this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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[–] Kinkisthebest@lemmy.org 0 points 6 days ago

Dildoes and pocket pussies

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 88 points 1 week ago (2 children)

fax machines, both in Germany and Japan.

[–] Libra@lemmy.ml 47 points 1 week ago (3 children)

They're common in the US too in doctors offices and hospitals because of the security requirements of transmitting patient records and such.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 78 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Legally defined as secure, not actually secure.

They are fairly insecure in practice, since they are throwing the data at misdialed numbers and they are frequently placed in shared and insecure locations in the building where lots of people can access whatever comes through.

[–] Libra@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago

Sure. But as someone who used to work IT with a focus on cybersecurity, physical access to anything trumps everything else, and people who put fax machines in insecure locations will also put email servers or whatever in them. Also throwing data at misdialed numbers is a tiny threat because the odds of transposing a number or whatever and also getting a fax machine are pretty tiny.

Although the guy above you was just talking about how he works in the industry and they mostly do efax now, which.. Iono how that's supposed to be more secure than just email or whatever. I guess if you're sending to physical machines it's more secure on that end, but if the senders are using efax some of the receivers prolly are too, at which point we've lost the whole point of using fax machines.

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[–] HeyJoe@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As someone who directly manages faxing in the company i work for, yup! In Healthcare and we send out results to doctors and hospitals through faxing all day every day. We have mostly converted to electronic fax. We still control the servers on prem but the account is linked to a cloud solution so all the faxes are created with the servers and instead of using our own telephony solution like we used to, we send directly over internet to the provider who then sends out to the clients at the last leg. Hundreds of thousands of pages every month. From my understanding, it's still the easiest solution to get away with not having to implement some new system that will be subjected to audits. Faxes are accepted, and little is required to show for compliance.

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[–] RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 1 week ago

And it's WAY older than people think. The first patent for a fax like machine was granted in 1843.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 67 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

IPv4.

IPv6 became a recognized standard by 1998.

EDIT: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption

Nearly 30 years later, and less than half of the connections to Google are via IPv6.

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fucking NAT. Never should have been allowed to escape from the lab.

[–] Chocrates@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Lolol, you're not wrong. NAT made IPv6 a later problem

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] AnAustralianPhotographer@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There's no place like 127.0.0.1

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[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 48 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Steam engines.

The vast majority of our power comes from making something really hot and boiling water. Coal plant? Oil plant? Gas plant? Nuclear fission plant? Geothermal plant? The grand holy grail of energy production that would be a nuclear fusion plant? All steam engines.

Yes, unbeknownst to everyone, this is what a steampunk society realistically looks like.

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago

We made steampunk a reality by developing the technology to transfer steam power efficiently over long distances through metal wires.

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[–] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 42 points 1 week ago (4 children)
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[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 32 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It surprises me how many system utilities I use that are older than I am. I am currently initializing a disk on a cloud server with an application that was written when Ford was the US president.

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[–] ExFed@programming.dev 31 points 1 week ago (4 children)

The Wheel. We should've graduated to antigravity by now, don't you think?

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Back to the Future lied to me again!

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[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 28 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I'm surprised nobody mentioned jack plugs yet. Basically unchanged since 1877 when it was invented for phone switchboards, roughly as old as safety pins or modern hairpins (give or take a few decades)

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[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Car thermostats for the radiator. You don't want the coolant flowing when the engine first starts, because it will run like shit. So you have a cylinder filled with wax that expands with heat. That controls a valve to set the flow of coolant. Low tech, works fine, no particular reason to change it.

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[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's a used bookstore near me that has the oldest cash register I've ever seen. It has keys like a typewriter, and makes the most satisfying "ka-ching" sound when it opens. They always use it to add up your purchase and print a receipt, even when you're paying with a credit card. But I always try to bring cash when I'm there so that the drawer gets used. (And also, y'know, screw credit card companies taking their cut.)

I know that's not really "in widespread use" today, which is probably what the question meant, but that was the first thing that came to mind for me.

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[–] Fedditor385@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Fax, still in official use in Germany.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Air traffic control still uses floppy disks, windows 95, and a plastic board of paper tag numbers to keep track of shit instead of a computer.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago

To be fair I have infinity more confidence in the system you just described than whatever tech bro disruptor was going to pitch

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[–] wildcardology@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago

That's not even a government thing. It's a finance/banking thing, as most major banks are still using mainframes and legacy COBOL code for most of their business logic.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

So does pretty much the whole banking and credit industry. When you get money out of an ATM there's usually some COBOL code involved.

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[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)
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[–] scottmeme@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

SS7, part of the old ass 2g and 3g networks

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[–] toddestan@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

It surprises me how little stick-built houses have changed in the last 50 years or so, at least in the USA.

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (5 children)
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Hospitals use pagers because the frequency band they run on is better at penetrating walls. Shorter waves carry more data, but are easily blocked by walls. Pagers don’t need a lot of data, so they use really long waves.

And hospitals are built like bunkers, to avoid the potential need to evacuate patients during an emergency. Things like fire breaks between individual rooms, earthquake protections, being strong enough to stand up during a hurricane, etc… The goal is to be able to shelter in place instead of evacuating, because a mass evacuation of bedridden patients who all need monitoring equipment would be a logistical nightmare.

But this also means hospitals are really good at blocking wireless signals, because the walls are all super thick and sturdy. So they use pagers, which use long waves and can reliably penetrate the bunker-like walls. You don’t want a doctor to miss an emergency call because they were sitting in the basement; Hospitals need a wireless connection that reliably works every time. And pagers just happen to fit that specific niche.

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[–] bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)
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[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.

Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.

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