Otamatone.
It’s a synthesizer shaped like a note with a mouth and eyes.
You can buy a drone for, like, $5. So a swarm of drones for $100 seems pretty futuristic.
Sous vide
Is a cooking method from the 70s really… futuristic?
Not saying it isn’t worth it, though.
It’s rare (intended) for me to find someone who knows what sous vide is. So I suspect for the majority it would seem futuristic.
A screw driver. Cause everything seems so much screwed.
Poop knife, it’s the future I tell ya!
Get one in damascus for really deluxe poop cutting experience!
A COVID vaccine (offer not good inside the US)
OP said buy though.
Amazon and Walmart have microwaves under $100
lighters. fire on demand! for all of preindustrial human history these things would be worth more than gold
A full working computer, more powerful than what we used to go to the moon, and using less power than a light bulb.
It can take many forms, like smartphones, SBCs or older PCs/laptops.
You can buy an ESP board that meets all those qualifications from AliExpress for less than $3CAD shipped.
Setting one of those up was the first time in a while I’ve been so impressed with just how cheap and accessible tech has gotten. It’s a web server with WiFi and Bluetooth shipped to my door all for the price of a chocolate bar.
By that logic, a lighter. Better than smashing two rocks together, that’s how we used to make fire.
One of those fancy plasma lighters, sure. But butane lighters have been around for decades
I think the deauther watch is pretty cool if we’re thinking cyberpunk-esque
Still this thing, 20 years on:
Kinda true, how this thing even worked, nobody knows
The tape head is basically a small and really sensitive electromagnet. Magnetized tape creates small disturbances in the magnetic signal. Amplify those disturbances and you get sound. Similar to an antenna, but only works in close proximity.
This also works in reverse. Feed an audio signal through the electromagnet, and the electromagnet will create the disturbances in whatever is next to it. You can do this to record to a tape, or you can do this to pass sound to another tape head, which is how these aux cassettes work.
You can build one yourself really easily. Just take the tape head from a broken player and solder to an aux cable. Take a cassette, remove the tape, and put the tape head in the middle portion so it comes into contact with the player tape head.
Of course it’s Technology Connections. Who else would make a video about a (now) useless piece of 80’s tech with enough content to satisfy any level of curiosity.
Raspberry Pis and other microcomputers can be had for pretty cheap, and they can be put to a surprising variety of tasks. You need to be a bit of a jack of all trades to fully embrace that DIY element, but I’d bet that showing off a project that you mostly built yourself would be seen as futuristic by most people.
The RPI400 is basically a full solution. You just need a display and a mouse, and you have a fully functional desktop computer. Not very powerful, but good enough for basic tasks like writing documents or browsing the web, coding etc.
Does web browsing count as a “basic” task these days?
A smartphone
What smartphones are you buying for under $100?
… So am I the only one that whenever I want a new phone, I just look for highest rated phone under 100 dollars? Been doing that for years, generally it’s just always just like top of the line models from 3-4 years ago.
Been doing it for years and I’ve never really had any complaint with my phones.
I normally check whatever was the flagship 2-3 years ago and buy it refurbished.
How often do you buy phones?
Stolen iPhones
the Walmart special can be had for $20, it sucks and is locked to a useless carrier, but can load web pages on WiFi.
Low end phones aren’t that bad, if you are willing to make some sacrifices, like an uglier screen, worse camera.
For example, the Samsung Galaxy A05
This would have to be some burner or 2nd/3rd phone cuz there’s a lot more than worse screen or worse camera. The only A series phone i would consider using would be the A54/55/73.
Well no shit it’s not great.
It’s still pretty damn impressive that you can buy smartphones for that cheap at all.
Honestly the sacrifices they make are pretty reasonable for every day use too. I used ultra cheap Umidigi smartphones for four years as a student and they held up quite well with a huge upside being shockingly good repairability. The biggest downside is the rear camera usually, I wish I had better photos from those times.
You can get the Umidigi G9 5G for just $99 shipped on aliexpress. Even budget phones under $100 get 8gb RAM, 128GB storage , and 90hz displays now. There really aren’t as many sacrifices as you’d expect, and by the time you spend $200 you even get plenty respectable cameras that would be flagship quality just a few years ago.
A stolen one
“previously owned”
Anything with GPS capability
5 months of an OpenAI subscription
Lemmy don’t like LLM’s