I just had an experience with a auto soap dispenser, sink, towels and dryer set in the same place in a public restroom, didn’t have to walk to a shared dryer
Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution
Those fancy sinks you can’t fit your hands in and just splash water everywhere. We have peaked as a race, its all downhill now.
The fact that I can go on eBay and get an actually usable laptop for $40
Like, I was playing around with freecad on it a couple days ago. It just works. The fact that I can get a fully functional personal computer for cheaper than 8 hamburgers is crazy.
The crazier part is that I have no problem spending $40 on those 8 hamburgers over the course of a month, but god forbid I spend $20 on something that should last years.
My Steam Deck!
Jesus Christ, it is SO GOOD!
Technology that is so ubiquitous that younger gen’s don’t know how to troubleshoot them at all.
I grew up with many examples from mag tape media to 802.11b that was basically only useful within a clear line of site to the router.
Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution
Probably not due to concern of both animals and those with impaired vision, but things seem to go back and forth on that front from time to time.
One of my answers was that most fuel is no longer leaded (apparently some prop plane fuel is?)
Computers are also so fast and we can access just about anything at any time. This compared to my childhood in the '80s where my dad was online (BBS and later CompuServe) and I would sometimes play around a bit when things were much slower and more sparse (and generally far more local). Obviously, this didn’t work out 100% in humanity’s favor, in hindsight.
I have a GoPro sitting next to me and a 4k camera in the form of my handheld computer (smartphone) all of which still kinda feels like the future a bit.
Translation services are also super cool and open up so much more for idea and cultural exchange as well as opening up travel so much more. Likewise with language study online and the preservation of endangered languages.
Everyone spying on me, listening to everything I say and tracking everywhere I go.
That and instant pots. You just put in ingredients and out comes food. It also makes rice way better than you ever could on a stove.
Playing with my own AI models is interesting.
Arc Search. I’ve learned more this past year.
Relating to electric cars, Aptera – when they hit the streets everything changes.
I second aptera
It looks so cool, I hope it actually launches. They’ve already gone bankrupt once before. I was holding off on a new car for a while to hope to get one, but it doesn’t look like they’re coming out soon, so I got a bolt, which has been great.
Oh, nice, I hear good things about the bolt.
I think that last aptera bankruptcy happened about a decade ago under different leadership, before they had all the manufacturing partners, business plan of today and definitely before this round of pre-orders/investment.
As far as I understand, that was basically a couple guys building an awesome car that they didn’t have the business infrastructure for. It seemed easier to source parts until they had to do it.
Ramping production is still slated for ~'24, which has been delayed before I believe from last year, which isn’t great.
They’ve had mostly finished prototypes driving around for a while now and direct investment/partnerships, so I don’t see them going bust too soon.
They have a lot of pretty regular updates with production status and media updates on their website and YouTube channel to check out.
I’m hopeful. I want the thousand miler.
Solar powered, self-reparable cars are where the future is.
when they hit the streets
I doubt that will be any time soon unless there’s multiple massive breakthroughs. Unless you drive 5 miles a day and park in pure sun there’s just not enough power to keep the batteries charged.
Honestly though I’d really like to see electric golf carts take over as city vehicles. They’re small, fairly light weight, go fast enough for a city, and if you really want you can fit some solar cells on the roof.
I drive like 20 miles a week, so that would be a game changer for me
Sorry to burst your bubble regarding quiet streets, but tires make a lot of noise, too. So if we just replaced every car to be electric, the streets would certainly be quieter, but not silent. The best way to make cities actually silent is to remove cars entirely.
As a very curious person with very wide interests, it is so easy to access really hard-to-find information. In the past five years I’ve satisfied my curiosity more than adequately on hundreds of topics I’d wondered about all my life … from home. One plus side of Covid.
On the darker side, there were plenty of predictions (from science and fiction) in decades past that are becoming very real. Too many heads buried in sand.
Given the heat lately, air conditioning. Sure, AC has been around for a long time but it’s becoming ubiquitous (at least in the us). Mine is controllable over Alexa, outputs data graphs, makes intelligent decisions to save money, etc.
Now that we daily experience the results of global warming, we all hide our heads in the
sandACZoom meetings
Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution
The sound of hooves on cobblestone is incredibly loud and annoying!
What really baffles me is modern computers. The whole assortment from mainframe batteries, desktop PCs, laptops to smartphones, watches, wireless earbuds, microcontrollers, miniaturised sensors, etc. Even the cheapest modern microcontrollers have insanely complex and tiny patterning that really speaks volumes for the amount of process control and precision in semiconductor fabs. Truly, I would call the modern IC a miracle if I wouldn’t know better. It is physics, materials science and chemistry at their best.
The speed of light means that light that left our sun arrives on my roof’s solar panels 8 minutes later. I unplugged my EV from my home charger, and drove to get a burrito. I drove on energy that left the sun 10 minutes before I used it to go get lunch.
Also, my electric bill arrived yesterday and it was the same amount due for the past 3 months: Total bill $0 “No payment due at this time”.
Wait people like automatic bathroom fixtures?? Every time I go into a bathroom with them they make my life so much harder than it needs to be. Especially automatic toilets, those things are genuinely one of the most horrible things to ever be invented
