airplanes, microchips, vaccines, lenses, lasers, windmils, solar cells, ... the list is endless !
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
100 points (98.1% liked)
Ask Lemmy
27036 readers
1469 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Cars… old cars were indestructible death traps. Crumple zones kill the car and save the human
Not even indestructible, just big heavy destructible death traps!
There's a video floating around of a midsized sedan from the 60s and the 00s in a frontal offset crash and the old car is absolutely demolished.
This is a consistent argument I get into with my mother. She complains that cars are made of plastic now, and I try to explain that crashing a steel body car would mutilate your body but to no avail. This and her hatred of roundabouts.
I saw that one! A great visual of how much safety has improved
that's the kind of positivity I wanted. it is cool how much laser tech has improved in the past few decades
When you hear people saying that technology has stagnated, that person clearly isn't following advancements in medicine. The medical tech I see now just blow me away.
I've heard of lab-grown flesh cloned from a burn victim's own flesh replacing the need for an invasive skin graft retrieval, and a gold nanoparticle mixture placed into an old spinal cord injury to cause microscopic damage and force the body to resume healing the severed nerves. Those are the big two I like to talk about. I'm optimistic about things like whole working artificial organs in the next 50 years
load more comments
(8 replies)
Devices with touchscreens
Except in cars, for some reason
Physical buttons are a must in vehicles for me. I want to be able to operate things with muscle memory so I don't have to avert my eyes from the road.
Cars are just brutal on electronics hardware, from vibration to heat and cold changes, to sudden bumps and direct sunlight.
That said, they could definitely improve the software that it uses to avoid it responding slowly by not including things like unnecessary transitions or trying to have it do everything and a ham sandwich. Most of the problems with the software remind me of shitty printer drivers with extraneous bloat and lack of optimization.
Car interface design seems like its gone backwards. I'd much prefer a tactile button I can feel and push without looking than having to mess with a touch screen.
Some cars still focus on that thankfully
While the cars are expensive, Lucid says they're trying to differentiate by focusing on tactile over touch
The fucking low fps on navigation maps, the laggy response on touch input, goddamn
load more comments
(1 replies)
Computer hardware overall i more dependable then it used to be IMO. So is windows itself.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Engines. 300hp out of 2L is impressive. It scales even better. V8’s can put out insane numbers.
For real, internal combustion engines are made way better than they used to be. Both in terms of reliability and power output.
You can get a small, ICE only (non-hybrid) car that gets 40+ MPG. You can buy a new car with a warranty that makes over 800 horsepower.
The IC engine is at its peak. Electric is the future, but the current crop of ICE are incredible machines.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Sports equipment has benefited greatly from advances in material science.
I've been snowboarding since they weren't allowed on the hills and a few years ago was finally able to buy a full new setup.
There isn't a single component of my gear that isn't a radical improvement over the prior setup from 10 years earlier.
Thermal form boots, fancy new strong and flexible plastics in the bindings, and who knows all the wizardry in the board itself.
It is all so comfortable and performs so much better I can't imagine going out with my old gear.
I have to believe this is true across the board in football and hockey protection etc.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Pocket computers
Aka cell phones
My phone's hardware is more stacked than my PC at this point and that blows me away
Houses. Mainly talking about asbestos and lead.
Unfortunately we've also mastered the art of putting a nice facade on shitty, shitty bones
load more comments
(1 replies)
A lot of beauty products. Nail polish, makeup, hair dryers, hairbrushes, you name it. Some terrible (and even ozone-destroying) chemicals have been removed, and with the proliferation of online reviews and images you can pick something that won't burn your eyes and will actually work.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Cars. Some people like to talk about how sturdy cars used to be, but with all of the advancements in safety, if I were in a head-on collision between an old Plymouth and a Toyota Prius, I'd much rather be in the Prius.
Kids toys.
Back in my day, toys over promised and under delivered, especially if it had any kind of electronics. Everything required extra imagination back then, sometimes stretching it to a point of disillusion.
Not to mention the poisons
load more comments
(3 replies)
I'm going to say "Motorcycles". (At least bikes in the US.)
20 years ago, a lot of bikes still had carburetors with manual choke. Many of them had no pollution controls at all. ABS was basically science fiction. A significant portion of them were air cooled. (To be clear, there are still some air cooled bikes on the market.)
Now it's rare to find carbs on street legal bikes, even the 125cc Grom has fuel injection. And basically any bike has at least a catalytic converter. There are bikes with variable valve timing. There are bikes made by Harley-Davidson (The company always the butt of "muh primitive motorcycle" jokes) that have water cooled engines with variable valve timing that make as much noise, and vibration, as the average Toyota. Most bikes have ABS on them now, and there are plenty with traction control and stability control. They're safer now than they used to be. I recently sold a couple of bikes and bought one nicer bike, and it's uncanny how smooth, quiet, and stable it is.
This thread is helping me realize what a curmugeon I am. Everybody's like "such-and-such is so much better that it was" and I'm coming up with so many reasons why all of them suck way worse.
(Maybe that says more about me than about the state of the world.)
/c/notliketheothergirls
load more comments
(2 replies)
Computer hardware is constantly improving. Sure, the software is getting worse, but there are good alternatives to that either already existing, like in the PC space, or being worked on, like in the mobile space. Also this is ignoring price gouging of PC hardware.
Display tech has gone a long way since early LCD TVs started being a thing. Granted, I still think CRT is a better technology overall, but modern TV panels do a great job of coming close in quality, while having its own benefits and drawbacks.
Good quality audio is becoming more affordable, with $20 IEMs sounding incredible for the price (Moondrop Chu II specifically) and ~$100 planar magnetic cans being available.
Phone screens.
Porn
rocketry
cost of transport to space (orbit) has dropped dramatically in the past 20 years.
from 8000$/kg in 2000
to about 2500$/kg with falcon 9 in 2010
and still dropping rapidly.
source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-cost-of-space-flight/
view more: next ›