Simplicity in Technology

Hello Lains I'm here today to ask you about the aspects of technology and technological items that you think are better at the paired down, simpler end of things. We have seen push back against overly complex, function obese software, but the same doesn't seem to be happening in hardware to nearly the same degree. So much of mainstream tech "culture" these days is focused on pushing the envelope, doing x better than y in dimensions or price bracket z, bringing new gimmick features onboard, chasing that youtube gaping mouthed compulsive consumer reviewer watcher money. I am talking about the opposite of that, simple, uncomplicated and unpretentious hardware that just gets the job done and doesn't have a mountain of caveats, hype and bullshit stapled onto it. I think that the premier example of this kind of divide is the audio market, you have absolutely absurd products going for many thousands of dollars, some of which do literally nothing, some of which do "something" 1% better than a product that costs 0.5% of their RRP, and some of which are near textbook veblen goods, only sought after because of the name and the price tag attached to them. Whereas down at the bottom end of the market you have products that cost about as much as a fancy cup of coffee that are better than what 95% of the general public use day to day while costing less. For example, the Kbear earbuds I use for everything now, that I purchased after giving up on my expensive sennheiser and Hifiman over ear headphones, the ones that were $5 and arrived in a disposable cardboard slip. What are they called? I don't know, who fuarrrking cares? They sound great, I forget that I'm wearing them, they don't interfere with my glasses, they fit in my pocket, I can replace them in an instant if I need to and don't worry about them getting damaged, they allow me to enjoy my music, not allow me to indulge in choice paralysis wondering if $300 earphones a would be better than $400 earphones b and if I've missed out on the latest meme. Another really good example imo is mice, the different sensors, the different weights, the switches, the blah blah blah who gives a flying fuarrrk, don't get me started on keyboards. Why do I think this matters? Because the constant indulgence in this rat race for performance that means almost nothing benefits no one and hurts a great deal of people, because nothing is less punk than chasing trends and throwing hard earned money away on things that do not bring joy or improve your life. What examples do you have lain? And why should people go for them instead of the expensive, finnicky option? >TL:DR, simple cheap tech that's better or not noticeably inferior in practical use to expensive tech, anything that avoids gimmicks and the endless consumption cycle goes here, second hand buying tips and repairable tech a plus

>>51413 >mouse Pic unrelated but I tend to pick low DPI mouse which are like most of the older generation mouse that doesn't look like a riced toy car. Why so? Most of the really rgb gamer toys are just upscaled from native 1000 dpi as starting point so they tend to have poor performance when setting to lower than 1000 dpi which means 1000 multiplied by tenths of a number = inaccurate downscale for 200/400/600/800 dpi modes. Every DPI modes above 1000 on all these meme mouse are multiplied by real number (32*1000 = 32000 dpi) and I don't know the reason for ever using this high maybe people think higher is better? I used to think higher DPI is slower but turns out the other way around and I regret getting those mouse which had TERRIBLE performance with low DPI modes and too slippery for a standard 96dpi monitor. Keep in mind the dpi button doesn't change the camera resolution, it's the same resolution! It's not like clicking the dpi switch makes it hang for a second and switch to a better camera! No. Those are upscale modes. If you have a monitor around 75/96/120DPI you will have better result with a lower dpi such as 600 or 800 and rarely true 400 dpi even exist which is probably the lowest out there. The lowest mode with no upscale/downscale also makes sure whatever you're using isn't multiplied by some number less than 1, when there's no downscale/upscale the accurate and sharp raw image is sampled from that mouse's camera sensor. https://y.com.cm/watch?v=b9d7dFId8t4 https://y.com.cm/watch?v=yLjXnXurLlo top player uses "low dpi" You can also see pros gameplay have less shake when they play regardless of game. Low DPI = better. Native 1000/1200 mouse DPI maybe good if you use anything above 4K or 200+ monitor PPI/DPI but as you can see this pubg guy uses 800 mouse DPI on 2K monitor.

>>51413 I think there's always a middle ground between Chinese shovelware and $1000 HDMI cables when it comes to practical purchasing decisions. The questions to ask in my view are: 1. Is the product in that prosumer/professional bracket of the market rather than the low end consumer tier or money burning placebo tier? 2. When it breaks can I fix it myself for a reasonable cost and avoid creating undue e-waste? 3. Are the specifications good enough for my use case? To use your earphone example, when they do break you probably won't be able to fix them, adding more to the ever growing pile of tech junk in landfills. Where as with those headphones you have (at least the Sennheiser) you can probably source replacement parts, which is better than throwing the entire pair out. YMMV depending on how much you care about the environment of course. As for low-cost devices I like, secondhand Thinkpads are a classic of course, all of those consumer laptops are like jokes in comparison. Mice are interesting because you can usually replace the switches at no great expense. I don't really care about mechanical keyboards, random OEM membranes suit me fine, although those custom-built mechanicals are probably much better for longevity.

>>51413 The thing you're describing doesn't exist in the current market. Everything I've ever bought always breaks down, no matter the cost. After my had microphone failed, I disassembled it and soldered the working microphone component to a spare jack cable and hot glued it to a wooden laundry clip - this self made microphone lives longer that any microphone I have bought. My advice? Build your own things and design them to work and use open hardware. There's also the NVMe SSD meme - don't buy that crap, every NVMe SSD I bought, no matter the price has failed. It is better to buy a SATA SSD or a regular HDD because they're cheaper, last long enough and have a better memory/price ratio.

>>51428 >After my had microphone failed *After my microphone had failed

>>51413 Junked laptops are a gold mine. The webcam of a laptop is just a 4-pin USB and can be easily repurposed for a cctv project. The LCD screen assuming it's still fine after all can be driven with LVDS display controller board for a really thin monitor you can put over your wall or cabinet. There's risks buying broken laptops but usually those components aren't fried, you can easily get a full HD or higher display in the cheapest. Laptop microphones are also superior when repurposed but maybe prone to interference so you have to implement a way to avoid that and maybe do some ferrite coiling as they're highly sensitive.

>>51428 Damn chummer, can second that one. I bought some cheapo headphones for the price of a small breakfast once, and I fixed then two times since I bought them (bouta a year ago), and they run perfectly. Pic rel, I had to solder back the wires on one of the sides, and fix the padding on the other. All just solder, shrinktube, and green insulation tape. Sorry for sideways, phone craps out sometimes.

>>51428 I think they do, I've had the same pair of headphones for the last 11 years, soldered in new wires twice, changed the pads three times, still going strong. I don't use them as often now because I wear glasses a lot now but I was using them nearly every day during that period. Look at the number of people buying 1000 dollar phones for essentially no reason other than being told to, my brother spent £800 on a super high end 10 camera monstrosity that he uses to watch youtube videos on, of the 10 people at my work I am the only one that has had the same phone for 5 years and the only one that didn't spend >£450 on their phone, and I do more with mine than they do. I am also the only one that hasn't ever broken a phone, and again, I use my phone for a lot of stuff, I use it as a GPS for work and for cycling for example, people spend way too much money, don't take care of their soykaf, then wonder why its so fragile/why they're unsatisfied with it, I'm not saying that's what you do, but I have noticed this tendency for people to go big thinking they need some specific feature or material (bicycles are a particularly good example here) and then obviously getting no value from that thing that made them spend big and KNOWING they get no value from it. >>51426 While I think you're right about there being a sweet spot where you aren't buying trash but you aren't throwing money away on nothing either, but most people place it way too high up. In reality I can think of very few goods where the average user isn't pissing money and time away when they decide I need new x (more often than not they've seen targeted ads for new x and have been slowly battered into thinking they need it) and go onto 4chan or reddit or wherever for advice on what to get.

>>51445 I would post my microphone, but I use it for online conversations and I'm afraid of being doxxed. Anyway good to see people fixing their hardware. >>51446 >I think they do, I've had the same pair of headphones for the last 11 years 11 years is a lot, the market has changed since then. But yeah, there are some exceptions. >I am the only one that has had the same phone for 5 years >I am also the only one that hasn't ever broken a phone, Same, I get the feeling that some are too clumsy or don't care about their devices or money.

>>51464 >some are too clumsy or don't care about their devices or money. combination of both. People don't use common sense, like zipping up their jacket pockets, or not putting your phone in your pants' back pocket. Some just cannot handle money, and they blow it on useless soykaf, which they can't comprehend the worth of. basically, it's all just people being stupid. >>51430 oi, never thought about disassembling laptops. Do you know if laptop hardware can be used as a server?

>don't even get me started on keyboards fuarrrking this aaaaah why would you spend hundreds on some diy kit made from chink soykaf marketed as revolutionary, and then make that glorified lego kit part of your persona. my personal example is my displays. a crt Ive had for 15ish years and some random lcd I got on craigslist (acer brand i believe) blah blah blah framerate, color gamut, ghosting...4k..guess what I stare at a text editor all I day with an occasional old video game so this works fine and they were both cheap and don't have integrated botnet and general retardation. Semi-related, but the "prosumer" market can burn in hell.

>>51479 Perfectly fine monitors can be bought cheap as soykaf. I always remind people of that, 2 monitors is worth the extra fiver.

>>51514 companies usually liquidate old assets every few 4 or so years which means you might be able to nab the good stuff at a low price. usually the monitors are really good and workstations sold in cheap but they usually have no HDD otherwise those drives come secure erased. my surprise was the hdd didn't even have that much hours of use, like some 2000 hours or less, they probably barely used the workstation too.

Has anyone ever tried replacing the charging port on a Huawei smartphone? Mine is a little wobbly from about 5 years of use, and I think it wouldn't hurt to replace or fix it.

>>51479 Higher resolution display means higher pixel density. This is really what matters when staring at text all day instead of catching subpixel rendering gay rainbows on the edges of each letter. Some modern computer displays especially handhelds are nearing digital print density, but still not there. A desktop display must have 273 PPI to be looked at from 60 cm with average 20/10.5 eyesight. So what is your point, you like torturing your eyesight with old CRTs that much? I hope you enjoy bathing in X-rays. >>51537 Sure, there is only one single uno Huawei smartphone in existence, and probably every indian on youtube has made a video about it, especially replacing charging port topic.

>>51537 if it's a micro usb you can just push the metal and not have to remove anything the same way how you can tighten wobbly usb ports.

>>51537 Search for you specific model and see if there's a how to guide available, if you're lucky it might be on its own daughter board or pogo pinned in and could be just swaapped out, but probably there will be some soldering involved. I've replaced the headphone jack and Micro-B connectors in my phone and its easy enough, a decentish iron, solder and flux, helping hand and a big wodge of blutack and at least some prior experience with a soldering iron are definitely required though, the bits are so fiddly and there's a lot of other soykaf on the boards you don't want to stab with a soldering iron

>>51558 Oh and you'll want to pick up a set of tweezers if you don't have ones already

>>51559 >>51558 I should also mention that you'll want to get some heavy carboard and tape it down around the rest of the phone to mask off the battery, putting a 350c iron tip through a lithium battery that's a few inches from your hands would not be a good time. If your battery needs replacing as well now is probably a good time to do it.

>>51558 >>51559 >>51589 That's all super good advice chummer, many thanks. I think I'm gonna go hardcore on component protection tho, I still got a smooth little aluminium plate, a little larger than my phone, lying around. Soldering experience is given, but mostly with microwave PCBs and headphone wires. Never soldered around those tiny computer components. Tweezers, solder and flux are here. My soldering iron is 60w tho, is that overkill? Many people say that you need 20-30w precision irons for this kinda work, but what is a hardware autists view on this? I'm not too concerned with fuarrrking up the phone, It's lived a long time and i won't mourn chinesium, but it'd still kinda hurt if I sh1t the bed with this one.

>>51592 I did mine with a parkside iron I bought in lidl for £9 so eh, up to you I didn't really search up any advice on doing it before doing it, maybe I'm an idiot

>>51592 40W is probably the sweet spot but adjustable that have attenuator or those knobs are probably much better and I'm looking for new soldering iron that's smalle enough. A small micro soldering job with 60W is overkill for me but that depends, I got mine for $2 and I often had to unplug as it's too hot.