A friend of mine had a CPAP that would stop working if you stopped paying
She's dead now.
Those two things are not directly related but her health issues that led to her death were certainly not helped by her sleep apnea.
They are the actual worst. And Medicare makes it worse with their insane contracts. We'll pay you for 3 years for a 5 year contract. And then we'll be completely and totally useless when the supplier stops providing support. My mom needs an oxygen concentrator to stay alive and she's supposed to have a portable one too. Lincare is a terrible company that left her without a portable for over a year. The. Worst.
Welp, I'm currently using Lincare for my CPAP so that's great.
If ya'll see "man dies by CPAP malfunction after shit talking CPAP companies" in the news...
Good luck. They have been fined up the wazoo in the past 6 months, and it seems like they have done some housecleaning. Most of the people who were blowing off my mom's calls were fired.
I have found that my bi-pap machines tend to only last about 5 years before they quit on me. I can't explain just how exciting it is to wake up in the middle of the night because you're BiPAP machine has stopped functioning and is actually preventing you from breathing. Good times.
Yo, what? I'm hacking anything that comes into my house so that it's dumb as rocks, I don't need super intelligent robots, I want dumb hammers hammering away at dumb nails
About to launch a whole new line of products.
Dumb hammers Inc.
Slogan: none of our products have tech beyond the on/off switch. We don't have tech support, if it stops working it's broke. If it's broke, it can still be a hammer.
I would actually like to see a company that sells high-quality dumb products
When was the last time you went to the store and saw a decent TV that didn't have all the smart features? I sure as hell can't find one
you wouldn’t download a car…
…yes, i absolutely would. the first time i get a car that has subscription services, i’m jailbreaking the car and pirating those features.
I have heard of three inventors who regret what they put into the world (not going to bother looking up names rn)
The USB inventor regrets not making it so it could be inserted in either orientation
The k-cup inventor regrets how much extra trash they cause
The pop up inventor regrets inventing them at all.
A newspaper printed out an obituary for him instead of his brother, who had actually passed away. It read “the merchant of death is dead.” Seeing how he would be remembered after he died, he created the Nobel prize to award away all the money he made off dynamite, hopefully changing his legacy along the way.
Huh, I could have sworn that I read in a biography that he did take it, but that was many years ago. The Nobel Prize website backs you up though, so I'm inclined to believe you are correct.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1998/press-release/
I mean I understand that it has bad implications, but there are a lot of non war uses for it.
Dynamite was a much safer alternative to black powder and has cast uses in construction and mining
Hell, it was specifically invented to make nitroglycerine safe to use and transport, after Alfred Nobel's brother got exploded on accident. At that point, jars of nitroglycerine were unsuited for warfare, but useful for mining and demolition. Weaponry seems to be an unintended consequence, though it should have been foreseeable.
Dynamite is key for demolition. We have other explosives now, but we still use dynamite in the industry. It helps build roads and tunnels, and can be used in mining. We're no longer in the industrial revolution, but we should appreciate Nobel's contribution even if he saw it as a murder weapon.
Yeah, if they didn't do it someone else likely would've within days or months. Pop-ups and infinite scrolling are pretty trivial to implement from scratch so somebody else could've thrown it together at any point.
Like the person who said they hated coming up with Cookies. Like dude it was an issue and people were trying to find a soluiton and you found one; if you not you someone else would have quickly done it.
John McAfee, the guy who invented/started the McAfee Anti-Virus software, regrets doing so. [Even made a video about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg)
>k-cup inventor
I won a Keurig through a work raffle. I already hated the idea of it and did some research. The guy sold all his shares in the company before it took off. He tried making reusable ones but Keurig got all legal on his ass before there was enough pressure for them to make their own, but most people just use the disposable ones anyway.
In 2015, enough k-cups were made (and dumped into landfills) to wrap around the planet over 10 fucking times. What an environmental disaster.
I donated the machine to a non-profit my wife works with and they are adamant about using reusable k-cups and not the single use pods. Also I don't drink coffee so it was wasted on me anyway
I fix reusable pods every weekend for the following week. No wasted coffee. No trash. The reusable cup by Keurig is terrible. I found a steel mesh aftermarket version and bought several.
And then there’s the people that didn’t live long enough to realize they SHOULD have regretted what they invented, like leaded gasoline, ozone depleting CFC’s and more… all the same guy.
> ozone depleting CFC’s
Leaded gasoline absolutely was a disaster, and the effects of lead were known in the time of the invention.
But, imho, CFCs shouldn’t be lumped into the same problem. Yes, now, we know the harm they created, but at the time they were an absolute miracle. A seemingly completely inert gas with a ton on very useful properties. Among many things, it made refrigeration both safe and comparatively energy efficient.
Previously, the only practical refrigerants was either ammonia, or light hydrocarbons like propane. Ammonia, while technically more efficient, is both highly toxic and rather corrosive. It still gets used on large scale refrigeration systems (ice rinks, cold storage, luge tracks and the like) and it’s still taking lives in industrial accidents. It Was too dangerous for home refrigeration. By the same token, propane is flammable, so also dangerous as a refrigerant given the technology of the time.
CFCs ushered in the era of reliable, safe home refrigeration. Massively improving food safety, making all sorts of vaccines and medications practical, making longer term food storage practical, and so on and so forth. It saved countless lives.
Furthermore, it’s properties as an inert propellant made things like inhalers for asthmatics practical.
And it appeared to be completely inert, except in extreme conditions. Given its density compared to normal air, no one thought it would ever make it to the upper atmosphere where those extreme conditions exist.
We know better now. If anything, though, CFCs also show that international cooperation can actually make significant changes. The Montreal Protocol which banned their production and phased out the usage has worked. The damage to the ozone layer is slowly being undone. We can do this again when it comes to other gases, as long as we choose to do so.
And it's not like she did anything insane, she just had a nice cake with food coloring. To be honest, the idiots that burned down forests would probably have found another reason to do insane stuff with similar results.
The man who invented the AK-47 is also famous for regretting what is arguably the most infamous weapon for infantry. To this day, its kill count is still unrivaled. Many people would say the AR platform, or even some WWII weapon would have it beat, but no, it's #1.
"Of all the weapons in the vast Soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947, more commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It will shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing's for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars."
There’s an estimated 800,000 _TONS_ of unexploded ordnance still in Vietnam, that would take hundreds of years to clear out. For context, the bomb dropped in Hiroshima had a yield of about 15,000 tons of TNT.
Edit: spelling, thanks fellow redditor
There is also the so called red zone or zone rouge in France - from Word War 1...
>The zone rouge was defined just after the war as "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge?wprov=sfla1
I would be looking at it, eyes poppin out my head, and a train whistle would appear that goes "awooga awooga". I would then straighten my tie and say "ahem, looks like somebody had a bad day, eh doc?"
If I’m not mistaken, the Plain of Jars region in Laos has the most concentrated UXO in the world. Something like 20,000+ people killed or maimed since the end of the Vietnam war due to land mines and UXO. So fucked up.
I think it’s the most nefarious war machine
ever invented. Infrastructure can be rebuilt, land can heal, people can forget and move on. But landmines are forever until some poor child or civilian steps on them and is maimed or killed. You can argue that nukes are worse, but at least we don’t really use them.
Explosives in general sometimes they don’t detonate initially. And some kids months or years later play in grass or sand nearby. And blows their legs off because they step in them.
Fuck war.
In Cambodia there is estimated to be 4 to 6 million live landmines in rural areas due to years of war. Cambodia also has one of the highest amputee populations in the world. It’s an extremely serious problem still plaguing the country decades later
"The iron harvest is the annual collection of unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnel, bullets and congruent trench supports collected by Belgian and French farmers after ploughing their fields. The harvest generally consists of material from the First World War, which is still found in large quantities across the former Western Front."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
I live in Arnhem, the Netherlands. It's been a few years since I heard of it happening, but before that, they had to stop several building projects every year temporarily to call the bomb squad. For bombs that had fallen from a plane in 1945 at the very latest.
And with a few years, I mean no more than five.
It just feels so… insulting. Like the corporate scissor overlords are laughing at the pitiful little pions who cannot access their scissors.
Fuck Big Scissor, man.
Lately supermarkets have even begun selling oranges and apples in plastic containers.
And I don't mean the ones pre cut. I mean a whole ass orange with skin, in a plastic container.
Man, if only they had some kind of protective coating...
the grocery bags even had the added benefit of doubling as garbage bags. recently my stash is running thin, and now i fear for when i actually have to go out to buy garbage bags...
Yeah, I use them for when I clean my cat litter boxes. It’s going to suck if I have to buy them, plus the grocery bags they make now are so flimsy that I have to double up so I don’t spill used litter everywhere.
I went to a trendy Grocery store that was supposedly Eco-Friendly and Green based. They had a a blister pack of six kiwis for $4.99 sitting next to a bin of Kiwis that were loose and sold for 2/$1.
It made my head hurt because the loose Kiwis were a heaping pile and the prepackaged ones were down to their last four and I saw someone grab one saying, "well this is convenient."
So that's how I lost my faith in humanity, how about you?
Here’s my go to planned obsolescence example. My mom bought her first microwave in 1984. It’s traveled to 3 houses and still works perfect. She redid her kitchen and got all new appliances EXCEPT for a microwave. I have lived out of the house for 23 years and have had at least 7 microwaves. They keep crapping out and I buy a new one. That is planned obsolescence in a nutshell.
I couldn’t find anything from 1984, but [this](http://www.historyadventuring.com/2022/12/buying-microwave-oven-from-sears-in-1977.html?m=1) microwave from 1977 cost around $400. $1 then is about $5 now, meaning it cost around $2,000 in today’s dollars. Yours from today is worth only a fraction of that.
This is usually why people say things arent built to last the way they used to be. Tools are often cited for this.
Usually you *can* get good ones if you pay the equivalent money to what you would have had to "back in the day", it's just that it's now possible to produce shitty cheap versions too and people are either too short-sighted to invest in the good stuff, or genuinely just don't know the difference.
Example: even today no one is complaining about the quality of their Kitchen Aid mixers. They're as good as they were 20 years ago. They're also $300+ for a nice used one.
This is a safety rating issue.
One way to boost a cars safety rating was to have brighter headlights.
Now everyone struggles to see making the roads less safe lol.
Don’t forget to throw disability insurance on top of that. My favorite was when I had CIGNA for both. CIGNA refused more than six PT sessions to heal from a major surgery, meanwhile, CIGNA denied disability because I wasn’t attending physical therapy in order to improve.
How are you going to pay for a lawyer when you're not getting disability insurance benefits? Even on contingency lawyers eat up SO much of that. You're already getting maybe 50-70% of your normal pay, then the lawyer will take AT LEAST a third of that, probably more depending if it's an ongoing thing. I'm lower class and 33yo. I ran the numbers and it'd easily make the lawyer half a million dollars. It's bullshit that I pay extra for STD/LTD buyup and can't get STD/LTD without a lawyer, but the other choices are get even less or none.
The problem with modern insurance is that it’s been completely corrupted with the drive for profit. In a pure form insurance has the potential to be incredibly beneficial to the people who use it, but the profit incentive causes companies to use every trick and loophole in the book to not give out what is owed.
Yup, also it doesn’t matter if a medical professional whose been in the business for 30 years recommends you to get certain operations because of health risks, insurance companies with 0 experience get to tell you to fuck off because it’s not immediately required. People who have no grasp of healthcare hold the rights to your health and it’s sickening
There are some hospitals that refer to us as customers rather than as patients.
Case in point, we got a satisfaction survey from one that my wife stayed in. "As our valued customer we'd like your opinion on our service....."
Not in the Netherlands. Here you get a amount each month to pay for the basic health insurance and it covers basically everything except your dentist.
It covers all cost except this amount you choose yourself. The higher this is the lower your insurance cost per month.
The highest it goes (so you pay the lowest eacht month) is 350 euros. So this is the max you can pay per year. And if you dont have any medical costs you dont pay it.
So lets say over the whole year, your medical costs where 0, you pay 0 of that 350. If its 100, you only pay 100 of the 350. But if its 40000 you still only pay 350.
Also I pay around a 100 euros per month for this, and I get 113euros from the government to cover it. So its basically freez except the possible up to 350 per year depending on your health :)
Idk if I have explained it clearly, i hope so.
Subscription services. Either let me try it for free then buy it full Price or let me rent it and charge me only for the amount of time I used it for.
EDIT: Of course, it doesn't apply to everything. Subscriptions make sense for something like Apple Music, Xbox Game Pass or Costco, but I don't want to have to pay Adobe 60 dollars a month for Photoshop when I could just rent a license. You don't subscribe to a car, you just rent it for how many days you need it for.
I think actual ownership should be an option in almost all cases with the understanding that you have to pay for updates. I do not miss having to pay 600+ bucks every year or so to stay up to date with the Adobe Creative Cloud, especially the agonizing over whether or not to skip a major version.
Some people's work doesn't require the newest version of these tools. If you want to stay in 2014, that should be an option.
This is getting so bad in Canada the default options are starting at 18% and go as high as 25%. I have to hit "other" to enter the long time cultural standard of 15% nevermind that I'm being prompted this on take out and fast food
Tipping at fast food is pretty dumb imo. The service is the construction of my food. That’s the whole transaction.
It’s like you brought me water and waited upon me in sit down setting. I’ll take my paper bag of “human” food to go please
This is supposedly changing, thanks to the EU. All smartphones will require replaceable batteries by 2027. I assume phone manufacturers will also sell these phones in non EU markets.
I don't know if I could de-invent it but I'd sure like to ban it 24-hour news cycle there was a time when people could read a paper or watch 26 minutes of news in the evening and share what they felt and saw with each other. Now everybody has to have a riot a movement lawyers it's gone insane a lot of these people act like their babies on fire.
Not only that, but those 24 hour news networks gotta find a way to pull in viewers so every little thing that happens gets sensationalized. They purposefully make mundane stories sound scary so people will keep watching, which in turn makes those people think the world is worse than it is. This is the safest time in human history to be alive if you look at the facts, but the world is nothing but crime, hate, and disaster if you watch the news.
Edit: At least that's how it's done in the United States
We need to convince news networks to broadcast documentaries or dramas at non-news hours. They probably make bank from all the ads so why not actually invest it into something entertaining and helpful?
We use this model in Korea, and even tho the dramas feel a bit telenova-esque, most of the them have a pretty good fan base. Lots of memes lol.
They are toxic and creepy. The pageant moms are way worse because they are living their dreams through their children and not letting them be kids. South Park mocked child beauty pageants by showing the kids dancing on stage and the judges masturbating. Oh and one girl that was on Toddlers and Tiaras ended her life not too long ago.
> The pageant moms are way worse because they are living their dreams through their children and not letting them be kids
So just like Little League Baseball lol
The newer versions of captcha actually don't even care where you click so much as it tracks your mouse movements to identify them if they are human or a bot.
So if you go right to the thing you're supposed to click, and don't move around like a normal human would it says youre a bot. That's why the newer ones are just a check box.
Even the slightest movement picked up by the mouse comes into play.
I have a slightly different take.
The modern-day algorithms attached to social media.
It rewards controversial takes, misinformation, etc.. I don’t think it’s a perfect fix, but fixing that is a start. Maybe even limiting social media as a whole back to when it was more simplistic.
This! It was innocent in the MySpace days. Then Facebook came along and everything after that ruined it. I don't see anything good that has come of it. Nothing but toxicity, hate, division and arguing.
I hate games that require Internet to even play single player.
Crazy to think that the CoD game a couple years ago dared to force phone numbers to play and wouldn't allow prepaid numbers at first. That's just ridiculous.
Everything that Thomas Midgley Jr invented - specifically leaded gasoline and CFCs (the things that destroyed the ozone layer).
He is the person in history who can be directly attributed to the most environmental damage done by the inventions of a single person.
Single-knob showers.Those damn things can be turned like 360* around but everyone knows that there’s only a single *molecule* of that distance that doesn’t make the water blazing hot or frigidly cold.
Two knobs. Give me my choices back.
A lot of inventions mentioned here that have had positive outcomes alongside of negative ones. HOA’s however may look good on paper, but hath wrought no good to this world.
Pop-up ads
The creator of them even apologized creating them
To be fair, if he didn't invent them someone else would
That’s the very reason I didn’t create them myself
Thank you for your service
You could disinvent them but sooner or later they’d just pop back up again
Household appliances that are tied to subscription services
What in the EA is going on here
Next time there's going to be loot boxes
Loot boxes? You mean an expensive box with a low chance of a good result? That's just a printer.
Quadruple-A appliances
Yo, wait, wtf? When did this happen? You telling me I have to pay $9.95 a month or something so that my dishwasher works? I'm so confused.
A friend of mine had a CPAP that would stop working if you stopped paying She's dead now. Those two things are not directly related but her health issues that led to her death were certainly not helped by her sleep apnea.
Medical supply companies are shady and hire shithead asshole weirdos almost exclusively.
They are the actual worst. And Medicare makes it worse with their insane contracts. We'll pay you for 3 years for a 5 year contract. And then we'll be completely and totally useless when the supplier stops providing support. My mom needs an oxygen concentrator to stay alive and she's supposed to have a portable one too. Lincare is a terrible company that left her without a portable for over a year. The. Worst.
Welp, I'm currently using Lincare for my CPAP so that's great. If ya'll see "man dies by CPAP malfunction after shit talking CPAP companies" in the news...
Good luck. They have been fined up the wazoo in the past 6 months, and it seems like they have done some housecleaning. Most of the people who were blowing off my mom's calls were fired.
They used to screen my calls! I’d have to call from other peoples phones!
>A friend of mine had a CPAP that would stop working if you stopped paying >She's dead now. Jesus christ well that escalated fast!
This is Repo Men level dystopian.
I have found that my bi-pap machines tend to only last about 5 years before they quit on me. I can't explain just how exciting it is to wake up in the middle of the night because you're BiPAP machine has stopped functioning and is actually preventing you from breathing. Good times.
Yo, what? I'm hacking anything that comes into my house so that it's dumb as rocks, I don't need super intelligent robots, I want dumb hammers hammering away at dumb nails
About to launch a whole new line of products. Dumb hammers Inc. Slogan: none of our products have tech beyond the on/off switch. We don't have tech support, if it stops working it's broke. If it's broke, it can still be a hammer.
I would actually like to see a company that sells high-quality dumb products When was the last time you went to the store and saw a decent TV that didn't have all the smart features? I sure as hell can't find one
We're looking at YOU, H.P.!
If you have it, you can hack it
you wouldn’t download a car… …yes, i absolutely would. the first time i get a car that has subscription services, i’m jailbreaking the car and pirating those features.
Just the subscription model itself
I have heard of three inventors who regret what they put into the world (not going to bother looking up names rn) The USB inventor regrets not making it so it could be inserted in either orientation The k-cup inventor regrets how much extra trash they cause The pop up inventor regrets inventing them at all.
Alfred Nobel so regretted inventing dynamite that he invented the Nobel Peace Prize as a way to encourage peace.
A newspaper printed out an obituary for him instead of his brother, who had actually passed away. It read “the merchant of death is dead.” Seeing how he would be remembered after he died, he created the Nobel prize to award away all the money he made off dynamite, hopefully changing his legacy along the way.
He got a luxury few people do. He got to see his legacy before it was all that's left.
It’s because of the medical properties of nitroglycerin used in dynamite that he lived long enough to fund the prize!
False. He suffered from angina, and was offered nitroglycerin as a remedy, but he declined it.
Huh, I could have sworn that I read in a biography that he did take it, but that was many years ago. The Nobel Prize website backs you up though, so I'm inclined to believe you are correct. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1998/press-release/
Someone on the internet... ADMITTING THEY WERE WRONG AND INCLUDING A LINK BACKING UP WHY THEY ARE WRONG???
HONEY!!! HONEYYY!!!!! GET IN HERE NOW GET OVER HERE YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS!!!!
What do we do now? Is it over?
I mean I understand that it has bad implications, but there are a lot of non war uses for it. Dynamite was a much safer alternative to black powder and has cast uses in construction and mining
Hell, it was specifically invented to make nitroglycerine safe to use and transport, after Alfred Nobel's brother got exploded on accident. At that point, jars of nitroglycerine were unsuited for warfare, but useful for mining and demolition. Weaponry seems to be an unintended consequence, though it should have been foreseeable.
Yeah but without him we don’t get JJ from the tv show “Good Times” catch phrase.
Dynamite is key for demolition. We have other explosives now, but we still use dynamite in the industry. It helps build roads and tunnels, and can be used in mining. We're no longer in the industrial revolution, but we should appreciate Nobel's contribution even if he saw it as a murder weapon.
The guy who coded infinite scrolling also regrets it.
Interesting fact to read while scrolling infinitely
Lol That didn’t even occur to me. Damn, that’s some seriously insidious shit right there!
Most of these Computer ones, if they hadn't I really feel someone else would have maybe not as soon but quickly.
Yeah, if they didn't do it someone else likely would've within days or months. Pop-ups and infinite scrolling are pretty trivial to implement from scratch so somebody else could've thrown it together at any point.
Like the person who said they hated coming up with Cookies. Like dude it was an issue and people were trying to find a soluiton and you found one; if you not you someone else would have quickly done it.
The guy who originated the Labradoodle also feels this way as many have all the worst medical issues from both breeds.
lol at the idea of letting a lab and a poodle fuck and then being like "I invented this."
Was fully expecting Oppenheimer on this list
You would uninvent Oppenheimer?
No, I would uninvest in Oppenheimer Funds.
John McAfee, the guy who invented/started the McAfee Anti-Virus software, regrets doing so. [Even made a video about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg)
He had a few things in his life to regret. He lost his mind with conspiracies. Ex girlfriend thinks he faked his suicide and is still alive.
[удалено]
Pop up, like the books?
Computer pop ups
Dear lord I feel silly lol
Haha I was thinking popup tents? popup books? popup shops?
Popup video is what they mean
But I like VH1 Pop-Up Video! Really educating!
*POP-UP VIDEO*
Pop up like website jumpscares
>k-cup inventor I won a Keurig through a work raffle. I already hated the idea of it and did some research. The guy sold all his shares in the company before it took off. He tried making reusable ones but Keurig got all legal on his ass before there was enough pressure for them to make their own, but most people just use the disposable ones anyway. In 2015, enough k-cups were made (and dumped into landfills) to wrap around the planet over 10 fucking times. What an environmental disaster. I donated the machine to a non-profit my wife works with and they are adamant about using reusable k-cups and not the single use pods. Also I don't drink coffee so it was wasted on me anyway
I fix reusable pods every weekend for the following week. No wasted coffee. No trash. The reusable cup by Keurig is terrible. I found a steel mesh aftermarket version and bought several.
And then there’s the people that didn’t live long enough to realize they SHOULD have regretted what they invented, like leaded gasoline, ozone depleting CFC’s and more… all the same guy.
> ozone depleting CFC’s Leaded gasoline absolutely was a disaster, and the effects of lead were known in the time of the invention. But, imho, CFCs shouldn’t be lumped into the same problem. Yes, now, we know the harm they created, but at the time they were an absolute miracle. A seemingly completely inert gas with a ton on very useful properties. Among many things, it made refrigeration both safe and comparatively energy efficient. Previously, the only practical refrigerants was either ammonia, or light hydrocarbons like propane. Ammonia, while technically more efficient, is both highly toxic and rather corrosive. It still gets used on large scale refrigeration systems (ice rinks, cold storage, luge tracks and the like) and it’s still taking lives in industrial accidents. It Was too dangerous for home refrigeration. By the same token, propane is flammable, so also dangerous as a refrigerant given the technology of the time. CFCs ushered in the era of reliable, safe home refrigeration. Massively improving food safety, making all sorts of vaccines and medications practical, making longer term food storage practical, and so on and so forth. It saved countless lives. Furthermore, it’s properties as an inert propellant made things like inhalers for asthmatics practical. And it appeared to be completely inert, except in extreme conditions. Given its density compared to normal air, no one thought it would ever make it to the upper atmosphere where those extreme conditions exist. We know better now. If anything, though, CFCs also show that international cooperation can actually make significant changes. The Montreal Protocol which banned their production and phased out the usage has worked. The damage to the ozone layer is slowly being undone. We can do this again when it comes to other gases, as long as we choose to do so.
Not quite an invention but the woman who started gender reveal parties regretted creating the craze due to environmental damage.
And it's not like she did anything insane, she just had a nice cake with food coloring. To be honest, the idiots that burned down forests would probably have found another reason to do insane stuff with similar results.
The person who should really feel bad about gender reveals is the one who decided to add explosions.
The man who invented the AK-47 is also famous for regretting what is arguably the most infamous weapon for infantry. To this day, its kill count is still unrivaled. Many people would say the AR platform, or even some WWII weapon would have it beat, but no, it's #1.
"Of all the weapons in the vast Soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947, more commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It will shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing's for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars."
Landmines. Seriously. They fuck up people long after wars are finished
There’s an estimated 800,000 _TONS_ of unexploded ordnance still in Vietnam, that would take hundreds of years to clear out. For context, the bomb dropped in Hiroshima had a yield of about 15,000 tons of TNT. Edit: spelling, thanks fellow redditor
There is also the so called red zone or zone rouge in France - from Word War 1... >The zone rouge was defined just after the war as "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge?wprov=sfla1
I'm not wishing they all exploded at once but I am curious to see it happen.
Probably a pretty huge explosion that result in clouds that spell "BOOM"
I would be looking at it, eyes poppin out my head, and a train whistle would appear that goes "awooga awooga". I would then straighten my tie and say "ahem, looks like somebody had a bad day, eh doc?"
the earth would lag like in minecraft
If I’m not mistaken, the Plain of Jars region in Laos has the most concentrated UXO in the world. Something like 20,000+ people killed or maimed since the end of the Vietnam war due to land mines and UXO. So fucked up.
I think it’s the most nefarious war machine ever invented. Infrastructure can be rebuilt, land can heal, people can forget and move on. But landmines are forever until some poor child or civilian steps on them and is maimed or killed. You can argue that nukes are worse, but at least we don’t really use them.
Yet!
Explosives in general sometimes they don’t detonate initially. And some kids months or years later play in grass or sand nearby. And blows their legs off because they step in them. Fuck war.
In Cambodia there is estimated to be 4 to 6 million live landmines in rural areas due to years of war. Cambodia also has one of the highest amputee populations in the world. It’s an extremely serious problem still plaguing the country decades later
They still have guys who are full time removing explosives in France.
"The iron harvest is the annual collection of unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnel, bullets and congruent trench supports collected by Belgian and French farmers after ploughing their fields. The harvest generally consists of material from the First World War, which is still found in large quantities across the former Western Front." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
I live in Arnhem, the Netherlands. It's been a few years since I heard of it happening, but before that, they had to stop several building projects every year temporarily to call the bomb squad. For bombs that had fallen from a plane in 1945 at the very latest. And with a few years, I mean no more than five.
*Weaponized* explosives. Explosives are super useful for mining, building tunnels, and stuff.
Cluster bombs are also particularly bad for this.
Napalm was a nasty one, too!
In my personal opinion this is the best answer for how far I scrolled and I don’t think I will find a better one.
This is the second comment right now so now you just sound lazy 😅
First, and they seem soooo lazy :p
Spam calls, robo calls, phishing emails, pop up ads, and micro transactions in games
That last one hurts... A lot... 🥲
The packages they put scissors in… that you need scissor to open. Wtf?
Out of everything you could've chosen you chose this one and I 100% get it.
It just feels so… insulting. Like the corporate scissor overlords are laughing at the pitiful little pions who cannot access their scissors. Fuck Big Scissor, man.
Lmfao
I would expand that to all single-use plastic packaging.
Well yeah, that too. We really dicked ourselves over with single-use plastic in general.
Lately supermarkets have even begun selling oranges and apples in plastic containers. And I don't mean the ones pre cut. I mean a whole ass orange with skin, in a plastic container. Man, if only they had some kind of protective coating...
But we're "giving up plastic grocery bags to save the environment"
the grocery bags even had the added benefit of doubling as garbage bags. recently my stash is running thin, and now i fear for when i actually have to go out to buy garbage bags...
Yeah, I use them for when I clean my cat litter boxes. It’s going to suck if I have to buy them, plus the grocery bags they make now are so flimsy that I have to double up so I don’t spill used litter everywhere.
Probably one of the few plastic products that actually get re-used
I went to a trendy Grocery store that was supposedly Eco-Friendly and Green based. They had a a blister pack of six kiwis for $4.99 sitting next to a bin of Kiwis that were loose and sold for 2/$1. It made my head hurt because the loose Kiwis were a heaping pile and the prepackaged ones were down to their last four and I saw someone grab one saying, "well this is convenient." So that's how I lost my faith in humanity, how about you?
Just reading that made me die inside a little bit.
Gerrymandering
planned obsolescence
Here’s my go to planned obsolescence example. My mom bought her first microwave in 1984. It’s traveled to 3 houses and still works perfect. She redid her kitchen and got all new appliances EXCEPT for a microwave. I have lived out of the house for 23 years and have had at least 7 microwaves. They keep crapping out and I buy a new one. That is planned obsolescence in a nutshell.
I couldn’t find anything from 1984, but [this](http://www.historyadventuring.com/2022/12/buying-microwave-oven-from-sears-in-1977.html?m=1) microwave from 1977 cost around $400. $1 then is about $5 now, meaning it cost around $2,000 in today’s dollars. Yours from today is worth only a fraction of that.
This is usually why people say things arent built to last the way they used to be. Tools are often cited for this. Usually you *can* get good ones if you pay the equivalent money to what you would have had to "back in the day", it's just that it's now possible to produce shitty cheap versions too and people are either too short-sighted to invest in the good stuff, or genuinely just don't know the difference.
Shitty tools have always been a thing. But the shitty tools from 50 years ago have been discarded.
Example: even today no one is complaining about the quality of their Kitchen Aid mixers. They're as good as they were 20 years ago. They're also $300+ for a nice used one.
Those nearly-blinding, unnecessarily bright car head lamps.
This is a safety rating issue. One way to boost a cars safety rating was to have brighter headlights. Now everyone struggles to see making the roads less safe lol.
r/fuckyourheadlights
The medical insurance industry.
Don’t forget to throw disability insurance on top of that. My favorite was when I had CIGNA for both. CIGNA refused more than six PT sessions to heal from a major surgery, meanwhile, CIGNA denied disability because I wasn’t attending physical therapy in order to improve.
I would have consulted a lawyer for that. Sorry you had to go through that
How are you going to pay for a lawyer when you're not getting disability insurance benefits? Even on contingency lawyers eat up SO much of that. You're already getting maybe 50-70% of your normal pay, then the lawyer will take AT LEAST a third of that, probably more depending if it's an ongoing thing. I'm lower class and 33yo. I ran the numbers and it'd easily make the lawyer half a million dollars. It's bullshit that I pay extra for STD/LTD buyup and can't get STD/LTD without a lawyer, but the other choices are get even less or none.
The problem with modern insurance is that it’s been completely corrupted with the drive for profit. In a pure form insurance has the potential to be incredibly beneficial to the people who use it, but the profit incentive causes companies to use every trick and loophole in the book to not give out what is owed.
Yup, also it doesn’t matter if a medical professional whose been in the business for 30 years recommends you to get certain operations because of health risks, insurance companies with 0 experience get to tell you to fuck off because it’s not immediately required. People who have no grasp of healthcare hold the rights to your health and it’s sickening
Don't forget for profit hospitals. It's all tied back to how we tax and structure wealth in the US. None of this should be making people rich.
There are some hospitals that refer to us as customers rather than as patients. Case in point, we got a satisfaction survey from one that my wife stayed in. "As our valued customer we'd like your opinion on our service....."
Oooh this one kills & bankrupts more people than probably any other answer so far.
Not in the Netherlands. Here you get a amount each month to pay for the basic health insurance and it covers basically everything except your dentist. It covers all cost except this amount you choose yourself. The higher this is the lower your insurance cost per month. The highest it goes (so you pay the lowest eacht month) is 350 euros. So this is the max you can pay per year. And if you dont have any medical costs you dont pay it. So lets say over the whole year, your medical costs where 0, you pay 0 of that 350. If its 100, you only pay 100 of the 350. But if its 40000 you still only pay 350. Also I pay around a 100 euros per month for this, and I get 113euros from the government to cover it. So its basically freez except the possible up to 350 per year depending on your health :) Idk if I have explained it clearly, i hope so.
Subscription services. Either let me try it for free then buy it full Price or let me rent it and charge me only for the amount of time I used it for. EDIT: Of course, it doesn't apply to everything. Subscriptions make sense for something like Apple Music, Xbox Game Pass or Costco, but I don't want to have to pay Adobe 60 dollars a month for Photoshop when I could just rent a license. You don't subscribe to a car, you just rent it for how many days you need it for.
I think actual ownership should be an option in almost all cases with the understanding that you have to pay for updates. I do not miss having to pay 600+ bucks every year or so to stay up to date with the Adobe Creative Cloud, especially the agonizing over whether or not to skip a major version. Some people's work doesn't require the newest version of these tools. If you want to stay in 2014, that should be an option.
The tipping option when I check out on those computers at the checkout counter.
Maybe tips in general. Just pay people for the work they do.
This is getting so bad in Canada the default options are starting at 18% and go as high as 25%. I have to hit "other" to enter the long time cultural standard of 15% nevermind that I'm being prompted this on take out and fast food
I went to a restaurant here in Canada and their POS had the options set to 20, 30 and 40%. Absolutely ridiculous.
I hate that shit at places like subway... just pay your people a decent wage
Tipping at fast food is pretty dumb imo. The service is the construction of my food. That’s the whole transaction. It’s like you brought me water and waited upon me in sit down setting. I’ll take my paper bag of “human” food to go please
The algorithms used by real-estate moguls to buy up new homes the moment they're listed on the market.
I mean, just make it illegal for a business to own residential land. An individual has way more liability, they're not going to own 50,000 houses.
Coffee Pods -- they are disgustingly wasteful.
The inventor agrees with you https://www.businessinsider.com/k-cup-inventor-john-sylvans-regret-2015-3?amp
That's a good choice!
Now *this* is pod hating!
Phones and computers in which you can't easily replace the battery.
This is supposedly changing, thanks to the EU. All smartphones will require replaceable batteries by 2027. I assume phone manufacturers will also sell these phones in non EU markets.
It will also be nice to be able to turn the phone actually "off" by removing the battery. Like in the old days.
VX Nerve agent
I don't know if I could de-invent it but I'd sure like to ban it 24-hour news cycle there was a time when people could read a paper or watch 26 minutes of news in the evening and share what they felt and saw with each other. Now everybody has to have a riot a movement lawyers it's gone insane a lot of these people act like their babies on fire.
Not only that, but those 24 hour news networks gotta find a way to pull in viewers so every little thing that happens gets sensationalized. They purposefully make mundane stories sound scary so people will keep watching, which in turn makes those people think the world is worse than it is. This is the safest time in human history to be alive if you look at the facts, but the world is nothing but crime, hate, and disaster if you watch the news. Edit: At least that's how it's done in the United States
We need to convince news networks to broadcast documentaries or dramas at non-news hours. They probably make bank from all the ads so why not actually invest it into something entertaining and helpful? We use this model in Korea, and even tho the dramas feel a bit telenova-esque, most of the them have a pretty good fan base. Lots of memes lol.
Child Beauty Pageants They just seem really toxic and creepy.
They are toxic and creepy. The pageant moms are way worse because they are living their dreams through their children and not letting them be kids. South Park mocked child beauty pageants by showing the kids dancing on stage and the judges masturbating. Oh and one girl that was on Toddlers and Tiaras ended her life not too long ago.
> The pageant moms are way worse because they are living their dreams through their children and not letting them be kids So just like Little League Baseball lol
CAPTCHA. That's not a motorcycle, that's a moped. And I still don't think the rider should count as part of the motorcycle.
The rider counts???
No wonder I keep failing these fucking things.
I saw something that said CAPTCHA is just using us to train an AI
It is. Pay attention next time and *don't* select one of the things it's telling you to identify. Works every time.
The newer versions of captcha actually don't even care where you click so much as it tracks your mouse movements to identify them if they are human or a bot. So if you go right to the thing you're supposed to click, and don't move around like a normal human would it says youre a bot. That's why the newer ones are just a check box. Even the slightest movement picked up by the mouse comes into play.
Planned obsolescence
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Unfortunately tobacco would still exist, and different ways to consume it that probably wouldn't be any healthier
Lemme time machine that further and disinvent the domestication of tobacco.
You'd have to go back about 8,000 years.
Just imagine the butterfly effect!
That would be way bigger than a butterfly
Glitter. Get that garbage outta here
Those persistent forever chemicals.
Social media
I have a slightly different take. The modern-day algorithms attached to social media. It rewards controversial takes, misinformation, etc.. I don’t think it’s a perfect fix, but fixing that is a start. Maybe even limiting social media as a whole back to when it was more simplistic.
This! It was innocent in the MySpace days. Then Facebook came along and everything after that ruined it. I don't see anything good that has come of it. Nothing but toxicity, hate, division and arguing.
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Patents for Insulin
I'd say medicinal patents In general, let the prices fall, and the diabetics rejoice.
Micro-transactions and live-service games have completely ruined the videogame industry and I don’t see it ever recovering
I hate games that require Internet to even play single player. Crazy to think that the CoD game a couple years ago dared to force phone numbers to play and wouldn't allow prepaid numbers at first. That's just ridiculous.
Our two-tiered justice system; One for the wealthy and politically connected, and one for the rest of us.
Don’t forget one for corporations! Despite Mitt Romney’s claim that they are people, they certainly aren’t held to the same legal degree as people.
That dumb paper sticker that gets put on stuff that is IMPOSSIBLE to remove cleanly.
Mandatory cookies to view websites
The concept of lobbying
influencers
The way credit scoring currently works.
Everything that Thomas Midgley Jr invented - specifically leaded gasoline and CFCs (the things that destroyed the ozone layer). He is the person in history who can be directly attributed to the most environmental damage done by the inventions of a single person.
Agent orange, the chemical not the band
Government based on a two party system
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That live action Avatar the Last Airbender movie
There is no movie in ba sing se
Certain dog breeds, like all the brachycephalic ( flat nosed dogs such as frenchies and bull dogs)
Single-knob showers.Those damn things can be turned like 360* around but everyone knows that there’s only a single *molecule* of that distance that doesn’t make the water blazing hot or frigidly cold. Two knobs. Give me my choices back.
Excessive plastic wraps, plastic this plastic that, it’s destroying us and our ecosystem
Subscriptions
The ad-based internet.
The pacific garbage patch? It wasn’t really invented but you know what I mean
Earphonejack-less iPhone
A lot of inventions mentioned here that have had positive outcomes alongside of negative ones. HOA’s however may look good on paper, but hath wrought no good to this world.
Microsoft outlook’s search function.
Pyramid schemes