I wonder if there are other " genericized trademark" companies that have failed that spectacularly. You can still buy Frigidaire refrigerators. Vaccuuming is known as “hoovering” in the UK, and Hoover is still around.

It would be pretty interesting if “a GoPro” exists as a word for an action camera and the company / brand no longer exists.

At the beginning they weren’t “kinda crappy” because there really wasn’t anything else you could compare them to. Nobody else made a camera that you could strap to your chest, or your helmet, or your motorcycle while you did something action-ey. They had fully waterproof cases too, so you could take them underwater.

As a camera, they weren’t amazing. But, people weren’t using them to take wedding pictures. They were using them in situations where a normal camera would be too heavy, or wouldn’t stay attached, or wouldn’t survive.

There’s a reason they became a household name. They enabled people to do things that had never been done before, and they changed the way a lot of sports are shot.

Boomer and Gen X retired people didn’t typically grow up with computers. So, I think part of the challenge is a way to play games that’s easy. Probably games on mobile phones are a good approach because the process of finding, installing and launching those games is easy if you’re not a “computer person”. OTOH, old people’s eyes aren’t great, and they don’t tend to have a lot of dexterity, so while a phone UI might be good, the actual device is maybe too small and fiddly. Games on tablets is probably a much better option.

Steam deck might be ideal, but only if you can bump up the UI font size so that it’s more readable if you’re older. That would give them access to hundreds of thousands of games. But, the problem is most are probably designed for a PC screen, so they’ll have tiny UI elements.

In terms of the games themselves, probably something turn-based would be ideal. I happen to like those kinds of games anyhow. But, as I get older and my reaction speed gets worse, I think I’ll play fewer and fewer games that require fast reactions and good aim.

Another consideration would maybe be something social. A lot of older people are still in relationships, and want to be able to do something together. That also means either multiple steam decks so each person can have their own, or maybe couch co-op games.

So, I think it’s:

• Turn based strategy, or any other turn-based game – visual novels might work, trivia quizzes, detective games, just so long as it isn’t reaction speed based
• A system that’s easy to find, install, and launch games. Even steam for PC is probably intimidating for people who haven’t been on PCs for most of their lives.
• Big fonts for people with fading vision.
• Easy controls.
• Maybe couch co-op for couples to play together

Based on that, I can see why Nintendo Wii games were really popular. The system is very easy to use. It runs on the TV so fonts can be nice and huge. A lot of it is couch co-op so couples can play together. They also have a lot of games meant for kids, but those games are also easy for older people to understand and enjoy. They also didn’t have sexual / violent themes that old people are sometimes more sensitive about than your typical gamer.

It also shows why Nintendo’s follow up consoles didn’t work as well. The Wii U had a gamepad. That’s more intimidating, and not as easy to use if you have poor vision. Then came the Switch, which was even worse if you have poor vision. Plus the detachable controllers are ideal for kids, but old people now have to fiddle with little almost hidden buttons to detach them. Not good.

Good job, may your quest succeed.

Nice reference.

I really hate the way they use the colour in the netting to try to make the fruit look better / fresher. Red netting for oranges to make them look more ripe, onions in brownish netting, limes in green netting, garlic in white netting.

I’d pay more for neutral / translucent netting that’s more honest. Or, maybe we can just get rid of the plastic entirely and use paper or something.

Suuuuure they are. No accounting gimmicks at all! Just suddenly profitable via magic right before they go public.

Sure, it might seem like a sprint compared to a Waterfall project where it’s a marathon, where there might be months between points where you check in with the plan and try to figure out if the software is ready to ship yet.

I still just object to the word “sprint”. Any job where you’re sprinting over and over, week after week, where that’s the main thing you’re doing, you’re doing something wrong.

What makes it so annoying to me is that a sprint implies putting in maximum effort for a short time. The pace of a sprint is unsustainable over more than a few seconds.

If you say you did “sprints” for over a year… no you didn’t. Either you sprinted for a little bit and then had to walk for a while because you’d used up all your energy. Or, you jogged at a sustainable pace for a year and just called it a sprint.

They make it up in volume.

(Volume being how loudly they shout about how it’s going to change the world and dupe more people into investing.)

Yeah, it worked.

What’s funnier is that typically the AI providers lose money on every query their customers make. So, this may have cost some company $500m to Anthropic, but it cost Anthropic a whole lot more than that.

Hmm, does the other direction work? @[email protected] wants to know. (That’s me).

On that subject, does anybody hate the term “Sprint” as much as I do?

“Sprints” are extremely quick events that last tens of seconds and are done at most once a day, but more often (in competition) a few times a month, or a few times in a day every few months.

You don’t sprint for a full week every week. That’s a marathon, maybe an ultra-marathon.

Especially when they’re called “standups” but everybody sits down because they typically last an hour or so.

Tag it how?

One difference is that Flipper have a track record of actually building and shipping a successful product.

I’ve followed a lot of similar projects on kickstarter, etc. and a lot of them fail before finally shipping something. There are so many hard parts: international shipping, customs clearance, supply chains, lead times, legal compliance, etc.

I hope that Mecha Comet works out, it looks really cool. But, I’m definitely not going to pre-order.

As for how it’s different, it looks like they’re intended for different uses. The Comet looks like it’s intended to be a handheld device you can use for gaming and maybe on-the-go stuff like texting, email, maybe watching media, etc. It has a 40-pin breakout board but you have to remove the keyboard to use it.

The Flipper One looks more like a portable debugging server. Despite its small size it has 2 ethernet ports and a full size HDMI port. It seems like if you’re holding it in your hand and looking at its tiny screen for any length of time you’re probably not using it the way they expect.

I remember using it back when it was called “Audioscrobbler”. I think the “scrobbler” part stuck around somehow?

The demo would be a lot more impressive if the questions you were asking weren’t longer than the extremely simple SQL queries it generates.