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

But what if I want a faster horse?

rakhim.exotext.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 632 posts

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#101

Post by damnitbuilds »

A mention for Amazon search here. Which is a very slow horse and always has been, when even a horse that can walk would greatly benefit their customers.

I can only guess that for some reason Amazon think they make more money by not making search work. Work, generally, like only actually returning things with the search term or, work specifically, like letting you specify hard drive sizes above 6TB.

But I find it hard to believe this shit horse actually drives sales. I always end up looking elsewhere in frustration.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#102

Post by germinalphrase »

neutronicus wrote: post #80
furyg3 wrote: post #9

The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…

I assume it's about papering over the gaps in their content library. You can't provide a seamless UX for turning on the TV and watching The Office if you don't own the rights to The Office. They want to habituate you to scrolling through content Netflix actually owns and picking something, because it's apocalyptic for them if you ever treat the services as fungible content libraries that you hop between month-to-mont…

Yep. If they can’t get you to watch unknown, b/c grade content - you will quickly exhaust everything on the top shelf and log off.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#104

Post by shakna »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #52
sokoloff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches For street usage, I think those cars are popular because they’re beautiful more than because they’re fast (or because enthusiasts like them). My utterly soulless Lexus will drive more than fast enough to get me in serious trouble. No one will look at it and feel stirred by its beauty, whereas the typical Ferrari or Porsche coupe will look at least appealing to most and beautiful…

I would say they're popular because they are expensive. It's bragging rights, conspicuous consumption…

If it was just expense, then Koenigsegg would be a household name. Most enthusiasts will know them, but the average person won't. There's something more that leads culture in such a way to uphold a particular brand.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#105

Post by bambax »

If you want a faster horse, your best bet is to make it yourself.

For media library, I use Jellyfin and host all my media files locally on a NAS.

I self-host all my projects on that same NAS, which works just fine and and makes me not need to subscribe to some offer or other from hosting providers.

I quit SmugMug last year, because it turns out, hosting my photos on the NAS costs nothing, and remaking the small part of the SmugMug web interface that I need is trivial.

And for vehicles, I also made myself a faster horse, by bolting a Bafang motor on an ordinary mountain bike. Things break occasionally on that thing, but I know how to fix them, and so I do.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#106

Post by nyclounge »

arkh wrote: post #4

All the result of A/B tests. Everything will converge to give you an engaging experience for most people. The only not too bad student is reddit which lets you keep using their older UI if you want to. But everything else is pushing new driven by A/B tests UI optimized for engagement.

>But everything else is pushing new driven by A/B tests UI optimized for engagement

That really hit the nail. Advertising industry along has ruined web! Everything is for trigger what action we want user to do on the page, how can we see what user is thinking.

Very creepy indeed from a user perspective. Now days I don't care if telementary is aggregated or open or if it helps developer makes better software.

How about NO telementary!!! NO tracking!!!

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#107

Post by AlexandrB »

mxfh wrote: post #46
arkh wrote: post #4

All the result of A/B tests. Everything will converge to give you an engaging experience for most people. The only not too bad student is reddit which lets you keep using their older UI if you want to. But everything else is pushing new driven by A/B tests UI optimized for engagement.

Not just A/B test but all happening while cost optimizations happen. The key metric seems to be no longer how many users you can make sign up, but how can I keep an subscription running at lowest cost to serve possible. The UHD price is not worth it for a long term subscription, and the HD quality is subpar.

This is an "old man shakes fist at clouds" opinion, but I think HD video is a huge waste of time/money for living room watching. Your eyes cannot effectively resolve that resolution at normal "couch" viewing distances for common TV sizes. This is kind of like how audio quality peaked at CDish quality. Anything better is largely inaudible.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#108

Post by kelnos »

api wrote: post #26

What this is describing is not what the Ford quote is talking about. Netflix and all the rest didn't TikTokify because they were trying to create some massive visionary innovation, but the opposite. They did it because it's more profitable to shovel slop than to distribute quality. Quality content is expensive to make. Slop isn't. The way you do that is by hypnotizing people with addiction. To do that you have to hav…

Part of the problem specifically with Netflix is that they lost the rights to most of the good stuff, or at least the stuff that everyone wants to see, because the Disneys of the world set up their own streaming services and pulled their content from Netflix.

So in a way Netflix had to learn how to push slop. Because they can't make their own Star Wars or MCU or Friends or whatever. It's just not easy to build a catalog of reliably-profitable franchises. Especially when many of those franchises were born decades before Netflix even existed.

Even the good stuff Netflix has (like say Black Mirror) isn't going to be enough to keep customers unless they get people watching some slop.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#109

Post by AlienRobot »

There is a flip side to this graph.

Every entertainment platform becomes video centric.

Every discussion platform becomes political.

As someone who prefers text and static images and doesn't like politics, this is really bothering me right now.

Adding to the list: image-sharing platforms, Instagram, Pinterest and Imgur, are also Tiktok now, specially if you use the apps instead of the website.

Tumblr and Flickr somehow have resisted Tiktok-fication so far.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#110

Post by tlogan »

cjs_ac wrote: post #16

For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…

> But who knows - maybe that really

> is the most profitable way to run a tech business.

Yes, I agree. This does seem to be the most profitable model for running a tech business: maximizing user engagement or increasing the time users spend on the platform. Whether that’s achieved through intentionally convoluted UI or by aggressively surfacing certain content, the end goal remains the same.

That said, I don’t think there’s much room left for significant innovation in video streaming interfaces. The core challenge continues to be content — whoever offers the best or most compelling library wins. UI changes might tweak engagement metrics by a few percentage points, but they’re marginal compared to the impact of strong content.

At the end of the day, if there’s a great movie or series to watch, people will show up. If the content isn’t there, no amount of clever interface design will convince someone to spend 30 minutes on something they’re not actually interested in.

Post reply on HN