In a perfect world, I could appreciate the concept. At the end of the day, I do need to buy stuff, and I’d rather know about the available options. If I’m definitely not going to buy diapers but I’m definitely going to buy a new keyboard in the next month or two, I’d rather see keyboard ads than diaper ads.
But that’s only in theory. In practice, “targeted” ads are invariably sleazy scams. You bet I use uBO.
Thank you, I have now been unwooshed
I don’t get the joke with the beaver.
These things are always impossible to predict. But I’ll try anyway.
What things like VHS and diskettes have in common is that they’re clunky. They’re a hassle to use, and they’ve been replaced by something easier. So what is currently a hassle to use, but we use every day?
Nothing obvious springs to mind, but I’m thinking of dishwashers and washing machines. Their main purpose is to save human time and effort, and they do a fantastic job at that compared to before, but there’s still a lot of room to improve.
Dishwashers need to be carefully loaded and unloaded. (Also they often don’t clean the dishes well unless you wash them a bit beforehand, defeating much of their purpose. Don’t tell Alec from Technology Connections I’ve said this, but I tried putting dirty dishes in there and it just doesn’t clean well enough. Maybe my detergent powder isn’t good enough.)
Maybe in the future there would be a dishwasher-cupboard hybrid, where you just put the dirty dishes into it (WITHOUT having to think about how to place them) and it automagically cleans them and places them in the cupboard ready to take.
Washing machines also require a lot of hassle. Same idea but with a closet.
Floppy disks will forever be used the way they are currently used: as the save icon.
I think you are totally wrong about all of these except the dentistry (and for that I simply don’t know enough).
Analog clocks are not going away. They’re aesthetically pleasing, all the luxury watches are analog, all the smart watches have analog modes… I don’t think this is changing any time soon. One caveat: I hear there’s a trend where younger people (e.g. today’s teens and younger) often don’t know how to read analog clocks. So perhaps I can be convinced on this, but I still think they’re here to stay.
Flashlights produce orders of magnitude more light than any smartphone. Headlamps provide light while keeping your hands free. Phone flashlights are useful in a pinch but flashlights are not ever going to seem alien, they might be more niche but not strange. In any event, this has already happened so you’re describing the present, not the future.
Keys? No way. Every electronic locking system includes a mechanical backup for a reason: power outages happen, batteries don’t last forever, and electronics fail a lot more often than mechanical lock mechanisms. None of these facts will change. People don’t really like being locked out of their home then the power’s out, so you bet they’ll keep carrying keys.
Fax machines are already out. A story made the rounds maybe a year or two ago about how Japan was finally going to stop using faxes, and before that Japan was one of the few (if not the last) to still be using fax. So again this is the present, not the future.
Lastly, dentistry: man I hope that happens, it sounds great. But it doesn’t really fit the question, it’s not something we “use” every day, it’s a treatment to a medical problem. Advances in medicine aren’t they here IMO.
Good point, I edited that in :)
Look, I happen to know what this is but I really hate posts that just assume everyone knows what they’re talking about.
So for everyone else: this is the newly announced Steam Machine, a gaming PC/console that will run SteamOS (Linux) (or any other OS of your choice) and overall looks freaking awesome.
It sounds that way on first listen! But it’s actually about his daughter.
If I remember correctly: during a holiday and a large family gathering, his young daughter fell and hit her head very seriously. She lost consciousness and it seemed like she was in mortal danger. Gave them (her parents) the scare of their life! They put her in the car and sped all the way to the hospital emergency room.
This song is about that incident. “I wanted to tell you how much I love you” is what he kept thinking on that drive.
She’s alright now :)
I use both btw
Woah. Sir, this is trademark infringement. You’re only allowed to use that phrase with Arch.
Yup, Cinnamon is slow on Wayland support, but they’re getting there. Eventually.
Try this: https://youtu.be/oOFdWRZr2uM
גיא מזיג - כמה אני אוהב אותך
Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/track/4RyainOBqMazNOuSU2BMfx
There’s a line of clocks where each hour is a different bird and the chime at each hour is what that bird sounds like. It has a light sensor to control its volume so at night it’s very quiet, never gonna give wake you up. Completely analog, for better and for worse.
https://www.audubon.org/marketplace/singing-bird-clock
It’s not adjustable so I’m not sure it’s a perfect fit, but it’s lovely. They’ve been around for ages, I had one since I was a kid, I’m surprised they’re still available.
Edit: it does tick like most analog clocks, which could be a deal breaker with ADHD. I know it’s sometimes a bother for me.
It’s obviously been painted over and the word “Copper” in the text is replacing some other word that was there before. But I have no idea what it was before.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Thanks! I’ve sent it to him and I’ll try to skim it myself.
Well, if you insist… How far is it from Toronto to Ottawa? (bracing myself…)
That’s kind of the problem that targeted ads are intended to solve, in theory.
Without ads, how else are you going to discover stuff? How does an unknown startup make people know about its product? Word of mouth can only get you so far, and if you don’t have the reach you’re locked out.
Targeted ads make advertising cheaper, because you don’t have to waste money advertising to people who aren’t even in your target demographic. It’s supposed to make it possible for newcomers with a good product to establish themselves in the market without starting out with an astronomical marketing budget.
But as I already said, it only works in a dream. On TV or on billboards, you only see the huge budget ads. Coca-cola et al. But on the web with targeted ads, you get spam ads. So many fake products, scam websites, get-rich-quick schemes, etc etc, that the advertising space itself is devalued because just by having your name there you look like a scammer.
But what choice is left? If you’re a new company making a cool product, how do you make it so that people know about it? For a lot of cases, targeted ads are the only affordable option.