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“A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

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Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#51

Post by cedilla »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #37
xyzelement wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on... This sub-thread is venturing into the territory of lumping airlines with "solutions in search of a problem" and that just doesn't make any sense to me. You can argue that airlines have not returned on the capital (it may be true, I have no idea) but there's clearly demand and utility for the product, as evidenced by nearly every flight being nearly or completely full at all times.

An industry basically can't ever make a profit is not a solution to anything.

All the goods and people transported won't mind that a few shareholders were unhappy.

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#52

Post by Retric »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #37
xyzelement wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on... This sub-thread is venturing into the territory of lumping airlines with "solutions in search of a problem" and that just doesn't make any sense to me. You can argue that airlines have not returned on the capital (it may be true, I have no idea) but there's clearly demand and utility for the product, as evidenced by nearly every flight being nearly or completely full at all times.

An industry basically can't ever make a profit is not a solution to anything.

You could say that about the restaurant industry where people regularly lose their shirts, except a few players are consistently profitable.

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#53

Post by PaulHoule »

malfist wrote: post #2

I thought this article had a good rule on how to differentiate dead end "solution in search of a problem" inventions and ones that might be successful. > whether the technology does something that would be useful if everyone had it, but is relatively useless at small scale I've often told my partner a lot of his "smart home" devices are solutions in search of problems. It seems to ride this line. Probably why despite…

My smart home gadgets are a common source of controversy in my house.

I have some rooms with dimmable lights that work really well even if there is some latency. I have other ones where there are chronic reliability problems usually because I tried to get a Sengled switch to work a Hue light or something like that.

I’d say my project success rate has been about 50%.

Hue made a really great switch which is piezoelectric powered and doesn’t need a battery but these are now crazy expensive and hard to find. I think switches are affected by supply chain issues but might not be stocked at places like Best Guy because plenty of people seem to have a smartphone grafted to them and just use the phone as a switch.

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#54

Post by PaulHoule »

jchw wrote: post #23
malfist wrote: post #2

I thought this article had a good rule on how to differentiate dead end "solution in search of a problem" inventions and ones that might be successful. > whether the technology does something that would be useful if everyone had it, but is relatively useless at small scale I've often told my partner a lot of his "smart home" devices are solutions in search of problems. It seems to ride this line. Probably why despite…

I love smart home stuff, but greatly prefer open source compatible (Home Assistant etc), non-internet-connected smart home equipment that still has hardware switches. There's no good standard for RGBW addressability over wires here in the U.S. (that I'm aware of) so I do use some Philips Hue bulbs, but only accompanied by a hard-wired switch capable of associating directly with the bulb, so that all it needs to work…

System like X10 or power line Ethernet that communicate over power lines have huge transformers and I think high power consumption. You’d think you could have power line Ethernet in your PC or X10 bulbs but it is not so practical.

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#55

Post by Shinmon »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #38
Shinmon wrote: post #32

Solutions in search of a problem (SISP) are not necessarily tied to low interest rates. What might be tied to them is that companies with such solutions live longer because money is cheap. However, if you never make money, noone will give you money either. I think SISPs are a typical problem for tech-savy founders who think some kind of solution is really cool, because it solves them a problem. The problem however wa…

> takes them about 1h. Automating it, is just more fun than actually doing it. Spot on. The joy of technological skill, being a programmer and engineer is that you can customise, reconfigure and shape the world in front of you. Other people see you playing and having fun, and say; "Hey, can you do that for me?" What was just scratching an itch becomes something others want to universalise. And that doesn't always wor…

Research proposals are not supposed to necessarily solve current real-life problems so there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

But given the amount of startups coming out of universities, the mindset is crazily wrong. So many people coming with a technology. If it's software you can at least pivot easily but if you got some kind of hardware technology, it becomes much less simple to do that.

> Low interest + easy capital + bloated academic research machine = new problems. It's a problem creation machine.

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but academy seems to be more of a solution creation machine without real problem solving. Problem solving as in someone will pay to get rid of the problem because it happens frequently and costs a lot of money each time.

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#56

Post by trgn »

obblekk wrote: post #24

I really dislike these takes on low interest rates. As far back as the 70s (when interest rates were 8-15%), there have been random business ideas being started and shutdown (pet rocks, every airline ever, etc.). We don't remember those because they shutdown 40 years ago. Today, we only see the successful ones that survived (walmart, fedex, etc.). There's a legit question: why have long term interests declined over t…

> has to do with some very broad phenomenon:

Consider also social and political stability. The variability of interest rates in function of societal cohesion was already observed hundreds of years ago, and seems consistent across timescales and geographies.

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#57

Post by RC_ITR »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #37
xyzelement wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on... This sub-thread is venturing into the territory of lumping airlines with "solutions in search of a problem" and that just doesn't make any sense to me. You can argue that airlines have not returned on the capital (it may be true, I have no idea) but there's clearly demand and utility for the product, as evidenced by nearly every flight being nearly or completely full at all times.

An industry basically can't ever make a profit is not a solution to anything.

Guess all that drinking water we have is just a waste then.

Highways too.

Airlines are unique in that they're essentially a public good that we've allowed to be a private market (look at how often the government intervenes in the industry).

That doesn't mean that airplanes are pointless.

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#58

Post by hedora »

xyzelement wrote: post #34
obblekk wrote: post #24

I really dislike these takes on low interest rates. As far back as the 70s (when interest rates were 8-15%), there have been random business ideas being started and shutdown (pet rocks, every airline ever, etc.). We don't remember those because they shutdown 40 years ago. Today, we only see the successful ones that survived (walmart, fedex, etc.). There's a legit question: why have long term interests declined over t…

Hang on... This sub-thread is venturing into the territory of lumping airlines with "solutions in search of a problem" and that just doesn't make any sense to me. You can argue that airlines have not returned on the capital (it may be true, I have no idea) but there's clearly demand and utility for the product, as evidenced by nearly every flight being nearly or completely full at all times.

Here are some example "solutions in search of a problem" airlines:

https://samchui.com/2022/05/30/worlds-top-10-strange-airline...

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#59

Post by jchw »

PaulHoule wrote: post #54
jchw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love smart home stuff, but greatly prefer open source compatible (Home Assistant etc), non-internet-connected smart home equipment that still has hardware switches. There's no good standard for RGBW addressability over wires here in the U.S. (that I'm aware of) so I do use some Philips Hue bulbs, but only accompanied by a hard-wired switch capable of associating directly with the bulb, so that all it needs to work…

System like X10 or power line Ethernet that communicate over power lines have huge transformers and I think high power consumption. You’d think you could have power line Ethernet in your PC or X10 bulbs but it is not so practical.

Yeah, powerline data transmission seems impractical. It works, but reliability has always been a huge problem for me, even with the most expensive adapters. Now that I own instead of rent, I just run ethernet for my computers. For smart home, I don't really care for throwing RF at every single problem, but ZigBee and Zwave at least do work, so I am just doing that for now.

What would be cool is just having something simple, like maybe one or two wire serial, at least between the switches and bulbs. Today, the best solution I'm aware of for smart bulbs is something like Inovelli Blue Series or Embrighten switches, which can associate with the bulbs directly. Even though in smart bulb it must use RF, it can at least skip the hub and work when everything else is down.

(Though, I am a little disappointed that I had to bypass the power control for my Blue Series. I was hoping I could have it connected to measure power usage even in smart bulb mode, but it seems even in smart bulb mode where the power is passthru you still can't have an inductive load like a ceiling fan motor or it will cause problems. Bummer.)

Re: “A solution in search of a problem” is a low-rates phenomenon

#60

Post by wongarsu »

makestuff wrote: post #36
ak_111 wrote: post #22

I am wondering how much of the excessive (even to the point of lunacy) funding of stupid ideas in tech is due to a low-rate macro environment as opposed to a spray-and-pray gold rush that naturally gets triggered whenever someone hits gold in an area. After all it is hard to argue that AdSense, iPhones and AWS are not hugely profitable paradigm-shift innovations that would thrive in even the harshest macro environmen…

I will be interested to see how much of a hit AWWS/Azure/GCP takes during this downturn. Suddenly startups are not going to be spending millions per year on cloud stuff stuff that they don't really need (ex: massive redshift cluster for your "data collection"). Furthermore, a large number of startups will cease to exist. I would guess large customers have account for a massive portion of cloud revenue; however, they…

In a sense AWS/Azure/GCP are doing startup investing, giving out tens of thousands of credits to basically any startup that asks for them, in the hope that most of them stay on their platform and some of those become huge (=big spenders).

So if less startups are founded, startups fail earlier and startups build less-oversized architectures we might first see the effect in the beginning of the funnel, in terms of less free credits being spent. The hit to revenue would then take a couple years to fully materialize.

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