• CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Given that nowhere in the article does it say that 14% of people exclusively play on pre-2000 hardware I don’t find this that surprising.

    I’m more shocked by the last statistic, 11% of American households still use fax. Fax? Fuckin’ why? That’s like saying people still listen to music on Edison cylinders.

    • nfh@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Fax is commonly used at least in the US because it has regulatory recognition as a secure means of transferring information, it’s highly interoperable, and it doesn’t really have a successor that has caused the network effect to die out entirely.

      11% seems slightly higher than I’d expect, but not crazy. Contracts, medical records, interactions with the government are all good reasons to need to send or receive one occasionally. That about 1 in 10 households did last year? Makes some sense.

      • Hawke@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Seems crazy to me. I can’t imagine that 1 in 10 household even have fax machines. All the stuff you mention is business and medical stuff. Nobody faxes in their medical requests from home.

          • Hawke@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Nah. They might do it from work or maybe by email gateway.

            Hell it’s only even possible for the 27% of homes that still have a landline. There’s just no way.

            • PlasticExistence@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              There are a lot of people with old technology in their home that still gets used. Fax is still needed for lots of medical things, and not everyone has an office to go to.

              Think retired people taking care of sick family members.

              • Hawke@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                Nah. It’s got a big fat [citation needed] from me.

                10% of people? Sure I’d believe that 10 % of people have transferred data using fax technology at least once in the past year or something. But 10% of households, and you can’t count email to-fax gateways?

                No way.

                • PlasticExistence@lemmy.world
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                  4 days ago

                  The citation is in the article which is from a Consumer Reports study. In case you don’t know, they’re very trustworthy.

                  I’m not attempting to convince you that the figure is accurate because I don’t need to that. I’m attempting to get you to understand that a big portion of the population of the USA are just making do with what they have.

    • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Signatures as a form of authorization I think held up the facsimile tech way past it’s best by date

    • toynbee@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      According to American Dad! widespread continued use would have gotten us the blorfer.

    • Carrot@lemmy.today
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      4 days ago

      I give my fax number to anything that asks me for a phone number. It’s a valid number that can’t recieve calls, meaning when my number is inevitably leaked/purchased by telemarketers, scammers, etc. I don’t even notice.