What's something that's seen as Obsolete, but isn't?
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you can choose whatever email provider you trust, and then they apply encryption on the transport level. but there is often very few phone companies, and zero encryption. they don't have to install any kind of wiretaps, they can just record everything automatically that passes through
That is true that they have the technical ability to do that, but it is also illegal if they disclose that information to anyone, and it’s unnecessary to run the service, so it simply puts them in a lot of legal jeopardy and adds to service costs.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511
I personally trust AT&T with a fax line a lot more than I trust Google with an email.
Google specifically discloses that it does record the contents of every email (obviously), and that when you delete an email, it’s not really gone from their servers. AT&T (as well as any phone company in the US) is not allowed to disclose the contents of your phone call or fax without a valid wiretap order (which don’t apply to privileged communications), so they almost never record call content. Keep in mind, email providers must also hand over any emails covered under a valid search warrant.
So when you send an email, your document is 100% definitely recorded by at least two companies (or one if you use the same provider as the recipient). When you send a fax, it’s highly unlikely that the contents of your document are recorded at all, except on the printed page at the receiving end. It’s just not necessary and puts the phone company at risk, so it doesn’t make any business sense.
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Printing out tickets as a backup. I do this for concerts and travel because then I don't have to worry about batteries dying, wifi/roaming not being available, getting logged out and having trouble getting back to the ticket, etc.
I also print out maps when doing wilderness backpacks because even if you download the map you'll burn through your battery life well before the hike is over but a paper map is just as good. If I really need to confirm my location I can occasionally turn on the app and shut it off. I keep the maps in a gallon ziplock so water isn't an issue.
Ticketmaster is doing their very best to make paper tickets unusable with refreshing barcodes. Funny thing is that "anti-theft" feature is needed because of their own systemic failures. I do like tickets that are just sent to my email or similar (e.g. as an attachment that I can save to my phone) though, it's better than wasting paper when I know my phone won't fail me.
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Writing your passwords in a piece of paper. Safer than storing it digitally and easier for people that don't know how to use password managers or computers in general to understand what to do to access your stuff if you're under a difficult situation or dead.
Also, physical photos. Yes yes, we all have gigabytes of photos, but almost never check any of them. Physicals catch my glance at home very often, great decoration. I've also took to writing the day, place and people on the back, plus any other important bits of context.
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Guillotines
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Wrist watches. Extremely convenient, even when your phone is buried or you don't want to be distracted.
I wear a cheapish waterproof one while swimming. The pool has a clock but I can't see it without my specs.
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I want to throw a shout out to the site that cloned the old Google reader by making theoldreader.com
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Fax machines. Government and medical offices would grind to a halt without them. That's just reality.
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I collect all them. Want to get into Laserdisc as well
I want a new Blu-ray format but with the size of Laserdisc. Vinyl coming back into style shows that a large disc doesn't matter if playing at home. Would be fun to have the Laserdisc vibe for movies and even whole seasons of TV using the tech of Blu-ray. Just think of how much uncompressed media could fit on something that size! It has no chance of happening of course, but Laserdiscs look sick. I loved when teachers would show educational stuff on them and see the size of those things. I plan to get a player sometime if I have the spare funds, but I did get Aliens on LD just to have and show off.
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Pretty much anything in a machine shop made in the last 80 years or so. So many people turn up their noses at anything that isn't computer controlled anymore. Yknow what a big old mill can do that a CNC can't? It can make every single part needed to make a new mill. It's a self replicating machine with the right know how. People don't respect that kind of quality anymore.
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- for the wristwatch, if you wear a 10$ casio people will think you’re poor
Or a terrorist
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Fax machines. Government and medical offices would grind to a halt without them. That's just reality.
Because it can do something that the alternatives can't do or because they refuse to use something more modern?
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Tape drives. They're still used for backups/archival because they offer the lowest cost per gigabyte, as long as you don't need to access the data very fast.
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Obligatory thought to cobol, which is stil the backbone of banking computers.
I would also think to the good old electromechanical relay which are still pretty common
More political, but whatever what imperator Musk thinks Privacy isn't obsolete
The latest version of COBOL came out in 2023.
Grace Hopper lives on
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Pretty much anything in a machine shop made in the last 80 years or so. So many people turn up their noses at anything that isn't computer controlled anymore. Yknow what a big old mill can do that a CNC can't? It can make every single part needed to make a new mill. It's a self replicating machine with the right know how. People don't respect that kind of quality anymore.
Can a CNC not do that for just the mechanical parts?
I know way too much about bootstrapping semiconductor production, which is viable but highly impractical.
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Because it can do something that the alternatives can't do or because they refuse to use something more modern?
"It can't be hacked"
Of course, it can, and a lot more easily than a TLS stream, but try convincing them of that.
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Secure fax is encrypted: it’s sent via https.
Technically true
Only in transit though.And at least email is ostensibly locked behind a password on a computer. Not just sitting in a paper tray ready to be nabbed by Anyone walking by.
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Fax machines. Government and medical offices would grind to a halt without them. That's just reality.
Even worse, the US military, at least, is still using teletype machines and COBOL.
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Wrist watches. Extremely convenient, even when your phone is buried or you don't want to be distracted.
I have one that shows the numbers in between chain links and it's dope.
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Eliminating an entire sense (touch) from being used to control things seems to be foolish.
I'm just waiting for tactile screens to show up in this role.
OP doesn't like them, but screens have the huge advantage they can display an unlimited amount of widgets organised any way you like.
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Developers. Yes, AI can sling a lot of code, but it can't make business decisions and it can't please a difficult customer.
Honestly, developers shouldn't be the front line for that if you're medium-sized or bigger anyway.
It's even simpler: AI can't really even begin with architecting, and will stubbornly defend nonsense code 5% of the time when you need >99% correctness for the thing to run at a basic level.
