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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?

#761

Post by lalaithion »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #732
certmd wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much looking forward to Emily Wilson's forthcoming translation. She translated the Odyssey a few years ago, still in verse but with less stilted language, definitely makes it more accessible. Looking forward to reading it to my children when they're just a couple years older.

Emily translated the first line of the Odissey as " Tell me about a complicated man ". She almost went with " Tell me about a straying husband ". Neither complicated nor straying husband appear in the original text. Pope's description ( The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d... ) is closer to the epithets we are taught at school ( ricco d'astuzie or dal multiforme ingegno ). πολύτροπος means resourceful, of many…

πολύτροπος literally means "one of many ways" or even more literally "multi-turned". Translating it as "for wisdom's various arts renown'd" is just as much poetic license as "complicated".

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

#762

Post by podiki »

aerovistae wrote: post #513
podiki wrote: post #497

Lisp (specifically, I've learned Common Lisp). The power is amazing, being able to have code write code was something I didn't realize I was trying to do over and over in different languages, but to have it all just be code....amazing. And the parentheses are also great, just a simple syntax and auto formatting with a decent editor. Which brings me to Emacs. Still learning and being amazed at what can be done in ther…

Can you recommend a resource on lisp? I have some interest in learning a bit of it for fun because proper around here seem to marvel over it so much and I'd like to see what the hype is about.

That recent thread linked had lots of good stuff. For me it was the Practical Common Lisp [1] and Land of Lisp [2] books. I like starting with a book and articles, but then need a project to work on to really learn it and experience the language. I will now make some quick scripts with Lisp since it is so easy to write it as you figure it out in a REPL, and a big project has been a text-based game engine using CEPL [3].

For me the power was really just in trying it out, seeing the joy of using a REPL and that everything is code. The development process is just better and more fun.

[1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ [2] http://landoflisp.com/ [3] https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl

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

#763

Post by shepherdjerred »

actf wrote: 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 just went down a rabbit hole of streaming for a couple of hours. I tried out Stadia, Moonlight, and GeForce Now.

I want is a service that:

* Lets me play my existing library of games (what I own on Steam, Origin, Battle.net)

* Has League of Legends

* Streams in 1440p 144fps

I haven't found anything that does this.

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

#764

Post by packetlost »

bananabiscuit wrote: post #711
cercatrova wrote: post #693

Interesting that people are substituting the hard question (what has been hyped and has lived up to it) with the easier question (what is good and has stood the test of time) and answering that instead, a form of attribute substitution bias [0]. My answers would be Mr Robot, especially after seeing what happened with Game Of Thrones. Having a story that is planned out from start to finish is miles better than improvi…

Interesting, I would never have guessed Mr Robot was planned out start to finish. I loved the first season, but by the middle of the third season it felt very much like a show where the writers had no idea where to take the plot next, haven’t watched anymore since.

You are sorely missing out. Mr. Robot is laid out in three acts. You cannot skip the last season (Act III), it provides closure and ties the seeming chaos of the middle two seasons (collectively, Act II) into a cohesive plot.

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

#765

Post by ssalazar »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #315
mkl wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for me. Too much quantum time travel hand-waving just magically solving problems.

Imagine being upset about quantum time travel when the main characters are a Norse God of Thunder, a man that got bitten by a radioactive spider, a lab created super soldier and the main villain is some demi god alien with reality warping powers derived from some rocks in a gold glove...

Scifi is much more satisfying when it sets up a fantastical world/premises and then keeps an internal consistency as the narrative develops. It’s far less satisfying to force the use of fantastical elements as a crutch for a weak narrative.

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

#766

Post by KhoomeiK »

nrp wrote: post #703
trianglem wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vein, the Mahabharata. Literally mind blowing character building and arcs and all of this more than 2 millennia ago. It is also 10 times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.

Do you have a recommended English translation?

It's pretty hard to get your hands on a hard copy because of how large it is (usually published in multiple volumes for academia). The most accessible translation is Ganguli's, which you can find here [1].

[1] https://www.mahabharataonline.com/translation/

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

#768

Post by Alex3917 »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #683

Electric toothbrushes. I always saw ads for them but they were expensive and I thought, how much better can they be? Finally listened to my dentist’s recommendation to buy one and my teeth have so much less plaque now to where I barely notice a difference after getting my teeth cleaned and the dentist takes much less time to do it.

Also waterpiks. Much better for your gums than flossing, and 10x easier. (Granted you still need to floss to prevent cavities, but still.)

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

#770

Post by andrewmackrodt »

bananabiscuit wrote: post #711
cercatrova wrote: post #693

Interesting that people are substituting the hard question (what has been hyped and has lived up to it) with the easier question (what is good and has stood the test of time) and answering that instead, a form of attribute substitution bias [0]. My answers would be Mr Robot, especially after seeing what happened with Game Of Thrones. Having a story that is planned out from start to finish is miles better than improvi…

Interesting, I would never have guessed Mr Robot was planned out start to finish. I loved the first season, but by the middle of the third season it felt very much like a show where the writers had no idea where to take the plot next, haven’t watched anymore since.

I had similar thoughts but was so glad I stuck with season 4, it is probably one of the best seasons of TV I've ever seen and provided satisfactory closure. IMO season 4 is worth watching no matter what you thought of the middle seasons, I've rewatched it a few times which I almost never do.
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