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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?

#301

Post by concordDance »

greggman2 wrote: post #165
sideshowb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are also not supposed to step from sidewalk into road without looking.

It's hard for me to have sympathy for cyclists as I see so many run red lights and plow directly through pedestrians even when the pedestrians have the right of way. Maybe that's a few bad apples but it happens enough that it feels like the norm. Yes, 2 wrongs to make a right. If the light is red and the pedestrian is crossing without looking then I'd also be upset at the pedestrian.

To be fair to cyclists, them hittibg someone is orders of magnitude less dangerous than a car doing so.

Bycicles are very light, narrow and slow so it's odd that as a society we expect them to follow rules designed for fast, heavy and wide vehicles.

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

#302

Post by rhn_mk1 »

buboard wrote: post #298
mikestew wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not, in most places. I fail to see what difference it makes: people do it. Hell, I do it on occasion, and I don’t like wearing headphones when I’m riding.

riding a bike is already dangerous, riding with headphones is doubly so

In-ear headphones can surprisingly improve spatial awareness by reducing the wind noise at certain speeds.

That assumes they are not playing anything though.

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

#303

Post by wwweston »

tsimionescu wrote: post #193
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers were at least, historically at least in the 20th century, were expected to inform and keep a separation between opinion and news. They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Exceptions to this, like Yellow Journalism and Hearst's use of his papers for personal and political ends were at lea…

> They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Newspapers ignored inconvenienent facts all the time, probably for all of human history. Even when they don't completely ignore some facts, they often choose to make a big deal of some facts and not of others. Some examples of the former would be the missi…

This is a bit like missing the distinction between, say, systemic if unintended background racism and ideological white supremacy.

There's the matter of both motive and degree. Of course newsprint journalism always had its issues (heh). Of course there's always been various struggles to rise to journalistic standards of objective reporting. And of course there's always been people with agendas who wanted to bend reporting a certain way.

It still wasn't anywhere near as common for outlets to aspire to be Pravda or for individuals to aspire to read from an outlet that was.

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

#304

Post by dorgo »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #159
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, I've been telling my kids for years, "I hold in my hand the accumulated knowledge of mankind."

Well, you hold access to it, not the knowledge itself.

You don't have a copy of wikipedia on your phone?

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

#305

Post by mchaver »

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…

It seems like when you grow up with some important but finicky technology, it tends to sow a certain amount of knowledge in the populace. I notice there tends to be a lot more car and mechanic knowledge in the older generations than say those in their early 40s and below. To drive a car it seems like you had to do a lot more troubleshooting on your own (didn't have a mobile phone to call the car shop). Same thing for those that were young in the 1990s and had a computer.

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

#306

Post by wwweston »

eldavido wrote: post #123
barry-cotter wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Newspapers were at least, historically at least in the 20th century, were expected to inform and keep a separation between opinion and news. They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Exceptions to this, like Yellow Journalism and Hearst's use of his papers for personal and political ends were at l…

This is a great point and pretty much mirrors my own views. I read the NYT but I'm under no pretense it's "neutral" or "fair and balanced". It is a highly partisan, albeit factual, news source that is selectively edited and clearly pushes a very specific worldview, through which every story is filtered. This worldview includes beliefs like: unions are always good, capitalism is at best suspect and makes a few rich, a…

More than one news source is smart.

The above description of the NYT, however, is (a) not only a conservative's idea of what an opposing partisan newspaper would look like, it's almost a parody of such an idea (b) only sustainable through the lens of confirmation bias.

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

#307

Post by tsimionescu »

wwweston wrote: post #303
tsimionescu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Newspapers ignored inconvenienent facts all the time, probably for all of human history. Even when they don't completely ignore some facts, they often choose to make a big deal of some facts and not of others. Some examples of the former would be the missi…

This is a bit like missing the distinction between, say, systemic if unintended background racism and ideological white supremacy. There's the matter of both motive and degree. Of course newsprint journalism always had its issues (heh). Of course there's always been various struggles to rise to journalistic standards of objective reporting. And of course there's always been people with agendas who wanted to bend repo…

There are many differences.

For one, few in the Soviet Union trusted Pravda, whileoat people in the US trust the picture of the world that the newspapers present. So, while the US newspapers were overall far more correct than Pravda, they were nevertheless much more effective propaganda tools, when they did choose, intentionally or through deep-seated biases, to 'massage' the truth.

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

#308

Post by Terretta »

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…

Not sure if this is different from growing up mechanically illiterate: a whole new generation growing up not knowing what a spark plug or timing belt is.

Engines are finally entering their appliance phase, just in time to be replaced by electric motors.

It’s okay for computers to become appliances too.

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

#309

Post by mattrp »

mikestew wrote: post #299
mattrp wrote: post #188

Upgrading to ios 13 and realizing they broke find my iPhone. It used to be I would log in to find my wife’s phone the half dozen times a day she’s forget where she put it. Now... I have to go to iCloud.com in a browser... another irony- her credentials are stored in my passwords whereas the old find my iPhone had no option but to forget credentials...

I just checked to make sure: yup, I still see all of my wife’s devices in Find My. So it’s not broken out of the box. You did see the new Devices tab at the bottom, right?

Is she on the same iCloud login or her own?

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

#310

Post by jaclaz »

FDSGSG wrote: post #247
onion2k wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practical terms speeding actually makes very little difference to your journey time. Eg if you have a 100 mile drive on a 70mph road and you drive the entire way at 85mph your reward is saving about 10 minutes on a 1.5 hour trip. The downside risk is getting charged for speeding and being delayed for much more than 10 minutes. I've never though the cost/benefit shows it to be particularly worthwhile.

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

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