Segway scooter
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.
I just wanted to be able to read a book without (possibly) straining my neck :(
I feel like it would probably be terrible for your eyes, but I feel ya.
Audio books maybe?
They’re just not the same for me, unfortunately. They have a place, but I prefer reading.
Are audiobooks with subtitles still audiobooks?
‘multimedia device’
I wanted to be like the kid from Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide and have a mouse wired up to it. Lol.
Companies keep trying to recreate something similar for motorcycle helmets
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.
Guess what, they’re already working on the 3rd version.
Would’ve been awesome for maps though
smartwatches are surprisingly good for directions/routing. they vibrate one way for left turns and another way for right turns.
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.
3D TV
The 3d stuff was great! The NVIDIA glasses were wild!
It’s a shame it died off tbh.
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?
The glorified pop-up books killed 3D. That’s most of what people saw, so that was their perception of it.
strangely never heard the phrase but it describes them perfectly
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.
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 was the opposite and it was detrimental working in a lab with stereo 3d. One of the main guys could not see 3d and he was great at perfecting the calibration because of it. I was awful at calibration because 3d shot into view so easily.
I also cant see 3D movies for the same reason. Cant see magic eye puzzles either.
I found 3D theatre experiences underwhelming and sometimes headache inducing, but watching Transformers on a friends’ TV with all the properly rendered depth was fantastic.
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.
I have not the newest but relatively new models from iRobot (Roomba) and Neato. The Roomba has more features, but I prefer the shape of the Neato for getting up against walls and corners. I would recommend either.
Neato looks to have gone kaput last year. The shape seemed to have positive benefits over the typical round ones. I wonder why no one else has gone that direction.
The 2-in-1 mop and vac Roombas looks exciting, though at a heck of a cost at the price of a Miele or 6 of my Shark uprights.
It’s wild these are on their tenth generation. I think mine was a 2nd.
Oh, that’s such a shame. Neato made some really good vacs and cost somewhat less than iRobot.
I’m interested in trying one of those combination mop vacuums as well. Whenever one of mine dies, I’ll probably try that. They’re both going strong for now, however.
What I would not recommend is going for a cheap brand. We got one (before getting the Roomba) as a housewarming gift and it did not work well and it broke after a few months. So we ponied up and bought a Roomba to replace it.
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.
Thanks! I’ve mostly enjoyed my Shark upright for a number of years now and I had wondered about their vac-bots.
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”).
Mine is alright, it doesn’t mao the room but kind of finds the perimeter and start to just do lines back and forth. It’s nice to vacuum when I leave the house.
It’s loud, but at least it’s doing something if only evidenced by how much I empty the damn thing. Every couple months I have to take it and the dock out to the garage to blow it all out with their air compressor.
I do think it makes me keep shit off the floor more. It wants to eat cords a lot. I want a second one with mapping so I can have it do specific rooms and this one can get sent to the basement where it doesn’t need to be as fancy.
I really hate the space it takes up, I would love one that was shorter so it could be stored underneath the side tables, or the dock and empty bin were flatter so it could be under the couch or something.
I forget about all the cords and other random things it would grab! You have to somewhat vacuum proof your space.
Docking under a couch would be handy. It’s been like it lives in a cave. 😆
Yea. All the self emptying docks make them really tall, but I’d love it if the bin was on the side and pulled out forward.
Someone should make one specifically designed to be hidden underneath shit. It’s not a decoration or talking piece.
Or a wider, lower doggy door to let it park in the closet.
3D internet/web.
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.
I recall talking to a vendor back… 8 years ago? Who had a colleague trialling hololens augmented maintenance. I personally felt it would be amazing to be able to look at equipment, bring up a model and explode it to get a look at (Yeah I know you can do that with a laptop, manufacturing lines have notoriously shitty wifi, not to mention greasy around equipment), assisted procedures were a cool idea too, helps people who may not be super familiar with your specific equipment, like shift or loaner maintenance people.
Over a decade ago, different company, they had a bounty on video procedures, you’d strap a go pro to your head and record something like changing batteries, replacing o-rings, removal of electronics etc for a cash bonus. I’m a text and photo person but I totally see the value in video documentation.
Microsoft had a demo at an ignite conference in 2020 if I recall of hololens doing ar metrics, person looked at things like the elevator and would give them real-time performance data, definitely a gimmick but I still think AR could be useful in an industrial setting.
Probably nothing beyond normal VR stuff. It’s still pretty new and it sounds like Apple is still trying to figure out the chicken or the egg problem when it comes to developing an entirely new platform and have decided to try putting the egg first to see if anyone will incubate it for them. Who knows if they’ll commit long enough for it to pay off. Tbh I can see VR enthusiasts still getting something out of it since it sounds like people have figured out how to get it working with steamvr. Other than that though, I don’t really see any uses for it. I think they’re going to have to spend a lot of time looking for problems that are worth paying $1,000~$2,000 to solve (I’m assuming that’s what a “consumer” version would cost), and then refine their solution until it feels natural before widespread adoption will be a thing.
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
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.
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?
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.
Hold up, so I can just stand still in a room for >30 seconds to sync the timing, then spin in a circle for 32 seconds, then sprint right up to the camera and rip it off the wall?
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.
You’d have to determine when the camera turns on in order to determine when it shuts off. If it’s 30 on 10 off, you stay still for >40 seconds to ensure the camera is idle and ready to record, and then you spin, you can ensure camera turns on at your spinning, and then you know it’ll shut off on your 30 seconds, and you’re totally synced to the 40s cycle
I see what you mean. Yeah, that would work.
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
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.
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.
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. 🚙
Idk, more options? It’s a self-balancing thing-a-ma-bob that takes you places when you stand on it. It’s cool and more options are nice. Also, I find it kinda amusing that you think a Segway-compatible city wouldn’t also be bike-compatible. They max out at like, 12mph. You’re not building a sprawling city around Segways like you would with cars.
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.
Anyone who can’t pedal is also gonna have trouble standing upright and maintaining a neutral balance on a thin board
I feel that an electric bicycle is better than a segway in every single aspect.
I guess maybe segways could in theory take up less parking space… but I’m not entirely sure. They’re wider, and you need to get out somehow. And they strike me as more awkward than bikes if you should need to lift them.
And don’t provide any exercise.
This is a point for sure, especially since I assume part of their contribution was that they were supposed to replace not only cycling, but also walking.
Then again, I’m increasingly excited about electric bicycles. They’re not for me while I still have good knees and all, but as soon as I can’t go everywhere I like with pedal force… I’m sure as hell getting an electric bike. I guess it’s still more exercise than a Segway though.
Even if you can pedal just fine, there are always those situations that are sort of marginal: when you’re feeling kinda lazy so you’re thinking of just driving instead of biking, or it’s a little further than you want to go, or you’re running a little bit late or don’t want to exert yourself and end up getting sweaty, etc. Those are the times when having an e-bike can really make the difference.
Electric assisted can help you keep your knees for longer without depriving you of the exercise. Specially if you’re using it for transportation and not just sport.
I have an electric bike. And if I set it to the highest support setting, I hardly have to pedal at all. I just need to move my feet, as they control how fast it drives.
And are prohibitively expensive. And require electricity.
getting on and off is way faster and given technology nowadays if you would have an autofollow when you are off or not allow to run so far from you then you don’t need to lock it up oftentimes. That being said I like getting some excersise which is worth the hassel of getting on and off and locking up.
Electric bikes are under hyped for how they revolutionise individual transportation.
Gob Bluth rides one, which reality captured the vibe they gave for the average person.
George W. Bush falling off of one didn’t help either.
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.
Playstation vr has been worth it for me. Great games and very good tracking. The library overall is underwhelming but the quality is there.
Beatsaber (obviously) Arizona Sunshine Walking dead Gun Range VR Swordsman VR Moss RecRoom
Those are some of the top games.
Disagree on VR, depending. I use a VR dry fire training system, and it’s def. improved my real-world shooting.
Smartphones in general.
But the convenience of being wired in every possible second of your life!
Dictating notes into my journal (eg obsidian/mediawiki/dokuwiki) is very nice though.
They were cool until the industry decided tall, skinny rectangles were the final form factor.
I’m on the last week of my dumb phone challenge (been daily driving a flip phone for the last 3 weeks), and I think I’m gonna keep it.
my dream is a dumb phone that can access the internet and act as a wifi gateway for my laptop or tablet. oh also a local webpage for managing the phone.
There is an OS for dumbphones of certain types that makes them smart phoens to an extent a browser and facebook etc on tbem skyoe is on some dumber phoens to already, You can do the opposite with certain launchers as well convert a smartphonex o dumbphone eg. the oddly named Baldphone on F-Droid for elderly peolle needing bigger buttons andxless modern sh@t I mean bloatware sorry lol it also adds an ease of opening the dialpad oviously in bold digits and other simplicities.
Baldphone remember to oot out of extra tracking it has anti-features
BaldPhone (Replace your phone’s interface with a big, simple and friendly one) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.bald.uriah.baldphone/
Other alternative maybe YAM Launcher or similar apps.
YAM Launcher (YAM Launcher is a minimalist text-based launcher for Android with weather!) https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.ottop.yamlauncher/
Nothing dumber looking than text for your items and apps installed
Here Techcrunch come up with ideas on dumbing smartphones down in this article
https://www.techlockdown.com/guides/dumb-phone-android
With launchers you don’t struggle to buy a dumbphone with 4g and 5g signals for the sim you dumb a modern phone down you could also strip the apps off if you root it or maybe just get Android AOSP on it and use a simple launcher for it then a text based one.
I mean its not about the interface as much as the way that smartphones feel like tracking devices. yeah any cellphone can be tracked but the ios and android are made seem to be at its core. Then there is the expense and don’t last as long. I just don’t want to be paying for a pocket computer when I just want a pocket phone/wifi
On AOSP they aren’t tracked it’s a De-Googled OS it has no Google Service Framework or Google related apps to track you, you’d use the F-Droid marketplace for none tracking apps to install on it if needed.
Expense I can understand, but something of a natively compatible format for installing the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) sounds fine to use as a kind of capable dumb phone if you like and by capable I meam it can be used as both a smart phone or dumb phone with the use of a launcher being installed for the dumbing down, say some text based or other simplistic launcher available via F-Droid.
Cost is not to viscious for Android phones of just ok spec like an old mid range octa core running Android 11 or Android 12 with say 64gb storage to 128gb storage but 32gb is fine even less really but you begin dropojng soc performance fast going to 32gb storage devices really but in those 64-128gb eras of hardware ranges are pretty cheap now for second hand ones with warranties sometimes to. AOSP is lighter on resources trick also is enable developer options and turn off
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Window Animation Scale
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Transition Animation Scale
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Animator Duration Scale
This makes a device fly scrolling and opening and tapping things to open them because the you aren’t waiting for transitions to take place for the UI that often has a momentary pause or animated effect to look cool but this might look cool but it slows the waiting time to ooem things right down, I always disable that on all phones or other Android devices that run Android on initial setup.
Or if you want true dumb phones a 4g doro lol
For iphone’s I just found this it’s pretty interesting turning it into a light phone by a launcher.
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I was actually surprised to learn that most current dumb phones (at least ones that run KaiOS like most of the Nokia ones) do actually support acting as a wifi hotspot. Not sure of any that have a REST API for management, though. They also have at least primitive web browsers.
Actually, you might be able to make a REST API (and web app to use it) with NodeJS or Python with Termux, though that requires an Android device (so not applicable for a dumb phone). Termux has an API that lets you interact with the phone hardware, though I’ve had issues with some things not being implemented (I’ve only briefly played with that, so I may just be missing something or it doesn’t fully work in Android 14 yet).
The “dumb” phone I chose for my challenge is the CAT S22 Flip which runs Android 11. I disabled most of what made it “smart” for the challenge, though. At the end of the week when the 30 days are officially up, I’m going to re-enable some of those features just for convenience. (That device was $20 cheaper than the true dumb phone I was looking at, so I figured I’d just dumb it down for the 30 day challenge and then use it as the unique smartphone it is after that).
you know someone told me this one on chat and all I really remember was it did not really seem to be that way. There was something I believe but it was as expensive as a smartphone which I get it may not be as cheap as a typical dumb phone it should not really be that much more with just the one function.
Adulthood.
Wow… Maybe for you, but it was everything and more for me. Fuck childhood. Give me freedom, independence, and not having to follow the rules of my parents.
No curfew, no bedtime… You can figure out what you want and do it. Living with a girlfriend. Making and spending money. Driving your own car. I get that maybe adulthood may not be for everyone, but I’ll take it any day over childhood!
You know, I’m genuinely happy for you.
Ouch
Google Glass.
I hate it so much I’m almost sad it didn’t take off more for just a little while. Would have been fun to get the chance to hate it even more.
