Hacker News Reader

Comment by hamasho | Hacker News Reader

As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants. They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place, but I think it won't happen soon, so I'm glad they are taking action.

That said, I'm not particularly sure Japanese politicians can handle those complicated matters efficiently. I mean, our "cyber-security minister" was accused of never using a PC and not knowing what a USB memory stick is [0]. I can't help but think that this will end in disaster and IT giants will use these examples as evidence of how bad it is to make strict regulations against them...

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-se...

View on HN

> They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place

> I mean, our "cyber-security minister" was accused of never using a PC and not knowing what a USB memory stick is

From what I've read about Japan it was probably the usual small set of local megacorps that Japanese politicians protect heavily that seeded the regulations, not out of a genuine interest in the protecting or improving regular customers lives or opening up competiton to smaller players.

But regardless hopefully it is more than just the pipe dreams of the existing entrants and there really is upstart competition that is capable of operating in a meaningful way.

> Another joked that perhaps Sakurada was simply engaged in his own kind of cybersecurity.

> "If a hacker targets this Minister Sakurada, they wouldn’t be able to steal any information. Indeed it might be the strongest kind of security!"

I love this comment from your article.

> That said, I'm not particularly sure Japanese politicians can handle those complicated matters efficiently.

It's not as if this law was actually written by the elected politicians, and furthermore, it's based on an EU law. Japan is only one of the many countries that are now using EU laws as a model for their own legislation for issues like privacy and antitrust law.

Meanwhile Singapore’s prime minister knows programming and writes Python in his spare time.

Does that mean anything though? I don't want Slash to draft anti-trust legislation in the record label industry because he can play the guitar. Crafting correct market regulations is largely going to depend on whether people understand the economic dynamics and are free from corporate influence, not whether they do some coding.

It may not mean guaranteed signal that they can create good regulation, but the opposite is a pretty major red flag. If you don't understand technology, I have a very hard time trusting you to enact laws on the subject.

Being a guitar player by itself does not qualify you to draft anti-trust legislation for the music industry.

However, someone who's deaf and doesn't know anything at all about music or the music industry would probably also be a poor choice. At least Slash has decades of experience working with major players in the industry and could probably advise on it to some lawyers who know about anti-trust regulation and at least understand the basics about the industry.

I still disagree. It's somehow weird to have a deaf person writing music industry regulations - but it's actually not at all important for them to hear music to regulate it.

Otherwise, do we regulate differently based on _sound_!? I hope not! We don't regulate based on music theory either! Do we need him to know chord progressions to be able to write laws? I hope not!

With tech it's a little different, we do regulate based on aspects that touch on fundamental theory, like manufacturing processes, cryptography, etc.

>We don't regulate based on music theory either! Do we need him to know chord progressions to be able to write laws? I hope not!

Yes, we absolutely do, and we already do this. That's why deaf people can't write these laws: they don't even know what music or chords are: they have no way of sensing them.

There absolutely have been court cases about plagiarism where the arguments were about whether certain chord progressions can be copyrighted or not.

And has his gov't done anything to protect it's citizens from monopolistic foreign tech firms? No. So really, this comment means little in regards to the wider discussion.

That’s underselling Lee’s talents, like saying Carmack learned shell scripting in his spare time. Lee was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, i.e. he came top of the class in one of the most competitive mathematics programs in the world.

He’s in the company of people like Ben Green and Kevin Buzzard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senior_Wrangler#Senior_Wrangle...

While I agree I feel it's kinda poetic that Japan is notoriously ok with Nintendo and Sony putting people in prison and has done absolutely nothing about it.

Do you think the Agriculture minister drove tractors and tried out various fertilizers?

In a way, having a fresh mindset not bogged down by trends and status quo is actually a nice thing.

I think Japan should build software which competes with these “giants” rather than try beat them through regulation.

Building good software is still in reach. You don’t need to have an Apple or Google behind you to be competitive. Especially in Japan where just making a native Japanese <whatever> will lead to dominance. Look at Line. It’s atrocious rubbish. Everyone in Japan uses it.

Japan makes the worst software out of any developed nation I’ve ever seen. Even Nintendo stuff is mostly terrible. Sony is a joke.

Or we can do both? Encourage competition from smaller businesses while curbing the power and influence of these behemoth monopolies that control basically all of modern human civilization.

Apple, Google, Microsoft and all the rest of them should've been nuked into a trillion tiny little pieces years ago.

Knowing Japan. This regulation isn’t about making your experience as consumer better.

Then, what is it about?

Pleasing or protecting some mega corp.

There are some sweet spots where local tech companies can compete in markets even though their products are worse.

But there's nothing close to Google Search or iPhone.

What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's?

Was it motivated purely or mainly by a need for a workable kanji/kana interface for mobile texting, with no sense of the larger implications of such a capable system as a basis for a very comfortable head start 10 years later into the smartphone adoption cycle?

It feels like such a perfect textbook example of a culture that embraces "how" much more than it embraces "why," a culture that is not endemic to Japan but actually quite common at various scales globally, because most of the time its the right mindset. But when it isn't, it becomes an enormous handicap.

I'm not familiar with that era, but I think cell phones back then were more focused on hardware and brute-force style development than sophisticated software. It's unbelievable how tough it was to survive the NTT Docomo's R&D center, YRP. Depression and suicides were sadly common, which caused a lot of Japanese to avoid the IT industry for years...

>What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's?

Nothing, really. Remember that most advancements in computing still happened outside of Japan (Windows 95, Pentium, et al.), or in the case of NAND flash happened in Japan but was shitcanned only to be picked up by the US.

Japan never was great at tech beyond a certain point, but that only became really obvious in the 2000s when even their Galapagos phones were finally outdone.

Docomo commissioned phone manufacturers to ship phones at half-year cycle. The idea was to sell it like women's clothing. But manufacturers didn't commoditize parts and optimize businesses for that cycle; instead they sped up and staggered development to match that cycle, in the process burning lots of cash and people's careers.

By the time iPhone came out, the tech debts and bureaucratic overheads had grown so much that nothing could be done to save the industry and platform. Everything from devices to institutional knowledge and existing moats all went down the drain until enough was shed off that reasonably usable Android phones could be manufactured, but not much points were left in making those.

> Was it motivated purely or mainly by ...

I'm sure Docomo execs had sane long-term plans, but ideological and hierarchical thinking isn't Japanese forte so executions were counterproductive and/or micromanagement mess. Kanji/kana interface has nothing to do with it, all Nokia phones handled Japanese language perfectly fine, certainly more than adequately for ... a dozen model or so sold over a decade.

This will not address the problem.

What will happen is here, a bunch of shady companies will sell gambling spyware and porn apps on a third party app store. Everyone who wants to make money will sell on the legitimate app store. DMM, for example, will have an app store, and it will be filth.

Japan has a massive elderly population who will just get sucked in installing shady crap on their devices.

I sympathize with the idea, but in practice, it won't work out the way people think it will.

Maybe this would be a good plan if it was more complete. For example, who moderates any new app stores, who vets the software, what government incentives are in place for better, more secure competitive software to emerge domestically?

This just seems like monkey see monkey do with Europe.

>DMM, for example, will have an app store, and it will be filth.

DMM already has an app store at least on Android, and as far as I'm concerned it's fine assuming you're there to buy the stuff DMM sells.

It's astonishing this comment is as heavily downvoted as it is because it hits Japan's problem at its core.

Apple and Google are dominant because Japan simply cannot do software (and tech in general). They have no domestic players, so this conclusion is natural.

Some amount of regulation might be necessary, but fundamentally Japan cannot break the US-held monopoly so long as they fail to bring their own players to market.

I'm not on HN to make friends :)

I do spend a lot of time in Japan though. A lot more then most down voters that's for sure.

For most people visiting Japan, their first interaction will be buying a a train ticket for the NEX Airport express or the Shinkansen, it's a horrendous and confusing experience. Their interactions with Japanese software will only get worse from there however.

Hmm, I don't get anything in this thread.

What's so bad about Nintendo's or the Sony PlayStation's software? From my perspective they're like... almost perfect, except for the fact that there are updates sometimes, but they're fast.

What's so bad about JR's ticket vending machines? What could be improved?

I think most of the confusing experience comes from the way that Japanese limited express paper tickets used to work. If you rode a limited express (like Shinkansen or Narita Express), you'd have to buy two tickets: the basic fare ticket and the express surcharge ticket. The basic fare ticket would also cover your non-express connections, so this was quite convenient in Japan's complex transit system.

Japan still has that system in place, but the basic fare is usually replaced by your IC transit card or integrated into an eTicket (which contains both basic fare + express surcharge and is tied into your IC card).

So if you buy a ticket to NEX on the Ekinet app you'll be offered a ticketless option, but you probably wouldn't know that means you still need to tap your Suica in order to pay the basic fare.

Shinkansen trains are generally using eTickets, which would be even more confusing for visitors, but many visitors are using JR Pass which is completely outside the fare systems (but does need reserved seats).

Most of this complexity is inherent complexity, not accidental complexity that comes from bad software. The main issues I've seen with the software in question are: Lack of English version (Ekinet), Complex registration flow (SmartEX) and flaky authentication (Ekinet). This is not a great UX, but the apps don't feel worse than train operator apps in other countries. These are not tech companies.

Look, you may have had a point when the United States wasn't investigating both companies. But how can you reasonably expect someone to break into a market that is reinforced by anticompetitive practice?

You're watching the fox leave the henhouse and asking why the chickens won't hatch.

> Japan simply cannot do software

Wouldn't the counterpoint here be the games industry? Sony PlayStation and Nintendo seem to make globally competitive software.

That's a real flaw in this argument. Japanese software is at least okay and oftentimes good in gaming UI/UX, and at the same time hopeless anywhere else.

One thing I happen to know is Japanese dev type people loves to victim blame for usability and unintended path issues. It seems omission of subjects/actors in spoken Japanese make it hard for them to comprehend issues. Japanese stoicism certainly isn't helping too.

Maybe entertainment for its own sake is technical exception, as joy, ease, addictiveness, are clear goals rather than potential excess. Or maybe there are somthing else to it. But it's certainly an interesting inconsistency.

Japan had a strong flip phone ecosystem back when iPhone happened. Contactless payment, lootbox microtransactions, music downloads, GIF emojis, TV broadcast, multicore CPUs, Linux-based OS, biometrics, >326ppi displays before iPhone 4, 3x mechanical zoom, literally everything. Sadly the industry was focusing razor sharp on political infighting and was just building up crufts, and so the UI/UX was beyond atrocious - it was not simply outdated, the entire ecosystem was user hostile. That and downright illegal quota enforcement from Apple wiped it out.

Two major mistakes made by Japanese phone manufacturers was that they didn't ship the phones globally from being scared to death with language barriers, and that no one cared about horrible organizational mess.

They had a decade and half to make MOAP(L) work out as a usable touchscreen OS that runs on Renesas SH processor with Toshiba DRAM and paired with a Fujitsu modem, they didn't take that route and instead spent that engineering man-hours on processing PDF file returned from payment gateway on a phone, and let it all bleed out.

IIUC, Korea was in an almost exact same situation. They managed to come out of it. Japan could not.

That's something wondering me as well. Japan had so much cool things way back in the 2000's (even late 90's I think?). Internet on mobile phones was thing (I think it was called iMode or so). Those flip phones were awesome and way more convenient then those bricks back then over here (I still have my international version of an NEC flip phone I bought in mid-ish 2000's somewhere around. It even had iMode access, albeit pretty useless here).

I still wonder what could have happened, if Japanese companies pushed their phones (and technology) more worldwide. Well, we will never know.

Don’t forget that the US had Internet on mobile phones in the 90s/2000s too. It was called WAP.

However it was expensive as shit.

I’m glad that both WAP and i-mode failed and we got the real Internet though.

WAP networks were basically same technology, but were way sparse and underutilized in content and market cap compared to i-mode/EZWeb/Yahoo! Keitai.

I think that content density disparity still exists today. The Western Internet is kind of content lean.

This is a pretty good article that talks about other reasons for everything going awry in Japan regarding software:

https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-forgotten-mistake-that-k...

The U.S. is about to put the hammer down on TikTok, eliminating a large foreign competitor to their social media empires. Protectionism is how countries develop local brands in the first place. Protectionism works for the U.S., it will also work in Japan (and has worked in the past).

>As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants.

Also Japanese(-American), this will not fundamentally change the situation of Japanese irrelevance. You cannot and will not win if you have no players to begin with, and Japan is by far the absolute worst country when it comes to tech now.

Once upon a time NEC was one of the biggest microprocessor manufacturers in the world, Sony was the world's boutique brand, Toshiba was bleeding edge, and Panasonic was the Samsung of the time, but it's the 21st century now and Japan hasn't been relevant for a looooooooong time. Top down government regulations won't solve this.

Only Hitachi has remained mostly unchanged, relevant then and still relevant now. Not much room for comfort, though.

IMO, a compelling alternative to push more heavily is open source, because it's something different than just another corporation that places profit before substance and ethics.

There are about 195 countries in the world (depending on how you count), I find it hard to believe that Japan is dead last on the list.

I'll be the first to complain about the bad state of software in this country, but it still sits very comfortably in the top half of that list.

Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant. Japan used to be what China is now: a megasupplier, protected by an artificially cheap domestic currency.

Top-down government regulations are necessary to curb big tech's power because big tech has subverted the normal mechanisms of market competition that are supposed to make dictatorial control unprofitable. The question is whether or not Japan denying market access to Apple or Google will be a sufficient punishment to get companies to comply.

>Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant.

No, Japan stopped being relevant because Japanese companies are legendary in their hostility towards each other. They themselves are their worst enemy. Not to mention Japanese society is more interested in looking in the mirror than out the window.

In fact, it's not even the US who really drove Japan into irrelevancy, it's South Korea, China, and Taiwan. All countries whose companies spent more time taking on the global market instead of squabbling amongst themselves and thus succeeded at out-Japan'ing Japan as a mere stepping stone.

Samsung, LG, and Foxconn killed off NEC, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Sanyo, and Elpida. Huawei and such cleaned up what remained. Renesas is basically on legacy life support, and who knows if Rapidus won't be stillborn.

The US dominance that is Apple and Google is a result of Japan loving to hoist petards, not because the US has power and has no qualms about using it legally or otherwise.

After returning from a vacation in Japan, I must say that the word "irrelevance" is far too hyperbolic.

While it is true that unfortunately Japan is no longer a leader in the development of new technologies, like it has achieved to be in the past, when looking at its public infrastructure, at least in the big cities, and at the applications of modern technologies for solving various problems of the day-to-day life, which actually matter most for the majority of people, Japan is still well ahead of almost all other countries and I have very little hope that I will ever see any country in Europe or America matching Japan in certain aspects of the quality of life.

It is true however that Japan is facing some serious economic problems, with declining revenues for many people. However, this appears to have artificial causes, due to mismanagement at high levels that does not result in a meaningful change of the managers.

>Japan is by far the absolute worst country when it comes to tech now.

No, it really isn't at all. It's better than the US in many ways:

1. Eating out. At many Japanese restaurants, you have a tablet computer at your table, or you get a QR code to order on your phone. You use the tablet/web app (which admittedly doesn't always have the greatest UI, esp when you switch to English) to order your food and maybe pay. It's not just big chains like Jonathan's; you'll even see this sometimes at small non-chain restaurants with 1 or 2 workers. This kind of tech is mostly unheard of in the US; you have to verbally tell your order to some annoyed worker and hope they don't screw it up, and then they expect a gigantic "tip" for simply doing their job. Partially thanks to the much lower staffing needed at Japanese restaurants, it's quite inexpensive to eat out.

2. Toilets: they all have electronic controls to spray your butt after you poop. You can select water pressure, activate seat heating, etc. These washlets as they're called are actually available in the US, but no one buys them except maybe Japanese expats. Even after the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020, Americans steadfastly refuse to improve their hygiene and adopt this technology.

3. Public transit fare cards: in Japan, virtually every public transit system uses "IC cards" based on the Felica NFC chip. It's twice as fast as other NFC technologies, so it gets people through fare gates quicker, which is critical in the crowded Tokyo subways. These stored-value cards can mostly be used nationwide (tip: get a Suica or Pasmo card, they're good almost everywhere). In addition to train fares, you can also use them to pay for vending machines, many restaurants, and lots more. On top of this, the Felica chip is built into Japan-market smartphones, so you can do all this with your phone instead of a card. In the US, the NYC metro system still uses magnetic stripe cards, and while the DC system is more advanced (using stored-value cards that aren't as fast as Japan's), like all other transit systems in the US, the cards are only good on that one transit system in one city, and for nothing else at all.

4. Remote-control air-conditioners. Called "mini-split" in the US, the typical A/C units in Japan are only good for one room, but they come with a remote control and have many functions: cooling, heating, dehumidification, etc. You can control whether the vents are fixed in one direction or oscillate. I'm sure I've missed many other useful functions. Since the A/Cs are room-sized, you don't have to waste energy cooling/heating rooms you're not using at the moment, or you can set them differently. These systems have become increasingly popular in the US, especially for retrofitting older buildings that don't have ducts.

5. Interpersonal messaging. In Japan, everyone uses LINE. It's not perfect, but it has great privacy and lots of features. In the US, most people are still using telephone-number-based SMS from the 1990s. The US is decades behind on basic communications, easily the worst in the world. I don't think I need to go any further here.

6. Bullet trains. Japan leads the world, and will have the world's first serious maglev train between Tokyo and Nagoya in around 5 years. The US doesn't have anything to speak of.

7. Combination washer/dryers. Americans think this is a brand-new thing, but they've been here in Japan for many years now and are very common at the higher-end.

8. Chip manufacturing. The US only has Intel, and TSMC is trying to expand there with government subsidies but it's not going well at all. Japan has Renesas and TSMC is expanding here too, with far better success. Time will tell how this pans out, but given how dysfunctional US society and politics are these days, I wouldn't bet on the US doing well here.

>Eating out. At many Japanese restaurants, you have a tablet computer at your table, or you get a QR code to order on your phone. You use the tablet/web app (which admittedly doesn't always have the greatest UI, esp when you switch to English) to order your food and maybe pay.

That experience is horrible, and not just because pecking at a small screen for ants is horrible. Quite often the thing flat out doesn't work and/or is laid out in the most incomprehensible way possible that it's just faster to call a waiter over.

Also, owing to this being computer hardware sitting right next to food, the things are almost always grimey. Proper menus at least are ostensibly cleaned between customers. This isn't a problem specific to Japan, though.

>Toilets: they all have electronic controls to spray your butt after you poop. You can select water pressure, activate seat heating, etc.

Yeah, they have that since at least the 90s or something. Nothing new. I appreciate the engineering that goes into them, but it's a case of Galapagos.

>Public transit fare cards: in Japan, virtually every public transit system uses "IC cards" based on the Felica NFC chip.

They're great, but the world is starting to move ahead of them with everything moving to smartphone NFC and in a way that is carrier and brand and network agnostic.

>Remote-control air-conditioners.

They're great, particularly with how quiet they are. If it wasn't obvious from the toilets, Japan is great at hardware engineering. The problem is this doesn't translate to software engineering and high tech in general.

>Interpersonal messaging. In Japan, everyone uses LINE.

LINE is a perfect example of Japan's irrelevancy in software. Why? Because LINE is a South Korean product.

>Bullet trains. Japan leads the world,

Yup, top notch engineering as mentioned. Bad news for the maglev since that's being held up in political power struggles, though.

>Combination washer/dryers.

They've become such a mundane commodity thanks in no small part to South Korean and Chinese mass manufacturing that Japan is hardly relevant there anymore.

>Chip manufacturing. The US only has Intel,

The US also has Micron and Global Foundries, along with old school guys like Texas Instruments and more. Though I agree it's mostly Intel (and Micron) pushing the envelope.

Japan has a very bad track record with chip fabrication ever since they lost sight of everything, Elpida and Toshiba by far being the most tragic examples. The jury is indeed still out on Rapidus, TSMC expansion, etc., but I'm personally not holding my breath.

>Also, owing to this being computer hardware sitting right next to food, the things are almost always grimey. Proper menus at least are ostensibly cleaned between customers. This isn't a problem specific to Japan, though.

This is Japan: if any place cleans things reliably, it's here. If you think most American restaurants clean menus between customers, I have a bridge to sell you. Many don't even bother cleaning the table, in my experience, and then get mad if you point out the table is dirty.

>it's just faster to call a waiter over.

American waiters absolutely hate this, but they still expect a huge "tip". But yeah, in Japan it's perfectly acceptable and normal.

>Yeah, they have that since at least the 90s or something. Nothing new.

It's not new in Japan, but the rest of the world still hasn't heard about them apparently (or just doesn't care about hygiene), so it might as well be new.

>They're great, but the world is starting to move ahead of them with everything moving to smartphone NFC and in a way that is carrier and brand and network agnostic.

I don't see that at all in the US. Transit systems there all have their own separate cards that haven't changed in 20 years.

> If it wasn't obvious from the toilets, Japan is great at hardware engineering. The problem is this doesn't translate to software engineering and high tech in general.

There's more to "high tech" than just software and microservices or whatever. Most software is pretty useless without hardware to run it on. Sure, if you're just focusing on stuff that's only online, you'll just use commodity HW and Japan has nothing much to offer here, but most of us have a little more to our lives than just sitting in front of a PC and surfing the internet.

>LINE is a perfect example of Japan's irrelevancy in software. Why? Because LINE is a South Korean product.

Sure, but that's irrelevant. What's important is what's actually used, which is what my whole post is about: what technology is actually used day-to-day by average people in Japan? Japan: LINE. US: SMS. (And it's just US/Canada that are dinosaurs here; all other countries use some kind of modern chat app.)

>Bad news for the maglev since that's being held up in political power struggles, though.

I haven't seen anything concrete here, just the one thing about Shizuoka prefecture (I think) complaining.

>They've become such a mundane commodity thanks in no small part to South Korean and Chinese mass manufacturing that Japan is hardly relevant there anymore.

They're relevant in Japan, where they're fairly common (and made by Japanese manufacturers mostly). Back in the US, they're almost completely unheard of.

> I don't see that at all in the US

How many US transit systems have you ridden on? Several? Dozens? There's 6,800 or so public transit systems in the US, you think you've ridden a representative sample of them?

Only a small number of cities in the US have real transit systems. No, a bunch of buses does not count as a "transit system" in the developed world.

So you've experienced a tiny handful of US transit systems and claim to know the experience on ~~most~~ all of them. Understood.

Curious what you mean by “a case of Galapagos”?

It's a way the Japanese came up for saying Japanese Exceptionalism without saying Japanese Exceptionalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_syndrome

Basically, a market isolated from the world and left to develop on its own is compared to the ecosystem seen in the Galapagos Islands.

> you have a tablet computer at your table, or you get a QR code to order on your phone

> This kind of tech is mostly unheard of in the US

Massively untrue. A large chunk of the restaurants I go to have extremely similar setups. Tons have Ziosk terminals at the table. Lots of others allow scanning a QR code and ordering at the table through a website/app. At least half the restaurants I frequent have some kind of digital ordering system. Some of these restaurants started implementing these systems over a decade ago.

> Remote-control air-conditioners

I generally greatly prefer central AC. Either way, remote controlled single-room AC units have been a thing in the US for several decades. It is not like IR remotes are some fancy new techology that only Japan could have figured out.

> Combination washer/dryers

They're great if you're space constrained, but with the two separate units I'm able to run multiple loads through faster. They've been for sale in the US once again for decades but have never really been popular outside of really space constrained spaces. And they're also often more expensive than two separate units meanwhile end up getting less laundry done in the same time period. So spend more money and have it take longer to do multiple loads of laundry. Great!

> Public transit fare cards

Everything I need to do can generally be done through NFC/Bluetooth on my phone these days. Payments, transit access, car keys, etc. Having to carry around a specialty payment card is a step backwards from my normal day to day.

>A large chunk of the restaurants I go to have extremely similar setups. Tons have Ziosk terminals at the table. Lots of others allow scanning a QR code and ordering at the table through a website/app. At least half the restaurants I frequent have some kind of digital ordering system.

What restaurants are these, Chipotle? I just visited the US for a few weeks and didn't see ANY of this.

>Some of these restaurants started implementing these systems over a decade ago.

I never saw it when I lived in the US, except for Panera.

>Either way, remote controlled single-room AC units have been a thing in the US for several decades.

No, they haven't. You're thinking of those shitty window units. They aren't the same; those are horrible. That's why the mini-split systems have gotten so popular, and they're all made in Asia (by companies like Daikin and Mitsubishi, rather than by the typical US brands like Westinghouse). So yes, apparently only Japan could have figured this out.

>but with the two separate units I'm able to run multiple loads through faster.

Sounds like you save up your laundry too much. Anyway, you can only do this if you're physically present to move the laundry between machines.

>They've been for sale in the US once again for decades

You're making the same mistake as with the A/C. No, they're brand-new, they haven't been available for decades. You're thinking of those shitty "over-under" units, with a dryer mounted on top of the washer. I'm talking about combo drum-style washer-dryer units with heat-pump drying: you put the clothes in, hit "start", and a few hours later your clothes are clean and dry.

>Everything I need to do can generally be done through NFC/Bluetooth on my phone these days.

Let's see you do that in NYC.

Washer-dryer combo units (sometimes called "laundry centers") have been around for a long time in the RV, marine, and apartment markets where space- and water-savings are essential. Coincidentally, most Japanese households also greatly value space-savings.

Splendide[1] has been in the business since 1984, and according to Wikipedia the first washer-dryer combo unit was invented in 1953 by Bendix[2][3]. Both are American companies.

[1]: https://www.splendide.com/index.html#faq

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washer-dryer#History

[3]: https://books.google.com/books?id=Dlpfw-9ikKAC&q=bendix+duom...

> I just visited the US for a few weeks and didn't see ANY of this.

You visited for a few weeks and feel you have a good sample size of one of the largest countries in the world. I've been to Cozumel, I take it the rest of Mexico is exactly like that. Everyone in Mexico just hangs out at the beach all day every day right?

Just one example restaurant from 2014:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/chili...

> You're thinking of those shitty window units.

No, I'm definitely thinking the mini-splits. I grew up in Houston. You can't survive without air conditioning there. I've seen every kind of AC setup hundreds of times over. Mini-splits were pretty common for a DIY add to a garage or a backyard shed/studio even back then. I saw dozens of them in the 90s. I'd still take a central air system for my home.

And ooh, so fancy, an IR remote controller! So high tech. I guess I'll just throw out my thermostat that logs my environment data to my home system along with how often the unit and fan have run, its impact, outside weather data, its total energy usage, its pressure levels, and more. It'll also automatically adjust dampers to ensure proper airflow to help target whatever rooms I'm using. A basic IR remote and noisy shit tacked on the wall is way fancier.

And yeah, instead of just having ducts properly planned into the construction of my home I'll just have loads of copper pipes with highly compressed and often toxic/flammable refrigerants run to the dozen or so spaces that currently have vents. Seems so superior. Mini splits make a lot of sense when you only have a handful of spaces you're trying to cool, much less sense when it's a four bedroom two living room single family home in a place where it's 90F+ at 70% RH half the year.

> I'm talking about combo drum-style washer-dryer units with heat-pump drying: you put the clothes in, hit "start", and a few hours later your clothes are clean and dry.

Once again, I'm very aware of what you're talking about. Notice how I was suggesting two units is faster for multiple loads? Notice how an over/under is technically two units? See how I know the kind you're talking about?

> Sounds like you save up your laundry too much

Or maybe I've got a family with kids that make a lot of messes in my household.

They're not that new, they've been around for a while. Only recently popular in large full-size units. Once again, I saw them in the 00s in the US. People would often have them in a fancy big RV/camper trailer or on a yacht due to the fact you can have a single unit and still do laundry on the go. They're not new, you just hadn't seen them much before.

It turns out maybe you don't know everything and experienced it all before. Who would have thought?

> Let's see you do that in NYC.

Ah, so that's what it is. You lived in and visited NY and assumed that's life for the rest of the US? Turns out the entire US isn't just NYC, for better and worse.

>You visited for a few weeks and feel you have a good sample size of one of the largest countries in the world.

Well, before I moved out of the US 2 years ago, I lived there for over 40 years. Is that good enough for you?

>Just one example restaurant from 2014:

Interesting, that's Chili's. I stopped going there about 15 years ago because it was so lousy (and also seems to be absent on the east coast where I moved). Still, I've been to countless other places and didn't see such things outside of Panera.

>You lived in and visited NY and assumed that's life for the rest of the US? Turns out the entire US isn't just NYC, for better and worse.

There's only a small handful of cities besides NYC that actually have public transit systems, and NYC's is by far the largest and most famous, so I think it's a pretty important data point.

> the east coast where I moved

> only a small handful of cities besides NYC that actually have public transit systems

So yeah, a New Yorker that seems to think the whole US is their experiences in NYC. Thanks for clarifying that.

Chili's is one restaurant chain I used as an example. Places from the scale of Chili's and McDonald's to mom and pop restaurants near me have such things. It's not just Chili's, but it's easy to find a news article talking about it around that time compared to finding an Atlantic article talking about a hole in the wall Italian restaurant in North Texas that offers mobile table side ordering.

Once again, maybe your experiences aren't representative of the entire United States, so saying things like table side ordering is "unheard of in the US" or suggesting nowhere in the US can you do mobile based transit tickets. FFS I was in NEW YORK recently and used NFC-based mobile transit tickets!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.justride.s...

> I think it's a pretty important data point.

McDonalds is the most widely known and biggest US restaurants. I think it's a relevant data point. I guess all food in the US is like McDonalds. Hey what do you know they have table side mobile ordering. I guess all food in the US is like that, all restaurants have mobile ordering. Anything outside of that is just unheard of.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com