Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid, worked on the U2's camera.

https://otislibrarynorwich.org/2024/04/08/edwin-land-and-the...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/polaroid-inventor-...

I lived in rural North Dakota and had dial up until 2005. It really sucked the last couple of years.

I had a friend who had dial-up I think until at least 2007 because his house was apparently right on the border of our town and the next and for whatever reason all of the ISPs other than AOL considered his address outside their coverage. This was in a suburb within 10 miles of Boston.

I lived on a suburban street a mile from the Stanford campus that didn't get broadband until 2003. I would go to the local copy center to rent an hour of computer time to edit my blog.

Ok.. so broadband in 1996, route-able (unique) IPv4 broadband in 1997 (177.1..), route-able satellite internet in Nigeria in 2002 (it sucked when it rained). Your Stanford proximity apparently didn't help.

I was raised by cheap boomers that would never pay more than the absolute minimum for anything, no matter how shitty the option, and most of my friends lived way out in the country. Paying $40/month for DSL or cable internet was off the table, because the library ran a free dialup ISP, so thats what we used even though their line was almost always busy. The cheap ass modem wouldn't reset the line correctly either, requiring someone to physically pull the phone cord out and back in the modem, otherwise the line wouldn't hang up, so redialling on a busy signal required physical intervention. (At some point, I recall my mom's friend/neighbor convincing her to pay $99/year for a dialup ISP that connected the first time.) I moved off dialup when I got a fast food job in 2005.

This is really making me consider going back to all cash and local purchases. Maybe prepaid debit cards and a PO box for when I need to order something online.

It's more important now than ever to spend an extra 2 dollars shopping locally. Your neighbors will appreciate it. Bezos will build another rocket and cut more jobs.

Agreed. I shop locally when I can. It's frustrating though that some of that stuff can't be found locally anymore. I went to 3 businesses today looking for a couple cheap car parts. Couldn't find them so ended up getting one part off eBay and then having my friend order the other with his Amazon Prime account.

But yeah, I do spend as much money at local/regional businesses as I can. And I've started donating to local charities to help my neighbors.

Perhaps in some places but if you live in a country without much competition and very high cost of living its much more than an extra 2 dollars to shop locally. Prices are routinely 1.5 - 2x more if you buy locally than online here. Also if money is tight then even if its just an extra 2 dollars then you should make the purchasing decision that benefits you. That extra money is health (both physical and mental (R&R))

Most people don't have an extra 2 dollars.

You will find many companies don't allow prepaid debit cards. OpenAI months ago refused to accept prepaid debit card but allowed personal debit card. Not sure how they know its a prepaid card though (Visa prepaid). I think many companies are using credit cards as a form of ID.

I've bought some cool stuff off Tindie. My latest purchase was this set of earrings that alert when you're near a Flock camera

https://colonelpanic.tech/#products

This really tickled me, I wasn't expecting them to just be a pair of esp32 dev boards you attach to your ears

2010 was a magical time

They can "survive" autoclave cycles that render other pathogens dead/inactive, but there do exist autoclave cycles that seem to pretty reliably inactivate prions.

No but viruses and bacteria are. What's your point and how common is transmitting prions?

My point is disposable is superior

The YouTube thing doesn't sound right. They had a ¿10? minute video limit for a long time and it was really annoying to watch pirated stuff on there. Google Video had a lot of full movies before they bought YouTube and shut it down.

Still remember those times watching movies or documentaries by parts. Sometimes I started watching just to discover that part 8 was missing :(

edit: in previous years some anime communities uploaded episodes to photo sites. They chunked the episodes in small JPGs with the video data encrypted. Just download hundreds of photos, join them and you got the episode :)

Remember this :)

I also remember how we (I?) used to hard link the /tmp/RANDOM.tmp files that youtube buffered into so the video parts don't get automatically unlinked and we could then stitch them back with ffmpeg or whatever buggy fork ubuntu had in its repos. Full Star wars in glorious 240p! (I had shitty internet.)

The good old days. Back when people called streaming what it really is (downloading) and exercised their god-given right to keep what was sent to them.

Wild to see the usenet/uuencoding model reproduced on the web w/ jpegs.

Then with the raise of rapidshare, megaupload, etc that JPG thing stopped.

Wow, how did that work? Steganography?

I think it was 15 minutes? Or maybe it was upped to 15 mins? But yes, it was super annoying when part n of something was missing.

Unfortunately I could easily see this being twisted into a mandate to murder more

In 2025, approximately $850 million per person who died.

A lot less than those born from the economic prosperity brought from open and protected sea lanes

I hate Chrome. Never stopped using Firefox

Lolwut are you serious?