Haha I feel like VR has already found it's niche!
Apple taking over an entire car with car play ultra or otherwise comes to mind. Latest Aston Martin model with car play ultra was atrociously laggy, ran instrument panel screen at like 12fps.
I'm long-term bullish on VR, if you mean having a HMD designed to provide an immersive 3D environment. Like, I don't think that there are any fundamental problems with headsets, and that one day, we will have HMDs that will probably replace monitors (unless some kind of brain-computer interface gets there first) and that those will expand do VR, if dedicated VR headsets don't get there first. Be more portable, private, and power-efficient than conventional displays.
But the hardware to reasonably replace monitors just isn't there today; the angular resolution isn't sufficient to compete with conventional monitors. And I just don't think that at current prices and with the current games out there, VR is going to take over.
I do agree with you that there have been several "waves" by companies trying to hit a critical mass that haven't hit that point, but I think that there will ultimately come a day where we do adopt HMDs and that even if it isn't the first application, VR will eventually be provided by those.
The hype around biotech. It has been around for 40 years, and the next big thing is just around the corner, but progress is always much slower than all predictions. Nuclear fusion will be available in ten years time; I’ve heard that in 1970, 1980, 1990 etc etc. Conquering the solar system, the universe - perhaps in 1000 years?
It's not very high profile, but there are definitely a number of major plant cultivars that have been genetically engineered.
searches
We just don't really talk about it much, because the changes are things like better disease resistance or something useful but not especially mediagenic. We don't have, oh, cats that can breathe underwater or something like that in 2026.
We don’t have, oh, cats that can breathe underwater or something like that in 2026.
If we had that, I'd be a major extinction event for a lot of fish species, causing food shortages for humans and famines around the globe.
The big one would be viable nuclear fusion, we've been trying to figure it out and spending money on it for like 80 years now.
That being said, there's actually a lot of verified progress on it lately by reputable organizations and international teams.
As far as i know they can get it working in small scale, in labs
Essentially yes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#2020s
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/helion-begins-work-on-fusion-power-plant One of the commercial entities did start building a plant last year, not particularly large (only 50 MW) with an agreement to power a Microsoft datacenter, and billions in funding from government and private sources.
Hard to tell for real though because the level of secrecy around this is insanity and the US Military is heavily involved in not just this, but pretty much every similar organization.
I would not be surprised if we hear nothing, or see them "failing", even if some of these designs are fully functional already.
Encryption with unexploitable backdoors.
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.
OTPs have a safe, unexploitable backdoor feature?
Tablets have had a couple of "waves". They've never really gone away, but also haven't really become the norm, either, not in the larger-than-a-current-smartphone sense.
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.
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.
What? Tablets are super common.
They exist
and in fact, I have an Android tablet in my backpack right now
but a lot of people felt that they were going to become a major computing paradigm, and that hasn't happened.
In practice, the PC today is mostly a conventional laptop. Hybrid laptops with touchscreen exist, but they aren't the norm.
Mobile OS tablets also exist, but they haven't managed to take over from smartphones or approach their marketshare, and there are fewer options on the market than there were a few years back; "mobile OS" tablets today are mostly, as best I can tell, a specialized device to use for video-watching with a larger screen than exists on a phone, with a larger screen and better built-in speakers, but without the sensors and radio suite. Not all that much uptake.
I know a ton of people who don't own a "PC" anymore, and instead have a tablet with one of those keyboard covers as their largest home computing device.
I only know one person with an iPad. Total apple fan boy, watch, phone mac etc, I dont know one person with android tablet - all our students have windows laptops
You realize Microsoft has an entire line of business tablets right? Google Microsoft Surface, they've been around for many years.
I think your personal experiences may be biasing your thinking on this one.
Yes. My girlfriend once owned a surface. I know what google is. I was clearly giving a personal account, I didnt say 94% of all people worldwide dont use tablets. You realise that right? Do you realise that microsoft has a line of laptops too? And they make operating systems for dekstop PCs? You realise that right? That would be quite the statement if it meant anything. Nike have an entire line of shoes, but they sell shirts too? You realise that right?
The original question was "constant failures, but we can't stop trying to make it work"
Tablets are clearly "working" already, they aren't a failure as a product category in any way. Companies aren't going bankrupt and cancelling lines of tablets to refocus on other products. They're just part of a standard product mix these days.
Ok, so, you responded with anecdotal evidence to someone who said they think tablets are a failure, which I replied to with my own anecdotal evidence. At no point did I say I agree with tablets being a failure. I was just countering your anecdote with my own. You came back at me in a condescending manner. I'm allowed to post my personal observations without being treated like a stone age moron who has never heard of a surface or tablets. So I replied in kind.
You can argue all you want, but thats not going to change the statement, my initial statement "I dont know anyone with a tablet, except for one", which is all I said.
Personally I think laptops are great for work, programming dealing with 200 emails, having 45 tabs open, and all bloody office apps across two screens at same time, but tablets, great with a cat on the lap on the sofa. Original marketing hype was that anything you can do on desktop you will be able to do on tablet. It's just not true. And reality. They just smartphones with bigger screens. So from a certain pov, they can be considered a failure. Which in my world, is true.
Flying cars.
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.
I'll go against the grain and say literally all of it. Every piece of technology that exists is a compromise between what the designer wants to do and the constraints of what is practical or possible to actually pull off. Therefore, all technology "fails" on at least some metric the designer would like it to achieve. Technology is all about improvement and working with imperfection. If we don't keep trying to make things better, then innovation stops. With your example of VR, I'd say that after having seen multiple versions of VR in my lifetime, the one that we have now is way more successful and impactful, especially in commercial uses rather than consumer products. Engineers can now tour facilities before they are built with VR headsets to see design flaws that they might not have seen just with a traditional model review, for example. Furthermore, what we have now is just an iteration on what we had before. It doesn't happen in a vacuum, people take what came before, look at what worked and what didn't, and what could be fixed with other technologies that have developed in the meantime. That's the iteration process.
Probably not top ten of mind, but Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been trotted out by the fossil fuel industry for a generation as a panacea for carbon emissions, in order to prevent any real legislation limiting the combustion of hydrocarbons.
So I have a contentious one. Quantum computers. (I am actually a physicist, and specialised in qunatum back in uni days, but now work mainly in in medical and nuclear physics.)
Most of the "working": quantum computers are experiments where the outcome has already been decided and the factoring they do can be performed on 8 bit computers or even a dog.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237.pdf "Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an
8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog"
This paper is a hilarious explanation of the tricks being pulled to get published.
But then again, it is a nascent technology, and like fusion, I believe it will one day be a world changing technology, but in it's current state is a failure on account of the bullshittery being published. Then again such publications are still useful in the grand scheme of developing the technology, hence why the article I cited is good humoured but still making the point that we need to improve our standards. Plus who doesnt like it when an article includes dogs.
Anyway, my point is, some technologies will be constant failures, but that doesn't mean we should stop.
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.
AI.
How is AI a failure exactly?
It's quite bad at what we're told it's supposed to do (producing reliably correct responses), hallucinating up to 40% of the time.
It's also quite bad at not doing what it's not supposed to. Meaning the "guardrails" that are supposed to prevent it from giving harmful information can usually be circumvented by rephrasing the prompt or some form of "social" engineering.
And on top of all that we don't actually understand how they work in a fundamental level. We don't know how LLMs "reason" and there's every reason to assume they don't actually understand what they're saying. Any attempt to have the LLM explain its reasoning is of course for naught, as the same logic applies. It just makes up something that approximately sounds like a suitable line of reasoning.
Even for comparatively trivial networks, like the ones used for written number recognition, that we can visualise entirely, it's difficult to tell how the conclusion is reached. Some neurons seem to detect certain patterns, others seem to be just noise.
You seem to be focusing on LLMs specifically, which are just one subcategory of AI. Those terms aren't synonymous.
The main issue here seems to be mostly a failure to meet user expectations rather than the underlying technology failing at what it's actually designed for. LLM stands for Large Language Model. It generates natural-sounding responses to prompts - and it does this exceptionally well.
If people treat it like AGI - which it's not - then of course it'll let them down. That's like cursing cruise control for driving you into a ditch. It's actually kind of amazing that an LLM gets any answers right at all. That's just a side effect of being trained on a ton of correct information - not what it's designed to do. So it's like cruise control that's also a somewhat decent driver, people forget what it really is, start relying on it for steering, and then complain their "autopilot" failed when all they ever had was cruise control.
I don't follow AI company claims super closely so I can't comment much on that. All I know is plenty of them have said reaching AGI is their end goal, but I haven't heard anyone actually claim their LLM is generally intelligent.
If people treat it like AGI - which it's not - then of course it'll let them down.
People treat it like the thing it's being sold as. The LLM boosters are desperately trying to sell LLMs as coworkers and assistants and problemsolvers.
I don't personally remember hearing any AI company leader ever claim their LLM is generally intelligent - and even the LLM itself will straight-up tell you it isn't and shouldn't be blindly trusted.
I think the main issue is that when a layperson hears "AI," they instantly picture AGI. We're just not properly educated on the terminology here.
"GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert." - Altman
During the launch of Grok's latest iteration last month, Musk said it was "better than PhD level in everything" and called it the world's "smartest AI".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5prvgw0r1o.amp
“PhD level expert in any topic” certainly sounds like generally intelligent to me. You may not have heard them saying it, but I feel like I’ve heard a bunch of these statements.
Printers.
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.
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 really liked my old brother laser printer.
Keyword in that is 'old' - new printers are shit, and Brother printers have been pretty bad in my experience as well. Most any new printers I've touched is just terrible.
But then again, I stan my old HP color LJ that I got for free from the early 2010s that I got when my employer went to a printer contract service and just dumped all the printers they currently had. That fucker runs like a champ and has let me put in after market toner carts without much complaint and 0 printing issues. Modern HP printers only belong on fire.
Fair.
I've seen that project. Complete radio silence since the announcement and zero path to releasing anything.
It really sucks.
Ahh that is a shame
The flying car, AI, cold fusion, anti-aging.
The flying car,
Those are called helicopters. They're literally just cars but every advantage and every downside is amplified.
They're amazing for taking a small number of people somewhere, at massive cost to the surroundings. They're noisy, take up a lot of space, require lots of specialized Infrastructure just for them and they are incredibly dangerous to their surroundings.
cold fusion
That's not a technology, it's a scam. Regular fusion is absolutely real, it's just super complicated and hugely underfunded.
No, a helicopter is a flying vehicle that can't drive on city streets. A flying car is a street legal vehicle that can take off and land like a plane. https://youtu.be/a2tDOYkFCYo for an idea of what I'm talking about.
Doesn't matter if cold fusion is a scam or not. People keep trying to make it work which fits OP's question.
Nobody but quacks is trying to make cold fusion work. Are you confusing it with "regular" nuclear fusion?
Whatever.
The shit with VR, specifically, is baffling to me. We have pretty good tech for it and yet nobody seems to know what to actually do with them. Hardware is at a good starting point, but the software is mostly bullshit.
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.
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
