Tech Used to Be Bleeding Edge, Now it’s Just Bleeding | After a decade of scandals and half-assed product launches, people are no longer buying the future Big Tech is selling.::After a decade of scandals and half-assed product launches, people are no longer buying the future Big Tech is selling.
The entire article is just an ad for a blog that doesn’t exist yet… The irony is unbearable.
Crazy how many up votes this article has. It’s like everyone is just agreeing with the headline without even bothering to check.
Hahaha, damn, thanks for saving me the click and read.
No? It’s a cover page for an hour long podcast episode. Not that that’s much better, as I am certainly not going to set aside time for that, but it’s not “just an ad for a blog that doesn’t exist yet”.
Exactly, to the layperson they need an explanation about the AI-washing fad amongst others. It surprises me how many people don’t know about the Google graveyard. The Stadia launch is still fresh on my memory with how it was suppose to be the next major step forward.
When we hear about the next major step forward so many times…but as for this blog post, it’s almost as though they want to have the comments write the blog for them based on a superficial notion. Just like big tech.
People love to say things like this but it’s kinda ridiculous, pretty much every new tech is hugely successful. Those battery advances that no one really believes in? You’ve probably got one of them in your hand now, you’re probably physically closer to someone using chatGPT than you are to someone reading a book - if not you almost certainly met more people today who have used gpt more recently than they’ve read from a book. Vr adoption continues to grow, automation solutions are getting installed all over the place at a rapid rate, electric cars are gaining market share, whole countries are using desalination for their water supply, everyone that’s said anything about Osiris rex has been excited about the move towards space based industry.
The bulk of the population is loving the endless tech upgrades and eager for more, yeah not everything is good and most people are adult enough to realise that.
(No I did not read the article, someone said it was shit and I don’t doubt them)
vr adoption continues to grow
It’s only gonna be 10 more years, I promise.
Complex tech takes time to develop, who’d have guessed!
I’m sorry homie but VR is going nowhere. No one outside of a small, niche community even cares about it anymore.
I think VR is doing OK
According to Steam has more number users than either Mac or Linux
And just Quest 2 alone has 20 millions unit sold, same number as XBOX Series X/S that released on the same year
I don’t think the situation is that bad20 million sold. 19 million units covered in dust in some box you never check
Ha ok, we’ll see how that prediction pans out.
Yes the expensive and complex products available today limit the audience which in turn lowers the attractiveness of the market to creators which further inhibits uptake, the exact same thing is clearly visible in the home computer adoption curve and many similar developments.
First adopters create an ecosystem of markets which results in a growing diversity of established use cases - many ideas fail but some prove to be very efficient and effective as part of a workflow which over going becomes the standard way of doing things.
As there are more things for which vr becomes established it transitions from being something major creators don’t really bother with to something that they make a show of supporting - especially as the general ecosystem has become established so things like which menu style to use or how to orientate views have become easy choices. This changes vr from being niche special use to a fairly general tool that a lot of people are used to using.
At that point we’ll see a lot of cheap consumer devices which results in a lot more development on the market, especially as natural language input through LLMs make control interfaces easier and similar generative ai make creating vr environments easier.
Vr is going to be something that most people are used to using somewhat regularly, I don’t think it’ll replace screens but there’s a lot of things that we currently do on a screen that will just make more sense in vr
Ha ok, we will see how that prediction plays out, indeed. VR is a dumbass joke that very few people care about. If anything it’s been made the butt of even more jokes since Ready Player One came out and emphasized that the dregs of society will just use it as escapism, if we’re lucky enough to have a universal basic income.
Trailer trash using it for stupid purposes, and getting real work done with it is still pathetic.
VR is going no-where fast, and the fad has moved on. Even Valve has a shiny new toy to play with as the Steam Deck keeps selling. Nobody cares, and that’s ok, because it’s a stupid useless tech still.
This sound like a take from some one who never tried vr games or used a vr headset… Once you use even current quest 2/3 you will quickly realize the possibilities and advantages vr can have…the issue is the tech is still not quiet there yet for average consumer (and it was not even close for last 20 years for sure)…we need better compact graphics processing units, and denser screens with better optics designs…these will all happen in time. Assuming we don’t die from global warming or ww3. Once the hurdle of high cost/low dpi/relatively limited processing power of now is overcome, vr/ar will be defacto standard for PC gaming and work, as using fixed screens will be inefficient/more expensive. I would use my quest pro for work if it had 40% higher dpi/clarity and I cn easily see the tech getting there in 2-3 years time. Mobile GPU power will take a decade to run games with graphics of today ( I am referring to stand alone headsets, as pcvr is to cumbersome for casual gaming, this will improve with better software and wifi development but wifi 6 is bearly good enough today, so we likely see wifi7 come along and usher in dedicated headsets with console coupling (e.g. wireless VR headset + PlayStation ) (better mobile processors for faster decoding will help a ton as well). Vr/Ar will continue to grow and once it gets critical mass will explode as we are seeing with electric cars.
I bought a Rift cv1, Rift S, Quest and Quest 2, so much for your pretentious first sentence.
You’re droning on about how it’s still just around the corner “if only we had” with reference to smaller processing units etc. VR is still bullshit until all those “if only we had” things are here.
Ah I should have guessed your opinion comes from a weird type of elitist nonsence but I can play that game too if you like…
You’re only thinking about the world you know which appears to be shitty movies and being a gamer that’s decided you’re not like the degenerate games you’re high class, ok bud but I doubt that’s how s casual observer sees it and I think you know that which is why you put on such a show to p distance yourself from what you recognise if your set. So shove your classism up your ass and grow up.
People with actual important things going on have been using vr for years, they did fucking surgery on a grape for fuck sake! While the surgeons were extoling the wonders of VR for complex remote surgery using hyper advanced robotics what the fuck were you doing? Bitching that the console noobs don’t have the same high culture as pc gamers?
When the USAF flies the F-35 and the pilot puts on his HMDS with the Distributed Aperture System do you think it’s because they’re trailer trash junkies looking for a distraction or maybe because billions of dollars of research went into creating the absolute best control system and it turned out that’s very clearly VR?
And the drone operators, the architects, the astronauts at nasa who use it… They just haven’t realised it’s stupid and useless, only an enlightened pc gamer like yourself is wise enough to realise there’s no use for it.
- well that was cathartic, hope you don’t take anything I said personally and that you have a lovely day but I felt it appropriate.
Vr has proven to institutions that have the money and tech to use it that it’s incredibly useful, as tech improves and ecosystems get established we will see it move towards ubiquity there’s no doubt about that.
Lol, the only grapes here are your sour grapes that people don’t give a fuck about VR except for shiny toys and things that run up medical bills for equipment surgeons don’t need, making healthcare costs worse.
Also don’t make me laugh about the F-35. Look up “Boondoggle”. As for professional uses, drone operators are about your only successful use case. Everything else is just an expensive toy looking for a purpose.
You wouldn’t be so salty if you weren’t insulted that VR is a ridiculous joke.
Just like hydrogen cars, in ten years it’s going to be big. (10 years later) in ten years everyone is going to be using it. (10 years later) etc…
lol, there was no article, that was the irony. Just like the promises of big tech for the past 5 years, and all we’re seeing is endless stupid fads and gargantuan wastes of resources.
It’s their ad/intro for their pod cast shrug
(No I did not read the article, someone said it was shit and I don’t doubt them)
Considering that this article comes from Vice I’m not surprised.
Aren’t we still using the same old Lithium ion batteries from 20 years ago?
Ha yeah in the same way we’re still using the same old pn semiconductor wafers from the 90s - it’s basically the same thing which is why I still use my p120 and it’s just as good as any of these modern machines with their fancy 7nm pathways!
The batteries used today are much better than old batteries and the manufacturing technologies are far superior also, it depends on the device of course but energy density, charge speed, reliability has increased also manufacturing cost and requirements, low lithium batteries are getting more common for example.
Plus it’s getting increasingly likely that the lithium in your battery has already been a different battery previously thanks to new recycling methods so that’s pretty cool.
You’re right that it’s refined more but I was more hoping for a truly different combination. What we’ve done to li-ion seems akin to how we refined combustion engines.
To truly achieve a massive performance leap it seems like we need an actual different combination. I recall CATL making sodium-ion batteries. Lithium is still a rather scarce metal which poses a problem for mass production.
Yeah its weird tech is moving so absurdly fast at that moment that people seem to have gotten used to huge breakthroughs and want one ever week, like with ai how astonishing developments aren’t even implemented yet but people are saying it’s not impressive or development has stalled.
There’s a lot of really good stuff that’s coming to market slowly, the main problem is lithium is so cheap and easy at the moment that it’s not really worth it for anyone to take a risk on something new. It is happening but it’ll take a while for the special use cases to filter though and it to reach a more general market.
Another good example is wave power, there are now working commercial devices and very successful test projects but because it’s complex and still has high planning and development costs associated with it everyone is sticking to wind and solar. There will be a point soon where tidal generation sneaks into common use just like desalination did
Hardly anyone is even aware how many of the areas we got told would have water wars now have desalination partnerships and plenty of water to go round. They can even extract lithium in the same process and we’re starting to see that getting built too.
I think the real thing is going to be when the various strands of ai combine with the incredibly good robotics we have developed over the last few decades, people are going to be shocked how much it’ll speed up every physical industry. Being able to show the robot ‘this surface here needs to be sanded smooth ready for spraying’ and it can understand the request, evolve a movement solution and continually check it’s work as it goes.
The problem is everyone knows that’s coming and it’s a game changer so no one is really interested in the amazing advances we keep making or the more basic tools. Companies aren’t going to invest five years researching and developing the sort of product we can make now when they know other companies as already investing big in general purposes tools that’ll ruin all those markets.
Ok but can we talk about that cookies popup? Yikes
I mean, isn’t that the better way of doing it? One popup, exains everything, gives you the option to opt out in that popup instead of going through settings and shit.
I think it’s intentionally wordy and the opt-out is “on” by default. I am usually instinctively just trying to hit the “off” button as quickly as possible and hitting save so I can get rid of the window, without actually reading anything. I almost certainly would have accidentally opted in to third party tracking.
I fully admit I might just be dumb though.
It could be less wordy, it isn’t perfect. I have definitely run into ones that require going through multiple layers of settings though, so this just seems a lot less bullshit than that.
Looking at the image again, default to not sharing while calling that ‘on’ and being slightly awkward is definitely not an accident and is probably designed to trick people paying no attention at all.
I took a look at the website provided and holy shit there are a lot of downstream providers. And when i click on the link for the first site I immediately get a pop-up warning from ublock.
Yeah it’s ridiculous. And the wording on the cookie popup is confusing af.
It is. I thought It would let you opt out at that site. Nope you have to go to each of the leech sites individually and of course they are going to make it difficult as hell to opt out if they even allow it at all.
Thats even worse than i thought
We went from, “here’s some cool tech we built, you should buy it because it’s awesome and we’ll make some money” to “how do we screw every last cent out of our customers whilst providing the bare minimum?”
While sterling all their data
We’re broke you assholes! We can’t give you money for gadgets with money we don’t have!
What future? They were selling us a Warhammer dystopia rather than glorious halo or something cool. Useless tech clowns
Good, open the market for true innovation.
That’s not what’s happening.
Now it’s just ‘open the market for VCs to suck the good out of everything they can’
I have verifiably never been active military or served in Nam but the first thought that came to my head was Veit Cong.
I’d argue Venture Capitalists have done more damage to the world than the Vietcong ever did.
Always was
Before Neoliberalism, VC type investing was done with a view for the future.
Nowadays it’s all ‘drain the value, dump the husk, move on to the next startup’.
It’s parasitic and on a scale never before seen in human history.
Before Neoliberalism, VC type investing was done with a view for the future.
Who were the VCs of the 19th century?
Bad, horrible, revisionist take. The idiots now are the same as the idiots then, they just were your heroes so you don’t want to hear it.
Botlike typing detected.
Omg, it’s becoming self aware!
Somewhere along the line they went from creating goods and services that people could use to improve their lives, to dreaming up some dystopian futuristic bullshit, then using their control over technology, governments, and media to make that dream a reality.
Good, they’re just scamming at this point.
I was talking to my daughter yesterday about H. G. Wells and the one film he wrote the screenplay for, the 1936 film Things to Come.
In the film, a great world war starts in 1940 with an air attack on Britain (surprisingly prescient, but the rest isn’t). The war lasts until 1970 until Britain is completely destroyed and petty dictators rule tiny patches of land in the wastes. But men of science return to Britain and rebuild it as a scientific utopia.
Wells was a scientific technocrat. He thought that scientists should be in charge of things because there was nothing technology could do that wouldn’t eventually lift humanity up and bring about a paradise on Earth…
So why did he also write The Time Machine, where everything falls apart and humanity splits into two species, both unintelligent? Because he was also a socialist and he saw what capitalism and the class system was doing to the world (The War of the Worlds was also about this, a critique of Western colonialism).
So over 100 years ago, H. G. Wells was telling us that we were on a path to either scientific utopia or destruction due to our embracing old modes of thinking.
What would he have made of capitalists using technology to end civilization?
The only future they have been selling the whole time is like ghost in the shell or psycho pass but somehow worse and with more and worse crime and depression and no suspenseful drama or epic action scenes.
Price are rocket high and salary still the same. Added on that vapor tech products. It is not surprising that the tech rush is over.
