Ask Lemmy

I'm 22 and I feel the same way. 2012-2014 PC hardware was better and I do not care what anyone says. It's probably the software that was better but damn nowadays my 6 core 12 threaded CPU feels so ass in any task compared to my old ass Pentium. I have 32 gigs of RAM and shit can still be slow and unresponsive. Games are poorly optimized because they just focus on making it pretty but it barely looks better. Best example is counter strike 2 vs CS:GO. I played csgo on integrated graphics then on a 1050ti game was always smooth and looked good. Now CS2 looks blurry even with taa off. Runs like shit and sure it looks better but not that much better for it to run how it does.

Edit: another example is vermintide 2. I upgraded my hardware since I played the 1st one but it runs way worse than the 1st one.

I used to customize my desktop like crazy with the dumbest 3D effects. I was on a Pentium using Ubuntu 14.04, integrated graphics. Now I can't run discord and 3D effects without noticing the difference in performance.

Software is getting worse. Because it's getting more and more complex. Now even basic things back then are rough to do now.

I don't have proof or know enough to prove it but I can feel it.

Its called enshitification. Its a process that's been happening in all areas of tech for a while now.

Your BS radar has simply improved I'm guessing. Go through a few hype cycles, and you learn the pattern.

Hardware is better than ever. The default path in software is spammier and more extortionist than ever.

I blame the big tech companies. 10-20 years ago they were not that big so they didn't buy every competition to kill them. Now any time we get a new company or product that could change the world, one of the big 3 (apple, amazon, google) will buy them to keep the tech, code, or people for themselves.

Wanna see what not being bought by big tech is like? Look at what FOSS is doing. Look at Home Assistant, Jellyfin, AOSP is doing, it's making huge leaps without big tech.

I'm young enough to tell you that it's not just nostalgia. Most new tech now is like "cool but impractical" at best and "I'm worrying about how this will be used to make the world worse" at worst. Nothing to make me think it's the future.

Nah new tech is great. Flippers, steam decks, nano drones. Bluetooth was a joke a decade ago. Now we can do devices over wifi! Much of the tech from that era barely worked and was practically DIY levels of reliability. Rose colored glasses etc..

Which isn't to say that somethings haven't gotten outright shitty (M$, apple products, etc..). But widely, things are much much better. I think it depends how "mainstream" you are shopping. But if you were shopping "mainstream" then, it was just as shitty as it is today.

Every dog has its day, I suppose. Smart phones were exciting when they first emerged on the market and no one knew where the tech was going. Today, they're an every day appliance and a bit more ho-hum as a result.

At the moment, my tech junkie sights are set on micro-mobility. There's all sorts of fun stuff coming out of ebikes, scooters, and other contraptions, and the sector is still innovating hard and experiencing some growing pains and backlash because it has yet to move past that disruptive tech phase. In other words, it's awesome!

Tech has advanced technically (for lack of a better word) but yeah, it's being used against us more than to our benefit a lot of the time.

Nah, people always think thing "peaked" during their era. Its probably nostalgia. Tech back then is, in my opinion, terrible.

I was born around 2000-2003 (not giving exact year for privacy reasons)

Examples:

When I got my first phone (like around 2015 or so), it was an android phone that didn't have great encryption. You had to manually enable encryption and its not File-Based encryption like in today's android phones, its Full Disk Encryption which mean alarms dont work if you reboot your phone. And it takes like an hour or 2 to first set up the encryption.

Phones have so much vulnerabilities. Stagefright, Blueborne, etc. Luckily, I never got hacked (or at least not that I'm aware of) but it was just unsettling to know your phone is vulnerable, and you're even already on the latest update. Also there was a lot of screenlock bypasses. Updates typically is only 1 year OS update and 2 year security updates, if even that. Updates were also very slow to get rolled out.

Security was so bad, I can root my android phone with a random app I downloaded by searching "Android Root", don't even need to connect to a pc. Like can you imagine a random app being able to just take root privilages on your phone.

Nowadays, phones are much more secure, even the cheapest samsung phone has 4 years of OS updates, 5 years of security updates. With better encryption.

Phone plans were expensive AF, well I was a kid, but the normal plans had those "Unlimited Data" but with a huge asterisk, data slows after like a certain amount like 5 GB or something, I was unlucky, my parents were a bit cheap so the family plan that I was on only had 30MB of 4g internet, then throttled to 128kbps. Unusable unless you are at home and have wifi.

Nowadays, unlimited plans have become the norm, the plan that I was on even got a free upgrade to unlimited high speed data.

Oh and HTTPS wasn't default in most sites, some didn't even have it. And no HSTS as far as I remember.

Back then, there were no such thing as Airtags or Samsung Smarttags that are so cheap and allows tracking misplace items or even your pets. (I mean there are privacy concerns... still, very useful if not misused)

There were no smart watches that can detect a heart attack. (They're not exactly accurate, but still...)

There were no phones that detect a car crash or even use satelites to make a sos call. (I'm talking about the iPhone 14)

I mean yes we have so much enshittification today, but that's not really a tech problem, its a corporate greed problem not doesn't just affect technology.

Technology isn't bad, its just the way we use it.

Like nuclear technology can be use to build bombs to destroy, or used in power plants to create energy.

For some, yes. Automotive is one that comes to mind. I miss dumb TVs. I'd say laptop, but then I'm rocking a decade-old Thinkpad, so I might be a bit biased here. I also miss phones that aren't as locked down. I hate what the current streaming service industry have become, and how social media is filled with AI trash.

I'd say that our personal needs for shear computation power have peaked within the last ten years. Yes, people have been saying this since the dawn of personal computers. Yes, servers keep getting more powerful. However, the fact that some schmucks just released a thousand dollar laptop with more or less the same RAM & CPU specs as my decade old Thinkpad kinda proves that.

Other than that, a lot of things are getting better. As an open-source enthusiast, I see things keeps improving, FreeCAD 1.0 just got released, more improvements to Linux kernel, LibreOffice handles MS Office files better, etc. Manufacturing techniques keeps getting more advanced, like 3D printing metal, and for us mortals, faster FDM printing with better plastic material that's more UV resistant. Radio technologies comes to mind; with SDR, one can achieve what people from last decade would need expensive specialized equipments for, yes you can get your hands on these for cheap.

Last but not least, don't forget this very platform where you're reading this very comment ;)

I've certainly had the feeling that things aren't improving as quickly anymore. I guess, it's a matter of the IT field not being as young anymore.

We've hit some boundaries of diminishing returns, for example:

• A phone from 5 years ago is still easily powerful enough to run the apps of today. We have to pretend that progress is still happening, by plastering yet another camera lens on the back, and removing yet another micrometer of bezel.
• Resolutions beyond HD are not nearly as noticeable of an upgrade. It often feels like we're just doing 2K and 4K resolutions, because bigger number = better.
• Games went from looking hyperrealistic to looking hyperrealistic with a few more shrubs in the background.

Many markets are now saturated. Most people have a phone, they don't need a second one. Heck, the youngest generation often only has a phone, and no PC/laptop. As a result, investors are less willing to bring in money.
I feel like that's why the IT industry is so horny for market changes, like VR, blockchain, COVID, LLMs etc.. As soon as a new opportunity arises, there's potential for an unsaturated market. What if everyone rushes to buy a new "AI PC", whatever the fuck that even means...?

Well, and finally, because everyone and their mum now spends a large chunk of their lives online, this isn't the World Wide West anymore. Suddenly, you've got to fulfill regulations, like the GDPR, and you have to be equipped against security attacks. Well, unless you find one of those new markets, of course, then you can rob everyone blind of their copyright and later claim you didn't think regulations would apply.

You grew up in a time of huge technological innovation, so you see anything else as unusual

Boomers grew up in stagnation, and expect tech to keep progressing at the same rate.

Both are 100% normal ways for our brains to expect shit to go, but neither fit modern society.

yep, and then tech companies began the big cull, taking all the free services and beginning to squeeze, at every level, all the time

I sure hope not. Building a new PC this weekend.

I might be simple to please but I think 1080p or 2160p is just peak to me. I find it very difficult to notice differences between 1080p and 2160p but moreso with 2160p and 4K. When Blu-Ray came out, they were of course hamming up Blu-Ray as the shit and DVD was now seen as inferior. I never really cared for what Blu-Ray had to offer at the time of it's debut. Because DVD quality was more than efficient to me, better than VHS which the comparison between VHS and DVD was night and day.

People tend to like tricking others into going into the more premium and expensive options of the latest tech with dishonest comparisons. You see this all the time with graphical comparisons with games and movies. Where they'll deliberately pixelate what they see as an inferior visual and sharpen the later options. It's just dishonest and operates on an extreme bias.

Does anybody else

Yes, pretty much always.

We just had an AI boom and now my computer can write text and code. It can generate images, voices and music almost as well as a human. This is in the last two years, I don't understand the feeling. I was personally blown away the first times I used things like chatgpt, stable diffusion, elvenlabs and udio.

No. You mean AI has not at least wowed you?

Highly disagree, everything is better now, and the things that have not changed a lot are instead refined. Stuff doesn't need to change just for the sake of change. A good example of this is smartphones, we've found a good basic model that the vast majority of people are comfortable with, all that needs to be done is to update the various parts as the years go by. Obviously smartphones aren't as exciting as they were, but that's not a bad thing at all. So much stuff was so bad in the early days, people are great at not remembering that. Try going back to like an iPhone 4 and you'll quickly realise how bad it is compared to what we have now. Bad screen, shitty camera, worse UI and UX etc. And the stuff that was top of the line and most expensive then is now mostly worse than even budget models of what we have now.

I really doubt you put even a second of thought into this post, you just felt nostalgic and remembered only the good parts. If you did sit and think about it for a while, I got bad news about your basic comprehension, critical thinking and memory.