The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#261

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #134

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

sure, for information density, text is always king. But real-time chatting is not dense, it s in fact very reduntant with lots of information being discarded left and right, and avatats can still text each other. The idea of 3d stuff is just an evolution of that imho, a messenger with extra stuff We have this stuff already btw, second life users do that every day, but Zuck didnt even mention it.

You would have to be mad to associate your benad new vision of the future of computing with a failed 10 year old game.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#262

Post by thom » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #118

Jasper_ wrote: post #52

> In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. "A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn't going to run ads," he said. "They're going to drop their car into the world in real time and you'll be able to drive it around. And they're going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there,…

Roblox will be looked back upon as the MS-DOS of metaverses, yet people go gaga over any vehicle you can make. They (mostly kids) spend an absurd amount of hours just jumping from one place to another to prove they can without falling. They spend real money just to turn their hat a new color. Entire genres of games and activities exist basically to just move around, jump on a few things, see numbers get bigger, and s…

People in tech, especially VCs, have this weird habit of seeing something simple (like music sharing, or Roblox) and instead of taking away the simplest lesson (people like free music, games are fun) they feel compelled to extrapolate some sort of vision of the future from it (people love P2P tech! Roblox isn’t just a bunch of games kids like, it’s a _metaverse_!) It’s certainly a fun job to have, massively overthinking everything all the time, but I’m not sure the results bear out.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#263

Post by snovv_crash » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:04 AM UTC

fredophile wrote: post #110

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

> Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear. How many people watched game of thrones? How many people read all of the published books in a song of ice and fire? The book might be better but movies and TV are a lot more popular.

How expensive was it to produce the movies compared to the books? What was the ROI as a ratio?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#264

Post by christophergs » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #175

wokwokwok wrote: post #43

the good news is that the metaverse and the tech industry's very expensive obsession with trying to make it a reality will be a schadenfreude generator the likes of which we've never seen before The tech landscape is littered with failed attempts, but we have here two very technically successful companies, Epic and Facebook, both trying to re-imagine the internet as something different. I'm not sure I'd write them of…

Past performance is no guarantee of future results They were successful with one thing. Now they are talking about something else. Why shouldn't "MetaVerse" be compared to the insane optimism of AI in the 1980'ies? Something that seemed just around the corner, but never arrived. It's like Thorium reactors: half the people think it's the next great thing, the other half thinks it will never come into production.

Timing matters. The latest generation of VR headsets are incredible. I feel like this point matters, the same way that Netflix needing broadband to be fast enough to stream video mattered.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#265

Post by wccrawford » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #241

rklaehn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucky you. Any tips how to get the kids to appreciate the real world more? It's not like I am not trying, but I also don't want to deprive them of computer games. I basically grew up gaming and hacking on computers (starting with an Atari 800), and I liked it.

Do things with them - not “go out side I want to use the computer” but actual activities involving you working hard - and not just the things you like. Kids playing Minecraft? Go visit an actual mine. Kids like racing games? Go to a racetrack or a monster truck rally. Rent a bobcat if you have land to use it on.

And "outside" could actually mean in the living room or garage, building things, too. I learned a lot of things just watching my dad repair houses and handing him tools. He just needed to get it done to get on to having fun, and didn't think to include me in the actual work most of the time unless he thought it'd speed things up, but I still learned quite a lot from it.

It could also mean art or music.

And finally... It could still be on the computer, making digital art, video games, writing novels, etc, instead of just playing games and chatting. Learning to create the experiences is hard, but the reward for having created them is pretty compelling and the skill carries across different softwares pretty easily, setting them up with those skills for life.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#266

Post by mkl95 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

The Hypermedia API-driven internet is the Metaverse. And it's not happening anytime soon.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#267

Post by saiya-jin » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #190

noduerme wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with manual transmissions. But watching my gf obsess over yeast cultures, I would say same about baking bread. Some people love a challenge; other people don't get it.

Manual transmission is not a challenge. It quickly blurs into muscle memory and you don’t really notice it.

Can second it, its properly effortless and becomes second nature. Gives much more control over the engine.

That being said, switched my old BMW 3 series (E46) with manual to newer 5 series with automatic steptronic transmission, and especially for longer drives, the cognitive and 'manual' load is measurably less. But you don't realize it until you migrate.

It moves to almost boring territory, luckily I am not a type of person who tends to fall asleep behind the wheel (unlike my wife).

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#268

Post by hooby » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:11 AM UTC

There are a few quite interesting arguments hidden in that article, that are genuinely worth taking a closer look at.

I feel though, that the needlessly aggressive tone does do those arguments a disservice, by burying them under a ton of very loaded rhetoric.

This writer is obviously more concerned with creating a stir, and riling up people - rather than actually making a point.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#269

Post by osobo » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

I'm kinda disappointed how Hacker News derailed into a mob mentality towards the metaverse concept because big evil Facebook touched it. I, for one, celebrate the new age beyond text and (sometimes moving) pictures and can't wait to move into (shared) experiences. I've seen this internet since 1989: I'm ready for something radically new. I don't care if it's Facebook running point. Sure, I'd rather have it be a cool start-up, but they are all chasing their tails to become unicorns these days. I was there when Second Life peaked and the potential of experience-based communication (instead of just information based) is incredible. I can't wait for Facebook to raise the bar on that, like they did with VR.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#270

Post by benjaminjosephw » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:14 AM UTC

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

Text is definitely a more versatile, low-effort, high-value and ubiquitous medium that will never be beaten for human information exchange. It's perhaps not the best medium for all context but it is the best generic medium for interoperable information exchange (unix was right all along!).

Entertainment is often more enjoyable with rich sensory experiences and some amount of novelty. People with great imaginations are probably the folk who experience books that way but, for everyone else, rich media provides more entertainment value than text alone.

The Metaverse is entertainment. It might be great for parties, games and other virtual interactions/experiences but it's definitely more a medium for novelty and sensory excitement than for pure information exchange alone (obviously).