Please don’t be shocked, but I’ve been reading old #UNIX Review magazines on Archive.org, as one does.

[neilk@xoxo.zone]

@occult you’re right, and I am sorry I got persnickety there

[mhoye@cosocial.ca]

@occult @Haste Why does the machine cast the shadow of a floppy, what is the metaphor here

[wyatt@soc.megatokyo.moe]

@occult @Haste is the shadow under the machine supposed to look like a silhouette of an 8 inch floppy disk?

[occult@vox.ominous.net]

@wyatt @Haste I believe so! I’ve seen a lot of that subtle but seemingly intentional imagery in the various ads.

[ppxl@social.tchncs.de]

@occult I mean! This is what we're doing now already with trying to circumvent face IDing with the help of moddable computer games and brining.

Why wait till 2029. Laser your computer rn!!

[occult@vox.ominous.net]

@mhoye @Haste I don’t know! I agree, it looks intentional.

[curry@theforkiverse.com]

@bit101 @occult I'm ready for things to start taking longer to do. Exquisitely lengthening the time to accomplish tasks, that's my goal.

[llewelly@sauropods.win]

@occult when computing abandoned rainbows, the future went dark.

[sashin@veganism.social]

@occult three years left!

[mrbruno@mstdn.social]

@occult could happen!

[yuki@xantronix.social]

@occult scanning a QR code with my phone to login to Discord

[catmisgivings@stranger.social]

@occult I mean instead of QR codes we could have had this

[occult@vox.ominous.net]

@llewelly I'd argue there’s plenty of rainbows around the Fediverse!

[elshara@www.mediacy.net]

@sb @occult that's not bad honestly.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@occult @Haste@mastodon.social they really liked to put rainbows on computers in the 80s, i guess to indicate that they could display more than two colours.

[occult@vox.ominous.net]

@burnitdown for sure. I mean, it was a choice and it represented color graphics, but it sure hits differently in 2026!

There are lots of examples in these old magazines like this. We lost this kind of original, experimental advertising. This was all in an otherwise stuffy UNIX magazine with articles about relational databases and reports from the front lines on C standardization committees.

Compared to what we see today, it's very refreshing.

[damonwakes@mastodon.sdf.org]

@occult There's still time!

[ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org]

@occult
I could see this one becoming a real thing --- using your smart phone to project QR codes to your desktop computer's screen camera to control them or send files. Now if only we could project laser light from our smart phones.

[theraccoonbytes@theforkiverse.com]

@occult I mean is not wrong

[nekomimi@sakurajima.moe]

@occult I mean.... Hey it's kinda possible :3
Not sure how the user experience would be like using those lasers but at least if someone really wants to go for it and design that all by themselves then the image is technically correct :3