Large language models
They are great if you don’t care whether they are accurate at any given point in time.
Yep they’re a great tool if you know what they excel at. But instead if you’re not familiar and you hear the over hype in the media, companies leaders etc, you’re going to have a bad time.
VR - It has been through a few hype cycles, but never quite makes it. Cost, weight, battery life (or tethers), lack of highly desirable games, required floor space, nausea (in some people), etc.
Starlink - when announced it sounded like the solution to ISP monopolies and rural broadband access. But the roll out was so slow that other solutions have caught up. For people with no option other than satellite internet, it is still great (if they can get it) but for a lot of people, better options now exist.
Also, it’s way overpriced tbh. Sure I get that it’s internet from space and all but I just see the price keep rising instead of dropping over time.
Disagree on VR, depending. I use a VR dry fire training system, and it’s def. improved my real-world shooting.
Spicy take: high speed Internet (specifically high-speed) and cell phones.
What the fuck am I smoking?
Listen. Look around you. People expect for you to be connected 24/7. Your boss, your friends, family, they all expect you to be connected nowadays. Hell, Australia had to pass a law stopping employers from contacting you outside of work hours.
Then everyone has an opinion and they all want to share it (me too!), and if you don’t have an opinion, you’re a fucking weirdo, a dirty centrist, ignorant, or many other things (you’re probably a Nazi or something, shithead).
Social media is designed to make you feel like shit and you’re antisocial if you’re not on some social media site.
Everyone is depressed and tormented by the constant flow of negative information on their pocket squares that they feel obligated to subject themselves to, all because someone they care about will get mad or be disappointed if they don’t know or have an opinion about everything that happens every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I have a pocket square (which I’m using right now) because I feel like I have to have one nowadays. A significant amount of this is enabled by widespread high-speed Internet. Some of it would still exist, but a lot of it would become unfeasible due to the Internet being too slow. Doesn’t matter if you have some crazy 32core phone with 64gb of ram and 2tb of ssd storage if you’re limited to T-1 speeds or slower.
Sigh I’m doing the “old enby yells at clouds” thing aren’t I?
Yes, the Internet is great and has done a lot of good things, and quite honestly, at the end of the day I honestly think it’s done more good than bad. But I also think it’s massively overrated at this point.
Cell phones kinda fit into the same category of, “everyone expects you to always be reachable”; and with the same conclusion (still good but overrated). I don’t know how I feel about non-cellular tablets.
Sounds like it’s extremely overwhelming, in a bad way. Wouldn’t call all that “underwhelming”.
Perhaps it’s just whelming.
I would have loved to see what the world would be like if the internet was only Gemini. The internet is incredible, but I have no doubt it’s more a curse than a blessing at this point.
Google glass. Sounded like we’d all be wearing these glasses that we’d not be able to do without, but even looking back that sounds like such a poor idea. I try to not be on my phone as much as I can, I can’t imagine wearing glasses with an interface in my direct vision constantly, especially when a lot of it would be shit like emails, LinkedIn notifications of people I might know, and my siblings sending me 12 Instagram posts in a row.
Would’ve been awesome for maps though
I want smart glasses that are a scaled down smartwatch. Give me like 3 lines of text & a vibration function.
If I could insert the interface from my Pebble into a pair of glasses I would be content.
3D TV
anything that was shot in 3D was fucking amazing, if you where underwhelmed it was because you watched some flat post production 2D conversion cash grab garbage, which I assume was the case for most people since no one makes 3D televisions anymore (yes, I know projectors are still being made with 3D capabilities)
I bought a 3D TV and liked watching movies on it. Agree that being shot in 3D is better, but anything released in 3D in theaters was good enough.
I don’t know why they died. Too bad. Did streaming kill 3D perhaps?
movies are inherently passive entertainment and the friction of needing glasses for everyone watching was probably enough to kill it for the average user. I think some people got headaches from the effect too and you couldn’t really have some people watching without glasses at the same time.
Based on what I heard it was mainly cost vs benefit. It was mainly an expensive gimmick, as not only you had to buy more expensive equipment that had its limitations (expensive glasses that had to synchronise with the TV or very narrow fields of 3D), but also had to have channels with 3D (which might’ve cost extra) or more expensive media that was capable of delivering 3D.
While streaming could have been a contributing factor, due to it killing traditional TV channels and basically DVD sales, it seems that overall 3D cinema declined very fast as well. This is probably because how expensive it was for both cinemas and production companies, and production companies often resorted to cheaper alternatives rather than equipment that would actually film in 3D, leading to a much less satisfying effect. So as the 3D effects got shallower, the whole gimmick in theaters died, and probably the whole 3D fad.
The glorified pop-up books killed 3D. That’s most of what people saw, so that was their perception of it.
I never was able to see in 3D because my eyes can’t bloody focus to produce stereoscopic images. 3D movies were hell for me and there was nothing amazing about the headaches it gave me.
I also cant see 3D movies for the same reason. Cant see magic eye puzzles either.
These ones I think had drummed up a lot of hype but failed to deliver:
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“ai” a.k.a. “Plagiarized Info Synth System”. the magic is gone. it doesn’t make decisions. hallucinations show how limited it can and doesn’t match how it was marketed.
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“smart” cars. all the powers (and tracking) of smart phone apps inside your car.
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“smart” ref/ fridge/ icebox. plays skyrim. supposedly orders for you when eggs go out of stock. tracking. dedj in a year or so.
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“smart” tv. more ads. more tracking.
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NFT. owning the “receipt” of a digital resource is a funny idea. as long as you aren’t the one owning.
- digital ownership. those online and cloud libraries of your music, books, etc. I have seen news of amazon, steam, and others de-listing items here. if you own one of those, they’re gone.
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“google+”. touted fb-killer. nobody was there.
- which leads to: any google product that was scrapped. because google killed it.
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hyperloop. vaporware. I mean, we can dream.
below are products that are solely in my opinion and YMMV:
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4D movies. oh, seat is vibrating. i got wet.
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1gb/2gb/4gb internet. promises up to advertised speeds. flat payment as if said speed was delivered.
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iphone. all the bright colors and jumping people on the ad. I don’t see iphone owners being high as that. imo, the money i dropped on it is stockholming me – i love it.
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salad. what’s all these girls smiling and laughing at their salad?
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Self-driving cars
I bought into the hype 10ish years ago. I had expected it to revolutionise road transport.Realistically. Trains will revolutionize road transport of goods and people if the train industry properly maintained their rails, operated above board (unlike the one that had the chemical spill in Ohio and other issues), and expands a bit. The largest expense in good transport is long haul and no one wants to drive long haul. Last mile will probably need trucks and drivers for at least 3 to 5 more decades. And taxi services have similar challenges to last mile delivery. Personal self driving systems need even more consideration than taxi services, and will likely take five to ten years after taxi services become recognized as safe.
In my (in the industry) experience: Agile killed safe development by pushing superficial internal deadlines that look good instead of are good. Safety requirements therefore are never met, but people keep looking like they’re approaching at least one, but end up sacrificing other things that no one is concentrating on, causing more set backs than improvements. Self driving will not be legally commercialized until either someone lobbies bad development onto the roads, or capitalism realizes that quarter profit isn’t as important as ten year profit and Agile finally burns in a god damn fire.
Interesting take. Do you have any material about the shortcomings of agile? Podcasts or articles or w/e
I’ve seen a few, but it’s still kind of controversial. That being said, there is a time and a place for agile where it works, but also there is a team composition and a style of agile which works and that style tends to piss off micromanaging middle managers, so it rarely is allowed.
I had an article saved in my work slack before I left that company (for health reasons), but a currently popular one seems to be this one: https://johnfarrier.com/agile-failure-what-drives-268-higher-failure-rates/
My take is based on years of interaction with companies and friends in other companies. The biggest problem isn’t necessarily Agile, but instead that agile is not intended for long term projects. Agile is fantastic in short turnaround interactions such as web dev, and because these short turnaround places have such easily visible results, managers take them to be gospel. Thus comes Corporate Agile: https://web.archive.org/web/20240524230754/https://bits.danielrothmann.com/corporate-agile Link is from the Internet archive because I can’t find his new site if he moved.
Long story short, corporate agile is the agile the bosses want, as it allows them to be constantly involved with more and more “agile” meetings. You know. Meetings. The antithesis of Agile. The place productivity goes to die. I had to remind our bosses that Agile dictated that stand ups included the developers and the scrum master ONLY multiple times and pointed them to the agile training they gave me. Didn’t matter. They’re the boss. This is a pretty common breakdown in Agile. So, that turned daily standup into daily meeting, since the quick status updates now had to be broken down for the boss. Every. Single. Day.
Agile at its most basic is intended to reduce meetings to once a week so the rest of the time can be spent developing. Every company I know starts including devs in at least 300% more meetings (even junior devs) after switching to Agile for at least 6 months. And on average, it takes half an hour for a programmer to return to the level of productivity they hit before any interruption. This is generally due to the limitations of working memory. (Many research papers on this if you want.)
But to get back to the original point. Because agile concentrates on short immediately tangible and verifiable benefits, any progress that takes longer than a sprint isn’t allowed. (It actually is, with proper implementation, as Agile is supposed to be edited on a team by team basis to make things work, but companies want everyone on exactly the same page.) Guess what doesn’t have immediately tangible and verifiable benefits? That’s right, research. Guess what it’s still in a research phase? Aside from basically anything that isn’t in market yet, self driving technology is very much research driven. Lots of trial, error, and long development cycles. Longer than a sprint for sure. And anyone who says self driving is in market should try an exercise if finding one level 5 self driving car that hasn’t been recalled due to false marketing or safety concerns. The technology isn’t there yet. It could be getting there, but profits are getting in the way of progress.
Foldable phones - at least the early generations hat lots of troubles with the hinges and scratched screens.
Still as of today, testers are undecided if these category of devices really has a benefit compared to just buying both a tablet and a phone (and still saving money).
I was very excited one year to get an early Roomba vacuum. It looked so fun and convenient.
I wouldn’t say it was bad, but it was very meh compared to the high hopes I had.
It went in a senseless pattern without setting up the electronic boundaries. It had trouble docking. It filled up very fast and had to be manually emptied. It was loud and slow. It just overall felt like it took longer and required more manual handling and maintenance than a regular upright and couldn’t even clean everything, so I still had to vacuum.
On top of that, the battery died after about a year. I got an expensive rebuild with supposed better cells from a local reman company, and that died again in about a year. The new battery was more than the Roomba was worth by then, so I gave up on it.
They’re a lot better now. They were pretty garbage early on.
Who’s the leader in the category these days? I’d be curious to see some videos and reviews of the best of the current gen.
Not sure if they’re a “leader” but I got two shark robot vacuums (same model) that are excellent. In the past I have purchased the “bump around and vacuum in circles and hope they don’t get stuck” type and they were just ok. The new ones I have can map the room with IR and you can program no go spaces in the app. I have two because the downside is it can only map one floor at a time so if I wanted it to run on two floors one would be mapped and the other would be “random bumping around” method.
The new one also came with a tank so if I run it on the whole first floor and it gets full it’ll go empty itself and start back up again.
I got em last year and ran me around $350 each I believe.
At least now they have ones where the base station cleans out the robot. The old style was basically not worth it. It vaccums by itself but then you have to clean the little compartment out which is sorta more annoying than just vaccuming yourself. It was only useful when you literally needed to be able to do two things at once which was what I needed at the time as my wife had just had knee surgery and was laid up. so it would run cleaning up while I was getting her stuff or what not and when I did not have something else to do i could pick them up and clean them out.
I’ve seen the ones with the trash station, but then I’d think you’d still need to dump that into the regular trash, fluffing up all that dirt again.
My house is a single story, open design, so I don’t think it really works well without setting the boundaries, as it just spreads itself too thin trying to do the whole place, and as it’s slow, it makes whatever room it’s working in somewhat off limits as you dont want to step on it or block it. The timer would help with that though, but it still seems more complex than the 10-15 minutes it takes for me to grab the upright and do all the floors, plus hit the nooks and Crannies and ceiling corners as well.
It’s still no Rosie from the Jetsons. 😕
I’ve got the station that empties the Roomba and it actually takes forever to completely fill (I run it often too).
Not saying you should buy a Roomba; if I could go back in time I’d probably get a Roborock due to the S9+ having atrocious navigation and constant strange errors (“battery not found”).
The first Segway.
They’re were quotes that cities would be designed around this invention. Before it was announced it was a balancing standup scooter.
I was legitimately sad it didn’t take off. It was a really cool piece of tech but it got mocked for being nerdy or geeky.
I wonder how much of that was encouraged by oil and car companies.
But… Bikes? How does it improve on bikes, other than being much less safe and more expensive?
Crazy futurists could even propose we build cities around bikes… but that would be insane, obviously. 🚙
I feel that an electric bicycle is better than a segway in every single aspect.
Electric bikes are under hyped for how they revolutionise individual transportation.
No need to exercise, much more compact…
One of those isn’t a benefit and the other isn’t true. Also, e-bikes are a thing
How is that not more compact than a bicycle?
Also for some people not having to pedal is actually a necessity so yes it’s a benefit to some.
Electric scooters did take off though, and you don’t need to pedal nor balance the thing.
Yes. The “Ginger”/“It” hype was off the charts. People were legitimately wondering if it was going to be some sort of jet pack or something.
Gob Bluth rides one, which reality captured the vibe they gave for the average person.
Apple Vision Pro
Seems only the influencers took the bait. And then they returned it once the channel had its run. Anyone know of any real world users/ uses for it?
It’s actually got traction in industry where we were already exploring AR for things like using 3d models to enhance maintenance on large facility equipment.
Compared to the value prop of increased reliability and enhanced frontline accessibility of consumable model data its cost is not a barrier and its quality is a MASSIVE step up from the equipment we had.
I’ve heard about it being used in high cost per unit sales experiences too, like jets or whatnot, it haven’t seen that directly.
Ok so I do agree that the Vision Pro is crazy overpriced and never gonna succeed by itself.
But remember the first gen iPad? That thing sucked!
The iPad 2 was a genuine quantum leap forward for the form factor, so I’m waiting to see the next Vision device before making a proper call.
The iPad had the Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field to save it
Blink Security Cameras.
Record for 30 seconds, then can’t record for the next 10. So you miss 25% of whatever’s going on at your house. Can’t add other users, so anyone you want to give view access to your cameras, you just have to give them your password, and thus, full access. No web UI, just the mobile app. No Home Assistant integration. Subscription required.
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They only record when they see movement, so no need to stand still. The spinning is what gets caught on the recording. Then if you can rip it off within ten seconds, all that gets recorded is your spinning.
The 30 seconds is a buffer between entering the space and spinning, so it doesn’t catch you running up. Like if it starts recording as you enter the room, how do you know when it started/stopped recording
You can just look at the status light on it that shows whether it’s recording.
I’m not saying it’s necessary, just explaining what it was for
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I see what you mean. Yeah, that would work.
Cybertrucks
My uncle is a Musk Stan and bought one. Ugly as fuck but 0-60 in under 3 seconds blows your mind enough to get past it. It’s his Lamborghini or Ferrari. The vehicle will be used as a truck as often as a Ferrari is used to race. It’s really something out of this world if you come from an area that has more cows than people. Uncle has money and still has his RAM TRX for everyday use. He enjoys his cybertruck so I can’t hate… till I see that mother fucker stuck in a snowbank then I’m guna do donuts around it in the snowbank in 4 wheel drive real truck and leave him to wait for AAA for being an ass and buying a stupid star wars truck as my grandpa calls it.😂
Except it didn’t really sound promising
I’d say Tesla in general became a disappointment. The Cybertruck was just the blister on top.
I wish other used EVs were anywhere close to teslas… I ended up buying Model 3 as everything else fell flat on its face. The worst one was the “Mustang”. There sadly is no alternative that’s feasible to me. I took a loan for 15k and got 2021 plate model 3 with okay miles. Nothing else was anywhere near it and the thing I has been stellar. And trust me, I have tried A LOT of EVs as my diesel costs pay for my tesla. It’s as close to " free" for my case as I can get.
I’m sorry to hear that, but I take some solace and knowing that Elon had minimal input with the original vehicles, and they were modeled after something that was designed by other companies.
My solice is the used car value doesn’t go back to him and I contribute to these cars being cheaper.
Apple Vision Pro. It’s incredible for the first days. Then there’s no reason to keep using it.
Really? This sounded promising to anyone?
Why, don’t you buy anything Tim Apple the marketing master tells you to?
