Wait… what happened to people born in 1989 that didn’t to those born in 1991???
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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8th grade teacher got pissed at us on 9/11 because he thought we were laughing at the fact that a plane had hit the WTC. We were laughing because one of the girls didn't know what the WTC was. We turned on the TVs to see the second one get hit.
6th grade we had napster while some of us were still bringing in cases of floppies to play games that'd run on the computers
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Bet this guy doesn't understand crypto himself... (And I wouldn't expect him to either if not for this post)
As an elder millennial, I respect gen z and alpha for coping with modern society. It may just be a fond remembrance, but things seemed much simpler then. Creative jobs weren't threatened by AI, the tech didn't exist for corporations to spy on people, the US.. well let's not get into that.
I at least got to experience a decent time in history and built up enough context where I understand what is going on in the world today. That of course leads to irreconcilable sadness with where things are going, but at least I got to experience a wild culture shift.
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Wasn't expecting that to be associated with 1990
This post makes my knees hurt
The other day, someone in one of the gaming communities posted a comparison of the progress of video games from mid-90s to mid-aughts, and a more recent decade. It was clearly meant to be slightly exaggerated since the the recent screenshots were all the same one from fortnite, but the point still stands.
I wouldn't trade my 90s childhood for anything in the world.
If only the pace of technology was the only paradigm shift to have to worry about since the 80s/90s
Nah fuck em. They invented nuclear physics and they can't figure out a goddamned email? Skill issue.
When I was growing up the “big scam” was chain mail and televangelists.
Get off my lawn!
Yeah, let’s see you write a new autoexec.bat file with whatever text editor came on a DOS3.2 floppy that’s infected the the Stoned virus after you stupidly deleted autoexec.bat from your 386 by going to the library and checking out some books.
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The elders had to rewind the movies after watching
Be Kind. Rewind.
I still own a VCR and a vast collection of VHS tapes. I mean, I also pay for streaming services, but without the old 90s commercials for Disney World and previews for movies that were released in 1995, the movies just don’t hit the same.
I don't have a machine, but can't throw away some classics. Sometime in the future, someone will watch 'Videodrome' as God and nature intended.
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I remember beta vs VHS debates, now get off my lawn!
Beta was superior
Funny story. Back in the 1960s porn shops invented loop booths. You'd pay a quarter and have five quiet minutes alone to watch an 8 mm porn movie. When the time came to switch over to video, the porn shops went with the cheaper option. The guys who made the tapes put them on VHS because the porn shops were the biggest market at the start. When guys went to buy dirty movies for home viewing they saw that most were only available on VHS.
That's how Sony lost billions.
Porn is the spice of media. Whoever controkes porn contrôles the medium .
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I was familiar with it having something to do with porn, but not the specifics. Thank you for that!
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So was HDDVD. Both lost for the same reason, money backed the rivals.
Laser disc was really good too
It’s not that brain-melting. Taken one day at a time, the shift was very gradual.
Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 it's only been -8 years plenty of time to understand
2008 it’s only been -8 years plenty of time to understand
watch out in about 4 years, stock up on masks and alcohol.
Drinking or cleaning alcohol
Yes.
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I understand that crypto is a scam that will rob millions of people of money they desperately need.
But what you said there is literally the end of my understanding of what crypto is. It has something to do with computers solving math problems, and somehow that’s worth money.
What?
It's a speculative asset that fluctuates based on the whims of billionaire hedge funds and early crypto investors. There is zero value in owning it unless you got in early enough. And even then it's a situation of the last man holding the bag. Someone will end up losing their asses.
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"it's somehow worth money" is basically true of all fiat currencies. It's worth what the consensus agrees it is worth.
(this comment should not be read as a defense of crypto)
Government currencies are backed by taxes - someone did something and gave a portion of the value of their labor to the government, represented by currency. The government then reinvests the labor into the country supposedly for the public good. This is expected to continue indefinitely and it is this cycle that gives the currency value.
Crypto companies have investors. Investors are only attracted by the prospect of growth. They have no natural revenue cycle, no way of creating value without hype and people gambling with their.money.
The exception is the value inherent in being a currency outside of the control and surveillance of the Governments. Hence all the illegal activities. As time goes on cryptocurrencies will be more regulated and controlled by government, and it will diminish that trait.
It's fucking stupid.
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the problem with crypto is that when you try to explain it, it sounds so stupid that someone else thinks you have to be explaining it wrong
but if you want explanation, this one is fine https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html and this https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html
These are great, but they don’t explain what a crypto coin actually is.
technical details vary and honestly matter little. what matters more is what people do with these things, and that's what's explained
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When I was a kid, Commander Data from Star Trek TNG was the height of technological possibility. TNG was set in the 2300s.
It looks like hard drives are selling for about 20 bucks a terabyte now. Commander Data had a storage capacity of 100 petabytes.
So today, to buy hard drives equivalent to the capacity Commander Data would cost about $2 million. You would have to be very wealthy to afford that as an individual, but the cost will only get lower. It will still be quite awhile before a random laptop will have a Commander Data's worth of storage space. But you're talking decades, not centuries.
Though, this calculation is for the Data that appeared in the original TNG run. His more recent appearance in Star Trek Picard may be different, as his specifications there may canonically differ.
This calculation was only meant to detail the capacity of the original Commander Data, not the more recent Big Data.
JESUS HAYTCH CHRIST. I'm watching TNG with my daughter at the moment. Did you have to do me that dirty?
Still, given modern video compression algorithms it's a solid 93,000,000 hours of video recording at 1GB per hour at decent quality and surely that's only going to get better with time.
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I like to re-read my favorite science fiction classics and giggle at the author's mistakes.
In "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" a self-aware computer struggles over creating a CGI face for him/herself. Also, iirc, the computer uses tape.
William Gibson has done essays about how much he got wrong in 'Neuromancer," but my personal favorite is the spaceship pilot who never heard of a computer virus.
My favorites are in Asimov. In the Foundation series, one product the traders sell is a nuclear powered ash tray. They employ advanced nuclear plasma manipulation to...quickly atomize cigarette butts.
Or the time there's this couple. They are traveling to another planet, and they get aboard their personal interstellar spaceship. The society is advanced enough, that that is just something you can own.
What happens as soon as they get onboard their personal FTL interstellar ship? The husband commands his wife to get dinner started.
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For what it’s worth, the capacity of Commander data did very a little bit during the show, but I just chalked that up to a few upgrades.
Besides, I think it’s important to mention that data was not built for storage capacity. He only had as much storage capacity as he realistically would need during his lifetime. Until he could get an upgrade, I suppose.
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I wish that wasn't painfully true.
hold up now.