Museum of Failure | Hacker News Reader

Museum of Failure

museumoffailure.com

144 pointsj0hax74 comments

Visited last weekend. Interesting for sure. Funny to see how many times and for how long we've been trying to do VR!

Some of the "failures" were unfair IMO, like minitel and Block Buster: It's like saying using wind sails on ships was a failure because it was replaced by steam engines.

VR is just the most recent incarnation of the "3D vision" gimmick every generation will rediscovered and then abandon. We had multiple waves of this fad, starting with the stereoscopic novelty postcards of the 19th century, the many 3D cinema revivals (the Avatar craze even saw the rise of ludicrous 3D TVs), and now Metaverse and its ilk.

It always fails because, once the novelty of the effect wears off, people realize it's basically pointless. The extra information 3D brings is not worth the logistic cost. So they revert to regular 2D cinema, classic virtual worlds like MMORPGs etc. which are much more comfortable to experience and deliver the same basic product.

Alternatively, we try again and again because there's a lot of promise if we get it right, but so far the technology just isn't there for anything sustainable beyond the novelty factor.

This round we got far enough that there are some industry use cases for AR, which shares 99% of its tech with VR. Maybe that will funnel enough money into development to break out of the hype cycle into something sustainable.

I think stereoscopic viewing is fundamentally a bad idea that holds little promise - it's not really 3D, but a parlor trick that gives confusing depth information, the eye must focus at the screen even if the scene is very close or very far. It's too annoying and tiring as a sustainable consumer technology; maybe tools only professionals are required to use, ex. remote surgery gear, with pros and cons well understood.

This could change if holographic digital screens become practical, allowing, for example, multiple people in a room to see a real 3D scene, each from a different angle without any head gear.

There are some attempts at making light field displays. Those seem like they would address this, but it's a lot of engineering to get from where they are now to a useful head-mounted display.

>the eye must focus at the screen even if the scene is very close or very far

This is just literally untrue. Your eyes focus "into" the VR scene, not at the screens one inch from your eye.

But you cannot focus where you want, so it’s not 3d but layered 2d. In a 3d emulated image you cannot focus on a background object and even if you could the interpupillary distance would be the same and so the focusing one. Our image processing in the brain uses such information to calculate, that’s why you can approximate the dimension of an object and distances in real life but not in a picture even if it is a 3d one.

> Your eyes focus "into" the VR scene, not at the screens one inch from your eye.

3D head gear like Oculus have optical systems that move the physical screens virtually to a much greater (and comfortable) distance - most people can't even focus objects closer than about 10 cm.

That's not what I meant. Rather, even that virtual 3D screen is still at a fixed apparent distance from your eyes, unlike a natural scene that contains objects that are father or closer. Such objects scatter light not only at different angles for the two eyes, the bulk of the 3D effect, but also at different internal convergence, requiring the eye's lens to deform and compensate.

This is an effect current tech cannot reproduce, leading to a nauseating and tiring viewing experience - as if the whole immersive virtual world wasn't already.

I think this is a pretty good summary, but misses one key point: people don’t like wearing something that blocks their natural vision for very long. Some can’t even do it for a few minutes. It’s not like any other form of technology in that way. Even 3D TVs didn’t have this “feature”.

Gamers might be able to do it all day, and it will probably always have that market. But as a replacement for the flip-open or pull-out-of-your-pocket screen, never gonna happen. Sorry Zuck.

It just needs its "killer application". I don't know what it is, but consider. Another constantly failing gimmick until recently was the videophone. "Nobody needs to see somebody while talking" was the standard explanation, and every attempt at a videophone failed for decades. But then the pandemic happened and then the remote work craze and virtual meetings became the killer app for that.

You say "it always fails", but also it fails because "extra 3d information is not worth the logistic cost".

Couldn't you conceive of a future where the "logistic cost" drops so incredibly low, that the cost is less than the benefit of the extra information?

For instance, if the soft-AI systems like KoboldAI and StableDiffusion were re-trained to handle the conversion of 2d media into 3d media and guided in the process by an appropriately talented director with a tech team and artists to support it, an entire mediacentric cottage industry could erupt just with managing the licenses to convert old movies into explorable 3d interactive adventures.

How cool would it be to have a chat with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, or to make a mad dive to save Mufasa at the last second and see how The Lion King would play out without his death as a motivating factor? If you could do all of that and more in a VR Cineplex it would probably be more entertaining than Disneyland and available at every Mall in America.

Honestly, that's probably a trillion+ dollar idea, but implementing it would need an insane amount of money, time, skill, processing, and resources plus dozens of large egotistical companies working together.

As I said above, true holographic digital screens could make 3D seamless and ubiquitous. At current computing trends, that appears at least a number of decades away from consumer gear.

In the case of Blockbuster, it's reasonable to argue that they should have at least taken advantage of their brand (and relationships) to get into the DVD rental by mail business which would have, relatively speaking, not been a big stretch. Though phasing out retail would have been disruptive.

Of course, streaming was a whole different game. (As would be original content.) And it's not like Netflix is looking especially robust at the moment.

Blockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix in the early 2000's for $50,000,000.

I bet it spent a while regretting not making that purchase, but then again, if they had Netflix may have become a passing fad and never branched out into the online streaming market.

https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/netflix-blockbuster-meeting...

I had forgotten that. Yes. I suspect they’d have done the DVD by mail thing but then would have stagnated however many years later.

It blows my mind that Netflix is still mailing DVDs.

Not only that, but their DVD plan is far better then their streaming plan because it includes decent (not Netflix produced) movies.

> Blockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix in the early 2000's for $50,000,000.

Ah, an example of the Butterfly Effect: then we'd have a billion references to FAABG on the web instead of FAANG.

I think it's highly unlikely Blockbuster was ever going to build and maintain a streaming service if they had purchased Netflix.

Hopefully this doesn't sound rude but that's what I just said

I swear Blockbuster tried to do a DVD by mail thing. It just never got popular.

They did, in summer 2007. They priced it for a dollar less than Netflix. They stuck with it almost 6 years, ending it when they left the retail business (except for the one franchise store remaining in Bend, Oregon).

https://www.reuters.com/article/industry-blockbuster-dc/bloc...

I think Blockbuster was an anti-brand at that point because of choices they made to navigate having national brick and mortar shops, making an unknown startup more trust worthy.

I'd used them begrudgingly in places that had no independent shops and the various inventory they didn't have were usually rumored to be that their management was christian conservatives, though I think it was more that they avoided a few arbitrary hotspots of potential conservative boycotts that would hurt them in other regions.

I remember that when a friend suggested them, I was quite pleased to be paying $1 more not to help them.

Yeah, they definitely did something like this. I recall you could return the DVDs to their stores to speed up the turnaround. And they eventually started a short price war with Netflix. But IIRC they had a lot of debt to begin with and combined with much higher overheard from all the stores it ended predictably.

Would you trust them to get DVDs by mail? At least my model of them was that they would do anything to scam me out of late fees.

This is how I explain innovator’s dilemma to others

Pretty sure wind sails are going to be making a comeback soon.

Traditional sails are very labor intensive, I doubt they will ever make economic sense again. They also take a lot of space that most ships don't have.

The two variations that might go somewhere are kites to save maybe 10% of fuel [1], or some variation of rotor sails [2] on tankers or bulk carriers that have the unobstructed deck space.

1: https://future.hamburg/index.php/en/artikel/skysails-marine-...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship

It might happen when rich countries start imposing tariffs on cargo ships using bunker fuel. Burning that stuff is utterly terrible but it's cheap so hey.

IIRC even after shipping went pretty much whole hog on fossil fuel transport there were some odd duck ships called windjammers, made with modern components like steel hulls and masts but still powered by sail. For awhile they filled a niche of transporting some types of non-time sensitive goods for a very low cost.

I have been seeing this prediction for a while. What makes you so confident?

I've noticed it's become an area of research again in universities. I'm sure tariffs will be put in place eventually to make shipping "greener". Harvesting wind energy seems ideal to at least reduce emissions.

I work in the shipping industry operating tugboats. I have also seen the claims that this will happen. I remain unconvinced. I haven’t seen any infrastructure changes that would indicate adoption anytime soon.

Someday I want to own a company that fails like blockbuster

I love this idea. So many failures follow the “first is not best”, then many failed business tales.

But most of these are the expected and the analysis is shallow. Snark added is unnecessary.

Many are fad products or acknowledged R&D experiments that I wouldn’t necessarily call “failures.”

I expected more when having to give my email. A categorized page of bullets with Wikipedia links would be more useful. The details and references would be higher quality.

Cool idea, just needs more development and research to provide real value.

Indeed. An entertaining idea in the abstract, perhaps, but this is just weak sensationalism and poor execution. I don't see anything substantive that explains how something failed. Instead of taking the right attitude of discovering where something ostensibly went wrong, it seems to relish in dismissive ridicule in the style of FailArmy.

I think you nailed it.

The hook is "failure is how you succeed" but they show dead end products with perfunctory blurbs and facile presentations.

I'd've expected these, yes, but also more substantive "failed 'til I didn't" exhibits such as representations of the hundred+ prototypes that James Dyson purported to have made before finally figuring out the bagless vacuum.

Or... photos of Abraham Lincoln and a long, long, long list of his failed attempts to progress before finding himself in the presidency.

Pardon my picking nits:

He wasn't entirely a failure; he was a very successful railway lawyer. As for his loss to Douglass, that may well have been strategic - a design from the beginning to force Douglas to endorse state sovereignty (not slavery everywhere.) That would get Douglas the senate win, but it was also pretty clear in advance that could split his party, the Democrats, in two. It did. That may have been a bigger strategic victory for his party than him personally getting into the White House.

Thanks for the feedback.

Now we're entirely off-topic, but it's a six-day-old thread so I doubt it'll bother anyone. I hadn't heard about the idea of him intentionally losing. Reminds me of the famous quote about New Coke: "We aren't that smart, and we aren't that stupid." Contextually meaning - I wonder how intentionally he ran for an office, worked to become the party nominee, then somehow was able to intentionally not sway voters his way for that election but then... get picked as the nominee later so they could actually try to win.

Just speaking from intuition rather than knowledge, seems more like a "glass half full" kind of strategy. Either he wins, or he loses but his rival weakens the opposing party, opening up future opportunities.

Further, the "successful lawyer" thing doesn't detract from the issue. Again, it's about reaching further than one has already. Striving, struggling, faltering, finding purchase, gaining a foothold, and succeeding. The context of Lincoln not being financially dependent on the appointment is, contextually, irrelevant. It's just that person's baseline.

A similar (fictional) story could be "I was a successful school teacher but I took the bar 17 times and became a lawyer! I then went on to the supreme court and also went on to fund research on dyslexia and change the lives of thousands because of it."

Certainly being a school teacher is itself already success, and if they'd given up on the Bar exam that wouldn't mean falling back on academics mean there was no failure.

I have to reload every page multiple times until it loads. Can we please stop having static websites rely on 65 (???) scripts.

I was thinking that this website should add itself to the list since it is so frustrating to use...

How do you demonstrate failure then?

But how else can the bing tech can show you ads about, DeLorean, Coke II or google glass.

Along the same vein, several academic journals allow for the publication of negative results:

1. Positively Negative (PLOS One)

2. The Missing Pieces (PLOS One)

3. The All Results Journals

4. ACS Omega

5. F1000Research

6. PeerJ

7. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine

8. Journal of Negative Results in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

9. Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis

10. Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results

https://www.enago.com/academy/top-10-journals-publish-negati...

My favorite place of this sort is Vasa museum in Stockholm

It hosts a huge 70m warship that sank in 1628 on her maiden voyage 1.5 km into it. Highly recommended to visit.

https://www.vasamuseet.se/en

I have a fond childhood memory of going to a place that looked much like that.

After asking my parents it turns out we went there when I was 6.

Since the memory stuck with me for almost twenty-two years, I can highly recommend it!

This reminds me of an amazing place I stumbled upon while traveling around Croatia: The Museum of Broken Relationships.

https://brokenships.com/

It's full of tokens and mementos, both happy and sad, along with stories of relationships that have ended for a variety of different reasons.

Ironicaly, the museum of failure fails to load for me.

They should add themselves to the catalogue.

It loads for me, but it took like at least 20 seconds

Wasn't it JPL at NASA that also kept some sort 'mistakes were made' database in order to prevent recidivating on the same failure?

This reminds me of the 'Library of Mistakes' in Edinburgh, a free public library which promotes the study of financial history.

https://www.libraryofmistakes.com/

I hope they have a red hot section on the last 20 years because wow.

Not an invention, but one of my favourite failures is Shackleton’s antarctic expedition[1], which among the many trials includes what must be one of the greatest navigational feats in history: 1300km in an open boat across the Antarctic Ocean after a year being stuck in the ice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Exped...

Bligh’s open boat voyage[1] after the mutiny on the Bounty has them beat at 6400km, but the Shackleton expedition certainly had to deal with much more adverse conditions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty#Bligh's...

I love the irony that the site displays a blank white screen for me. Well done!

Proud to have worked on one of the failures in this exhibit :-)

I also had a number of the products I've worked on land in the Weird Stuff warehouse (and, oddly, another surplus hardware warehouse near Seattle).

Badge of honor :-)

Oh man, the Nokia NGage! I still remember the "taco talking" mockery (back when people used phones to make calls). Symbian OS was so much better than the competition. Apps and games were feasible, compared to the j2me wasteland. I remember it for not being a too far fetched idea as I playing with the software on my S60 device more than making calls.

https://museumoffailure.com/nokia/

I believe the official term was "sidetalkin'" https://sidetalking.com

I found a picture of myself on that site. I don't remember taking it and I don't remember sending it to this site, but apparently I did both of those things at one point in my life. How bizarre.

https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html - In the red shirt with the game.com.

I was a chemist in my first career incarnation. I always argued there should be a journal of failed chemistry. There are so many methods that you try and fail and it can take a few days of work to give up. Imagine if there was already a reference to see what was tried and failed. I know there’s a lot more money in what works, but still.

I had an N-Gage, the first phone I talked on in stereo using headphones (obviously).

It was probably the best portable device I ever had.

Musicplayer, console, stereo phone!!!

So much ahead of it's time it even makes a modern "smart" phones look wrong.

You could change battery yourself without tools.

Real buttons! How many misclicks do we count per day, probably a couple of billion?

When you stereo, do you mean different sounds for each ear? Or just having the same sound on each ear?

Wouldn't the former require two microphes?

True, same in both. So mono in both ears.

But it's still a game changer.

What are the years listed below the items on the home page supposed to denote? The DeLorean dates are "1989-1990", but it was sold, and production ended, in the early 80's.

There are symbols next to each date, but I can't find their meanings anywhere on the website.

That was about the point at which I found something else to do with my I-don't-want-to-work time: Back to the Future (in which a DeLorean play a prominent role) was released in 1985. The car itself: 1981. Sooooo, what do those dates signify?

Then the site claims New Coke/Coke II came out in 1981. Umm, try 1985. Olestra? Nope, try again (I'll leave the lookup as an exercise). I know all of these things are wrong at a glance because...well, I'm old, and for example I know that New Coke didn't come out when I was in high school because I was married to my ex-wife at the time, and she hated it. And I saw Back to the Future at the cinema. I was there, man.

So I don't know what those dates are supposed to signify.

Maybe the site could add its own implementation into itself. It's totally broken for me.

I went to the link and it didn't load for me. I figured it was just a funny joke, but then I realized other people saw things. Missed opportunity :-D

I dont think Google Glass can be seen as failure. The product is still on market, it only has changed the target audience.

Why not both? It ended up being a success on the enterprise market while being a failure on the regular consumer market.

What is their market now?

Is the joke that the page won't load?

I would be happy to produce something that ended up in there. At least it would serve an educational purpose :)

Oh looks like this came to where I live last year. Shame I didn't hear about it then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com