Coming next is AI and most people's jobs will go bye-bye. Elon Musk has already talked about how a national minimum living wage will have to be implemented because so many people will be out of work.

How many jobs is Watson alone doing? And it's just an expert system; not true AI. Same with self driving cars....don't go to truck driving school because in 5-8 years you won't have a job.

Please stop

Short answer: not many yet. Longer answer: Watson is more marketing than reality at this time but that will change. Watson is not currently a product but is instead an analytical workbench that is the front end for highly tailored services engagements delivered by IBM to make it do this analytical wizardry.

All that being said your thesis is correct in that automation is going to fundamentally change our society, like it does every generation. This change this time is going to be pretty profound and impact the lesser educated and those with tasks that can be automated. I do not pretend to have answers and hope that those that are in a position do can come up with things to help the American population. I see the changes that are even impacting my industry (high tech sales) and am contemplating how I stay ahead of this wave. Irrespective of politics, I hope that we can invest in infrastructure and the retooling of our educational system so that we can give people good paying jobs and develop applicable job skills in our citizenry.

Finally up to speed on this thread....Stern is in trouble, but more importantly......Millinnials who are slow....think like Gen X peeps.

Got it.

You forgot everyone is going to lose their jobs and society is turning to a life like that in the movie Idiocracy. Buy Starbucks stock now!

idiocracy-poster (resized).jpg

I like money, let's go find a Starbucks.

I think the name of that company will be... Multimorphic. Not that they are going to produce thousands and thousands of games, but that platform seems to have a lot of potential.

Screenshot_20170402-124358 (resized).png

Blech...What is that, the "C" team?

You forgot the latest, greatest MAN BUN! Better known by the Gen X as the bob knob.

So was this an April fool's thread??

I usually just put Saran wrap over the toilet

No it was not. OP is trying to rid himself of the drama. Which wound be a shame - thread of the week so far

http://pinballmakers.com/

As a Gen-X, who sits forgotten and quiet between two self-centred, egotistical generations, I guess I'd rather "do" than just talk about it. So, there's your homebrew link.

Strange that it's the thread with the most ignored user comment messages for me

I don't know if Stern goes to bankruptcy but financial people get the lead in this company and money like unique industrial objective is dangerous in long term even if competition is weak currently. Quality (playfield) and creativity lowering, price increasing, some remade to earn easy money, are some telling signs.
But Competition is organized, they are more numerous and all the money they earn doesn't go in Stern pocket.

Lesson from this thread: If you want a thread with awesome responses, make sure to use a title that riles people up.

You could've learned that lesson on 4chan

Just a final thought for interested parties.

If there was another actual "major war", pinball would be significantly effected both in materials and construction. Even potential apportionment and redirection of manufacturers for war support as has occurred in the past. It might even stop. Parts suppliers are also effected. Afterwords, you see a return of the industry.
It is cyclic.

Think about it.
It is one of the most exciting things about pinball.
People repeatedly have kept saying it was "dead" over the past 60 years alone, but it keeps coming back reinventing itself for new generations?
Intriguing, if you watch it long enough.
I personally have heard the following quote quite few times since the 1980s, "Wow, when did they start making these things for real?"

Historically pinball sales, if available, generally do poorly during extended war periods (the TFGW was very short but provided economic benefits), even though there is growth for GNPs. This does occur every 10-15 years in world history.
Stick around and watch what happens, watch political developments, global crisis, economy changes as it affects this particular niche entertainment industry.

However, In order for major war impacts to occur in full bloom in effecting the United States and the pinball industry, it would have to be conventional, which is today is quite rare, as no one wants the long term collateral impacts.

What really is the largest area hurting the pinball industry more than any other right now?
Manufacturers failing to fulfill responsibilities, expectations, or features and new potential owners that trust them exclusively on their word.

Or if you want >75 downvotes on a single post.

Was it Frax that made that Pinside dick of the day shirt?
Just wondering if that's available in a week--month--year dry erase/velcro model.

I up voted you just because you typed out eh. Made me chuckle.

I forgot about the man bun. If you wear one, are you for or against Stearn?

Hilton wanna make 10 easy dollars for 1 hour of your time to be on a talk radio show?

Well shit, I messed up then.

Sounds like the P3, no?

New video posted by Stern, they look very busy. could do with more cabinets, assembled playfield lying around all over the place.

The P-Roc and P3-Roc hardware are really as close as you're going to get to that, for now anyways. The P3 platform with customizable slide-in assemblies and a rear module that you can customize on a work bench, plus an open software developer kit sounds pretty close to what you're asking for as well, or at least the closest that actually exists at this time. In the future, who knows?

USB sounds friendly but realistically it probably isn't going to work in an environment with any kind of EM interference and suffers from latency and addressing issues. 10 or 20 USB cables going back to some kind of hub sounds no bueno to me. No matter what you do you're also still going to need to deal with power supplies and driver circuits too, so you're back to these "analog wires".

Your prices are crazy low!!!
Even a cardboard pinball DIY starts at $50: http://makezine.com/2016/02/09/building-pinbox-3000-cardboard-pinball-machine/

USB 3.0 supplies maximum 900 milliamps (.9A)per port. Flipper drive power for one flipper is usually 4A+ at 40-50V. Not even the same ballpark.

Even with a separate power supply, USB does not work reliably in environments with fluctuating magnetic fields (such as inside pinball machines).

I agree that it's a cool idea, it'd be awesome to see a plug-and-play platform.

Understand where you are coming from but as we have seen with JPOP, SKIT-B, and every other company out there, building pinball is hard. Very hard. You have physics, physical construction, wiring, logic programming, safety, etc to all accommodate for. Most people would not have the ability to do even a little bit of what is involved and those that do (Rosh, guy that build Total Annihilation), etc have spent tons of money and time building these things. i don't think you will ever get to the point where you can grab pieces and put them together like "little bits" and some of the other plug and play modules out there.

Dedicated wiring for things like cars, boats, and aircraft, all of which have fluctuating magnetic fields.

I think we are way off topic on this....