what is “futuristic” in this context?
A calculator is pretty futuristic depending on where you start
I was thinking of something that would be considered futuristic to an average person today. So, maybe something uncommon, with impressive capabilities, but still affordable?
Not sure if many items fit that criteria, but was curious if any!
A basic DNA test can tell you your ancestry back thousands of years and identify numerous genetically determined traits. It’s kinda crazy what kinds of things they can tell you about yourself.
And if you send in your dna three times, you can find all three if your ancestries! Really tho, there was some funny news on this a while back when identical twins took those tests and got different results
Bluetooth headphones/headset/earpiece. You too can look like Uhura from Star Trek by sticking a wireless speaker in your ear!
She is hearing always in mono. Maybe she lost one of them?
A knife. Futuristic in that it will be handy for hunting and self-defense after the future collapse of civilization that results from our insatiable appetite for consumption - of, among other things, useless gadgets.
I once found a curved 4k monitor at my local thrift shop for $70.
While “good for you” and “congrats”, it’s not something anyone can buy for under 100 bucks.
That specific monitor? No. But I often see things second-hand that are under $100 and could be considered “futuristic tech”.
If you know where to look and are patient there are good deals to be had.
Still this thing, 20 years on:
3 sea shells.
you can get several smart outlets around your home for that, have fans and lamps and humidifers etc all remote controlled even with your voice.
A smartphone
£76.77
The pound isn’t the future since Brexit.
You can buy a cheap smartwatch that will monitor your pulse, give you a pulse oximeter reading, handle text messages and phone calls, take photos, and also within a reasonable margin of error check your blood sugar for about $35 on AliExpress.
And ping all that data to CCP instead of our corporate overlords? No thanks
And if you read the manual of even the latest fancy pancy samsung or apple ones, you’ll find that it’s health monitor is nothing more than a gimmick
What do you mean with that? Depending on the recency of your device they can be quite accurate. I use a Garmin though because they last longer on battery and are a bit more oriented towards sports and health. Some studies I found back then suggested Garmin is not that far off lab testing on most metrics. Yes even the guestimated ones like vo2max.
I mean what I said. There’s a reason it’s in their manual. And it’s not in the back of the “legally cover our butts’” section. It’s right next to the description of the feature itself
A 1-terabyte MicroSD card
For under 100$ ?
Yeah, as low as $61 on Amazon for 1TB. Pretty amazing if you’re old like me and remember diskettes.
Those can’t be real
Most of the ones on Amazon aren’t trustworthy. Especially at high capacities. But apparently you can get up to 2TB now, at least in theory. I imagine the support for them is pretty limited though still.
In the uk I can get 1TB for 95gbp from sandisk website.
So probably less than 100 usd in usa from a reputable seller.
They’re sold as 1TB for that price. But if you actually write that much, you’ll find that only part of your data is there. The rest is garbled or zero.
There’s tools to restore this (on windows/linux), and it’ll show up as a smaller size when you run them. You can also use such tools to set any fake size you like
I bought a large capacity unknown brand cheap SD card somewhat recently, it seemed real at first but after installing an OS on it and running a few minutes became bricked somehow. At least I got a refund.
Devices less sophisticated than smart phones were once pretty common in sci-fi novel, but they still achieved the same sort of thing, all the world’s knowledge in the palm of your hand.
You can get smartphones for absurdly cheap these days, and while crappy by modern standards they’re still technological marvels.
A Voxellab Aquilla FDM printer. They’re regularly on sale for about $70. Maybe cheaper these days since they’re kind old now.
Probably a cheap 3D printer
I’m actually blown away by how good of a 3D Printer you can get for ~$200 now. Huge improvement from just a few years ago.
I got an ender 3 pro for about $100 a couple years ago
I started off on an Ender 3 V2 a few years back. The AnkerMake M5C and Bambu A1 Mini are both down to $199 and can’t believe how much faster / more reliable they are for the price.
this entirely. It’s awesome and frustrating haha. My Neptune 3 from 2022, that I’ve poured hundreds of dollars and hours into, is completely outclassed by an out-of-the-box printer of the same or lower price today.
I’m really happy that it’s getting so approachable now, I hope that I can get my grandfather his own printer during his time. I love that you don’t need to be an engineer anymore to get the things to work.
