I prefer pressing buttons and turning nobs in the car.

Software engineering.

Back in my day(™), it was an engineering role, where science reigned. Anyone even attempting "vibe coding" would've been rightfully laughed out of the room.

It's a task that should take concerted effort, with specific goals and performance metrics in mind. Just getting the task done wasn't and shouldn't be good enough.

I don’t like electric can openers. I strongly prefer to just use a manual one. I just see an appliance that has but one use and requires electricity to be tremendous waste.

TV.

I hate the smart-TV workflow, its a terrible user experience: Turn the TV on... wait for the smart-TV OS to load... land on an app menu... navigate around and choose an app... wait for the app to load... select a profile... wait for the list of shows to load... scroll almost endlessly through shows... choose a show, finally... wait for the video to load...

I miss when you turned the TV on and it was just instantly playing whatever channel you last had on, with one single interaction. I miss not having to make the conscious choice of what to watch and feel overwhelmed by so many options. I miss TV programs being a common experience, like an event, that everyone would be talking about together the next day, instead of everyone watching their own thing on their own schedule.

This is kind of niche, but I mix concerts for a living and newer consoles and shows are all scene based, every song has a scene, and most of the time every verse and chorus in the song has a sub scene. It is a breath of fresh air to be able to mix with no scenes and have to rely on pure skill and intuition. Those shows tend to have a better feel and be more energetic, albeit less polished. They are also more fun, and a little bit more stressful.

many countries need to go back to reasonable inconvenience for superior and ethical product. same-day shipping is accelerating the speed of climate change so no you don't get to have it actually. no, fruits and vegetables are not available 24/7, seasons matter again. etc and etc. we need to go back to all of this. we have to reduce the strain.

I liked connecting to irc servers and setting up a znc bouncer (also an on ramp into self hosting!) way better than anything matrix and discord do.

We had mumble for voice chat and that was perfectly serviceable.

As a software and electrical engineer who has worked in life system critical projects as well as foundational financial systems with strict uptime and performance requirements....

My home is as basic as humanly possible, no automation, manual systems for everything. Anything that must be digital is untrusted, isolated, and has a backup. A cabin in the woods off grid is the only way I feel comfortable

Dating. It's hard to manufacture that initial spark in an app.

Photography. Film was so advanced, having a layer for each major colour, every film stock has a different feeling. The only downside was cost, but you only took a picture when you were sure it is a good picture. Now we have tons of digital garbage because we take 100 pictures at once.

Paper boarding tickets and having someone who works for an airline actually be able to help you directly when something goes wrong.

I love a manual shift car, feels so much better to drive than automatic. Make bread from just flour, water, and salt, sourdough is an older method than dry yeast but it works better for me.

I also love radio, literal airwaves, works when the wifi goes down, battery radios can work during emergencies but also I just love the tech it is so old and so cool. And getting music curated by humans (we have a local community station) is great.

I daily drive a clapped out 80s sports car with no AC and a broken radio. The true connection you can feel to a classically engineered machine when there's zero distraction or convenience is hard to describe. You learn every noise, every smell, every quirk of handling and weight transfer, gain intuition about how the chassis will react to every abnormality in the road surface, have the shifter and clutch become subconscious muscle memory where you don't even realize you're doing it, etc. There's a variety of reasons the average person should drive a newer car but I personally love an old hooptie.

I prefer how Nazis were dealt with in the past

Just pop in a magnetic screwdriver bit holder and you have strong power and perfect control.

It countersinks with ease but without the risk of screwing too deep like its electric counterpart all too easily does.

Dating, though i have met my partner online too. Not dating app but a forum.

Data, i LOVE PHYSICAL STUFF. TRY TO TAKE THAT AWAY STREAMING SERVICES!

And politics. Used to actually be honorable and people across the board worked together for the good of their country.

I've never brought a computer/laptop to class in uni except when I needed to do a presentation. I vastly prefer to take notes by hand because I find that I retain info much better. And I'm a massive doodler. I'm pretty pen and paper playing ttrpgs as well.

I want back my Dumb TVs!! I dont want everything to be connected!

I prefer D&D 3.5e over all revisions.

Shadowrun 3E is so much better in so many ways, not least of which is that the "Wireless World" additions make hacking so boring and easy compared to how it worked prior. Don't even need a party

Physical controls are better than touch sensitive controls.

Wireless controllers last way longer when you can turn off the vibration, speakers, microphones, lights and other things that don't NEED to be there to control something (but I do like adaptive triggers when not just used as a secondary vibration motor; clicky tension feedback for shooting guns feels awesome tho).

Dumb phones. I've grown to hate smartphones, apps, and all that goes with them.

Literally anything involving AI bullshit.

Would love to pay a mortgage instead of paying rent

It grinds my gears that programs are called 'apps' now. On phones it was normalized immediately, so, sure. Computers run programs, though, god dammit.

In the 90s, I felt like I knew so much about computers, both the hardware and the software, but I've definitely fallen off from all the improvements in the past 20 years, and I'm so Goddamn lost now. I miss those simpler times when it was more about the physical aspects of a PC and less about the technical aspects.