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CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

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Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#441

Post by ImSkeptical »

BigJono wrote: post #196
bigiain wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I move my vacuum robot up and down stairs as needed. I'm not _quite_ lazy enough to buy a second one for upstairs (but I _have_ considered it, I use an inexpensive Chinese knockoff, not a brand-name-priced Roomba...)

Are the Chinese knock-offs any good? I just looked up the price of a Roomba. $600 AUD to start for the shittiest model :(

I'm surprised at the good reviews of the Roomba here. I got one a few years, and found it basically worthless. Everyday I'd come home and find the inventive way my Roomba had discovered to fail. Somedays it would get stuck on a chair leg, other times it would get trapped behind doors, or I'd just discover it dead somewhere without a clear explanation.

I had been hoping the Roomba would make my apartment and sweep it intelligently, but as near as I could tell, the Roomba just moved at random. I also found the power of the Roomba was weak. Inspecting my floor afterwards, I'd frequently find the same kind of lint, or detritus that made me want a Roomba in the first place.

Maybe I was just unlucky, or had a bad living space for a Roomba, but in my experience they aren't worth it at all.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#442

Post by AnimalMuppet »

coldtea wrote: post #370
danr4 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From research I've done lately, I found that new dishwashers are more environment friendly than washing dishes manually (taking into account water + electricity). So it's not only time saving it's also greener.

Well, taking account US-level use of water and electricity (eg. let the faucet run and wash the dishes leisurely, wasting water in the process). Not sure it is as green as "have some predetermined amount of water at the ready and wash dishes with it", as is the case in much of the developing world (and could be an alternative for the developed world too if environmental costs were a concern). Plus the cost of water+e…

> Of course it could be premature optimization -- if 99.99% of the water is wasted in other uses.

Yards. (At least in my part of the country, you have to water them fairly heavily.)

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#443

Post by jackvalentine »

daveguy wrote: post #409
rsynnott wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would almost inevitably be extremely wasteful; it's very inefficient to run any conceivable washing machine with almost nothing in it.

I think in that case the device that does this would include washing optimized for small loads. It wouldn't just dump a few pieces in your washer/dryer.

Like most things, there are economies of scale at play here. Energy use for one sock is not linearly scaled for 100 socks.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#445

Post by prawn »

epmaybe wrote: post #313
prawn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A family with any kids such that you're going through the bedtime routine after dinner, then exhausted and forget/avoid the dishes.

I know that my parents started making me do dishes around age 8 or 9, and I guess I hadn't really considered if that was normal or not until now. Is it normal?

I don't know if it's normal, but I was washing dishes at a similar age and later cooking for the family as a teenager.

My children are 3 and 5 which is why they're not much help with washing/drying and why the bedtime routine is more involved - bath, drying, brushing teeth, packing up, reading, answering questions about why they have to go to bed, why it's still light outside, how they are actually tired and so on.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#446

Post by wernercd »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #155
wernercd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving Kids :- Taxi, bus, chauffeur, again have been around for ages, auto drive cars are not that far away, but will you be willing to abandon your kids to the machine? Are they willing to abandon kids to the machine? iPhones, iPads, Nintendo's, dvd players, netflix? What's one more "machine" taking care of kids?

True. I was more considering the average helicopter parent allowing a machine to drive their kids to school or some such.

Hell... I would think those types (Helicopter) would be the first in line.

Think of it... self flying vehicles that control where your kids go.

That's right up there with iPhone tracking your kid.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#447

Post by omilu »

roel_v wrote: post #226
kayhi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought about getting like 5 and replacing all cabinets. A lower end dishwasher is about the same as a custom cabinet $150-$300).

Don't skimp om dishwasher quality. You'd think 'hiw different can they be', but a cheap dishwasher is only slightly better than none at all (having to rinse, redoing things that weren't cleaned well, frequent breakage/blockage) whereas a good one is a life changer.

recommendations? I have yet to find a good one.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#448

Post by candiodari »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #264
crdoconnor wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laundrettes?

Maybe if you had a guy whose job was to feed clothes into it in just the right way. TBF an experienced laundry person can fold them manually, much faster. Don't let a robot do something a human can do better.

Why not ? Humans are still far better than robots at car manufacturing, and yet ... nobody wants to go back to that (well, none of the customers or company leaders would want the prices to rise by enough to make that possible)

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#449

Post by zitterbewegung »

jandrese wrote: post #38
zitterbewegung wrote: post #17

I used to work in the event services industry and CES no longer needs to exist. All of the major companies can hold their own press events and promote their products. Why buy an exhibitor booth at CES when you could take the same money and DIY. Apple , Google and Microsoft get this. Also, things like Kickstarter do the same. In a few years CES , E3 won't really exist anymore they are already dead.

CES is for brand recognition. There are thousands of products that come into existence and disappear every year. Having to find the website for all of them would never happen. Even aggregators like this site are going to miss most of them. Walking the floors of the convention is a great way to get a huge infodump on what people are planning to sell. I agree that a lot of what goes on there is a stupendous waste of mo…

I think that Linus Tech tips could singlehandedly eliminate CES.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#450

Post by pjvandehaar »

mikekchar wrote: post #110
S_A_P wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a family of 7 and get back to me on that one. Edit: not trying to be snarky but a use case for a single person or small family breaks down quickly when you have young kids and have special diets(that require an entirely different set of dishes) then you can see where automation is useful.

On the other hand, according to the US census, as of 2016 the number of households with 7 or more family members is 1.27% while the number of households with 1 family member is 28.13%. If we take into account the households with 3 or fewer family members we are talking over 75% of the US. I think it is completely reasonable not to consider your circumstance when giving general advice. The vast majority of people can…

I agree with you, but you are using the wrong numbers.

Sure, only 23% of households have 4+ members, but they contain 44% of all Americans. Likewise, the 1.3% of households with 7+ members contain 6.2% of Americans.

And there are more people in households of 6+ members than in single-member households.

  #people_in_household  %_of_households  %_of_people
  1                     28%              11%
  2                     34%              27%
  3                     15%              18%
  4                     13%              20%
  5                      6%              12%
  6                      2.2%             5.3%
  7+                     1.3%             6.2%
Collapsed to your categories:

  #people_in_household  %_of_households  %_of_people
  1-3                   77%              56%
  4-6                   21%              38%
  7+                     1.3%             6.2%
(source: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/families/cps-20... where tables C1 and A1 give a total 2016 population of 318579k. Table H1 gives numbers of households with 1-6 members, which, by multiplication, hold 298913k people. The remaining 19666k people must be in 7+ member households. This matches table AVG1's 2.53 people/household and surprisingly implies that the 1.6M households with 7+ people contain 12 people on average.)
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