Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype? • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by musingsole » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

zests wrote: post #136

dmitriid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. They really haven't. Not a single one of them. There is, however, organized religion around them that has twisted those book to mean whatever it is that brings the flock. Are they influential? Yes. Have they stood the test of time? Hell, no

You’re talking about the best selling book of all time (by far). Its more likely that you misunderstand it than all the readers misunderstand it. Its just one of those things that is so popular that people find any way possible to criticize.

For a good chunk of history, wasn't the bible about the only book you could buy in Europe?

Separating the social structures around the bible from the book and trying to talk about it as if it is a product following the same rules as Tom Clancy's next novel is gross and laughable.

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

#422

Post by skohan » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

thekyle wrote: post #20

When the M1 chip was introduced I was a bit underwhelmed. Apple being so vague about their performance didn't exactly inspire confidence. But as more information has come out it seems like the hype has actually increased.

Yeah it's actually pretty cool. I got an M1 air, even though I normally don't jump on 1st gen products, partly out of COVID boredom I suppose. I thought I would use it along side my 2017 15" MBP at least until things caught up on the software side, but I have barely touched the pro since I got it. The screen is smaller, and the speakers are not quite as good, but it's so snappy, light and quiet that it more than makes up for it.

There are still some rough edges: for serious development a lot of things are not quite there yet: e.g. last time I checked, there's no native release for NodeJS, and home-brew is still hit-or-miss. A lot of things work with Rosetta, but it surely takes more tweaking and trial and error to get things running than normal. But I've been programming mostly in Rust lately, and that works flawlessly on nightly, so I haven't really thought about compatibility since I was kicking the tires the second day I had it. YMMV depending on which tools you use.

All in all, I think this is the most I have really had fun using a laptop since I got my first MBA in 2012 or so. It was so light to travel with, and powerful enough for everything I needed, so it pretty quickly replaced my other laptop for pretty much everything.

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

#423

Post by geocrasher » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

Games: Portal, FSX. Incredible, even now, and still what I play the most (not that I'm much of a gamer)

Science: Mars Opportunity Rover, Starship

Music: Nathaniel Rateliff && and the Night Sweats. Incredible.

Electronics/Radio: Arduino, QRP Labs QCX radio kits.

Internet: YouTube. When I first heard about it in the mid-2000's I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of. But lately, I've been having more fun with it than ever. Love it or hate it, it's incredible in so many ways. Except the ads. Those suck.

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

#424

Post by otium » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

Avengers: Endgame, I feel like they did a great job bringing an end to the slow build up of all the previous movies.

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

#425

Post by davecyen » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

Stripe

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

#426

Post by CM30 » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

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 terms of reviews (97% review score average on Metacritic) and sales (best selling games in their respective series), and delivered absolutely magical experiences that made the Nintendo Switch extraordinarily successful in its first year on the market.

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

#427

Post by raldi » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

Shakespeare, but I didn't understand the enduring brilliance until I started reading it side-by-side with a modern translation: https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/msnd/page_38/

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

#428

Post by slantyyz » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #390

VMWare. We take virtualization for granted now but I thought it was smoke and mirrors when it was announced. But nope, it did exactly what it said on the tin.

That's an oldie but goodie.

I was on that bandwagon pretty early around 2000, although back then it was mainly to be able to test sites on older versions of IE than whatever was out back then.

Crazy to think my smartwatch is probably more powerful than the laptop I used to run VMWare back then (I'm guessing it was a Pentium 3).

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

#429

Post by anderspitman » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

remote_phone wrote: post #231

SkyPuncher wrote: post #129

Tenet. Just watched it last night and found it to be absolutely incredibly well done. Dialogue audio was weirdly quiet, but that was solved by cranking the center channel up relative to other channels.

Nah. I watched this a few nights ago, and was largely confused. I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t anywhere close to “great”. Most people won’t like it because it gets more and more confusing, and at some point you’re like okay whatever and give up trying to understand. That’s the way it was for me. They were trying to shove too many complex ideas into too short of a timeframe and it didn’t work. It felt very self- indu…

That's part of the beauty of it. She tells him right at the beginning not to try and understand; just intuit. I didn't give up, frustrated, until almost the end of the movie. Loved my second viewing, and would watch again. And I almost never rewatch anything.

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

#430

Post by GeneralMayhem » Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

manuelflara wrote: post #130

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 cast discussing a letter from Ben Franklin asking for slavery to be abolished. On the one hand, I can see why it was cut - 3 might be too many cabinet meetings - but it adds so much to the thematic tragedy to have Hamilton quietly give up his morals for practicality. He starts act 2 with his youth, his career, his family, and his idealism; by the end, he loses the first three, and the foreshadowing was there for him to lose the fourth, but it doesn't have the payoff.