The year ahead in technology fail: You knew they were bad, now they're going to prove it We've had nearly two years of the type of uncertainty that could make even the most avant-garde quantitative analyst fiddling with a risk management model weep. And now we're all on board for another trip around the Sun. There's a lot to say about the tech prospects of the next 12 months. First of all, processor wars are …
@ Pete 2
You have stolen my comment.
As for Amazon Astro, "Everything you love about Alexa but on wheels" according to one blarbista, so my take is that it is not worth considering.
There is a shipload of other alleged innovations that could be flushed down the toilet of history along with the metaverse and friends in '22.
pyrobot - the robot that halts and catches fire!
It could just be the capacitors...
I am seriously wondering how this virtual concert thing is going to work (not enough to buy a VR headset, or go to a Bieber concert).
I checked out the linked page (on EW, as in Eww) and it states that The Bieb will be present on scene virtually (so, sitting comfortably in his chair at home), lipsynching belting out his tunes to all connected, some of whom could be present on stage with him during "dedicated fan moments", with the possibility of "influencing" his performance.
Okay, live virtual concert programs are not exactly a hot item on GitHub, if I'm not mistaken, so that means that there's a group of programmers hard at work to make this possible. Not saying it can't be done, but it never has been done before so the possibility of bugs is rather high, IMO.
I wonder how they're going to work them out - supposing that they're going to try.
To be fair: A 20Mbps link would be sufficient if your computer knew which part of the screen you were about to look at, sent that part with lots of detail and used less and less detail for more distant parts of the screen. Even with that in mind, 48Gbps does seem a little generous.
The visual cortex interprets the signal from the optic nerve and forwards a much lower bandwidth data stream probably consisting of things like written words or the name associated with a face. Perhaps later we will be able to play monkey pong without a monitor.
There's a whole world of music fans who'd seriously consider any technology, no matter how expensive, that could recreate being at a live gig right now, as would every performer on the planet.
This is obviously the market for the $2,500 Audiophiles Ethernet Switch and Audiophile SSD.
Seriously, how stupid are people?
you reminded me of the opening sequence for 'Idiocracy' where the DUMBEST people were the only ones actually breeding. That being the case, wouldn't a dumber population have a HIGHER birth rate? The sucker being born every minute rate would soon become an exponentially increasing sucker:unit-of-time ratio... as the population explodes into an 'Idiocracy'.
Brawndo - it's good for plants!
I've seem to have fallen down an audiophile rabbit-hole after reading about the SSD.
Just reading a website called the "cable cooker" where you can condition or break in your cables to get the best sound quality. Only takes 2 to 5 days depending on cable type. AND you will need to do this every few months.
Can some one recommend a good flat earth site? Need to get back to the real world....
Wait - my earth wires needs to be *flat* to give the best sound? I guess you mean ribbon like?
I learn something new every day!
I shall change them over forthwith, or at least after someone finally recommends us a good site to buy some high quality flat earths from.
.
:-)
Don't laugh - someone I know has a mains lead which he uses on his (admittedly quite nice) guitar & keyboard amp which has 'flattened' multistrand cables encased in translucent blue PVC. It must be two inches wide (except where it goes into the mains plug and the IEC socket) and he seriously believes it improves the sound out of the amplifier.
Need to get back to the real world ...
Well ...
From what I've been seeing in the past 15/20 years, it seems that is the real world.
Up to the brim with legions of credulous idiots with more money than they know what to do with and/or an absolute lack of common sense with shysters/snake-oil salesmen/scam artists/ by the boatload waiting to convince them of something with some blatantly implausible claim.
Examples abound but are particularly numerous in the 'make money fast' category, from Nigerian lawyers with nameless inheritances to bitcoin.
This has probably been the case for ages, but thanks to the web reaching almost all corners of the globe, it has become much more visible to us.
Such is the world we live in these days.
O.
Some marketeers are SO good at what they do, they could sell ICE MAKERS to people who live in a permanently frozen climate. That being said, they could ALSO convince people that Windows 10 (or 11) is better than other operating systems...
(Audiophile overpricing seems minor compared to that LAST thing I mentioned)
I set up 4 new Dell Latitude laptops before Christmas...
They have the latest Dell image (Windows 10 20H2, yes, you read that right, not 21H1 or 21H2, but 20H2... Or Windows 11!).
It boots up and asks, reasonably, if you want Windows 10 or Windows 11... We are sticking with Windows 10 for the foreseeable future, so I selected Windows 10. The next screen was REALLY as per the skit in the article, "But Windows 11 is so pretty, please take Windows 11!, pretty please!" NO, or I would have selected it on the first screen!
It is the same as the Microsoft Account question. "Do you want to sign on with a Microsoft Account or join a domain?" Domain, thanks. "But, a Microsoft Account has so many advantages!" NO!
Microsoft seem to be making the first set-up as hostile as possible and when you give an answer they don't like, they'll ask you again, "just to make sure," because you are just a dumb user and you probably clicked on the wrong button, didn't you? NO I BLOODY WELL DIDN'T, now, just get on a do what I say!
when you give an answer they don't like, they'll ask you again, "just to make sure,"
This reminds me a bit of those Apple vs PC ads - "Cancel or Allow"
And I recall the 'Microsoft Account' part of setup to be a LOT more heinous and strong-arming... having to jump through the right hoop to get to a screen that would actually LET you create a local user account.
(not like I do this every day, just to set up a test version in a VM)
I'd like to see more things split up. TVs and Smart doing a Beatles and going it alone.Fridges and Smart doing a Sonny & Cher. The washing machines and Smart doing an Ike and Tina Turner...
The problem is, we've taken commodity white goods that we expect to last at least a decade and stuck a cheap 10€ PCB in it with no support that will turn the item into a dangerous insider in your network within months, that is ready to betray you to the next passing hacking crew. Yet we pay more than a 10€ premium for these "Smart" versions of our long serving white goods, without actually seeming to worry about their security in 6 months, let alone in 5 or 10 years time.
With manufacturers having to carry spare parts now for a decade, at least, that puts the white goods back into the realm of where they should be... Except that they should NEVER be put on your home network, especially, they should not be left on your home network if they are not getting their monthly security updates!
I bought a Sony "smart" TV, but after 12 months, it stopped getting security updates. I don't really care about feature updates, they are nice to have, but a device isn't "smart", if it isn't getting the monthly security updates (it was an Android TV, so Google was pumping out monthly security updates, but Sony was pushing out an update every 3 to 4 months), it is just a downright dangerous device. I removed its network privileges and it complains regularly that it can't get the latest adverts, but at least it isn't selling me out to ReVil or Hafnium... Instead, I put a cheap "streaming box" next to the TV and use that, it costs 30€ every couple of years, but even if I replace it every 4 years, that it still cheaper than replacing a 1,000€ TV every 12 months, because the manufacturer is bored with supporting it.
The same goes for the rest. The "smart" part of each smart white good is only usable for a few months, before you need to block its network access. And, really, what benefits do they really offer? Turn my washing machine on, when I'm not at home? Yes, fine, but I'm not there to fill it up with dirty washing and soap, so I don't need to turn it on, and if I want it to start later, so it finishes when I get home, I can set the timer as I'm packing the washing into it!
The same for the dishwasher. Oh, but it can order salt when it gets low. Yeah, but the salt for my non-smart dishwasher is in the same cupboard as all my other supplies and I just add it to the shopping list manually, when it runs low. I don't need to pay a few hundred Euros, just to save me 10 seconds of work every few months...
Begone smart crap, the dumb products are a much smarter choice!
Couldn’t agree more, my 6 year old Panasonic tv I don’t use any of the built in apps but run everything through an apple tv box.
I have a “smart” washing machine which I have never connected to any network - why would I want to?
Don’t need a smart speaker / lights / thermostat etc.
I do have a delay timer on the oven but that is just a clock.
People see smart and just have to have it.
I'd love to get a popup when my clothes washer has completed its cycle
Not much point unless you are actually in the house...
Our washer sings.
It has a countdown timer to the end of the programme which is vaguely accurate so you have an idea within 5 or 10 minutes when it should be finishing, and when it actually does finish it sings a little tune which can easily be heard in the next room.
Very Korean.
The bleeper apparently can also sing down the phone to tell the manufacturer a fault code. No need for internet connectivity :-)
M.
Hear hear.
I have a 'smart' TV but none of the apps on it have ever been run (well, not here anyway). No appliances at all are on my network. I am no Luddite but there are limits in what should reasonably be within appliances.
Making 'smart' appliances comes under the heading of We know you can but why?
I want a TV that receives the signal (in one of a number of formats*) and displays it. There is no need for it to connect to anything else at all (except the remote).
Making 'dumb' appliances (you know, that do just what they are supposed to do and no more) would probably solve the chip shortage in short order. I wonder just how many integrated circuits and their support components** are in these appliances and are never effectively used but still consume power?
The ecological and environmental impact of not having those parts used in the first place would be rather large I suspect.
* Various analogue and digital interfaces are available on most devices and the majority of display controllers can handle multiple input types.
** Up to 90% of the components (by count) are support components in modern electronics. Typically it is about 50% to 75%. Quite a few of those components contain conflict minerals that are not from conflict free zones.
you can still get the 'dumb' versions of various appliances (including phones), last I checked...
normally I do not look at nor consider 'ecological' or 'environmental' (or even political) things when I buy something. It's nearly always price vs features. The limited budget I have to buy things with requires it.
And usually the 'dumb' versions cost LESS. I call THAT a feature!
That may be true of certain classes of appliances, but media devices are the clear exception. Reason being those devices with their crud are typically being sponsored, enabling the manufacturers to sell them at a discount to undercut the competition. Put it this way. No TV manufacturer would put something like Roku in an ad or on the box unless Roku was paying them for the privilege.
@Electronics'R'Us
Many years ago I bought a supposed "smart" TV from Panasonic.
Great TV, the smarts not so much. I have NEVER had any updates from Panasonic, nor have I been able to download any further, updated, apps.
Sadly, the only app I am likely to use is YT, but I can achieve that from my device streaming through Chromecast.
I look at all the newer TVs, which look great and supposedly offer so many more smarts, but sadly, they have all done away with any analogue interfaces.
As I have an older devices which will only talk via analogue, (we still watch DVDs occasionally) I have to ask myself, what was the point of buying it. It certainly was not capable of doing what they claimed to do.
I know, annoying. We bought a low-end 4k LG television in November to cover while my dad's older Panasonic went away for repair (he couldn't cope without a TV :-) The blasted thing not only has ditched the ability to deal (properly) with MHEG (meaning that he couldn't get the BBC "text" news pages)* but apart from mains, network, aerial and LNB the only sockets on the back were two HDMI and a single USB.
It used to be possible to get around this lack of analogue connectivity using a "home theatre" type amplifier - and let's face it, the speakers built into TVs these days are so awful that an external amplifier, even paired just with a couple of cheap bookshelf speakers, would be an improvement - but I note that many of those come without analogue inputs these days, and even those which do only have composite video, which rather downgrades even a cheap DVD player fitted with RGB outputs.
An alternative, if you only watch the occasional disc, would be to buy a cheap DVD player, many of which (including that £28 machine) come with HDMI output, or upgrade to Blu Ray as Blu Ray players (that's a £55 model) can all play DVDs too.
If you want to keep your DVD player because it was actually a really good model back in the day, then the obvious answer is a converter, just make sure to find one which supports analogue RGB as many of the cheaper models do not. (actually, I'm confused about those two, the manual for the cheaper one says it does support RGB in one paragraph, and then not in another. The more expensive model doesn't have a downloadable manual)
I still have a working Laserdisc player and a small selection of films. As it happens, my AV amplifier does have composite inputs, but I'm toying with the idea of using a converter instead, especially as I'm also considering reconnecting my S-VHS player having recently rediscovered boxes of old videos in an attic tidy-up (the idea being that we'd audition them for digitisation - some are home movies - and take a box of worn-out timeshifting tapes up to the tip).
M.
*I know the BBC keeps threatening to shut down MHEG but it is a lot easier to get text news this way than via the TV's inbuilt web browser, especially for a 90 year-old. His Panasonic disables red-button MHEG if the TV is connected to a network, but the LG we bought as a stop-gap doesn't do it at all! I know the thing has the ability, as the audio-only or "data only" channels work fine, but they've removed the ability to access it.
Ooh, I could rant about that, too. That particular model of TV doesn't have a button on the remote for subtitles (or audio description) which is a right royal pain. The only way to activate either is to go about three levels deep in the menu system and turn the things permanently on. It doesn't have an "info" button either, for now & next, which means checking listings by using the Guide - again, tedious - and neither does it have a dedicated aspect ratio button, which was a pain recently when watching a Christmas present of Remembrance of the Daleks which has sections in both 16:9 and 4:3.
Fortunately, our other TV is also an LG and the new device responds to all the codes for the above, so a quick purchase of a One4All and a re-programme of some of the buttons (because the One4All doesn't have a button for subtitles either!) and problem solved. Shouldn't happen though, and I feel I ought to get in touch with the RNID/RNIB or whatever their currently trendy names are :-)
@Stork
"I think our new washing machine is smart.'
Ditto, We knew it was supposedly "smart" but that certainly wasn't the reason we bought it.
In fact we bought it despite it being smart.
I attempted to connect with my phone just to see what it could do, but for some reason I was unable to get it to connect, so I haven't bothered since.
Funnily enough, it does exactly what we want without all that.
Sheesh!
My kids don't want or need a bunch of "smart" devices. They have a few tablet games, but equally prefer Lego and pickup up (and reading!) dead-tree books. And everyone says how smart they are, fancy that.
But that doesn't stop others from trying to push our edge. Oldest daughter got an Echo Dot for Christmas from electrician uncle (my wife's brother) married to aunt who loves connected tech. Because their daughters (my nieces) love theirs. Despite that they know I hate "smart" (unnecessarily network-connected) devices of all kinds. Or that I work in an industry that pays to be paranoid (not to mention actual regulations that say I shouldn't have an always-live microphone in the same room listening to my meetings).
Said daughter has a iPad. I can't even set up this bloody thing to act as a "dumb" (er, less smart) Bluetooth speaker without first installing the Alexa app and connecting bloody device to some WiFi. One workaround is to use "mobile hotspot" to do only the Bluetooth setup then turn off the hotspot, but D'OH that only works for phones or cellular tablets and her iPad is non-cellular/WiFi-only.
So, unless I want Amazon to spy on everything my kid is doing, the Dot stays in the box. Not that it gives her any more usefulness than Siri, which she doesn't like to use anyway.
And that's how they'll get us. Little-by-little things won't work unless they are hooked up to the web with an account - and possibly a subscription. I haven't got any connected hardware other than my PC and phone. I just bought a new car that I can connect to VW via its internal SIM. I have no intention of enabling it and so far it's not a problem - I don't even get nagged. However I half expect that at some point in the future I'll be forced to connect and create an account in order to install some "necessary" update or get it serviced or something.
Not being connected means they can't update it in a way to force you to stay connected. But they CAN update it if/when it goes for a service at a dealer. They will do a manual update, almost certainly without asking you first, which may then require the connection with the mother-ship from then on. If you try to request they don't do any firmware updates as part of the service, they will probably tell you they "have to, because" or that the update includes "safety" updates which can't be applied separately from the "feature" updates.
I had a similar experience a while back. I took my car in for a recall (I use a non-dealership mechanic for most things), and I specifically demanded that they not update any software. I made the Service Manager write it on the work order in big letters.
He then mumbled something about voiding my extended warranty. I answered "I think my lawyer would argue that you would have to prove that the failure was caused by the out of date software. Would you be able to do that?" The answer was "no, I guess we wouldn't be able to".
In the end, my extended warranty expired before I needed any serious work done on the car anyway. I haven't been back to that dealership since.
I may have to keep this car forever now, since I won't buy anything that is connected to the f'ing internet.
My stepsons Beamers have a SIM in them, and they have a button to call for help if there is an issue.
A passenger sitting in the car for the first time thought it was the on-button for the interior light. Pushed it, and there was no way to cancel the call. Support answered quickly though...
The worst part of so-called "smart" devices is the extra electronics seem to be the first thing to fail. Those controller boards aren't cheap for appliances, and the entire system is on there, so ANY point of failure that doesn't HAVE to be there means you'll be buying a new appliance sooner than you'd like or shelling out a healthy dose of cash to pay the repair people. :(
I repaired the main board out of an almost new front-loader washing machine for a lady at work a while back. The problem was easy to fix, just very poor soldering (cold solder joints everywhere).
I could not believe how poor the quality of the PCB itself was. I order prototype PCBs from overseas, and we are talking about the cheapest of the cheap board houses (a five piece order for $2), and the quality I get is light-years better than that board. I honestly didn't think there are any board houses left anywhere in the world that could produce such a low quality PCB. It looked like something out of an early 70's low-end stereo receiver. It was single sided, and no solder mask. It sure as hell wasn't FR4.
And, this was out of a $1200 major name brand washing machine!
The problem is, we've taken commodity white goods that we expect to last at least a decade and stuck a cheap 10€ PCB in it with no support that will turn the item into a dangerous insider in your network within months, that is ready to betray you to the next passing hacking crew.
Within months? I'd say out of the box...
With manufacturers having to carry spare parts now for a decade, at least, that puts the white goods back into the realm of where they should be... Except that they should NEVER be put on your home network, especially, they should not be left on your home network if they are not getting their monthly security updates!
Any so called "smart" things (take TV for example) in my house will be either without any network access or on sewer VLAN with no access to outside world so updates don't matter so much.
It's annoying that its getting more and more difficult to avoid "smart" thingys due to what is available to purchase.
It depends, Sony updated my Android TV for about a year, before abandoning it. But my daughter bought a Sony non-Android TV and they stopped supporting it within 6 months.
I always had the TV on a separate IoT Wi-Fi, but I locked it off totally and used a FireTV after they stopped the updates.
Did we? It wasn't Ballmer trying to push Windows 10 onto users' PCs in the most shameful ways. Or U-turning and becoming data hoarder just like Google.
Actually, those in charge of MS today have far more contempt for users than Ballmer ever did. The ugly designs, lack of features and serial mistakes of the new Windows 10+ applications is another symptom of that.
Ballmer didn't like open source at all - but that's a far different thing. MS could be more FOSS friendly today, and also delivering far worse software - after all that is far cheaper, and users have no real competition to switch to.... I mean users that need something more than a web browser and a terminal window.
Ahh, the 1988 Olympics, starring Eddie the Eagle. A very sharp (eyed) fellow with legendary poor eyesight.
Of course, first the obligatory XKCD, but it was mostly window dressing and spin..
When Second Life tried to do shared VR, griefers harassed their users with flying penises. Judging by Meta's publicity photo the Metaverse already has one dick in it.
Folding phones. I love my Z3 Flip.
In a world where everything is a Black Mirror, having a phone that is different. In any way different. Is special.
Of course, if all phones were folding ones we'd be back in the same positions.
I understand wanting to inhabit a virtual world.
No, I understand wanting to inhabit a different world to the one we are in.
S.
As I read this and got to the eagle bit, I said "Wow, this guy or gal is really funny." I checked the byline and saw "Rupert Goodwins". I said to myself... "Wait, I know that name... didn't he write... no that's impossible." As I checked Wikipedia I thought I was crazy and mistaken until I reached the last bit... "Rupert also wrote the 64-page novella accompanying the game Weird Dreams by Rainbird." I was right! I knew it! Of course! Weird Dreams is still one of my favorite short stories I've ever read. I don't have the game anymore... never got very far in it even when I did have it... but I've still got the story, it's that good. I still quote lines from it today when discussing the topic of writing humor.
Thanks for making me laugh again more than thirty years on. Eddie the Eagle... you got me again....
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