Dollar Tree.

It used to have been an unreal experience witnessing the existence of these stores when they came out. Everything for a $1. No joke. The quality of some things have had corners cut and the quantity might’ve been laughable, but there was a good solid purpose for these stores.

And then I started seeing the signs after a few good solid years of shopping there. The first sign was how they stopped selling eggs. This was before the Bird Flu. They stopped selling eggs because they simply couldn’t afford to buy stock and then the price hike to $1.25 happened.

And now they’ve hiked the prices again to $1.50 for some products in a handful of stores. Additionally, they’ve incorporated items going from $2 ~ $15 so they have long lost the role and title of being the most affordable places to shop.

Gone were the days.

  • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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    12 days ago

    Google Search. Or search in general. Now it’s all shit and you have to convince it that you actually want to search what you want and not what it thinks you want. Which is sometimes hard and other times impossible. I miss Google Search, it seriously was the best.

    • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      I’m sorry I came to this late, but this one’s really the best answer.

      We talk a lot about how kids are struggling to recognize fake news, find reputable sources, etc… but I also think about how hard it is to find decent sources these days! I honestly can’t comprehend how kids are learning to do research projects and so on without the ability to easily search for stuff on the internet.

      And while there’s lots of stuff on this threat that was cool while it lasted, I think search engines are one of those things where we never even considered the possibility it would change. Businesses fail, prices go up, experiences get skimped on, but search engines were goddamn magic. They just were. Why would anyone ever want to make them worse? The idea never even crossed out minds.

    • Soulifix@kbin.melroy.orgOP
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      11 days ago

      Yeah it’s just starting to look like where no matter what search engine you use almost, they just spit out garbage results. And they try way too hard in being the swiss-army knife of everything.

      • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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        11 days ago

        Haven’t had the time to try it yet, but really doubt it’s better than Google at its peak performance.

        Is Kagi the AI powered thing? Or am I mistaking it with something else?

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    12 days ago

    Granted it’s a bit niche, but: skiing + snowboarding.

    I learned to ski as a kid back in the 90s, and have always loved it. Used to be you could get a lift ticket at alpine meadows (where I learned to ski) up in Tahoe for like 40 bucks. Palisades Tahoe (the merged resorts formerly known as Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley Palisades) now costs between 2-300 a day (surge pricing, ofc) if you buy a ticket day-of - not including rentals/demos/parking/food/etc that a snow enjoyer might also opt for.

    Yeah, fine, it’s a kinda bougie sport, but it’s kinda awful that all these PE firms who are gobbling up all the mountains in the country are not even pretending to keep the prices even remotely reasonable. I don’t need a “curated resort experience”. I just want to slay some gnar pow.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      12 days ago

      It was always bad.

      Windows 3.1 was bad. It was ugly, it was slow. The Macs of that era looked better, although their multitasking was even worse than Windows, somehow. It was pretty clear that 3.1 was just a desktop GUI over a text OS.

      Windows 95 and 98 were bad. They were graphical improvements over 3.1 / NT, but they were so brittle and janky. Remember bullshit like “TEXTFI~1.TXT”?

      The latest versions are all terrible too. Like, try to make a change to a system setting and you get the Windows 10/11 themed settings menu. But, if you try to make any kind of advanced setting change and you’re taken over to a GUI that shows that under the hood it’s still effectively running Windows XP components.

      • DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com
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        11 days ago

        I thought Win 2000 was an improvement. Didn’t Win 3.1 literally run on top of DOS? Like, DOS was the actual operating system and Win 3.1 was merely the graphical user interface/desktop environment, so it consumed a bunch more hardware resources? I think I remember having to run many programs out of DOS so that they would run more smoothly than if I used Win 3.1. In that sense, Win 3.1 was really Ski Free, Space Cadet Pinball, Solitaire, Minesweeper, and a nice file manager.

        I also liked the improvements of Win Vista, but my laptop couldn’t seem to keep up with the requirements needed for things to run smoothly. Win 7 seemed like a smoother Win Vista, so that was nice. However, I felt let down that there were no major noticeable improvements other than performance, which could also have been attributed to improvements in hardware. Around then, I started experimenting with Linux out of sheer curiosity and slowly switched to Linux 100%. In the past several years, I know about Win only from what I hear on Lemmy, so ofc I think it’s terrible, but I wouldn’t know from personal experience and judgment. I’m happy af with Linux anyway.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          10 days ago

          I recently ran Windows 2000 in a VM to pull some files from some install discs (grabbing Microsoft Train Simulator content from disc images off of archive.org to play in OpenRails in case anyone reading this is the same kind of crazy I am) and it was kinda striking how usable it was even in a modern context. Sure certain shortcuts and niceties hadn’t been thought of yet but it’s surprisingly modern for a 25 year old desktop operating system

          • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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            12 days ago

            The OS is riddled with ads. How can anyone be okay with ads running at the OS level is beyond me.

            The tracking is also getting much much worse, they spy on every fucking thing they can.

              • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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                12 days ago

                Lemmy is a bunch of Linux users who genuinely don’t know how to custom-install Windows without all the bloat

                It’s bizarre, how the fuck are they managing Linux if they can’t even do that?!?

                • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
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                  11 days ago

                  My days of installing LTSC, ShutUp10, Massgrave, modifying ISOs, unchecking 20 checkboxes during install and installing hosts files are over.

                  Nowadays I just install Linux and it does what I want without begging for it.

                • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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                  11 days ago

                  I can do that. In fact, I do that for the only device in my home that still has Windows. But my point is that you don’t want to really use a system where you need to do something like debloating the OS after every update.

                • Soulifix@kbin.melroy.orgOP
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                  11 days ago

                  Because they like the idea of doing that and still feeling like they own their computer in every way possible.

                  It’s pretty sad that the best windows experience now, is just breaking it down to pieces and custom installing.

              • DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com
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                11 days ago

                I have been using Linux 100% for the past several years without any use of Win. The last time I used Win, it was Win 7 on a work computer. All I know about Win since is from what I see on Lemmy and the very few short instances when I might look at a friend’s computer. What I remember not liking about it was a lack of control in comparison to Linux and that it would get slower and slower with updates. Is the latest Win really as bad as Lemmy makes it out to be? Are there ads in the OS? Does it truly spy on you without your knowledge?

                • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
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                  11 days ago

                  I understand there to be telemetry. As I already said, I have never, not once, ever seen an ad using Windows from 95 to 11.

              • toddestan@lemm.ee
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                10 days ago

                That’s impressive. Even the IT-managed corporate Windows 11 Enterprise installs at work have ads in it. Nothing like what you’d find buying a cheap Windows laptop from someplace like Best Buy with the Windows Home edition, but there’s still ads in places like the start menu. I can get rid of some of them, at least temporarily, but not being an admin on the machine I can’t seem to squash them entirely.

                • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
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                  10 days ago

                  I use windows both at home and at work and have never seen an ad in either place. I really don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing other people’s experiences because that’s not what I’m trying to do, but I also haven’t gone out of my way to disable any special setting or anything.

            • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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              11 days ago

              The OS is riddled with ads

              Is there a particular edition that’s prone to this? I don’t see any on my work or personal laptop. Either that or they’re so subtle that I don’t even see them.

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    12 days ago

    I think as phones have sort of plateaued we take for granted the joy in more mechanical devices like a calculator, ipod, radio, calendar, etc.

    • MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      My last phone and tablet weren’t used for anything greater than the one before it. I have no need for more powerful devices.

    • Soulifix@kbin.melroy.orgOP
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      11 days ago

      They want instant gratification, more like. Suckered into the whole “finding the perfect one” and thinking a dating app will help. Some dating apps fucking charge you to read inbox messages, the nerve.

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    11 days ago

    Flying. Ever seen those pictures where people would dress their sunday best and climb into a dual turbo prop prestine silver tube up stairs on the tarmak? Beautiful stewardesses dressed in blue with matching hats.

    Compare to now. Last I “flew” they gave my seat away and I had to fly the next day with a 3 hour layover. Perhaps I’m romanticizing, but I’d love to try the old way.

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    11 days ago

    For most of the 2010s I was optimistic about how cool cell phones were going to be. Instead they’re almost all basically the same phone/camera/web browser and I can’t find anything that even has the same features as my 2016 model let alone new ones. There’s foldables I guess but from what I’ve seen that’s not particularly useful.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Foldables easily fit in all your pockets. Whether it’s worth paying twice the price is not immediately obvious to me.

      Getting the previous generation foldable or a refurbished one can make sense.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        10 days ago

        I worked in support for a phone manufacturer that has made some foldable. From what I’ve seen they seem to be noticably more fragile than the chocolate bar form factor. Seems the screen technology needs more time to mature

        • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          I’m using one that was gifted to me (Samsung Z Flip 3). It’s not a format that I would have deliberately picked, but after a little over a year, I can’t say I find it especially fragile. However, the provided screen protector has to be changed fairly often (I did it twice already and I’m overdue for a third), which is a bit of a bother. Apparently some people just remove it. I’m not sure if I’d be comfortable doing that though.
          As for the form factor, it is slightly more convenient than a full sized phone, although it certainly doesn’t justify the markup.

          • Soulifix@kbin.melroy.orgOP
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            10 days ago

            It’s simply novelty design and oh look, they’ve got you going to spend more money having to replace screen protectors.

            I cannot imagine what it’d be like the day those models start lagging and chugging because of planned obsolescence.

            • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              The screen protectors are 10€ for a set of three (plus three sets of wrappers for the phone) so it’s not a big deal. They’re annoying to install though.

    • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 days ago

      Idk what your setup is, but one of my favorite things about my TVs (and most newer TVs) is that they have HDMI-CEC enabled, so if I hit the power button on my Chromecast or PlayStation, the TV turns itself on/off too and I didn’t even have to program the remote, or worry about pointing the remote toward the TVs IR receiver like back in the day.

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    12 days ago

    People using real words instead of saying things like “skibidi” and “enshittified.”