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There is so much to improve in there.
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...That would be wrong on so many levels! 
Ba-tish!
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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I want a TV streaming/DVR that works well and won't trash my records when it needs replaced.
My first DVR was from a regional cable company and made by Scientific Atlanta. It worked and worked well. My second was a TiVo with a cable card it also worked and worked well.
My regional cable company was purchased by Comcast. The at some point in the middle of the night they performed an update to the cable DVR. It resulted in a loss of features, features that did work well, and of course loss of recorded programs. Comcast denied the issues for months and months. They slowly fixed a lot of the issues but it was still a suckfest. There was a Comcast rep that was being honest on a site someplace that was helpful until he fell suddenly silent.
Over the years I had several new model replacement boxes from Comcast. They all had their own unique level of suck until they failed and got replaced. And each time I lost my shows and the recording settings. Comcast Sucks long live Xfinity. More new hardware that fails to be robust.
Then I moved to a new state. Now over he last seven years I have had Spectrum (was Time Warner now Charter Communications). They too have proved they can't make a bullet-proof DVR.
I had to replace my original TiVo to be able to use a USB device to demultiplex the channels. It works okay, not as clean as the original, can't jump 30 seconds anymore, and it looses connection with the demultiplexer regularly and things need rebooted.
Ruko was good to me for a while. With the regular updates by YouTube and other apps it also goes wonky and reboots. It has a watchdog so when it locks up it reboots itself.
Spectrum is offering a Cloud DVR. Based on the repsonce time of their other OnDemand services pausing and rewinding will be laggy.
Oh, and get off my lawn.
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Every time I turn around the self-serve gas pump has another delay to overcome. Having to leave my credit card in the machine while it collects my PIN, suffering through sales pitches just to decline extra items...it never gets better. And then there's the ridiculously long printed receipt I want to shorten that's also taking longer than ever to start printing. When it's -25C and windy the last thing I want to do is stand and wait for yet another button press. All of that could have been going on while I'm refueling.
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so this!
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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Well, you can certainly tell your Canadian...."standing around at -25C", although I have yet to see advertisements (aside from car washes) in Ontario. In the US, yeah, painful.
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Guilty as charged, but not sorry. (Ironic, eh?  )
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A couple of years ago I was sitting in at a red light, along with several other vehicles. There was no cross traffic, and I remember thinking at the time "This is (whatever year it was). Why don't we have traffic lights that manage traffic flow based on actual traffic, rather than an 'optimal' timing?" Seems like things have only become worse with the new "optimal" timing being longer cycles. Sigh.
Still, I suppose when autonomous vehicles reach a certain level, traffic lights will be fazed out, almost completely.
Keep Calm and Carry On
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And what would be the fun of an autonomous motorcycle?? There's no way I'd get a motorcycle that's going to do the driving for me. Until I moved north (where they have snow!) I put more miles on my motorcycle than I put on my car.
I do agree that whoever does the traffic flow in some of the smaller towns (like Temecula, CA!) don't have a clue.
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I agree about lights but having spent time in a related business and having some interactions with transportation departments, there are a few reasons for it.
Us humans have an expectation of behavior for signals. It can actually mess people up if they work purely based on traffic flow. Second, good systems require remote actuators that "read" the traffic at a greater distance.
Both systems do exist, and have for a while, but they were really pricey back in the day. I don't think they should be too pricey now with tech improvements. Still don't see them used as much as I'd like.
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If there was a use for AI it would be traffic. Don't make traffic lights smart. Make them able to detect how many cars are waiting in which lanes. They would then network with other nearby lights to control traffic flow via AI in some data center. The lights would fall back to timed cycles when the network goes down.
I will not see it anytime soon.
- Pete
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I have been working on and off on such that can be folded into something like a large book, still has 88 keys, and feels and sounds like a real piano. When I tell my wife that I am going to work on it when I retire, she laughs.
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1) WEB site development software
2) Factory automation.
3) Electronic voting systems.
4) ATM's
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CAD workstations, computer graphics devices
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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The controls for my pool, especially the lights. They can do most any color but orange is not an option and I want to fix that.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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Ooh. I didn't even think of this one. My pool controls lose connectivity all the time. I would love to do something with them!
Pete McNamee
"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing."
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Various Communication needs for various kinds of disabilities.
Communication devices for nonverbal folks are crazy expensive, but not particularly clever. Innovations made in the 90's were locked up by patent holders, and trolls. Development is cosmetic now, not innovative. So when people show any sign of considering innovations they are in the shadow of litigation threats.
From another angle, but similar problem : I volunteer for a group that involves a variety of disabled. What gets to my heart the most is when there is a person who is otherwise mentally fit - but held back because simple communication is a task.
Those are the thinks that I'd rather work on full time.
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so I can remove all the crap making it take 20 seconds to just switch on.
Netflix app crashing a box, I get. But if TV display using same OS/ram and requires whole TV to reboot, a bad design indeed. Hell ill moan about my pc monitor as well. 6 seconds turn on, WHAT.
Physical tactile buttons everywhere. Power FRICKIGN buttons add ons as well.
Fridge, only microchip im expecting is temperature sensor and cut off, oh wait mechanical versions of these work far better.
HVAC, im poor UK person, we not knows what this is 
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It was made by the cream of the crop sw engineers.
1. The least important thing on the small screen is the name of the currently played file
2a. Moving up and down in the menu system? Left/right arrows, of course!
2b. Escape key? Up arrow, of course!
3. Order of files in a folder? Upload time, of course!
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Find a player that supports Rockbox - Free Music Player Firmware[^] and never suffer again!
Luca
The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance. -- Wing Commander IV
En Það Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað, Er Nýr Dagur.
(But the best thing God has created, is a New Day.)
-- Sigur Ròs - Viðrar vel til loftárása
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* Write a driver for my scanner that only ran on XP so that it runs on Linux.
* Make ANY tool or program I am using run on Linux.
* SAP -- the chaotic GUI of this piece of SW is making me mad.
* Windows -- make it slim and simply working without the need to buy a new computer together with all the peripherals with each new version; make it even more safe to use; improve the garbage collection of the system itself (so that it's not inflating to tens of GB just because of the updates); remove that stupid file sorting method from the system.
* Create a piece of SW to track down all those SPAM nonsense and those ransomware guys so their websites are put offline by the executives and the guys themselves are locked away for a long time.
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SAP is chaotic by design.
About a decade ago, someone pretty high up the chain, who was a couple of months away from retirement, started to do odd jobs in his fade out period. One of those jobs was in-school recruitments.
Having had no specific training for the role, he opted to simply explain how they make money, in broad strokes.
The highlights were:
- make sure the stack, from DB and up, is not trivial to work with; training needs to be essential AND cost-prohibitive.
- make sure none of your components interop with anything, so you lock-in your customers from the start.
- the point is not to sell software, but to make the customer dependent on your services, indefinitely, without being able to afford in-house specialists.
- litigate any threats to profit.
- we like money, so come work for us if you like money.
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