Technologies I thought my son would never use
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
The rough heuristic is: the longer a technology has been around, the longer it will last into the future.
That is, it's NOT the case that every piece of technology lasts roughly the same amount of time, and then is replaced.
For example, a chair vs. an iPhone. Which one will be used further into the future? Almost certainly a chair.
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Land lines have been around a lot longer than fax machines (both in the article), so they will likely outlive fax machines.
Will HTML or JavaScript last longer? Probably HTML, since it came first.
What about ASCII or HTML? Probably ASCII.
These have a "dependency stack" issue, but it applies regardless. And I think that is part of the phenomenon -- low level technologies that are widely adopted take longer to go away. Plumbing, electrical (AC vs DC), land lines, TCP/IP, BIOS, etc.
I can't find a link now, but there was a recent Kevin Kelly article about finding farming tools from a catalog in the 1800's still in use. I think he said that almost EVERY one was still in use, or able to be purchased, which is a nice illustration of the point. It takes a long time for old tech to die, and arguably it never does.
Smartphones (since first iPhone) - 14 years.
Laptops (since first Apple Powerbook) - 30 years.
PCs (since first IBM PC) - 40 years.
C programming language will be 50 years old next year.
SQL will turn 50 in 2024
I'm still inclined to think someone would have jumped to a smartphone without a keyboard. But it's also true that the iPhone had plenty of critics early on and arguably didn't fully hit its stride until the 3GS.
James Watt didn't actually invent the steam engine. He just came up with an invention that made it a lot more efficient.
I mean, imagine a parallel world where those smartphones weren't designed to shove ads down your throat and where they could be used to be as productive as with a laptop, and where people could help to automate their lives on their own with it.
That would be so amazing.
Entire generations have been lifted from poverty due to it.
Smartphones aren’t consumption-only.
I disagree, even when talkingn about a smartphone as a human interface device and not, as was the actual context of the thread, a computing device.
Having a, say, DeX-enabled Android (or even potentially powered by fairly traditional Linux, if one doesn’t just use a major maker device with stock software) smartphone as a computing device doesn’t preclude standard desktop I/O devices fo interact with it in manner very similar to a standard desktop PC.
> They are not usable as general-purpose creation machines.
Again, as an exclusive computing device, they are just about as much as is any computing device.
Even as an exclusive HID, there’s a giant excluded middle between “consumption only” and “not usable as general purpose creation machines”.
You seem to be conflating the ability to be used with a limited interface with a restriction to be used with only a particular interface. I desktop PC has the ability to be used without a graphics tablet. It would be a much more limited creation device if it were restricted to being used without one. And the same is true of everything that isn’t a touchscreen, microphone, or other built in human interface and smartphones. But a smartphone as an exclusive computing device does not imply the limitations of its built-in interfaces, since having external interfaces is also a standard feature of the class.
Any alternative where trade didn't follow optimal path is due to regulation / force. And in most, the force required to steer humans away from their nature also kills innovation.
Ergo: you cant have a miracle chip in your pocket with no one using it to sell you potato chips.
2. Capitalism is not "natural" either and only started developing in the post-renaissance world.
3. Natural selection demonstrates conclusively that relying on purely natural processes to drive "innovation" often lead to highly non-optimal and harmful trends.
4. Most of the major scientific and technological innovations of the 20th century were either the direct result of or funded by "force" which I take to mean government.
5. Advertisement was not the only monetisation strategy that the internet and telecommunication industry could have taken. The internet could have very easily gone down the subscription route and the only reason why anybody thinks otherwise is because of the decade long marketing that has normalised getting everything for "free".
This principle implies the C programming language will outlive Rust, Go, Python, etc. I'm not sure how I feel about that. There's a good chance its right, but I'm uncomfortable imagining my grandchildren learning C's weird quirks.
There's definitely codebases written in C today which will outlive me, like the Linux kernel. And most of those codebases will probably never migrate to a different language.
I learned Dvorak a decade ago and loved it unless someone else had to use my computer or I had to use a shared computer. I'm typing this on a qwerty keyboard and I'm okay with that now.
Typewriter layouts are designed to avoid jamming, but not by reducing typing speed. They place letters that are pressed in direct succession apart, so that the levers don’t collide. Trained typists can write pretty damn fast on a typewriter.
... and that really reduces typing speed. When i switched to dworak I was amazed how my fingers just roll on a keyboard, forming sentences faster than I even form a conscious understanding in which succession should I move my fingers. It just happens as if by itself!! Just think of a word to type and it is already on the screen.
That may be the effect for you, but it's not a goal. It's maybe a tradeoff, but machine writing is a trainable craft. Usual results for trained people are at about 200 - 400 characters per minute measured over 10 minutes. Championship results are at up to 900 characters.
[1]: http://www.recordholdersrepublic.co.uk/world-record-holders/...
I've always wanted a Blick, their "scientific" DHIATENSOR layout intrigues me. They also made a qwerty version and I seem to remember a story that their salespeople would make you sign a waiver that you were choosing a less efficient keyboard if you bought one. That's certainly 90% marketing for their layout and maybe 10% fact, but I find it amusing (if true, but I can't seem to find a reference to it any more).
I'll bet typewriter-trained typists can really move. It's definitely a separate skill, at least for the manual typewriters in my collection which have about an inch of key travel and a heck of a lot more actuation force than the gateron red switches I use at work. :-)
Ultimately I find that the fastest layout is the one you know.
Dvorak has specialised right- and left-handed layouts. Maybe it also needs specialised one finger layouts, too.
I can imagine you'd need to use both thumbs extensively or you'd be jumping back and forth. I definitely found that when I was laying on my side on the couch, propped up with one arm, qwerty was easier to use with one hand. Not that that's an ergonomic or sustainable way to type, but I was a lazy college student and I didn't care.
The question of whether a technology simply exists vs. whether it retains its popularity is an interesting one. Chairs and forks will both exist and be popular. iPhones will exist, but they won't be popular on some time scale. So it is interesting to think whether C is closer to one or the other :)
Certainly higher-level languages have edged out C in many domains though.
In any case, I'd argue that most of the quirks are due to undefined behaviour as implemented in the compilers. And 50 years from now the language have probably evolved some more anyway.
What about them learning English's even weirder quirks? Does that make you uncomfortable as well?
I have come to the point that I sort of accept C's quirks, and, with the appropriate mindset, I can even love them. I certainly see myself as an old man teaching these arcane quirks to a young and innocent audience.
And COBOL is extremely niche, while C is still quite common and useful to know.
That kind of Apple revisionism is not correct. The NEC UltraLite predated Apple clamshells by 3 years (1988), and luggables with a battery configuration have been available as early as 1981 (Osborne 1 with an aftermarket 1 hour battery add-on).
“The TRS-80 Model 100 is a portable computer introduced in 1983. It is one of the first notebook-style computers, featuring a keyboard and liquid crystal display, in a battery-powered package roughly the size and shape of a notepad or large book.”
This article is a little different -- "things my son would use" implies that they're still popular, not just extant. Both questions are interesting, and influenced by the same principles.
The Lindy effect is one reason I'm working on https://www.oilshell.org/, because shell is now more than 50 year old, much older than Python/JS/Ruby, etc.
Concrete example from the last few days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26746280
i.e. When people want to explain a modern cloud platform, they use shell. Go would have been more obvious, but shell is clearer. Lindy prediction: shell will outlive Go :)
For example nobody expects the 2004 Toyota Carolla to be forever but the gas powered car will be far harder to kill.
Trinitrons are still to this day the best tech for displaying old games, and people will pay over $100 for even a consumer-grade unit without SCART.
For the professional grade PVM and BVM monitors, people will pay thousands for a large (21"+) one and they sell like hotcakes.
If you already KNOW that Trinitron displays are gone, then there's no uncertainty. The Lindy effect is a heuristic for making decisions under uncertainty.
The relevant situation is if you have two things that still exist, and you want to guess which one will last longer. This doesn't override other facts about the domain -- it's SOME information in the absence of any other knowledge. It's for poker players, not scientists.
The example I gave was the new cloud blog startup vs. the old hosting platform. Which one would you put your blog on if you wanted people to read it 5 years from now? All other things being equal, I'd take the old hosting platform. But if you think the startup has a really good business model or you like the founders, maybe you choose that one. It's just common sense.
Another example might be cold-blooded crocodiles vs. a warm-blooded mouse as an example. All things being equal, you could guess that the crocodiles will survive further into the future, since they were here first. But someone with a specific theory or expertise could also argue that the bigger animal is less likely to survive, etc.
Similarly, we already know that dinosaurs are gone. This isn't a situation where you need to act or make a prediction.
Someone who understands Bayesian statistics can probably explain it better than me, but you have to take into account existing knowledge, and update it with new knowledge. Picking out something that you know is obsolete isn't relevant.
"The term Lindy refers to Lindy's delicatessen in New York, where comedians "foregather every night at Lindy's, where ... they conduct post-mortems on recent show business 'action'"."
And no more should be read into that. There are solutions to problems which are adequate, e.g. "chair", where further changes can be expected to be modest. And since the problem isn't going away (unless someday we're told that sitting kills us and that we need to stand or lay instead), the solution won't either.
Otoh, there are technologies which simply supersede and obsolete others. E.g. UTF8 has ASCII as subset and hence I don't expect to see the latter around for long.
It could have gone the other way: if UTF-16 was the ONLY encoding, then ASCII would be obsolete. But that didn't happen.
ASCII is utf8, but it’s not utf16. ASCII will be around for as long as utf8 is.
I guess these guys took over all the telegram infrastructure of Western Union in 2006.
It's cheaper to send flowers with a card!
https://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/0301-The_FAX_Machine...
Unfortunately, you can’t physically harm people over the internet, so different security measures must be taken.
Yes how unfortunate?
The odds of getting caught attacking a Russian computer from the US or attacking a US computer from Russia are essentially zero for any scale small enough to not have major foreign policy implications.
Well-studied? By whom? In what journals?
The Lindy Effect may be true, but based on that Wikipedia article's sources, you can't make a good scientific claim for that being the case. Even if you could, you still run into all the current problems such a nebulous branch of science must contend with, such as the peer review problem and the reproducibility problem.
Office chairs have a reclining mechanism. If you ever leaned back too far in an old office chair with four wheels, you would find out the hard way that four isn't enough. It's very easy to lean back comfortably and not realize you've reached the tipping point, fall back and hit your head on the floor or have a close call.
My first jobs long ago had four-wheeled office chairs, so you can guess how I found this out.
The fifth wheel goes a long way to preventing this danger.
You're much less likely to be leaning back in a regular four-legged chair so the front legs come off the ground, and if you do you'll probably be more aware that you are doing something outside the chair's normal mode of use.
And even if offices go out of style, office chairs will likely be around long past then.
My personal take is that there’s a an apex for a particular generation of technology, and that is good forever. A 1930s Farmall tractor is an example of that... there are improved modern replacements, but the 1930 model still does the job near optimally. I would guess that a non trivial number of those tractors will be in use in 2130.
1980s/early 90s minicomputers are similar. Many of these devices are still in use today, and probably could be kept in use for decades to come.
Modern tech is a little harder because we’ve been in a rapid growth phase and the software services based world is more aligned with production than sustainment. I’d bet that trend will change in 20-30 years.
He says it cost me $100 to get the best that has ever been made, and it's backed up by a lot of experience living off grid
Many preventable deaths happen every year as a result.
He says "one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten is: Don't trade a gun for a snow machine". This is exactly what you're saying, and it's backed up by a lot of experience living without power and water!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH15Kua5P1Y&t=918s
He also says "everyone one of us has to decide when to jump ship on a technology"
He says canoes peaked in the 1960's, and you can buy a used one for like $125 that's the same as what you'd buy today for thousands. Same with hand saws. He maintains old saws and chainsaws and uses them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH15Kua5P1Y&t=746s
when you look at any kind of manufactured goods a lot of things have reached their peak and are either poorer quality than they used to be or they're just the same quality as their peak
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I found this channel via a video about building an off grid cabin from scratch for a couple thousand dollars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOOXmfkXpkM
It's good -- a lot of it is built by hand with a hammer and nails. He even says load bearing screws are too expensive, and nails are better!
All of the advice reminds me of Taleb, because it's not necessarily trying to be "right", but rather distilling rules of thumb from practice.
The old one my parents had was aluminum with a metal gear. The modern version has been MBAed to death — the gear is plastic, and the lid is so thin that you could probably replicate it with 2 plys of aluminum foil. It costs more and is measurably worse in any dimension.
Grummans are great and they're still being made (though not by the original company).
However, for recreational/tripping/whitewater, Royalex-based canoes were better for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately the material is no longer being made because its intended use (Go Carts) didn't take off to the degree planned. The company continued to make it on a more or less breakeven basis but upon a change of ownership the new owner decided to scrap it. There have been one or two efforts to make something equivalent, but AFAIK they haven't panned out.
There are still plenty of well-made fiberglass/Kevlar boats being made but they're much more fragile.
The Lindy effect is the realization that your encounter of something is like a random sample. "How old are chairs when I exist?" "How old are iPhones?"
It's not claiming to be a scientific law; it's a heuristic for making decisions. The rest of Taleb's books are also about making decisions, not "being right" (whatever that means).
A concrete example is if I'm writing a blog, and I want people to read my posts in 5 or 10 years. Do I go with the cloud platform that just launched or an older hosting provider? This is a decision people make every day. Of course there are many people who don't care if their blog is readable in 5 years; this isn't a judgement.
The Lindy effect is not about what's "better"; it's about what lasts longer. It's also not making statements about the present, which is what survivorship bias typically means.
Older people obviously will die sooner, but having survived does give you some information. For example, your life expectancy at age 1 is 75 years, but at age 40 it's closer to 79 years.
e.g. https://www.annuityadvantage.com/resources/life-expectancy-t...
The Lindy effect is a theory about the surviving examples specifically.
Well, barely. I’d bet on JavaScript for this one; programming languages are almost immortal once they reach the popularity of JS, while HTML would be easier to replace.
This doesn't make any sense because it maps trivially to "any technology still around will last forever."
The Lindy effect talks about the rare cases where this isn't true.
It's the 2nd sentence in the article. So not sure using examples of perishables shows it is a terrible heuristic.
It applies to ideas/cultures/technologies.
I was mostly pointing this out because a lot of people in the comments seem to be talking about this as if it's some kind of universal law, or a proposed universal law, when really this applies to only exceptional circumstances.
Absent other observations and/or priors, the best estimate of your expected waiting time is the amount of time you have already waited.
So if you've been waiting 10 minutes for something to arrive, your best estimate of how much longer you have to wait is 10 minutes.
If you've been waiting 10 years for a tech to become outdated, your best estimate for how much longer it will take is 10 years.
People usually use buses as an example. So it makes sense: if the bus is supposed to come every few minutes, and it hasn't come in the last 15 minutes, then odds are something is wrong thus increasing the prob that the additional wait will also be 15 minutes.
The Lindy effect makes perfect sense has an heuristic to evaluate the remaining lifetime of technologies and species at a given point in time. It’s trivial to prove that it works for anything whose survival curve is convex.
Despite its apparent love for rationality (which I enjoy), it seems like a large part of HN is just as subjective as anyone and unable to accept things that don’t fit their mental model.
All people have that skill, of course, but this field seems to have more than its fair share of such.
I mean it's a tech entrepreneurial news aggregator on a tech incubator's website. Their whole raison d'etre is that "future is better buy my technology so I can get $$$" -- that's why this site exists.
Is it that it doesn't fit the mental model, or is it failing to read the room?
This even had the slight benefit over sending email to a random address because a fax can just be posted on a common board in the office space, rather than someone having to take the step of printing the email first.
I was in a radiology startup for a bit, and getting people to fill out forms on something like an iPad is still a problem. You need staff able to help them, and people damage or try to steal them. So then you end up with paperwork, and if that paperwork needs to move somewhere else, people fax it.
As for ripping out the physical service entirely, I don't have any numbers but I saw the lists from 2020 and 2021 and they are huge. So it is clearly happening. And they have been doing this for quite a few years.
If you mean landlines for Phones: The fiber can handle that, and does, but people are indeed dropping their telephone-number-for-a-house subscription in favor of individual cell phones (and my Phone is generally on WLAN-call when I'm at home, so it use the fiber as well). My parents in law were the last ones I knew with a house-based phone number and they dropped it this year. That said, I think you still get a house-telephone-number for free with many internet subscriptions and the ISP's modems have ports for Phones on them, so indeed the landlines as defined still exists, but it's a matter of definition.
Do you have a source for this? All I can find is this quote [0], which is a long way off from "all landlines":
> nearly 1 in 2 homes in the 25 largest cities will have KPN FTTH access by the end of 2021.
[0] https://glasvezelnieuws.blogspot.com/2021/04/kpn-op-schema-m...
I'm less sure about this one, because of the relative difficulties of replacement. You can replace someone's POTS line with VOIP and they'll likely never notice (and this is underway). They'll notice if you take your fax machine.
The question is if fax on VoIP is still fax in that sense. At least the wikipedia article on fax mentions transmission through audio-frequency tones [1]. However if you count fax over VoIP as fax, I guess you should also count phone on VoIP as "landline".
What truly causes a technology to die is when it's kept a secret and all those who know the secret pass away without passing it on (Greek fire, ancient Babylonian batteries, Roman stainless steel). It's the one good argument for having a patent system, to keep that knowledge from being lost.
Whereas with physical transmission lines, be they cables, fiber optics, or whatever, each run can re-use the entire spectrum.
I still agree wired/optical is best for most fixed installations both LAN and WAN, but people are getting more out of wireless than I would have predicted. And the "last mile" capacity of today's technology far exceeds what people seem to want even looking forward a decade...which paradoxically suggests that wireless might be adequate in the interim for some use cases.
Where I live, a lot of people have 3G internet because mobile data is pretty cheap and the companies advertise it as an alternative to cable. And now they all have really crappy internet. In the evening when everyone watches youtube you get a fraction of the advertised bandwidth.
With fibre, every customer gets the full spectrum. And since the frequency of light is a lot higher than radio frequency, you also get a lot more bandwidth. At radio frequency we're already hitting the physical bandwidth limits; with optical transmission there's still a lot of bandwidth left.
Thinking that radio frequency transmissions are an alternative to cable / fibre is pretty short sighted thinking. Data usage is going to grow, more devices are going to use data, and wireless transmission is going to seriously limit us.
The pixel is 17x, not bandwidth. Even Compressed RAW size dont scale linearly with pixel count. I dont have any experience with 8K, but compressing / encoding 4K with HEVC or AV1 tends to easier with fixed VMAF score than a comparatively low pixel count of 2K / 1080P. I would imagine the same if not better for 8K. And that is discounting the use of much better video codec like VVC which brings another 40 to 50% reduction in bitrate.
I think we're hitting the point with video resolution that music CDs hit with audio, where improvements in fidelity are largely outside the range of human perception. It's one of the reasons the music DVDs and SACDs never really caught on.
4k at 65" 65ppi
8k at 65 135ppi
This is well within what someone with good vision can see at for example 6-8 feet
For a personal reference I could tell the difference in clarity at 8 ft between a 1080p 24" monitor and a 28"4k monitor. That is 157 vs 92 ppi on a screen a fraction of the size 5 minutes ago.
I must imagine people making such claims have poor eyesight or are using optimum viewing charts as a proxy for distances wherein human vision was sufficiently acute instead of looking for themselves.
For reference someone with good vision ought to be able to distinguish up to about 115ppi at 8ft according to this source.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-highest-resolution-humans-...
The source seems valid despite the mixed bag that is quora. Especially since I and many others can verify this in 10 seconds.
Edit: I wrote 43 instead of 34 by accident. 65" and 1080p = 34ppi
Try it with a high resolution video you've transcoded locally (so you're not dealing with streaming quality differences) at various resolutions. The human visual system is a lot less precise with video than it is with still images. A paused DVD frame often looks like a blocky, terrible mess, but it's perfectly fine when displayed as video.
I won't argue that if you pick your content carefully, and know exactly what to look for, you can tell the difference. But, practically speaking, most people watching a decently encoded video won't see a huge difference from 1080p to 4k at typical screen sizes and viewing distances, and will see even less difference going to 8k.
I honestly can't tell you if I'm watching 720p or 1080p content on our TV without looking at the source file info.
You're confusing "What can be perceived" with "What actually matters." I'd argue 4k was a bit of a stretch to sell new TVs, and 8k is going to be even more so.
We've hit, as someone else said, the 44kHz/16bit point of video. Encoding quality and bitrate matter a bit, just like mastering does with audio, but we're past the point of diminishing returns at this point.
We aren't talking about near the limits of human perception we are capable of perceiving 115ppi at a typical 8 ft viewing distance. 8K for a 65" screen is about the limit. 4k is itself about 1/4 the resolution we can perceive and 1080p is 1/16. You are saying that people can't on average distinguish between 1/4 the resolution we can perceive and 1/16th.
The link I posted was the informed opinion of an electrical engineer that worked in display tech. If people really can't tell the difference between 4k and 1080p shouldn't there be scientific research by this point to show this? You can't because there isn't.
You are like a color blind person exclaiming there is no difference between green and red! There is.
> You are like a color blind person exclaiming there is no difference between green and red! There is.
You're arguing against a complete strawman here. The key point that Syonyk was making is this:
> I won't argue that if you pick your content carefully, and know exactly what to look for, you can tell the difference.
If you're watching a nature documentary or anything else that puts an emphasis on the visuals, people are going to notice the difference by themselves. But most of the stuff we watch doesn't focus on visuals, it focuses on narrative. If I'm watching a legal drama, I don't really care if I can count the hairs in the lawyer's nostril or not. Again, I'll probably be able to tell apart the 4K version from the 1080p version from the 720p version of the lawyer's face's closeup, but even if I watch just the 720p version, it won't significantly impact my enjoyment of the narrative.
First goalpost high dpi video is already outside the range of human perception.
> I think we're hitting the point with video resolution that music CDs hit with audio, where improvements in fidelity are largely outside the range of human perception.
Second goalpost ok its not but its really close
> I won't argue that if you pick your content carefully, and know exactly what to look for, you can tell the difference. But, practically speaking, most people watching a decently encoded video won't see a huge difference from 1080p to 4k at typical screen sizes and viewing distances, and will see even less difference going to 8k.
Third goal post ok its actually clearly discernible but I mostly care about the story anyway.
> But most of the stuff we watch doesn't focus on visuals, it focuses on narrative. If I'm watching a legal drama, I don't really care if I can count the hairs in the lawyer's nostril or not.
Believe it or not but some people said the same about HD vs SD towards the beginning. It was complete bullshit then too. I too enjoy the story and psychological drama but its not books on tape. Film and TV are a visual medium wherein being able to see the world more clearly adds to the experience.
I just measured our living room. We have a 43" (4k) TV at about 16' viewing distance. Just about every chart I can find on TV resolution vs viewing distance (assuming 20/20 vision) indicates that I'm in the "720p is fine" region, on the border of "You really won't notice a difference from 480p." Which is consistent with my experience. I can see the difference between 720/1080/4k if I'm right on top of the TV, but once I'm back where I actually watch from, anything I notice is more a factor of bitrate than resolution - I can certainly tell the difference between a low bitrate MPEG2 source and a high bitrate h.264 source, but that has nothing to do with the resolution.
I don't really have the motivation tonight to pull out my trig tables (I'm about to watch a movie instead, of what resolution I honestly don't know), but... at least for my case, yes, I'm saying I can't tell the difference. And it's entirely possible my glasses need updating (quite likely, honestly), but the "TV size vs distance" charts I've found say nothing of what you're claiming either. And they're by people trying to sell TVs!
To get a more precise fix you can break out a calculator or use this one based on THX recommended viewing angle.
https://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculato...
It suggests that your tiny tv ought to be optimally viewed from 4.8 feet away and at 16 feet away you really ought to have a tv greater than 100 inches.
Of course most people don't have 100+ inch tvs but they also don't watch tv from 16 feet away unless they are watching a 45-60 FOOT theatre screen. Play with some values in the calculator if you want to see how other people use tvs.
People normally sit 8-10 feet from 60-75 inch tvs and use 40 inches for smaller rooms like bedrooms where they are 6 foot away.
To be clear about the whole picture you are a fellow with bad vision watching a small tv from nearly 3 times further back as the rest of planet earth.
At that distance your tv literally does already exceed average visual acuity and for your usage you are absolutely correct.
Meanwhile the rest of us will benefit from up to 8k in the future.
My vision is perfectly fine, thank you very much, as you seem to insist on going on about how horrid it must be. The difference is entirely explained by the fact that I watch a reasonable sized TV from a perfectly sane distance in a living room that isn't a home theater room and has space for plenty of other activities. No idea how you get a TV 6' away in the bedroom, though, unless it's literally at the foot of the bed. I've never had one in there and never intend to.
Your linked calculator suggests that the "optimum" distance for my TV is about 6' away, which I find quite absurd (having just tried it). I'm watching movies, not programming on it.
We appear to have rather divergent views (and social group priorities, if yours has 60-70+ inch TVs at your suggested 8-10 foot viewing distance) on the nature of television viewing, and, as such, there's not an awful lot more to discuss.
In point of fact a medium sized living room is 12x18 with a TV on either a stand or the wall along the longer wall and seating that is around 2 feet deep and off the wall by at least a foot. This means that in an medium size living room there is 8-9 foot between seat and screen. In a large living room 15x20 there is still only 11-12 feet.
People actually are putting 60-75 inch screens therein so we can support the position that the figures given by the calculator represent how people actually use TVs and supports the position that HD -> 4k -> 8k will be perceptively still beneficial given the constraints of human eyeballs.
1/3 of the US lives in apartments and 80% live in urban area where housing is comparatively more expensive. Even for slightly larger houses its common to have a living room and a family room and give up a lot of space to the individual bedrooms. It's supper likely that the TV is in a room that is between 12-18 and 15-20. With the TV on the long wall.
Also for some reason sticking your TV on a stand is still pretty popular vs putting it on the wall. This means that in a 14' room your tv is between 0' and 1' off the wall and your rear end is 3' off the wall. This puts as little as 8' between viewer and tv in 12-18 and as much as 12' in the larger room if they hang it on the wall.
How the US population is distributed is kind of interesting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/03/how-s...
Regarding the question of average living space in the US people in the US almost universally prefer single units detached housing but as the song goes you can't always get what you want. Many for example would prefer to be close to urban settings with more jobs. Others can only afford to rent.
Among renters, around 1/3 of the population, half live in 111 sq meters or less
1/3 of owners live in domiciles of 167 sq meters or less and and 60% of owners live in domiciles 222 sq meters or less.
Combining renters and owners 77% of Americans live in 222 sq meters, 54% live in 167 sq meters or less, 25% live in 111 sq meters or less. Some rounding and conversion between sq ft and meters.
This means about a 1/4 each live in
<= 111 sq meters
112-167 sq meters
168-222 sq meters
> 222 sq meters
https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
The people paying lots for tiny apartments in the city think your 16' of open space in your living room is as unusual as you think they are with their relatively giant TVs in smaller spaces.
Interesting, but doesn't tell me much - I live in an apartment, well under 111sqm, and have a 55" TV around 12' from the couch - so still too small / too far away, according to recommendations. People with even smaller living space (at ~80sqm, my apartment is reasonably large for a two bedroom unit where I live) may simply get smaller TVs to compensate, still being "too small".
These are anecdotes. I'm curious about what people actually do, I don't know, and (contrary to your assertions about what most people do) it doesn't sound like you do either.
My assertion is that due to the above asserted space constraints the majority of people in America are 8-12' from their TV. I also assert that the same people are buying 60"+ TVs
I linked a source that suggested that people could distinguish up to 115ppi at 8' If I understand correctly that means they ought to be able to distinguish about 90ppi at 12'.
If these assertions are correct most people would benefit from 90-115ppi and based on THX recommendations would benefit from the increasingly popular and cheap large screens that people are provably buying despite living in not so huge spaces. In fact tv size purchases are trending upward based on what people can afford.
https://www.consumerreports.org/lcd-led-oled-tvs/tv-trends-t...
A 60" 4k screen is only 73 ppi meaning we aren't beyond human visual acuity yet and 4k at 75" we are down to 59ppi.
The majority of consumers will based on good visual acuity be able to distinguish between 4k and 8k in the room sizes and screen sizes where such products would be relevant and applicable and a median American would benefit.
Now I wonder what Samsung’s motivation for this could possibly be?
>but the "TV size vs distance" charts I've found say nothing of what you're claiming either. And they're by people trying to sell TVs!
The people selling TVs actually say you ought to buy a big ass TV.
Not practically. NetFlix will just compress it down to 3Mbit anyway like they do with 4k, but be able to call it "8k content!" and (probably) charge a premium for it.
Quadrophonic sound did not replace the "good enough" stereo even though humans can move their heads. Of course an 8K TV is just as easy to set up as a 4K one, unlike a quadrophonic stereo. And the functionality of quadrophonic records became available as "surround sound" which some people do have.
It's possible there are enough people who will appreciate the difference for 8K to become established. Personally I doubt it, but it's certainly possible.
Another possibility is that your TV watches you and provides just a 4K or 4K-ish image unless you walk close to your TV at which point it displays a higher resolution image where you are looking. Possibly with some hint-driven mix of AI upsampling and more image data.
The opposite could be true of course with 8K VR rigs in every home. I also doubt it, but it's quite possible.
The 8K-production -> 4K result is well established and will remain even if my guesses above turn out to be correct. That needs a lot of bandwidth but not at the point of viewing.
It makes sense to me. Just add more fiber and let people access them over whatever.
My biggest gripe is we could choose to do away with licensing fees and spectrum auctions and open mm wave 5G to be something like Wi Fi but we are shortsighted as usual.
Well, yes 3G is Shared Spectrum.
>None of these technologies allow you to exceed the available bandwidth
Exceed available bandwidth of what? Per Spectrum? Shannon–Hartley theorem?
The whole point of 4G, and 5G, mentioned in the GP as Massive MIMO was that we could workaround those limits with more Antenna. Everything we are doing today and aiming to do in 3GPP Rel 17 in a few years time are literally impossible to even infer about in the early 2000s. When Massive MIMO, or it was known as Very large Array of Antenna was first published people called the idea "crazy". And CoMP, whether the marketing decide to call it 5.5G or 5.9G along with distributed antennas being worked on in 6G.
There are no fundamental technical reason why we cant have a fully wireless Internet. Although there are many business and economical reason why this may never happen.
>Well, yes 3G is Shared Spectrum.
Sorry, I think I meant 4G, not 3G. It's marketed as LTE here.
> Exceed available bandwidth of what? Per Spectrum? Shannon–Hartley theorem?
No, not Shannon-Hartley. That's just a mathematical model.
When EM waves propagate, they are subject to diffraction, which limits both the amount of information that can be transmitted per time interval, and also the spatial resolution of the transmission. Even with antenna arrays or distributed antennas you can't get past diffraction limits; you can just get closer to them.
To get around diffraction limits, you need to use higher frequencies / shorter wavelengths. (Which has the side effect that you loose the ability of signals to go around / through obstacles, so you need a lot more cell towers.)
We're at a point where new technologies just make different trade-offs (eg. shorter wavelengths for areas with lots of wireless clients vs. longer wavelengths for sparse areas).
With a fibre connection, you don't need to make these tradeoffs; you just need to dig up the ground and you can have as much bandwidth between two points as you want.
The beam forming and such slice bandwidth availability spatially (that's what the cell network does too) so more people can use the shared medium by...not sharing it! It's not like AM radio that gets sent in all directions regardless of whether there is someone in a given direction to listen.
> With fibre, every customer gets the full spectrum.
Well by definition that's true whether fibre or copper, but that fibre or copper is itself aggregated into connections to upstream provider, so you're just kicking the problem down the road. You don't really get the full bandwidth end to end.
As I said I think fixed wireless is an acceptable transitional technology but wired makes more sense longer term for most locations.
Nope. In theory yes, but unfortunately diffraction is going to get you every time if youre not transmitting in deep space.
AFAIK the fastest IP network speed at the moment if 44.2 Terabits/sec for a single light source (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200522095504.h...).
These are hitting upwards of 10Gbit speeds (not quite 44.2 Terabits) but still impressive nonetheless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_communication_in_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_PAyload_for_Lasercomm_...
But that limit, the capacity, is also the maximum possible limit of information transfer on the channel. Modulation schemes don't increase it or change it, they just push the achievable information rate of the system closer to the capacity.
Let's take TDMA as an example. TDMA means that instead of using the available bandwidth continuously, each participant only gets to use that bandwidth for a fraction of the available time. Saying that TDMA helps us increase the available bandwidth is like saying queueing up at the restroom will "provide a lot more availability than purely looking at the number of stalls".
CDMA is more complicated but it's still a similar story. Look at this diagram of a CDMA signal:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Generation_of_CDMA.svg
Notice how the "data" actually being transmitted is only a couple of bits, but the CDMA signal includes many more transitions. CDMA is essentially using N bits of transmission bandwidth to send a signal bit of data signal, the benefit being that if multiple signals interfere it's possible to extract one of them using some complicated math. It's like if 10 people were sharing a phone line, and instead of taking turns talking they all spoke at the same time, but repeated themselves 10 times so you could pick up enough snippets from one speaker to understand what they were saying if you concentrate hard enough.
You can improve the situation with spatial beamforming, polarization isolation, mmWave bands, etc, but there eventually comes a point where the added complexity doesn't win over just hiring a few guys with a backhoe to run fibre down the street.
The little micro cell tower alternative arrangement exists to support devices that expect to communicate with a cell tower where cell service is poor. You normally actually plug them into your wired router so they are actually for areas where relying on wireless would be the worst possible experience.
Fiber is able to provide Gbps to for example all homes in a square mile where they each get Gbps and can indeed fairly heavily use it. Cellular internet isn't actually wireless you run fiber to the towers and then everyone in that square mile.
Urban areas where 80% of people live have a high density so for example in New York City that 1 sq mile contains 27000 people.
In cities however, where most of the population is:
- Bringing optical fiber is cost effective because of the population density
- Wireless gets clogged very quickly (also because of the population density). Additionally 5G is even worse than 4G at going through walls.
Quality of Service is definitely one of the metrics ISPs track, wired is a more reliable way to guarantee service than wired in a fixed setting, upto the house.
I'll admit there is one aspect where wireless might be interesting: Comparatively lower cost of initial set-up, especially when infrastructure is lacking. In other words, if you're trying to provide Internet access to a developing country (little existing cable/telephone infrastructure), wireless might be an interesting intermediate option. But if you're looking at a industrial nation where (rough guess) more than 90% of households already have some kind of cable/telephone/fibre infrastructure, wireless would be a downgrade.
Simply put, with SSDs you are trading the convenience of having faster boot times for essentially everything: HDDs have (a lot) more space, lower prices, longer lifespans.
Simply put, with electric cars you are trading the convenience of charging at home for essentially everything: Gas has higher range, maintenance is easier to find, filling your tank takes 2 minutes instead of hours and that tank's capacity doesn't diminish over time.
Simply put, with screens you are trading the convenience of not having to deal with paper for essentially everything: Printers have better resolution, paper is easier on your eyes, it's more portable.
I guess people just like convenience.
SSDs are a better product than HDDs, they trade capacity for speed, but if you need capacity it's likely you don't really need the extra speed, and you're likely running into other bottlenecks anyway (a HDD can still saturate 1G Ethernet)
Electric cars are a "worse" product, but for most use cases they're functionally equivalent. Most people don't drive farther than the range in a day, maintenance is at the same place as ICE, slow recharge times are easily negated by just plugging in every night and charging while you sleep.
Paper is a worse product than a screen because a screen can be updated. It's about as easy to read, the resolution is about the same, they're equally portable (see a cellphone), but you can put just about anything on a screen and update it many times a second. You can't do that with paper, which is why screens have mostly replaced paper.
It's a huge difference to think you're going to be servicing all rather then some user workstations data requirements with just todays celltowers - which isn't to say you couldn't make it feel similar, but at some point you're cramming a 5G tower into every apartment and those still need fiber backhaul.
If I had a dime for every WiFi user in a video call who's "breaking up", I had a whole bunch of dimes.
But the reverse mix-up also happens: Hotels, restaurants and the similar businesses like to boast their "included free WiFi" when they really mean complimentary Internet access, provided with an AP.
Happy to keep the pretence up though -- what else is a as neutral and widely understood as "internet issues"? Whoops, seems as if my connection has dropped out! Yes, I was very interested in that discussion over sales targets that's been going on for the past half an hour, please email me a summary! Bloody internet, always dropping out!
This is a distance of about 10 meters with 2 brick Victorian internal walls in-between. No matter how much you spend on WiFi equipment you can't get more than 20 Mbps with high packet loss here.
Even downstairs, with no walls to worry about, only 5 Ghz is usable. 2.4 GHz is completely occupied by neighbours, and the lower 5 Ghz channels are all crowded out because of compatibility too.
I hate WiFi with a passion.
If you use real transmission line like ethernet cable (~70 ohm twisted pairs) or coax the impedance remains constant and they might even have a bit of shielding. You'll get faster, more reliable speeds and pollute the radio spectrum significantly less.
- It's disruptive and time consuming. It would likely take me a whole day
- I don't see why I should invest further in improving the property when I will likely move out in 1-2 years time and won't reap the long-term benefits. I've done that already in other areas.
- It's hassle. My landlord could protest that I've done a shitty job when I move out, or, even if I haven't, make me remove it.
- I need multiple WiFi adapters anyway to cover both upstairs and downstairs effectively.
- It's not as flexible (in terms of moving things around) as plugging an adapter in to any electrical outlet.
- I needed a quick solution when I moved in so I could work.
You're both breaking the law and being an asshole for aesthetics and your convenience. That's why.
You don't need to justify yourself. I see this more and more and it's honestly just annoying.
But cities aren’t really the area where 5G home internet provides an advantage. Sure, the protocols more efficient than WiFi - the tower allocated bandwidth and time blocks to coordinate transmissions instead of having everyone’s router blast away on the same hardcoded WiFi channels. But it still achieves those high speeds and great connectivity through having a bunch of small cell towers - hardly much different than wired internet.
The real advantage is suburbs, small towns, and rural areas. You solve the last mile problem for cables, eliminate outages, and you do it all with a couple large cell towers.
Yeah, people (or more likely businesses) with high throughput needs will still use wired connections. But it will be because the electricity costs of transmitting from a 5G tower are high enough that there’s always a base cost per GB, not because there isn’t enough bandwidth to go around.
Why do you expect 5G to eliminate outages when we can't eliminate them with existing LTE towers, with home wifi, or even with direct ethernet connections to modems?
As of now, my least reliable network is always my cellular network.
> you can have about 100k devices per square kilometer before speeds drop below ideal (20 gigabit)
When, though? We're far, far from this at the moment. What is going to fix it and when?
It's not going to completely replace hardwired internet in suburbs/cities, but it might just kill last-mile fiber rollout short of new construction.
That being said I can browse most sites and do 90% of my internet just fine either on my phone or tethered to my phone using my data plan. So maybe I’m wrong!
Can it replace cabled internet, period? Can it replace terrestrial cellular? Unlikely:
Mobile internet is constrained by the capacity and coverage of the cell. "Capacity" being the practical sort of what the maximum achievable information rate is, given the available receivers and transmitters. Satellite links are a bit complicated, but essentially the Shannon-Hartley theorem holds and you either have to increase bandwidth or increase signal-to-noise ratio to provide better data rates within a cell. Bigger cell, more users, less capacity per user, worse data rate per user.
I don't know what the cell sizes Starlink will use are, but I've read numbers around 200 km^2. My hometown of 10000 homes is 21 km^2. If they were to provide 100 Mb/s just to my hometown, they would need a 1 Tb/s capacity in a much smaller cell. Of course, not everybody will use 100 Mb/s all the time, but it illustrates the problem.
This is why SpaceX is mainly focusing on low-density areas in places where the infrastructure is less-developed/monopolized. The capacity / coverage problems works much better to their advantage.
But... somehow, I never actually found myself wanting it that badly at home. And I guess everyone else agreed because one day it just vanished.
So few technologies follow a trajectory like that. Usually you either get a success or a failure, where successes only end once they're replaced by something new and strictly better. But this was truly a fad; it was kind of successful for a minute, and then everybody lost interest.
People were willing to put up with the inconvenient version for the novelty but they quickly wanted something better and no one could provide better. 3D video may come back with mobile VR devices.
I don't think that people simply didn't like 3D video, only that we weren't able to give a good enough experience for it and one day if someone invents something that does it better, it will come back.
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.
Or perhaps you expected sculpture would have supplanted painting?
3D isn't really what we want for every medium. I would argue the same is true for VR.
I do believe VR is here to stay, but I really think that's going to be more gamer-centric. The 'social' aspects of VR seem to be very, very niche; most of what users are talking about (and spending time/money on) is games.
VR might be another story, since VR content has a much more convincing 3D effect. But that entails pretty fundamental changes to cinematography, and requires the viewer to wear a massive headset that blocks out the real world; having some friends over for a movie night is virtually impossible.
I mean, you're not wrong, but I think it's fair to note that yours is not a popular opinion [0]. :D
That everything above is true I can easily hold in my mind.
Check out Big Screen too, lets you watch movies together with people in the same virtual space, might not be great for an IRL movie night but its great for a remote one.
I’ve had enough of that remote shit over the past year and I don’t think I’m the only one.
I found it interesting 2 times, then annoying, and then just started avoiding cinemas that didn't show the movie I wanted to see in 2D.
Or the Nintendo 3DS. I quickly found the best thing about its 3D feature was that you could turn it off.
It's how I imagine football would look if the animators of the original Paddington Bear series[1] were rendering it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mClA14WQFu8
This is the best example I could find. Like 2D cutouts set out in 3D.
This meant that even the relatively small amount of 3D content didn't really feel that 3D, it just felt like more realistic 2D.
And if there's only a small amount of content you might as well just go to the far superior 3D cinema for the experience.
For a while, it was really hard to go to the theater. Everything interesting was only in 3D. I didn't want to pay more for an experience I liked less than the previous status quo.
1. Mechanical hard drives. These have become a bit more niche, but if you deal with larger files like that movie library the author ought to rip from those fragile optical disks he still has lying around, spinning rust is the far more cost-effective option for storing files you don't use all the time.
2. Phone numbers. His original prediction is that people wouldn't use them, not that people wouldn't remember them and dial them manually. A number of popular messenger services including Signal use phone numbers as identifiers, and I wish they didn't.
3. The fax machine. This absolutely, 100% deserved to be dead a decade ago. Perhaps most faxes aren't actually sent using physical machines anymore, but a lot of businesses and some government institutions treat fax as more secure than purely digital file transfers. My vote in the 2020 US election involved a fax. I'm disappointed in the tech community for not producing a solution that achieved near-universal buy-in from more conservative institutions in the past two decades.
4. Optical disks. I haven't used one in years, and I suspect a lot of other people here are in the same position. There's not that much content I want to watch more than once, so the issue of streaming non-ownership isn't a big problem for me. The author has kids, and kids definitely do that, but there are both legal and less legal ways to obtain permanent copies of content by purely digital means. Note to content sellers: I'm happy to pay for content; don't make it so difficult for me to do so that I seek alternatives.
Both are digital, of course.
By the way, it annoys me that the word digital is used to mean “downloaded over a network”.
Console makers want it to be legacy because they can charge a higher price for a game when there is only one store in town compared to multiple stores when it comes to discs.
No, they're still pretty mainstream. When someone runs out of disk space (e.g. with media files), they tend to buy a large HDD (whether external or internal), not a second SSD.
So, your point about HDDs is even stronger, and the author's son will definitely get one.
* In 2020, non-enterprise sales were 330 Million SSD units, 260 Million HDD.
* In 2020, non-enterprise users bought 5 times more capacity on HDDs than on SSDs.
https://www.pcgamer.com/fun-fact-ssds-outsold-hdds-last-year...
Von Neumann wouldn't be too surprised at the memory paradigms in use now, because they haven't changed, even though the implementation has become considerably more sophisticated.
But, of course, that can't dismiss the idea that a better implementation is a substantial technical advance either.
Actually, I'm wrong wife's desktop does... and our car does...but I mean the frequency of use is like twice per decade...
I fail to see how this is the bright side. Both of those ways are worse at interacting with literally anything, especially compared to a dedicated remote for a TV. I'd try a foot controlled pedal for my TV before I'd be ok with using voice controls.
So for my regular use, I wouldn't mind voice control for this, though voice assistants have trouble hearing you when there's extraneous loud noise, so volume control (especially when a really loud scene comes up and I want to lower it) would be difficult.
I don't like the idea of a smartphone app, because there's the hassle of unlocking my phone and finding/switching to the right app.
The author also mentions using gestures, which also seems very error-prone.
So I guess a dedicated remote control is the way to go, though I wouldn't mind having a single bare-bones power+volume remote, so I could toss the full-featured remotes into a drawer and only pull them out when (rarely) necessary.
After having them installed for a few weeks, their benefit is mostly a wash. I'd rather just flip them on/off, but unfortunately one of the bulbs doesn't retain its "memory" of the last setting this way, so to use the features, I have to use the app and keep them on. Additionally, the app sometimes takes a second or to to connect to their service, so I'm standing in front of the lamp waiting several seconds just to be able to turn it on/off. This is definitely a case where a manual switch is so much better. It. Just. Works.
To be honest I almost always use the switch, including changing the color. Cycling through colors with a button is still more convenient than opening an app and picking one. I really only use the app when I need to control individual lights.
Yeah, my last smart light setup a few years ago had this problem too. I ended up running a script on Raspberry Pi that detected when a light bulb appeared on the network again and reconfigured it immediately.
But my ultimate conclusion from that setup was, smart lights make no sense without smart switches. You want to be able to both actuate physical controls and switch the lights through software.
Are there better places you could use the lights? Where the flexibility is more useful?
For instance, you're upstairs and you wish to watch a movie in your home theater in the basement. You hit the button on your phone and while you travel to the basement the lights lining the hallways and staircases come on (if off); the projector turns on and switches to the movie input; the receiver turns on and switches to the movie input; the theater recliner adjusts to your preferred position; the bias lighting turns on; and two minutes later the lights lining the hallways and staircases revert to their previous state.
Especially since this kind of thing has only been possible in really high end homes until now, so it feels exclusive. At least that’s my read.
The whole problem is that TV remotes keep changing. My TV now we have two remotes, one that came with the TV and one for Google TV.
I used the TV remote the other day out of necessity...and it took me about 20 seconds to find the mute key. On the GTV remote, it's one of like 5 buttons.
I'll always prefer physical buttons to menus, but not when the layout and meanings of said buttons change every year.
*a few years back now
Growing up in the 90s I thought virtual reality was just around the corner - only now 30 years later are we starting to see virtual reality.
5 years ago it seemed like 100% self driving cars were just around the corner. You can argue we are much closer than we were, but it still seems like we are pretty far away.
10 years ago, the web was dead and apps were the future... today hardly anyone believes apps are the future.
I imagine that travel to Mars, and a moon colony seemed like it was just around the corner in 1970 and yet here we are 50 years later and neither one of those came to fruition.
The reality is tech is incredibly fast moving, which makes it hard to predict, but still not as fast as we think it is.
A 3d printer in 2012 was $2000... a 3d printer that can be that printer is about $300 today.
A decent drone was about $3000 back there... $400 can you get you a decent drone today.
Smartphones too. 2011->2017 changed big time - in hardware at least. But now it doesn't really matter if you get a 250 or a 1000 euro phone. You'll get a better camera and some gimmicks like oled (objectively better, I went from oled to lcd and it bothered me for weeks, but honestly I'll use a phone for years, I'm used to it now, and don't miss it at all anymore) or usb-c. Can't do much more without reducing battery life or other aspects. And sometimes they do -- make a worse phone with better specs I mean. People don't mind because it's all the same anyway, the tech is stagnating there.
As a rule, you're right, but the exceptions and limitations are also everywhere.
That's the OP's point.
What has happened over that period is people's expectations have inflated (with some help from the marketers).
Oh and wage growth over that period has been reasonably strong (until 2020): https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/embed/?s=unitedstawagg...
To me (very occasional user) it seems like going to a fab lab and using their $3000 3d printer is the better option.
As Tom Hall said (paraphrase) "No one wants to strap shit to their face". I'd bet it's still very much a novelty in 30 years.
I do feel like we are at a turning point where VR will become the dominant non mobile gaming device of the future. If it will be used much outside of gaming is the big question.
Do not play games where you are in any vehicle or need to walk around.
Seated experiences where you use smooth locomotion are bad. Aircraft (or spaceship) cockpit type experiences are even worse because not only do you have translation that's out of sync with your inner ear and sense of movement, but you have rotation as well (which is much worse).
also, newer headsets are much, much better than in the 90s.
I do wonder if this is a simple statistical fluke, or if it's pointing at some deeper aspect of our biology.
VR sickness is when there's somewhat equivalent visuals, but not acceleration. So I could see motion sickness and VR sickness being essentially opposites.
Anecdotal evidence: if you get motion sickness, you can help mitigate it by focusing on the horizon (ie, feed your eyes what your body is already telling you).
If you get VR sickness, maybe you can concentrate your focus on your body/breath to mitigate.
I still question if VR will ever truly take off.
That, IMO, is the killer feature, and once it hits takeoff, the headset era of VR will be looked back at as a necessary stepstone that was ultimately completely replaced with what ultimately will be used.
AR, in the inobstrusive/genuinely useful sense is harder but seems far more interesting. Yes, there are social factors to deal with as well, but I can certainly see worn information displays becoming a thing.
As a side note, my friend and I first made this bet back in the DK2 days, and I was ~60% confident I was correct. What pushed me in to the 90%+ region was playing with an Oculus Quest. The guardian mode, freedom from wires, hand tracking, pass-through mode, etc... Everything that felt like a real step forward was also something that will ultimately apply to AR glasses. It really made me think I was on the right track.
Can we be so certain of this, especially given the events of the last year? If VR technology had been perfected at the time, it seems very likely to me that instead of a shift to Zoom at the outbreak of the pandemic, many companies, government agencies and (especially) schools would have made the move to VR. It will be interesting to see how VR is integrated into our every day lives (both voluntarily and otherwise) as it is perfected.
Easy tier: folding laundry, cooking, most other things
Medium tier: doing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom (need to have a towel at the ready if I need to unmute)
Hard tier: vacuuming (makes it hard to listen to what's being said, so I've only done it once very briefly until now)
It really only solves maintenance cleaning IE doing the main bits that get dirty most often like common walkways, near the front door etc.
For me, that is 90% of the work. I only live in a small place and wife and I appreciate it. In a large house, with 3 or more kids? I'd buy one for every floor if I had to.
For the other 10%, I have a dyson battery powered stick thing. Gets into the nooks, does the keyboard and the car too.
And there is something nice about being able to do the dishes, wash and dry clothes, vacuum the floor; all while playing games.
This is true, at least in part, because Zoom meetings allow this, not necessarily because this is the behavior that an employer views as ideal. If VR technology was well-developed, I think its likely that many employers would hold VR meetings for the very reason that employees would be forced to give 100% of their attention. Certainly this is true when it comes to schools, which have done everything possible to ensure that students are paying 100% attention all the time, aren't using supplemental materials during tests (cheating), ect.
>When North Carolina A&T State University junior Arielle G. Brown took her International Marketing exam in September, a cheating-detection program analyzed her behavior through a computer webcam the entire time. After the test, her associate professor fired off a furious email ripping into her class for some “negative behavior” the software had flagged.
>“A STUDENT IN 6 MINUTES HAD 776 HEAD AND EYE MOVEMENTS,” she wrote, adding later, “I would hate to have to write you up.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/12/test-mo...
We may not all end up choosing (or be forced) to hold VR meetings in cyberspace, but to seems virtually (pun intended) certain to me that many will.
It's certainly a start, but there's a long way to go.
oh really? what are people thinking the alternative is?
If a project like this exists I unfortunately haven't come across it.
Commercial interests play opposite to creation of anything like Emacs, where everything is customizable and anything can interact with everything.
Unless interoperability is mandated somehow, I do not see anything like Emacs in our future.
It was just around the corner. The grand arc of human life altered course, and it took the market 50 years to catch up to collective action.
I usually give a lot of the credit for the recent push back into space to private companies like spaceX, but, now after making this comment part of me is wondering if I am just being naive and the real reason for space becoming a priority again is because China has started to make significant progress in their space program.
As for the Mars thing, SpaceX is funding it with their profits from boring commercial launches, and I don't think that is driven by excess capital on the market.
I'm still torn about this. I hope the web wins, but I don't really know if the average mobile user even uses a web browser anymore.
And PWAs have been a failure so far, maybe Svelte or WebAssembly could fix this, but I wouldn't put my money on it.
I like that it saves my tabs for me. I have old ones sitting from nearly 5 or 6 years ago that I still go back to occasionally.
I also like purposefully obfuscating browsing social media and youtube so that I spend less time there and am less inclined to use it all day. I can even have a reddit account without ever getting any kind of push notifications. Its great!
That being said, I am probably going to get a linux phone once this one finally leaves me, so I do not represent a large segment of the consumer base.
When I've had companies come and bid on things like roof repair, for example, the person that comes to access the job and prepare an estimate will use one. During the job I see the workers using them to document what they are doing.
I know they have modern smart phones, because I see them use them.
My guess is that they use the stand alone camera because of the better interface. Smart phones can be a pain to operate while wearing heavy work gloves, or to operate one handed.
Just this afternoon I wanted to take some photos of the gutters on my front roof to see if they needed cleaning. That section of roof is only about 7.5 ft above the deck, so it is easy to just reach up to where the camera has a view of inside the gutters. Except on about half the shots, some part of my hand would hit some on-screen control and do something to mess up the shot, such as changing the mode from photo to video.
It would have been easier if I had used my old Sony DSC-P93 [1].
[1] https://www.dpreview.com/products/sony/compacts/sony_dscp93
There's also the aspect that, for construction documentation, everything is on the camera card. You don't have to pay attention to who has which photos, but, oh, their phone won't run the uploader app right, or their home ISP is slow, or... whatever. You use the camera, you take pictures, they're there.
And I'm still inclined to use a camera for documenting a number of my projects around the property. I don't have to worry about it getting beat up, I can use it in gloves, etc. Plus, the lens is better.
In my country, everyone uses a smartphone (practically speaking). Delivery, repair, inspection people, all use their smartphones to take photos and upload to destination via an app.
Apart from being convenient, this has a side effect that the organization can push device cost onto individual contractors and lay people. I'm fully certain western countries will catch up with this trend just to save a buck.
The reasoning behind this, that everyone is going to have a place big enough for a great home cinema setup is laughably privileged and off the mark. Such a huge amount of people live in absolutely tiny places with neigbours that mean the audio and video could never be a decent home cinema.
And I know, cheap TVs aren’t what you meant by “decent home cinema” but for many people a 60-75” tv with a midrange soundbar (or decent headphones) is plenty. Both those things can be had secondhand. Obviously below a certain income level it’s still not doable, but I can’t imagine being so poor I couldn’t afford a secondhand tv but still willing to drop $15 on admission then pay $8 for a popcorn.
Example in India. The average ticket price in a high-end movie theater is ₹239 ($3.18), most tickets are priced way below that [1]. The cheapest 4k 55" TVs I can find on amazon.in cost around ₹35,000 ($466)[2]. And these units will have the absolute crappiest screens and even worse sound. Anything smaller and you won't have a screen big enough to replace the theater-going experience.
I think your perception is distorted by the extreme high price of movie tickets where you live ($15 would be insane here). However TV prices are comparable. So obviously the TV looks more attractive to you.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/319496/movie-ticket-pric...
[2] https://www.amazon.in/AmazonBasics-127cm-inch-Ultra-Smart/dp...
What’s more, the context switch alone is worth it. In the cinema my job is to watch the film. At home I’m thinking about chores and checking my phone. It’s not remotely the same.
At that point, you are really only saving on snacks. I agree that that's not thing, but its not as if buying the TV grants you the cost of admission to the movie as well.
I don't own a TV and I still go to theaters for the occasional movie. I've always felt that I got my moneys worth when going out to the theater. Plus, having a large TV mounted somewhere is just another piece of furniture that I have to account for.
I think a home theater system makes sense for a diminishing segment of the population. A theater is cheaper if you are only interested in major releases.
If you want to watch relatively recent movies you might have to pay extra, but not per viewer as you do in a theater.
Compare that to a 20-30 minute car trip one way + parking + walking to theatre, expensive snacks, loud-as-shit misbehaving kids interrupting the movie etc.
We've paid for every single Disney+ "premium release" and haven't regretted a second. I don't think we're going to a movie theatre as a family ever again - as long as there's a simultaneous digital release.
I'll go solo to see my AAA R-rated blockbusters if cinemas ever open again.
That's why I don't think it will go away anytime soon.
I kinda suspect it will be more like a CD-quality audio situation. is 1411 kbps PCM better than a 128 kbps AAC? yes, but for most people it doesn't outweigh the convenience of being able to stream on your phone. and people have shitty earbuds anyway because they don't care.
Most of his predictions were based in fantasy desire.
I would argue that while his son will probably never use an actual dedicated Fax Machine, he will probably have to figure out how to send a fax at least once. Lawyers just can't seem to get away from those damn things.
That seems a bit harsh, considering that the 3D versions of major blockbuster movies do well in theaters. It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that quite a few people would want to be able to get the 3D versions of those movies for home viewing.
A 3D TV is not much different from a 2D TV. Doesn't it mainly just need a higher refresh rate, and for some 3D technologies a higher vertical resolution? The higher end TVs from most manufacturers already often have twice the refresh rate of mid end TVs, and higher resolution (e.g., there are 8K TVs out now, even though most programming is 4K or less).
I'd have expected TV makers to continue offering 3D, but only on their high end models. It wouldn't really cost them much, and it would get those people that watch 3D movies in theaters and want the same version at home to buy a higher end TV than they would otherwise need.
Did well, past tense. 3D movies peaked in 2010 and box office sales declined annually. By 2019 they were less than 50% of their 2010 peak. TV makers stopped making 3D TVs after 2016.
You're right that 3D TVs were just high refresh rate TVs but they have to sync with shutter glasses so you can't easily do 3D without TV support.
The latest HDMI spec supports variable refresh rate so in theory you could now make a player capable of handling the shutter sync.
It was a fad just like in the 50s and 80s. It lasted longer this time but yeah 3D is dead.
Which is around the time the author wrote the first article
Almost no one cared about 3D movies in 2012 and it was only industry momentum and sunk cost fallacy that kept things going for as long as it did.
I initially wrote a fax App using the Twilio API to send some medical forms that could only be faxed. Since then I've had to use it for the sale of two homes, and this past summer it was augmented to receive faxes for closing on a home. My partner ask me for the number just last week to request some medical records from out of state.
We have software installed in our email gateway that detects key words like SSN or 16 digit numbers that look like credit cards and blocks them from being sent.
The crazier predictions are ones that didn't come to fruition line no more floating window managers or mice and people no longer building desktop pcs, or ones the author still thinks are going to happen like no more wired internet connections.
For what it's worth I'm 15 years older than his son, and haven't used a landline in over a decade. I'm typing this from my office desk that has a landline phone on it, that as far as I'm aware has never rung.
It's not an unreasonable conclusion to mark that prediction as correct.
EDIT: actually upon closer inspection it appears that the phone on my desk might be VoIP, so I've not only not used a landline phone in a decade, I haven't even seen one.
In a similar boat. Last time I used a landline was about 20 years ago.
In fact, in India the landline has all but vanished.
Also, you can't use whatsapp without a phone number. Several apps and services require a phone number for sign up or 2FA. So that one is bogus too.
Some of the technologies hi lists are indeed are on its way out from home experience, like HDDs and landline phones, but it does not mean they do not have niches where they are doing to linger for at least a decade.
Point and shoot...I have DSLR. I didn't have one 15 years ago. It's not for every day use, of course but I use it frequently. I can do so much more with it and the quality is so much better.
Mouse...my parents/in-laws haven't used one in years since their main computer is a tablet
Home phone? I installed one (VoIP) a few years ago. If I need to reach anyone at home I just have 1 number to call and I don't need to worry about phones having no battery, on silent etc...Also my kids (oldest is 4) and may need to reach me when they are older and for sure they aren't getting their own cellphone for a long time.
> In my original article, I said that a confluence of factors would kill movie theatres: the improving quality of home theaters, the eventual death of the 90-day theatrical window and the cost and hassle of the movie-going experience.
I mean, I appreciate being able to just have a nice quiet evening watching Netflix, but if anything after the pandemic I yearn to see a movie in the theater. This type of commentary rarely mentions the social aspect of going to the movie theater, watching with friends or a date, etc. It always goes with the "going to a movie theater is not efficient" take, which makes me think that people's brains just must be wired differently. I consider myself an introvert but I'm so excited about being able to have normal in-person interactions soon.
Online ordering and increasing poverty makes the mall a declining asset where the movies are one of the last big drivers of demand.
Interesting—what part of the country do you live in? Where I am in the North-East, movie theaters attached to malls is more of a minority. Not non-existent, but not at all a majority.
On the other side,I love going to cinema- the smell of overpriced popcorn, big screen and the same exciting feeling I get when I see a studio logo and know that the film is about to start. And I can always throw some popcorn at those who think having their phones on is a good idea:)
Getting the boys together to watch a film at home usually means playing MST3K all night while we pound beers and butcher a pizza.
Hitting the movie theatre means we keep our mouths shut, focus on the film and the experience of being in the theatre, and the compare notes over dinner/beers after the fact.
It's like comparing going to Easter Mass with watching a televangelist over public access on Easter morning. The two are vaguely analogous, but experientially incomparable because of the environments and framings in-which they take place.
Hollywood may die, but you'll go to a movie theatre just like you may go to see a Broadway tour or a regional Shakespeare once in a while.
Films might actually get better when the demand to crank out the most popular drek for box office bang fades away.
They already do a lot of price variation in the release process, by the time it gets to cable their marginal revenue is something like a few cents.
I think we have been at this step for decades already. Look at what is featured and promoted at the Sundance festival and what Annapurna produces and what others do: we already have such movies without the marketing and production budgets of Marvel or Disney or big budget producers.
They've already gone that way, in part, particularly during the 60s, 70s and 80s when a large share of cinemas closed. Then it sort of stabilised, at least in terms of screens: while cinemas kept on closing, some others got bigger. But those bigger ones rely on the business of blockbusters.
Maybe it will start dropping again and turn the way you foresee, I don't know.
I much prefer arthouse cinemas (my favourite has a bar, and you can take a bottle of wine in to the theatre) these days. They cost a bit more but the experience is usually pretty good.
Plus, Marvel has gotten so good at turning it into a crowd participation activity. It’s almost like going to a sporting event from a crowd energy perspective.
During the pandemic I’ve watched those “Audience Reaction” videos on YouTube a lot just because I miss it so much.
I do wonder if we get smaller, private space theatre in less prime locations. Basically these rooms could be used to watch latest movies, live sport, or other things where a group of people can stay together and socialise. You still get a 90 days theatrical window with much higher quality stream than you would be renting on Netflix 90 days later.
In the 90s there were all sorts of bookstore chains, now it’s pretty much B&N. At the same time, at least here in Boston, there are several long-standing bookstores (Harvard, book smith, trident, etc.) that still get a ton of traffic and are local institutions in their own right.
So when I think of local independent theaters that already have a dedicated following (thinking mostly of Coolidge corner theatre) I think they’ll find a way to thrive.
Booting has disappeared.
Sleep (and hibernate) has made booting and boot times a non-issue.
I would be surprised if people boot phones, laptops and many desktops more frequently than once a month.
Even rebooting for updates probably happens without anyone present.
If more people had the option of long-term support releases and live kernel patching with computers, I would expect similar results with laptops.
I work from home and I still use a land line phone. I bought the best quality speakphone I could find and I don't regret it a minute. Cell phones just don't have the same voice quality, especially for speakerphone, as a land line. And I avoid doing voice over the computer because my computer is busy and I don't want to sound like a robot because it can't handle the workload.
This one being in the list surprised me. I was born more than 20 years earlier and I don't think I've ever seen a fax machine in action, let alone used one.
I was working at Office Max at the time and the transition happened fast. We went from having more than eight dedicated fax machine models down to one or two.
The first multi-function machines looked like fax machines and could function without a PC but we're so much better when connected to a PC.
Cheap software modems allowed people to send and receive faxes without owning a dedicated machine. I remember eMachines bundled software with their PCs to make them effectively behave like a fax machine. Later they pushed the eFax internet based fax software.
It's crazy that many business transactions still require Fax but the machines don't really exist. We needed to send/receive faxes to purchase a home last year as PDF/email was unacceptable. I was able to create a virtual Fax Server using Twilio in a couple hours and deal with these silly requirements.
Sadly Twilio is shutting down their Fax service later this year and the suggested alternative is vastly more expensive.
So I suspect that they don't require fax. Fax is their normal way of operating, but it's not a legal requirement or something. It's just their default, and they'd rather not have to deal with changing it for you.
But who's paying who? Oh, I'm paying them? Then they can forget making me jump through their obsolete technology hoops. No, they can figure out a way to send me the documents that I'm already set up to handle.
You're fairly likely to have to use one even today if you end up in certain places (Japan, Germany) or in certain businesses (medical, restaurant delivery). Then again, I bet many of these have the physical fax machine replaced by digital fax services. It's ironic, because a PDF would obviously be higher quality and faster to transmit, but some places still require fax but will accept you "faxing" a PDF via an online service, which then gets received by a fax-to-email service.
I've also had to fax documents to immigration (again, government). I guess my point is if you're dealing with the government, you'll probably have to fax something at some point.
Just plug a phone line into the modem, print to "Fax" from any program, enter the fax number, and hit Send.
Before WFH I would normally just use the office's fax machine but because of the pandemic it wasn't an option.
I got to play around with a 3D-glasses-free display[1] for the first time yesterday, and I've got to say, it felt pretty magical.
It's a lousy format, though. For files intended to be played on a computer, I used webm/vp9/opus. It seemed like browser-supported, royalty-free formats that play on everything not Apple would last a while.
Would have expected better from a supposed tech mag.
FTC or FTH is still l going to beat wireless connections - "you cane change the laws a physics" as Scotty used to say.
You'll probably be pretty close in any case... a decade is a lot of time.
Or when he starts using a computer at school, other family or friends.
Solid state isn't too expensive now, if waiting for downloading is okay. You can get 480GB disks for around 50€. That is what, less than price of new title? And likely can at least one to three of them at one time.
Point and shoot digital cameras are interestingly bad compared to cellphones nowadays. The camera will generally have better glass, better sensor, beefier battery, more space to house the components, but will get beaten by a 7mm thick phone in most circumstances. Amazing how much can be done just by crunching numbers harder and faster.
On the contrary, DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have held their own against camera phones. The hardware advantage is too vast to be bridged by software right now. Or maybe the camera manufacturers are starting to use some software tricks themselves in their newest stuff.
Well of course this isn't the case. I've banged on about this a lot, but we've given up on optimising our software and have just opted for making the hardware faster instead.
This is the result.
/shrug
I do not and hope I never will live in this man's future
It was a bit of a hilarious experience plugging a VoIP box into a ~2010 Brother MFC printer/scanner.
It might be the only time I've ever sent a fax in my entire life (and I'm 28).
They kind of predicted a few things right-ish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vix6TMnj9vY
Although I think the technology that exists now is much better than what I thought it would be like as a kid. Except for flying cars, I still want one
Seems pretty true for the non-Windows uses cases at least, in my experience (iOS, Android, Linux, macOS).
The only reason wee don't see coreboot everywhere is that motherboard manufacturers refuse to adopt or even allow it.
ChromeOS is also the fastest of the non-mobile operating systems to wake from sleep. It is up and running and on wifi before I can raise the lid to its normal position.
Although recent versions of RISC OS are now entirely softloaded, the increased speed of the Raspberry Pi and other modern hardware platforms has cheerfully reduced boot time again: by modern standards RISC OS is tiny!
I am super happy that my computer unsleeps quicker than I can move my hand from the finger print sensor to the keyboard, but I also basically never reboot it.
What competition? If you need to run Windows you'll run Windows. Mac and Linux don't compete with them, these are alternative products but not competing ones.
I'd argue that this is correct in spirit. Not because operating systems boot really fast, but because they have been designed to not need to boot at all. The only time I need to cold boot my computer or phone is after an update (which is maybe every 2-3 months?)
> He Won’t Go to the Movies
This is not TBD but straight up wrong. Pandemic notwithstanding, there is no end to movie theaters in sight.
Hmm hard to disagree with that. For pros and experienced enthusiasts, sure nothing beats camera system with bigger image sensors.
But for casual folks who just want to take image quickly (and publish them to social media), smartphone is way more practical. And cheaper.
> 2. No Dedicated Cameras and Camcorders I’m almost 40. I (finally) own a smart-phone. I also own a good digital camera. I tested smartphone cameras for “a leading tech company in Mountain View” for several years.
I’m fully aware of the saying, “The best camera you have is the one you have with you”.
One day I saw a coworker pointing to my digital camera and saying “That type of camera is obsolete”. I didn’t feel good about that, and I have no regrets owning it and still using it with no issues for quality or availability. When I go out for pictures, I bring my camera; when I don’t, I accept I have to accept smartphone quality.
> 7. He Won’t Go to the Movies I love movies (and television). I watch at home and out.
I go out to the movies for the experience and to get out of the living space. No regrets. I'm an introvert.
> 8. He Won’t Use a Mouse I cannot stand using a trackpad or the “mouse button” [there are more crude words for it, think the red thing on ThinkPads].
It is a mouse for me for life because it’s actually useable.
> 10. He Won’t Use a Remote Control Does a bluetooth mouse count as “remote control” for my computer dedicated for watching movies and television 6 feet away?
> 14. He’ll Never Use a Fax Machine If only some businesses or government I need to deal with was the same.
The only reason go to theater for me is great sound especially bass. Huge bass is really impossible at home but not all content requires such bass.
Maybe we could just sum alot of the assumptions to.. Smart phones will replace X predictions. Seems like where it all originated.
Side note: In the late 80's, I worked for AT&T in the consumer marketing dept. I remember there was a manager who repeatedly said, "Someday our phone numbers will follow us no matter where we live." Now, he was _not_ predicting the mobile phone, only that if you moved you wouldn't have to change numbers. But that, even then, he was viewed as a mad man. I wonder that he'd say today.
1 - Effectively, ubiquitous wifi - The obvious direction of technology + market. Something Comcast / Xfinity was offering and expanding.
2 - Mobile devices with better cameras - Both were handheld with similar and overlapping technologies. The obvious direction of technology + market
3 - Landlines - The obvious direction of technology + market. I haven't had one since early 00's, and that was strictly as a back up for business purposes.
4 - Instant on - Who wouldn't want that? TVs do it. The obvious direction of technology + market.
5 - Non-UI UX - The obvious direction of technology + market, ask Siri or Alexa.
6 - SSD / Cloud - HDs are the fax machine of storage. The obvious direction of technology + market
7 - Movie theaters - The obvious direction of technology + market.
8 - Mouse? - See above about voice, and of course there's touch. The obvious direction of technology + market
9 - 3D glasses - Been hyped for the longest. The obvious direction of technology + market.
10 - No remote - Remember the infomercials, "the clapper"? Also, back to voice, or mobile device (see cameras). The obvious direction of technology + market.
11 - No desktops - He was midtaken.
12 - No phone dialing - Most comms aren't via phone number, and if they are no one dials. Ever since mobile devices - even flip phones - fewer and fewer were dialing. Again, the obvious direction of technology + market.
13 - Won't watch prime time - I owned a TIVO (DVR) in the late 90's and the promise of 500 channels is as old as cable TV. The obvious direction of technology + market.
14 - No fax machine - Never really a consumer product. Why would a 9 y/o need one in 2021? The obvious direction of technology + market
15 - No optical media - See SSD / cloud. The obvious direction of technology + market.
Fax and optical media are the big exceptions; good riddance. SSD/Cloud are being pushed by an oligopoly of mega-corporations and people don't have a choice. And even then, it's not like CDs are rare like Betamax tapes.
And almost of these are "obvious" directions with respect to adoption beyond enthusiast types who like cool high-tech shit (with the above exceptions). They are niche, not poised for total takeover so complete that a child born in the 2010s would literally never experience them once ever.
Don't confuse "hype in tech magazines" with "things people care about or want". And don't confuse "fun and/or useful technology that will gradually increase in popularity over time" with "overnight society-transforming".
Keep in mind, per the original article, some of these are biz / enterprise driven. An SSD might cost more up front but over its lifetime, it saves money. That increase in demand lowers prices, to the point that they are consumer friendly.
I think most are discounting how often ppl still bring their work tech into their home.