• Euro@lemmy.world
    76·
    2 months ago

    Email, as far as im aware there isn’t some alternative email standard (messaging services, whatsapp, signal, sms, etc do not count imo as I believe they serve a different purpose than email)

    DNS, while there are alternative root servers, they still fundamentally rely on the dns protocol.

    TCP/IP, when the internet was first starting, this was not the only standard in use, but now it is (to my knowledge).

    I thought about this for longer than I should’ve for a comment on a random post, but this is all I could think of lol.

    edit: grammar

  • jimmux@programming.dev
    471·
    2 months ago

    Toilet paper rolls.

    Somehow we settled on a pretty good size for toilet rolls, and there never seems to be a compatibility issue with holders.

    At least not for households. Commercial products have their own things going on, but it doesn’t affect most people.

    Is there a formal standard, or did we decide not to mess with good enough?

  • Zarxrax@lemmy.world
    42·
    2 months ago

    The way I see it, it’s not so much an issue of making something that’s better than the other standards. It’s really about getting your standard into actual use and hitting critical mass which makes all the other standards irrelevant.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 months ago

      Yeah. No standard covers all use cases. It’s just best to have one standard that makes a lot of compromises.

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
    38·
    2 months ago

    1000006617

    There are many, I think. Like what other people have mentioned, sometimes the new standard is just better on all metrics.

    Another common example is when someone creates something as a passion project, rather than expecting it to get used widely. It’s especially frustrating for me when I see people denigrate projects like those, criticizing it for a lack of practicality…

  • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
    36·
    2 months ago

    When the standard is a big interoperability push that leverages MORE functionality as a bribe to be implemented.

    This is how USB (plug & play!), Bluetooth (wireless headset!), HDMI (high def, single cable!) , and USB-C (both sides are good!) all beat the entrenched pseudo standards.

  • superkret@feddit.org
    34·
    2 months ago

    You can avoid the issue when a government just mandates one standard, ideally after consulting with experts on which is the best.
    See: USB, SCART, etc.

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
    26·
    1 month ago

    MIDI.

    Before the 80’s, there was no standard interface to control electronic instruments, just a bunch of proprietary interfaces unique to each manufacterer. But in 1983, amazingly they actually standardized on MIDI, and it remains a useful standard to this day, with any new versions of MIDI being completely backwards compatible, so your Yamaha DX7 from the 80’s is still just as viable to use today as the day it was new!

    • towerful@programming.dev
      5·
      1 month ago

      DMX is a similar protocol for lighting.
      Sure, there’s artnet and sacn, but most gigs still use good old DMX.

    • monomon@programming.dev
      1·
      1 month ago

      Should mention Open Sound Control which is also pretty good. Not exactly a competitor, it was supposed to provide a richer, real time interface. Still popular for certain use cases, including beyond music.

  • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
    13·
    2 months ago

    Networking standards started picking winners during the PC revolution of the 80’s and 90’s. Ethernet, with the first standards announced in 1983, ended up beating out pretty much other LAN standard at the physical layer (physical plugs, voltages and other ways of indicating signals) and the data link layer (the structure of a MAC address or an Ethernet frame). And this series of standards been improved many times over, with meta standards about how to deal with so many generations of standards through autonegotiation and backwards compatibility.

    We generally expect Ethernet to just work, at the highest speeds the hardware is capable of supporting.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 months ago

    For home automation, Matter/Thread has the potential. We’ll see over the next five years, but yes market forces can make a new standard work

    Reasons I’m hopeful

    • this is the first time major companies are involved: Apple, Google, Amazon agree
    • first time home automation hubs “just happen”, with the millions of people who have Echo, Google Home, Apple devices
    • small companies that dominate home automation seem to realize the problem of the market can’t reasonably expand without interoperability and ease of use

    Matter/Thread is the new kid on the block. Will it be yet another home automation standard, or will it gradually replace the previous ones? We’ll see.

    • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      3·
      2 months ago

      My guess is that the speed with which new device types are supported is too slow to make it truly revolutionary. It was a good idea, it just does not happen fast enough to become dominant.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        Definitely a problem - but the positive side of that is the slow pace is from reaching a consensus. It’s easy to be impatient with how slow the rollout is going but if that means that most manufacturers of each type are on board it could still be a good thing

        • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          2 months ago

          Let’s hope so, I would love that! It is so frustrating shopping for new Home Assistant gear, finding something nice and then realizing it uses FlooSnorb instead of zigbee or wi-fi or bluetooth or whatever you already have. And yeah, sure, you can buy a controller for that, and there is probably an integration for that for HA, but damnit…another one? 😁 ™️

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 months ago

            At this point i already support the most common protocols in HA, so i really hope for the end of WiFi, and vendor specific portals

    • nightofmichelinstars@sopuli.xyz
      9·
      2 months ago

      Also, playing cards. Every casino and basement house party uses the same 52 card deck. It’s sold in airports all over the world.

  • Obelix@feddit.org
    113·
    2 months ago

    There are a lot and in most cases you’ll notice when dealing with Americans, who are refusing to do stuff like the rest of the world. The meter and kilogram took over from hundreds of different measurement standards. Most of the world is using the same calendar and writes dates in the same way. Most countries are driving on the same side. Traffic signs are kind of the same worldwide. You can buy screws with the same standard everywhere.