@cengland0 my God do I feel that right now. I’ve got Windstream and our modem is going belly up. I’ve had to restart the modem at least 25 times since Wednesday. Earliest they’re going to get to me is later this week and that’s after I threw a fit about working from home and needing internet for it.
@ivannabc I have comcast. When I paid for business class, it never went down. Now that I’m retired and paying for their lowesr 25mbps residential plan (using the exact same hardware), I lose internet a couple times every hour for a couple minutes each time. Shouldn’t have this problem in 2020.
This is annoying because my house is automated. “Alexa, turn on the livingroom light” and you would expect the light to turn on. But both Alexa and Smartthings require Internet for these commands. Timed events like turning the porch light off at 12:15 am fails if the internet was down at that exact moment so sometimes the light is still on when I wake up in the morning. Grrrrrr…
@djslack I almost went the Home Assistant route because it uses your internal network for automations and does not require Internet. The problem was that there isn’t an Android app and only an iOS one. You can control things on Android by using a website running on your local server but a web application doesn’t support notifications which renders my leak detectors and motion detectors useless.
This unstable internet problem is making me sorry for “upgrading” to Zwave from Insteon. Never had this issue with Insteon.
@cengland0 I see. There are ways if you want to get your hands dirty. (This is the answer for almost anything with home assistant, it seems). There is a home assistant companion app for android, html5 notifications, and pushover is also an option, but home assistant is hardly a plug and play deal. Tradeoffs abound.
I rescind my recommendation to look at Hubitat, though, there’s currently no app for it either.
It is frustrating. You would think that there would be something on the market that checks all the boxes but you have to compromise somewhere. The biggest battle lines are cloud vs local and fidgety vs plug and play, and all the plug and play options are cloud based it seems.
@cengland0@djslack
Don’t forget the powerful profit motive of every IOT and software company to “monetize” the fuck out of everything by making everything critically dependent on … you guessed it … the company’s “API” services.
As if your porch light couldn’t have a local device with a clock on it (stove, coffee maker, microwave, phone, computer - anything connected to your wifi) and the command to turn off at 1am stored on the light. My 7-day $30 thermostat can do this shit all day even without power with a AA battery. Why the fuck does your light turn into a brick without a full 24x7 internet connection? It’s like some idiot millennial without a fucking clue about actual real engineering ability shat this crap out and shipped it so that they could promote themselves from “Senior DevOps Product Architect/Engineer” to “CTO” for the next round of VC financing.
@djslack You seem to understand my problem exactly. Even now with the Smartthings plug and play solution I have chosen, there are device handlers that you may need to install if you want to benefit from all the features of a device such as ramp rate that may not be configurable through the front panel of the switch. Those device handlers are separate projects located on Github and you need to fork them to your personal account and then link Smartthings to your Github account so it can use those handlers. That is ridiculous to have to go through that in 2020.
Although I’m able to figure out how to do the complicated stuff because I used to be a developer when I was working, it shouldn’t have to be that way. I keep thinking about what it would be like if my 70+ year old neighbors tried to buy this stuff off the shelf. They would have no clue. Even if I installed it for them, they couldn’t figure out how to use it. I’m still trying to show them how to do “advanced” things on their smartphone like texting photos to their grand kids.
There should be an IOT standard protocol and I understand some of the big names like Amazon, Apple, and Google are working on creating one. From what I read, it looks like they may choose Zigbee as their standard even though Zwave looks to be the most robust and secure one that’s out there. For this reason, I stopped buying IOT devices for now so I still have a few Insteon IOT devices mixed in with my Zwave system. I’d hate to spend another $1,000 on devices only to find out that Zigbee will be universally accepted in 5 years from now and then I’ll have to repurchase everything all over again. https://apple.slashdot.org/story/19/12/18/1648252/google-amazon-and-apple-join-forces-to-develop-ip-based-smart-home-connectivity-standard
Even within a single company, they cannot decide on a single standard. Take Philips for example. They have Hue bulbs that require a hub. Those are easily able to incorporate with Smartthings. Now they are selling a Hue collection that works without the hub if you want to control it with bluetooth or you can use the hub optionally. Not sure if those will work for me or not so I stay away from them. Philips also sells the “Wiz Connected” line of bulbs too which also does not require a hub but each bulb connects via Wifi instead (each gets an IP address). That’s 3 different standards from Philips alone and when you see them in a store, they all look the same so you need to be careful.
@cengland0 We paid for business class with a static IP and it was ALWAYS down, and their customer service was horrific, mostly trying to gaslight me into either thinking I had service already, or that I shouldn’t expect it because of planned outages reported to no one.
@ivannabc I hope they fix it even faster. That has to be really hard to have to go elsewhere to get your remote work done.
@cengland0 Yeah comcast sucks. I also have 25mbps and it cuts out a lot too. At the moment it isn’t working as my router bit the dust a week or so ago after 7 years and I have to use the hot spot thing (which, when I did a speed test, appears to also be 25mpbs). If it weren’t for the fact that isn’t secure I’d skip even replacing my router. Hoping to find a dirt cheap basic one today on cyber Monday. This building I live in is hard wired for comcast so we can’t vote with our feet since we are forbidden to have satellites and AT&T only offers 3mbps (never mind they have their best upgraded stuff available in the new building next door). I’d vote with my I wallet if I could. There are good reasons why that company is high on the list of most hated.
The other thing I found out with comcast is that they won’t change the IP address you end up with (I am unplugging the modem for a couple of days to change it - I sort of remember doing that changes it). When I checked mine it says it has been involved in a major cyber attack of some sort (I forget what now) which may explain why I get a zillion bikes and traffic lights every time I have to do anything recently). Comcast refuses to pull that one from its pile it uses.
@cengland0 I have this. I pay $50 for a gig up and down, with no data cap. I couldn’t tell you the last time it was down.
Municipal fiber, folks. Mobilize your neighbors and demand it.
@Kidsandliz Yes, Comcast sucks but the only other option I have in my area is AT&T Uverse and that costs a bit more. 25mbps is sufficient for my needs but what is more important is that it’s up all the time. Speed is secondary to uptime.
I did notice that I keep the same IP address for a long time. Their lease time is pretty long. But I still need to use a DDNS in case the IP changes when I’m not home and want to access something like my surveillance cameras.
@cengland0 we also have comcast/xfinity and pay for the gigabit plan and for some reason lately it has been trash. when watching twitch or youtube tv it routinely drops out and you end up sitting there watching it buffer. when it started booting my partner out of things on his hardwired setup he called. speed tests reveal trash and it’s not our equipment, but because we don’t lease from them they’ve of course decided that’s their easy out and they don’t have to fix what is obviously their problem. comcast has a monopoly in our area so it’s either them or nothing. we’re not getting anywhere near what we’re paying for and will have to track down an isp specialist and fix it ourselves. i’m fortunate at least my partner is an IT guy but in this instance even we are forced to accept garbage for $$$. to say nothing of all the less technologically inclined customers who have no recourse at all.
@cengland0@Kidsandliz Local ISPs run by geeks are the way to go. They rarely go down, and if they do, they’re transparent about the problems. See if you can dig around and find one in your area.
@tinamarie1974
I was just gonna say growing up watching the Jetsons, you really think by now we’d be living like them, or at least as a little kid I did.
Some sort of repair service/parts for my original Google Glass… that my dog chewed up on day three. Nothing like a thousand dollar dog treat with no way to fix it. And yes, I read the T.O.S…
@FarmerTony I had the opportunity to trade a Lytro camera for a Google Glass and didn’t take it. Talk about two technologies that went nowhere. I still regret not making the trade.
Complete quantum computing to drive our AI so that we could all now be slaves to our robot masters (until they finally decided they would be better off without us).
@Felyne Saw it once for sure; ages ago at a film series at my college. Think I saw it again after that. I confess I don’t remember much about it though, except I think it was a Fritz Lang (sp?) movie. I’ll wiki that later.
@phendrick I saw it on Turner Classics and they said a lot of the film was lost but they found a more complete version in Argentina. So the revised edition is the more complete version. But both get the point across. Amazing how spot on they were in 1925.
teleportation, always. if people could live anywhere, work anywhere, travel anywhere, a lot would change. i imagine it like on picard, where there are gates like a subway, so you couldn’t just teleport anywhere at will. (no teleporting into a bank vault or into someone’s home or onto conservation land etc.)
and then having teleporters in the home for non-living stuff. just being able to cook for people that need food, or share leftovers with friends and family, or to more easily disseminate harm reduction kits, contraceptives, menstruation products, and things of that nature, or just to share a book or cookbook would be awesome.
@phendrick i think people should live and work wherever they want, hence my original comment so i’m not scared of people living here. there are plenty of people here that would live somewhere else if it were that simple too.
i’m sure like everything it would be overregulated and over taxed (i live in taxachussetts already) but this was just for fun, a utopian daydream
@jerk_nugget@Kidsandliz But I’ve already heard of parents getting in trouble just for putting their kids into closets for punishment! (Never did that with my boy – I’m sure he would have just tried to kick his way out – glad he survived to being 23 and married now; he now gets to deal with his step-daughter.) Imagine if you sent your little one off to the Amazon forests to see kids who actually like to get an occasional vegetable, and the authorities found out.
At least, there wouldn’t be much evidence left behind if you teleported them off.
@jerk_nugget Then there’s the existential question about destroying yourself to be perfectly rebuilt in a new location. Are you really dead? Or still alive? Bones was a doctor in the future and he didn’t like that shit.
But I’ve already heard of parents getting in trouble just for putting their kids into closets for punishment!
My kid, whom I adopted at almost 10, would sneak out the window. Her punishment was putting her mattress in my room and she got to sleep there plus I took her door. She hated that. I told her the other alternative was to be handcuffed to her bed. She said she’d call DHS if I did that. I told her she could choose one or the other. Her pick. Or don’t sneak out then it wouldn’t be a problem. I told her a jury of my actual peers of parents with kids who would sneak out at night would find that a justifiable action.
Teleportering her somewhere would have been lovely! I hated having her sleep in my room too. (grin).
@jerk_nugget@Kidsandliz@phendrick I was skimming and your comment made me triple take. At first I thought you were suggesting we teleport bad kids into a literal PIT, like with a sarloc in it or something, then I re-read and thought you misspelled PETA, which I thought was an unusual punishment, but it would probably prevent them from bugging you for chicken nuggets, which naturally led to my thinking you meant to enforce compliance by confinement and giving them only PITA bread and water (Classic naval punishment). It literally took me a minute. A full 60 metric seconds. PITA-full comment. It was a Pain In The Ass to decipher.
And end to hold times, and and end to listening to company-recorded messages tell us how much they value us and how much they care.
And thinking how badly those companies probably treat their CS workers, and how little those people probably get paid;
And how those workers are monitored endlessly, and ordered to get customers off the call asap, and how those workers are forbidden to either fix and problem that caused the call, or tell the truth about the problem.
@f00l@RiotDemon pixel 5 and 4a 5g are the ones I’ve seen advertising this feature. My 3 doesn’t have it that I know of.
My 4a 5g should be here soon. Google store gave $270 credit for my 3 with a cracked screen, couldn’t pass it up. Would have been $300 if I wasn’t a butterfingers. Trade in was only $90 towards the 5, the 4a 5g has some kind of deal going on. There may still be time left on that deal.
My pixel 1 sucked re battery life, and the processor behaved likely a cheapy from before the millennium.
And no sd card of course.
And way overpriced if purchased new.
I swore off pixels then.
Maybe I’ll give pixels another try sometime. I’m fed up w Samsung’s OS customizations, and Samsung’s limits in OS upgrading, and other Samsung BS, even tho Samsungs have gorgeous hardware.
@f00l the 4a starts at $349 new, so not bad. You might even score a great deal on a used 3, which is still a good phone in my book. The 5 is overpriced, imo, at $699 with marginal new features but better glass and wireless charging over the 4a 5g. Still no sd card. But it lacks all the Samsung things you are fed up with. And it will screen your calls for you which is cool.
I was only halfway looking, this phone is 2 years old but the battery is starting to suck (they sent a refurb when I had mine replaced for a usb c port malfunction, my first was much better). When I saw the opportunity to get 2/3 of what I had in this one towards a new one I felt that was a sign it’s time to jump. Black Friday seems to be a good time to buy a phone.
The person (who has in my direct experience flawlessly repaired many phones and tablets) told me that inside the pixel 1, the battery was glued to the screen circuit board, which was glued to the screen. Or something like that.
No way to replace the battery without replacing all three, if he could get the parts. And if he could, it would be stupid-pricey.
Another reason to avoid pixels, if the Google specs still let the manufacturer do that.
I’ve had the batteries replaced in my iphones with little hassle.
I called as few places and couldn’t find anyone who would even attempt the pixel 1 for under $200; and if they broke the phone, too bad, I still had to pay up front no refunds.
That’s how risky they all seemed to think it was.
Perhaps these guys weren’t as good or as experienced as ifixit. Or maybe it was a 1st gen prob.
Since even with a new battery, the phone would still have a processor not up to what I expected after using a samsung-s-series (even when the pixel was current gen), I gave up on it.
I tried two 1st gens; both had identical probs Perhaps google stepped up on the specs after gen 1. People seem to like the current pixels I guess.
No, flying cars would lead to FAR worse accidents. Self-Driving cars on the other hand is the technology I am anxiously awaiting on that front and those will come in the next decade or so.
Holodecks are super cool and I would love it, but they are also big and expensive to own and operate. Your average schmoe (like myself) would only be able to rent some time a few times in their lives… just not worth it for my dream come true technology above all others.
Transporters are … problematic. Most of the ideas behind them involve killing the person who steps onto the pad and then making a perfect duplicate on the other end. No thank you. Now if you are talking Portals, THOSE I can get behind.
But ultimately I think I’m going with replicators. They are small enough to be a household appliance and would fix most household appliance needs. No need for laundry, dishwashers, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, etc. Even if they cost as much as a car, they will end up saving so much money that they would be worth it. Not to mention the ability to replicate whatever wardrobe you are feeling that day without having to have a closet as big as a bathroom. It would cut down drastically on clutter and accumulation of stuff and then there is the societal benefits of the removal of scarcity and the effectively perfect recycling that they provide. Replicators would be the single biggest game changer in the world.
@mike808 A couple years ago, I wrote a program to web crawl the site and look for any pages that contained my username and then create a final page with links to those pages where my username was listed. I went to them and unstarred each that I could find. But it still shows 102 likes that I gave myself and I cannot find those last few. There must be some hidden forum pages that are not linked from anywhere so those will be in my profile forever.
@RiotDemon I’m embarrassed to admit it but I think it was over 400. I only knew that they kept track of it when, after their first year, they sent out an email giving us all sorts of statistics about our account. As soon as I saw that, I thought “Oh Crap” everyone will know that I starred myself. I ignored it for a while until new profile pages appeared which then made it visible to everyone. I had to fix it now.
Still a little upset that I cannot find the 102 stars after web crawling the entire site. There was one link that actually crashed the site with an error. Wish I kept that link so I could post it here but I didn’t keep it because I knew that one page couldn’t possibly contain all 102 stars and it might be around 50 pages or more that I still need to find.
IoT devices and an intelligent assistant interface that play well together 100% of the time. Zero down time, zero lag, zero “I’m sorry, that device isn’t responding right now” or “Sorry, we can’t reach (insert device or service name here) right now. Please try again in a few minutes.”
I’d even settle for an intelligent assistant that replied to my questions with information relevant to my query.
A good internet connection that is stable.
@cengland0 my God do I feel that right now. I’ve got Windstream and our modem is going belly up. I’ve had to restart the modem at least 25 times since Wednesday. Earliest they’re going to get to me is later this week and that’s after I threw a fit about working from home and needing internet for it.
@cengland0 With a fast upload speed that doesn’t require me to pay for download speed 500 times faster than I need.
@ivannabc I have comcast. When I paid for business class, it never went down. Now that I’m retired and paying for their lowesr 25mbps residential plan (using the exact same hardware), I lose internet a couple times every hour for a couple minutes each time. Shouldn’t have this problem in 2020.
This is annoying because my house is automated. “Alexa, turn on the livingroom light” and you would expect the light to turn on. But both Alexa and Smartthings require Internet for these commands. Timed events like turning the porch light off at 12:15 am fails if the internet was down at that exact moment so sometimes the light is still on when I wake up in the morning. Grrrrrr…
@ivannabc Windstream may do fiber in your area, they’ve gotten into it I hear. Doesn’t make them any better but it could be more reliable.
@cengland0 check out Hubitat for local home automation. Doesn’t solve the rest of the issues but it could help your lights turn off regularly.
@yakkoTDI what’s wrong with gigabit down, 4mbps up? Lol cable company, you so crazy.
@djslack I almost went the Home Assistant route because it uses your internal network for automations and does not require Internet. The problem was that there isn’t an Android app and only an iOS one. You can control things on Android by using a website running on your local server but a web application doesn’t support notifications which renders my leak detectors and motion detectors useless.
This unstable internet problem is making me sorry for “upgrading” to Zwave from Insteon. Never had this issue with Insteon.
@cengland0 I see. There are ways if you want to get your hands dirty. (This is the answer for almost anything with home assistant, it seems). There is a home assistant companion app for android, html5 notifications, and pushover is also an option, but home assistant is hardly a plug and play deal. Tradeoffs abound.
I rescind my recommendation to look at Hubitat, though, there’s currently no app for it either.
It is frustrating. You would think that there would be something on the market that checks all the boxes but you have to compromise somewhere. The biggest battle lines are cloud vs local and fidgety vs plug and play, and all the plug and play options are cloud based it seems.
@cengland0 @djslack
Don’t forget the powerful profit motive of every IOT and software company to “monetize” the fuck out of everything by making everything critically dependent on … you guessed it … the company’s “API” services.
As if your porch light couldn’t have a local device with a clock on it (stove, coffee maker, microwave, phone, computer - anything connected to your wifi) and the command to turn off at 1am stored on the light. My 7-day $30 thermostat can do this shit all day even without power with a AA battery. Why the fuck does your light turn into a brick without a full 24x7 internet connection? It’s like some idiot millennial without a fucking clue about actual real engineering ability shat this crap out and shipped it so that they could promote themselves from “Senior DevOps Product Architect/Engineer” to “CTO” for the next round of VC financing.
@djslack You seem to understand my problem exactly. Even now with the Smartthings plug and play solution I have chosen, there are device handlers that you may need to install if you want to benefit from all the features of a device such as ramp rate that may not be configurable through the front panel of the switch. Those device handlers are separate projects located on Github and you need to fork them to your personal account and then link Smartthings to your Github account so it can use those handlers. That is ridiculous to have to go through that in 2020.
Although I’m able to figure out how to do the complicated stuff because I used to be a developer when I was working, it shouldn’t have to be that way. I keep thinking about what it would be like if my 70+ year old neighbors tried to buy this stuff off the shelf. They would have no clue. Even if I installed it for them, they couldn’t figure out how to use it. I’m still trying to show them how to do “advanced” things on their smartphone like texting photos to their grand kids.
There should be an IOT standard protocol and I understand some of the big names like Amazon, Apple, and Google are working on creating one. From what I read, it looks like they may choose Zigbee as their standard even though Zwave looks to be the most robust and secure one that’s out there. For this reason, I stopped buying IOT devices for now so I still have a few Insteon IOT devices mixed in with my Zwave system. I’d hate to spend another $1,000 on devices only to find out that Zigbee will be universally accepted in 5 years from now and then I’ll have to repurchase everything all over again. https://apple.slashdot.org/story/19/12/18/1648252/google-amazon-and-apple-join-forces-to-develop-ip-based-smart-home-connectivity-standard
Even within a single company, they cannot decide on a single standard. Take Philips for example. They have Hue bulbs that require a hub. Those are easily able to incorporate with Smartthings. Now they are selling a Hue collection that works without the hub if you want to control it with bluetooth or you can use the hub optionally. Not sure if those will work for me or not so I stay away from them. Philips also sells the “Wiz Connected” line of bulbs too which also does not require a hub but each bulb connects via Wifi instead (each gets an IP address). That’s 3 different standards from Philips alone and when you see them in a store, they all look the same so you need to be careful.
@cengland0 We paid for business class with a static IP and it was ALWAYS down, and their customer service was horrific, mostly trying to gaslight me into either thinking I had service already, or that I shouldn’t expect it because of planned outages reported to no one.
@ivannabc I hope they fix it even faster. That has to be really hard to have to go elsewhere to get your remote work done.
@cengland0 Yeah comcast sucks. I also have 25mbps and it cuts out a lot too. At the moment it isn’t working as my router bit the dust a week or so ago after 7 years and I have to use the hot spot thing (which, when I did a speed test, appears to also be 25mpbs). If it weren’t for the fact that isn’t secure I’d skip even replacing my router. Hoping to find a dirt cheap basic one today on cyber Monday. This building I live in is hard wired for comcast so we can’t vote with our feet since we are forbidden to have satellites and AT&T only offers 3mbps (never mind they have their best upgraded stuff available in the new building next door). I’d vote with my I wallet if I could. There are good reasons why that company is high on the list of most hated.
The other thing I found out with comcast is that they won’t change the IP address you end up with (I am unplugging the modem for a couple of days to change it - I sort of remember doing that changes it). When I checked mine it says it has been involved in a major cyber attack of some sort (I forget what now) which may explain why I get a zillion bikes and traffic lights every time I have to do anything recently). Comcast refuses to pull that one from its pile it uses.
@cengland0 I have this. I pay $50 for a gig up and down, with no data cap. I couldn’t tell you the last time it was down.
Municipal fiber, folks. Mobilize your neighbors and demand it.
@j37hr0 You’re making me jealous.
@Kidsandliz Yes, Comcast sucks but the only other option I have in my area is AT&T Uverse and that costs a bit more. 25mbps is sufficient for my needs but what is more important is that it’s up all the time. Speed is secondary to uptime.
I did notice that I keep the same IP address for a long time. Their lease time is pretty long. But I still need to use a DDNS in case the IP changes when I’m not home and want to access something like my surveillance cameras.
@cengland0 we also have comcast/xfinity and pay for the gigabit plan and for some reason lately it has been trash. when watching twitch or youtube tv it routinely drops out and you end up sitting there watching it buffer. when it started booting my partner out of things on his hardwired setup he called. speed tests reveal trash and it’s not our equipment, but because we don’t lease from them they’ve of course decided that’s their easy out and they don’t have to fix what is obviously their problem. comcast has a monopoly in our area so it’s either them or nothing. we’re not getting anywhere near what we’re paying for and will have to track down an isp specialist and fix it ourselves. i’m fortunate at least my partner is an IT guy but in this instance even we are forced to accept garbage for $$$. to say nothing of all the less technologically inclined customers who have no recourse at all.
@cengland0 @Kidsandliz Local ISPs run by geeks are the way to go. They rarely go down, and if they do, they’re transparent about the problems. See if you can dig around and find one in your area.
Judy Jetson’s shower/closet. It washed you, did hair and make up and dressed you while you stood on a conveyor belt.
@tinamarie1974 so basically a car wash for people (grin).
@tinamarie1974
I was just gonna say growing up watching the Jetsons, you really think by now we’d be living like them, or at least as a little kid I did.
@Kidsandliz I mean kind of, but so much better!!
Some sort of repair service/parts for my original Google Glass… that my dog chewed up on day three. Nothing like a thousand dollar dog treat with no way to fix it. And yes, I read the T.O.S…
@FarmerTony I had the opportunity to trade a Lytro camera for a Google Glass and didn’t take it. Talk about two technologies that went nowhere. I still regret not making the trade.
@FarmerTony I kind of feel like I should give your dog a medal. He saved you from making a terrible mistake – possibly using Google Glass.
…
Whosa good boy!?
Something that would eliminate the need to have a bazillion user names and passwords.
@heartny LastPass, KeePass, Dashlane, etc.
I have no idea what most of my passwords are (other than 20-60 characters of gibberish), and it works perfectly.
@heartny Don’t they have a service that remembers all your passwords? Then again, that sounds risky on its own.
Voting machines that can’t be hacked.
@tweezak now you’ve done it.
@tweezak It’s called paper.
@blaineg Sho nuf. Unfortunately you can always print all the ballots you need. >100% returns is perfectly normal.
Food replicators
@rtjhnstn Well you just might be getting that. They are replicating food with 3D printers!
https://www.labmanager.com/news/researchers-create-food-ingredients-by-3d-printing-24567?
a face and whole body wrinkle remover wand
and
a painless fat sucker outer vacuum.
@mick So you’re not a skinny Asian, like me? Must suck.
@mick genius!!
That the Meh image upload feature would also allow png and webp and webm files to be uploaded instead of just gif and jpg files from last century.
Complete quantum computing to drive our AI so that we could all now be slaves to our robot masters (until they finally decided they would be better off without us).
@phendrick Did u see the silent movie, Metropolis? Awesome!
DIPLOMAT! RAT-A-TAT! FAT CAT! AWESOME!
@Felyne Saw it once for sure; ages ago at a film series at my college. Think I saw it again after that. I confess I don’t remember much about it though, except I think it was a Fritz Lang (sp?) movie. I’ll wiki that later.
@phendrick I saw it on Turner Classics and they said a lot of the film was lost but they found a more complete version in Argentina. So the revised edition is the more complete version. But both get the point across. Amazing how spot on they were in 1925.
@Felyne @phendrick
It’s gorgeous
Something that will stop a cat from eating plastics and a dog from eating poop.
teleportation, always. if people could live anywhere, work anywhere, travel anywhere, a lot would change. i imagine it like on picard, where there are gates like a subway, so you couldn’t just teleport anywhere at will. (no teleporting into a bank vault or into someone’s home or onto conservation land etc.)
and then having teleporters in the home for non-living stuff. just being able to cook for people that need food, or share leftovers with friends and family, or to more easily disseminate harm reduction kits, contraceptives, menstruation products, and things of that nature, or just to share a book or cookbook would be awesome.
MEALS! DEALS! EELS! AWESOME!
@jerk_nugget I’m sure the government would over-regulate it, over-tax it, …
And Microsoft and Alphabet (Google) would do their best to get the monopoly on it, though China would steal the IP.
And can’t you just imagine all the countries that would be sending their excess population into your back yard.
@jerk_nugget @phendrick
But think of the places you could temporarily send kids being a giant PITA as punishment
@phendrick i think people should live and work wherever they want, hence my original comment so i’m not scared of people living here. there are plenty of people here that would live somewhere else if it were that simple too.
i’m sure like everything it would be overregulated and over taxed (i live in taxachussetts already) but this was just for fun, a utopian daydream
@jerk_nugget @Kidsandliz But I’ve already heard of parents getting in trouble just for putting their kids into closets for punishment! (Never did that with my boy – I’m sure he would have just tried to kick his way out – glad he survived to being 23 and married now; he now gets to deal with his step-daughter.) Imagine if you sent your little one off to the Amazon forests to see kids who actually like to get an occasional vegetable, and the authorities found out.
At least, there wouldn’t be much evidence left behind if you teleported them off.
How about teleportation like on Discovery?
@jerk_nugget Then there’s the existential question about destroying yourself to be perfectly rebuilt in a new location. Are you really dead? Or still alive? Bones was a doctor in the future and he didn’t like that shit.
@jerk_nugget @phendrick
My kid, whom I adopted at almost 10, would sneak out the window. Her punishment was putting her mattress in my room and she got to sleep there plus I took her door. She hated that. I told her the other alternative was to be handcuffed to her bed. She said she’d call DHS if I did that. I told her she could choose one or the other. Her pick. Or don’t sneak out then it wouldn’t be a problem. I told her a jury of my actual peers of parents with kids who would sneak out at night would find that a justifiable action.
Teleportering her somewhere would have been lovely! I hated having her sleep in my room too. (grin).
@jerk_nugget @Kidsandliz @phendrick I was skimming and your comment made me triple take. At first I thought you were suggesting we teleport bad kids into a literal PIT, like with a sarloc in it or something, then I re-read and thought you misspelled PETA, which I thought was an unusual punishment, but it would probably prevent them from bugging you for chicken nuggets, which naturally led to my thinking you meant to enforce compliance by confinement and giving them only PITA bread and water (Classic naval punishment). It literally took me a minute. A full 60 metric seconds. PITA-full comment. It was a Pain In The Ass to decipher.
@blaineg i love discovery! but definitely this is the type of teleportation i hope to avoid
Cure for cancer
@DrWorm Yes! For all of them.
The future ain’t what it used to be.
https://www.webomator.com/wordpress/2015/02/28/flying-car-t-shirts-and-invisible-but-clever-updates/
We Were Promised Jetpacks is both the thing i’m most bitter about not having as an adult, and an excellent rock band from Scotland.
And end to hold times, and and end to listening to company-recorded messages tell us how much they value us and how much they care.
And thinking how badly those companies probably treat their CS workers, and how little those people probably get paid;
And how those workers are monitored endlessly, and ordered to get customers off the call asap, and how those workers are forbidden to either fix and problem that caused the call, or tell the truth about the problem.
@f00l on the new pixel phones, Google Assistant will hold for you and ping you when a person comes back.
It’s not what you asked for, but it’s a start.
@djslack @f00l wait what? I have a pixel, I haven’t come across that function yet. Maybe I don’t call enough places where I get stuck on hold?
@f00l @RiotDemon pixel 5 and 4a 5g are the ones I’ve seen advertising this feature. My 3 doesn’t have it that I know of.
My 4a 5g should be here soon. Google store gave $270 credit for my 3 with a cracked screen, couldn’t pass it up. Would have been $300 if I wasn’t a butterfingers. Trade in was only $90 towards the 5, the 4a 5g has some kind of deal going on. There may still be time left on that deal.
@djslack ah ok. I’m still happy with my 3. I don’t feel a need to upgrade yet. I’m still paying off this phone, lol.
I kept my HTC One M for… Four or 5 years. As long as I don’t break them, I keep them for a while.
@djslack @RiotDemon
My pixel 1 sucked re battery life, and the processor behaved likely a cheapy from before the millennium.
And no sd card of course.
And way overpriced if purchased new.
I swore off pixels then.
Maybe I’ll give pixels another try sometime. I’m fed up w Samsung’s OS customizations, and Samsung’s limits in OS upgrading, and other Samsung BS, even tho Samsungs have gorgeous hardware.
@f00l the 4a starts at $349 new, so not bad. You might even score a great deal on a used 3, which is still a good phone in my book. The 5 is overpriced, imo, at $699 with marginal new features but better glass and wireless charging over the 4a 5g. Still no sd card. But it lacks all the Samsung things you are fed up with. And it will screen your calls for you which is cool.
I was only halfway looking, this phone is 2 years old but the battery is starting to suck (they sent a refurb when I had mine replaced for a usb c port malfunction, my first was much better). When I saw the opportunity to get 2/3 of what I had in this one towards a new one I felt that was a sign it’s time to jump. Black Friday seems to be a good time to buy a phone.
@djslack
I tried to get the battery replaced in my pixel 1
The person (who has in my direct experience flawlessly repaired many phones and tablets) told me that inside the pixel 1, the battery was glued to the screen circuit board, which was glued to the screen. Or something like that.
No way to replace the battery without replacing all three, if he could get the parts. And if he could, it would be stupid-pricey.
Another reason to avoid pixels, if the Google specs still let the manufacturer do that.
@djslack @f00l iFixit actually puts the Pixel on par with iPhones when it comes to repairability.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/8539/pixel-repair-phone
At least it’s no Essential Ph-1. Or a Surface.
@djslack @narfcake
I’ve had the batteries replaced in my iphones with little hassle.
I called as few places and couldn’t find anyone who would even attempt the pixel 1 for under $200; and if they broke the phone, too bad, I still had to pay up front no refunds.
That’s how risky they all seemed to think it was.
Perhaps these guys weren’t as good or as experienced as ifixit. Or maybe it was a 1st gen prob.
Since even with a new battery, the phone would still have a processor not up to what I expected after using a samsung-s-series (even when the pixel was current gen), I gave up on it.
I tried two 1st gens; both had identical probs Perhaps google stepped up on the specs after gen 1. People seem to like the current pixels I guess.
@f00l @RiotDemon today the pixel 3 gets hold for me:
Safe energy boosters.
Pretty much all of the tech from The Jetsons, or at least most of it.
No, flying cars would lead to FAR worse accidents. Self-Driving cars on the other hand is the technology I am anxiously awaiting on that front and those will come in the next decade or so.
Holodecks are super cool and I would love it, but they are also big and expensive to own and operate. Your average schmoe (like myself) would only be able to rent some time a few times in their lives… just not worth it for my dream come true technology above all others.
Transporters are … problematic. Most of the ideas behind them involve killing the person who steps onto the pad and then making a perfect duplicate on the other end. No thank you. Now if you are talking Portals, THOSE I can get behind.
But ultimately I think I’m going with replicators. They are small enough to be a household appliance and would fix most household appliance needs. No need for laundry, dishwashers, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, etc. Even if they cost as much as a car, they will end up saving so much money that they would be worth it. Not to mention the ability to replicate whatever wardrobe you are feeling that day without having to have a closet as big as a bathroom. It would cut down drastically on clutter and accumulation of stuff and then there is the societal benefits of the removal of scarcity and the effectively perfect recycling that they provide. Replicators would be the single biggest game changer in the world.
@infornography you do realize replicators and transporters, on a basic level are the same tech right?
A Meh search engine that could locate all posts where you self-starred your own post so that you could fix them.
@mike808
@mike808 A couple years ago, I wrote a program to web crawl the site and look for any pages that contained my username and then create a final page with links to those pages where my username was listed. I went to them and unstarred each that I could find. But it still shows 102 likes that I gave myself and I cannot find those last few. There must be some hidden forum pages that are not linked from anywhere so those will be in my profile forever.
@cengland0 102 after you unstarred what you could find!? How many were there before?
@RiotDemon I’m embarrassed to admit it but I think it was over 400. I only knew that they kept track of it when, after their first year, they sent out an email giving us all sorts of statistics about our account. As soon as I saw that, I thought “Oh Crap” everyone will know that I starred myself. I ignored it for a while until new profile pages appeared which then made it visible to everyone. I had to fix it now.
Still a little upset that I cannot find the 102 stars after web crawling the entire site. There was one link that actually crashed the site with an error. Wish I kept that link so I could post it here but I didn’t keep it because I knew that one page couldn’t possibly contain all 102 stars and it might be around 50 pages or more that I still need to find.
Would you trade your left foot for the flying car?
@rogerbacon No but I’d trade your left foot for one (grin).
IoT devices and an intelligent assistant interface that play well together 100% of the time. Zero down time, zero lag, zero “I’m sorry, that device isn’t responding right now” or “Sorry, we can’t reach (insert device or service name here) right now. Please try again in a few minutes.”
I’d even settle for an intelligent assistant that replied to my questions with information relevant to my query.
Commercial fusion reactors.
Clean sustainable power…as long as you can maintain containment…
Self-driving cars because it would reduce traffic/accidents once more people have them.