Anon OpinNobody has done anything genuinely interesting, brilliant or even good for the consumer in computing since about 2011
Harry Wood@anon_opin It's true. I was really trying to think of counter-examples, but struggling. There's things like Mastodon, and Signal, and Framework laptops and Fairphone, consumer 3D printing, Rasperry Pis, which are pretty cool recent things, but none of these can really claim to have made a splash with the mainstream. Any "big advancement" the general public would be aware of, has been depressingly linked to Big Tech and hobbled by issues of Big Tech lock-in (ultimately bad for the consumer)
Mat@harry_wood @anon_opin what about wearables? The Pebble watch didn't come out till 2013.
@okwithmydecay @anon_opin Yeah that's another for the list new technologies which are pretty cool, but I sort of feel like it didn't go mainstream quite enough to be held up as the counter-example.
I think most ordinary folks would choose something like "WhatsApp" as an example of a recent new tech development. To be fair it *was* good to get the masses using end-to-end encryption but hardly an unalloyed "good for the consumer" as it cements meta's dominance.
I think most ordinary folks would choose something like "WhatsApp" as an example of a recent new tech development. To be fair it *was* good to get the masses using end-to-end encryption but hardly an unalloyed "good for the consumer" as it cements meta's dominance.
Nicolás Alvarez@harry_wood @okwithmydecay @anon_opin WhatsApp was launched in February 2009. It sent messages in plaintext over the network (not even TLS). They added basic encryption in 2012, and proper end-to-end encryption in 2016.
@nicolas17 Interesting. Yeah WhatsApp feels newer. I suppose because it went more mainstream a little later. I don't think I installed the app >10 years ago.
Another example of quite an exciting recent tech development: Apple's M1 chip. Good news for users. Breaking a monopoly by intel but... tainted again, since this one's obviously only of interest to mac users, and only serving to grow the Apple mega-corp.
I wish I could think of more recent mainstream good-for-consumers tech developments.