The AchieVer Posted December 14, 2018 Share Posted December 14, 2018 1 I am become death, the destroyer of brands Some tech products burn out, others fade away. From streaming movie reviews to blood-testing scams to ugly Geocities pages, these are the products, services and brands we said goodbye to in 2018. Netflix 2 DEAD: Netflix viewer reviews Last year, Netflix dropped its star-based rating system in favor of the binary thumbs up/thumbs down; this August, it did away with user reviews as well. Maybe they didn't want people reading those Iron Fist reviews... Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET 3 DEAD: GeoCities (yes, it was still around) For most of us, the Yahoo-controlled GeoCities died in 2009. In Japan, it somehow hung on another 10 years. If you're too young to remember, this was a community site, really a proto-social-network, where anyone could publish a hideously ugly web page. The final pages now have an expiration date: March 2019. For a little nostalgia hit, check out the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for a snapshot. Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET 4 DEAD: Theranos bleeds out A once-hot blood-testing machine company valued at $9 billion, Theranos made an ignominious exit following a huge fraud scandal that went on for several years for making false claims about its blood analyzer. Theranos had laid off the bulk of its employees by April 2018, settled with the Securities and Exchange commission, and on September 12 posted an insolvency notice on its site. TL:DR, the product never worked, and the company knew it. Sarah Tew 5 DEAD: PlayStation Vita Portable gaming has changed a lot since the PlayStation Vita debuted in 2011, so it's no surprise that Sony finally declared it would cease production in Japan in 2019. Sony says it doesn't plan another gaming portable, which makes sense as competing with the massive success of the Nintendo Switch (and 3DS) seems like a fight you don't want to pick. Note that this comes after the earlier PSP (PlayStation Portable) also failed to catch on. Chris Monroe/CNET 6 DEAD: Kuri, a cute robot with no future The beeping, booping absolutely adorable rolling robot companion that made a splash at CES 2017 and CES 2018 will likely never see the inside of your home. Mayfield Robotics announced in July 2018 that it wasceasing production of this promising li'l 'bot and refunding preorders. Why? It just didn't fit into the business plans of Bosch, a company whose products run the gamut from power tools to sensors and is the power behind the incubator that helped birth Kuri. Chris Monroe/CNET 7 DEAD: Sansaire Delta, sous-vide est mort An immersion circulator designed to let you cook sou- vide-style in a standard pot by maintaining a consistent water temperature, the Sansaire Delta was forced to shut down in February when it ran into problems with its manufacturer. Too bad, this was a good trend to capitalize on this year. James Martin/CNET 8 DEAD: Cambridge Analytica wilts under public scrutiny Facebook may be feeling the fallout of offering up the intimate details of its two-billion-plus users' lives to pretty much anyone with an advertising budget. But no one fell harder than Cambridge Analytica, which acquired the data "improperly" and then used it to influence US elections and the UK Brexit campaign by selling psychographic profiles for targeted political ads. That earned the two companies a spot in our list of top tech screwups for 2018. But unlike Facebook, CA gave up the ghost in May, filing for bankruptcy. Path 9 DEAD: Path, another Facebook wannabe Don't feel bad if you forgot -- or never heard about -- Path, the one-time Facebook competitor that launched in 2012 with a vision of small, simpler social communitiesrather than the friends of friends of friends of random strangers more common in social media. In September it tweeted about the upcoming closure, and as of mid-November it evaporated into the ether. James Martin/CNET 10 DEAD: Chorus, fitness startup from an ex-Twitter CEO I'd never actually heard of this fitness startup launched by Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter. It was predicated on peer pressure: you join with a group of friends and announce your daily plans for healthy living. I had to include it because of the reason it failed: the "abstinence violation effect." If you need to be motivated that much, you'll lack the motivation to keep checking in. Raise your hand if you saw that coming a mile off. Dong Ngo/CNET 11 DEAD: Apple AirPort We've been waiting, waiting and waiting for Apple to finally acknowledge that it was getting out of the router business, given that its AirPort line hadn't seen a new product since 2011. In April, the company finally announced that when supplies ran out for all its AirPort products, the line would go away, and the AirPort Extreme base station was almost completely sold out by May. Now it's on Apple's Vintage and Obsolete list. But as a parting gift, Apple delivered a firmware update to the old routers supplying AirPlay 2 support, essentially turning it into a (bulky) wireless speaker dongle. Josh Goldman/CNET 12 DEAD: Karma, the GoPro drone Action camera-maker GoPro made an attempt to break DJI's grip on the drone market with the Karma, but the company was having enough trouble staying profitable with its popular mainstay Hero line. At the very end of 2017 the company announced it was getting out of the drone biz and looking for a deep-pocketed suitor. Screenshot by Ed Rhee 13 DEAD: Klout gets knocked out Another one that was easily forgotten, in 2012 Klout tried to put a single number on the influence of high-profile folks on social media and soon fell out of the minds of anyone who might have cared. It was eventually bought by Lithium, which announced in May that "the Klout acquisition provided Lithium with valuable artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning capabilities but Klout as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy." Jason Cipriani/CNET 14 DEAD: 2015 MacBook Pro, iPhone SE, iPhone 6S, iPhone X Old Apple products never die, they just get pulled from the Apple Store. This year's disappearances included the iPhone X, iPhone SE, iPhone 6S and the last MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar, the 15-inch from 2015. The legacy of the iPhone X's notch lives on, though (and the classic X might be coming back to Japan). Nate Ralph/CNET 15 DEAD: Steam Link hardware logs out It wasn't hugely popular, but Valve's box that let you play Steam games on your TV was actually pretty good. In November, the company announced that once existing supplies ran out, it would not respawn. Instead, Steam's playing up its app-based solution, which as yet is still in beta on Android and MIA on iOS. You could just drag a gaming PC over to your TV and hook it up directly via HDMI, or try this Raspberry Pi hack. Oppo 16 DEAD: Oppo Digital DVD players The division of Oppo responsible for its well-regarded DVD players and audio products bid farewell -- literally -- to the consumer electronics market in April. Don't worry, though; its cool phones live on. Ossic 17 DEAD: Ossic X 3D surround headphones There always has to be at least one big crowdfunding disaster: This year's standout looks like Ossic/SonicVR: The company raised over $3.2 million (on a $100,000 goal) for its Ossic X 3D surround headphones, produced about 250 of them, and then disappeared, leaving behind angry backers and a class-action lawsuit. Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET 18 DEAD: Snapcash was gone in a snap Social media youngster Snap partnered with Square to launch its peer-to-peer payment service in 2014, but it didn't even make it to its fifth anniversary because everyone wants to middleman your money. It announced it was shutting down the service in August. Read the article Honda 19 DEAD: Asimo, Honda's pioneering robot Asimo's been around a while -- or what passes for a while in robot years -- and Honda's finally retiring its friendly humanoid, incorporating elements in future, more practical robots such as the ones it showed at CES 2018. Volkswagen 20 DEAD: VW Beetle drives off into the sunset The Volkswagen Beetle is one of the most iconic cars in history; while automobiles come and go, this one deserves a moment of retrospection. In September, VW announced a 2019 Final Edition and its intent to cease production of the Beetle next year. Let's pour one out for OG Bumblebee... Chris Monroe/CNET 21 DEAD: Halo Smart Labs, a smoke detector goes up in smoke One of the big problem with the smart home is its dependence on cloud services; when the company folds, it can frequently takes the intelligence of your devices with it. That's the case with Halo Smart Labs, which announced it was shuttering in July, leaving your the Halo+ Smoke Alarm without the ability to connect to the internet. Take a walk through the smart home graveyard. Nintendo 22 DEAD: Nintendo Miitomo, its first app's last hurrah Nintendo's first app wasn't a game, it was an oddball avatar-based social-quizzy thing that lasted about two years; in May 2018, Nintendo shut down the Miitomo servers in May, driving people to get their quiz fix from one of the billion other apps on the market. Shure 23 DEAD: Shure phono cartridges discontinued In 2015, veteran audio company Shure was enthusiastic about the "vinyl revival": Flash forward three years and it pulled out of the photo cartridge business in May 2018. Not because it wasn't doing well -- its component suppliers just couldn't keep up with demand for the high-quality parts. Rethink Robotics 24 DEAD: Rethink Robotics lays off Baxter, the robot grocery clerk The company behind Baxter, a robot designed to work with humans in small spaces -- or a "knife-wielding robot grocery clerk" -- closed its doors in the fall of 2018. In a farewell letter, CEO Jim Lawton said of the company's work in collaborative robotics "In the end, we just didn't get it quite right." Tyler Lizenby/CNET 25 DEAD: Kuvee FreshPour, a smart wine bottle that aged poorly Life for Kuvee, a Kickstarter-funded startup with a bottle designed to extend the life of wine after it's been opened, turned to vinegar in March when it shut down. The CEO blamed the Napa fires for its troubles, and stated, "to properly educate the market, we would need a much louder voice and considerably more capital." It needed more than that. Unfortunately, the FreshPour requires proprietary cartridges, now leaving owners with a useless piece of smart-home history. Humble Bundle 26 DEAD: Telltale Games zombies out Popular narrative game studio Telltale Games shut down suddenly in September after laying off a chunk of its staff without warning and leaving the fate of eagerly anticipated Stranger Things and Walking Dead games up in the air. Skybound later announced that it had picked up the Walking Dead development. Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET 27 DEAD: Google Inbox and Google+ Google giveth and Google taketh away. In September, it put an expiration date of March 2019 on its Inbox Gmail client and then gave Google+, the unpopular social network, a pink slip in October, with the news that it would shut down in April 2019. Coincidentally on the heels of announcing a data vulnerability which had left the personal information of up to half a million users exposed. At least Inbox will kind of live on, as its best features have been folded into regular, old Gmail. Yahoo 28 DEAD: Yahoo Messenger Instant-messaging client Yahoo Messenger is a piece of internet history, though not a piece everyone remembers fondly. Parent company Oath, or Verizon Media Group, or whatever it's called now, laid its anachronistic IM to rest on July 17. David Carnoy/CNET 29 DEAD: Amazon Mayday and Music Storage Amazon shut down its free MP3 storage service (and also the paid version) for your uploaded files on April 30 of this year, and Mayday, Amazon's one-click access to Kindle tech support stopped taking your questions in June. 30 DEAD (but resurrected): Mad Catz has only used one of its nine lives Mad Catz, purveyor of uniquely designed game accessories, liquidated its assets in March 2017 after a couple years of financial struggles. The bulk of them went to a Hong Kong-based holding company whose employees were instrumental in creating Mad Catz' products, and at CES in January, it brought the brand back with updated versions of its gear. 31 NOT DEAD YET: Blockbuster is going, going... almost gone The once-mammoth video rental chain is down to a single store in Oregon after the last two stores in Alaska went belly up -- despite John Oliver's attempts to save them by donating Russell Crowe's jockstrap (and more) in hopes of giving people a reason to pay a visit. We don't give the lone remaining store good odds of making it through 2019. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xpkRAKE Posted December 14, 2018 Share Posted December 14, 2018 How I wish Facebook and impossible 'Captchas' were on this list 🤨 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nir Posted December 14, 2018 Share Posted December 14, 2018 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'. The story of Oppenheimer's infamous quote The line, from the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad-Gita, has come to define Robert Oppenheimer, but its meaning is more complex than many realise As he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, a piece of Hindu scripture ran through the mind of Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. It is, perhaps, the most well-known line from the Bhagavad-Gita, but also the most misunderstood. Oppenheimer died at the age of sixty-two in Princeton, New Jersey on February 18, 1967. As wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, the birthplace of the Manhattan Project, he is rightly seen as the “father” of the atomic bomb. “We knew the world would not be the same,” he later recalled. “A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.” Oppenheimer, watching the fireball of the Trinity nuclear test, turned to Hinduism. While he never became a Hindu in the devotional sense, Oppenheimer found it a useful philosophy to structure his life around. "He was obviously very attracted to this philosophy,” says Rev Dr Stephen Thompson, who holds a PhD in Sanskrit grammar and is currently reading a DPhil at Oxford University on other aspects of the language and Hindu faith. Oppenheimer’s interest in Hinduism was about more than a soundbite, it was a way of making sense of his actions. The Bhagavad-Gita is 700-verse Hindu scripture, written in Sanskrit, that centres on a dialogue between a great warrior prince called Arjuna and his charioteer Lord Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu. Facing an opposing army containing his friends and relatives, Arjuna is torn. But Krishna teaches him about a higher philosophy that will enable him to carry out his duties as a warrior irrespective of his personal concerns. This is known as the dharma, or holy duty. It is one of the four key lessons of the Bhagavad-Gita: desire or lust; wealth; the desire for righteousness or dharma; and the final state of total liberation, or moksha. CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images Seeking his counsel, Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his universal form. Krishna obliges, and in verse twelve of the Gita he manifests as a sublime, terrifying being of many mouths and eyes. It is this moment that entered Oppenheimer’s mind in July 1945. “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one,” was Oppenheimer’s translation of that moment in the desert of New Mexico. In Hinduism, which has a non-linear concept of time, the great god is not only involved in the creation, but also the dissolution. In verse thirty-two, Krishna speaks the line brought to global attention by Oppenheimer. "The quotation 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds', is literally the world-destroying time,” explains Thompson, adding that Oppenheimer’s Sanskrit teacher chose to translate “world-destroying time” as “death”, a common interpretation. Its meaning is simple: irrespective of what Arjuna does, everything is in the hands of the divine. "Arjuna is a soldier, he has a duty to fight. Krishna not Arjuna will determine who lives and who dies and Arjuna should neither mourn nor rejoice over what fate has in store, but should be sublimely unattached to such results,” says Thompson. “And ultimately the most important thing is he should be devoted to Krishna. His faith will save Arjuna's soul." But Oppenheimer, seemingly, was never able to achieve this peace. "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatements can quite extinguish," he said two years after the Trinity explosion, "the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” The first detonation of a nuclear device, conducted on July 16, 1945 was a result of the Manhattan Project which Oppenheimer led Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images “He doesn't seem to believe that the soul is eternal, whereas Arjuna does,” says Thompson. “The fourth argument in the Gita is really that death is an illusion, that we're not born and we don't die. That's the philosophy really: that there's only one consciousness and that the whole of creation is a wonderful play.” Oppenheimer, it can be inferred, never believed that the people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not suffer. While he carried out his work dutifully, he could never accept that this could liberate him from the cycle of life and death. In stark contrast, Arjuna realises his error and decides to join the battle. “Krishna is saying you have to simply do your duty as a warrior,” says Thompson. “If you were a priest you wouldn't have to do this, but you are a warrior and you have to perform it. In the larger scheme of things, presumably The Bomb represented the path of the battle against the forces of evil, which were epitomised by the forces of fascism.” For Arjuna, it may have been comparatively easy for Arjuna to be indifferent to war because he believed the souls of his opponents would live on regardless. But Oppenheimer felt the consequences of the atomic bomb acutely. “He hadn't got that confidence that the destruction, ultimately, was an illusion,” says Thompson. Oppenheimer’s apparent inability to accept the idea of an immortal soul would always weigh heavy on his mind. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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