• finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    "In the future we have a standardized cable called a Universal Serial Bus, and it’s used for connecting to computers for things like information and/or power transfer. They’re super versatile, you know those personal computers you saw in the news last year? Well a USB could be added to connect a future computer without a keyboard and mouse to a keyboard and mouse with the same port and never worrying about brand differences or multiple types of wires or any of that, which makes them easily replaceable parts.

    They’re so common that you find USB ports on devices, walls, and even people’s furniture. The reason you might want it in your furniture is to connect your handheld mobile phone which will run off a grid of towers transmitting low energy high frequency radiowaves, but their batteries drain pretty fast during regular use and need to be recharged frequently. People spend a lot of time on their phones in the future."

    “So can you like order a pizza from anywhere?”

    “Yes but people in the future don’t call anymore. They use a tiny screen on the face of the phone to access a digitally transmitted form to fill out that has all the food options, payment info, and recieving address. You can even get financing for it, the payment split up in smaller regular payments automatically transmitted from your bank balance.”

    “That’s rad!”

    “It is not. We hate the future.”

    • stormeuh@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Yeah if there’s one thing that wouldn’t be easily explainable to people from the 70’s, it’s the lack of technological optimism in the current zeitgeist.

      • TheGoddessAnoia@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        Um… no. Having been an adult in the 1970s, I can testify that people read a great deal more then than they do now, and among the things they read were such optimistic tomes as 1984, I Am Legend, The Death of Grass, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or anything else by Philip K. Dick, The Egghead Republic, anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Silent Spring, the works of Harlan Ellison, and I could go on. Problem was then what it is now: corporations can pay for and broadcast lies faster and louder than a whole lot of worried people can yell and point and warn*. Don’t be fooled by selective hindsight: there were a whole lot of people getting pretty nervous, even in the 1970s, and being told we were worrying needlessly because history could only move one way…

        *To quote Jonathan Swift (the probable originator of the idea that Terry Pratchett brought to Millennials) " Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it." (1710)

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      “This was a dire warning. The unabomber may be insane and have questionable methods, but many people think they had a point in the future”

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    A few years back I remember reading a headline along the lines of:

    “Google Android Ice Cream Cream Sandwich for Galaxy 2 available on Sprint”

    And I thought that someone from just 5 years earlier would have been really confused.

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    I once charged my portable blender using a power bank daisy chained to one of my laptops which was also powering a desk fan, the future is strange man.

  • GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
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    7 days ago

    When I was last shopping for furniture, one of the immediate disqualifications was anything that required a power cord. I don’t need or want anything motorized, built-in chargers, bluetooth speakers, and I especially don’t want LED lighting in my chairs. All that crap is designed to fail / break. Not to mention that standards change quicker than furniture gets updated in my household. Most of those USB ports were old 5V USB-A crap that can’t keep up or crappy old bluetooth standards & antennas with poor quality speakers that I would never use anyway because my receiver is far, far better. And fuck LED lights in everything. Fuck that to Hell along with the people that make/invent that bullshit.

  • easily3667@lemmus.org
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    6 days ago

    They had electricity in the 70s. They were missing standards, but they had electricity.

    Just tell them our pet rocks are now cameras and instead of a regular wall plug we have a tiny plug for charging tiny things.

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      Also they had the ability to do this back then, too. It’s just that there weren’t as many devices that needed constant recharging.

      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Rechargeable batteries weren’t really a thing in the 70’s. For consumer electrical devices, batteries were one use, and anything that plugged in needed to stay plugged in while in operation.

        Big advances in battery chemistry made things like cordless phones feasible by the 80’s, and all sorts of rechargeable devices in the 90’s.

        • easily3667@lemmus.org
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          6 days ago

          Early cordless phones would still destroy batteries with garbage battery management system well into the 2000s.

          And they had those fucking stupid 2pin molex connectors that, despite being 4 mm across, had literally 2747329 different keying combinations for different vendors.

  • GoodOleAmerika@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I swear this is getting stupid. One day someone is going to shove a battery pack up the butt with USB port sticking out “omg tech dude, I can charge with my butt”

    • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      It’s pretty bold of you to to assume that this hasn’t been done already; I’m sure there are more than a few with a flared base for safety.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      You should probably ensure you have patent rights on that before you go spouting off about it in public spaces.

  • Kane@femboys.biz
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    7 days ago

    Okay but the most important question: where do I get a couch like that?

    My cord is always the wrong length lol

  • Subverb@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    My digital thermostats have Alexa built in. When I first installed them I went around telling people “I know I live in the future because my thermostat can play the Beatles”.

    Also, I have a heated coffee mug. I have legitimately used the sentence “My coffee mug is doing a firmware update.”

  • xia@lemmy.sdf.org
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    6 days ago

    They’d probably be confused as to why it needs charging. “I don’t charge my doorbell, so why the manual process? Is running copper wire prohibitively expensive in the future?”

  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    My 50 year old “dumb” doorbell doesn’t need to be recharged. More proof that “smart” technology isn’t actually smarter and isn’t actually making our lives easier.

    • eRac@lemmings.world
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      7 days ago

      If they had a 50 year old doorbell they could replace it with a better version of the pictured one that is powered by the old doorbell circuit.

      • emenaman @lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        My Ring doorbell like this does connect to my existing power supply for a ‘dumb’ doorbell. This version shown is a wireless model aimed more at apartments which don’t have existing wiring or for a tenant who wants a removable version to take when they move.

        I am not not associated with Ring, just a customer.

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      A doorbell like this requires recharging because it is wireless.

      Meaning you don’t need to drill holes, just connect it to your WiFi.

      Maybe screw the holder into something (or just command strip it to your door).

      It removes to recharge.

      Other smart door bells connect to existing power, and don’t need recharging.

    • slackassassin@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      A dumb doorbell won’t let me talk to or see anything from the third floor which makes it much easier to tell Jehovah’s witnesses to fuck off.

  • the_wiz@feddit.org
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    6 days ago

    I mean… yeah, having all the electronic gadgets that spy on you and let you read the post of the worlds united village yokels is great, but, just as a thought… why do i need to recharge my phone at least once a day when the Atari Portfolio (which was / is a nearly full IBM PC compatible computer) that was build in '89 did last about A MONTH on 3 AA batteries that i could buy nearly everywhere in the world?

    Imagine a world where not every consumer electronic is controled by layers upon layers upon layers of cruft running on an operating system that in its core still thinks it is powering an PDP11 and talking to a bunch of teletypes…