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

301–310 of 632 posts

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#301

Post by gokayburuc_dev »

TLDR:

The main problem here is that the systems are starting to look more and more alike every day. Systems that are oppressed by algorithms turn into a Hollywood porn star: they are just trying to show what they like the most. This makes the systems uniform by wiping out all other beautiful and valuable things.

Instead of really making a system better, we're trying to make it look like the most popular one available. As a result, we have copies with silicone lips, silicone breasts, plenty of aesthetics, but cheap and soulless. Instead of improving existing systems, we corrupt them by copying them.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#302

Post by abustamam »

feoren wrote: post #294
dcrazy wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix’s ad-supported tier makes so much more money per user than their ad-free tier that they had to raise the price of the ad-free tier to make it competitive on ARPU.

But those two tiers are not really competing with each other, are they? I'd wager that most people are fixed in one group: either they will never watch anything with ads (e.g. me), or they just don't care about seeing ads. The former group will never switch to the ad-supported tier -- they'll just cancel if the price gets too high -- so the only calculation is price vs. retention among that group. Similarly, the latt…

I guess I'm weird because I pay for Netflix/HBO for no ads, but I'm on the ad supported tier for Peacock and Hulu. I guess it's just what I'm used to (I don't expect to see ads on Netflix, but I do expect to see them on Hulu)

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#303

Post by acyou »

SirFatty wrote: post #265
acyou wrote: post #256

That quote is pretty dumb, I see it quoted a lot. It's arrogant, assuming, demeaning, elitist. And I don't think it's true. Who would say "a faster horse"? It doesn't make any sense, because people know/knew that horses are what they are. A better, more constructive approach is to proactively identify how emerging technology can fit people's needs. And for sure, you need to verify that there is an actual need for wha…

You should probably read the article... the author did not say that Netflix and TikTok are the faster horse, the opposite actually. You seem really focused on the quote for some reason.

The article says that 2015 Netflix and 2015 Spotify were better, my point is that 2025 Netflix and Spotify are better for the actual customers (the advertisers), but they are not transformatively better in the way that generative AI is.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#304

Post by frereubu »

eadmund wrote: post #269
donatj wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Shoving content into the faces of an indiscriminating userbase" maximizes eyeball time which maximizes ad dollars I mean that's not really the case for paid services without ads like Netflix. They lose money the more you watch. Ideally you'd continue to pay for the subscription but never watch anything.

> Ideally you'd continue to pay for the subscription but never watch anything. I think that’s Netflix’s actual goal: deliver nothing anyone wants to watch, but keep on promising the possibility of something one might want to watch in the future. Which reminds me, we really need to cancel our subscriptions.

We immediately cancel our subscription as soon as we subscribe for services like Netflix, Disney+ etc, where you keep the service for the month. It's thankfully really easy to susbcribe and unsubscribe these days, so doing it this way means we never unknowingly renew. Must have saved us hundreds of pounds by now.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#305

Post by lern_too_spel »

eadmund wrote: post #266

> YouTube. YouTube: Once a video catalog with social discovery. Now? TikTok. I hate YouTube Shorts with a passion. They are low-effort engagement bait. They cannot be disabled. Even worse, my Google TV will not play them when my phone is connected to it, and my phone will not play them when it is connected to my TV. Both devices can play them fine, they just don’t want to play them when they are connected. There can…

> They cannot be disabled.

https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/156lw72/the_be...

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#306

Post by WorldPeas »

ryandrake wrote: post #287
WorldPeas wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse yet it's the only effective way to sync music to the iphone over a wired cable. I can tell they've abandoned their USB sync software because of how annoying the dialogs are when you plug your phone in and don't authenticate to start it, additionally that thay've (likely intentionally to push I-cloud) never added automatic usb photo sync from phone to computer. This probably all originated from when Apple shifte…

The iPhone (and previously iPod), from day one, could never simply be mounted as an external USB (or networked) file system. You always had to do the ridiculous "sync" song and dance and use their proprietary software, instead of just copying files using the OS like every other external storage device. Maddening.

more maddening yet is you can actually mount it as a limited storage device using https://libimobiledevice.org/ under linux, but not MacOs(to my knowledge)

EDIT: perhaps it's time I make a utility that I could use to achieve these ends: https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/libimobiledevice

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#308

Post by [deleted] »

red_admiral wrote: post #190
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…

I get your point but I think the browser analogy is wrong. IE had something like 90% market share back in the day because it was bundled with the OS and cost $0. Chrome ate everyone's lunch because everyone was using google to search for stuff, and they could advertise their browser on their home page or together with their search results. They also took out ads, in some countries, on billboards, in newspapers and ev…

[deleted]

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#309

Post by feoren »

darkhorse222 wrote: post #144
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…

That is exactly what is happening to Reddit. Made famous by its submitters and moderators. Business decision driven by metrics based on view counts because that sells ads. Let this be a lesson: metrics are not the only way to measure success. I worked at a company where metrics were viewed as a way to cut through dissonance and bias. Newflash: leaders should be opinionated and have visions that do not yet exist. They…

You keep using the word "should", but what makes you think these business parasites aren't getting exactly what they want by making their products complete garbage? The CEO caste doesn't care about making good or unique products; they don't care about their users; they don't care about company culture; they don't care about their effects on society or the environment; they don't even care about the long-term financial success of their company. They only care about the immediate short-term gains that directly benefit them, and clearly paint-by-metric is a tried and true way of optimizing for that at the expense of everything else. If it rots the company from the inside out (or even society as a whole), who gives a shit? They just fly off and find a different company to parasitize.

By the time our society is collapsing and our rivers are catching fire and our government is being overthrown and our oceans are boiling and our bodies are full of plastic and we can't even escape to another planet because of Kessler syndrome -- all due to their actions -- they'll be old. That will be their kids' problems, and we know the CEO caste fucking hates their own kids.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#310

Post by MarkusWandel »

As others have said, the "faster horse" analogy only goes so far. Even more than a century after cars became practical, you can still go get a faster horse.

The analogy would be "I want to go back to the pre-ensh*ttified, simple version of X that we used to have. But with an updated web experience, or smartphone app, there's no way to go back. I have at least three apps on my phone that I wish I could still have the older version of. But I can't.

Post reply on HN