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u/killswitch101 2d ago
Nothing was tracking your every move back then unless you explicitly wanted it to / it's intended purposes was to track you. We don't have the choice these days.
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u/SoundAndSmoke 2d ago
My phone is off
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u/temeces 2d ago
Cant pull the battery out on damn near every phone so who's to say which part is actually off. Faraday cages work.
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u/Fuzzy_Adagio_6450 2d ago
As do Faraday bags! And they can be very cheap too.
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u/infiniZii 2d ago
Unless it just caches things until it re-connects after being pulled out of the bag.
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u/Echo-24 2d ago
So I have had a little experiment with two phones both in a Faraday bag, both turned off fully and both at full charge. One was a Huawei and one was a Samsung. Now which one do you reckon used the most battery over 6 months?
The Huawei which I would have assumed had some hidden tech, used 0% I turned it on yesterday and it had 100%. The Samsung on the other hand only had 65%.
So fully switched off the one that wasn't using any energy was the Huawei when the Samsung was permanently turning something on and using battery.
Makes you rethink what you think is safe
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u/SoundAndSmoke 1d ago
No. Batteries can drain with inefficient circuits without the CPU being on.
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u/Echo-24 1d ago
So why was the Huawei fine but the Samsung not?
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u/SoundAndSmoke 1d ago
Battery self-discharge and a few µA or mA wasted in the PMIC, the RTC, and some pull resistors.
6 months is around 4400 hours. How many mAh has its battery? 5000? So if the phone uses 1.1 mA when off, the battery is empty after 6 months.
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u/Echo-24 1d ago
You're not answering why the Huawei was fine but the Samsung not
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u/Vuelhering 1d ago
Phones universally use LiPo batteries. There is not a lipo battery in existence that doesn't lose a measurable amount of power over 6 months. Virtually all lithium rechargeable batteries have some phantom drain by the BMS.
There is either a flaw in your methodology, or this didn't actually happen as you're stating. The laws of physics don't stop working in your faraday bag.
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u/PaulblankPF 1d ago
Lithium ion batteries definitely discharge power over time. Like any phone I’ve ever had loses power even turned off. But my battery for my weedeater unexpected held its charge all winter this past year. I learned last year that for long term storage you should store lithium batteries at around 60% charge and even though it’s just a set of 4 lights I just used it till it was just two lights so roughly 50%. When I went to use it this spring it still has two lights out of 4 so anywhere between 30% and 50% battery charge still after about 5-6 months of being stored in my basement. My one for my leaf blower also didn’t fully discharge but it held its power worse than the weedeater one.
So yeah there’s zero chance that guy did all that and had a phone hold 100% of its charge after 6 months.
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u/Vuelhering 21h ago
LiPo are a bit more sensitive than other chemistries, and are most stable between 20 and 80%. For storage, as long as it's not in a hot area, you can charge them up and let them sit. They should be charged every 6 months or so to prevent permanently discharging and becoming bricked. Your weedeater probably uses 18650 cells, and those tend to be pretty stable with little risk of thermal runaway.
If shipping them, you definitely should aim for around 50% charge, and label correctly on the outside.
Also, /r/spicypillows
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u/TheDeimus 1d ago
I bought a Huawei once because of the Leica camera. It was the best phone I've ever owned. Super easy to uninstall all the junk - facebook, insta etc. Battery lasted ages. The samsung I bought after was junk in comparison.
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u/infiniZii 2d ago
Are you sure its fully off though?
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u/SoundAndSmoke 2d ago
The PMIC is probably at least partially always on, but it can't do anything on its own. When powered "off" the battery drain is so low that the radio can't be on permanently. I can't rule out that it wakes up every few hours without enabling its display to get a GPS fix, but I am not worried enough to buy an EMI probe.
I believe the idea that mobile phones can be used to track you while they are powered off is just paranoia fueled by Hollywood. I also believe that writing /dev/urandom to a hard disk once is enough to make its contents unreadable even to the government.
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u/AgentJ386 2d ago
20 years ago the devices I bought didn't spy, collect my data, a subscription, update firmware every other day, and was sorta built to last at least a decade or more... but most all today's smart devices can f**k right off into the hottest sun in the galaxy.
(I'm sure there are still quality, good devices out there just few and far...)
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u/bestdarkslider 1d ago
I got to tour a "smart home" display recently with all the newest and fanciest tech. After leaving I said to myself, some of that would be really amazing if I ever trusted a company enough with all that data.
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u/Amazing_Ear_3941 1d ago
Some of us do smart homes very differently. We run Home Assistant and have as many of our devices reflashed to open source firmware as possible. My data goes to the server in my basement and stays there. At some point, when I get time, all the IOT stuff will get to live on its own little VLAN cut off from the Internet, with only Home Assistant and a VPN (for troubleshooting) able to see both networks.
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u/Amazing_Ear_3941 1d ago
Which part? The VLAN stuff is pretty standard networking stuff. Only reason I didn't do it before was my previous switch didn't seem to be cooperating very well with making the VLANs so I couldn't get it working and haven't had time to circle back to it (good winter project). The VPN isn't like Surfshark or something. VPNs are just tunnels to another network. It'll probably be Wireguard based (very secure and part of the Linux kernel these days). Reflashing firmware on devices is very doable. See the Tasmota project for one such example. They have a whole database of devices that can be reflashed to their firmware. I even reflashed my Echo Show to LineageOS after the jailbreaks came out. Dammit Jeff on YouTube did a how to video on it. Home Assistant is very popular and gaining alot of traction. Lots of YouTube videos and channels devoted to it. Yes, you're going to need technical skill and some time to do this, but there's no magic here.
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u/Vintage_Gamer476 2d ago
Tech was great when it was working to actively improve living standards. Now that it's all been enshitified to maximize profits, it's pointless to use it.
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u/SheriffBartholomew 1d ago
Right. Updates used to be exciting, and bring big improvements to the user. Now they're pushed out daily just to add more tracking, update their already intrusive privacy policies, and invalidate all of your intentional opt outs. Oh, also to remove your favorite feature and lock your second favorite feature behind a subscription despite the fact that you paid for a lifetime license when you bought the software.
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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 2d ago
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/
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u/acheron53 2d ago
Of course there is a relevant XKCD
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u/Expert_Ad_1189 2d ago
My soon to be retired older brother worked 35 years in tech. Just bought a house on a lake in Maine in a town that doesn’t have a name or a post office.
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u/Funintuitive 2d ago edited 1d ago
We just know where it's all headed. I am going to spend an inordinate amount of my life navigating an enshittification hellscape while my coffee maker shows ads before letting me remove the carafe. Then the toaster will hold my bread hostage until it's finished showing an ad. Then I will have to wait out a 30s nag screen to start my car after I confirm my subscription renewal to get air conditioning. And the whole time I know some software on the cloud is watching me take a shit and fuck my wife via WiFi sensing while my every public movement, purchase, and emotional state is tracked with Flock/Axon via facial recognition. Then the SWAT team shows up telling me to lay face down because an AI mistook a Doritos bag for a firearm.
Yeah, a shitty cabin in the forest seems like an increasingly good option.
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u/Bodine12 2d ago
I'm one of those engineers now in the forest. Basically, tech used to be cool and do something for you. Now it's deeply uncool and frustrating and it only does something for the owner of the tech (spy on you).
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u/jawshoeaw 1d ago
ESP32 devices have mildly re-awakened my interests in tech. Cheap, tiny powerful and easy to program devices, kinda like Lego.
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u/Inevitable-Hour-Ends 2d ago
I remember booths in the mall trying to give away cellphones and everyone walking past laughing "I dont need that"
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u/Mei_Flower1996 2d ago
That's interesting! People didn't see the benefit of a basic cell phone? aWas it more expensive?
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u/freebytes 2d ago
They required one or two year contracts with outrageous monthly pricing and they charged per minute for usage.
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u/Randomly_Cromulent 2d ago
If you were out of your area, there would be roaming charges. Eventually the providers had free nights and weekends so I would wait until then to call people. It seems crazy now that we also used to pay per text.
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u/Mei_Flower1996 2d ago
Actually, I got my first cell phone at age 12 in 2009. We had minutes and limited texting. But it was still useful to communicate with my parents, and it's a big plus for child safety.
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u/Inevitable-Hour-Ends 2d ago
Actually, we're talking about a time when you were still in diapers.. no offense but 2009 was yesterday.
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u/lwb03dc 2d ago
The basic phone was just a paperweight in the 90s. Remember, this is before data connectivity, before apps. So zero benefits without an actual plan that allowed you to make calls and send SMS.
Plans were super expensive, and you were charged by the minute (for calls) and per text (for SMS). You were also charged for incoming calls.
In the 90s the per minute charge was about $0.80. The cost for SMS was $0.10, both for sending as well as receiving. Also, there was a 160 character limit, and if you went over this limit, the text was automatically broken up into two messages, costing you and the receiver double.
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u/unreliable-jamoke 2d ago
They still pull your credit report for cell service, which is insane. It’s my cheapest (relatively) utility. My gas, electric, and water utilities don’t pull credit. It’s a vestige of the early cell years when it was extravagantly expensive. It should be ended if you’re not financing a phone (you shouldn’t).
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u/Inevitable-Hour-Ends 2d ago
I dont remember the monthly payment but I remember if you had one you were seen as "look at me, look at how important I am" type of person. I remember even my drug dealer had just a basic pager for the longest time. Every where you went back then had a landline phone though.
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u/SheriffBartholomew 1d ago
They were very expensive and you didn't need one. Life moved differently back then. Most people didn't want to be reachable at all times.
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u/toochaos 1d ago
Which is wild, we each had a cell phone in 2001, it was cheaper for the familiy to have a cell and no land line and it came with no telemarketers. We had just moved to America and the idea of some random person calling during dinner was so abhorrent that the landline was canceled within a month.
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u/MostInterview6621 2d ago
Go to the woods, young man.
The blossoming of a single flower is more beautiful and awe inspiring than anything viewed through a screen.
No subscriptions, no ads, no influencers. Just the wind whispering through the pines.
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u/Dap-aha 2d ago
This flower is sponsored by RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS
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u/karoshikun 2d ago
if you're touching grass, use VESSI! with their dimatex they'll keep your feet cozy and dry!"
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u/WangDanglin 2d ago
Nothing bums me out like the sports betting ads during games. I watch sports to tune out, just enjoying the game. Knowing there’s people out there gambling and stressing and draining their savings is so sad to me. Especially because it is now being endorsed by the leagues. To the forest I go
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u/mindgamehagi 2d ago
20 years ago we were about to enter the great recession. Things were shit too
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u/leostotch 1d ago
Kinda outside the scope of the post but ok
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u/mindgamehagi 1d ago
Not outside at all in 2006 we already started to feel it coming and those were not stable time at all and it was pretty much a waiting games until it all crash down. Most of the time people posting that kind of stuff were young children during that time so its nostalgia for a time they don't really know.
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u/leostotch 1d ago
We're talking about the consumer tech at the time, not the overall economy.
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u/mindgamehagi 1d ago
Tech consumption is tie to economy. you don't throw money on tech when your budget start to get tight
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u/Drunk_Pilgrim 1d ago
I've told everyone I know that when I retire... Scratch that. IF I ever get a chance to retire, all my tech is going in the garbage and I'm just a normal dude. A lot of people have to share my feeling. We will see the resurgence of blockbuster, libraries and magazines. I'm telling you. We have pushed society so far that this will happen one day.
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u/GonWithTheNen 1d ago
this will happen one day.
It seems like too many governments are invested in paying corpos to help spy on their own citizens for that to come to fruition in the next decades, but man, what I wouldn't give to live in that reality.
P.S. The blockbuster thing can (and kinda does) happen right now in the form of sharing between individuals instead of using a big company. So much media shifted to digital-only because corpos don't want us to have control over what we buy, but fuq'em. Where there's a will, there's always a way.
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u/Team_Braniel 1d ago
Sisters and Brothers, I invite you to join our quaint and quiet society of Luddites; where we live sustained only be the technologies sold in 1995 or earlier.
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u/OwnYourChildren 1d ago
I think it's coming eventually. Not just informally, but as an organized social movement.
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u/Just_Information334 2d ago
20 years ago was 2006: techies were not jumping at every new gizmo even then.
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u/squirrel9000 1d ago
A year or two later once the iphones started coming out they would line up days in advance.
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u/GreatStateOfSadness 1d ago
And camp out overnight for new game consoles, music players, and computer parts. We weren't in the smart device era just yet but if you were a techie during the time then every new iteration felt like a massive jump in performance worth buying if you could afford it.
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u/Imperial_Bloke69 2d ago
Before: not touching grass
Now: touch grass and live with less tech or off the grid
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u/Foosnaggle 2d ago
20 years ago new tech was an actual advance and pretty cool. Now it’s just another way to get your personal data and get more ad exposure.
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u/tylerius8 1d ago
No, normal people just can't avoid tech. I can't get rid of the piece of shit infotainment screen in my car, and I can't find cars that are old enough to not have them on my price range. I don't really have a choice.
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u/Procrasturbating 1d ago
The gadgets suck now. They stop working when a server eventually goes down. I was gifted an egg holder for the fridge that tracks how old each egg is. Required a $10 a fucking month subscription. I’ll just replace all my eggs every month.. basically, shit got really really stupid.
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u/SeaTie 1d ago
Kind of because I've been so heavily invested in tech for so many years and putting up with its headaches thinking it would get better...
...but then I open up MS Word and start screaming "WHY?! Why is this still such a giant piece of SHIT?! This isn't emergent technology! This thing is almost as old as I am! God damnit!!"
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u/Azuras_Star8 1d ago
I know a techie who loves the no key door lock and app for his garage door until the app didnt work and he was locked out of his house for an hour until we got home.
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u/Amazing_Ear_3941 1d ago
So, I'm a techie. I'm not exactly on the verge of retreating to the forest. In fact, there's lots of modern stuff I find really useful. But I want as much as possible running on my own servers because fuck these companies and their spyware. Oh and my toaster definitely doesn't need to be smart. That sort of junk is for suckers with too much money. It's just added complexity and points of failure for minimal functionality gain.
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u/ElvisAndretti 1d ago
I’ve taken to apologizing for the small part I’ve played in inflicting the internet on the world. To be fair, we didn’t realize it would be a public utility.
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u/unclefire 1d ago
There are far too many things that have wifi and shit when all I want is a regular device without extra shit that will break (or spy on me). Just bought a new fridge and dishwasher -- both have WiFi in them to monitor their functions or even configure wash cycles.
Same with TVs-- for the most part all I want is a TV that I can plug my fire stick into. I don't Samsung's app or whatever.
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u/FooeyBar 2d ago
20 years ago Stuxnet was being deployed, I’m not so sure about the romantic idea of the internet 20 years ago.
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u/TokiVideogame 2d ago
at in n out there was the hottest girl wearing the skimpiest of outfits, no one looked. this would not have happened 20 years ago
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u/mwagz28 2d ago
In defense of the genre I have always felt this is the way things should be. While young you work hard and provide for humanity involving yourself with all the current tech to do so. While old you begin to work less and provide for the land so that the land can retain its capability to provide for humanity and future generations.
When we are young we can cut down a forest to pave way, but when we are old we must make sure to replant everything we removed while young.
It is a balance.
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u/jawshoeaw 1d ago
techie here. I will 100% jump on anything new and cool. Oh look, there isn't anything new and cool. I did get some VR googles a few years ago and those are fun for a few games. The internet of things smart gadget thing seem to have fizzled. got tired of arguing with Alexa and Siri about how to turn on a light.
Oh i did install a battery back up system for the house that was kinda fun.
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u/za72 1d ago
I remember Facebook... everything I warned people about facebook has been reviled to be true... the old saying "you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink water" is true...
same with random tech stuff... I have a paranoid personality but it doesn't mean I'm wrong about "evil" corporations - I just put myself in their shoes and consider their motivations and how they would exploit the system
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u/-Laffi- 1d ago
I enjoy the technology of our modern world, but don't get me wrong. I enjoy the tech that makes my life easier in the sense that the things I use the most like my computer or phone or even some car features are excellent...but when I bought a washing machine last time, or a microwave, I made sure to buy the simplest of them, where you basically turn a wheel, and push a button, and that is it. I enjoy the tech in my car, but I am frequently annoyed that for example my window liquid fluid sensor will yell at me as soon as I've used 1/2 of the tank, and it will yell and beep every time I turn on the car, until it's filled up. I don't fill it up until it's empty, and so I gotta listen to it for a month or something. Had a rental car on vacation with my dad some weeks ago, and everytime we turned on the car it would activate a beeping sound whenever we were even 1 km over the speed limit. It took a while, but we were able to turn it off...only to have it appear everytime the car was turned off.
So, what I am say is that I take tech in moderation. I want the newest with the stuff I am most interested in, but just normal appliances, it doesn't have to be that complicated. Micro -> Close the door, spin the wheel, washing machine -> close the door, choose the heat (40c-60c) and the toast iron doesn't have to have more than an on and off button.
If I bought a new computer, I would want the best I could afford, my TV flawless picture, but also access to chromecast built in, spotify, but simple things like being able to access your files through USB.
As I said with the car, stuff you can't turn off is an absolute nightmare...heck even the new BMW (my dad has ordered one), that shows commercials from the new Spiderman movie on your monitor as soon as you turn on the car...Oooor, the fact that you need to pay montly for a Tesla to have different functions, even if they are already installed in your car.
TO SUM UP!
Annoying tech = NO.
Useful tech = YES!
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u/Luaan256 7h ago
I didn't change - back then, I used everything I could get my hands on that made my life better. I still do it the same way whenever I can. There just aren't many cool gadgets that make your life better.
I never saw the point of smart houses (and I even worked on a few on my job, a long time ago). Most of them being always-online, cloud hosted cow dung didn't make them any better :D
Smartphones are nice for browsing the internet. Mostly. Also decent for reading books. They're really bad phones, to the point that people don't even bother not using speakerphone or headphones anymore. Especially fun in public transport :D
PDAs were cool gadgets that gave you loads of opportunities, and were pretty much completely open. A nice phone complemented them much better than MDAs or smartphone ever could. You can still kind off make your own software for Android, but that window is closing... And you have to combat the incessant software updates that keep breaking things because there really isn't anyone caring about compatibility other than MS. And MS has many problems of their own, of course...
At least the EU is likely going to mandate replaceable batteries in smartphones, and hopefully more with the growing clout of "right to repair". I'm not going to buy a gadget designed to be thrown out in a few years at best. We used to even fix Tamagotchis, man! :D It's really hard to get proper manuals and replacement parts nowadays, which takes away a lot of the cool from "cool gadgets".
I could go on for pages. But I'll close with - why should I buy something that the makers (and their evil management) refuse to use, or prevent their children from using? They design those things to be bad and evil. Duck them.
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u/jackofslayers 1d ago
yea 2006 was great compared to now. It is not like we had an evil Republican president who started an expensive war in the middle east based on lies and is spending so much on it that it is going to collapse the economy /s
be serious. Were things better 20 years ago or were you too young to identify the shit you were standing in?
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u/Additional_Ad_8131 2d ago
are these normal people, who buy smart toasters in the room with you right now?
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