We don’t indulge too often in looking back, but [Chloe Albanesisu] at PC Magazine did and wrote the tech obituary for all the tech gadgets and services that died over this past year. Some of the entries are a bit predictable: Twitter died to be replaced by X, which is exactly like it, only different. Others we hardly noticed, like Netflix stopping its DVD shipments.
Google Glass died again, but this time it was the enterprise edition. Amazon gave up on both donating money through shopping and print subscriptions via Kindle.
Glass wasn’t the only Google casualty. Gmail lost its basic HTML version and shut down its smart whiteboard product, Jamboard. They also sold off their Internet domain business in an effort to focus on core businesses. Other notable Google shutdowns include their popular podcast app and Usenet support for Groups. Oh, and don’t forget their experiment in offering Pixels phones as a subscription. That’s done, too.
As you might expect, PC Magazine’s list is a bit consumer-oriented. What hacker-centric products and services vanished this year that you’ll miss? The Sculpteo Marketplace? XYZ Printing? Start up companies collapsed in 2023 at an alarming rate, but you didn’t hear about most of them. Were there any you were especially disappointed about? Let us know in the comments.
“Amazon gave up on both donating money through shopping and print subscriptions via Kindle.”
This is new.
maybe they should sell it as therapy assist gadgets?
Guy with asperger who can not read facial emotions get support over the little screen (Smartgalss: “Person is smiling – smile back”, “Person is very angry – run you f. idiot! run!”).
A.I. generated answer options could give the real world the touch of a conversation with a NPC.
Me: Boss i need more money
Boss: No,
A.I. Glass Options:
A: Nice jacket, Bla bla…,
B: Bla Bla…,
C: Set everything under fire :-D
Or a.i. IT support: Did turn on the switch? Y/N?
The possibilties of making the real world even more confusing is endless.
I needed Google Glass. Wearing a smart watch does me no good with my arms full. I did NOT need a camera on it. Just heads up display would be great. Ugh, still waiting. I’m not neckbeard enough to wear a CRT on my face like the olden times.
Zack Freeman made his own monitor that he uses as a teleprompter.
You might be able to use that? Hmm, I wonder if he made plans..
I would have loved to see a more open google glass. It’s an excellent implementation of a HUD, camera, SoC and battery in a single device. You are never going to be able to match it with something homebrew with a raspi duct taped to your head.
Unfortunately, the hardware is still stupid second-hand expensive even after being orphaned, so the changes of someone doing the work to port a mainline kernel and drivers to the hardware is probably slim to none. Otherwise you could build a simple minimal image with a kernel and some drivers and a copy of busybox and write some software for it using SDL.
“We don’t indulge too often in looking back,”
Aren’t 25-33% of articles about retro tech?
B^)
Well… that’s the magic of this article ruined, RUINED I SAID!! :-D
This article is about the retrotechtacular articles of the future, so it is not looking back at all ;-P
Well, looking back on the scale of a year or two… retro tech has to be at least a decade back, I think.
Jamboard is actually going to die in 2024. Google just announced it’s EoL year before killing it off. But tonnes of other Google products and promises killing in 2023 (Google Stadia, Pixel Pass, etc.). More at: https://killedbygoogle.com/
Also ~12000 Google jobs killed in 2023. But don’t worry if you’re a google stock holder since the savings for those jobs and killed products let them spend $70B on stock buy backs!
Trickle down economics at its finest?
The affordable Raspberry Pi. All models other than pico.
This. Buying a raspberry pi feels increasingly like buying a PC. Although a used PC can actually be cheaper.
l dedpise the interface mess that gmail now is
the things i used are now burried and trying to open contacts triggers a popover that i cant dismiss.
they also locked most of my accounts and dissabled the secret password backup function on them.
captchas oh sweetfuckall there.
put up images of mopeds snd want me to click motorcycles (none in image ) so get flunked for that shit.
oh and the cellphone option was removed too.
some acounts were over ten years old, so just imagine the contact lists that i lost.
no one to ask for help at google mail of course.
lost the account i use for hackaday too.
Phone co made some repairs here (Lighning strike damage at street) and google kicked me out that same hour
well then lets try setting up new acounts on aother service that claims no phone needed… haha, cant open an accout without another already active email to get the secret code, etc
F.M.L.
Seems like there is a gap in the Hacker market for a device that houses a suitably large matrix of sim cards for access by one phone / modem /whatever. Not dual sim but mult-sim.
There are simbanks but not aimed to hackers, mostly to the enterprise market.
Grab a domain at Gandi.net (in France) and use their mail server without making a web page or anything else.
Mail forwarding to another account is essentially free, and the basic service comes with 5 (IIRC) (unforwarded) mailboxes you can use at that domain. Setting up the mail system is some clicks on a few menus.
Then use a real mail app instead of a browser page, such as Thunderbird, to access your mail. You will need to point your app to the SMTP server, but there’s plenty of info on how to do that.
Google suddenly wanted my phone number to log in to my already-created accounts, and I won’t give that to them, so I switched everything over to using my own domain.
My ISP has changed ownership 3 times since I moved in, so the original ISP domains (and the E-mails they gave me as part of the service) are very old forwarding addresses to the current account, and I’m expecting those to age out at some point. Getting an E-mail through your ISP seemed like a good idea at the time, but people move and get different ISPs, you have to trust the mail forwarding system, and if the old ISP goes out of business or has a problem they won’t fix it because you’re no longer their customer.
Gandi is in France and privacy oriented, so it’s a bit harder for the US to legally obtain my personal information.
Anyway my point is there are a bunch of advantages to owning a domain name, even if you don’t put up a web page.
Having your own E-mail server is one of them.
And did you by chance actually get yoiur Gmail account about the same time you’d gotten your phone? Thanks to the illogical methods behind Android phones and Google, they do tend to think that the phone number is needed. POTF (Point of the fact) if the user had gotten their Gmail account before their phone number for such a phone, they do not access for it.
All accounts now are forced to give a phone number.
Phone number harvesting is the new e-mail harvesting.
They want to ID your real name and track you 24/7, goddamn mofos.
Obviously it’s not just Google, it’s so many of them that are going that route, including people you pay and you local ‘authorities’.
Unfortunately the 5 free mailboxes with each domain are no more, even for existing domains/customers.
https://news.gandi.net/en/2023/06/faq-new-mailbox-service/
The insane bloat with gmail is unacceptable. The weight of what is essentially a text messaging app with some attachments is too damn high
Exactly… In places with poor internet connection it won’t even load at all.
And this isn’t just in the back of boyond, there plenty places in England I’ve had poor enough signal I’ve had to use the basic version, not just when offshore
The mass culling of “zero interest-rate phenomena” has been in full effect for a while. Just a side effect of this totally great no problems whatsoever economy we have right now. Inflation isn’t happening but also we have to jettison huge swathes of the US’s only remaining successful industry in order to dampen inflation
Getting rid of the basic HTML Gmail is going to be such a pain for anyone who works on ships offshore or in the back order of nowhere with next to no internet as I often do. Usually the internet is so slow that it cannot load the usual Gmail and you absolutely have to use the basic HTML version to be able to access personal email at all.
You don’t need a web browser to download the entire UI every time to access email. You simply add your gmail account to any email client software that you already have. You get online, synchronize your mailbox with the server, and then go offline again to read your mail and write your replies. You don’t necessarily need to download any other data than just the subject lines to see if there’s anything interesting.
That’s how email was designed to work in the first place, when people were using analog modems and every minute cost money. Of course Google would like you to think that you NEED to use their web-app to do it, but as long as they’re doing standard email, they have to support third party client software.
All the older MacOs are no longer downloadable from Apple. Hacks online don’t work. Thankfully my former colleague has all the older installers.