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Comment by ginkgotree | Hacker News Reader

Everything about this is wonderful. I do as much of my writing on a mechanical typewriter as I can, I use a rotary phone, and listen to vinyl records. This kid takes it to a whole new level and I'm so happy to see someone passionate about being a luddite in the new generation

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It does feel like putting tech into everything was novel (Cars becoming iPads with 4 wheels) and at some point the scales tipped into mechanical things with the least tech in them are novel (Mechanical watches[1], manual transmissions, typewriters, developing film, INS[2]).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Speedmaster

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system#Ove...

I want to live in the 90s. CD audio is a little bit nicer tech. They say vinyls release VOCs. There's Internet, but not enough to drown in.

The 90's were such an amazing decade, maybe one of the most perfect in the past 100 years(at least for the US).

You had a outstanding job market for all professions with tech jobs still around if you chose. No wars(besides smaller conflicts in desert storm(91) and Bosnia(98)). Politicians/politics during that time were very moderate, George HW Bush and Clinton both governed from the right and left center respectively. Housing was extremely affordable and if you worked a half decent job you could expect to buy a house in most markets, My Wife's family bought a house in Redwood city and her Dad was in the trades, and Mom worked in printing. A house in the mid-90's in Palo Alto CA would run about $350-400k.

Music was outstanding in grunge(Nirvana, STP, Peal Jam) and hiphop was in its golden age(Wutang, Biggie, Tupac). For TV such classics like Seinfeld, Friends, and Star trek TNG were around. Movies like great sci fi and action movies - Matrix, T2, Jurassic Park and many many others were coming out all the time.

Having been a teenager during that decade I feel really lucky compared to the following decades and how bad they have turned out. The only downside to the 90's was crime was relatively high compared to today, but almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).

What I mostly miss from the 90s is a kind of optimism. Stuff like TV shows and music is pretty banal IMHO, and there's still plenty of good stuff around today (and there was plenty of bad stuff in the 90s too – we just don't remember it as clearly).

But this idea that we might get peace in Israel with the Oslo accords, that the USSR/Russia would no longer be the big "red scare" enemy, that China would be our friend and we could slowly convince them (and Russia) that freedom and democracy was good for everyone, and The Troubles were finally over. Well ... 1 out of 4 held.

Maybe I was just younger, and sure there were going to be problems and challenges, but everything just seemed so much more ... hopeful.

> almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).

That's probably pushing it a bit too far though; trying being gay in the 90s – depending on where exactly you lived that was hugely harder than today. And you could smoke everywhere – it was just accepted. I remember family birthday parties as a child and I would "flee" upstairs because all the smoke just got too much. All the pubs and restaurants: full with smoke. Trains and buses: people smoked. Unthinkable today – that changed very quickly in the early 00s.

And the state of software ... have you seen real-world code from the 90s? Good lord...

There's probably other things I'm not recalling offhand that really were worse in the 90s.

About CDs being "nicer tech", even quite a few people growing up in the CD era disagree with that. Vinyl is more tactile, has bigger album covers, demands more focus in the music (like how it takes more effort to skip). CDs are like an awkward in-between phase between vinyl and downloads/streaming.

Besides it's absolutely not vinyl VOCs that will get you. Compared with health low hanging fruit, from diet and exercize, to stress, bad sleep, to BS substances in modern industrial food and city air pollution, it's beyond insignificant.

As someone who has spanned eras, I don't really disagree. I embraced CDs because they were a lot more practical in many ways, but we did lose something in the process--physicality, album art, etc. The same is true with photography or writing for that matter. Ultimately I've always pretty much embraced the new but I understand why someone wouldn't--especially if forced to live through it.

I thought most people embraced CD's because they were a massive improvement over tapes.

I don't think that's generally true. As someone who was in college during the vinyl era, although I created mix tapes and taped vinyl that others owned, I never did a lot of purchasing of pre-recorded cassettes and I think my behavior was pretty common. Certainly, the "record stores" of the era carried far more vinyl than cassettes.

Fair, but didn't that change once CD players showed up in cars? Some people were certainly buying up loads of tapes (but they did wear out, so some repeats?)

This suggests that cassettes were never a hugely important medium--maybe in the 80s for a while for the reason you suggest?

https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...

Another chart is this one but it's hard to parse. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-...

In any case, pre-recorded cassettes were always a pretty small part of the mix.

interesting!

> t's absolutely not vinyl VOCs that will get you

I know, it's playing them backwards :o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTpK87Eqzbs&t=10s

Yeah, Seinfeld is my go to mental reference for the perfect time period... and I'm not even a huge fan of the show, having only watched bits and pieces

Eh, I think the early days of broadband and wireless routers were it for me. Being able to have multiple devices in the house use an Internet connection was great for school work and such....but before you had the internet in your pocket at all times via a smartphone.

Early 2000s

I used to live in the 90's, it was alright, I don't particulaly miss it.

> I want to live in the 90s.

Gross

I don't like the values I see in the 1990s TV shows.

However I love the tech, like CDs:

> CD audio is a little bit nicer tech. They

I love CDs! I even got a CD player in my car!

After trying them, I've found I really don't like vinyles or mechanical keyboards so maybe it's not just every 1990s tech I like, just some of it

> I don't like the values I see in the 1990s TV shows.

You think the world is better off now that we've traded Family Matters and Step by Step for the likes of Euphoria?

they're all basic tier slop and pablum aimed at the broadest possible audience based on market testing.

The thing I remember most about the tech is how unreliable it was. Windows 3.1 through to me were terrible compared to what we have now. Also we had to pay for tools like compilers.

Yeah, but on the flip side, you bought software and then used it. You didn't have a subscription to use XYZ on the following terms for the following time periods, unless otherwise changed.

And it was about software, not "behavioral surplus data collection pretending to be useful to you."

You win some, you lose some. But I'd take that era back in a moment.

There's gotta be more one-time-purchase software for sale now than there was in the 1990s.

I agree it was mostly better software, at least in terms of respecting users.

I bought my first Linux distro (Mandrake). It was worth it to avoid the huge download on 56k, and the hassle of writing a CD. Plus Mandrake played pretty well written my system thanks to the '3dfx' drivers.

I also have rotary phones, use vintage radios, prefer vintage appliances, and listen to vinyl.

I thought I was a little odd - nope, I'm just a normal level of odd in comparison.

I’m starting to feel like a lot of people in tech have an outsize love for more vintage stuff.

I like the vintage stuff because its usually easier to operate, and better built.

My vintage west bend percolator makes the best coffee you'll have - it makes maxwell house taste good.

I have 60 year old Zenith radios that work great, and have needed zero parts.

Do rotary phones even work anymore? I had thought (perhaps mistakenly) that support for them was dropped a number of years ago.

I have a functioning rotary phone connected to POTS. I do live in the sticks though. Only issue is automated systems that ask me to dial 1 for foo, 2 for bar, etc. But a lot of those now actually also take voice.

You can play dtmf into the microphone with a separate device

Blue boxing is back baby!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box

Shouldn’t that still work there if they work for dialling?

No, the dialing on a rotary phone is done by quickly closing and opening the circuit (this means you can tap out numbers by hand on the switch that detects you hanging up the handset).

Press 1 to continue systems require the DTMF tones to be played down the line, either by the phone or any other device held up to it.

I commented [0] on this a while back, there are hybrid adapters that bridge Bluetooth to old handsets. I have an older version of this [1] and a few different phones I've successfully used with it. YMMV

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37484671

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Xtreme-Technolgoies-XLink-Bluetooth-G...

I thought that too. Pulse dialing can’t possibly work anymore. Is OP sure it’s not a retrofit?

The VoIP gateways we were installing a few years ago still supported pulse dialing on the FXS lines. Those gateways supported all sorts of archaic and arcane POTS features. All the classic feature codes (like *69) had support. I think it could be set up to emulate a DMS-100 or a 5Ess as well.

If you have a copper landline from your local telephone company, I'm willing to bet it still supports pulse dialing? Maybe it's 50/50 now?

There are pulse to tone converters: https://www.dialgizmo.com

ha. this just reminded me that some old touchtone phones had a pulse button in case you needed it.

Every POTS phone I've ever seen, touchtone included, has a pulse button. It's the hook switch!

Yes, last year, I setup a real CenturyLink POTS line for my MIL in a condo near me, and tested my rotary phone on the line, and it works fine. That phone won't dial with my VoIP ATAs, even though they say they work with pulse dialing though.

I'm hoping it continues to work when utility power goes out, but we haven't had a long enough outage to test since I set it up.

There are adapters available.

Yea, I went in expecting him to ask for followers / clicks but there was none of that.

"Please subscribe to my monthly mail newsletter, I accept payment in the form of check or money order, or even trades"

I have one with a SIP VOIP converter. I had to add a resistor or the sound was too lound. But it works.

A 500 set is not really well optimized for 40ma+ of loop current.

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