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Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

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Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#521

Post by account42 »

aragilar wrote: post #513
mbb70 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme personalization of the internet/modern life can lead to a feeling of isolation. I recently was on a plane with broken inflight entertainment, so all you could watch was a single movie in lock step with everyone else. When the movie ended, there was a weird sense of camaraderie; "we are all stuck in this tube and we all just sat through that mediocre movie".

Planes used to be like this, and I'm noticing more and more they're expecting you to bring your own device, so it wouldn't shock me if they went back to having no inflight entertainment.

In-flight entertainment is one thing that I wouldn't mind being unbundled because at this point it really is just a crappier version of what you can bring yourself - both the content and the usually outdated and overloaded tech.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#522

Post by account42 »

gniv wrote: post #296
mbb70 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme personalization of the internet/modern life can lead to a feeling of isolation. I recently was on a plane with broken inflight entertainment, so all you could watch was a single movie in lock step with everyone else. When the movie ended, there was a weird sense of camaraderie; "we are all stuck in this tube and we all just sat through that mediocre movie".

I’m surprised people preferred watching the plane movie over whatever they had saved on Netflix on their phone.

Same, except without Netflix. I'm constantly surprised people use these streaming services.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#523

Post by account42 »

throwaway290 wrote: post #385
viraptor wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who want to watch something on the plane where you have no/limited choice of quality movies and/or the screen is way too bright and warm. It's the best you've got, not the best in general.

Usually planes have a decent catalogue (remember this was a bugged entertainment system on one flight) and if we are talking about watching on a phone quality doesn't matter (if anything plane screen is bigger).

> Usually planes have a decent catalogue

That has not been my experience unless you like a random selection of the latest big-budget movies mixed with weird artsy films.

> and if we are talking about watching on a phone quality doesn't matter (if anything plane screen is bigger).

Physically bigger (compared to a phone) but almost guaranteed to be lower resolution, have worse colors and contrast and the touch controls are barely working. You can also bring a tablet or laptop if you prefer a larger screen.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#524

Post by account42 »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #289
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The extreme personalization of the internet/modern life can lead to a feeling of isolation. The extreme manipulation, not personalisation. The latter would be for your benefit, Youtube would study how to make their users happy, have better sleep, be better informed, not fall for scams, etc. But instead they are studying how to make us spend most time on the most clickbait cospiracy theories.

It's a for-profit company and they have never tried to hide that. If you know a way to make money from exclusively showing users content that makes them happier, better informed, better rested, etc., then by all means go ahead -- I sincerely wish you the best. But you won't need my good wishes, because you will soon outcompete YouTube and all the rest with your healthy-yet-still-profitable alternative.

It's an entity permitted by society under the premise that allowing such entities is a net benefit. We can and should continuously re-evaluate that benefit and adjust what we allow accordingly.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#525

Post by Eisenstein »

WalterBright wrote: post #518
Eisenstein wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what it means; that's the whole point. I want a specific definition. I'll start with a question: Is a pregnant woman of 'able body'? Is a person who speaks english as a second language 'of sound mind'? Is a person who grew up in a place with very poor schools and who had to drop in high school to take care of their aged mother 'of sound mind and body'? Expound on the reasons please.

Sorry, I'm not interested in semantic arguments.

Have you considered that your 'different' ways of thinking may be flawed if they can't stand up to a little bit of dissection?

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#526

Post by Eisenstein »

WalterBright wrote: post #517
Tainnor wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you some unsolicited advice: You come off as rather arrogant and I would suggest reflecting on it. The idea that "legions of HNers" are telling you you're wrong sounds like confirmation bias. I basically see the same old discussion about free markets vs. market regulation every day on HN and it's not as if there was ever a clear-cut consensus. Maybe somewhat expectedly, radical positions such as "markets sh…

> You come off as rather arrogant I know. > instead it's just other people who "don't understand" free markets When I see an example of a successful commune or communist society, I'll think about changing my mind.

> When I see an example of a successful commune or communist society, I'll think about changing my mind.

It may not be obvious, but buying and selling land and resources for personal gain is somewhat novel in the history of humanity.

Basing the entirety of society and law on the notion of a single person being able to own a piece of the earth, which they are allowed to deny others access to if they like, is unique to our particular time and culture.

One could say with a fair amount of certainty that a 'commune' aka a village or tribe is the basis of the vast majority of the human experience.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#527

Post by autoexec »

WalterBright wrote: post #388
Eisenstein wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you know what most people think?

Sort of like my dad, a professor of finance, who had a student remark to him "I didn't know there even was a case for free markets!" I get similar responses. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on HN who understands how free markets work. For example, most people would say that hard work leads to success. This is incorrect. It's creating value that leads to success. I very rarely hear the latter, in fact, prett…

> They only cared about was the lawn mowed. Using scissors, a push mower, a gas mower, or a rider mower all came with a huge variance in how hard the work was. None of that had any influence on what I was paid for it.

That may have been true for you, but it won't be true for everyone. Sometimes we really do value the work that went into something and that will have an influence on what we pay for it. It's why people will pay for an orchestra instead of a laptop and some software. Its why people will pay extra for "handcrafted artisanal" items that could easily be pumped out by slaves in a factory overseas and sold for much much less. The large amount of effort involved is a big part of the charm for a lot of art forms.

Sometimes hard work can result in success. Some people produce a lot of value but never see success. Some people manage success without doing anything of value at all. Some fail upwards and gain success while actually producing negative value. If we could really reduce the formula for success down to a catchy soundbite there'd be a lot more successful people in the world.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#528

Post by woooooo »

Eisenstein wrote: post #506
woooooo wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not calling those things the same at all. I actually draw distinctions between them. But there's a historical record of how they happened together after not happening separately for thousands of years. There's a principle of charity when reading that you may want to consider.

Sorry but you don't get charity when you are asserting a point which is completely unfounded. Please find something which will back up your point besides 'they all happened at once' because that isn't even true. There is no correlation with 'capitalism' 'industry' and 'profit' with 'demise of slavery'. I beg you to look up what was happening in the Congo by Belgium when the automobile was being popularized. There hap…

Before industrialization, slavery and serfdom are common for thousands of years.

After industrialization, it goes away within 1-200 years every place that industrialized. Probably because it's not economical anymore in the presence of industrial production.

You're saying that this observation is so out of pocket that it doesn't deserve a charitable hearing?

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#529

Post by jeegsy »

autoexec wrote: post #157
pavon wrote: post #124

Recently I was thinking about how I am completely out of touch with the culture of younger generations, and was about to laugh it off cause that's how it is with every generation, but then I realized that I don't even know how I would know. In the past if you wanted to know what kids were listening to, you change the radio station to that new loud one you normally skip, or watch that new TV show that people are going…

> I feel like every decade of the 1900's had pretty distinct cultural trends and identity, and even subcultures and counter cultures of the past were more public, but now it's all balkanized. I have no idea if that is a bad thing, but it is certainly different. I like it. Instead of sitting around talking about whatever the big media gatekeepers shoved down our throats we can get together and share what we've found a…

The older I get, the more I realize that I didnt so much have a problem with the 'gatekeeping' as the 'gatekeepers'

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#530

Post by kredd »

pzmarzly wrote: post #520
kredd wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, counter-argument to that is — it is sometimes really fun to discuss absolutely outrageous and stupid conspiracy theories. It’s a fun thing to laugh at, I would say even that gives a common ground to a group.

This is fun until one person says "well, they are kinda right". Happened in that group I'm thinking of, now some of them are unironically saying the pope has UFOs hidden in a garage. This reminds me of how me and my friends once upon a time started browsing 4chan and jbzd (Polish nsfw meme site) for "spicy memes". We found some gems, but I couldn't stand negativity of these places. Few years later some folks develope…

Fair, I totally get what your point. But that’s an argument for getting rid of “for the memes” media, which incites unjustified hatred towards other people. I’ve known people who got into those rabbit holes as well.

However, my argument was about “having common topics for discussion in real life”. As of now, you don’t really need to meet up with people to go down the conspiracy guy rabbithole. As you mentioned, you can be siloed and find your people online.

But yeah, I guess we’ll see where the whole “media curated for one person only” tactic takes us with all the implementations of recommendations algos.

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