They're so good at EVERYTHING but software...it's so weird. They lead or are top contenders in the world in for optics, manufacturing, appliances, sensors, batteries, metallurgy, even coffee makers (huge fan of Hario), many quality-of-life things. Those things are HARD and no one else can do it like them. But make a UI?...nope...they just can't master JavaScript, or whatever toolkit they should use. They don't even make good backend software. You'd think they'd be leading the world in software given their reputation for quality and attention to detail.

I'm a software engineer, so designing sensors, some of which have parts that are a few atoms thick sounds mind-blowing to me. However, I'm a fucking moron and I can write better software than what I've seen on modern products from the leading manufacturers. Also, they take silo-ing to an extreme and seem to avoid frameworks, even in their video games, which are often excellent then you realize most of them write their own game engines instead of just using Unreal.

Their software quality and mentality is just confusing as can be to me.

Aren't these redundant since you can pay with their app? You're only serving people who don't regularly shop at the store. I have never heard of a WalMart near public transportation, so you already need your driver's license in most states, so you probably. have to have your wallet. Also, I've never seen a convenient WalMart. It's not like CVS or 7-11 where you quickly drop in for 1 item you forgot. It's hard to get in and out of one in less than 10 minutes. I happen to be one of those guys who never goes there both because: 1. They SUCK in my area...mediocre prices and every store is a horror show of damaged shitty merchandise thrown all over the place, flicking lights, and poorly maintained everything. 2. They won't go NEAR a major city because they try to avoid labor laws at all cost...so because I live in the city, the nearest WalMart is 30 min away, but I have 10 Targets in the same range with one just a few blocks down the road.

I'm not a WalMart hater. I want to see them thrive and counter-balance Amazon...and they really have the potential to do so. I know a handful of engineers there and they tell me they take their online technology seriously and want to claw-back marketshare from Amazon. However, each time I go to their store or website, I am sorely disappointed. EVERY Target in my area is clean, the staff are great, the experience is nice. WalMart is the polar opposite.

You're mixing up poorly designed screens with useful ones. Remember, the Japanese SUCK at software. I LOVE Japanese products, but hate anything they do involving computers, like cameras, cars, TVs, etc. Everything they do involving software seems 20 years behind. Their expensive flagship cameras that cost more than my last car still can't match conveniences we all took for granted on Android and iPhones 15 years ago. The same applies to their cars. The interfaces look like they're 10-20 years old....not even good interfaces, just ordinary

So...if you're buying a Japanese car, you just have to assume their brains are in 2006 mode...and still learning what's an intelligent vs stupid utilization of technology that Apple mastered long ago. The Tesla is just bad idea after bad idea with tons of stupid gimmicks (before you consider Musk is a POS and that WAS a Nazi salute) and the other American car companies are not run as well as American tech companies. I honestly never have ridden in a modern Chevy or Ford with a touchscreen because I don't know anyone who owns one.

A well designed touchscreen is an essential interface to your phone....maybe some obscure settings you set once and forget about, like speaker balance or equalizers.

A touchscreen should NEVER be used driving. Those should require physical buttons, by law, for everything you use, like windshield wipers or climate control. It should merely display your map, what's playing, and possibly a weather summary. Everything else is noise. From what I can tell most, car companies do that today and have moved away from touchscreen controls like the Teslas seem to love....but regardless, they're just behind...very conservative, not very innovative. It seems to broadly apply to Japan, generally. FIRST-RATE manufacturing and components...dogshit software.

You can hold whatever opinions you want, it's a free country, but you are using a service that costs money to operate and is given to you for free. Either you're the customer or you're the product. Is Facebook abusive? Yes, but IMHO for different reasons. Is collecting data generally to sell you things abusive?...not if done transparently and ethically. Facebook could easily be run ethically. Many sites offer free services in exchange for ad viewing in ethical ways.

The US was an early adopter of this technology, hence why we're far behind. In my case, I don't think my local grocery chain takes them and my local retail chain (Target) gives me a 5% discount if I use their credit card, which I can link to their app. I guess I never saw what's in it for me. If I go shopping, I usually take my car and need my wallet for my license (I'm not in a state with digital ID). I remember something similar in that fax machines are really common in Japan...because businesses mastered their workflow early on in the days of fax...or how COBOL is still dominant at major banks. So most American businesses have been taking credit cards since the 80s and a lot don't bother updating. I am confident none of my local restaurants would take it.

Why sadly? Meta employs 77,986 employees, according to Google. That's a fuckton of people impacted. Wouldn't it be better to have those resources applied responsibly? You can hate Zuckerberg and you apparently wish for his extinction, but I'd personally rather he just stop being an ass and be more careful with our data & his algorithms. His companies are a goldmine and don't require abuse to profitably thrive. I'd personally rather see him just stop abusing users and make a nice healthy profit while providing a valuable service to those who need social media (like non-profits, local-schools, small companies who rely on facebook to earn a living or reach out to the community).

Just because you don't like social media doesn't mean it doesn't provide value for others. Lamenting it is like lamenting AI, the web, TV, air-conditioning, electricity, indoor-plumbing, etc. Social media is a permanent part of our life. It is very valuable for many. It's how our local community organizations and schools communicate and raise funds. It's how many large families keep in touch. I don't use it any more. I only go on there to donate stuff I don't need and follow school announcements as well as community fundraisers. However, my family loves it. My wife used to love it. Most of her friends love it.

Social media is also essential for small businesses to get noticed. I am into woodworking and many small businesses got their start marketing innovative tools on social media: ranging from complex AI-powered hand-held CNC machines to simple measuring tools that were just a little better or more clever than anything that came before them. Many of our favorite products started out marketed through social media.

Many marginalized communities leveraged social media to get their message out and get their views heard...whereas the world ignored them before. This can be amazing for helping civil rights or downright gross because some of these groups are terrible people. However, it has been an equalizer unseen in history.

As critical of it as I am, I know the answer is not to foolishly wish for it's demise, but for it to transform into what it used to be: a fun place to share kid pics or keep up with long-lost friends....or something new and less shitty than what we have today. Social media will be with us forever. There's no going back. The best we can do is make it less abusive. Don't let perfection get in the way of progress. Maybe perfection to you is for them to go away. However, that'll work about as well as prohibition did 100 years ago. People want their social media. The best we can hope for is that Meta/Twitter either becomes more responsible or gets replaced by someone who is.

You still have a physical driver's license. It's now optional to carry it if you have your phone. Men usually don't care because we have good pockets, most womens' clothes don't so my wife wants this. I view it like Apple Pay or even Venmo. I want the option, but I have yet to use it.

Regarding thieves? How does this increase the value? How are they going to pass Face ID?

Very simply, this is either useful to you or not. Some hate carrying a wallet. I don't mind. Presumably you and (and most men) don't either. Remember, I can go anywhere I need with just my pants. My wife needs a purse for most of her clothes if she needs to drive. She'd never leave without her phone, but she'd love to leave the house without her wallet.

AI is sold as having capabilities it doesn't have. No one who uses AI trusts you, Dario. It helps a little bit, but your entire industry is telling us you have the cure for cancer, yet all you have is the equivalent of improved ibuprofen...pretty useful, but not the cure-all you promise. You tell us your AI can write code...well...that's true if you don't expect it to actually work. You tell us programming will become obsolete....which also means all white collar professions will become obsolete....yet we don't even see evidence that AI saves money. I use your product daily at work. It fails daily...at simple and complex tasks and costs a shocking amount.

Beyond the fact your product doesn't work....once it does, you're going to wreck the economy on a scale we've never seen...so we're kinda glad you're frauding us.

Then there's the reality today: You've raised our electricity bill and caused a MASSIVE chip shortage.

You're forcing something on us that doesn't work...most people don't even want....and you're making things we want and need a LOT more expensive.

You've made our lives tangibly worse and you definitely have not made my life better...nor most of the people's lives you impacted. You haven't even saved money for my employer or helped them. Our director is into AI-wishing....if you wish hard enough, eventually AI will increase productivity. Yeah, it's kinda fun playing with these tools...just like a roomba...but even with a Roomba, I can't throw away my broom. It hasn't actually tangibly changed how I keep my house clean or helped. It helps a little, but I wouldn't notice if it stopped running. Similarly...we can't say AI is useless, but we can't actually measure tangible benefits. There might be some there, but our day to day productivity is pretty similar, if the AI is even helping at all...and we've been using it daily for over 2 years now.

Only a moron would trust any tech vendor, including ones with good track records....you, sir, do not have a good track record. It may be better than grok or Open AI, but it's not a good record and your success rate is VERY low.

Dude, if you're commenting on this site, you're my age or older. When you were a freshman, the information age was either just starting or not a thing. When I entered college, we were using Netscape still. Websites were nearly useless. Commentators were downplaying the internet saying it's just for Star Trek debates and low-res porn....no one would do real work, like banking, on it. You and I didn't deal with the impact of social media. Life was a lot simpler when we were freshman. Remember boredom? I fucking do. I was REALLY FUCKING BUSY as a college student working 2 student jobs and having a challenging major. Even then, lots of hours of downtime and boredom...commuting on the subway, hanging out in the dorms and later my apt. LOTS of hours sitting in some kid's dorm bored entertaining each other. We'd play old games we were sick of and make the best of it. We'd watch movies we had seen before because it's what he had in his room. We'd watch lame old movies because we watched all the good ones at our university's campus video rental place. Being bored is extinct today....replaced by a feeling you're not doing enough or missing something...no sense of downtime....that fucking phone in your pocket, a constant connection to every self-doubt you have, everything in life more fun than what you need to do, every bit of information to make you realize how daunting your path to success is.

I focused on studying and getting laid and my peers from wealthier families got to sit around the dorms bored getting high and doing enough to pass. No one knew shit. It took fucking effort to be informed. You'd have to read the newspaper and watch the nightly news and no one in college had the time for that shit. We learned things via word of mouth. I couldn't compare myself to those in my high school class. I had no clue who was dating or thriving.

Kids today? They're FLOODED with more information than human brains can handle. They can see boastful exaggerated posts of their former friends from home living their best lives. Everyone is more successful than you. Everyone has a better relationship than you. Everyone went on a cooler vacation than you. Oh, there's an article about some kid 2 years older than you that now has a multi-million dollar startup that may reach a billion dollar valuation...oh yeah, and he grew up somewhere in your state...isn't that cool???? ...and what are you doing with your life?...barely getting As, no girlfriend, a very uncertain path to success....Oh yeah, and AI?....that's in the news every fucking day....your profession may be extinct by the time you graduate. Certainly, ever CEO with an AI offering is saying we're 2 years from replacing all software engineers....which if that was true, would mean they can replace accountants, lawyers, most managers, even most doctors, etc. So....you could be taking on all this debt, get a law degree, and have to become a plumber to make a living.

Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation....meaning your success in life is a mixture of skill and luck and really much much more luck than skill. I know mine was. I am very skilled....but so are a fuckton of people who achieved less than me....and many less skilled people achieved a lot more. I was at the right place at the right time and I used my skill not to fuck things up....those far more successful?...most were in a better place at the right time. The point?...you're not successful in life because of your mental fortitude. If you were their age, you could not replicate your success perfectly. You'd have to be MUCH MUCH MUCH better and more skilled at life to replicate your success today. I know I would. I know there are 100x more interesting distractions today than before. I know things are more confusing, the standards are higher, the amount of information to process is impossible. When I was 18/19?....you could be smart by not being a dumbass...shit was easy. Our programming projects were tiny in scope compared to what is expected of kids today. We could have a 100line C program that doesn't do much of anything be a successful thesis in the 90s. Kids today need to build full stack apps in at least 3 different languages and know a FUCKTON more stuff than anyone who graduated in the 90s/00s. I could easily master the technology I was expected to know on graduating. it was usually a single language. NO ONE can master a full stack today. Anyone who says they do, just don't realize how little the know about databases...which aren't even just RDBMS any more, but a dozen types.

Fuck off with the kids are soft bullshit. I heard it all my life about me and we all listened to it about millennials and gen z...it's a tale as old as time and it's bullshit every time. I feel sorry for today's kids because A LOT MORE is expected of them than what was expected of Gen X people like me to make it into the middle class and have a basic standard of living. Life got a lot harder and more complex. You forget how simple things were for us.

If the experts think this may help, I am all for it. However, I do sympathize with kids today....shitting on the youth and pretending they're soft and inferior to you won't change the fact that your relevance diminishes each year, like it does for every other aging person. It won't change the fact that they have many more years on this planet than you and I do at this point.

Of course...and many like Pilsner beer, like a Bud or Coors....I personally like those beers myself. However, I also really appreciate a Guinness and many other types of beer that taste nothing like bud light. If you like impersonal fucking....well, the world is your oyster...those are the default and dominant form. 99% of professionally produced and even the vast majority of amateur porn falls under that category. You're all set.

My wife prefers stuff where the couple is less tacky and the sex is more realistic. So for us, having more of that is great. If you're into stuff that resembles traditional loving sex?...it's an underserved market...those wanting a rough fuck?...well, I think it's safe to say you have many choices.

That's interesting. I didn't realize they were so firmly limited. I would have guessed other software would work allow it. I don't own these and never plan on buying any. I'm monogamous and sadly it's tough getting a wife/mom in her 40s to let you photograph, let alone video her....so video shenanigans are not in the cards for me. However, meta isn't the only game in town and really pro porn is an endangered species. It's just too hard to make money off it, especially for an extended period of time.

Go pro helmets are kinda weird. If you could get acceptable footage from a pair of glasses or something more natural looking, it would definitely help the experience, especially for couples. As you said, pros will go through a lot for their craft. However, amateurs are more likely to be bold if the video equipment is simple and doesn't take over their house.

I think most would agree, porn would be a lot better for society if more "real people" were in it. Instead of a LA fitness instructor with huge breast implants, like we saw in the 80s and 90s and 00s...what if it was actual women and men who are actually in love with their partners and have imperfect bodies? What if lonely people watched healthy, positive, loving sex instead of impersonal performances?

Even if I never see it, filming yourself can be a fun way of spicing things up for couples. TBH, it never worked for me because I'm obsessed with sex and photography and my brain is wired that it can do one or the other, but not both. If I start adjusting camera settings I get a bit too perfectionist and am not thinking about the moment any more :). But for people less on the spectrum than me?....I've heard from many couples it was a very thrilling experience...even if they just delete afterwards. So I think these are not terrible in your own home...they just should never be allowed in public. There's probably no legal way of preventing that...but the least we can do is shame people who record others in public and certainly shame and prosecute people who misuse these.

Dude...if knowing people enjoy porn spikes your blood pressure this much, you're not long for this world. Relax. No one is sending you dick pics...which TBH wouldn't even traumatize me...I'd just be bored. It's not natural to hate sex as much as you seem to.

Very good point, but it's been long lamented by male porn stars that their craft isn't very appreciated...that they're a prop. I enjoy porn documentaries and reading about these things. :) Most women I talk to who are into porn like I am, the man is often a placeholder. They may want to see his body, but they're happier the less they see his face. Even if they're enjoying his physique, they want to picture a specific man or a man who's more their type (most male porn stars from the studio days are pretty old). And finally, what percentage of men in porn are good looking? :). Most have good bodies, but quite a few are "butterfaces" (or whatever the male equivalent are).

Honestly, it's ironic now that I think about it. Women always complain about men dehumanizing and sexualizing them....but in actual porn, we want to see the woman and the women I've talked to usually don't want to see the man.

It's a great way to film yourself having sex if you have the consent of your partner. Sunglasses are weird, but not as weird and a gopro on your forehead. I can see these as a staple of amateur porn. No one wants to see the guy, so the sunglasses make him even more of a prop from other camera views, but many want to see things from his point of view!