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Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

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Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#371

Post by api »

mattlondon wrote: post #234

My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. People see their 5 year old using an iPad and the knee-jerk cliche thought/assumption us the classic "oh wow these kids just get technology!" (recall all the "I need my kid to program the VCR" type stuff from the 80s/90s - it is the same thing of older people assu…

Same thing happened with cars. Nobody knows how to work on them anymore because they became easier to use and more reliable.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#373

Post by KozmoNau7 »

joe-collins wrote: post #345
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ditched streaming services a while ago, because I was fed up with the lousy curation of their catalogues and the tendency for albums to randomly disappear and reappear based on licensing disagreements. Now I'm back to a ~25K track FLAC library and a small collection of LPs for fun. It's backed up to a NAS, to a cloud storage account and to a portable drive I keep in my locker at work. Nobody gets to take the music…

I've moved to purchasing music only on Bandcamp, where I get the option of downloading every purchase in the format of my choice (and offers artists an 85/15 profit split!). And, after one adverse incident, I am very diligent about exercising that download option. Turns out, artists can withdraw themselves and their music from the platform at any time, which leaves customers without access... mostly. For some reason,…

I do the same thing, download as FLAC and store locally.

There are two options for artists/labels on Bandcamp if they want to remove an album from sale, for whatever reason.

One is to deactivate the album, which removes it from public view, but keeps it in the backend, so people who bought it still have it in their collections.

The other is the "nuclear option" of completely deleting the album everywhere, which also takes it away from the people who bought it.

While I can understand why they need to have the latter option, probably for legal reasons, I do find it troubling that something I've bought can just be arbitrarily taken away from me.

It really should be impossible to completely delete content from Bandcamp, without contacting them first. It should not be an option directly in the artist/label control panel.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#375

Post by greggman2 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #362
greggman2 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you prove that or is it just another conspiracy theory?

They fingerprint your browser, IP address and usage history. I can bring back my entire YouTube recommendations (many completely unrelated subjects) even in a private browsing window by watching just one or two videos (I guess it isn't sure at first whether I'm the same person or someone else, but one or two videos, combined with IP address is enough for them to be reasonably confident it's me and bring back my previ…

I'm not using the same IP address nor the same browser. I've never seen my recommendations being remotely similar. When I view logged out via another browser in private mode all I get are the generic "popular in your region" videos.

I also never notice the videos I'm watching logged out affecting my recommendations when logged in. That doesn't mean I'm not being tracked but without actual proof I'll continue to consider it mostly a conspiracy theory.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#376

Post by FDSGSG »

jaclaz wrote: post #310
FDSGSG wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are exceptions to this though. If you're driving through Europe at night you can easily spend most of your trip on highways safely going 180kmh or faster, saving you many hours on longer trips.

By Europe you are meaning Germany only, I believe, in most other European countries there is a speed limit of 130 km/h or 140 km/h, day or night doesn't matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_by_country

Oh, I just ignore the speed limits when there's no traffic. With Waze and laserlicht I've never got a speeding ticket.

If you're driving through France or Spain after 1 AM you'll see see that everyone else tends to be speeding too.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#377

Post by drbrtsn »

Terretta wrote: post #319
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Being able to use a keyboard or a mouse is different. By comparison, is not being able to drive a car. I sure know nothing about engine but can drive. A computer illiterate needs the minimum of being able to maneuver it. Files might disappear, they are an abstraction after all.

Surely “mouse” is not a particularly modern artifact. Remember Scotty from Star Trek trying to talk into one? Mouse was because you couldn’t manipulate directly, iPad you can. Keyboard is because you can’t talk to it. But now one can. As for not driving a car... why would you need to know how once it can drive itself better? The car’s purpose is to get you from A to B, not to be driven. Clearly we are on an appliance…

Some skills require a working knowledge. Race car driving. Off roading . Driving rescue vehicles etc. these are all skills where simply getting from point A to B is insufficient. Also, some skills once in decline do make a comeback. Beekeeping, soap, candle making find a niche in a “craft” market because people value quality. Just a thought.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#378

Post by danbolt »

More and more video games require an internet connection and server to be playable. They can't be archived or revisited in the same way that an old Nintendo ROM can be. When World of Warcraft rereleased their "classic" version, there was a lot of dialogue of what that classic experience was and what warranted revising.

How could a computer game historian play 2009's Farmville in 2109?

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#379

Post by Breza »

banmeagaindan2 wrote: post #358
siruncledrew wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest related instance I've encountered was: > at work with a 20 year old intern in the stock room > clock on the wall above the door > intern asks "Hey, do you know what time it is?" > I look at the clock and say, "5:30pm" > intern says "Thanks, my phone was dead" I was in shock for the rest of the day a person less than a decade younger than me doesn't know how to read an analog clock.

Somebody with a wristwatch can develop a superior sense of timing when working. It is quick and distraction free. Wristwatches are underrated. In the trades a $20 watch could pay you $x000 a year if it saved some minutes each day.

In EMT training, they had to repeatedly tell us all to get watches with a second hand. It felt like the stone ages.

Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?

#380

Post by delogan »

traverseda wrote: post #342
degenerate wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if... shiny new technology can't solve the human condition. Have you tried turning it off, and on again?

I mean we've had the technology to solve the human condition since what, the 40s?

now I’m curious
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