A cure for cancer is a perfect example. Research has been going on for a century and cumulatively amassed 100s of billions of dollars of funding. It has failed constantly to find a cure, but our understanding of the disease, treatment, how to conduct research, and prevention have all massively increased.

Cancer != cancer. There are hundreds of types of cancer. Many types meant certain death 50 years ago and can be treated and cured now with high reliability. "The" cure for cancer likely doesn't exist because "the" cancer is not a singular thing, but a categorization for a type of diseases.

We have also produced treatments that work to some extent for some forms of cancer.

We don't have a 100% reliable silver bullet that deals with everything with a simple five minute shot, but...

That article made my day!

It's only 30 years away!

Just like it was 30 years ago.

As far as i know they can get it working in small scale, in labs

In its defence, that assumed it was properly funded. Its actual funding was very limited.

I believe most of the critical problems have been solved. The only major one left is keeping the reactor walls stable. They have a tendency to transmute, which causes multiple problems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

The one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked in cryptography. It requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is larger than or equal to the size of the message being sent.

They are surveilance- and ad delivery platorms. The user experience is as bad as the consumer can tolerate. They work as intended.

You're not kidding. It's pretty difficult to not buy them.

It's a $250 smart TV vs a $2000 non-infested TV.

Man, I haven't really faced this yet. My flat screen is a really old Panasonic plasma and it is"barely" smart. It came with a few apps on it. I ignore them and use it as a dumb monitor, running everything through my receiver instead. When it dies, I don't know what I'll do.

Only if you use it as a smart tv - I just never signed the user agreements, and now have a big TV with OLED. I switch to the source I want - off I go. Television can still just be television!

you can buy business-grade stuff without all the spyware shit, it's just much more expensive

Curious what your preferred streaming box is, considering changing my Android TV so that it launches to HDMI, disconnect from internet, use a streaming box that isn't as slow and has a hardwired connection instead.

The LaserJet 4P driver was the GOAT. It worked on every HP printer for years. It's been all downhill since.

I think there is an open source printer being created. Potentially has the chance at being the only printer that isn't a pile of shit.

I have a black and white laser printer

a Brother, FWIW

that works great. It sits there and when I print the occasional document, flips on and quietly and quickly does its thing. I remember printers in past decades. Paper jams. Continuous-tractor feed paper having the tractor feeds rip free in the printer. Slow printing. Loud printing. Prints that smeared. Clogging ink nozzles on inkjets.

It replaced a previous Apple black-and-white laser printer from...probably the early 1990s that I initially got used which also worked fine and worked until the day I threw it out

I just wanted more resolution, which current laser printers could do.

The only thing that I can really beat the Brother up for is maybe that, like many laser printers, to cut costs on the power supply, it has a huge power spike in what it consumes when it initially comes on; I'd rather just pay for a better power supply. But it's not enough for me to care that much about it, and if I really want to, I can plug it into power regulation hardware.

It's not a photo printer, and so if someone wants to print photos, I can appreciate that a laser printer isn't ideal for that, but...I also never print photos, and if I did at some point, I'd probably just hit a print shop.

Too true :(

Nah.

The printer / multifunction I have right now is pretty magical. It just works. It's a solved problem.

I think the problem is that the cheaper ones are hostile.

The thing is how is a flying car different from a aircraft?

We have (ultra) light aircraft not much more expensive than a good car, we have helicopter with vtol abilities. Licencing isn't that more complex than for a car.

The problem are the maintenance cost as a failure would be dramatic, and the noise meaning people don't want them over their bacxyard/balcony

I don't think any government will ever allow flying cars.
Too prone for accidents, and way too much freedom.

There are many models of flying cars. They usually are bad cars and bad planes and very expensive. Only good for niche wealthy enthusiasts. 

For sim racing games, it's actually pretty helpful for being able to look around, check mirrors etc.

Outside of that it feels pretty gimmicky

I shit you not I know a University where they have AR (with haptic gloves, not just VR) headsets worth around 70k euro and nobody uses them.

A student watched porn in class on one of them though, so I guess the taxpayer investment was worth it...

Gaming. It has completely replaced flatscreen gaming for me. Playing FPS on a screen feels so ridiculous to me now.

I remember setting up a VR og Skyrim with an old android and some infrared LEDs. It was pretty cool at first, but I couldn't play more than an hour without some kinda discomfort. I've tried some of the newer guys, and aside from being much higher def, it's largely the same thing. I don't want or need it in my life.

Beat Saber and VRChat are genuinely cool at least. I think what it comes down to is that the illusion of physically being somewhere is cool and can be useful for some stuff but not as cool as everyone used to assume. More abstract entertainment and art works basically just as good or better most of the time because it doesn't require specialized hardware, acclimating to nausea, and learning novel control schemes.

I really like VR gaming. If only they would develop better FOV to get rid of some “porthole effect” and drop in some screens that don’t have the screen-door resolution. I played Elite:Dangerous for years on VR and it’s totally worth it. If only there were a way to get first-person shooters working better it might take off.

because it doesn't offer anyone any really value.

it's massively inconvenient and expensive compared to non-vr versions.

i worked on a VR program 20 years ago. the same issues persist today as they did back then. it's still bulky, uncomfortable, annoying, and way too many people get sick from using it for any prolonged period of time. if 50% of your users throw up after 5 minutes, you don't have a viable product.

it's only really good for short term novelty experiences. and that's where it overwhelmingly gets used, always has, and always will.

VR has given us an incredible amount of funny videos where the user will decide to run full speed into a wall or something. That and "hoverboards" have kept America's Funniest Home Videos on the air.

Iteration isn't a claim that the predecessor was a failure though, you iterate on the successes of the prior generation. It used to be that technology advanced so rapidly that the cutting edge became obsolete in a matter of a few years, but for that time it was a success.

I think there's also an assumption of design philosophy here. One designer might put many generalized requirements into their design, then you get Google glasses, AI, NFTs and so on. This means everything is a failure because it couldn't achieve the requirements. Others may pick a small set of very specific requirements, then you get the iPhone or a Toyota hilux. These are massive successes because they had cohesion in the idea and planned as to about compromise.

pretty much, we will never make it like CYLon level, or skynet level intelligent. the former requires a human mind in a convoluted process, which is probably more realistic than skynet/kaylon.

Yeah, similar to VR, they have their use, but compete with technology that pretty much everyone already has, so when push comes to shove, people will use what they have.

Tablets are in such a weird middle ground spot now that they really seem like a niche device.

For heavy tasks, you probably want a full-fledged computer (laptop or otherwise). For lighter weight tasks, phones have gotten large and capable enough.

I can see them useful for parents. Also in commercial/professional settings, like a doctor's office using tablets for patients to fill out their info.

The problem is that a tablet ends up just being a cheap computer, but Android requires a lot more involvement of OEM's to update compared to Windows.

What? Tablets are super common.

If you mean flying cars that will replace regular cars, I don't think anyone ever tried it really. There have been prototype cars with wings but no one took that seriously. More recently what everyone keeps trying is drones as taxis but I hope that fails because I don't want that noise pollution.

Doesn't sound like it failed at its purpose in that case