Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 157 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#141

Post by zabana »

sundvor wrote: post #22
starbugs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iii) The fact that the present is shrill, exhaustively hyped, manipulated and in a sense damaged. Tech is no longer a force for good and we long for the time when this illusion was available. I agree with this sentiment to some extent. Yet, I am struggling to identify if it's "just me getting old" or if there is more to it.

Speaking as someone who started working in the mid 90s, we're definitely well past The Internet's "Golden Hour". These days we can see first hand just how much societal degeneracy it has helped facilitate. All the latest Culture Wars, malice, scams, cancellations, filter bubbles, misinformation madness etc would not be possible without the Internet. This easily helps explain the point of looking backwards to when the…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#142

Post by shrimp_emoji »

moomoo11 wrote: post #92

I know rose tinted goggles and all that. But honestly the older I get the worse the quality of products has become (for me - important). Everything has shifted towards planned obsolescence and I barely spend money today when I make way more than I used to when I first started working. I got a Tesla and it was built crappy and interior kept breaking. A purchase should make me happy but I felt like my dollar didn’t go…

Capitalism has overoptimized for profit, I think.

The paperclip maximizer has started eating puppies to produce too many paperclips.

I'm enchanted by the phrase "quality that's too high for the market to rationally produce". It referred to how much quality a hobbyist can put into a physical good because they're not manufacturing them at scale or for profit. I didn't realize that's a moving target though. ;p

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#143

Post by shrimp_emoji »

lonelygirl15a wrote: post #60

There was a time, not long ago, when new products were built on new ideas, and the marketplaces were very, very heterogeneous. Now, the marketplaces are largely commoditized and new products are incremental improvements and extensions of previous ones. The old ideas and products are still there, fascinating history to be explored. An example - on a new Linux system, look at the man page for "termcap", and you will fi…

> the Lear Siegler ADM-3

The thing vi was written on! (Which is why vi has arrow keys on hjkl and not jkl;. Which is why my dead reckoning for vi's evolution makes me wanna stop using it.)

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#144

Post by shrimp_emoji »

askafriend wrote: post #134
moomoo11 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I think its because everything has become commoditized now. iPhone have gotten more and more like glass art objects than functional phones. Apple knows people want their products, and their whole model made to extract as much money out of people as possible (apple care) obviously shows they are masters of capitalism and creating tons of shareholder value. It sucks, but hey at least I'll use the gain…

> shows they are masters of capitalism and creating tons of shareholder value Um....maybe there's another takeaway here. Maybe Apple created something people love, are delighted by and find useful in their lives. Maybe people want their most personal computers to be beautiful glass art objects. Intimate, daily-carry items have ALWAYS become fashion at some level (wallets, handbags, belts, etc). Phones were fashion an…

That's true.

People are stupid and the stuff they like is stupid, and understanding the market means your product will redound down to the lowest common denominator of quality.

It's why addictive mobile games earn an order of magnitude more than good console games, which in turn earn an order more than good PC games.

One counterpoint, though, is that no one likes cheap plastic interiors, and yet they're in the highest end cars now: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vXKOPwJ2Ink&t=120

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#146

Post by detourdog »

pixl97 wrote: post #119
detourdog wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The past holds the roots of the future. I don't think we can shape a rational future without understanding the decisions of the past. Everyone doesn't need to understand the past but some do. It is not nostalgia for me. I study technical developments I didn't live though.

> I don't think we can shape a rational future Unfortunately reality doesn't require us to, it's only our comfort that does.

Im not really sure I understand your comment. I wholly admit the quest for rationality maybe driven by desire for comfort and independent of reality. I also often see reality is what one makes of it.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#147

Post by pixl97 »

dukeyukey wrote: post #140
pixl97 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Steam power, the first computers, _especially_ electricity did things no previous technology could. And it massively changed the world.... so, um, buckle up, I guess.

I absolutely agree it'll change the world. But in a meta sense, we've been through this before. Even in living memory, my grandparents were middle-aged before computers became a big thing and at least one of them grew up in an unelectrified Irish village.

Rate of change is a significant factor.

Electrification is an example of that, it takes a massive amount of time to put the infrastructure in. Then even when you got a power pole to your house, you had to run lights and it was unlikely you had any other appliances that used power. Those were slowly and expensively added over time.

AI may work from the opposite direction. It uses the infrastructure that already exists, we have power poles, and network lines, and all kinds of computing devices gathering information and feeding it back to datacenters. This sets up a 'fertile data environment'. One potential outcome here is we see an increase AI compute power over the next few years with only a moderate increase in AI intelligence, then by change in algorithm that compute power is now far more efficient in creating intelligence. This could manifest itself as "AI is a great helper for a programmer" to "Actually, why do we have so many human programmers at all" in an exceptionally short time frame.

It is the disruptive timeframe that is the largest risk to society. If for some reason we go from "Corporations need people" to "Corporations don't need people" in a very short time frame, we'll Moloch ourselves in to high unemployment and social instability quickly.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#148

Post by askafriend »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #144
askafriend wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shows they are masters of capitalism and creating tons of shareholder value Um....maybe there's another takeaway here. Maybe Apple created something people love, are delighted by and find useful in their lives. Maybe people want their most personal computers to be beautiful glass art objects. Intimate, daily-carry items have ALWAYS become fashion at some level (wallets, handbags, belts, etc). Phones were fashion an…

That's true. People are stupid and the stuff they like is stupid, and understanding the market means your product will redound down to the lowest common denominator of quality. It's why addictive mobile games earn an order of magnitude more than good console games, which in turn earn an order more than good PC games. One counterpoint, though, is that no one likes cheap plastic interiors, and yet they're in the highes…

> People are stupid and the stuff they like is stupid

Absolutely not.

People are not stupid just because they don't value the things you think they should.

People love beautiful objects. People love art. People love to be entertained. All of these things have immense value. People love color! There is a ton of value in bringing more color to the world and engaging people senses and emotions in new ways. So when HN-types deride Apple for releasing fun new colors, I find it telling and amusing; the HN-types simply don't understand people while Apple understands people more deeply than any other computer company.

And no, not everyone wants to sit and watch information dense documentaries about complex world problems every day after work. Sometimes people just want to shut off their brain, relax and watch stupid content that encourages that state of mind. That content is serving a practical purpose. But I'm sure you'd deride it as trash and rotting people's brains while totally missing the point about why people gravitate towards it.

Do some people take things to the extreme? Of course. Are mobile game mechanics often problematic? Of course. The world is a messy place.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#149

Post by moomoo11 »

askafriend wrote: post #134
moomoo11 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I think its because everything has become commoditized now. iPhone have gotten more and more like glass art objects than functional phones. Apple knows people want their products, and their whole model made to extract as much money out of people as possible (apple care) obviously shows they are masters of capitalism and creating tons of shareholder value. It sucks, but hey at least I'll use the gain…

> shows they are masters of capitalism and creating tons of shareholder value Um....maybe there's another takeaway here. Maybe Apple created something people love, are delighted by and find useful in their lives. Maybe people want their most personal computers to be beautiful glass art objects. Intimate, daily-carry items have ALWAYS become fashion at some level (wallets, handbags, belts, etc). Phones were fashion an…

Yeah it’s been tough to deal with it. Like I said I find way more pleasure holding and selling apple shares than I do buying their products. I’m fact now I wish they make even more artsy phones lol I won’t use it but they will sell.

Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?

#150

Post by askafriend »

moomoo11 wrote: post #149
askafriend wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shows they are masters of capitalism and creating tons of shareholder value Um....maybe there's another takeaway here. Maybe Apple created something people love, are delighted by and find useful in their lives. Maybe people want their most personal computers to be beautiful glass art objects. Intimate, daily-carry items have ALWAYS become fashion at some level (wallets, handbags, belts, etc). Phones were fashion an…

Yeah it’s been tough to deal with it. Like I said I find way more pleasure holding and selling apple shares than I do buying their products. I’m fact now I wish they make even more artsy phones lol I won’t use it but they will sell.

I 100% respect that!

The way I see it, there needs to be at least one company in the world that sees computing as a functional artform. It's an important perspective and clearly it resonates - people love it.

We have plenty of companies that don't take this perspective. In fact, it's the default way of thinking. We're not really lacking choice here.

Post reply on HN