Whatever happened to... - A thread about tech trends and items that died a quiet death.

[Retink Retunk]

For whatever reason something popped into my head today, which was the Freedom Phone. I remember a few years back it was being shilled everywhere and even people like Tim Pool were claiming they'd get real versions of it to test. Then it seemed that the first wave were cheap Chinese phones, followed by people being unable to get their phones, and looking into it the company was sold to some Utah brand that then proceeded to have all kinds of issues but at least now it comes with Twitter preinstalled if you can even buy it?

Another one, on the left wing side, were Solar Roadways, I remember people hyped those things for ages, but all that it amounted to was a patio sized footpath that broke and caught fire after a city invested millions of dollars into it.

As such, I figured I'd make a thread where we can post about weird things like that in tech that had all the hype only to be complete clusterfucks, however, because they were presold so much in advance that people forgot about them before they were ever delivered that it never became a massive scandal in the media. So post your own stories or ask the question of whatever happened to some random widget or bit of software that was promised but seemingly never amounted to anything.

 

[Saddam Hussain Obama]

What ever happened to sitcoms, game shows?
(On the radio was)

 

[TyrasGuard]

I recall Kickstarters a lot, or failed videogame consoles like the OUYA. Those who have seen Retsupurae's Kickstarters should recall lots of Drone flying cameras that shattered their funding goals and to this day they either did not deliver or they delivered a horrible product. The Vinci headphones were probably the worst.

Then you have phones like the N-Gage for example. Attachments like the Kinect/Playstation Move. The SEGA 32X. The Jaguar. It's a huge list. These things end up bought by some company or just abandoned with the money nowhere to be seen.

My favorites are games on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo. Anyone remember playing Elysian Shadows? Because I certainly never did.

Even big companies like Windows have had horrible products out. I was unfortunate to have Windows Millenium back then.

Not Yandere Simlator though. That is for sure going to be completed one day.

 

[SNU]

Any of Elon musks big ideas. The hyperloop was never going to work. Did he also want commercial intercontinental rocket flights or was that someone else? The premise was a rocketship that would take you from one side of the earth to another in 30min or something. Even though it wasn't thought out and had many huge issues people were hyped for a while then no one talked about it again.

I'm forgetting heaps but they all fall under the umbrella of someone thinks they are Tony stark. They do a big think to solve a problem. The solution is horribly flawed but they think "I can work out the kinks later". The "I heckin love science" eat it up and get hyped because it seems kinda sci-fi. They realize later the fundamental basis of the idea is flawed and give up. No one talks about it ever again and they move on to their next big think sci-fi idea.

 

[seri0us]

Those pictures that would "move" depending on your viewing angle. I stopped seeing them very much after the early-to-mid 2010s.

 

[herefortheactualthreads]

i miss tamagotchis, theyre heccin expensive now for being a small toy.

 

[Tablet County]

Put the blame on VCR.

 

[The Lawgiver]

i miss tamagotchis, theyre heccin expensive now for being a small toy.

They never left, but yeah they charge way too fucking much for them now. 20 fucking dollars? no way!
it gets infinitely worse though when you try looking at the Digivice reissues that aren't of the brick wall design and their MSRP is over $100 and sometimes they have a variant that's named something very slightly differently that's not even actually functional but plays the japanese theme song and lights up as if it IS working and still has pressable buttons but they do fuckall in terms of actual functionality.
The scalpers of older tamogachi type shit the last6or 7 years on ebay are a special hell, 50 sellers squatting on multiple copies of used grimy ones for 500 each, god fucking damnit I hate the fucking "value" situation with any kind of electronic game thing these last few years.

 

[Judge Dredd]

So post your own stories or ask the question of whatever happened to some random widget or bit of software that was promised but seemingly never amounted to anything.

There are a few I would like to know about, but not sure if this place is to discuss them.

Subverse.
This was an adult game that had a real budget and asperation behind it instead of being another patreon scam or anime fetish game. It had a lot of hype and positive reviews early on, but then kind of vanished. One user said in the adult games thread, the developers decided to invest in crypto development and the game was put on the back burner. It's still strange that an 18+ Mass Effect vanished without a trace despite so much hype behind it.

Banned Memories.
This was a Silent Hill clone that was looking promising and had a lot of hype behind it. This was in 2015. There was no updates for years. There was a new trailer that dropped in 2021 saying the game was "almost done", then it disappeared again.

https://www.youtube.com/@bannedmemories4181/videos

The developer has been working on other things, though he never seems to finish anything.

https://www.youtube.com/@GamingEngineer/videos

Printers and Word-Art.
A more general one, but whatever happened to printers? There was a time everyone had a home printer people would use for all sorts of things from family photos to wedding invitations, but you don't see them now. Related to that is the death of clip-art and word-art. Clip art I kind of understand because google images exists, but why word-art?

 

[Retink Retunk]

Subverse.
This was an adult game that had a real budget and asperation behind it instead of being another patreon scam or anime fetish game. It had a lot of hype and positive reviews early on, but then kind of vanished. One user said in the adult games thread, the developers decided to invest in crypto development and the game was put on the back burner. It's still strange that an 18+ Mass Effect vanished without a trace despite so much hype behind it.

Speaking of Subverse, I thought you were talking about Tim Pools thing that he sued the porn game over and was immortalized in it as a beanie wearing lobster.

Tim Pool's Subverse was another one of those things he hyped up and then vanished, first because it was in a copy right dispute with the porn game, then it was renamed to SCNR and fell apart after the psychotic lefties he hired from Vice tried to rape him, and now it's supposedly coming back with new people.

Edit: Looks like someone had the original clips scrubbed from Youtube, but there are always backups of the Dim Fool character clips

 

[Unsane]

LaserDisc.

As a kid I would window shop my local UK high street electrical store circa 1980. The LaserDisc was crazy expensive and so were the discs but it looked magical in the window and I was always into technology from an early age.

My dad was a loser so knew it was just a dream to own one, although, in fairness, he did buy a microwave and a VHS recorder about the same time, but he was still a loser.

 

[jeff7989]

Any of Elon musks big ideas. The hyperloop was never going to work. Did he also want commercial intercontinental rocket flights or was that someone else? The premise was a rocketship that would take you from one side of the earth to another in 30min or something. Even though it wasn't thought out and had many huge issues people were hyped for a while then no one talked about it again.

Starship Earth to Earth is i nice idea. Military has a hard-on for it. Once SpaceX works out all kinks of that launch system it could be interesting, not something you could deploy in contested area (rocket with methane and oxygen could go boom), but still exciting.

Unfortunately Musky has a track record of overselling and underdelivering, but you know, Falcon and Heavy are extremely successful vehicles which proved that reusability is viable. Just bear im mind Elon Time™.

 

[lemonsolebrother]

LaserDisc.

As a kid I would window shop my local UK high street electrical store circa 1980. The LaserDisc was crazy expensive and so were the discs but it looked magical in the window and I was always into technology from an early age.

My dad was a loser so knew it was just a dream to own one, although, in fairness, he did buy a microwave and a VHS recorder about the same time, but he was still a loser.

LD was magical for its time, but DVD was better and cheaper - tho' I waited to migrate until the region lock was reliably hacked

 

[Aunt Carol]

Those pictures that would "move" depending on your viewing angle. I stopped seeing them very much after the early-to-mid 2010s.

Are you referring to lenticular prints? Those are definitely still around, just not targeted to adults very often. If you want 3-d stickers, a souvenir magnet or a cool animation on your ruler, you're set.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Apparently Sandisk Clip MP3 players are still a thing. Oh, and those shitty little "Eclipse" brand MP3 players? Changed not one bit, exist but are in fewer numbers.

 

[Pissmaster]

I recall Kickstarters a lot, or failed videogame consoles like the OUYA.

Yeah, Ouya practically died on arrival, lol. It was the kingpin of the microconsole fad of the early 2010s.

There were actually a bunch of them. The idea made sense on paper: Android was becoming the world's most widely used operating system, so building a game console around it meant the same software you could sell on phones could be the same you sell on a console. Android hardware by then was also powerful enough to run PlayStation 2-tier games in HD, as well as emulators for consoles from up to the mid 90s. Even Mad Catz had a console:


The problem was, none of these companies invested in any worthwhile game studios to give anyone a reason to buy their machines. When you heard about someone playing them, it was almost always an emulator. Most mobile games anyone ever cared about were engineered around the touch screen to the point where they couldn't really be played with a controller. You're not gonna have fun with Cut the Rope by moving a reticle around your screen with a joystick. Not to mention, while the Ouya was $99, the Mad Catz Mojo went as high as $250. Who wants to spend that much on a machine from the most notoriously unreliable accessory manufacturer, when at the time you could pick up a PS3 or 360 for less than half of that?

Every bit of that Android microconsole fad was doomed from the start. It has no place anywhere. Incidentally, streaming boxes like Roku ended up picking up and becoming successful, which is ironic, because the principle is similar, and there was no reason those game consoles couldn't run streaming service apps.

In a similar vein, goofy game streaming nonsense like Stadia and Luna sure have never taken off. Luna's still going, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it turns out to be a giant money hole that's going to abruptly shut down one day.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Who wants to spend that much on a machine from the most notoriously unreliable accessory manufacturer, when at the time you could pick up a PS3 or 360 for less than half of that?

You could do that tactic of buying an old EliteDesk or a modern Raspberry Pi for £100 and using that as an emulator. Even if you have to buy a hard drive and controllers, you're still coming out ahead.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Freedom Phone.

Wasn't the whole concept bullshit since as long as the phone is connected to the cellular network you can triangulate its connection by distance from cellular towers?

Really practically everything on Kickstarter was shit. Maybe 1 in 100 of products funded was mediocre.

 

[Retink Retunk]

Wasn't the whole concept bullshit since as long as the phone is connected to the cellular network you can triangulate its connection by distance from cellular towers?

Really practically everything on Kickstarter was shit. Maybe 1 in 100 of products funded was mediocre.

Like with anything in life, yes, but it was never really intended for complete intractability, rather it was just more privacy focused than other options and could be an ok idea in theory.

Also, check out this talk about how the CIA got screwed by metadata and their own tech. This talk was about the Italy situation, but it also mentions multiple other countries and times where the CIA was retarded.

It's also weird as it's a Journo covering Obama's bullshit about how harmless metadata is, it was a simpler time when you could criticize the left.

 

[macrodegenerate]

Screenless mp3 players that were a USB stick. With just three buttons on them.