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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

#61

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

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'm baffled at what purpose there is to voice-activated lights.

Light switches are always at the entrance to a room. If I'm entering or exiting a room, I turn the light on or off as I pass the switch. This is going to be much faster than "Alexa, turn the computer room lights off" on my way out and then waiting to make sure it understood me.

The only exception is my front porch light. I usually leave it off, but turn it on when I'm expecting a food delivery at night. Being able to turn it on from my computer room remotely could be nice, but I'm not going to begin investing into a "smart home" for that one purpose.

My TV and clothes washer are both "smart", but I don't use any of the smart features, and neither have ever been connected to my WiFi.

The only smart appliance I have is a thermostat, and even that one is pretty basic. It has an app that I can use to control it and create a schedule, but it doesn't try to learn when people are home.

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

#62

Post by epicureanideal »

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…

Based on my experience working for many startups, I would say talent is not plateauing, but the capital is being managed and deployed by shockingly incompetent people. Far less competent than the people who end up working for them.

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

#63

Post by epicureanideal »

mym1990 wrote: post #46
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…

The case for decrease of human talent(however you quantify that kind of metric, if it is even true) likely has little to do with population growth, and rather the quality of education that can be provided to a broad population.

Or to the reduced incentives available to most of the population. The very rich are accumulating more and even the upper middle class are struggling, and it might take decades of work to build up enough capital to start a small business, while someone with the right connections and half the talent is handed money for little effort.

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

#64

Post by black_puppydog »

Raidion wrote: post #20
nerdponx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a dead end is like calling biplanes a dead end because now airplanes only have 1 wing on each side. And not even that analogy is apt, because even the stylus made a comeback briefly.

Stylus is now standard on the most expensive "non-folding" flagship from Samsung too.

Hehe and Apple charge you and extra €130 for one. :)

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

#65

Post by majormajor »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #27
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…

Have those random business ideas grown to anything like billion-dollar companies (adjusted for inflation) before everyone realized that oops, actually these things won't turn a profit? It's a fair argument to make that low interest rates (with can be thought of as a proxy for 'too much money chasing too few opportunities') take random ideas and inject them with far too much money. (Airline industry is a special case,…

> (Airline industry is a special case, eventual "failure" is part of the business plan, so leave those aside.)

You could make this statement about today's "unicorns" too, once you start excluding things. If you're cynical, be cynical equally. WeWork? Classic "greater fool" "let it fail after we cash out" company. Many others out there too. Crypto? 10000%. I'm sure there will be a bunch of "obvious failure in retrospect" companies in a large-language-model wave too.

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

#66

Post by prottog »

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…

> why have long term interests declined over the past 500 years, accelerating in the past 50-100 years

The cost of money (that is, interest) is based on two things: the time value of money, which is the concept that an amount of money is worth more now than the same amount of money later (above and beyond inflation); and the default risk, that you may not get back some or all of the money that you lent out.

As the world became more stable over time, the default risk also lessened over time; and there's a good argument that the time value of money also decreased over time, as the quickening of the pace of technological advances meant that lenders could expect more returns over a shorter amount of time. Both factors combined to gradually decrease interest rates in the recent past.

If you believe that we are now in a new era of geopolitical instability, it's reasonable to bet on this long-term trend reversing.

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

#67

Post by acdha »

ipsi wrote: post #14
electroly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had several Palm devices. As I recall there was a fairly long gap between the death of PDAs and the birth of smartphones. I certainly did not replace my Palm with a smartphone; I replaced it with nothing, and then years later I got a smartphone. Most of the things that are amazing about smartphones were not present on my Palm IIIe, FWIW.

> there was a fairly long gap between the death of PDAs and the birth of smartphones. Only if you define the birth of smartphones as starting with Android/iPhone. Palm released their own smartphones using the same OS as their PDAs (the Treo line) prior to that, and Microsoft had Windows Mobile plus a bundle of third-party manufacturers. Plus Blackberry had been around the whole time, too. Looking it up, it seems that…

I’d put the starting point at the iPhone, but not for technical reasons and with a heavy American focus.

At the turn of the century I had a PDA with unlimited wireless data (Handspring Prism + Ricochet). I used that a lot for email and web browsing but stopped when those companies failed.

There continued to be PDAs on the market but the chokepoint as needing $100/month or more for an unlimited data plan. This especially toxic for the web where you have no idea how much data the link you are thinking about clicking on will use. Also, the phone carriers charged App Store fees which would’ve made Steve Jobs blush and had to be individually negotiated with every phone company so few developers even worked on apps seriously since the market was so limited.

The iPhone was a huge improvement in the device but equally big for Americans was the cheap unlimited data plan meaning you weren’t having to think about the cost before sharing photos or sending an email with an attachment.

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

#68

Post by spiffytech »

black_puppydog wrote: post #5

> [...] products that ultimately turned out to be dead ends, like the Palm Pilot [...] Huh? I never had a Pilot, but from everything I've read about it (and how people who did have one describe it) it was quite amazing, and arguably the predecessor of the smartphone, no? I get that the product line is dead, but the concept was very much viable...

Palm PDAs were instrumental in getting me into the tech field.

At the time, the way they could enhance my life felt magical, and they were down-to-business and solution-oriented in a way that I miss in modern smartphones.

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

#69

Post by nicoburns »

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…

I thought the reason interest rates have been so low for the last ~30 years is because governments in the 90s (certainly the US and UK ones) took the decision to make it their monetary policy to keep them low.

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

#70

Post by Brian_K_White »

electroly wrote: post #8
black_puppydog wrote: post #5

> [...] products that ultimately turned out to be dead ends, like the Palm Pilot [...] Huh? I never had a Pilot, but from everything I've read about it (and how people who did have one describe it) it was quite amazing, and arguably the predecessor of the smartphone, no? I get that the product line is dead, but the concept was very much viable...

I had several Palm devices. As I recall there was a fairly long gap between the death of PDAs and the birth of smartphones. I certainly did not replace my Palm with a smartphone; I replaced it with nothing, and then years later I got a smartphone. Most of the things that are amazing about smartphones were not present on my Palm IIIe, FWIW.

Most of the things that were amazing about the iphone I had in my Samsung sph-i300 palmos phone 6 years earlier.

In many ways the palm device was more amazing since it was already a rich mature ecosystem by then and already had 3rd party apps, thousands of them, for every imaginable purpose.

It was the essense of the later iphone (after it allowed 3rd party apps) 6 years before the first iphone.

I don't remember any gap. I certainly had an unbroken sequence of pda phones from several makers after that, but maybe there was a time before 2001 where people didn't use pdas much?

I never used straight non-phone pdas myself.

I was playing with a wince pda for a while but only for stunts like getting an old dos version of my companies unix software to run in a dos emulator on a Journada, just to show it at a company xmas dinner to the guy who invented & wrote the language and db initially on the trs80 (he immediately closed that and tried to find porn, I love that guy).

To me a pda was never that useful by itself, only when Kyocera combined it with a phone a year or two before that i300 did it become a must have for me.

But the way I remember it they seemed to be pretty popular with everyone else.

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