
My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s - eru
https://www.gwern.net/Improvements
======
chasingthewind
A counterpoint to this that may resonate with some:

* I _feel_ significantly less hopeful than I did in the 1990s. Things _seemed_ to be heading in the right direction in lots of important areas then. Now I feel significant anxiety about whether my kids will live in a dystopia within the next 30 years

* Many of the improvements listed reduce hassle and stress in some ways, and markedly increase stress and anxiety in other ways. I had ZERO concern about my identity being stolen in 1995. My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years and caused significant anxiety and hassle.

* Many of the improvements to convenience feel like a bad trade. Having information and services a click away has begun to feel almost like a burden. Everything has to happen instantly now. This has been a negative from a psychological perspective for me.

\----

I know some of this is just that I'm 25 years older and I'm trying to subtract
that out.

I understand that objectively this is a good time to be alive in many, many
ways but I feel _significantly_ worse than I did then.

If I could return to the 1990s at my current age I would do so in a heartbeat.

~~~
ksdale
I think these are great counterpoints, and important to consider.

I would offer that I think we are more worried about dystopia because we are
so much more aware of all of the ways the world can turn into a dystopia, but
I don't think that necessarily tracks with the actual likelihood of dystopia.

I read a lot of history, and I occasionally find myself wishing I had lived in
a... more "exciting" time, or a more authentic time, but then I remember that
I would probably just be a normal person in that exciting or authentic time,
possibly not even aware of the exciting-ness because I'd be trying not to
starve to death or die of cholera.

We feel like a ton of crazy stuff is happening all the time, but history has
always been that way. You'd be hard pressed to live for 80 years (period, ha!)
in any historical period anywhere in the world and not end up going through at
least one or two of wars, famines, disease-outbreaks, oppressive governments,
fires, earthquakes, riots, etc. And maybe it'd be easier to deal with because
you wouldn't see it coming on twitter for two months before it killed you...
but man, reading history, a lot of people die, all the time, often for no
reason or really bad reasons. And fewer people die now, but we're a lot more
aware of it.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Ok the contrary, I feel we are not aware enough. Recently the atomic bulletin
of scientists put the doomsday clock to 100 seconds, even closer than the
Cuban missile crisis. The reason they gave were tensions with Russia. That’s a
huge threat, and it’s not getting much attention.

Really you would think today we shouldn’t have to be worried about wars with
Russia or China, and having endless, escalating conflicts in the Middle East.
Not to mention the environmental crisis.

Runaway oligarchism in another concern, ever since the 70’s income inequality
has gotten significantly worse.

~~~
nradov
The "Doomsday Clock" is a biased and meaningless political statement. There
are no objective criteria for measuring our proximity to Armageddon. Relations
with Russia are poor but we're nowhere near nuking each other.

~~~
eru
We could set up a prediction market.

(How to design a contract to evaluate the possibility that the world and thus
the economy will be blown up is a bit of a puzzle. But it's totally doable.)

------
Vinnl
Another thing that's a _major_ improvement to me: I can take public transport
in a place I'm unfamiliar with, and I don't have to sit anxiously hoping that
the bus driver will actually remember to call out my stop and let me off - I
can just look at the screen that displays the upcoming stop.

Also (though it is lumped in with smartphone's "too much to list"): if I reply
to someone's text message, I can actually read that message while I'm typing
up the reply.

~~~
astura
I took busses to go places ever year of the 90s and I've never heard of a
driver actually call out any stops, back then you just had to already know
exactly where you were going to get off at the right stop. I would stick to
routes I was already familiar with. Not only that but you had no idea of the
schedule (when the bus would come) you had to already have a physical copy of
the bus schedule. Kept copies of the bus schedule for select routes at my
house, but who knows if they've been updated or not since you grabbed it.

Took a bus in my home town recently and the upcoming stop was labeled with an
LED board like on a train. I couldn't imagine something like that 20 years
ago. I agree it makes travel 1000% better and I would have gone to less
familiar places if it were available back then.

~~~
Vinnl
> I took busses to go places ever year of the 90s and I've never heard of a
> driver actually call out any stops, back then you just had to already know
> exactly where you were going to get off at the right stop.

Yeah, the method you had to use where I'm from is to know where you had to get
off, then ask the bus driver when you hop in whether they're actually going
there - then they'd call out your stop, usually.

Not the greatest, especially not for a shy kid like I was.

------
scottlocklin
Funny; I always thought Gwern was around my age, but it seems like he either
wasn't fully conscious in the 90s or lived some peculiar life out in the
weeds.

Shit he missed:

1) Video conferencing is a big deal. Makes remote work possible and routine.

2) Bittorrent, libGen and SciHub have actually realized the dream of making
information de facto free, even if it is illegal.

Agree on:

1) Logistics has improved immensely (in part due to ubiquitous computing and
part to exporting manufacturing to all corners of the globe).

2) You can get more "weird" foods at walley world and Trader Joes (on the
other hand, staples are more disgusting and obviously unhealthy -just look at
people)

3) Spaced rep applications are useful. Not world changing, but useful. Ed
Thorp did know about this in the 50s though (as I did in the 90s).

4) Electronics are much cheaper (and I make a lot more money to buy more of
them). Linux works about as well as it did in mid-90s anyway. Laptop batteries
MUCH better.

5) Cars are better: antilock brakes, crumple zones, airbags have made things
much safer on the roads

6) Crime was much higher in the 90s than in the 21st century. Trend is
reversing in the US at least.

Disagree/aesthetics

1) Clothing is vastly worse than in the 90s in every way; aesthetics,
durability, materials

2) Muh weed isn't better than public smoking; I miss being able to smoke in
public after a drink

3) Induction stoves are bloody awful and a huge regression from gas, even
electric coil

4) Microbrews were much better in the 90s; everything is a disgusting IPA now,
mostly to cover up the fact you're drinking toilet water. I'd rather drink
coors light than an IPA.

5) Most coffee is actually worse; Peets and Starbucks burning their beans is
an aesthetic atrocity.

6) Apples are still groace and covered in alar.

7) Average flights are cheaper, but travel is VASTLY more unpleasant. You used
to be able to buy a paper ticket, then trade it on usenet for someone else's
ticket. No ID required; just the ticket. Imagine that. No CNN blaring at you
on the infoscreen making thought impossible (looking at you Atlanta). No anal
probe at the boarding area. Your family could wave at you when you get on the
plane, or hug you as soon as you get off. Total regression: I'll happily pay
more for the old experience.

Just wrong:

1) Travel in the EU is vastly more expensive to an American than it used to
be, and hordes of travelers from everywhere on the globe make it less pleasant
as well. It's also worse from a visa perspective; you used to be able to do
visa runs and stay on the continent basically forever instead of vacating
Shengen every 90 days.

2) Most houses are actually NOT heated/cooled/insulated as efficiently as he
thinks; presumably he just moved up a few socioeconomic brackets or moved some
place warmer.

3) Coats? C'mon; if your coat is thinner, it's because you live in the Bay
Area or something. High end winter coats are still goose-down.

4) AI/VR aren't really things except as LARP

5) Trichinosis wasn't a problem in the US in the 90s any more than it is now.
Personally I can no longer eat US pork (it was fine in the 90s, just as it is
in europe). See next point for why, perhaps

Shit that got worse and he didn't notice:

1) Everyone's fat; an aesthetic and libidinal apocalypse. Obviously something
enormous and negative has happened in public health (cue 10 people responding
to this, all with different "answers"), and nobody can identify what it is.

2) Everything as a service: back in the day you had to pay for utilities and
maybe cable TV. Now you pay 10x what you used to for phone service (in the US;
elsewhere else it's fine) due to oligopolistic pricing, and you have a bunch
of dumb "apps" on your phone charging you, 3 different movie services, even
your damn radio betrays you. Managing more such things is unpleasant and the
whole world is basically a giant ripoff

3) Social atomization in the US is at all time high, mostly due to technology

4) Search engines, homeless people and Elsevier have destroyed physical
libraries, and that's a real loss.

5) The internet is dumber and more corporate, and opinion makers now think
that Usenet arguments on twitter are meaningful and real: something the rest
of us got over around 1991

6) Cheap LED lights means designers put them everywhere, and you have to work
hard to sleep in a dark room

7) Movies are shittier; big deal that I can watch a capeshit movie in 4k. I'm
an adult and do not enjoy watching adults prance around playing make-believe
in their underthingees. Supposedly we live in a "golden age of TV" but I don't
see that either: they just rediscovered the 1930s serial format. You can watch
any of 1000 things, but most of them are awful.

8) There are tent cities in the US, rapidly turning into Favelas

9) The ubiquity of internet telephony (a general good) has made telephone
scams and spam calls much more annoying than playing phone tag

10) Cheap flights and transport has caused "barbarian invasions of Rome" level
immigration problems, and will be a huge social problem in the next economic
downturn, in part because the internet means ethnic enclaves don't have to
assimilate to local culture. Globalization has generally destroyed the lower
middle classes in most first world countries.

~~~
dorfsmay
> Induction stoves are bloody awful and a huge regression from gas, even
> electric coil

You must have used an underpower induction plate. Gas carries a lot of energy,
a standard house power outlet cannot deliver that much energy.

Induction stoves with enough power are slightly less reactive than gas, and
can only use cookware that is magnetic, but MUCH more energy efficient (you
only heat the cookware, not the air around it) and much easier to clean than
gas stoves.

Electrical coil are so slow to react to heat change that cooking in them is a
different skill altogether, and makes some cooking more difficult.

~~~
leetcrew
> Induction stoves with enough power are slightly less reactive than gas, and
> can only use cookware that is magnetic, but MUCH more energy efficient (you
> only heat the cookware, not the air around it) and much easier to clean than
> gas stoves.

I kinda disagree on the cleaning bit. the induction stoves I'm familiar with
have a glass top, which is great for cleaning off bits of food gunk, but
terrible for doing stuff like seasoning a cast iron pan. on a gas burner, you
just put a thin coat of oil all over the pan and put it on medium-high for 15
minutes or so. if you try this on a glass top, you end up "seasoning" the
glass itself with a layer of polymerized fat. it's _really_ difficult to get
this off.

~~~
JetSetWilly
Why would you season underneath the pan? The only part you need to season is
the part that comes into contact with food?

~~~
leetcrew
the whole pan needs to be seasoned if you don't want it to rust. the actual
cooking surface needs to get "refreshed" more often though.

in any case, the same problem occurs if any random drops of fat get sandwiched
between the pan and surface, which happens pretty often just from splattering.

------
chrisco255
I love the positivity. It's true that a lot of minor improvements in products
and services have added up to a relatively frictionless experience. He forgot
to mention that GPS is ubiquitous and you can travel great distances with no
prior planning, find great restaurants, book hotels, etc. You can also hail a
Lyft or Uber with ease in most urban areas. And now, even grocery delivery is
very commonplace.

Adulting in 2020 is child's play.

~~~
lordnacho
> Adulting in 2020 is child's play.

Weirdly taking care of kids is not substantially more convenient nowadays.
It's hard to compare, because most of us haven't had kids with a 25 year gap,
but I do know a guy who has done just that.

Tech is a double edged sword with kids. You can throw a tablet at them to
placate them for a while, but often it leads to the kid being difficult when
you take it away.

You still need to sit with them to put them to sleep, nobody seems to have
made an app that buys back that time. Again, tech sort of looks like it will
work ("I'll put on a soothing melody from YouTube") but often it backfires
somehow.

Kids misbehaving? Where's the app to fix that?

And then there's the whole education side of things, where tech promises a lot
more than it delivers. The only things I find useful are Khan Academy and
various times table type apps. They're just straight replacements for a
person, which is great. Anything more complex, I'm very sceptical of.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
>You still need to sit with them to put them to sleep, nobody seems to have
made an app that buys back that time.

I don't know why anyone would want to buy back that time. I might even pay to
be able to do that again.

~~~
disqard
Thanks, I was about to write that in response.

------
jariel
He's not even scratching the surface.

'Heart Surgery' used to be a really big, scary ordeal. Now they do much of it
on an 'outpatient' basis - home the next day.

Putting the brakes hard on a car from the 1970's might mean you slide the
thing into whatever you were driving towards. The sensitivity and intelligence
of car control these days makes old cars seem like horse and buggy.

A woman doing a more classically male job in the 1980's was a big deal, a
statement, and they would be told constantly 'they didn't belong'. My younger
nieces doing research have never met with any such resistance, just the
opposite (They're still younger though, this will change a little later).

Vinyl, CD's, tapes, whatever: you had to collect them and physically go to
stores to get music, video or any content. The content revolution is mind-
boggling.

You generally did not know or communicate with people from other countries.
What you know about Russia came from books in the library or a few scenes on
TV, or maybe a ridiculous Hollywood film.

Clothing was something you bought for 'durability'. It was expensive and
unfashionable.

And this since the late 20th century.

Those who have been alive for a long time, say Queen Elizabeth who's 1st Prime
Minister was literally Churchill ... it's almost impossible to fathom the
change they've seen in their time.

~~~
ginko
>Clothing was something you bought for 'durability'. It was expensive and
unfashionable.

That's the one thing I don't think is a real improvement. Fast fashion is
wasteful and has lead to actually quality clothing being really hard to find.
There's this old fruit of the loom t shirt I have that will probably survive
all my current ones.

~~~
GordonS
This is a good point. Growing up, we seldom bought new clothes - they'd have
to be literally falling apart before we got new ones. Largely I suppose
because clothing was so much more expensive, but also, I think, because we had
much more of a "utility" view towards it, rather than the "fashion" view that
is much more prevelant today.

In the UK, I recently saw a TV advertisement encouraging people to not be so
wasteful with their clothing, and to wash it less frequently so it lasts
longer and we use less resources.

I thought this was interesting to see, and I was reminded of some friends who
spend hundreds of dollars on clothing _every single month_.

------
stareatgoats
In the filter bubble that I inhabit, articles like this are breaths of fresh
air - much needed reminders that everything is not gloom and doom.

Permanently moored as I am in my bubble though I can't help feeling that this
type of article more an attempt to balance the narratives that I and my peers
are fixated on, rather than paint a complete picture: so what about the
trajectories of climate change, wealth inequality, opioid crisis, debt crisis,
nuclear warfare threat, pandemic vulnerability, soil depletion etc?

I guess this is the nature of human discourse: we don't typically try to
provide complete pictures, we tend to paint alternate pictures (aiming to
support different courses of action?) in contrast to other narratives.

In the best of worlds all perspectives are based in reality, painted in
earnest, and readily available, enabling a rational discourse. In reality
that's obviously not always the case, filter bubbles being a case in point.

~~~
kybernetikos
I agree with almost all of this list, and what I assume are the motivations
for creating it, but it definitely leaves out problematic aspects. Not just
the ones you list, but things like:

 _not watching crummy VHS tapes_ : the decline in _ownership_ and reduction in
ability to record / remix media.

 _playing phone tag_ : now that normal humans have access to broadcast media,
the easy to avoid 'holiday slide show' or gossip sessions have become almost
impossible to avoid in whatsapp groups, etc.

 _USB cables_ : Physically different connectors for different functions is a
good thing. I have usb cables that can carry data (at I think 4 different
speeds), usb cables that can only carry power, usb cables that can fast
charge, usb cables that can power delivery charge, usb cables that can carry
thunderbolt. I have lots of these cables and I have no idea which are which. I
do very much like that some of these cables can act as power and screen and
input now, but usb is pretty frustrating. It's great that almost everything
charges with the same cable these days - for which I credit the EU rules about
phones rather than innovation, (but usb-c vs usb-micro, and even a few hold
out usb-minis mean it's still not perfect), and the usb micro cable has been
much less reliable than things like the old nokia power jacks, with many of my
tablets developing problems with charging and connectivity because of the usb
port.

 _search engines_ : Search engine quality goes in waves. I've definitely had
some years where google returned me worse results for my searches than I used
to get in the good old days.

 _batteries_ : the power tools I have with batteries are less powerful, go
wrong more often and have to be charged (and never are, because I don't use
them enough).

~~~
leetcrew
> not watching crummy VHS tapes: the decline in ownership and reduction in
> ability to record / remix media.

what do you mean by this exactly? I can agree it's sort of sad that people
don't usually own a physical/local copy of whatever movies/music they enjoy,
but you can still buy physical copies of most media if you really want. I'm
pretty the inflation-adjusted price is lower than it was in the early '00s.
you could certainly argue that streaming is so convenient/cheap that it
precludes this kind of ownership for most people.

the reduction in ability to record/remix media I completely disagree with. the
shittiest smartphone camera records better quality video than a good consumer
camcorder from the '90s, and you can edit the footage with free software on
any computer.

------
motohagiography
Saying things are actually good or better is pretty subversive, or
conservative, depending on your view. Somewhat related to the Varian Rule,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varian_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varian_Rule)
which is documented as: "A simple way to forecast the future is to look at
what rich people have today; middle-income people will have something
equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have it in an additional decade."

We still have poverty in north america, but it's not a lack of conveniences,
food, or material goods. It's something else. It's not just money, because
lots of poor people earn money. Even people with mobile homes often own their
homes. It's something else, like hope, mobility, culture or something.

~~~
nabla9
> food,

It's still nutrition and food insecurity are still an issue. Calories are
plenty but large number of poor still suffer from malnutrition because healthy
food is very expensive and neighborhood deprivation creates food deserts.

> Even people with mobile homes often own their homes

Mobile home business in US are huge predatory business model that keeps people
poor. Private equity companies buy and own many mobile home parks and the
loans for mobile homes are expensive, plus the homes are bad investment. They
lose value just like a car. John Oliver made an episode about this.

>It's something else,

Relative poverty is real poverty. It goes against all evidence to claim that
only absolute poverty is real poverty and only thing that should be addressed.
Just being poor hurts even cognitive functionality and causes stress. People
who have less options, less time to make decisions, are forced to long term of
short decisions that are non-optimal.

There has been a great natural experiment testing the culture theory and
direction of causal link.

In the 80's when drug epidemic ravaged black neighborhoods there were two
theories. One theory was that poverty causes desperation, destroys culture and
brings drugs and destroys neighborhoods. Another theory was that culture
causes poverty and drug use and creates bad neighborhoods.

Opioid crisis provides great second data point and natural experience. It
turns out that when poverty and financial insecurity hits white middle class
neighborhoods, they are just as susceptible to drug epidemics, destruction of
cultural values as black neighborhoods.

It seems that relative poverty and decreasing options and loss of hope creates
culture and behavior more than other way around.

~~~
motohagiography
Conflating culture and race doesn't provide a strong control. The effects of
drugs on poor black and white groups in the U.S. are similar. I don't think
poverty and the effects of drugs are because someone is racialized, however I
do think it matters very much where they grew up, and how. Race is a proxy for
class in the U.S, because class is the last real american taboo, imo.

I would also agree that the effects of racist policy impacts how they grew up,
and that in turn _becomes_ culture, but where I diverge is that the solutions
to "how to not be poor," and "how to stop making people poor," are different.

The tech changes we've had have clearly raised all boats, and yet we
undeniably still have poverty. What it means is that making peoples lives more
convenient, giving them more stuff, and spending on the lower level needs in
the hierarchy doesn't end poverty. This is the crux of what the Gwern article
shows.

It has to do with ability to achieve and self-actualize. Broadly, Maslow's
hierarchy of needs is a handwavy metaphor for it, and the technology changes
we've had in the last 30 years provide belonging (social media), not a lot of
security, and probably come at the cost of self actualization.

Given the clear quality of life improvements from technological change, we can
see with some certainty that merely providing more of the things that
technology change already and inevitably provides is not a solution to multi-
generational self-reinforcing poverty.

That is the subversive implication.

------
sethammons
YouTube how-to videos. You can look up so much. From fixing a washing machine
to replacing parts on cars, to installing windows on a house, and learning
math or programming, and a million other things. I'm learning the Banjo as my
first insrument with online videos.

------
chris_st
Well...

> _not getting lost while frantically driving down a freeway; or anywhere
> else, for that matter_

I had a real "The Machine Stops" moment a few months ago when I was trying to
get to a doctor appointment, and I'm running late, so I fire up the map app on
my phone, enter the address, and get on the highway... and no internet. And
yeah, I hadn't been to this location enough to know how to get there, and it's
in a twisty maze of passages, all just enough alike each other to make
"hopeful" navigation worthless.

Rebooted the phone, got the internet again, got to the appointment, whew.

And yeah, we have our old bag of maps in the car, but they're old enough that
I'm not sure the office is ON those maps...!

~~~
mrfusion
I was driving to a relatives house out of state when my phone died and I
didn’t have a charger. I had their address and phone number only on my phone!
I was panicking.

Luckily my phone was able to restart after a few minutes and I memorized the
directions before it shut down again.

I still wonder what I would have done otherwise?

------
nicolas_t
Off topic, I completely agree with most of these except "search engines
typically turn up the desired result in the first page, even if it’s a book or
scientific paper; one doesn’t need to resort to ‘meta-search engines’ or
enormous 20-clause Boolean queries"

I find that search engines used to be much better in giving me relevant useful
results 8-9 years ago. There used to be a lot more content on small personal
websites or blogs that was really well done and useful.

Now search engines tend to only return results from massive well known
websites and the actual relevant and interesting results is buried far far
down in the results under all of the seo optimized content farms.

~~~
mda
I wish you could see random 10 items your 8 years ago search history and 10
items from last week and compare them. I am pretty sure picture would be
different. My theory on this is then in years peoples expectations grew faster
than the technology itself. Search is actually much better than past.

~~~
londons_explore
Many people here have search history from 8 years ago... Anyone volunteering
to collect some data?

~~~
taejo
We have the history of searched terms, but do we have the search results from
that time?

~~~
londons_explore
I'm sure the wayback machine or other similar projects have lots of search
results pages indexed.

------
paweladamczuk
What is the notation the author uses for historical prices? The one with the
year in lower index and some other number in upper index? I tried <your
favourite search engine>ing that but I don't know how it's called.

~~~
gwern
The automatic inflation-adjusting is unique but hopefully self-explanatory.
See [https://www.gwern.net/Inflation.hs](https://www.gwern.net/Inflation.hs)
[https://twitter.com/gwern/status/1029831368782635013](https://twitter.com/gwern/status/1029831368782635013)

------
eru
Inspired by discussions on 'The boss who put everyone on 70K'
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22440922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22440922))
about inflation and quality improvements (or lack thereof) since 1950.

~~~
jhvkjhk
Hello, I like your typography but how did you achieve small caps in Source
Serif Pro? I use Adobe Fonts to deliver the same font to my blog, but it said
‘smcp’ is not included in the OpenType feature of this font.

What's more, how did you make the fantastic Gothic style drop caps? ‘WhatFont’
said it's Source Serif Pro but it looks far more different!

~~~
gwern
I believe the Source family only recently got smallcaps, in 2017:
[https://blog.typekit.com/2017/01/10/introducing-source-
serif...](https://blog.typekit.com/2017/01/10/introducing-source-serif-2-0/)
So you need to upgrade.

The Gothic drop cap is nothing to do with Source, but it is from Deutsche
Zierschrift, one of 5 drop cap fonts (Cheshire Initials, Deutsche Zierschrift,
Goudy Initialen, Kanzlei Initialen, & Yinit).

In one of the clever performance tricks we use
([https://www.gwern.net/About#design](https://www.gwern.net/About#design)), we
subset them all into multiple font files, one initial per file, which makes
them almost free in terms of bandwidth. The CSS for positioning them is quite
tricky, however, due to subtle brokenness in browsers (particularly Firefox),
so you'll have to inspect the 'DROP CAPS' section of
[https://www.gwern.net/static/css/default.css](https://www.gwern.net/static/css/default.css)
carefully if you want to imitate it.

~~~
jhvkjhk
Thank you, I will try to adjust my the typography of my blog based on your
helpful explanation!

------
hyko
“electric cars will be ordinary things in 5–10 years; self-driving cars not
long after that” If we’re counting things that haven’t happened yet as
improvements to our quality of life, why not include a cure for all disease
and holidays on Mars?

~~~
hadlock
We were at Carmax (nationwide used car dealer) on Thursday evening and they
had probably 15 plug in battery electric "electric cars" on their lot of ~500
cars. Not a significant fraction, but three different models were available to
choose from, and competitively priced against the other cars on the lot.

------
s_r_n
"air quality in most places has continued to improve, forest cover has
increased, and more rivers are safe to fish in" This makes me really happy to
read. I know that in the 90's, there was pessimism around the environment
already (e.g., the hole in the ozone layer). It's really nice to know that
from this person's perspective, things are improving.

------
katzgrau
> programmers able to assume users have 4GB RAM rather than 4MB RAM

But with that, some programmers assume they can use all 4GB of RAM

------
ptr
Two other things he missed (or maybe that's the "too much to list" under
smartphones) that have been a true revolution for me:

* Buying groceries in an app and getting them delivered directly to my door (without being super expensive nor low quality) same or next day. No more wasting time driving to a store just to run around in there trying to find everything. No standing in lines.

* Throwing away large pieces of garbage (boxes, furniture, recycling) without having to rent a car, you just take a photo with an app and someone shows up at your door within 30 minutes, ready to take it away for just $10-$20.

These things + living within biking distance of work makes it very easy to
manage without a car.

------
starpilot
Remember having to call movie theatres for showtimes?

~~~
gspr
Interesting! Where I'm from, these were posted in the newspaper. But I do
remember having to call to reserve seats.

~~~
jopsen
Remember opening a news paper and getting dirty fingers :)

~~~
gonzo41
Remember when newspapers started printing color photos in them :D

------
Frost1x
>stoves which are increasingly induction-based and safe rather than fire
hazards burners/gas

As someone who enjoys cooking, the proliferation of induction based stoves
makes me sad. I find cooking over a gas flame superior in just about every way
(except obviously safety and energy efficiency).

Induction cooking just gives little to no feedback and makes it difficult for
any pan tilting techniques (I love my garlic basted pan seared steaks...).
Pretty much have to use something like cast iron for heat retention now.

~~~
gonzo41
I've solved this problem to my satisfaction at least. YMMV I use a scanpan on
an electric stove, and just throw a tablespoon of garlic butter on top of the
steaks and let em cook. Once they are ready to flip the butter has melted off
and started cooking the garlic which I use with the butter to baste. I find I
don't need to be moving the pan much.

Whilst the steak is resting I usually cook cut french onion in the same pan,
when the onions are browned I de-glaze it with a half a glass of wine and let
that reduce to get all the fond for an awesome pan sauce.

------
ken
I think I live in the 1990's still.

> we no longer have to worry about our car windows being smashed to steal our
> radios, or our GPSes

I've had friends' cars broken into this way in the recent past. Not for
radios, perhaps, but for anything else left in the car.

> car security alarms no longer go off endlessly in parking lots

They do in Seattle. It's a rare day I don't hear at least a few minutes of car
alarm, several times a day.

> all cars have electrified power windows; I don’t remember the last time I
> had to physically crank down a car window

Not that rare. I last drove one a week or two ago.

> radio stations have minimal static

Depends on the station, of course. A couple of the stations I listen to can be
anywhere from "sounds great" to "can't make out a word", depending on weather,
and which side of the hill I'm on.

> TVs no longer have rabbit ears that require regular adjustment

Now we have HDTV antennas which require adjustment. When the signal is bad,
instead of a fuzzy picture that's still somewhat watchable, you get a broken
frame every couple seconds.

------
jopsen
Robotic lawnmowers and vacuums are common, reducing number of hours spent on
house work.

~~~
gwern
I understand they're a lot more common in the EU than in the US, but while
I've seen robotic vacuums (Roombas), I've never seen a robotic lawnmower, and
haven't used either yet.

------
zeckalpha
> LED lights are more energy-efficient, heat rooms less & are safer, smaller,
> turn on faster, and are brighter than incandescents or fluorescents

And they last much longer. I’ve not had to change more than one LED bulb ever,
and that seemed due to a flaky controller. I even bought a light fixture with
non-exchangeable LED bulbs because the half-life of the bulbs is longer than
fixtures now!

------
dusted
My perspective as a child during the 90s, and was a teen in the 2000s. I've
been working as a programmer the past 10 years.

[https://www.designboom.com/technology/evolution-desk-
harvard...](https://www.designboom.com/technology/evolution-desk-harvard-
innovation-lab-09-30-2014)

Looking at those two desks, I envy the person of the 90s. I envy them the
physicality of their environment, of their mind. I envy that they get to
actually, physically, organize their day and relate directly to people. The
empty desk has nothing but an interface into an artificial world where we are
now supposed to live and do everything. The room around that rectangle fades
out and becomes as irrelevant as it is empty.

I understand that a lot of things are easier and neater now, but I am not sure
if I thrive in this environment. It feels hollow and empty.

------
cosmojg
> nuisance software patents have been expiring (eg GIF, arithmetic encoding,
> MP3)

I can't wait until the day this list includes "software patents are no longer
a thing"

------
speby
Pretty exhaustive list ... here's one more:

* No need for a road atlas, or asking people for directions to their home and scribbling spoken directions down on paper * And even when MapQuest finally came around, no more need to print out the directions!

------
pjdemers
Comparing to 90s to today isn't fair to today. The 90s were a golden era
(well, at least 92-99). Compare the 70s to today. Some thing are better, some
things are worse, it probably balances out.

------
mrfusion
This made me look into Spaced repitition and wow are there really no apps on
the iPhone that are free or inexpensive?? I’d love to just try loading up the
multiplication tables for my kids.

------
cma
> hotels and restaurants provide public Internet access by default, without
> nickel-and-diming customers or travelers; this access is usually via WiFi

Most sell your data.

------
rjkennedy98
> it is now reasonably safe and feasible to live in (most) big cities like
> NYC, Chicago, or DC

Not it you make an average income.

------
davidjnelson
Lots to be grateful for.

------
bambax
How are electric windows in cars an"improvement"? It's different but it
doesn't change your life in any significant way at all. Car safety is an
improvement. Not this. Countless other things listed are in the same category.
Was it so hard to have to rewind tapes?? Those are micro-comfort things that
contribute exactly zero to our happiness.

I'm old enough to remember a time when there were no tapea at all. We weren't
worse off. Everything was memorable. Now nothing is important.

Also, cheap airfarea, cheap, disposable clothes, etc. are destroying the
planet faster than wver before. Counting "improvements" without externalities
is absurd.

~~~
transect
In my truck I can lock all of my windows to keep kids from rolling them down.
If I'm driving alone I can roll down the passenger window without leaning over
the bench. My windows have a behavior where the window will roll all the way
down automatically if I press the button with a certain duration.

All of these features mean I almost never think about the state of the windows
while I'm driving for more than a split second. I think that's a safety win.

Also it's just nice not to have to roll down a window or rewind a vhs. Micro-
comforts add up.

