Gwern wrote a post about his ordinary life improvements in 2018. I feel like now is a good time to write a follow-up.

Obviously, we’re different people who live in different places and have different habits. What’s better, people in comments live in other places, and have other habits and hobbies and I hope would bring 10x of what I can think about.

So, for me, compared to 2018,

• Laptops are fast and live all day.
• Smartphones live two days on one charge.
• Noise cancelling headphones are great.
• Dishwasher and robot vacuum remain the best quality of life improvements for home. Both became a lot better but not necessarily cheaper.
• Washing machines with dryers slowly improve.
• Air conditioners got better and quieter.
• Air purifiers and humidifiers are affordable and save a lot of annoyance during winters.
• International shipping is mostly sorted. I live in Serbia and can order almost anything I want.
• Map apps mostly know about public transport, taxi apps exist almost everywhere.
• Neural networks are actually helpful (sometimes).
• Teeth aligners (as in invisalign) are affordable and a lot less annoying than braces. Probably made many people fix their teeth and learn the hygienic routine and go for checkups regularly.
• From what I can tell, other dentist devices are better, cheaper, and more compact than before.
• Specialty coffee is everywhere. I guess people learned to grow and transport it, and there is enough demand for it too. You can also get yourself a grinder and an expresso machine for $500 combined and get decent coffee at home. You can order coffee too if you don’t have a coffeeshop nearby.
• It’s easy to rent a car with automatic transmission and a rear camera for parking even in Serbia.
• Hair transplantation is affordable and not risky.
• Eye surgery is affordable and not risky.
• Laser epilation is not new but I guess more affordable too. Electrology aka permanent very painful hair removal exists.
• USB-C is everywhere, for all the devices. Even scales, even trimmers, even water picks.
• Automatic passport control gates are increasingly common, I guess one of the consequences of widespread biometric passports. Another consequence of that is the ability to scan that NFC chip in your passport with your phone and use the result as an identity confirmation. Some e-gov apps already do that.
• Your local grocery shop is probably redesigned to look much better.
• Serbia got a fast cheap reliable frequent train between Belgrade and Novi Sad, now extended to Subotica, hopefully next year extended to Budapest. Bus / tram are synchronised with train in all those cities.
• Belgrade is having a boom of cafes and restaurants and coffeeshops and bakeries.
• Ikea + flea markets sorted most of the furniture and home decoration. Probably happened before 2018 generally but not for me.
• Local-first apps fade and telegram bots allowed simpler apps where you can skip doing big chunks of work yet don’t compromise on UX. Vibe coding is attacking the problem from another angle.
• Remote work is not exotic anymore.
• Psychologists are not exotic anymore.
• Meditation doesn’t have to come with the rest of the religion.
• Videocalls became good. Helps at work and to call parents.
• Self-service cachiers are good and fast and work every time and are everywhere. Made your next door shopping so much faster.
• All things cameras became better and more affordable. Cameras themselves, tripods, mounts, lights, processing programs.
• Figma is a web design tool a programmer can use, and a wannabe designer can start with. I don’t even know what people used before that but it was a lot scarier to try.
• Spaced repetition got even better.
• SWIFT money transfers suddenly started to be processed within a day. I’d love to hear a story behind that.
• Some sort of the small internet revival is happening vs people spending their time exclusively in 5-ish social networks. People again started having their blogs and forums and clubs and art projects on their websites, and other people find them and make their newsletters and it’s all so cute and human and brings me joy and will to make something myself.

Sidenote: One of the popular comments on hackernews was that more important things were getting worse. I agree, and some of the important things are still getting worse and for me personally 2019 was the best year so far. That’s fine, more important things will recover, and these tiny everyday conveniences will stay and improve further. Cheers.

This post on hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44089031