I tend to not really care for most new things, as most of it feels cheap, inauthentic or a scam to further the surviellance facist oligarchy state. Id be completely content with time frozen in 2004.
So, to be a little more positive, what are some new things that are actually good?
Note, to me, new is within the last 10 years.
I’ll start. The fediverse concept is neat.
Cell phone service.
$25/month for unlimited data at >100mpbs is definitely being taken for granted.
For sure. I remember the 5 cents per text…or whatever it was
Alright I can answer this because with all the shit there have also been a ton of cool tech that isn’t fascist, and ton of instances of the community building something awesome:
**Commercial things: **
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Sodium Batteries (I have a 18650 shipment on the way for my custom charger)
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Solar panels have dropped in price so dramatically that they are viable for hundreds of millions of people
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Prusa and Bambu have made 3d printing not just a hobby, but very functional and practical. Now people themselves can replace broken parts, create new functional parts and tools without having to make their entire hobby and personality trying to fix and optimize their 3D printer
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MCUs have blasted off the past 10 years. nRF has revolutionized the Bluetooth space with nRF52 and newer. ESP has brought WiFi to literally everyone in any device they want with whatever processor strength with no antenna design. STM is very friendly to hobbyists and has everything for motors, and NXP makes performance beasts (and all non-US companies doing the great things of course) and they have all become so much more dramatically efficient.
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Multiple MCU companies have switched to open source toolchains that are inter-compatible, more portable, and transparent, making embedded development much less relying on shitty half-baked manufacturer libraries that are incomplete for different offerings.
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FOC motor control and bringing it to the masses have created a huge step in motors and have made implementing efficient servos actually viable for open source projects
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RLCD is an up and comer that gives epaper-like reduced eye strain and outdoor visibility while having an update rate of an LCD.
Maybe older, but still great:
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open source hardware companies like adafruit, sparkfun, olimex, etc… Have made electronics so much more accessible to actually do useful things with.
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epaper displays being widely available for power savings in small devices
**Community Projects: **
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HomeAssistant has gone from an enthusiast system 10 years ago, to literally the best, and easily customizable automation system that supports every
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Meshtastic and Meshcore bringing community location services and communication to everyone for a very cheap price
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Docker and Podman. They have revolutionized the server space.
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The leaps and bounds made in self hosting software in general is incredible and taken self hosting from a quite risky and very very complicated technical endeavor to do safely to a medium difficulty hobby project that is 100x less of a time sink. Not only that, but commercial software has genuinely good replacements Traefik/caddt, crowdsec, docker, immich, paperless-ngx, jellyfin, mealie, syncthing, nextcloud/opencloud, *arr suite, etc…
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The fediverse, still in early stages, but I don’t need to explain the impact
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Gadgetbridge, turning smart wearables spying on you and selling your biometric data to insurance companies to just plain useful local devices for looking after yourself
There is more, but this is already long
I’d love to hear more a out your custom setup for 18650 sodium batteries. What are you using them for? Are you making some sort of DIY UPS?
So I am in the designing of the circuit and PCB stage right now.
The usecase is for Meshtastic/Meshcore nodes because those sit outside in a tree or in a high place outside year-round and are solar charged. I am designing it as a RAKwireless Wisblock power module that will be charged by 2, 5V, 200mA small solar panels in series. The whole project will be released on Codeberg like all of my home projects.
Later I can copy the circuit over to other PCBs for more general formats. One of my future projects is going to be an 8S pack BMS for driving a 12V water pump for off-grid rainwater collection barrels.
I am targeting 2S systems now because then the entire sodium cell can discharge if the system voltage is set to 3V and I don’t need any buck/boost, just a buck which is significantly cheaper and easier on the batteries.
I am using an STM32C011 as a custom BMS + buck charger because my original idea of using a very cheap, small mixed signal FPGA (greenpak SLG47105) wouldn’t work well for sodium because it didn’t have enough comparators to have a soft constant voltage region (gradually increasing CV voltage from 3.8V per cell to 4V along with the natural current decrease to prolong charge cycle life), it will have overvoltage/over current protections, 1A or 2A max current, resistive battery balancing, and some safety features and an I2C readout.
(Sorry, wall of text)
have created a huge step in motors
Solid word play
Everything you mention is great. However I think everyone needs GadgetBridge in their lives. Especially with the “internet helper” they’re working on to allow opt-in ability to share with internet things (like they’re working on supporting Endurain)
I agree.
Also, Health Connect now is integrated as of 2026 which is absolutely huge for actually allowing app interoperability.
Yeah, I noticed that recentjy. I had lost track when it was an initial PR. Was a nice surprise
Home Assistant
I’ve had HAOS running in a VM on an old Mac mini for the past year or so, to figure out how it works and eventually shift away from Alexa. Last week I finally got serious, shifted my install over to an M1 Mac mini I have,installed Ollama alongside it, then went around the house cataloguing all the smart devices I have and making sure they were all working in HA. I’m now at everything but 5 Govee Matter bulbs, which I’ll figure out when I’ve got time.
I’ve replicated all of our Alexa automations in HA and begun activating them to make sure everything is working, and so far I’ve been really happy with the results.
All of this from someone who only picked up Linux a year ago and is learning as I go along.
Docker
Similarly, over the past year I’ve gone from being kinda nervous of Docker (on Linux) because I can’t really see what it’s doing, to being reasonably confident at installing various bits of software that can chunter away in the background being incredibly useful to me.
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My favorite 3 things of the last decade
Electric cars, Incredible performance, low maintenance.
Steam deck, great fun in a small package, great to play games before bed
Podcasts, seriously there’s one that will speak to you.
Bonus: taskmaster, it’s entirely free on YouTube, it’s a worldwide phenomena, simple low stakes fun, akin to the great British baking show without the manufactured drama (not that there’s much in gbb)
As someone who focus on low/no-tech (edit: and older stuff in a general manner), I must say it’s a tricky question. But the answer is still obvious for me: medications.
I should have died many years ago, and if I’m still alive today (nearing my 60s) it’s thx to constant innovations in the medical fields and research in pharmaceuticals (and also thx to radical life changing decisions, but those would not have been an option at all without new medications to begin with).
Glad you’re still with us!
thx :)
Andor is arguably the best Star Wars content since the original movies
Heat pump technology has come a long way recently. In locations that stay above 0F (-18C) they’re now competitive with fossil gas furnaces for performance and cost (cost results may vary based on local incentives). Many units now work below 0F too, but they get more expensive/less efficient
Personalized mRNA vaccines to prevent pancreatic cancer recurrence after surgery have had some promising early results in clinical trials. This is one of the hardest cancers to treat, so this could be huge.
Andor is arguably the best Star Wars content since the original movies
I’ll get down voted for this, but remove the nostalgia goggles, and the original Star Wars trilogy are 7/10 movies at best. MAYBE Empire would get an 8.
A 7/10 is great when most of what hollywood shits out these days is a 1 or a 0.
You also don’t get to just “ignore” the historical impact a series like Star Wars had on the entire medium.
Maybe in a modern context, but compared to the movies at the time, it was kinda mind-blowing.
Heat pumps work great and are super common to install on homes where winter temps drop well below that. They’re so efficient they’re worth it even if you use supplemental heat for the coldest part of the year.
Andor was indeed great
We have heat pumps at my job for our factory.
They are literally useless around of below freezing in the experience here.
They exchange heat so they blow out air colder than outside air, then their entire radiator gets completely covered in ice, then it has to switch off and then the entire factory cools off while they have to turn on the resistive heaters to defrost themselves, then they turn themselves back on and because they are covered in water from defrosting, very quickly freeze again and the whole cycle repeats while the factory is very marginally warmed up during the cycle.
Yeah I don’t mean every model, make, and year is good but almost every house has one here where it’s -15C 3mo of the year and often -20C and below.
I don’t think it’s even an argument. It’s just better than the original trilogy IMO. They need more Star wars movies with the same feel.
Comments like yours reinforce my idea that I’m simply not part of the target audience for most of the modern renditions of what I liked in the past.
Induction burners for cooking are pretty cool. All the heat of gas with none of the “slowly poisoning you and may explode”.
For super duper recent news, the Giant Panda has been moved off the endangered species list and into Vulnerable status.
I saw recently they’ve cured Parkinsons for the first time, and I think HIV can be reversed now. So that’s pretty cool.
Oh, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they fixed airport and hotel wifi. I don’t know why I thought shitty wifi in hotels and airports was something I would have to live with for the rest of my life. It just always was that way, so I thought it would always be that way. But the last time I went on vacation, blazing public wifi at the airport and at the hotel. with video playing. We are the future.
You’re gonna have to link that Parkinson’s news.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stem-cell-therapy-parkinsons-china-b2880000.html
I think it was probably this one that I read, though they did not use the word cure. They significantly improved symptoms.
Batteries are about to get really good. Solid-state is close and that should be huge.
And for those not aware, by “close” they meam that solid-state batteries are being manufactured in mass this year.
Plus sodium batteries are going online too, though at a much lower rate due to the cost of lithium going down causing many sodoum battery manufacturers to declare bankruptcy since they’re having trouble with sales
Sodium companies closing is incredibly painful because also if you look at the reasons, outside of Northvolt, it is literally all startups where their investors pulled out and screwed them because lithium prices dropped and they wanted to recoup their costs with 30% market share on week 1 of launch (exaggeration of course)
Proving yet again that rich fucks are complete and total idiots who can’t look any further at all than 4-8 quarters.
China sodium is luckily going strong, so we have a fallback when lithium prices inevitably spike yet again.
Are we talking about the Donut Labs battery, or is someone alse promising to bring solid state batteries to market this year? My gut says Donut Labs is like 1/8 odds of coming through.
People have been inventing new 1000x capacity batteries every year for the past 20 years.
Good thread, since I hate a lot of “new” things. It’ll be good to read about the good ones.
I’ll add: GrapheneOS (and other custom phone OSes) giving us a choice besides being tracked by the big corpos.
Same. Updated to Graphene almost two weeks ago and have been loving it so far. The only thing I’m missing is the built in call screening. I get so many spam calls.
What do you use for call screening?
As of now, nothing. When I was on stock android I had the Pixel built-in call screening. I might try a third party service but I haven’t found one I like yet.
In Graphene’s phone app, you can go to Settings -> Blocked Numbers, and enable “Numbers not in Contacts”. That will send any call from numbers you don’t have saved directly to voicemail. I still get the occasional voicemail message that’s just 2 seconds of silence (they didn’t hang up in time) but it stopped all spam calls for me.
Ive been using GOS for two years and just learned this. Thank you kind stranger!
Gaming:
- Steam Deck and Linux gaming altogether
- Solo TTRPGs
- The TTRPG space in general
- Board games
Music making:
- Dirtywave M8
- Synthstrom Deluge
- Elektron Digitakt
- An absolute flood of amazing software and plugins
- Tons of pedals from boutique manufacturers
- Music software for mobile devices
- Import guitars are top notch without breaking the bank
PS: A ten year old GTX 1080ti can still run most modern games at 1080p…which is still a very popular entry level monitor resolution.
Still running a 980ti Classified, there’s only a handful in the overlap of “Games I want to play” and “Games I can’t play” diagram at 1440.
I’m intrigued by solo TTRPGs. Is there a particular one you can recommend?
I’d start with the one that really kicked the segment into high gear; Ironsworn. More specifically, its sci-fi (western in space) sequel, Ironsworn:Starforged.
Also, most Free League games that have been released lately have included a solo mode. Also a solo mode for Cyberpunk Red has also been recently released. Most if not all of these solo modes have been inspired or heavily influenced by Ironsworn.
Also, the PDF of the original Ironsworn is free to download. Although the setting (think viking) is not to everyone’s liking, there are hundreds of re-skins and hacks for it.
Id be completely content with time frozen in 2004.
You mean when the US had just invaded Iraq based on lies and greed for oil? Fabricated entirely from a bullshit “global war on terror”?
I do like highlighting things that have gotten better (and thank you for the thread), but rose-tinted glasses and all.
99 then ;)
There’s always shit going on.
Solar panels combined with House batteries or Vehicle to grid is cheaper and more reliable than a backup generator, and in many cases, is even cheaper than using energy from the grid.
The majority of materials in each battery and solar panel can be recycled into new batteries and solar panels at end of life (often after 25+ years), so the raw resources are only needed once.
Most new batteries don’t use rare or controversial materials.
Car back up cameras.
Waze
2025 Seadoo GTX models
Many Broadway Plays
Keypad front door locks
Online DVRs
Legalized gay marriage
Legalized pot
Waze was founded by former members of Unit 8200, but has been owned by Google since 2013. I do like that it can alert people to the presence of police, but that’s about it.
Edit: Gay marriage is pretty cool, though!
I do like that it can alert people to the presence of police, but that’s about it.
Apple Maps does this now as well.
Are the superchargers lasting longer on the new doo’s? I’ve been out of the loop for a while but I never really cared for the rotax supercharger setup. Kawi made the ultra fugly on the last update though.
Fallout tv show
They’re off on official lore big time but that hardly matters to me because they captured the essence of the series perfectly 👍
