this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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We talk a lot about enshittification of technology, so tell me about technology that is getting better!

I personally love the progress of electric scooters. I've been zooming around on a 400$ escooter for a year and it works so well. It has a range of around 20 miles and top speed of 15 mph, so it works just super well for my uses, and 10 years ago scooters with that range/speed/price were no where near a thing.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Does the Evercade family of consoles count?

The original Evercade portable.

The Evercade VS home console.

They’re coming out with new hardware too!

Atari makes good retro consoles too and recently released the 7800+ that comes out later also.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I know, I know, it's getting boring, but...Linux.
Nowadays you install it by clicking "next" a few times, and when you're done, the latest updates are already installed, the firmware for your hardware is installed, your wifi is connected, your networked printer/scanner combo is already recognized and set up, storage media or devices you plug in are auto-mounted, most games work out of the box, bluetooth works, MS Office files can be opened without becoming a garbled mess, touch screens work, touchpads work better than on Windows, ...

It didn't used to be this way. 20 years ago, Linux ran only on desktop PCs with Ethernet cable connection, all games had a penguin as the main character, shopping for a printer made salesmen look at you like you're from Mars, and when someone sent you a .doc file, you sent back a reply to please use a free format or PDF.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Linux is pretty sweet. I haven't got a new computer in over a decade, and don't plan to, and this OS just continues to work like a dream.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

E-Ink and Ebooks in generell. Maybe not all the shitty Software/DRM that often comes with them but the technology itself is amazing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That is incredible tech. And now they're backlit and in color? Amazing. The only thing holding me back is shitty software and DRM. If there was a color eReader I could run something like Alpine on I would get one instantly. Instead it is often some proprietary shovelware begging to subscribe to their proprietary cloud service.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

E-ink screens aren’t backlit. It’s one of the reasons they are so easy on the eyes. They are front-lit. There are LED’s at the edge of the screen and a light guide on top of the screen that diffuses it onto the e-ink screen. Instead of staring directly into a lightbulb like with LCD the light you see is reflected off the page.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (4 children)

This will sound a little mundane but, FLASHLIGHTS! Particularly bicycle head lights. The prices before LED's were just STUPID. Hundreds of dollars for small amounts of light (which to be fair was the best you could get at the moment). Which were being used for night mountain biking. But all I needed was to get to and from work safely at night, I didnt have $400 for a headlight that would actually let me see the ground in front of me.

BUT, then came the revolution. China started putting out these LED lights that blew everything else out of the water ... FOR CHEAP! In two years light prices went from $400 to $100 for top of the line lighting. US bike light companies were a year or two out before they could re-tool to match the lumens coming out of china. Mind you, the Chinese lights were not always the most reliable. BUT they were 1/4th the cost of a name brand light. So even if it died, you could still buy ANOTHER one for less than the price of a high end name brand light.

And since the LED revolution, things have not changed much. Prices either go down or stay the same and the lumens increase OR the burn time increases. Its just a win win for customers/consumers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

By the same token, and I consider these a different category, headlamps. Camping got a whole lot better with a solid headlamp setup. The red light is crucial.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I have an obsession with light. Love the golden and blue hours and I don't want to know why, it's just so beautiful to watch. Being like this I'm pretty conscious of lighting and, in general, it has become just wonderful to have that precise dim and warmth in every space for a reasonable price. Not only this, less-intrusive lighting had become something urban ecologists quietly succeeded on spreading all over the world (bat-friendly lighting, for example) thanks to the available technologies.

So, yeah... not mundane at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I've been biking at sunset after I get the kids to bed and have super cheap lights on my bike to blink for visibility. Each light is powered by 2 CR2032s (BIOS batteries) I forgot to turn them off one day after my ride recently and left it in the garage blinking away, came back the next day to no visible decline in light output after running them for over 24 hours. Honestly those lights are probably approaching 24 hours of actual usage time not counting leaving it blinking in the garage

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. When I was growing up, incandescent bulbs and massive short-lived batteries made flashlights suck. Now flashlights are tiny, throw a tonne of light, and last a really long time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

E-books

I love having the physical thing in my hands, but love that we've gotten to a point where I can log on to Libby and just download one too, or back up digital versions of my favorites on my hard drive so I hopefully never lose them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Have you checked out using an IRC for e-books?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

IRC as in the old-school chat protocol?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yep! There is a great post on Lemmy about hot to get ebooks from irc

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Do you have that post? I was doing it from a reddit post but it recently stopped working for me ( a me problem not an irc problem probably).