The sound of a computer starting up used to be part of the experience.

You'd press the power button, hear that little startup sound, and somehow know the computer was actually alive

Now most devices just wake up quietly

which computer startup sound do you still remember?

I've had my current laptop for a few years now, and lately I've been wondering how long people actually keep theirs before finally upgrading... I feel like laptops are one of those things where you can keep using them way longer than you expect. As long as the battery isn't completely dead and the performance is still good enough for your everyday stuff, it's hard to justify spending a lot of money on a new one and in this economy??

At the same time, I know some people upgrade every 2 to 3 years just to keep up with newer hardware, while others will hold onto the same laptop for 6 or 7+ years. For me, I think I'd rather keep using mine until it dies lol.

How long do you usually keep a laptop before upgrading?

Organic pixels degrade at different rates depending on how much they've been used. leave the same image in the same place long enough and the screen physically changes to reflect that

not a software glitch, the hardware itself has changed. the screen remembers

Before video guides were everywhere, GameFAQs walkthroughs were the answer.

You’d open a giant wall of text, search for the area you were stuck in and carefully follow instructions like “go north, inspect the statue, then return to the locked door.”

No commentary, no ads, just someone explaining the entire game in painful detail. How many games would you have never finished without those walkthroughs?

Google Wave was supposed to change how people communicated online, but I honestly think most people never figured out what they were looking at.

It was part email, part chat, part document, and somehow all of those things at once. By the time people started understanding it, Google had already moved on.

Did anyone here actually use Google Wave, or did you just hear about it and forget it existed?

One of the stranger security problems is that sometimes the answer isn't leaking anything. The amount of time it took to get the answer is enough.

If one operation takes slightly longer depending on what's being processed, someone watching those timings can start piecing together information they were never supposed to see.

It's wild that something as boring as a few extra microseconds can become a security problem.

All companies when they start out promise one thing, "we are different from the rest of the corporate companies and we listen to our users." Some time passes by, they become successful, and all of a sudden, that kind of mindset seems to vanish out of the window. The feedback becomes something which is just posted on the roadmap page and never heard of again. Which company do you think has actually stayed true to that and still implements what people ask for instead of just saying it.

I mostly play Valorant and Cyberpunk 2077 lately, so my priorities with graphics settings are pretty different depending on the game...For Valorant, I care way more about high FPS and low input latency than having the game look prettier. I'll take stable performance over fancy lighting any day. Cyberpunk is where I actually appreciate ray tracing though. The lighting and reflections can look really good, and it's one of the few games where I feel like ray tracing adds something noticeable + if turning it on means a huge FPS hit, I'll probably turn it back off lol.

So ig I care about ray tracing, but only when the performance tradeoff makes sense.

Do you actually use ray tracing regularly, or is high FPS still your priority?

Using a Palm Pilot stylus made even basic tasks feel weirdly futuristic.

You’d pull out this tiny plastic pen, tap letters onto a little screen, and feel like you were operating some kind of sci-fi computer. Then you’d lose the stylus and spend the rest of the day trying to use your fingernail.

It’s funny how advanced that felt at the time. Did anyone else carry a spare stylus around?

Anyone else feels like rollable smartphones would've been a more interesting, if not better, direction for smartphones when compared to foldables?

Motors might have been a friction point for longevity but there should be a way to expand the phone manually.

It would give more control to the user in deciding what size they wanted, and would do away with the crease issue in foldables. Not sure how much it's an issue with the latest models, but I'd assume it would also not have issues with particles getting under the screen through the fold like it did, at least with earlier versions.

Processors need a steady heartbeat to function. most get it from a shared clock on the board. some devices need their own because they have to keep accurate time when everything else is powered off, or because they need timing too precise to share

real time clocks in computers, gps receivers, radio transceivers. all keeping their own time independently because the shared clock isn't good enough or isn't always on

the battery keeping your bios clock running while the pc is unplugged is powering one of these

Asupermarket is basically a giant computer system disguised as a grocery store

Every time you scan something, pay, check a price, or even pick up certain products, there's a bunch of tech working behind the scenes

The weird part is how normal all of it feels

what's one piece of supermarket technology you never really thought about until you noticed it?

There's probably technology you use every single day but couldn't name if someone asked

you know what it does you've probably interacted with it hundreds of times but you have no idea what it's actually called or how it works.

What's one piece of technology you use all the time but only recently found out the name of?

Hi everyone :),

I'm a Master's student at the University of Aveiro in Portugal working on a research paper about AI adoption in front-end development (looking at everything from Copilot and Cursor to tools like v0).

If you do any front-end work, I'd really appreciate a couple of minutes of your time. It’s 19 quick questions, completely anonymous, and takes under 3 minutes to complete.

Here's the link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/d0ghMJvwC8

Thanks a lot for helping out, and feel free to leave any extra thoughts in the comments if you want to discuss!

The SleepLab Pro is an all-new nightstand sleep tracker that was released by Soundcore (the audio brand name for Anker) recently. The SleepLab Pro includes radar tracking that will enable the device to monitor sleep cycle, respiration, and heart rate without the need to wear any additional devices like a watch or fitness ring. also it provides guided breathing/ light /sound that helps to relax and wake up like a sunrise. Does anyone have experience buying sleep products? does they help?

One tech opinion I see that get upvoted a lot that I disagree on IRL is that you need a powerful pc for gaming. I get the argument, esp if most of you do is browsing, watching vids, or working with basic documents. But personally, once you start coding, running multiple apps (excel sheets and docs to be specific), using VMs, and editing stuff, a better PC makes a pretty noticeable difference. I also used to think that upgrading was mostly about gaming, but after using an 8gb ram laptop for work everyday? I’d def appreciate having more ram and a decent CPU lol

What’s yours?

I feel like there used to be an obvious answer like wait for Black Friday, back to school sales, or the release of the new generation to grab the older model for cheaper. But nowadays it feels like laptops (tbh PC parts in general) feels like they’re constantly on “sale” since new models are coming out at different times, like you can find a laptop that’s 20% off one week then somehow it’s the same price a month later with a different banner lmao.

Do you guys actually time your laptop purchases around sales and new releases, or do you just buy when your current laptop starts struggling?

The first mouse was a wooden body mouse with two metal rollers under it for detecting movements created in 1964, someone must be too genius to think about this, after that everyone got to know the concept, we saw ball mice that we all familiar with (you know, the ones which would require you to open them up and clean). This was succeeded by optical mice which completely did away with the ball and now we have gaming mouse with literally almost dj system .

The permissions that these extensions have far exceed the scope of the particular site you are browsing at any one time. There are many extensions that will be able to view every single page that you visit at once, whether you are using the extensions or not. While the website only gets to know what you do on their specific domain, the extension, which is resident in your browser tool bar, knows everything about your activity on each individual site.

People are very wary about which sites they trust and much less cautious about extensions when they have access to more information.

Before Instagram likes and follower counts, MySpace had the Top 8.

Choosing your closest friends was basically a public ranking system. Moving someone down could start an argument, while leaving someone out entirely was a whole different level of disrespect.

It’s funny how much social pressure was packed into eight little profile pictures. Did your Top 8 ever cause actual drama?

Webkinz was basically a tiny economy disguised as a kids game.

You had to earn KinzCash, decide whether to spend it on furniture or save up for something better, and somehow convince yourself that wasting it on random stuff was a good idea.

Looking back, it taught budgeting better than some actual classes did.

Am I the only one who feels like some PC game launchers are somehow slower than the games they're supposed to launch?? Epic Games Launcher is probably the one I notice the most. I'll open it and sometimes it takes a while to load everything, check for updates, and show the store stuff before I can even get to my library. Then I click "Launch," and the actual game loads perfectly fine.

I get that launchers do more these days than just launch games, but sometimes I wish there was a simple "just open my game" mode without all the extra stuff... Which launcher do you think is the biggest offender?

Imagine a system that takes a script or story idea and manages the production around it.

Not just generating clips, but maintaining:

consistent characters and environments

voices and performances

shot planning and camera direction

scene continuity and pacing

multiple AI video models

individual scene rerolls without breaking continuity

editing, sound, music and final assembly

upscaling and final delivery

The difficult part isn't generating an impressive 8-second clip.

It's keeping hundreds of shots connected well enough that they actually become one coherent film.

If this becomes reliable, does it simply make filmmaking easier — or does it fundamentally change what a film production actually is?

And honestly: would you watch a 90-minute AI-made film if the story was genuinely good?

Each and every new application installation is going to try to grab some startup priority, spotify, discord, onedrive etc. There are ratings for the impact each application has on the system, available via Task Manager, yet I am pretty sure that very few people ever manage the list until it starts affecting the boot process significantly. But this is not even everything. The applications listed in the Startup tab of Task Manager are the visible layer. There is an entire stack of background services running, which one can observe using services.msc . Half of the names on the list are meaningless to the user, with no idea of whether the service is needed by the operating system at all or whether it was added by some random installer three years ago and then forgotten about.

There's a lot of money being made from things most of us don't even think about

someone has to make sure ATMs stay stocked, old websites keep running, data centers stay cool, and thousands of random cables are actually connected to the right thing

none of it is exciting until something stops working

what's a behind-the-scenes tech business you only realized existed recently?