling.
|
| If you're in a room and CO2 is gradually built up, you
| will likely experience symptoms of the build up occurring
| in your body, absolutely. When it's more acute though,
| you often don't experience symptoms in a time frame in
| which you'll be able to respond properly. In the case
| with this mask that's probably not a concern at all.
|
| Another concern, far more applicable here, is hypoxia.
| This kills snorkellers and divers frequently. Typically
| they deplete CO2 levels in their body via over-exertion
| and/or hyperventilation (intentionally or not) then go
| under water for some period waiting for their warning
| signals to return to the surface to breathe.
| Unfortunately the signals never occur because CO2 levels
| haven't reached a level which causes their nervous system
| to respond by causing an urge to breathe. Instead, oxygen
| is depleted causing a blackout to occur either under
| water or near the surface. The person isn't able to
| protect themselves while unconscious, so they often
| drown.
|
| I wanted to point this out because in the context of
| water sports, more people need to be aware of this. Your
| body won't always let you know you're in danger. It's
| often why people experience it and/or die from it - they
| simply didn't know. We expect our bodies to tell us when
| we need to breathe. This is because our bodies are
| typically in conditions which allow for this to happen
| and we're very accustomed to that - we take it for
| granted. Once you skew the O2 and CO2 levels in your
| body, things don't occur as you'd expect at all. Much
| like any other situation where homeostasis is
| compromised.
|
| Hopefully I'm not coming across as lecturing or anything.
| I'm genuinely intending to be helpful.
|
| Some key tips when in the water, regardless of what mask
| you use:
|
| - Breathe normally, don't hyperventilate
|
| - Only dive if your breathing is at a normal rate and you
| feel relaxed
|
| - Say you dive down for 30 seconds - spend at least 1
| minute (2x your dive time) recovering oxygen, preferably
| 3x
|
| - Always, always try to go with other people - accidents
| happen, and you'll need each other
|
| - If it's your first time spending time under water,
| gradually build up your time under there. Feel out your
| comfort zone before testing yourself.
|
| - Spit out your snorkel when you go under water. If
| something goes wrong, it becomes an easy entry point for
| water to get to your lungs.
| phreeza wrote:
| That doesn't make sense to me, why would a larger space
| allow for more CO2 buildup, if there is a connection to the
| outside?
| treis wrote:
| There will be some mixing of fresh air through the
| snorkel but that's a small opening and a long tube. It
| will still mostly be the air you exhaled. For a
| traditional snorkel that's a small volume relative to a
| breath but not so much for those masks. Plus, if you're
| diving under the water a traditional snorkel will be
| completely purged while these masks will retain the air.
| GoatOfAplomb wrote:
| I started to write this out but realized a more polished
| explanation might be more useful:
|
| "Snorkels constitute respiratory dead space. When the
| user takes in a fresh breath, some of the previously
| exhaled air which remains in the snorkel is inhaled
| again, reducing the amount of fresh air in the inhaled
| volume, and increasing the risk of a buildup of carbon
| dioxide in the blood, which can result in hypercapnia.
| The greater the volume of the tube, and the smaller the
| tidal volume of breathing, the more this problem is
| exacerbated. Including the internal volume of the mask in
| the breathing circuit greatly expands the dead space."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snorkel_(swimming)
|
| (The face mask snorkels are relevant to the "greater the
| volume of the tube" part.)
| coryrc wrote:
| That's the problem with the old ones, where you breathe
| in and out the same tube. That's fixed in these full-face
| masks.
| lisper wrote:
| As long as they are working properly. The problem is that
| the valves can fail (or not be properly designed in the
| first place), and then they become dangerous.
|
| https://www.ktvu.com/news/recent-snorkel-deaths-prompts-
| inve...
| treis wrote:
| New snorkels have a one way valve on the bottom. That
| vents the exhalation plus allows the water to drain when
| you're on the surface.
| phreeza wrote:
| Interesting, my comment was based on the assumption that
| the tidal volume of human breath would be much larger
| than the tube/mask, but it seems I was wrong, it's just
| 500ml for an average human breath, opposed to 6 liters of
| lung volume.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I don't know if it actually applies to a facemask with
| unidirectional flow (on at the top, out at the bottom).
| But the CO2 buildup mechanism is sometimes described as a
| reason for medical facemasks to be close-fitting. When
| you exhale into a mask with a big space, and then inhale
| again, you (very roughly) first inhale everything that
| was in the mask before inhaling new air.
|
| The extreme example is breathing from a long skinny tube.
| If the volume of the tube is bigger than that of your
| lungs, you never inhale new air.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Today the glue probably works better (barring regulation that
| forces compromises to product efficacy)
|
| Regulation might do that and there is much more going on:
|
| Regulation also protects health and safety of customers and
| workers (especially important with chemical products) and
| prevents fraud, and it corrects market distortions that damage
| businesses, including instituting changes that the nature of
| the market prevents any one business from implementing, and
| opening up competition.
|
| Other things limit technological innovation, including
| incumbents with market power who profit more from eliminating
| competition than from improving their products.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| > missed the elephant that is ...
|
| Definitely a big deal, but mostly invisible on the demand side.
| You're talking about improvements to the supply process; the
| article is about what consumers experience.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| The downside to broadening the talent pool for
| design/manufacturing is that it means workers now have to be
| among the best in the world to get business and thus earn a
| good living. It no longer suffices to be the best in a local
| region.
|
| If each local region needs its own widget factory, then to
| become a top widgetsmith you only have to compete with the
| local widgetsmith talent pool. Just as there can be many high
| school star athletes across the world, there can be many top
| widgetsmiths within their local widget factories across the
| world, even if each is likely mediocre relative to the global
| pool of widgetsmiths.
|
| Now the widget market has globalized. To become a top
| widgetsmith, you now need to be the best in the world. There is
| no room for locally optimal widgetsmiths when the market can
| globally optimize, just as there's no room for most star high
| school athletes at the NBA.
|
| The upside is that the entire world gets much better widgets.
| The downside is that you can only make a good living as a
| widgetsmith if you're the absolute best in the world. Local
| markets lead to redundancy, which is globally inefficient but
| locally optimal.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "workers now have to be the best in the world to get business
| and thus earn a good living"
|
| This is extra pronounced for singers, actors etc., but not as
| much for people such as software engineers. A mediocre
| programmer that implements functionality that _you_ need is
| much more valuable for you than a star programmer immersed in
| his UltraFastXMLParserForHaskell library and does not take
| side jobs.
| njharman wrote:
| Yep.
|
| That is why society is (has to) move into post-employment
| era. It's no longer required or even beneficial for everyone
| to be employed and/or employed to the extreme degree they are
| now (~50% of waking hours).
| quacked wrote:
| I agree with you, but in a different way. Our supply chains
| that we need to stay alive (medical, shipping, farming,
| manufacturing) run on extreme conditions and extreme
| working hours, paid for by extreme money, designed by
| extreme intellect. We could all stop working, but the
| workers in those industries (from the CEO down to the
| laborer) would have to keep their extreme conditions and
| extreme hours.
|
| If, somehow, we all started working for the supply chain, I
| think we could rebalance those hours so that they weren't
| as extreme. As it stands, solutions like UBI still require
| sweatshops, global shipping, global finance, etc. while
| simply letting people who aren't on the hook to provide a
| vital service to sit around and gaze at navels.
| njarboe wrote:
| Maybe a system where people work in the extreme system
| from 20-30, get paid highly, and save enough to not need
| to work again in their early 30's. Seems like a much
| better system than UBI.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The upside I think of is that this enables more
| specialization and "division of labor", which is one of the
| basic drivers of prosperity.
| toyg wrote:
| * _was_ one of the basic drivers, when labour was scarce
| and specialization rare.
|
| We're now headed to a situation where labour is abundant
| (demographic trends being what they are, globally) and
| specialization trivially achieved (hello youtube). I'm not
| so sure it will continue to be an advantageous trait.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| True, but a downside is that there may be a correlation
| between specialization/division of labor and
| depression/ennui.
|
| I don't have any data handy, but I think we often feel
| greater satisfaction working through all of the aspects to
| creating something versus being a "cog in the machine" and
| specializing in one role. E.g. I'd rather build a boat -
| have a hand in the design, source the materials, and
| actually physically build it rather than work in a factory
| and operate a machine that spits out rudders all day, every
| day.
|
| Of course, the boats created via mass production are
| probably going to be cheaper and in many ways better than
| what a novice manages to put together.
| krisoft wrote:
| Your boat comparision is nonsensical.
|
| To build a boat on your own the way you described is
| crazy resource intensive. You need land to store the
| boat, you need materials, you need tools, you need free
| time to work on it. This is basically a wealthy persons
| pet project. Depending on the size of the boat and your
| abilities you will be pumping a crazy amount of resources
| into this for years.
|
| The second type is a job. You need a car to get to the
| factory, and an able body. Within a week to a month you
| would be expecting your first paycheck.
|
| You are basically asking if a wealthy person can feel
| higher amount of satisfaction than a worker class. It's
| cliche that money doesn't bring happyness, but if you are
| investing that much resources into a project it better be
| making you happy or what are you doing with your life?
|
| The other problem with the comparision is that people who
| have a boat project are a self-selected bunch for those
| who would enjoy building a boat. If i would have the
| resources to build a boat I wouldn't. It is a risky,
| hard, and back breaking work. The reward at the end is
| that you have a boat, which I don't want. If you give me
| resources and force me to build my own boat I will be
| misserable.
|
| Is it a surprise then that this wealthy self-selected
| bunch has a higher statisfaction with their pet project
| than a factory worker? How could this ever be a fair
| comparision?
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Even someone who does "the whole job" is still generally
| a cog in the machine, as few jobs are in themselves
| extremely important in the global scheme of things.
| Indeed t here have been plenty of forgettable prime
| ministers and presidents. The question is just how much
| diversity of tasks it takes to feel engaged, and how much
| scope of responsibility it takes to feel like what you're
| doing matters.
|
| The exception would be someone like a subsistence farmer.
| But hell I'd rather work in a factory.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > that it means workers now have to be the best in the world
| to get business and thus earn a good living. It no longer
| suffices to be the best in a local region.
|
| Yes, though for most jobs there is far more demand than can
| be met by the best in the world. When someone needs a lawyer
| or software developer, they are very unlikely to hire the
| best in the world.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| > When someone needs a lawyer or software developer, they
| are very unlikely to hire the best in the world.
|
| Certainly not the _absolute best_ in the world, but they
| are still unlikely to hire a thoroughly mediocre worker who
| in a past world devoid of easy global communication and
| travel would have only been hired into a high-paying role
| by virtue of the fact that they were the only available
| worker with the necessary skills, since sourcing better
| talent from a global pool was much harder.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Agreed; it is more competitive, and therefore work should
| become more specialized. I wonder if it drives
| unemployment; I expect that it drives people to tasks
| they are more productive in (and perhaps more interested
| in, given greater options).
|
| But let's also remember that much of the world doesn't
| use the Internet. In the US, large segments of the
| population lack computers (beyond phones) and high speed
| internet access. I know that during the pandemic, schools
| in poor districts had the problem that many of their
| students lacked those tools for remote learning.
|
| And for FWIW, there are exceptions where the absolute
| best in the world dominate the market, such as in
| entertainment where the top musical performers, athletes,
| etc. collect almost all the revenue.
| dntrkv wrote:
| And not only that, a lot of the improvements in these
| tools, services, and supply chains means you can design,
| prototype, and mass manufacture a product without buy-in
| from a major corp.
|
| So many of the new products I buy are designed by small
| teams, or in some cases, one-man operations. It's funny how
| we went from a single craftsman making the whole product,
| to massive corporations making all the products, and now
| the internet, with the access it has given us to
| information and the global supply chain, has allowed us to
| go back to that world where we can leverage the talents of
| an individual and mass production at the same time.
|
| I think the Framework laptop is a prime example of this.
| The fact that a small team like that can "produce" a
| product of such quality is mind blowing.
|
| It seems to me that the general quality of items has been
| on a steady rate of improvement again, rather than the
| race-to-the-bottom that seemingly every industry
| experienced during the 90s and early 00s.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > And not only that, a lot of the improvements in these
| tools, services, and supply chains means you can design,
| prototype, and mass manufacture a product without buy-in
| from a major corp.
|
| A great point. While I'm well aware of it, is there a
| book or guide to how that is done? 'Global supply chain
| manufacturing for noobs'? I'm looking for something with
| real expertise and research behind it, not someone's blog
| post.
|
| - Another consequence is that everyone can publish,
| anything, no matter how good it is. Come to think of it,
| in that example, crap rises to the top much more than the
| cream.
| toast0 wrote:
| Global supply chain manufacturing for noobs in two parts:
|
| Part 1; make a compelling mockup, post to kickstarter etc
| and other social media
|
| Part 2: bide your time with product update mockups until
| knock offs appear on Alibaba. Make a show about
| complaining about the knock offs and then return the
| kickstarter deposits.
| guntars wrote:
| This is what's happening with open source hardware. For
| example, VESC and ODrive both quickly had knockoffs in
| all the usual places. The maintainers were somewhat
| understandably irked by this, but if you ask me it's
| exactly what should be happening. Maybe the issue was the
| knockoffs not complying with the license or not giving
| credit, but if that's all good and proper, and we should
| check as the end buyer, it's a net benefit to the
| consumer.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > This is what's happening with open source hardware. For
| example, VESC and ODrive both quickly had knockoffs in
| all the usual places. The maintainers were somewhat
| understandably irked by this, but if you ask me it's
| exactly what should be happening.
|
| That is fantastic (at least as far as I understand it).
| What a fantasy of open source that not only do people
| download your code and compile it, but they download your
| hardware design and _manufacture_ it!
|
| Who doesn't it benefit? The designers and other
| developers now have prototypes, etc. without having to
| pay for manufacturing.
| guntars wrote:
| Agreed. I'm working on some hardware that I intend to
| open source and prepare a ZIP with all the files
| necessary to order your own boards from some place like
| JLCPCB that also does assembly. For the user it's a
| matter of dragging the ZIP to the manufacturers site and
| filling in some details. But that also means that they
| can easily swap out parts and customize it any way they
| want. Together with a 3D printer to make a case, you
| could make OSS/HW replacements to a lot of the crapware
| products that we have to use.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| A big question to be is if
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox applies to this
| type of labor.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| It's noteworthy that you're talking about the market for
| products, not services. Services generally don't scale like
| products do. We need more plumbers than toilet manufacturers.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| Very well put. Excellently stated. That's one of the concepts
| that many have thought about, because we all feel the
| effects, but aren't exactly sure how to articulate. I'm going
| to be thinking about that comment!
|
| It definitely applies to software. It's why trades are a much
| better career option, local will never not matter in that
| case. The best 'star high school' welders and electricians
| are always going to be desirable, as no one is flying in the
| best in the world for every little job.
|
| Most of us, except the best in the world among us, messed up
| going into software. The script completely flipped on this
| since I was a child in the 80s and was dreaming of becoming a
| programmer as I am now.
| flerchin wrote:
| Software dev wages are through the roof as a
| counterargument.
| munk-a wrote:
| Most aren't - most are quite comfortable but 100k is
| still above the median for developers.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| That's what I see. As the OP I can say that my wages
| aren't through the roof, and I don't think they ever will
| be. I'm a developer and under 100K. I'm not sure anyone I
| know in this industry has a "through the roof" salary. I
| don't know anyone at Google. Given how hard I work for
| the money I do make, I'm expecting to unionize or go solo
| with my own thing, before my salary somehow goes through
| the roof. Either of those are more likely.
| flerchin wrote:
| I dunno. I've never worked a FAANG, but wage increases
| have been great for every new job. Maybe my US
| perspective is showing? Maybe move to a hotter market?
| leetcrew wrote:
| according to BLS, the median is more like $110k:
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
| technology/...
|
| anyway, the median figure doesn't tell you a whole lot by
| itself. the median rent in the US for is ~$950 for a 1BR
| or ~$1250 for a 3BR (suitable for a family with 2-3
| children). if you make the median salary, you are
| probably taking home $6000-6500 a month depending on tax
| situation. having ~$5000 left over after paying rent
| sounds more than just "comfortable" to me.
|
| of course, we don't know exactly how well local rents are
| correlated with dev pay. maybe to be more than
| "comfortable" you need to pay for private school or pay
| rent in the best school district. but it would be much
| more useful to calculate the ratio of rent or home price
| to pay for each dev and then take the median of that.
| minikites wrote:
| >(barring regulation that forces compromises to product
| efficacy)
|
| Can you really not think of any benefits of regulation to
| correct for pervasive market failures?
| Filligree wrote:
| Of course there are benefits. It's still true that it
| compromises the main goal of the glue--compromise is the
| _point_.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It's still true that it compromises the main goal of the
| glue--compromise is the point.
|
| That may happen, but it's not generally true. Regulation
| can, for example, increase competition which increases
| innovation. It can standardize safety rules, which reduces
| the risk for manufacturers clearly defining what they do
| and don't have to do. Etc.
| minikites wrote:
| That's not the typical framing I see, it's usually
| "government regulations strangling private sector
| innovation" with the implication that there are no
| benefits.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'd say the costs outweigh the benefits, and the benefits
| often go to the politically connected who can influence
| the regulations.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > the benefits often go to the politically connected who
| can influence the regulations
|
| The benefits go to a lot of people, or you could say that
| voting makes you politically connected. Politicians must
| balance many interests, including those of the
| politically connected and of the voting public. You don't
| want to be the politician who failed to protect your
| constituents.
| tootie wrote:
| I think he missed a lot bigger elephants. Things like the
| massive reduction in global poverty levels or eradication of
| polio. The global decrease in crime. We reversed ozone
| depletion and massively decreased the mortality rate for HIV.
| This post is more like a list of cool products we have now when
| we have monumental human development achievements no one is
| talking about.
| dalbasal wrote:
| _" From farming to high finance products and services are
| substantially more influenced and optimized by specialist
| professionals than they were in 1990. Increase efficiency like
| this throughout the national and global economy is how
| lawnmowers and A/C units can be sold on sale for $100 and still
| make a profit. "_
|
| You can find examples of this, but overall, I dispute the
| generalization.
|
| I think quality/price improvements have been monumental in some
| areas, stagnant in others. Computer related products have gone
| crazy. It's not more for less though, it's "much more for a
| little more." The market grew a lot and a produces a hell of a
| lot more. Even that isn't the norm though. More for less, even
| less for less, are uncommon.
|
| Farming and manufacturing.... None of the capitalisation, gene
| patents and such of recent generations is anything like basic
| green revolution tech, in terms of productivity growth. Farming
| is different. It uses less labour, more capital, but it's not
| producing much more efficiently. The price of farm produce
| isn't falling, quality is not rising. Same for most
| manufacturing, especially basic manufacturing. Most of the last
| generations' gains were made by employing cheaper employees in
| cheaper places, not reinventing manufacturing techniques. So,
| low end, high volume manufactured goods got cheaper, but a car
| still costs what it costs. Good quality appliances generally do
| too.
|
| The quality of housing has gone up, but prices are often very
| high.
|
| Education... we have more and arguably better, but more
| expensive.
|
| Medicine... same. More and better, but more expensive.
|
| There's a pattern here that's more complex and interesting than
| the average.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Computer related products have gone crazy. It's not more
| for less though, it's "much more for a little more."
|
| I thought we liked Raspberry Pis on HN.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| > Even that isn't the norm though. More for less, even less
| for less, are uncommon.
|
| At least in the embedded space, this is definitely not true.
| The norm is approaching more and more features for less.
| dalbasal wrote:
| My point was that as price drops & quality rises, there's
| an increase in consumption.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > Education... we have more and arguably better, but more
| expensive.
|
| There are many thousands of people on this forum that have
| gotten a free education and in turn, one of the best careers
| in history from that free education that would never have
| been possible until recently.
|
| I'm seeing more and more people (that aren't designers and
| engineers) are forgoing classical education and making a
| great living for themselves just by utilizing the freely
| available information on the internet.
| dalbasal wrote:
| True. Some of that "more" is even free, quite a lot of it.
| Still, if you do the sums, the education industry is
| larger.
| victorbstan wrote:
| I looked at the 1980s desktop picture and I realized nothing has
| improved since then.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I looked at the 1980s desktop picture and realized the computer
| on it was a Mac Classic (with the logo and name removed, and an
| earlier mouse and keyboard), which was released in 1990.
| sumanthvepa wrote:
| My kitchen is definitely antediluvian by this standard. We still
| have a gas stove. The induction stove after week of use has been
| relegated quietly to the attic by the wife, and has stayed there
| for years. I suspect Indian cooking doesn't lend itself well to
| the use of induction stoves.
| Etheryte wrote:
| There are many dishes that you simply can't make without the
| heat of a gas stove. Mostly I would say you won't find these in
| the western cuisine though, so it explains how the author might
| miss this point. Modern gas stoves are pretty much as safe as
| any other appliance, but I can see why someone who doesn't see
| a need for one might avoid it.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Induction stoves are good for boiling water and nothing else.
| And I mean boiling, not simmering. I'm going back to gas very
| soon and can't wait to start cooking properly again.
| tristor wrote:
| Pretty much agreed. I thought induction was going to be the
| miracle technology that would make a kitchen both highly
| productive and capable while increasing safety standards
| markedly over working with open flame. I was all in on
| getting a high-end induction range to replace my older
| radiant electric range, and thanks to a friend's advice I
| decided to buy a freestanding single-burner induction cooktop
| to try it first.
|
| I found that induction is a VERY VERY uneven heating source,
| in fact it's the most uneven heating source. When using it
| with traditional cooking methods and implements that are also
| usually quite uneven (like cast iron) it becomes a complete
| travesty. Additionally, typical cooking techniques that are
| intended to address unevenness of heat like pan flipping
| doesn't work with an induction cooktop because when you lift
| the pan it shuts off.
|
| I ended up getting a dual fuel gas range (gas cooktop,
| electric oven with convection) and I love it. Gas is just the
| best way to cook, period. I wish it weren't so, because it's
| not energy efficient and it can be a safety hazard, but it
| just straight out works better than anything else.
| globular-toast wrote:
| This is my primary frustration with induction too. I use
| heavy cast iron and stainless steel clad aluminium
| cookware. This isn't some cheap thin stuff before people
| think it's the pans. The induction ring will make a hot
| spot hotter the sun in the middle of the pan while leaving
| the edges without any heat whatsoever. It's a complete
| nightmare for doing something like frying an egg, searing
| meat or anything really except boiling or deep fat frying
| where the water/oil provides the conductive surface rather
| than the bottom of the pan.
|
| The other problem is temperature regulation. It regulates
| heat by pulsing on and off. It makes a noise which is
| annoying. On some settings and some pans, it will pulse
| between boiling over and coming off the boil completely.
| Since the heat settings are digital it can be impossible to
| find a setting that will keep water at a simmer (even if
| your volume of water is large enough to overcome the
| pulsing).
|
| The one thing electric hobs have going for them is ease of
| cleaning. But cleaning a gas hob is a small price to pay
| for being able to cook properly.
|
| Gas hob with electric oven is definitely the best
| combination overall. I could see having a couple of
| induction rings in addition to gas useful just for boiling
| and deep fat frying due to increased efficiency and safety,
| but that seems like an overly complicated setup.
| dhosek wrote:
| We're in the process of designing a new kitchen and I had
| thought that we might do a hybrid cook surface: use a six-
| burner space to have a 3-4 spot induction cooktop and a
| 2-burner gas cooktop. Hearing these accounts, I'm beginning
| to reconsider (certainly, there are some things, like
| roasting chili peppers that can only be done effectively on
| a gas range).
| globular-toast wrote:
| If you can I would go 4 gas and 2 induction. I think that
| would be a pretty good setup and a true "best of both
| worlds".
| dionidium wrote:
| Seeing the "War on Drugs Lost" and "War On Smoking Won" sections
| back-to-back highlights how much stuff like this depends on how
| you define success. Of course, far more people smoke cigarettes
| in 2021 than consume illegal drugs (or legal marijuana), but we
| won the battle on the former and lost the war on the latter?
| Second, a lot of our worst addicts now live in tents in open-air
| drug markets that exist on a scale that would have been
| unimaginable in 1991. Is this what progress looks like?
| rthomas6 wrote:
| The big changes, I think, are smartphones and widespread LGBT
| acceptance. Everything else just seems like incremental
| improvements to existing technology.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Smoking in bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and other places
| where you wouldn't even think about it now. Coming home after a
| night out stinking like stale cigarette smoke was the norm,
| even if you didn't smoke (which you may as well have).
| detcader wrote:
| I'd submit two more:
|
| An incredible amount of whistleblower leaks made it possible
| for citizens to know what horrible things their governments are
| doing. There is a real check on state power when the press has
| such a reach now, and you can publish (or dump) materials
| anywhere online even if you don't trust the press.
|
| Frozen/convenient dietary alternatives to enslaving and killing
| animals are now easily available and it's no longer
| conventional wisdom that veganism will kill you or make you a
| stick figure person. Not likely considered incremental by those
| living beings!
| alasdair_ wrote:
| " the Internet/Human Genetics/AI/VR are now actually things
| Imagine dealing with the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in 1989
| instead."
|
| Am I the only one hat thinks without Facebook and other social
| media, our vaccination and mask wearing rates would likely be
| much higher?
| JeremyNT wrote:
| This one stood out for me:
|
| > _All-You-Can-Eat Broadband_
|
| ... in some places, with some providers. My local broadband
| monopoly imposes metered data usage, with caps and overage
| charges. You have to pay $30 to have unmetered access.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Without denying any of the improvements cited here, some things,
| even in computing, are no better:
|
| 1) Printers still suck. By that I mean, mainly, reliability. I
| try to print something from my Mac laptop. The printer is
| connected, has paper, and displays no error messages.
| Nonetheless, nothing happens. There's no apparent way to figure
| out why. There wasn't in the 90s and there still isn't.
|
| 2) Software quality is, if anything, worse. It's clear that no
| unusual cases are ever tested for; only the most common browsers
| and a few of the recent releases of the OS. Error cases are
| handled no better than they ever were.
|
| 3) What else?
| bhelkey wrote:
| > 1) Printers still suck. By that I mean, mainly, reliability.
|
| Laser printers are a step forward even if they leave a lot to
| be desired. Also, somewhat anecdotally, the amount of times I
| need to use a printer has significantly fallen since 2005.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| There are tons of live improvements from my point of view, but
| the few downsides that exist today make it worse in overall. The
| main downside I see is:
|
| - big tech companies are becoming so powerful that they will
| interfere in our daily lives through tech (because tech is
| everywhere) and there is little we can do about it we want it or
| not.
|
| You cannot escape Google/Microsoft/Facebook/whatever. You just
| can't (unless you go full offline, but then the tech live
| improvements since the 90s go away as well).
| sixothree wrote:
| I got Pong as a kid (specifically Telstar Marksman) and I have
| been 100% all in since that day. Every doubling and incremental
| change has been exciting to me.
|
| The way technology today is implemented repulses me. The
| surveillance, gamification, addition psychology all seem so
| unrecognized by the public but have made me less interested.
|
| But for me the biggest grievance is the poorly working
| software. So tired of it. So so tired.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > You cannot escape Google/Microsoft/Facebook/whatever.
|
| This is such nonsense.
|
| There are more alternatives now than ever. Name any service
| provided by FANAMNGS (or whatever acronym we're using today)
| and there are many alternatives. Shit we even have viable
| alternatives to iPhones and Androids.
|
| Now if you need AWS level quality of service, you're gonna have
| to use a service provided by a company that has the means to
| provide that level of service. The difference is, 20 years ago,
| that level of service was just not available to your average
| person/company.
|
| If you're talking about social media, then yeah, social media
| NETWORKS rely on having everyone on the same platform. It's
| easier than ever to host your own Geocities equivalent, if
| that's what you wanna do for some reason.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| So, I'll give my point of view:
|
| - all the employers I ever had either used Google or
| Microsoft suite of tools (e.g., gmail, office, etc.)
|
| - my family uses WhatsApp, and they give a damn whether
| Facebook becomes Big Brother or not
|
| So there you have two aspects of my life (big ones) where I
| cannot escape the big corporations.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Driving maps/planning is wildly better, not just a little better.
|
| I can remember in the early 90s going to AAA to get paper maps
| for upcoming trips, buying a Rand McNally almanac for the car,
| etc.
|
| First getting mapquest and then later in-car GPS and later Waze
| has been super convenient.
| jjav wrote:
| But is it better? Buying maps and planning a road trip is
| satifying. Blindly following the voice on waze, not really.
| Worst part is getting there and not knownig how to get back
| without waze because I was zoned out of the surroundings.
|
| Although the one part that is unequivocally better is the real-
| time traffic/incident info to reroute around trouble.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think it is. I can recall driving alone trying to steal
| quick peeks at the paper map. Safer (but more difficult) was
| doing map-based navigation in light aircraft.
|
| Database-backed GPS transformed both of those to be easier
| and safer to use while traveling.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Fresh Guacamole can be easily bought due to pressure
| pasteurization
|
| Where do I find this? I tried this spring and summer but couldn't
| find guacamole that doesn't spoil within a day or two, especially
| after being opened, which is too soon to be practical.
| jameshart wrote:
| Get the single serve packs then.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Thanks, but that's too much waste for my taste.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I wonder if it's less waste than spoiling a larger
| container.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Interesting question, though certainly it is less waste
| to buy neither.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Yo Quiero is using the process on their pre packaged guacamole.
|
| https://yoquierobrands.com/
| owenversteeg wrote:
| It looks like Wholly Guacamole, with 83% market share of the US
| guacamole market, is pressure pasteurized, so it should last
| significantly longer: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
| world/national/econo...
|
| As far as prices go, seems like Walmart has them at $4.89 for 6
| mini cups (12oz total or 340g) or a large single package of
| 15oz/425g for $4.98. An average avocado weighs 136 grams
| without the pit or skin according to the USDA. Let's say 1/5th
| of the total weight of avocado flesh you buy is spoiled in some
| way (too stringy, too hard, spoiled etc.) At $1.25 per avocado
| and 20% spoilage, the large single package of Wholly Guacamole
| and the avocado are nearly the same price. Various sources
| claim that the average US avocado price is around $2 but when I
| buy them myself I usually get them around $1; I suppose if
| you're paying more it's an even better value.
|
| So, looks like a good value in addition to saving on spoilage.
| My only worry would be the plastic waste, but I can't seem to
| find what the containers are made out of and if those are
| recyclable.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Thank you! I've eaten Wholly Guacamole; not really the best,
| but now that I know it's pasteurized, I might try it again.
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