Tech Used to Be Bleeding Edge, Now it’s Just Bleeding | After a decade of scandals and half-assed product launches, people are no longer buying the future Big Tech is selling.

I'm guessing Microsoft acquired them to keep people from using it

And that's also why it was designed to need their servers to authenticate against: because they could charge Microsoft more if their product could be switched off remotely. They likely built the product with the aim of getting bought up. Who wants to run a company for 40 years when you can just skim a few million off of Microsoft and retire?

then my father (retired engineer) enlightened me on why important (electro-mechanical stuff) runs on older, slower, (but insanely reliable) engineering.

I am in the controls and automation sector. Your dad is half right.

1. You have to look at the whole system to determine reliability. Oh sure what you have now is going to last a long time but no one knows how to repair it when it dies. Plus all the components are no longer available so now a repair job is going to involve lots of work. I can't count the number of times I have had to bail out a plant because the one guy who knew how it worked retired. Very expensive.

2. Why do you need reliability? No really ask yourself this. Or better yet how much do you need. The answer is not going to be "as much as possible". Are you going to do this process this way for 30 years? No? Ok why did you pay 4x as much for a machine that can last 50? There is almost no chance whatever process you are doing is going to be the same forever. There will be improvements and your competition will take advantage of them.

3. What the heck does reliability even mean? Take a classic FET output vs a relay output.

Relays: easy to repair, can handle almost any voltage you throw at them, sensitive to vibrations causing false state changes, rated for a 10k cycles.

FETs: can't repair, can handle limited voltage ranges, ignore vibrations, rated for a million cycles.

Now tell me, given these facts, which one will result in less downtime over say ten years? I am asking here because I don't have enough information. Again you need to look at the whole system to determine which way you want to go. I have seen machines act up seemly randomly because a relay was flipping from vibrations and I have seen ones fuse contacts causing a machine to rip itself apart. I have also seen FETs die from a tiny surge.

4. Maybe you don't want a repairable system. I know this might be startlingly fact but it might benefit you to not have any ability to mess with your machine. Lots of amps and high voltage in these you going to have your guys open it up and mess around? Now you have the liability now your OEM can get pissed at you and not want to help because you messed with the design. You also compromised the UL label. The OEM can make a solid argument that if there is a workers comp suit that you altered it and hence it is on you. That's part of the reason why security screws are finding their way into factory equipment. Makes it that much harder to get inside.

5. I also question the mentality of customers who insist on individually long lasting parts when they haven't even established that they are. Sure NEMA contactors vs IEC ones look tougher but do you have data to back up that they are infact longer lasting? In real world conditions.

6. To put it bluntly: people get old and are afraid of change. They have half remembered wisdom about something that may have been true at one point but isn't anymore. The result is crap design. Fuses that don't protect anything, transformers that don't prevent surges, heafty parts that are a waste of material, line reactors when there is an internal one in the Soft starter/VFD, multiple voltage domains when 2 would have been sufficient, indicating lights that are dim, hardcoded non-safety interlocks when we have software, branch circuit protection when it isn't needed, expensive hard to replace push-to-test lights instead of a simple switch and software, thick wire crammed into limit switches that is almost impossible to repair, ancient PLCs no longer under support, serial comms that can't be troubleshooted, external power that defeats lock-out-tagout, roller switches that have to be made in a machine shop...

Oh sure your system will work but it radiants excessive heat, parts costs multiple times what they should to replace, large portions of the design do nothing but add heat and increase the chance of failure, it pulls a lot of energy, it can't be upgraded or even half the time incorporated into a line, it is more dangerous to work with, and you look like a fucking moron as people in the future learn not to buy a camel (horse built by committee) from you.

Don't go into controls/automation if you have any passion for good design. If you want to know what about a quarter of my customers are like imagine someone insisting that you apply the noose of a hangman to your forehead to fix a headache and women who show ankles carry smallpox.

There are free solutions that are open source, hell there’s older commercial solutions from Acronis and whatever Symantec calls Ghost these days. You made a poor choice in selecting a losing horse in a race that’s been run many times - how is that a reflection of the state of modern tech? You didn’t choose the Hare, you chose poorly.

The article and this discussion isn’t about reliable solutions vs new fangled stuff that doesn’t realise, it’s about what we do now that stuff realised and we didn’t think about what we signed up for. I’m really glad your dad encouraged you to think about the value of well-worn approaches but you’re being extremely reductive as are many in this discussion. What I find interesting about that is I feel this trend towards reductive thinking probably reflects a world seemingly happily with sliding the Overton window right inch by inch.

While this is true, I feel like this tank misses a few things.

• not everyone replaces on this schedule. I still know people that go 2hrs or less on a phone. At the same point, I bought new, used, then passed down to my daughter,my iPhone 6 and she finally replaced it in 2022. It was still getting security updates. That’s 8 yrs. I’m not in a hurry to replace my iPhone 11, it’s still perfectly fine. My late 2013 MBP, still works well. (I replaced the battery once in 2020) I finally upgraded to an M2, but continue to use the 2013 for things at times.

People replace things too often imho. But to go with this theme, I used to do so as well… swapped my iPhone 3GS for a 4s and then the 6. I’d build a new desktop every 18-24 months near the late 90’s and 2000’s. Things were improving so fast in those times, it was worth it… but then things have stagnated. I don’t see a good reason to get a new iPhone, and while I love the M2, it’ll easily tide me over for 10 yrs. My wife still uses her Lenovo laptop from 2011. Cost is only part of the equation. Sure I don’t want to drop the coin, but also there’s really no big changes worth it to me.

I do miss my Nokia 3110 though. Stability and battery life were awesome. Those were simpler days.

I think you want to use hourly cost, or maybe some other measure of the utility of something. I can own a rock, and it may be a magnificent rock that will last centuries, but it isn't going to give me much benefit.

Same with an old cell phone. I may be able to use it for 8 years, but I'm not going to use it for navigation, taking pictures, video chatting with family/friends, replacing my laptop when I'm out, etc.

Your table is a good start, but it's missing some really important information

Complex tech takes time to develop, who'd have guessed!

Just like hydrogen cars, in ten years it's going to be big. (10 years later) in ten years everyone is going to be using it. (10 years later) etc...

But this is not true, everyone has been asking for better internet speed and natural language computing. 5G was required because everyone is online all the time, yeah people aren't hyped about it because it's boring but if we didn't have 5g and archaic infrastructure didn't scale with demand then you bet people would be yelling about it - when a train goes by there's a hundred people using mobile internet, likely none of them care about 5g but they love being able to work, chat and browse the internet on their journey.

Ai is absurdly beneficial to people already and it's incredibly early days, again people aren't going to be especially hyped by most it's uses, in fact they won't notice most of them but it'll help fix a lot of things that really annoy or negatively affect them.

As someone who has spent a lot of time learning about and designing GUIs I can tell you that designing a system to give all the different user sets and types the controls they need is super complex - as someone who actually programs them I can assure you implementing whatever system is created to do this is even more painfully difficult. Now imagine not having to do that, imagine I can make a tool and the user just has to say 'import this old file in an obscure format then do these obscure but relatively simple things...' this is huge from a development point of view and even huger from a user point of view.

Ever have a family member ask you for the tenth time how to find their emails? Or hand you a device you've never seen before and say 'can you change the font size' and you have to go through menus and Google how to do it? Soon it'll be fairly standard to just tell things what you want and for them to actually understand.

This is just one small benefit that LLMs and natural language computing bring, I could list other benefits for days

It's their ad/intro for their pod cast shrug

Ha yeah in the same way we're still using the same old pn semiconductor wafers from the 90s - it's basically the same thing which is why I still use my p120 and it's just as good as any of these modern machines with their fancy 7nm pathways!

The batteries used today are much better than old batteries and the manufacturing technologies are far superior also, it depends on the device of course but energy density, charge speed, reliability has increased also manufacturing cost and requirements, low lithium batteries are getting more common for example.

Plus it's getting increasingly likely that the lithium in your battery has already been a different battery previously thanks to new recycling methods so that's pretty cool.

Yup, no refinements, advancements or chemistry changes at all. Exact same, yup.

I think it's intentionally wordy and the opt-out is "on" by default. I am usually instinctively just trying to hit the "off" button as quickly as possible and hitting save so I can get rid of the window, without actually reading anything. I almost certainly would have accidentally opted in to third party tracking.

I fully admit I might just be dumb though.

Yeah it's ridiculous. And the wording on the cookie popup is confusing af.

I have verifiably never been active military or served in Nam but the first thought that came to my head was Veit Cong.

Always was