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Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

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Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#951
post #135

Retina displays. Not sure they were hyped (depends on the definition of hype of course), but I could never set my eyes on regular low DPI displays (e.g. 1080p at 27’’) again, ever, after working with one for a few days.

I agree, with one caveat - some old software just makes everything super-tiny.

It's a little like when widescreen monitors came out and people were trying to figure out how to play their 4x3 games.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#952

The WWW. It was a huge bubble when it came out, and then the dot-com crash came and a lot of people were like "Oh, it was a fad, it's over now." But it wasn't. The Web ended up changing society far more than was predicted in 1995 and remaking both the economy and likely soon the political environment.

I was in highschool in the early 90s and wrote a paper in why the "Internet Superhighway" would change society, and got a number of things right (and of course did nothing with them and just watched it happen around me, sigh).

Got a C on the paper, mostly because the instructor found it too unrealistic and so not convincing. I misplaced it at some point, I really wish I still had a copy of it.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#953

Vim: Although I use IDE for coding, Vim has been a good all-around editor for my past 8 years. I just hate working on editor without vim kb binding. MacOSX: As a veteran developer on Windows (and Linux), I really liked how everything worked well in GUI. While I can't explain it all, everything looks and feels intuitive and easier to work with, even little things like the command key, its various keyboard shortcuts, a…

I have to disagree that macOS has a good GUI. I have used Ubuntu with KDE Plasma (Ubuntu) extensively in the past, but when I started a new job a year ago I was supplied a 2019 MBP. This year has been my first Mac experience. I find a lot of things annoying. I'm mostly used to it now and don't mind the day to day experience, but it was jarring and I know it's not ideal. * If I want to maximize a window, I have to hov…

> I have to disagree that macOS has a good GUI.

MacOS has a predictable UI. However, Apple products have the LEAST customizable UIs of any system I've used (probably predictable = 1/customizable)

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#954

Vim: Although I use IDE for coding, Vim has been a good all-around editor for my past 8 years. I just hate working on editor without vim kb binding. MacOSX: As a veteran developer on Windows (and Linux), I really liked how everything worked well in GUI. While I can't explain it all, everything looks and feels intuitive and easier to work with, even little things like the command key, its various keyboard shortcuts, a…

I have to disagree that macOS has a good GUI. I have used Ubuntu with KDE Plasma (Ubuntu) extensively in the past, but when I started a new job a year ago I was supplied a 2019 MBP. This year has been my first Mac experience. I find a lot of things annoying. I'm mostly used to it now and don't mind the day to day experience, but it was jarring and I know it's not ideal. * If I want to maximize a window, I have to hov…

Fully agree that MacOS is not great. It relies too much on hidden knowledge. It claims to be intuitive, but IMO the discoverability of things is just broken. I don't stumble on a nice way to do something I have to google how do I fix this annoying thing.

It may be fine for people who literally have used macs their entire lives, but as a windows and linux user before using a mac, it is super frustrating at times.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#955

Hamilton. I'm not big into theater nor musicals, and I had heard so much about it by the time I watched it on Disney+, I wasn't expecting it to blow me away but it totally did. I'm a huge fan now, watched it several times, listened to the album hundreds of times, read the book, and recommend it every time I can :)

I thought the same when I saw it in SF, with just one nagging annoyance - the mentions of racial justice felt a bit... token. Abolitionism is mentioned in passing a few times (e.g. Laurens "redefining bravery"), but never really got the spotlight. I later discovered that there was a third cabinet battle, which was cut from the final script. You can hear a demo of it on the Hamilton Mixtape album. It features the main…

I feel like part of the issue was that the question of slavery just wasn't that important to Hamilton, was it? So tacking it in may have been too fake.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#956
post #514

Vim: Although I use IDE for coding, Vim has been a good all-around editor for my past 8 years. I just hate working on editor without vim kb binding. MacOSX: As a veteran developer on Windows (and Linux), I really liked how everything worked well in GUI. While I can't explain it all, everything looks and feels intuitive and easier to work with, even little things like the command key, its various keyboard shortcuts, a…

+1 to vim, but no word of a lie, +2 to kakoune. This editor is literally the best possible right now. I'm still waiting for someone to write the paper proving editing with ranges is superior.

A very interesting editor, but...no folding and no concealing. Once it gets those it will be worth a serious look.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#957
post #520

Stadia, the initial reviews were actually pretty bad, but I'm blown away by how good it is. There's something undeniably cool about playing cyberpunk on a macbook air with full graphical detail, and then switching over to play on my TV exactly where I left off. The latency is virtually imperceptible to me, and I love that I don't need a 50 GB download just to try out a new game. Everytime I use it I'm honestly impres…

I signed up for Stadia and was really confused about the value proposition. You stream games, and yet you have to... buy them?

There are some free games included, of course, but I didn't find anything I was interested in playing there.

What I want is something like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, where you pay a fixed price per month to play the full library of games, with nothing else on top of that. A Netflix for games, if you will. I don't want to shell out $60 for Cyberpunk 2077.

(The absence of an easy way to trial games on consoles is problematic, in my opinion. I purchased Cyberpunk on my Xbox One before I realized how bad it performs on that console, and fortunately I was able to get a refund.)

Unfortunately, Xbox Game Pass is predictably hobbled by a very limited library (and they keep removing good stuff), and the fact that the games are tied to the platform they've been developed for.

What I'd like is basically Game Pass + Stadia.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#958

The Illiad. As the foundation of Western literature, it may have received the greatest amount of hype that it is possible to receive. I had attempted to read it and The Odyssey when I was much younger, in middle school, maybe too young, and failed miserably. But as it is always with cultural touchstones, references to it are inescapable, and a few years ago, in my mid 50s I overcame the reluctance accumulated in the…

I thought you can only hype things before they're released. "Praise" is what things get once released.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#959
post #426

As far as video game examples go... The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. The trailers made them out to be the pinnacle of their respective franchises, and people's expectations for the two games was sky high. This plus all the changes made to the 3D Zelda and Mario formats meant there was a lot riding on these titles. But both delivered on that hype. They've both done extremely well in term…

And then Pokemon Sword/Shield came along and did the exact opposite, sadly. Really funny how that works out.

Sadly, the Pokemon series is stuck in a situation where it doesn't 'need' to innovate or do anything ambitious to sell well/get good reviews, so its creators basically don't bother and coast along without trying too hard. It's kinda like YouTube under Google to be honest.

Extremely high levels of popularity + no competition + unambitious creators that are out of touch with their audience/userbase can equal a mediocre product or series that just ticks along without any attempt to live up to its own promise.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#960
post #520

Stadia, the initial reviews were actually pretty bad, but I'm blown away by how good it is. There's something undeniably cool about playing cyberpunk on a macbook air with full graphical detail, and then switching over to play on my TV exactly where I left off. The latency is virtually imperceptible to me, and I love that I don't need a 50 GB download just to try out a new game. Everytime I use it I'm honestly impres…

I signed up for Stadia and was really confused about the value proposition. You stream games, and yet you have to... buy them? There are some free games included, of course, but I didn't find anything I was interested in playing there. What I want is something like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, where you pay a fixed price per month to play the full library of games, with nothing else on top of that. A Netflix for games…

Game Pass has streaming for Android. It's coming to more platforms in 2021.
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