What opinion just makes you look like you aged 30 years
I’m not subscribing to anything. If I buy something, it’s fully functional, and it’s mine. There is no ongoing relationship between me and the manufacturer. Done.
I mean, that’s basically what FOSS is about.
And that’s why we use it.
Especially when it comes to expensive equipment like cars, computers, printers, etc.
who doesn’t want a subscription for heated seats on their $100k car? /s
The only thing I’m willing to pay a subscription for are the essentials that have no product alternative, i.e. utilities - power, water, Internet. I refuse to pay for streaming when they used to sell DVDs and CDs with the same content. I refuse to pay for game subscription services when you used to be able to buy the games outright. I refuse to pay for software-as-a-service or bullshit like cloud service integrations for smart home stuff. If I don’t own it, I don’t buy it.
At least for utilities you can reframe it as paying for parcels of utility, and then consuming them, like you do for food. Middleman bullshit like cloud services that refuse to let you just self-host can screw off. Having to spend money to spend extra resources to deal with a 3rd party is obnoxious, doubly so when they just decide they don’t want to support it anymore and pull the plug.
I’m working on this, the subscription model has gotten so expensive now that literally everything uses it. Do you have any tips besides “just pirate everything”?
Just pirate some of the things?
you know, I (supposedly - you cant prove anything, mr. prosecutor) may have done this as a kid. then I hopped hardcore on to the FLOSS bandwagon and never looked back. everything I need I can find as a FLOSS package (firmware often excluded, of course). all the learning that I (supposedly) did through the “hack” as a kid now goes into writing original code and supporting open source software. FLOSS literally (may have) made an honest man out of me :-)
Depends on the media, buy from bandcamp, steam
Bandcamp is the move.
Use free or at least alternatives without a subscription model where possible
For cars? Just buy one that’s a bit older
Movies etc? Pirate
I’ve wanted an EV for years, but I’m sticking with my very old and fuel-efficient ICE car until it’s absolutely dead. At that point, I’m hoping that some model of EV emerges as the most hackable one, like the Nissan Leaf. I’ll buy a very used one of those & hack it.
The best thing that you can do for the world is but less shit that you don’t need.
Unfortunately the only alternative for some things are becoming very tech literate and running an objectively worse mediocre open source software
This is what I’m resorting to. Instead of pirating Lightroom, I’m using RawTherapee for my (non-professional) photo editing of my x100t photos. In the old days, I’d have done it (I still have a very old version of LR exe in one of my hard drives) but today I’d rather not have a ton of keygens and crap on my laptop.
Anything that doesn’t incur an ongoing cost to provide should be legally prohibited from being sold as a “subscription.”
Not everything needs a law against it. I’m just not going to buy into their fucked up system.
Except more and more companies are hopping on this gravy train because they can get away with it. At some point (and that point may be now already, depending on the sector), it’s going to be difficult-to-impossible to buy anything without this subscription bullshit.
We’ll find a way. Right now, I’m mostly concerned about cars. That’s going to be an interesting problem over the next few years.
@TheBaldness Do you pay taxes? It’s literally a subscription on the state :)
Only because the late fees and collection agencies are to die for :)
Music in restaurants and bars is just too loud. I know why the music is loud, but I am still going to shake my fist at it like Grandpa Simpson.
Same. It’s getting worse over time too, I can hardly hear anything anyone is saying in restaurants and bars anymore.
I felt my inner boomer grow stronger after writing that.
I think many grey hairs suddenly sprouted on peoples’ heads after commenting on this thread.
I’ve thought this since I was young. Background music? Cool, keep it quiet so we can talk.
Does this mean loud music is bad? No, I’ve been a put my head in the PA speakers metal head since I was young too. But I don’t expect a waiter to serve me then.
Beyond that, it’s a known problem that as you get older audio distractions become more severe, and I’m sure there’s a neurodivergent dimension to it too, so it’s one of those things where we are actively punishing people for wanting to be out and socialise. Also sure it’s one of those things where everyone thinks they have to do it but don’t
If I know I’m going to one of those extra loud bar or clubs, I always being some earplugs. I have some pretty stealthy ones in a mint tin. I can’t hear people talk either way, might as well not hurt my ears.
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Single player modes in games shouldn’t require internet connection.
That fact that’s considered a boomer take makes me sad
Exactly this
It was totally uncool to remove the headphone jack from my device, man.
GIVE ME BACK MY DAMN 3.5MM HEADPHONE JACK ON MY PHONE!!!
Cars shouldn’t be loaded with user-facing technology. Bring back analog dashboards and buttons for climate control!
I just want to be able to adjust the stereo without looking away from the road. Is that too much to ask?
Interesting fact: I just got a new ev (so a battery hooked up to a computer with wheels) - and it has buttons! It also has dials for sound and climate.
Now to be fair it also takes interacting with a touchscreen to turn on the heated seats, but I’d say it’s progress in the right direction.
What EV did you buy?
Iconiq 5. I can honestly say I really enjoy it (and I’m not a car person).
Bring back stick-shift, too. People shouldn’t be driving if they have no grasp of the mass and inertia of their car. We should be able to disengage the engine at will. And we should have to pay attention when we drive.
I hate the touch screen climate control, especially when’s it’s cold and it takes the touch screen awhile to get started…
I don’t want to have a subscription for everything. It used to be possible to pay a one-time fee for software and use it as long as I want. Now I have to pay a monthly fee and once I finish paying, I can’t use the software anymore. And it’s not like I constantly get updates for the software. Often it stays the same for months or years.
I understand that software has a price, but no way these prices are sometimes justified…
I agree, but from a !piracy perspective
I’m always on the hunt for self hosted/open source solutions.
Smart tech in general is annoying and dumb. I want my TV to just be a tv with inputs, I don’t need built in firmware and updates to shove ads in my face. I don’t want my car to have a touch screen to adjust the A/C, just give me a knob or buttons.
Digital privacy is important, and it’s important to be anonymous on the internet
I feel like this could go either way whether it’s a boomer opinion or not. Real boomers are not very tech literate and probably don’t have much of a notion of online privacy.
On the other hand for those that were adults in the early years of the internet, they likely think we’re all giving away too much of our private information.
Boomers (my parents’ generation) were telling us 90’s kids how dangerous it was to put your information online, but then it seemed once social media happened they all forgot about such privacy concerns entirely. They were right the first time!
You’re right, i guess i am mistaken
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Cities are too car-oriented
I agree with the sentiment, but this feels like the least boomer opinion ngl
I think it’s simultaneously an opinion held by very old people who remember when they could just walk to the store and younger urbanists that want us to return to that. The people in the middle grew up in a car oriented society that hadn’t completely lost small businesses and been locked down by traffic. And they now have a house way out in the burbs with a disdain for the traffic of the city. Urbanism threatens their way of life now. That’s my opinion.
Most of the US has dug a hole that can’t easily be fixed with its car-centric developments, people living there pretty much need a car for everything.
Driving there may be a pleasure, but I personally wouldn’t want to live in that situation at all. I’m glad and lucky to have the equivalent of a mall just a 10 minute bike ride away, 25 minute walk, 5 minute bus trip.
America is definitely pretty deeply invested in car-centeic living. But I don’t think it’s impossible to get out of it. There’s rising pressure to lower housing costs, traffic, and improve infrastructure quality. My city (which is about as car centric as it gets) is growing fast and most of that is with infil development. It’s going to be a slow transformation but I think it will happen. I don’t think American cities will look like European or Asian cities because they won’t evolve the same way. But they will look different to how they look now.
Yep I agree - It’s definitely possible for the US to shift away from it, some cities have even been transforming some of their busy central roads into pedestrianised boulevards (such as times square in NY, and a couple others I can’t remember off the top of my head) and from an outsiders perspective been successful.
The difficulty is mainly going to be places like Culver City where some just don’t get that cars don’t scale well in dense urban areas like cities - they’ve voted to remove a 2 year old bike lane just to get back an additional driving lane. That’s just going to move most of the bike riders back into their cars, filling that brand new driving lane (and the other existing driving lanes) with traffic that previously didn’t exist. Hopefully over time positive changes will return though!
Depends on the city. In my city, you could walk across the whole thing in maybe an hour, and anything major the furthest you would have to walk is about 30 minutes.
Sneaker culture is incredibly weird. Shoes made by children in China with a limited edition color are in such high demand that there are sites where people refresh F5 constantly hoping to have the honor to pay hundreds and hundreds for shoes that cost $7.50 to make. Then half of the time people won’t even wear them outside, they’ll put them in a bag and change shoes when they get to work or whatever. Or some might not even wear the shoes at all and just display them.
I’m an old soul in this sense. I love a quality goodyear welted shoe, and made in USA, UK, or Italy usually. An Allen Edmonds strandmok is a fantastic everyday shoe for me. I like to purchase nice things in general, use them, take care of them. I really hate throwaway culture as well.
Please nobody hate me for this, I’m a bit self conscious being an admin of my own instance and don’t want to piss people off haha. If you’re into gym shoe culture that’s awesome. If I knew you in real life I’d probably make fun of you for a minute if I saw you walking outside in socks carrying your $400 limited edition sneakers, but then you can make fun of me for one of the thousands of things I do and it’s all in good fun.
I have three:
- They don’t make things like they used to
- We don’t need all these damned computers in everything
- Modern music sounds like crap
I’m 17.
I think two out of those believes stem from survivorship bias. You think of old music and consumer products as superior because the only ones that “survived” are the good ones. No one remembers bad music from 50 years ago, and for every old thermos flask/blender/knife that you see around there are dozens that broke years ago.
There was song from the 60s (supposedly the best music everyone tells me) called “7 little girls”. The chorus went “7 little girls sitting the back seat kissing and hugging with Fred”
Thankfully a mostly forgotten song now, but a clear example of how bloody awful pop music is not a new phenomenon.
That’s fair.
I say yes for the music one, maybe not for the first. There are literally different materials being used and increasingly optimised-for-profit-to-effort-ratio processes. Many things are just straight up made more cheaply because we have the technology to do that.
Although for the music one, a relevant lyric comes to mind:
Hip hop? Buddy, don’t get me started
So how do you get yourself charted?
Kids love this stuff 'cause it’s so new
Put in a sample from a pop song too
You’ve got a hit, how come it sold?
The melody and it’s 30 years old!
Hip hop is pretty mainstream now but it started as counter culture. And I don’t think a sample in a song makes it similar to the sampled song. A lot of tracks that rely on samples completely create something new. Look at J Dilla who relied almost entirely on samples. His music isn’t a collection of old songs, it’s entirely new songs. I guess this thread is for boomer takes.
Or the Prodigy, who relied almost entirely on samples yet made some of the most exciting music we had ever heard.
My theory on the first one is that it’s usually hard to make things cheap and consistent, so it often starts off as bad, then good but expensive, and then trends towards and past “good enough”
Modern music is fire when you know where to look but I’ve always felt like pop music has been taking a very slow weird turn. It seems like 1970s and earlier it was mostly good, and mostly good after, but at this point I’m just confused
- The internet was way better before it became a giant shopping mall.
- Those cars that don’t have the flecks in the paint look like children’s toys.
Then, I have a couple that pre-date even boomers by many years 😅:
- Handkerchiefs kick the shit out of paper tissues.
- Cars have made the world a worse place.
I miss the era when the web was just this
Handkerchiefs are the bomb. I carry one everywhere I go (when I don’t forget 🥲). Really feel like they could make a comeback with the right marketing.
Go pick up a heap at your local hospice shop. I’ve gotten a lot of mine there and made a few more out of scrap fabric. I use old flannelette cotton sheets for our spill rags.
Those cars that don’t have the flecks in the paint look like children’s toys.
Finally I can out my finger on what bothers me about them
Those cars that don’t have the flecks in the paint look like children’s toys
Actually, why do so many modern cars straight up look like oversized toys?
Electric cars are the worst for this IMO. Aside from the Tesla model 3, Nissan leaf and a handful of other ones… everything else looks like an oversized replica remote control toy to me. Some are nice, like the VW minivan, but most look like cheap wannabes. I can’t quite put my finger on it
I always bring half a dozen hankies with me camping. They’re so useful on a limited inventory. They help you grab hot things. As napkins. Allergies. Wounds. Cleaning knives. Storing spare fish hooks/lures i.e. pocket tackle. I handwash them in the river and they sun dry quiet quickly.
Love hankies. I miss the old web too.
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The only exceptions I can think of are streaming services that simply couldn’t exist as standalone one-off products (Spotify, Netflix etc). But yeah, there’s no logical reason something like Photoshop should ever require more than one transaction.
I bought FL Studio back in 2017 and have received free updates since then.
Meanwhile, most other software companies: “nooo, you can’t own the software, you have to pay for a subscription and you can’t keep using it when it’s over! Also if you want updates you have to pay for the premium subscription”
(this comment is not sponsored lmao)
