Live data from Hacker News

Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

en.wikipedia.org

21–30 of 158 posts

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#21
post #9

I feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. I don’t have much commentary on the matter other than to say it makes me sad.

Nothing wrong with a more orderly, predictable, benign, ideally deterministic world without variance.

Not sure if this comment is sarcastic. Perfect determinism doesn't exist in the human condition. To embrace such invariance is to embrace the sterilization of art, culture, and our ability to adapt to the unpredictable.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#22

I feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. I don’t have much commentary on the matter other than to say it makes me sad.

I'm going to take a contrarian view here and opine that society will rebound from the fascination with "AutoTuned" reality.

(Eventually), it may settle on a minimal set of areas where everything has to be spied upon and logged to a fare-the-well.

Grew up just fine without Alexa.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#23
post #7

I feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. I don’t have much commentary on the matter other than to say it makes me sad.

It's literally a story about this thing happening.

It's literally a story about this having happened in the past and having stopped.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#24

> dispensed drinks were rare cans that were either ordinarily unavailable in the United States or have not been in circulation since the 1980s > In June 2018, the machine mysteriously disappeared I don't think it's mysterious. The owner likely ran out of full, rare cans of soda and could not / did not want to source them anymore.

I never got anything particularly weird out of that machine. Drunkenly dropped $20 in it a few times. Mostly it was the odd flavors of things you only see in specialty stores, but I never saw anything "rare" other than an out of season Mtn Dew.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#25
post #10
post #3

Background: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/capitol-hills-magi... Restocking: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mys... Disappearance: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/seattle-mystery-soda-m...

2nd link for Europeans: http://archive.is/2017.08.07-014013/http://www.capitolhillse...

Quick question: Why "for Europeans?" I tried from a couple of EU-based endpoints and could access the second link just fine. What error did you get?

I ask because I know the operator of CHS via a friend of a friend kind of thing.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#27

I feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. I don’t have much commentary on the matter other than to say it makes me sad.

I would hope Capitol buildings had better security so that Putin cant randomly put in an arcade claw game with microphones and radar. (Cue SNL's Elf and Shelf.)

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#28
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2nd link for Europeans: http://archive.is/2017.08.07-014013/http://www.capitolhillse...

Quick question: Why "for Europeans?" I tried from a couple of EU-based endpoints and could access the second link just fine. What error did you get? I ask because I know the operator of CHS via a friend of a friend kind of thing.

Error 1020: Access denied by Cloudflare.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#29
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that this has lead to the popularity of ARG/Analog Horror/SCP/etc. The Unknown is shrinking, so we need to create the Unknowable.

Oddly, true Alternate Reality Games [0] peaked in the mid-to-late 2000s, even as the world has shrunk by orders of magnitude since. Perhaps that's the period when the internet itself was at its most Unknown, before the great silofication of everything. [0] ...as opposed to, say, ads with base64 "puzzles" tacked on or narrative-less viral videos with arbitrary distortion.

ARG for promoting films / games kinda peaked as a guerilla marketing campaign then. Once it became less novel, less money was spent on developing them.

But yeah they become a lot less compelling when it's solved so quickly and there's wikis devoted to them.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#30
post #27

I feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. I don’t have much commentary on the matter other than to say it makes me sad.

I would hope Capitol buildings had better security so that Putin cant randomly put in an arcade claw game with microphones and radar. (Cue SNL's Elf and Shelf.)

You must not have read the article, it is on Capitol Hill in Seattle, which is in the state of Washington, not Washington D.C.
Post reply on HN