carry on then posted:

KozmoNaut posted:

I got my Chromebook replacement the other day. It's more or less the antithesis of that whole concept, where the Chromebook was thin and light and sleek, the T420 is thick and bulky and heavy. It feels very substantial indeed.

It's a refurbed machine, so there is a tiny bit of wear and tear, I had to shim the keyboard to keep it from flexing (known issue for pre-chiclet Thinkpad keyboards) and the hinge is only like 95% tight (after 5-6 years of use, mind). But it cost less than a decent replacement Chromebook, it still does a solid 5+ hours on the battery and it runs Linux Mint flawlessly.

I'm probably never going to buy a new laptop ever again, unless I win the lottery or something.



Buying brand-new laptops is obsolete and failed, in my opinion. Let the corporations buy laptops and discard them after a couple of years, so I can pick them up for next to nothing.

Mr.Radar posted:

Earlier today I discovered that someone had uploaded the whole series of the 90s Are You Afraid of the Dark? horror anthology show to the Internet Archive so I've been rewatching some of the episodes I vaguely remembered. One of them is "The Tale of the Phone Police". While watching the episode I couldn't help but think how many of the plot points in it wouldn't make sense to younger people today.

Firstly, the story starts with the our main character and his friend making prank calls. Even at the time the episode was made in 1994 prank calling as a pastime was already on its way out due to the adoption of Caller ID, *69, and screening your calls on your answering machine. Today it wouldn't make sense since almost nobody answers their phone if they don't recognize the number.

Then, the big sister of the main character tells him and his friend they'll be arrested by the titular "phone police" if they keep making prank calls and mentions that it happened to a kid named Billy Baxter. The friend leaves and the main character takes the phone book back to his room to look up Billy Baxter and he finds a listing with only 6 digits (instead of the usual 7). A kid today might know what a phone book was but even if they did they would probably be equally confused by a 7-digit number as they would by a 6-digit one since in the cell phone age you'll pretty much always need to specify the area code when you give out a phone number.

Of course, the main character can't resist calling this strange number and he gets a staticy connection to an old man begging him for help. He freaks and hangs up, only to get called right back . Again, *69 or caller ID makes this horror implications of this plot point less understandable.

The main character disconnects his phone and the next day explains what happened to his friend while they're out walking. His friend doesn't believe him but then they walk by a pay phone which rings and it's the same raspy old voice calling . Of course, a young person today probably wouldn't fully get the horror implications of someone or something being able to call you wherever you were even when you weren't at home.

This prompts them to visit the phone company (which is creatively called "The Phone Company") to find out what this number connects to and the secretary directs them to the "records department" in the basement. The friend decides to wait in the hallway while the main character enters, and of course it's actually the Phone Police and he's under arrest . The friend leaves and goes back to the main character's house to get help from the main character's parents. When he gets there the main character's sister doesn't recognize him or remember having a brother, and when the friend tries to prove the brother existed by showing the sister the main character's bedroom he finds it's now a sewing room with no trace of the main character.

As a kid, that last bit was the part of the episode I found the scariest. The concept that a mysterious secret force could just completely erase you from existence so that even your own family never knew you existed was terrifying and the phone company was the perfect entity to have wield this power. Back in the day, particularly in the pre-breakup "Ma Bell" era, they had the kind of power that was normally reserved for governments. If you wanted to talk to someone in real-time and you weren't together in person you had no choice but to use the phone company. If they disconnected you then you were screwed. Today you can get phone service not just with the "phone company" but also your cable company or 4 different cellular providers (or dozens of MVNOs), not to mention all the Internet-based phone and chat/messaging services. The story loses a bit of its punch in today's era of easy and cheap communication.

Finally, the friend comes up with a plan to rescue the main character. He looks up the main character in the phonebook and finds that he has his own mysterious 6-digit number now (while making a comment that "they work fast" to have gotten the new phone book out so quickly). He goes to the phone company and calls the main character on a payphone in the lobby. The main character lets it ring (as he and the friend had previously discussed as part of the escape plan) and the friend uses the loud ringer to locate where the phone police were holding the main character in the building. Of course, the concept of a phone just ringing without going to voicemail is pretty strange today.

In the end they escape and reality reverts back to normal. Oh yeah, and the framing story has the tale being told via cell phone, and at the end they reveal that the character telling the story is calling them from her own cell phone. I can only imagine how expensive that would have been back in the day.

Pilsner posted:

And they are definitely not 4000 Lumen, but they might still be fine for your purpose. They're probably around 200.

Trabant posted:

If you guessed that it was the theme to a 1970's Yugoslav TV show about WWII freedom fighters, you are correct.