Age verification challenge:
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@Steveg58 @pheedbackPhil Pay phones in the UK didn't have buttons until well into the 1980s. They ran on pulse dialing and if you needed long distance you could either dial the area code *or* talk to the operator.
@cstross @Steveg58 @pheedbackPhil button B predates me, but it must have been in the UK because i've seen them in old UK movies — and i seem to remember Hancock had a "bit" about them?
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@christineburns No, I just put up with the leakage.
@cstross @christineburns we went from pencils to ballpoints once it was time to use pens.
Not quite 60 yet, decimal / metric happened the year or so before I went to primary so I missed the change but it was still all new to the teachers which was a weird feeling; counting skills went up to 12 as a matter of course but no-one explained why or gave us anything to apply it to. Also calculators became a standard thing a year or so before we hit the exams, we got school-approved ones issued
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@pheedbackPhil @Steveg58 There were no buttons on phones when I grew up. Just rotary dialers talking to Strowger electromechanical exchanges at the Post Office. (Motors and relays!)
@cstross @pheedbackPhil @Steveg58
Until the late eighties in Argentina. In the early nineties we sold all of our public infrastructure to US and European consortiums and they dumped their slightly obsolete communications gear on us. Good times for phreaking.
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@lizmeyer Yep, calculators weren't permitted in maths exams until I was 15, and we had to learn to use a slide rule. (I was right on the cusp of the transition—got my first basic four-function calculator aged 13, and I'd already learned how to do the operations longhand, so it was a time-saver, not a replacement for learning.)
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Age verification challenge:
Growing up, I used a gramophone to play my mum's 78rpm jazz records (on shellac, not vinyl). And was taught to indicate I was about to make a turn by sticking my arm out the driver's side window on vehicles that didn't have indicators. (It was on the driving test back then.)
@cstross
I remember both these things. -
@stevewfolds @cstross blotting paper soaked in inkwell and fired at the ceiling with ruler!
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@stevewfolds @cstross blotting paper soaked in inkwell and fired at the ceiling with ruler!
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@stevewfolds @cstross i like to think i'm still bad! 🤣
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@cstross The elementary school cycling test?
That as well, but @cstross really is talking about the test that motorists have to pass.
https://gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/signals-to-other-road-users#armsignals
It's in the theory test nowadays.
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Age verification challenge:
Growing up, I used a gramophone to play my mum's 78rpm jazz records (on shellac, not vinyl). And was taught to indicate I was about to make a turn by sticking my arm out the driver's side window on vehicles that didn't have indicators. (It was on the driving test back then.)
@cstross Our first TV didn't have channel buttons. You had to look up the channel in the Radio Times, find out how many MHz it was, and adjust a tuning dial until you got the best reception you could.
Kids of today, don't know they're born ;)
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@cstross @root42 @annehargreaves they still teach those even now. Couple of months ago I saw somebody driving a car without working lights and they were using them. They looked pretty young too.
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@cstross @root42 @annehargreaves they still teach those even now. Couple of months ago I saw somebody driving a car without working lights and they were using them. They looked pretty young too.
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Age verification challenge:
Growing up, I used a gramophone to play my mum's 78rpm jazz records (on shellac, not vinyl). And was taught to indicate I was about to make a turn by sticking my arm out the driver's side window on vehicles that didn't have indicators. (It was on the driving test back then.)
@cstross @CharlesShould My grandpa had a wax cylinder player!
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@cstross @pheedbackPhil @Steveg58
> Strowger electromechanical exchanges
And what a fascinating back story *they* have!
@cstross @pheedbackPhil @Steveg58 @neil I can't hear the word without hearing the distinctive contact bounce.
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Age verification challenge:
Growing up, I used a gramophone to play my mum's 78rpm jazz records (on shellac, not vinyl). And was taught to indicate I was about to make a turn by sticking my arm out the driver's side window on vehicles that didn't have indicators. (It was on the driving test back then.)
@cstross I have actually had occasion to use those hand signals.
Driving a pool car from work, the indicators stopped working. Fortunately, work was the AA, so they could come and sort it in the office car park while we went to dinner...
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