When you connect a new device to a ‘smart’ tv, you must pay homage to the manufacturer with a ritualistic dance. Plugging and unplugging the device. Turning them on and off in the correct sequence like entering a konami code.
Every time you want to switch devices, the tv must scan for them. And god forbid you lose power, or unplug something. You are granted the delight experience of doing it all over again.
I have fond memories of the days of just plugging something in, and pressing the input button. Instant gratification. It was a simpler time.
What is some other tech that used to be better?
The physical aspect of laptops - the old ThinkPads were fucking amazing and while their specs may not be much to look at today they were equipped with adequate cooling and could take a fair amount of beating.
I don’t want a light thin laptop that I could snap in two with one hand… I want a laptop that isn’t going to overheat and can survive a few tumbles when someone trips over the power cord.
That’s an interesting example. Around 2010, I had a MacBook Pro (granted, before they were super thin) and I’d regularly pick it up by the screen. I then had a thinkpad for work and did the same thing and it cracked in half.
To be fair, that’s a wild way to lift a laptop.
This is a funny one for me because I actually burned my lap on a ThinkPad back in something like 2003.
Buttons.
Everything used to have buttons and switches for things. You knew when you activated something because you could feel the button getting pressed.
That’s the main reason I stick with OnePlus. The notification slider is a feature the I need on every phone.
Retrofuturism, fuck yeah. I have a major soft spot for stuff like that because of movies like Aliens and Star Wars.
Not even that, I just want a fucking keyboard on my phone again, and for actual buttons in my car so I can feel when I change the song on the radio or whatever.
It’s not just a “soft spot” thing though - the tactile confirmation of a button press is life and death if you’re driving a car.
Does your car have the rocket launcher button directly next to the volume knob or what do you mean with life and death?
I mean looking down at a touch screen that offers no tactile feedback is dangerous. And feeling a button click that your muscle memory can intuitively find is not.
In Star Trek Voyager, pilot Tom Paris creates a custom shuttlecraft called the Delta Flyer. Tom’s a history geek who spends his holodeck time repairing antique muscle cars from the 20th century. So naturally, he designs the Delta Flyer with lots of analogue switches and dials instead of the usual Starfleet Okudagram touch screens. He thinks they’re much better.
He only wanted to make sure that no one else could fly his shuttle.
Whoever thought a touchscreen is the optimal way to interact with a wearable fitness device while running and drenched in sweat is really dumb. Just give a couple buttons, I can’t fucking swipe while moving like that.
Oh yeah when the click hit just right. Soft touch buttons on a 1990s Sony tape deck mmmmm
Kia gets this right with their window controls Just the right clickyness.
Keyboards. They had way better and more innovative switches back then. You’ll be hard pressed to find anything today that doesn’t use cherry, or cherry clones.
Happens to everything that becomes a commodity.
But Model Ms and Model Fs are still in production, and the MK ecosystem has never been so vibrant
Google Assistant/Google Now (RIP).
My phone 10 years ago used to have a component called Google Now on Tap which would show me useful information like where I parked my car, when my next appointment is, what my commute looks like, what the weather is going to be, etc.
It was so context aware and good at predictive algorithms, I never really had to do more than swipe left to get what I needed. But of course now that’s in the “Killed by Google” graveyard because it didn’t enforce enough “engagement” with apps and services that could feed you ads.
In general, I find Google Assistant to be less helpful overall and worse at understanding what I am trying to do. It used to be a daily convenience for me, but now I can’t remember the last time I ever bothered with it. Not to mention every time you use it these days, it has to throw in a “By the way,…” suggestion that just feels like an ad for itself, because it is never related to anything I want to do.
Miss now on tap a ton.
The assistant used to be able to translate any app on the fly. It was great when living in a foreign country and trying to figure out what those text messages I got meant.
It was truly the only thing I used assistant for. I’ve had it disabled since they dropped that feature.
Analog cable with a cable-ready TV was better than digital cable. No set-top box with bullshit rental fees, no weird lag waiting for it to “boot up” or change channels, no interactivity so they couldn’t easily try to upsell you, etc.
user friendly ‘self installs’ in many places…
So much. So, so, SO much.
Websites in general. More bloat, more CPU usage, worse design, less content. This is even worse for shopping sites, USAians probably only know Amazon, but people from other countries definitely know a big local name that used to have a much better site years ago compared to today.
Smart TVs are the worst. You’re better off buying a shitty china android tv box than a smart tv, both will suck up and sell all your data, but at least the latter can be kept off when you don’t need the “smart” part.
Smartphones. Not only the whole “LETS COPY APPLE” on hardware and software design, but also on how fast it’s doing a lot of the stupidity that followed PCs: phones keep getting more powerful, programs keep getting slower and more resource intensive because
fuck you“new features”Ad tech. Yes, I’d glady go back to shitty popups over clickjacking, infinite redirects that don’t show up on the “back” button, annoying anti-adblocks, 70% of pages being advertising and fingerprinting bloat, javascript/css having control to FUCKING HIDE AND DISABLE MY SCROLL BAR
Tinder. It was good 10 years ago, enshittification accelerated aroudn 2017. Free accounts have had a hard time getting any matches as far back as 2019, as I recall from experience. Nothing like having received “41” likes, going through 300 profiles with “nope” and not losing a single match.
javascript/css having control to FUCKING HIDE AND DISABLE MY SCROLL BAR
That sounds like something you could definitely turn off in browser settings. It never happens in Tor Browser, which is just souped up Firefox.
Also:
TinderEvery widely-used dating app.They’re all trying to be Tinder, because it’s good business. It turns out, making an app for someone to delete is exactly as commercially self-defeating as it sounds.
Other dating apps weren’t good back then, that’s why I singled out Tinder. I remember that, before tinder, every app/site was all about charging premium subscription to read and send messages
Honestly I’d prefer long-form profiles and pay-by-message over a slot machine filled with faces. I guess we just like different things.
but people from other countries definitely know a big local name that used to have a much better site years ago compared to today.
No, that one was always slow. While the other has an atrocious search.
I remember back a decade or so ago when phones had a fully customizable ringtone option, wouldn’t constantly tell you they’re overheating when it’s only thirty degrees out, had a block function that actually worked, didn’t dump spam calls on you, wasn’t always spying on you, and didn’t cost so much per month, often coupled with the possible fact you don’t actually use it everyday and maybe only have it to keep your overworried parents pleased.
I don’t know about you, but for the unforeseeable future, mine is, for the large part, ghosted. I remember being in a dispute with someone where they asked what my number was as a form of feeling secure about me. “What age do you live in” he bitterly asked, “everyone uses a phone, are you a fake zoomer who is BSing me”. This is the pedestal the existence of phones thrives on. Imagine if I was Amish, do you think I would survive past the job interview stage of finding a new job?
Even when I had high hopes, the way people would market the thousand-app aspect of it was absolutely fierce, you couldn’t go tech shopping without the person selling you stuff going on and on about the smallest nook and crannies in each extra feature like they were Steve Irwin trying to teach you the beauty of whatever animal you just happened to step on (RIP Steve Irwin), and you couldn’t do so much as go to a festival without a business person from the phone stall running up to you asking to pay for new plans like a Jehovah’s Witness on a leash (always stood out to me because they were the only ones who would operate like this).
Analogue TV was much faster with much lower latency than digital TV.
Back when Nintendo light zapper games worked, the power bars you stopped on games were accurate, and guitar hero was perfectly synced in timings.
Speaking of analog: Light Guns don’t work on modern televisions due to the high latency relative to CRT screens (which had essentially zero latency).
Mostly because of the timing of the electron beam. That let the game see which target you hit. Otherwise you could hit everything by shooting any bright light.
Analogue TV
I mean, the vacuum tubes will take quite a while to warm up at the start.
If there’s one thing I don’t need from a TV, then it’s low latency. The pause, rewind, and skip functions are some serious stuff, on the opposite.
It was funny during the transition period. You could hear through the timing of cheers during football matches who in the neighbourhood was analogue and who was digital.
But yeah, recording features were really nice for the transition to streaming.
It was so in the football world cup of 2014 IIRC. Outside was public screening and they had a sat dish while we watched a delayed stream. We could hear the goal seconds in advance. But that’s an edge case.
Latency doesn’t matter if you’re just watching television, but it’s very important if you’re trying to hook a game console up to it.
Oh man, remember when you just had to press the channel number on the remote.
Now you gotta use menus in a Smart TV that takes 2 seconds to process an input event.
Reminds me of the time I had to make an interface for a set top box by Deutsche Telekom. It was severely underpowered and I had to work with some very quirky browser. I think the browser was based on Internet Explorer.
It was super slow and couldn’t handle anything asynchronous. Which meant that it would lock up for even the simplest operation. And they insisted on their buttons having button down animations. Which meant that I had to slow down the incredibly slow machine artificially so that you could see the animation. And it wasn’t enough to slow it down just for the animation duration. You had to give it some extra time because it was so damn underpowered. I think in the end a button push took a whole second extra time.
And it was still faster than what they had produced themselves before that, even though their thing didn’t have any animations.
The worst was that those machines actually did have a fancy hardware accelerated interface one could use. But for some reason they weren’t ready yet for that. So everything I had done was just a placeholder anyways.
Swords are kind of crap now compared to the Renaissance. These days they come out of malls to be put on walls.
I love how “technology” means “man-made” and you think of swords.
Yeah I was trying to make a cheeky joke.
With the ever growing HEMA and reenactment scene, there are a bunch of really good forges/manufacturers putting out fantastic training equipment, replicas and custom work, sharp and blunt.
With our machining and material science I’d guess that a high end sword now would blow the originals out of the watee
I mean you can still buy good quality swords, you just don’t buy them from the mall.
Where else can mall ninjas get their gear?
Mall swords? That’s an apples and oranges comparison.
I feel like the problem is less with the technology itself and more with some of the stuff within and around it. So let me list my favourite bugbears:
- Buttons!
Here’s the thing about buttons and knobs: they are definite. When you press them, you KNOW you pressed them, you can use your finger to feel for them without activating other stuff by accident. Back in the day with my cheap-ass chinese MP3 player, I could change tracks and playlists without taking it out of my pocket just by using tact and muscle memory.
Nowadays with my smartphone even something as basic as skipping a track requires me to take it out and unlock the screen. It’s like. Sure, the phone does a lot more stuff, and can stream stuff from the internet so I don’t have to download every track (even if I keep a local library for my favourites in ogg format), it has bluetooth for wireless headphones, a lot of good shit – But that little bit of user experience is just dead and buried.
Heck, my older sister tells me she used to text her friends in class without taking her phone off her pocket. Imagine! IMAGINE typing a text on one of those old phone number pads, just by muscle memory and tact! It may not be the ideal user experience, but holy shit, it was possible! Try doing anything even close to blind typing on a modern smartphone.
Another point: when something goes unresponsive on a device with just a touchscreen, you experience a confusing and annoying experience as all you have feedback-wise is the screen and sometimes it freezes and you’re swiping and tapping and just praying something happens.
When a computer with keys and buttons goes unresponsive you can do the three-fingered-salute and that usually gets it to do something, and because the keyboard is a physical object, it can’t be hidden from you by a crashed OS.
Nowadays even kitchen appliances are dropping buttons and knobs. My parents’ dishwasher is all touch-buttons, sometimes they brush against it while walking around the kitchen and lo and behold, their butt pauses the washing cycle. Something that wouldn’t be an issue with a much cheaper set of regular-ass buttons.
To say nothing of cars and the horrid security issue that fusing a tablet to the dashboard and replacing every control with just that has proven to be.
- Customization!
Used to be, Windows 9x let you change every colour of your UI right from the built-in settings app and came with a dozen colorschemes built-in, and Windows XP came with three built-in themes and could with just some changing around (you replaced like ONE dll file, a single copypaste), support themes that totally changed the look of the OS. Nowadays you get “White” and “Black” and that’s it.
And like, that’s windows, a corporate-ass proprietary system for corporate jerks – But even Linux – Linux! the darling of nerds who like to change everything in their computers (like me!) has caught this illness – And you’ll see people defending this. Saying that having no theming support and only having users be able to change highlight colours if even that is the “right way” to do it.
On the note of customization – In the back-then times, chat applications let you set fonts and colours to give your messages “your look”, and your friends could do the same. – Fuck! The application me and my mates used for playing RPGs by text back in the early 10s supported not just font colours, but also complete rich-text, and would let you set different colours for like, things said by a character vs. narration, resulting in an utterly beautiful formatted text.
Don’t get me wrong, we use Telegram/Discord for that now and having a fully searchable archive of everything that we did and talked about is great and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But the most customization you get is – Setting a profile picture. The most formatting you get is bold/italics.
Webforums would let you have an avatar, a user title under the avatar (that many forums let you customise!), and a signature. Nowadays with things like Lemmy you have to squint to see a person’s username.
And like, it’s not like there is something about the modern technologies unto themselves that prevents these bits of customisation: Computers are better at drawing shit on screen than ever, internet connectivity has only gotten faster, and we figured out ‘sending some markup codes to make rich text’ as a thing way back in the 80s. We lost all that simply because the people making the applications don’t want to have it.
I feel like for every neat thing that new technology provides us, it takes three steps back for entirely human and not at all technological issues. read: capitalism
I got my first dishwasher a few years ago and decided to go sort of all in and get a solid mid range one instead of the cheapest option because I was so excited to not have to do dishes.
The fucking touch buttons are the worst fucking god damn bullshit pieces of shit I’ve ever experienced. From the jump even when they worked ‘properly’ it just felt weird, but a couple years later and half the time the touch doesn’t register. Sometimes there’s the slightest but of crud or water on there and the thing goes crazy and becomes super sensitive all of a sudden, usually I spend 5 minutes loading the dish washer and 10 minutes trying to get it to register which button I pushed.
I want real physical buttons.
Also while I’m on the topic I was highly disappointed to learn that you still have to wash food and stuf off of dishes before you put them in. I don’t know why I thought I could throw a plate with crusted lsagana on it the dishwasher but I did. I thought all dishwashers had some sort of garbage disposal thing built into it. They do not.
You shouldn’t need to wash food off. Was that in the manual or something that someone told you? Just scrap off what you can. Too much gunk can clog the filter and also end up filling the base with water and tripping an E15 error.
Wait a dishwasher with buttons on the outside? I have only seen ones that had them on the inside. Physical and touch.
Odd.
All the ones I’ve seen have the interface on the outside. Like on the door. Usually at the top.
Well yes but once you close the door the buttons are not accessible anymore?
Nope. Still accessible on the front of the door. Dunno what to tell ya.
Okay. I have never seen such a dishwasher. Where I live they all have buttons on the top of the door but in such a way they are hidden after closing the dishwasher.
This is my Bosch Silence Plus 44-DBa dishwasher and the buttons are still visible.
This is my uncle’s bosch silence plus (I am currently not home) but ours has buttons positioned exactly the same. So does any washing machine any of my relatives have.
Touchscreen in cars are so bad for safety. Buttons mean you don’t have to take your eyes off the road
Literally what I said.
Heck, my older sister tells me she used to text her friends in class without taking her phone off her pocket. Imagine! IMAGINE typing a text on one of those old phone number pads, just by muscle memory and tact!
I got a car with a T9 input and I was pleasantly surprised at how good I still was at typing without looking
Uhh Linux is a kernel and on its own doesn’t even support graphics much less customising them.
But if you wanna actually blame someone, we’ll need to know which software youre talking about - could be OPPO’s ColorOS for all we know.
That being said a big name in the Linux world is KDE, and they have one of the best theming engines Ive ever used. Everything QT follows the theme - so much so I didn’t even realise how ugly some apps look on windows (like prism launcher not matching my file explorer?? Eww)
That being said I couldn’t agree more with the first part, and in linux specifically I wish we had more ‘basic display driver’ like tools to handle emergency situations.
“I use Linux as my operating system,” I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. “Actually”, he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!’ I don’t miss a beat and reply with a smirk, “I use Alpine, a distro that doesn’t include the GNU Coreutils, or any other GNU code. It’s Linux, but it’s not GNU+Linux.” The smile quickly drops from the man’s face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams “I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT’S STILL GNU!” Coolly, I reply “If windows were compiled with GCC, would that make it GNU?” I interrupt his response with “-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even if you were correct, you won’t be for long.” With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man’s life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I’ve womansplained him to death. Here is a quick text about GNU/Linux:
"I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!"
Understood? No? Here then:
“I installed Linux and the feeling of freedom and privacy hit me so hard that I immediately began committing crimes, knowing that the FBI could never track me. Piracy, sexual assault, trademark infringement, petty larceny, tax fraud, you name it. I also own several fully automatic firearms even though I live in the state of California, but it doesn’t matter. Ever since I removed Windows 10 from my computer and replaced it with Arch Linux, and began using a PinePhone as my daily driver phone, police can’t even stop me in traffic. Windows may have a lot of video games, but the benefits of Linux should not be understated.”
First, I love this.
To be fair to the original poster though, he did not do the “GNU / Linux” thing. His point seems to be that “Linux” is not enough information to know much about the graphics stack and that seems fair since there is Wayland / Xorg and an array of DE, WM, and toolkit options.
Have you tried Chimera Linux? It does not even use GCC. It is even less “GNU” than Alpine but no less “Linux” and I do not mean just the kernel.
Uhh Linux is a kernel and on its own doesn’t even support graphics much less customising them.
I think we all realise that when someone says “Linux” in casual conversation on the internet, they mean existing well-known distros that include far more than just the naked Kernel, because no one who uses Linux is using just the Kernel, even headless servers aren’t “just the kernel”.
ANYWAY, I mostly am bitching about Gnome, but other DEs and WMs caught that bug as well to varying degrees. As have a dozen unconnected libre programs. Just for one example try finding a Matrix client that DOESN’T look like a shittier version of Discord (… And doesn’t run on the Terminal)
There was even a collective of libre application developers that got together specifically to chastise people for using themes and to beg DEs to disable all theming by default because “muh app’s branding and identity!”
Everything QT follows the theme - so much so I didn’t even realise how ugly some apps look on windows
Unless you’re using Flatpaks. Then you have to spend an afternoon metaphorically beating your computer with a metaphorical hammer to get the apps (not just qt, gtk too) to look like the rest of the OS.
and in linux specifically I wish we had more ‘basic display driver’ like tools to handle emergency situations.
It’s true. It would make the whole thing more resilient.
Of course, but by just saying Linux you’re bound to be wrong somewhere - I’m just highlighting its so broad its an essentially useless definition (42% of all computers run it by the way). Gnome is pretty shit for customisability, so what’s more customisable than having another option?
By looking at ‘just Linux’ you couldn’t be more wrong for the core argument.
It also shifts the blame to many smaller devs like matrix which tbh they’re mostly doing work for free so who’s gonna complain they don’t want to add extra complexity, just get in that source code if you really care. And in the age of such easy frontend engines an experienced could probably whip up their own in a week.
Also ive never had issues with qt/flatpaks, using prism launcher as an example, its seamlessly followed my color scheme (not saying bugs don’t exist somewhere I’m not seeing, but there certainly is 'just works support to some degree).
I you’re gonna be mad people don’t like something, yikes open source isn’t for you - git as a whole all but is designed to handle disagreements without breaking its stride.
Car stereos.
They used to have buttons and tape decks and cd players in em. From the factory.
I don’t want to do a complex install of some aftermarket thing. I want a car stereo with buttons, knobs, a tape deck, cd player, am/fm and aux input that looks like it belongs in my cars interior and is designed with the same ideas as the rest of the cars controls.
I still feel touchscreen controls are such a bad idea in cars. Old stereos have dots and grooves on them so you can operate them without having to take your eyes off the road.
I’m on the fence about this as most (all) modern cars also have steering wheel controls so you don’t even really need to move your hands much. My car is from the mid '10s and the touch screen is absolutely slow garbage but I was just in a friend’s 2020ish Sienna van and her touchscreen is lightning fast like a smartphone which was fine to use comparatively. I do agree that having all the control on the touchscreen sucks but hers still had physical buttons for the HVAC and other commonly used items.
XMPP > Matrix | Slack | Telegram
How is XMPP better than Matrix?
I think a better question is how matrix is better than XMPP. I don’t know much about it but I think the answer is “it isnt”.
Matrix has better encryption protocols, its always been an afterthought for XMPP, and I am worried XMPP doesn’t have the mindshare to fix it.
XMPP is the better protocol, hands down.
They are both using the exact same double ratchet Signal protocol for end-to-end encryption down to the same problems of other clients keys for haven’t used in a while due to ‘inactivity’.
The only difference is that XMPP is an extensible protocol where you very much can drop encryption all together if that doesn’t suit your use case for the protocol (such as not chat). However, all modern servers folks actually use for chat comminacations follow with the Conversations compliance suite & OMEMO support is expected in clients—meaning everyone using XMPP for standard coms in 2024 have a good encryption story.
Matrix’s extensibilty is limited due to the choice of JSON over XML relying on adhoc, stringly-typed message names. Due adopting an eventual consistency model, Matrix server can’t be run on a potato in your bedroom & most folks are relying on public servers rather than the decentralized, federated self-hosted tendency of the XMPP network in practice not just theory. Most users are on Matrix.org or Matrix.org-provided servers syncing all metadata back to a single entity started with funds from Israeli intelligence. If you ask me which one has a better story for freedom, it’s going to be the one that is lightweight enough & designed to be individually-hosted over the defacto centralized option with resource-intensive clients.
TIL. What are some good clients?
Also, how does ActivityPub compare, because that’s what we’re using right now?
Like Matrix the clients aren’t all equivalent without feature parity (& no concept of the flagship or implementation client). For desktop, Gajim has the most power user features but issues rendering in smaller windows like a tiling split (& being written in Python has other issues). Dino is feature-complete & calls tend to always work—great if not connected to tons of chats. Profanity is the best TUI which is very fast but usability is really good for some things & really bad for others (like accepting no OMEMO keys). I use all three depending on the environment & task. Android it is a lot clearer where Cheogram takes the cake for me being a Conversations fork but with OLED black support as well as webxdc. For the web, Movim has the best UX/feature set & can be used anywhere a browser can with PWA support.
ActivityPub is a JSON-based protocol for seems primarily built for social networks, with the DMing experience normally not being secure or particular fast. XMPP is largely for building networks for passing messages & client presence—which can be extended to support PubSub like MQTT. It isn’t normally built for social networks but Movim & Libervia have extended XMPP to be a social network.
Hmm. Looks like Libervia is working on bridging XMPP and ActivityPub, as well.
I was just thinking, I don’t know ins and outs of it all, but ActivityPub is often compared to Matrix, so if XMPP is a better version of Matrix does that mean ActivityPub could be improved upon?
Most electric appliances in the second version. Always some lock-in anti repair bullship.
- email. Before Microsoft fucked it up with html and “some asshole would like to recall this email” type bullshit.
- web search, obviously.
- any fucking software that you have to rent.
- so, so much more.
Anything with asbestos in it. It’s just a truly amazing material, with the one catch it happens to dangerously irritate lung tissues. Relevant XKCD.
Asbestos is mostly bad to the people that work with it, or manufacture products with it. If you have asbestos in your house or building, 99+% of the time it’s fine, and you don’t need to do anything at all. All of the remediation that we did in the 90s and early 2000s did more harm than good. Like, floor tiles with asbestos; how are the chrystotile fibers embedded in the tile going to break out in enough volume to cause harm to people?
On the other hand, the people that manufactured and installed asbestos-based products were often entirely fucked over.
Asbestos is not harmless to people living with it, all structures need repair and modification eventually (regularly) and unknown asbestos cutting or chipping can be incredibly hazardous.
Undisturbed asbestos is def. harmless to the people living in a structure. The hazards to a homeowner that does their own work will be minimal. The hazards to a professional that does many renovations is pretty significant, because they’re likely to see many cases over the years.
It’s like cigarettes; one isn’t going to hurt you, and even a pack won’t hurt you. But regular and repeated exposure will.
It’s extremely easy to disturb asbestos, it does not take a large chronic exposure to get health consequences, it takes a very small amount of acute exposure or even less chronic exposure. Generally you will be fine from incidental one-off exposures, but if you live in a home with say, asbestos tiles in your kitchen, or asbestos in the paint or drywall, it can be very easy to build exposure from reno or damage from normal home wear. Not to mention it’s extremely expensive to modify because of the required controls, meaning it disproportionately effects low income households, who both struggle to afford preventative maintenance, and struggle to afford the reno.
There’s a reason asbestos ppe is decon controls roughly equivalent to mercury, lead, and beryllium.
Asbestos isn’t an issue if it isn’t airborne, and it’s not going to be airborne in any significant amounts if it’s in, for instance, tile, pipe insulation, or wallboard, unless you’re cutting them for some reason.
“People who become ill from asbestos are usually those who are exposed to it on a regular basis, most often in a job where they work directly with the material or through substantial environmental contact.” You are very unlikely to have “substantial” environmental contact in a typical 50s/60s/70s home, unless you are doing substantial renovations, because most of the fibers will be encapsulated in the material they were used with.
Asbestos PPE is made with the understanding that a person that is using it will be working directly with asbestos, or will be exposed to significant amounts. For the typical person, it’s as unnecessary as it is to wear PPE to a gun range.
Sibling in existence I know asbestos must be airborne. You aren’t refuting anything by repeatedly saying that. Respond to the words I am saying or I can only assume you are copy pasting talking points.
…And what could I say that you wouldn’t take as a copypasta talking point? The amount of dust that a homeowner would deal with, even with a fairly modest renovation, simply ain’t that much, compared to the people that were ending up with lung cancers and asbestosis. AFAIK, there have been no documented cases of a person contracting either disease simply because they lived in a home that had asbestos, unless they also worked extensively with the mineral.
