A two-panel comic strip titled "Back in the Day" and "Now." In the first panel, a man sits at a desk cluttered with 1990s technology, including a bulky cell phone, a portable CD player, a radio, a cassette player, headphones, and stacks of CDs. He thinks, "Wow, it would be great to have all that in one device." In the second panel, the man sits at a clean, empty desk with only a modern smartphone in front of him. He has a nostalgic expression and thinks, "I miss my Walkman."
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[–] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yup, thank God each device just has one lithium battery, instead of the HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS of alkaline batteries you'd go through in the life of a device in the past. You got about 6-8 hours of gameplay in a GameBoy from 2 AA batteries. Kids played these every single day. You have any idea how many we went through?

Or stereos/walkman of the time using even more? Stereos used 4-12 C/D batteries and lasted maybe 2 hours.

You have no idea how incredibly better you have it with lithium batteries and the waste they create. We used to buy alkaline batteries by the 24/48 pack as a regular grocery item.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I've used recchargeables for all my life. some of the first ones still work. No idea where they actually end up but I always brought them to the battery section at the recycle depot when they finally died.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago*

    While better, even those were terrible at first. The first ones were charged for almost as much time as they were used for. We've come a loooooooong way with battery tech, mostly for the better. At this point, battery waste is almost entirely a recycling infrastructure problem(we need more facilities doing it and more people turning them in instead of dumping them).

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