My garage door just emailed me

Computer punch cards, rotary phones (with cords!), cars with carburetors and windows you had to crank up and down. Now my car emails me if it needs servicing.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

While you are at make sure your bot/ram band width doesn't cause problems with your hard drive.

Solid State 3D NAND is where it is at today!!!
Followed soon by 3D crosspoint...

that’s “smarter” than I am .... well OK that’s just about all of em ...

We trained on a computer. The thing that stuck in my mind was 95% of computer problems can be fixed by turning the computer off, then turning it back on.

Explain to me with all these miracles why is that still true?

CNN had a program this morning. They operated on a 2 year old boy, removed a brain tumor by virtual reality!

Boy, am I going to have fun with the 2 Engineers in my family explaining to me what that is. One gave a speech on AI in College last month. This should be enlightening.

While we were sitting down to eat at her sister's house.

On this special day for family, please take time to remember to rinse your plates before putting them in me and washing them... Or I'll tell TrogL's garage door opener on you.

TlalocW

And the battery replacement was free at the dealership!

and a LOT of those are actually posted by my wife. Those wistfully searching for "the good ole days" are looking thru rose colored glasses. I wouldn't go back to the 70s and the lack of electronics for anything.

Everyone waxing nostalgia for the good old days always gloss over the social inequalities and mortality rate of that era.

Later came the Series 1400. I got transferred out of the computer department and "promoted" to where I used a manual desk calculator.

I saw SPUTNIK from the street corner, one block from my house. Now, I see the Skylab every few weeks.

Or maybe its the cadillacs in my eyes.

So I purchased a wall mount unit that connects to my WiFi.
If I forget to close my door, the app shows the door still open,
so I send a command to close the door from anywhere in the world.
It keeps a history of when the door opens and closes.

The wall mount is very cool, because it removes the chain/screw
drive down the middle of the garage. opens the space for storage.

Very nice unit.

Why it's bothering you about it? Tell it to order one it's self.

I swear, it's like we have to do everything ourselves these days.

Ah well.
I live in the dark a lot.

I hope they find a new planet to send that escaped lizardman prisoner currently inhabiting the White House.

you know
just in case I want to know exactly what he's.......um...........'done' in there



(on a slightly more serious note, the litter robot is great for us - totally expensive, but solved so many problems here at the house (our cat refuses to go in a pan that has anything other than clean litter. He'd go EVERYWHERE. No more. That litter robot is worth every penny for us)

we needed another. We got a used car but it had quite a few perks with it. I now sit on the stage after rehearsal, start my car with my phone and when I get in is warm and toasty. It also has seat warmers, I have never had those before and quite frankly I would crank my car to start it before I would give up the seat warmers. We have not done up our house. We decided that we are pretty lax with our phones and Internet, we do what they tell us to do so it feels ok but bugging our house is not something we care to do. There are some perks there, some really nice perks but nope.

I do not remember crank phones in our homes but I do remember seeing them on vacation in a dusty little town in Oklahoma we used to stop in. Air conditioners were not everywhere. I seem to remember Sputnik but I was only 4, I mostly remember the worry about the communists beating us into space.

I gotta say, I love so much of what we have now. My grandparents are now gone but they went from before cars were used by most people, no airplanes and I have to laugh with amazement how things change over our lives and we really do not spend enough time realizing the good parts and the bad parts.

My car bosses me around but so far my house is not complaining. Enjoy!

It's been over 3 years since surveillance cameras were used in a DDoS attack. And Trump is president. We live in interesting times.

We recently got a Nest thermostat and home security system.

The thermostat is round and looks a lot like the “eye” on the HAL computer in 2001 references early in the thread. It lights up when you get close to it. Really freaked me out for the first few days.

We become like the title of a Robert Heinlen Novel “Strangers In A Strange Land”. Everyday life is just so fundamentally different than in our youth, of 2-3 black and white TV Channels, black telephones, and for some bread men and milkmen bringing those things to your door.

I was afraid of butt dialing my oven and burning the house down

It keeps bitching that I haven't moved much in the last hour. lol

(snip)

The phenomenon has, in fact, become so common that mental-health experts have named it phantom phone syndrome: Smartphone and smartwatch users so alert to incoming messages they sometimes feel devices vibrate when they don’t. Some people detect a buzz even when the devices are put away. “This could really be categorized as a hallucination. You’re feeling something…that doesn’t really exist,” says Michelle Drouin, a psychologist at Purdue University Fort Wayne. She has studied phantom phone alerts, as well as experienced them.

Jacqueline Nisson says she first tried silencing her Apple Watch notifications to keep the phantoms at bay. That didn’t work. Nor did taking off the watch. Symptoms subsided, but they would start up when she put it back on.. The perceived sensations aren’t recognized as a mental-health disorder. Instead, the phenomenon tracks the deep reach of personal technology as a habit as well as a physical and psychological adaptation.

“I’m sure it’s linked to my anxiety,” says Zachary Lipton, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who experiences phantom notifications, even when he isn’t carrying his phone. “You realize you’re conditioned like some post-trauma, battered animal…It’s horrible.” He says he feels obligated to reach for his phone, regardless. His only reprieve is while running, protected by knowing he isn’t tethered to a device.

(snip)

Researchers say phantom phone syndrome is related to the social-media driven fear of missing out, so-called FOMO. Another condition, nomophobia, refers to feelings of terror from not having a working phone... Phantom phone syndrome is sometimes called “ringxiety” and “vibranxiety.” It is also known as “FauxCellArm,” which refers to the more commonly known malady phantom limb, feeling pain or other sensations in missing arms or legs.

(snip)

Some blame their phone or smartwatch rather than their own psyche. “The phone companies and manufacturers say this doesn’t have to do with their hardware or software,” says Daniel Kruger, a University of Michigan social psychologist who has studied and experienced phantom vibrations. Research on phantom phone syndrome hasn’t settled on what is happening in the brain, Dr. Kruger said. Some studies, including his own, suggest that people anxious about the status of their relationships are more prone to phantom vibrations compared with those more secure in them.


More..

https://www.wsj.com/articles/feel-the-phone-buzz-in-your-pocket-it-could-be-all-in-your-head-11576773050 (paid subscription)

... the first woodpecker would destroy civilisation.

An oldie from the world of computer programming. As a programmer and fan of dystopian SF from childhood, the world we're building scares me. I won't even have a smart phone.

Just installed it last week. I can open from my phone, get alerts and always check to make e the door is closed. Now I can have amazon leave packages in the garage.

What’s not to like? I was going to get the cheap opener but the gadgets were only a few bucks more.

So I can no longer use my phone to open it. Thankfully the remote and wall button still work fine.

Seriously.

Ive already got my phone listening in on me.