Dial-Up internet. Unfortunately, it’s still here because the ISPs continue to fail to deliver on the promise of expanding broadband over and over.

And because of that, it’s no wonder internet isn’t expanded to everywhere in the country of USA.

  • @[email protected]
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    1810 hours ago

    VCRs.

    Spent my childhood merrily taping things off the TV, and thought it was the best thing ever. i love those nostalgic whirring and clicking sounds as the tape loads.

    But digital media is just the best, and tapes can stay in the past where they belong.

    • @vaper
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      17 hours ago

      Honestly I really miss being able to record live TV with a VCR. I still watch tv with an antenna, mainly for football games, and it would be really nice if there was a way I could record them. Whenever I’ve looked into making my own DVR it just seems too expensive and confusing.

    • Kalkaline
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      410 hours ago

      DVDs too. If I never burn another DVD again, that will be A-OK with me. I hate having to babysit those. Give me a hard drive, USB, or server to move data all day.

      • @[email protected]
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        9 hours ago

        Burning DVDs was really a thing there for a hot minute. I remember buying them in big spindles of 50 at a time, and burning at least two or three a week.

        Back then I already had my first ever USB flash drive, but they were still very expensive and small - 128MB was great for some documents, but no good for large files. And my PC’s hard drive was still only about 120GB or something.

        DVDs were in their element. 4.7GBs of storage, and super cheap. I was using them to back up data and clear apace on my hard drive, and I was loading them up with content for friends, where I could just take a disc over their house and leave it there for them.

        Then flash drives got bigger, and hard drives got bigger too, and that sweet spot the DVD occupied got squashed from both sides until poof, in just a few short years the age of the DVD was over.

        • @[email protected]
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          13 hours ago

          … I still have probably 100 blank DVDs and a hundred blank CDs.

          But I also have a 3.5" floppy drive so I’m not a good measure to go by on these things.

      • @[email protected]
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        19 hours ago

        I don’t doubt it exists, but I’m kind of curious about workflows that still involve burning optical media in 2024.

        • @JustAnotherKay
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          18 hours ago

          The US military uses tapes for long term storage still

        • @[email protected]
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          8 hours ago

          Secure networks have their head in their ass about flash media. So, discs.

          Edit: For more technical reasons see what ReversalHatchery wrote further down