I think the best example is the PlayStation 2 being discontinued in 2013, as well the PlayStation 1 in 2006
Nixie tubes - those vacuum tubes that display a single digit or character on glowing wires - were commonplace in the 1950s and 60s but were superseded by LEDs. They’re still made in the Czech Republic, bought mostly by hobbyists to build retro gadgets. I have a few myself that I haven’t gotten around to using.
There’s a mod for Factorio that adds these in for use in our circuit spaghetti
Tangentially related Technology Connections video: The Numitron: An obvious idea that wasn’t very bright
Weren’t they superceded by LCDs not LEDs? The whole big thing with Nixies was that you could display digits but if one filament burned out (which it relatively quickly did) the whole bulb was bad and even then you had to pump power into them and use these complicated plugs.
Enter LCDs, they take ages to burn in, you can run them off a coin battery for literal years, and they’re a dozen times cheaper to make.
Nixie tubes were replaced by the multi-segment LED displays for numbers for many of those use cases where the numerals needed to glow. Think the last four decades of clock radios, TV channel number displays after mechanical channel knobs but before they removed the bezel stuff and put it all on the screen itself, etc.
Women’s suffrage was ratified in US constitution 1920. But probably not for much longer.
Ruby Bridges is alive and well.
The human race went extinct about 17 years ago. We’re all secretly something else, but we don’t tell you about it until you’re 45.
RIP
HEY! SHHH! You know the rule, and you know the consequences. I’ve said too much.
Some women in Swiss were only allowed to vote in 1984.
Cleopatra is closer to us than she was from the great pyramid construction.
It helps to remember that Cleopatra was both from a completely different incarnation of Egypt and that she was the last independent pharaoh before Egypt became a Roman province.
Jim Crow.
The south still has similar voting restrictions, it’s just the supreme court stopped caring and said ‘sure, whatevs’.
Feudalism as a form of government didn’t end in Europe until 2008 when the Island of Sark converted over to representative democracy.
Audio CDs are still around. While they’re surely not the medium people listen music from, they will most likely be on the merch table at the next concert you go to.
Who thought they weren’t around?
Do people really think audio CDs aren’t around anymore? I bought several audio CDs in the last few years, I prefer to have local copies of music I like rather than depending on a streaming service.
I’m a CD collector, they’re definitely underrated
One of the only things I’ve encountered in life that provides greater joy than sex is the feeling of finding an awesome super underground CD in a $1 garbage bin at the local record shop.
Favorite findings:
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, Sad Tropics
Sunswimmer, New Madrid
New Moon Daughter, Cassandra Wilson
On that note, vinyls have overtaken CDs in sales again
The fact that high end music streaming platforms are only just now starting to offer super high bitrate lossless “CD Quality” audio as an option, gives you an indication of how good CDs actually are as a physical medium.
A cheap old CD player connected via SPDIF to a modern mid-range DAC with decent speakers will give you better quality audio than the latest Sonos system streaming from Spotify.
In MLB, the National League and American League didn’t have unified rules until 2022, when the National League finally adopted the designated hitter rule.
The national league has designated hitters now? I guess I haven’t watched much baseball in a while. Oh, fuck Bally’s.
I believe it was implemented during covid when everything was weird and then they agreed to just keep it officially.
It was part of the 2022-2026 collective bargaining agreement. I wouldn’t expect it to ever go away, since it effectively created another high-pay player for NL teams.
Had no idea… what else changed besides DH?
How can you talk shit to AL fans about pitchers hitting now? Have any stats gotten more similar between the leagues, where the DH diverged them before?
Democracy
Too soon bro.
Acknowledged.
There’s plenty democracy in the world still. And your election seem pretty democratic if you count modern elections where oligarchs controlled media tells you who to vote for as democratic.
Lexus sold cars with cassette players until 2010
That isn’t as crazy as it may seem. My main audio source well after graduation which was 2005, was a portable cd player that could play cd’s burned with compressed mp3 libraries and connected to the car’s stereo system via aux to cassette adapter.
Idk about the portable cd player with mp3 library being common but most blunt cruises in those days were done in vehicles using portable cd player with cassette adapter. I know this is super anecdotal and specifically about the car owner class that isn’t buying new Lexus’ but I still wanted to point out the cassette deck saw extended use long after people stopped listening to actual cassettes.
Insert relevant Technology Connections video here.
Omg fuckin yes. It was so awesome. It was during a brief period when mp3 hit the stage but before ipod was God, there were mp3 players that would just pop up like a memory stick in windows and you could limewire whatever you wanted for music onto the players.
IDK if the software was Sony but the player was and you could put your whole limewire library in a small single CD per page zip up binder things. The mp3 saved on the cd was nothing special. The special was no audio players could play mp3 files at that time. Exceptions being: gaming consoles, pc’s and maybe your surround sound if it was new. Cars were still nobs and buttons.
My 2006 RX factory radio unit had cassette and cd decks. Sometime around 2012, I remember feeling like I had unlocked a secret backdoor because an audiobook that I wanted from the library had a crazy long waitlist for the cd edition. I hadnt used cassettes in decades, but somehow I had the idea to check to see if they offered that audiobook on cassette. They did! And it was available to check out immediately!
I replaced the radio in that car shortly after that because I needed a bluetooth connection and handsfree capability.
Continuing off OP’s list, the last PS3 game was released in 2020
😲
The most recent commercial game using the modified 2.5D Doom engine, was released in May 2024 on Steam. It is called Selaco.
Heck, people are still producing new games for the Commodore 64.
The ottoman empire
Despite anti-miscegenation laws being banned as a result of Loving v Virginia in 1967, support for interracial marriages only passed 50% in the mid 90’s.
Slavery. People always talk about slavery like it’s something that only existed in 19th century America as if it wasn’t happening right now everywhere.
