this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I think video is still referred to as "footage". That is, how many feet long the tape is.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 20 points 6 days ago (3 children)

My favorite thing about smartphones is that the "call" icon is an old-school telephone handset. I'll bet younger people have never thought about what that thing is even supposed to be. My second-favorite is the gear icon for "settings" - like, what the fuck does a gear ring have to do with a list of options you can select? That isn't even remotely close to what gears are used for in real-world mechanical devices.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

Even my two year old can recognize a telephone handset, pick it up and hold it to her ear while saying "Hewwo?"

[–] Dasus 14 points 6 days ago

I'll bet younger people have never thought about what that thing is even supposed to be.

Oh cmon.

Yes, this supposedly (according to some meme) happened with the save symbol, because a floppy is actually something a lot of today's people have never seen or touched.

That sort of a handset for a telephone though? Do you think they haven't seen shows or movies? Never saw a playset with a very classic model plastic phones?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

One time I heard a colleague called the settings/gear icon in Windows a flower. I've also heard somebody refer to the PuTTY icon as "the two penguins"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Are we referring to this icon? Found here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PuTTY

If so I see no resemblance with a penguin at all.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yep that's the one. It was on the taskbar so significantly smaller than it looks here. I think he thought the lightning bolt was the beaks.

Sometimes late at night I squint my eyes to look at the icon and, for a fleeting moment, I can see two penguins.

[–] Lost_My_Mind -2 points 5 days ago

So either your friend has terrible eye sight, was high, or is an idiot.

[–] FlyingSquid 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

This sort of icon is still used in software all over the world:

I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I used a floppy disk.

[–] Sir_Premiumhengst 5 points 5 days ago

Died to become the icon of saving!

[–] Siegfried 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I can, 2007... I used them as fkashdrives for school cause it looked cool and a flash drive was a luxury in my country. I lost a lot* of info because of an error and never used one again

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

They held like 100M. They were gargantuan.

[–] Krudler 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

It's hard for people to understand, but there was a time from the late 70's to early 80's where after a screen "transition" whatever came up next on the screen was called a "new page".

So if you were playing Intellivision AD&D going in a dungeon from the overworld was a "new page". Or playing Karate Champ.... going from the Title Screen to the Fight Mechanics part was thought of as a "new page". Beating the first maze arrangement of Ms Pac Man would bring you to the next maze on "page 2".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Do we not call them webpages still?

[–] Fades 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

They explicitly are talking about movies and nobody uses the term page when talking about different scenes anymore.

How does the internet fit in here? They’re not saying we as a society moved away from the concept of pages…

[–] nepenthes 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Intellivision was a game console that came with the game Burger Time. It had many amazing (for the time- 1980s) games, such as Snafu, Metroid, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Minotaur.

I still have mine, but it no longer works. Big nostalgia, it looked like this:Very basic not even 3d walls graphics with a figure standing. Arbitrary numbers provide HP as there is no armour. Spells, bows, or attacks were more complex though.Very bright colours with no shading; Mintotaur was Purple

Edit: added image

Transcription: Very basic not even 3d walls graphics with a figure standing. Arbitrary numbers provide HP as there is no armour. Spells, bows, or attacks were more complex though. Very bright colours with no shading; Minotaur was Purple.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 3 points 5 days ago

I thought he was talking about vodeo games......you know.....because of all the video games he mentioned.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I hear the snake/dragon. Quick, press the button and count how many "bips" you hear to see if you have enough arrows!

[–] lordnikon 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I always liked mobile it works for everything you do on the go

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In 5 points 6 days ago

I always liked the German "Handy" ... cos it's great for porn.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Is it worse that I still call them "telephones"?

p.s. I am British, which gives me some allowance for using strange, historical words.

[–] LovableSidekick 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Since you are British, international law allows you to call it a "wireless" if you like.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Thank you, and I shall do so. Very much appreciated :)

[–] rottingleaf 2 points 5 days ago
[–] dual_sport_dork 57 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

It's slightly less absurd than that, I guess, because modern smartphones do at least still have telephone functionality.

Plenty of kids I grew up with also called Nintendo and Atari cartridges "tapes." It made sense from an ergonomic standpoint and from the point of view of someone who had no interest in understanding what was actually going on inside the machine. It's a rectangular plastic thing you put in the machine to make it play whatever it says on the label. Just like a VHS tape, see? Same same.

The thing with tape was that it described the actual medium inside the casing, all the way back to the time before the tape itself came in the casing and was just loose on a spool. This would have been state of the art in the 1960's. It's possible that Original Series Star Trek foresaw the possibility of solid state-ish storage with no tape reels inside, but probably not. (Their computers also exhibit a distressing lack of displays, so I'm not sure the producers were too good at being prescient.) And for what it's worth, I do know a few oldsters who now call the various small card based flash media formats "memory chips," which I guess is pretty close to accurate. TnG did this too with their "isolinear chips," whatever the hell those were supposed to be made of.

Anyway, we do have a limited selection of "phones" without the phone feature, e.g. things like the iPod Touch which was basically an early-gen iPhone with the phone cut out. Nobody could really decide what to call these, with the closest thing to a standard being "pocket media players," which turns into the rather non-melodious "PMP." (With this I guess we missed the chance to call wi-fi enabled variants "pocket internet media players," and therefore have the opportunity to label these "PIMPs," which is obviously much cooler.)

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (4 children)

In German, a phone is called a "Handy"

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (9 children)

"Pocket-Sized Portable Computer with Telecommunicative Radio Capability" is quite a long name, people would just get tired of saying that and call it by a simpler name.

Oh wait.

[–] Archer 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ironically the Brits got this right with “mobiles”. What’s the key characteristic of a cellphone? That it is portable and mobile.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

but the key characteristic of a car is also the mobility.

🤔

[–] FlyingSquid 1 points 5 days ago

Not if c/fuckcars gets their way.

[–] TheTetrapod 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

To pull terms from a couple different sci-fi book series I like, we could go for Hand Terminals or Scribs. I like both, the former when I'm being grandiose and the latter when I'm feeling cute.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Didn't we had Personal Digital Assistant before?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Hand Terminals imply you no longer have local storage, which wouldn't describe smartphones today.

Also, I hate the idea of a "Hand Terminal" where everything is on the cloud. I mean...

spoilerEros Incident, comms all dead. Screen doesnt even turn on.

With actual phones, they could've used something like Briar!

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Portable Handheld Omnidirectional Networking Equipment is also pretty long, we could probably shorten it.

[–] jaybone 4 points 6 days ago

This guy phones.

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