I always recount the story of the Hovercraft Christmas.
There was one toy I wanted for Christmas. We were firmly middle class growing up, so it wasn’t like I had all the toys, but I was old enough to know that my parents were footing the bill and getting an RC hovercraft was going to mean I only get one present that year.
Iirc it was called the Typhoon, or maybe the Typhoon II.
The commecials showed it zipping across land and water, jumping off ramps, bouncing off a lake, etc. It was the coolest fucking thing ever. I begged my parents for it, and would not shut up for months about getting an RC hovercraft.
Christmas comes, and wonderous joy, I got the hovercraft! Life is good, but the battery needs to charge. Shit, OK, we plug it in and let it charge all day while we go do the normal Christmas family visits. Everyone I talked to that day got a lesson in how hovercrafts work, and how it can travel on a pocket of air to move across land AND water.
We got home late that night. It was probably after 10pm, way past everyone’s bedtime, including my parents who had been up all night making the Christmas magic happen for my younger siblings who still believed. But I put my fucking foot down. I had waited for months to get my hovercraft. I had waited all day for the battery to charge. I would not wait another god damned minute to go zipping around the backyard. So, my dad and I put coats on over our pajamas, went out to the driveway, and fired that bad boy up.
I can still perfectly remember the sound of the fans turning on, and the little rubber skirt inflating. Sure enough, the hovercraft was floating on a pocket of air! But the driveway was on a mild incline, so the hovercraft started to drift sideways. Then I hit the throttle and… nothing. Just the sound of the fans spinning, but no motion.
Bzzzzz. BZZZZZZ. Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz. The fans spun impotently against the inertia of the hovercraft. It wouldn’t move at all, except to sadly drift towards the gutter. My dad gave it a little nudge with his foot, and it got stuck on a tiny stone chip.
I learned a lot about physics from that one night, but I learned even more about advertising.
Thinking back on all the RC cars, planes, and yes, hovercraft, commercials that I saw as a kid, I think they ought to have been sued for false advertising. Realistically though they probably had some disclaimer read (at 8x speed) at the end of the commercial that absolved them of any false advertising by saying the commercial was merely depicting the fantasy of the toy and not the actual use of it.
Are there any old ads you can link to on YouTube for this thing? I wanna see!
All lies. The fans couldn’t push the thing without a polished smooth surface. You see it spinning? Think about where the fans are, because that’s the only steering it had.
Kid I knew 25 years ago had one. Actually kinda worked on an indoor pool, which was neat, but definitely didn’t work for shit on the sidewalk. Basically, it didn’t work at all in any sort of wind and barely worked on anything rougher than linoleum
I got burned by this too. I feel your pain.
Dad figured out that if we hosed the concrete driveway, it made a better seal, and handeled bumps and impetfections better.
It was a glorious 3 minutes before the water started to seep in to the concrete quickly. The Typhoon nosedived and tore its skirt.
0/10 would not hovercraft again.
Maaaan I remember these ads! Thanks for sharing.
Man, what a bummer. My equivalent to this was an RC car called the “Skydriver”. But it absolutely lived up to my expectations. That thing was frickin awesome.
Duke Caboom nods approvingly
Gingerthe Segway was supposed to revolutionize the way we view cities!TBF electric scooters are doing that now. Dude was just ahead of his time.
Also if you take “the way we view cities” literally, they definitely did since they became a popular way for tourists to view a city.
Ahead of his time? It is a different product working with a different (and far older) principle?
The principle here that matters is “personal electric low-skill vehicle”. Segway tried it first, but electric scooters were way cheaper, and the GPS/smartphone technology helped it a lot.
Useful product but where is the revolution
In the wheels obviously
The hype leading up to its reveal was wild.
I remember trying one in a section of a science museum as a kid!
There’s a great episode of The Dollop about the Segway guy. 565 - Dean Kamen and It.
Dean Kamen is so cool to me, because he’s pretty unknown but has had such a positive impact on the world, especially with his STEM outreach to school kids. I got to meet him once briefly after the FRC national championship in 2014, he was going somewhere but still stopped to talk to us briefly and I thanked him and he signed my team hat.
I wouldn’t recommend you listen to the Dollop episode though, they tend to mercilessly mock their subjects.
CEO fell off a cliff with his Segway and died
Crucially to the mythology, it was the CEO who recently acquired the company, not the inventor who pioneered it
Dating sites. Complete useless trash.
I’d have to agree. I met my wife on OKCupid in 2016 and almost immediately after that it changed several key features and became complete garbage.
That’s no way to talk about your wife.
Is there a Lemmy version of the ol reddit switcheroo?
The next time you see a similar joke you could be the one to start it!
A Lemmon Twist?
Thanks I hate it
Wow, all of them, huh?
When everyone around you is an asshole, it’s time to reevaluate who the real asshole is.
Not sure how this is relavent here considering most of them are owned by the same holding and their goal is to ensure engagement with their shite platform.
But sure let’s just start out by shitting on the user base
I wonder if they share consumer info with themselves under the hood.
you would be lucky if they don’t sell that shit to data brokers…
“simps for big titties asians” is valuable data point for data brokers selling to shiti ad companies
Tell me about it, speaking of big titty asians, Ive always wondered if the bra and hair spray commertials were actually for men (or to convince woman to buy because of male appeal). They literally walk right up to that line. Example
My understanding is using hot chicks to market to Becky’s actually works
Unlike using “hot” men to market to men
Men don’t judge each other on look per we but rather based on their “idea of musculanity”
I’ve had some great experiences, but I’m sure everyone’s mileage may vary
I think it got really bad the past few years. I think many people don’t even know that, but tinder used to be free. You got 5 free super swipes or something, unlimited swiping and so on. Now you can swipe a few times for free, and it is never ever the people who already liked you. It has a feature where you can limit your range and disable people from around the world. But half the women i see are from china or thailand. Women get flooded with likes and matches while as (an average?) guy, it’s like playing the lottery.
The problem that i see with that is that men generally don’t pick their “dream girl” they jest pick what they can get. Which is a weird dynamic for any sort of relationship. “Of all the likes, i picked you, because of your smile and we both like cycling.” “You were my only match in 3 month.”
I mean yeah but I also found my SO that way
Suit youself, I like lemmy
Huh?
I get hella hoes on this app
Sure buddy, sure
But, best-case scenario, you could have committed a sex crime!
Mario Party Advance on the Game Boy Advance.
I’ve seen kkclue’s very recent video on it. The main problem with this game is the false advertising, it doesn’t feel like a Mario Party game. Otherwise, it’s an alright game.
Kirby vacuums. I got one for free from a neighbor and she included the invoice by mistake. $2200 for a vacuum that smells like burning and can’t lift pet hair. Brush is working, bag is new, carpet is being lifted from the pad. But man, this thing fails at pet hair.
There was a brand that worked by filling the tank with water and applying a vacuum to use the water as a filter. They weren’t amazing but they cost like $2k in 2001 money. My ex had one that her father had bought and I finally convinced her to get rid of it once it started shocking her.
Rainbow vacuums, my parents had one when I was growing up.
We still have one and it works really well. I suspect they were over filling the water reservoir
bong-vacuums
really? we’ve had ours for 21 years or so, and it still works well. admittedly we use the dyson almost exclusively now
Sounds like it really sucks.
Actually, Kirby vacuums worked amazingly well and worked for years, if not decades. But they weighed a ton and could NOT handle pet hair.
A Willy Wonka experience in Scotland
I’d have a much shorter list of what products did live up to their advertised claims…
Fallout 76.
Don’t forget nuka dark rum
Pinephone, linux on smartphones isn’t ready and this won’t change any time soon.
Depends if you need group MMS or not
Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker. The movie was already getting a bad rep pre-release, and in response to potentially sales-damaging claims that Palpatine was coming back, Disney had Ian McDiarmid explicitly claim he wasn’t. A bad movie where there was nobody to point a finger to became a bad movie where there was someone to do it to. Then he passed away shortly after. I witnessed this mess all go down in theaters.
Ian McDiarmid didn’t pass away. But yes, this movie might be the single worst cinematic disappointment I’ve ever witnessed in my life. I’ll never watch it again.
Gosh dang it, I was fooled by another death rumor.
Crystal Skull springs to mind as a close second
Air-up water bottles. When I bought mine it claimed to be a better water bottle all-around.
Its primary gimmick of tricking the brain into tasting the scent works well, I did drink a lot more water without needing actual flavouring. The fact that I could (unofficially) 3D print my own reusable flavouring pods to be a little more eco-friendly was a nice surprise and the reason I decided to try it.
The “better bottle” part is utter horse crap. It leaks when tipped over, even when tightly closed. Their marketing team went as far as adding “sip, don’t tip” to the instructions instead of making the cap properly seal.
Drinking from it was a chore as there was no water pressure and the constant bubbling (lets be real, its more like wet fart) noises made it impossible to use in silent settings.
I ended up going back to reusing a disposable bottle until it leaks even though the thought and feeling of something flavourless being in my mouth is revolting (its a sensory thing).
have you tried plain soda water? the carbonation might make it interesting enough to be drinkable even though it’s flavorless. if you get a drinkmate or something like that it’s fairly cheap to make at home
Drinkmate is the way to go. Vastly superior to sodastream
I’m one of those creatures that flattens out fizzy drinks before drinking xD
Holy cow. It’s like someone thought “the human race isn’t using enough single use plastic, how can we pump up those numbers? Maybe we can tie it in to the basic consumption of tap water.”
Rather obvious that ‘What product did live up to its advertised claims?’ is a more useful question…
Cast iron skillet… Lodge
There are many products like that but I agree with over all sentiment. Most shit ain’t right.
However, we as customers also have choices, considering this was posted within this comment section:
Gotham Steel pans. They work decent the first couple times but I found the non-stick part of it wore down real quick
Why are people buying something like this?
Yes, but then people can’t have a nice whinge about it.
Remember how Google’s Find My Network was supposed to be as good or better than Apple’s. We put a tracker in a checked bag. Couldn’t track it from once we lost sight till when it was 10 feet from me.
Head on…I applied directly to the forehead, but nothing happened.
I got an uncomfortable cooling sensation that couldn’t be wiped off. It made the headache worse.
I always assumed the reason they repeated that line and only implied it was for headaches with the animation is because they knew it wouldn’t work and wanted to avoid being called out for false advertising. Honestly if I was ever told it worked I would be absolutely astounded.
AI. Bitcoin.
Why Bitcoin?
Because Bitcoin was supposed to be a decentralized peer-to-peer cash solution, which is impossible with Bitcoin with the scalability issues it has currently.
Spiritually Bitcoin’s original idea still lives on Bitcoin Cash. But it doesn’t have the popularity nor the name brand to be able to make the huge impact that Bitcoin could have made if it was usable by end users when it gained popularity.
Bitcoin cash was an attempt at centralized control by Jihan Wu. Just because the block size is bigger doesn’t mean it’s better for decentralization. In fact, the increased costs of maintaining a node just makes it harder for people in (typically poorer) oppressive countries to self verify
They are still increasing the TPS, lightning network isn’t perfect, but it can scale beyond visa until more upgrades are implemented
The lighting network is bound to fail because it suffers from the same problem Bitcoin is solving, i.e. it only works in centralized hubs. Think about how a new user would come to Bitcoin if the LN was in full effect, they would need to spend hundreds to open a channel to a centralized hub, the more centralized the better so it can connect to more places, so they can ensure they have the funds and the connectivity to use the network, because channels can’t be increased, if he ever needs more funds than what he has he will need to close the channel and open a new one, and because channels might be used by third parties when routing through the network if he spends double that amount to create two channels to two centralized hubs he risks having their funds go from one channel to the other and having to go the long route for his own transactions.
Also the idea that running a node is more expensive because of larger blocks is mostly nonsense, for starters the only nodes that matter are mining nodes, even if your validating node finds an issue it has no power to do anything about it. Secondly there is such a thing as pruning old blocks to reclaim space. Third the whole point of Bitcoin is that you don’t need to validate transactions because mining nodes have incentive to stay honest, and the regulators are other mining nodes who stand to gain from others dishonesty by mining the same block they did, and again, mining nodes require lots of hardware, some extra HDD for old data is cheap in comparison. Fourth, why don’t you feel the need to validate the LN? Why just validate the on-chain stuff but trust the LN? Surely you’ll want your validator Node to process all of the LN transactions to ensure they’re valid, no? Or do you trust that the LN works? And if you do why not trust that the technology the LN is built on top of also works?. Not to mention that even in poor countries the cost of a hard drive that can hold years of data is lower than a couple of transactions on the main Bitcoin network during peak times, and a lot cheaper than opening one channel on the LN that’s worth using, for example earlier this year the average transaction fee peaked at $123 https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee so of someone wanted to make a transaction that day on the Bitcoin network they would need to spend $123 extra, that is enough to get a used 8TB HDD which should hold all of the BCH Blockchain just with the cost of a single transaction.
Long story short:
- LN has design flaws and doesn’t work
- Even if LN worked, on-chain transactions are better, less limited and more secure
- Even if those design flaws could be addressed, the main chain will still become unusable due to high cost of entry unless blocks get increased
- If blocks never get increased, popularity will be the death of Bitcoin like it happened in 2017, if someone needs to throw away hundreds of dollars just to get into the network, they’ll never do it. And because RBF people that don’t pay whatever the current tx fee is can get scammed.
- Validator nodes serve no purpose
- Even if they did running a validator Node on BCH is cheaper than using BTC
- Even if validator nodes made some difference then the LN would also need one and then the amount of transactions there would increase the need of a node to higher than what would be needed for BCH (since besides regular transactions you would also need to validate on and off channel transactions).
I’ll look into LN more, I’m familiar with the centralization concerns (but still think they’re able to be mitigate until more upgrades), but am not familiar with the costs you’re bringing up. Fee estimators notoriously round up, I’ve never spent more than a dollar but that’s anecdotal
BCH is still an attempt at centralization from bitmain, a company which literally installed kill switches in their miners without telling anyone, and ran botting attacks in /r/Bitcoin and /r/BTC during that fiasco - the hard fork they created is absolutely more centralized than Bitcoin
There will be a time to do something as risky as hard fork for a block size upgrade, but to do it for the sake of just one upgrade that serious doesn’t make sense to me. If a hard fork must happen there might as well include other bips that necessitate a hard fork like drivechain.
Soft fork upgrades which enable more efficient algorithms like schnorr / SegWit in the meantime have scaled tps without having to waste block space. Bch is cheap because there’s no demand or usage.
First of all, this discussion doesn’t matter, Bitcoin will never regain the popularity it could have had if it had increased the block size back in 2017 when it became unusable, I remember buying stuff with Bitcoin, I remember mining and using that money to buy games on steam, paying for my electricity bill, etc, those days are gone and won’t come back. After all of the backlash Valve got from the unusability of Bitcoin, they’ll never reenable that, Bitcoin fucked all of crypto adoption back then and I don’t think the market will ever forget (if they would they would have migrated to another coin already).
$1 which is what you say you pay is too much. Imagine if every time you used your card $1 extra was charged, you would never use that as a currency. The problem is that you’re not thinking on Bitcoin as a currency, and I don’t blame you, that hasn’t been the vision for Bitcoin in a long while, but originally that was the goal.
You keep saying that BCH is an attempt at centralization, would you care to explain how that would work? Imagine if back when BCH hard fork happened all of the miners had sided with it (they had the option and choose not to), how would that be more centralized? You do know you can mine BCH with any miner, right? Just like BTC you don’t need to use Bitcoin-core, the protocol is open source and there are plenty of implementations.
As for the botting attacks I was there when they supposedly happened, I was banned from /r/Bitcoin for saying the same thing I’m telling you now, we weren’t bots, that was the excuse the mods there used to ban everyone who disagreed with keeping blocks small. I’m not going to put my hand in the fire for him, I don’t know the guy and for all I care he can go fuck himself, but not everyone who was accused of being a bot was one, lots of us were just people saying “don’t you see how not increasing the block is harming Bitcoin? Don’t you see the hardware price has decreased dramatically since the 1MB block size was introduced? Don’t you see companies are jumping ship and we are losing all of the momentum?” It sounds like bots because lots of people were pointing out the same stuff, but the thing is that we were pointing out things like we were seeing them in the real world. That’s when /r/BTC started gaining popularity, because being banned from /r/Bitcoin was almost a rite of passage, and curiously on /r/BTC no one was banned for showing either side of the opinion, people might get downvoted but that’s just the system working, banning people is censorship and it’s a clear cut way of showing you’ve ran out of arguments and are just looking to create a bubble where everyone agrees with you.
Nope, the time is gone. Hard forks are not risky at all, Bitcoin has had several in the past, no one made a fuzz about them back then. Soft forks are just as dangerous, and BTC has had several. The difference between a soft and a hard fork is that the hard fork is backwards compatible, whereas the soft fork is forward compatible, both of them the miners are forced to migrate or they will be throwing away money.
You are correct, there is no demand or usage for either of the Bitcoin’s anymore z there was back then, there isn’t now. BCH is scaled much, much higher than BTC, so if adoption had migrated they would have been prepared. And the important thing is that no one was saying we don’t need side chains, it was more of “we need the main chain to be usable NOW, we can scale indefinitely later, but we need to fix this NOW or Bitcoin adoption will be irreparably gone”, unfortunately it was too little too late, and companies had already jumped ship and weren’t going to risk it back.
Because Bitcoin was supposed to be a decentralized peer-to-peer cash solution
I still think it is one, we use it to pay for services online right? We don’t share bitcoins like money with friends or family because of it’s complexity but who know what the future contains?
Yes and no. Historically Bitcoin had no limits on transactions, but someone realized a while back that because transactions were really cheap rich people could flood the network with transactions and that would prevent legitimate people from using the network. Therefore a limit on the size of a block was imposed, which in turn meant that Bitcoin could only process 7 transactions per second in average.
At the time that was great, if someone tried to attack the network they would quickly run out of space in the block and people wanting to do transactions had only to pay a little bit more to ensure their transactions got approved, which in turn made this attack more expensive and eventually useless.
However in 2017 Bitcoin gained popularity, and this caused an issue, actual users were hitting that barrier of 7 transactions per second among themselves, and so users began competing with each other for space on the chain. And when that happens your coffee or VPS payment is going to get a much lower fee than what someone trading hundreds or thousands of dollars can afford. So essentially Bitcoin became only usable for large trading (you needed to pay $50 for a transaction at the time).
Since that became prohibitive for most users, people stopped using it, and because of long confirmation times for people who still tried to use it stores stopped accepting it (some people don’t know this, but Steam and Microsoft used to accept Bitcoin payments).
You might think the solution is simple, just increase the limit like the guy who imposed it originally said it should be done, but that created a shit storm of people claiming that that would bring all hell on earth, and the proper solution was to build a secondary chain on top of Bitcoin so you only needed to pay the high prices once (this is what the other reply to my comment is mentioning). The problem is that for miners small blocks with higher transactions fees are waaaay more profitable, so they sided up with the fuck the user mentality (and some even say that they paid people to promote that solution).
So long story short Bitcoin is not currently usable for day-to-day purchases. Transaction prices fluctuate a lot, currently it’s “cheap” at $1.5 per transaction, but it regularly goes to 10/20 and even got to over 100 this year. So it’s no longer a currency, since no one would pay those prices to use it as currency. Bitcoin is now more of an investment than cash, it’s closer to gold in that you could use it as cash but it’s inconvenient and you’ll end up losing money.
Monero seems to be the closest successor to the idea, actually. It is accepted in a lot of places, and I got actual use out of it when I couldn’t use my card.
It’s gonna make fiat obsolete. Any day now!
I still don’t know why fiat exist
Fiat makes itself obsolete
