151–160 of 741 posts
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Many people I know are asking for and seeking out smart tvs. It's not being pushed on them. I don't hear those people asking for smart fridges (but occasionally I hear them talk about integrated ice makers).
TVs are Netflix terminals. Why not get a TV with Netflix built in? At this point, it just makes sense to have apps on the TV.
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> why are there shortages for these basic chips? Can’t they be made anywhere, and more easily? Not really. Semiconductor fabs are built around "tools" from manufacturers like AMAT and Nikon. Those tool vendors make most of their money from selling new tools for fancy new processes, not supporting 20-year-old stuff. Eventually stuff breaks, and fabs have to offline these older processes. The way this works in the tech…
Actually, ASML provides lifetime support for their machines. I don't know for the rest.
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If you don't want a monthly car payment, start your “monthly car payment” into a savings account now. You'll end up paying less for your next car if you can maximise the up-front payment.
Yes, we save a healthy portion of our income, but increasing that now just shifts the timing, not the pain, of when have to start a new car payment.
What a narcissistic culture we’ve built if such a reality brings “pain”.
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Connected washing machines continue to make little sense to me. The only benefit I can think of is a notification when it's done. Otherwise all the interactions with it are done in person. (loading/unloading etc) What would you want to script?
The common use case is to want to set the time so that it runs not right now but later - either because for noise reasons, or so that it finishes when you're back home to unload. Also, of course, there's the "internal scheduling" of various different activities that the machine is doing; you can do that mechanically but IMHO it's simpler now to do that with a cheap microcontroller.
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The world isn't driven by "I should have all the nice things I can imagine". How are you gonna script the washing machine to take the underwear off your bottom and put it in the drum? You'll have to do that yourself. And when you do it, you might as well "script the washing machine" by pushing the buttons on it. I'm a programmer and honestly I can't wait for this IoT fad to die down a little. Sure, maybe it's cool to…
I couldn’t imagine not having smart lights, they are one of the few iot devices that make my life a lot more comfortable- def not a novelty
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With the amount of horrible infotainment systems in the wild i honestly doubt they’re using overpowered chips. I’m sure any consumer grade APU (ie. CPU with an iGPU) from the past 5 years would do better than the chips currently in cars.
How much of that is the APU? I’d imagine the bottleneck would lie with manufacturers using the cheapest panels and digitizers they can.
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One can also do the choice to not buy any of these. I have no trouble finding non IoT toothbrushes, fridges and so on.
Finding a dumb TV is a lot harder.
I've always wondered what it would be like to suddenly lose the ability to build higher technology like computer chips. Obviously this is just a shortage and not the same as manufacturing just vanishing, but the effects will be interesting to observe.
Many products like water boilers, ovens or toasters can be built more robust without digital chips. I would argue we would see a overall quality improvement from having a bad chip shortage.
There's useful technology, like computer controlling your engine to make it more fuel-efficient or whatever. And then there're "smart appliances", like a fridge with a screen. Do we really need it? The companies try to sell us more useless stuff, that's what it is.
If people do not want a screen on the fridge, then the sales numbers will tell manufacturers not to make that model. So much of product is experimentation, and often times the research and experiments ends up being wrong. So many products and companies fail when they go to market and find out nobody wants it. The other side of the coin are the products that are unexpected hits... There are so many things that have to…
First, sales numbers can only really ever tell you part of the story. If every fridge has a screen, sales numbers won't tell you about the demand for screenless fridges. If, at that point, some manufacturer tests a screenless fridge, the sales numbers might tell you about a lack of demand or might tell you about a failure in marketing. Additionally, if fridges with screens can be used to advertise to customers, get them to sign up for subscription services, steal their data, avoid the expense of bifurcating the line of fridges, or otherwise increase profit or decrease costs, they will be manufactured anyway.