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.
@MossyFeathers@pawb.social
You make a very good point. Things aren’t black and white and because something has produced Benefits, it doesn’t mean that it has only positive consequences.
The side effects of an amazing technology…but the technology is still amazing. I wouldn’t interpret it as overrated at all.
When something comes along that can be misused so easily, then it takes a conscious effort to avoid misuse. It’s the same with cars, processed foods, or any modern innovation really. Be the change you want to see. Reject social media. Turn off pretty much every phone notification. Have screen free time. Socialise without screens. I’m trying to do all these things. It’s difficult when no one else is interested in following suit and I just get excluded when I’m not on the platforms everyone else uses…but I’m trying to gather a circle of people who are aligned in this way of living.
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.
Web1.0-punk. Probably needs a catchier name.
Can’t agree. The internet is composed of ultra high speed, ultra cheap plumbing (financed by normies doing their normie things). We piggyback on it, selfhosting our capsules for next to no cost, freeloading on all the wonderful infrastructure. Don’t look at all that is bad about it, don’t participate and it won’t affect you.
Well, I think the deteriorating effect social media and the modern internet has on society affects all of us, whether we participate or not. Russians stole the 2016 election using the internet - it’s not like it didn’t affect people who didn’t use Facebook or Twitter.
Of course there’s a lot of wonderful things as well. I use the internet all the time, obviously. But it would have been fascinating to see what the world would have looked like if the Internet had remained much more primitive and run largely by enthusiastic individuals.
I can agree. Anything business wise with it worked just fine before the internet and was not all that annoying. going to the bank regularly or such. heck much of it could be done by phone. Even something that theoretically should be a no brainer win like streaming media has become increasingly worse to the point its value is questionable. What am I really getting from it. Then there are single player games requiring network connections???
I’ve been thinking more, and I think the Internet would be better off if it was segregated into two, mutually incompatible lanes. Lane 01: slow lane for webpages, online games, general web usage. Lane 02: high speed but exclusively for filesharing. Lane 01 content can provide links to Lane 02 content for filesharing purposes, but Lane 02 is set up so it can’t actually be embedded.
That’s why I like Lemmy so much, quirky, slow updates, small…
The error was letting normal people in, like video games 🥲
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.
Disagree on VR, depending. I use a VR dry fire training system, and it’s def. improved my real-world shooting.
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).
The people yearn for flip phones
I want one but I use a lot of apps still so I wouldn’t be able to replace my smartphone with it
Nah it was about feature phones. Cool phone though, I’m glad phone manufacturers realized the Game Boy Advance SP’s design is perfect
Oops, sorry ^^
Still miss my LG VX1 that closed with a nice <thwack>
Well the folding aspect is pretty good.
Software otoh…
Fuck everything samsung touches for software but I love the zfold series. Only phones I’ve ever owned that I can carry without a case and not break the screen. Not sure if it’s still a problem with other phones as I don’t see as many cracked screens as I used to. I am clumsy as fuck amd drop my phone all the time but these plastic flexible screens never break. The early models were breaking from common use where the fold crease would break but they seemed to have improve that flaw. It also only happened to me after a year or more of heavy use and it was covered by insurance so never really turned me off to the phone.
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!
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
3D internet/web.
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