I just had an experience with a auto soap dispenser, sink, towels and dryer set in the same place in a public restroom, didn’t have to walk to a shared dryer

Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution

  • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Ebikes have transformed where I live. It’s mountainous so the only cyclists you’d see were skinny lycra-clad guys on 5 grand bikes.

    Now virtually everyone has a bike, from kids to octogenarians, and the only difference between the lycra-clad cyclists and the shorts n t-shirt cyclists is the fact the ones on the ebikes are all smiling 😊

    • Wahots
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      6 months ago

      Lime bikes and scooters, too. Totally transformed our city after we finally started installing protected bike lanes (and light rail), and a ton of people use them instead of cars. I bought an ebike and use my car like, once a month to grab something like a heavy AC unit.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    When I was a kid, I had to reference several manuals and carefully assemble a double handful of parts in specific order to connect two computers to eachother. I’d have to fiddle with protocols and speeds and obscure features and traits to make the stars align. Transferring 200mb would be an overnight task. If I wanted to show pictures from my vacation on a big screen, I would have to have them printed on cellulose and insert them in tiny frames to project on a thick screen with a huge machine.

    Yesterday, I went to a friend, pointed my phone at a magic symbolqr code and sent a full movie to their PC in a few minutes. Then I pushed a button to make the photographs on my phone appear on their TV.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    I have a magic little box sitting in my garage that allows me to dream up a weird little device, create it on a computer, convert it to a big pile of computer code automatically, hit “go” on the magic box, and come back in 4 hours to a hunk of plastic in the exact shape I dreamt up only a few hours before. A shape and functionality that had never before existed on the face of the earth.

    Ya, 3d printing feels pretty futuristic.

    • Cikos@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      my job is basically design and manufacture, the dependencies of 3d printers make my job wouldnt exist 10 years ago.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Technology that is so ubiquitous that younger gen’s don’t know how to troubleshoot them at all.

    I grew up with many examples from mag tape media to 802.11b that was basically only useful within a clear line of site to the router.

  • vividspecter@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Electric cars will certainly be quieter at low speed but they will still be noisy at higher speed due to tire noise dominating. Lower speed limits in cities would help here significantly.

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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      6 months ago

      Also, even ICE car can be very quiet in low speed, the insulation and exhaust muffle help a lot. I work with car a lot and often time the noise came from the radiator fan, without it running it’s quite hard to tell if the engine is running or not. The only thing electric car ever gonna solve is the tailpipe emission, which is good, but not quite enough.

  • treadful@lemmy.zip
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    6 months ago

    Some of the job titles of people I know would sound insane to people in the 80s.

    • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Yeah but one of my favourite things is when watching quiz shows, see who can come up with the most fucking pretentious phrase for “I’m a salesperson”

      Hi my name’s Lorna and I’m a client communications solutions engineer

      Ya hi my name’s Kyle and I’m like a future business outreach manager ya

  • kalkulat@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    As a very curious person with very wide interests, it is so easy to access really hard-to-find information. In the past five years I’ve satisfied my curiosity more than adequately on hundreds of topics I’d wondered about all my life … from home. One plus side of Covid.

    On the darker side, there were plenty of predictions (from science and fiction) in decades past that are becoming very real. Too many heads buried in sand.

  • Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    smartphones are pretty damn impressive.

    they downright make scifi gizmos like dataslates, or comunicators seem outdated.

    gps navigation arround the world,
    even without cellula reception if you have offline map data.
    and automatic navigation / route planning

    a vast array of communication services be it text sound, or video,
    one on one, as a group, or in a public forum.

    a vast sea of information on every topic immaginable.

    ever improving camera & sensor tech.

    and smartphones do it all in one device small enough to fit in your pocket.

    and i didn’t even mention the computing power & storage that oveshadows some room sized supercomputers of the past

    • krowbear@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yep! That was my thought as well, especially that we can carry the internet around and talk to pretty much anyone anytime.

  • Richard@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution

    The sound of hooves on cobblestone is incredibly loud and annoying!

    What really baffles me is modern computers. The whole assortment from mainframe batteries, desktop PCs, laptops to smartphones, watches, wireless earbuds, microcontrollers, miniaturised sensors, etc. Even the cheapest modern microcontrollers have insanely complex and tiny patterning that really speaks volumes for the amount of process control and precision in semiconductor fabs. Truly, I would call the modern IC a miracle if I wouldn’t know better. It is physics, materials science and chemistry at their best.

  • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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    6 months ago

    honestly just modern medicine and indoor plumbing/water treatment

    the amount of not dying from random infections we do these days, no wonder there are so many humans

    • I'm back on my BS 🤪@lemmy.autism.place
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      6 months ago

      If it weren’t for modern medicine, I’d have been dead over a decade ago since I have an autoimmune disorder that is treated with a weekly injection. Whenever there are discussions about societal disorder, my first thoughts are wondering how long I would last without the medicine.

        • I'm back on my BS 🤪@lemmy.autism.place
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          6 months ago

          Unfortunately, the medication lasts about a year before it expires. However, that’s in the fridge. At room temperature, the medication only last 14 days before it goes bad.

          I appreciate your concern so much tho! I’m having a terrible day, so your care made it a bit nicer. Thank you very much 🥹

  • I'm back on my BS 🤪@lemmy.autism.place
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    6 months ago

    Everyone walking around with digital cameras

    • We have video and photo evidence of nearly every single event because there are multiple people with cameras nearly everywhere there are people.

    Global interconnection

    • I can instantly communicate with someone in Germany from the US. I can even share a picture or video with someone in a matter of seconds.

    Medicine

    • Whenever I do something risky or worry about becoming sick or ill, I recognize how lucky I am that I can just go to a doctor and it will likely be addressed without issue. This goes especially for bacterial infections.