A Fond Farewell • Hacker News Board

Re: A Fond Farewell

#171

Post by ghc » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

gaoshan wrote: post #139

herodotus wrote: post #138

In the early 1990's, during my days as a Comp. Sci. prof, I was so excited about the emergence of the internet. When I saw the Mosaic browser (a precursor to Netscape and later Firefox) I knew the world had changed for the better. Now I have such mixed feelings. Magazines (like the Farmers Almanac) either go online completely or just disappear. They just cannot compete for advertising dollars with Google. And small f…

The aspect of small local stores functioning as a social hub really hits hard. The social hub, such as it is now, can be so much larger and less personal that it really does feel like a loss (a negative even). Is the social hub now something like Instagram or a specific forum/subreddit/space for a school or neighborhood? These are really insufficient replacements and people that grew up knowing nothing else likely do…

We decentralized information, and in doing so we centralized culture. I fear that we are only now coming to understand what we have wrought. I am sure that new social structures will arise to replace the old, but who is to say what lies between? It is not out of the question that even a project with noble intentions such as the web may precipitate a dark age for humanity. I don't say this as a pessimist, but as a wide-eyed realist wondering what happens when human civilization no longer requires humanity.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#172

Post by pksebben » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #159

MichaelZuo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if it’s so valuable… why aren’t people willing to pay for it? Forgoing luxuries like a vacation to support local stores full of people you know and trust, that might charge 20% more for the same product, seems like an obvious thing… That almost no Americans do in reality.

Lots of things have happened that have ultimately harmed these small communities. A major problem is consolidation. A small town hardware store may have had access to multiple suppliers at one point. Those all merged together and ultimately started raising their prices in a "go away" sense to small time purchasers. That's made it incredibly hard to be a store. A big box store gets a lot more foot traffic and has more…

I think to tease out the core of the problem with large businesses, capital, and society (esp. as regards the dissolution of small businesses), you need to autopsy the concepts of value and liquidity.

Money is meant to be a store of value, 'value' in this case being literally anyone considers valuable. However, it's an abstraction that doesn't quite fit over the thing it attempts to abstract - it really only captures that value if the value is something that is easy to transact. You might value a good conversation with your local grocer, or the smile you get when you pass someone you recognize in your neighborhood, but those things are left out of the money equation. Things the abstraction captures well - transactions of goods, legal representation, contracts, and lobbyists - are all of a particular stripe. Many of these are related to a projection of will; the ability to make things happen the way you want in spite of potentially mitigating factors.

One of the things that money allows is exploitation. Because of the delta between actual value and the abstraction of value, one is capable of strategically manouvering such that they capture more of the abstraction than a straight value:value transaction would warrant. This is compounded when you get tricky with laws and litigation and contracts - hard edges in the problem space become anvils you can use to hammer things to a shape that you like. Cynical strategies are quite successful here.

It is my belief that due to the recursively self-reinforcing nature of this system, it is bound to fail eventually. Because the leaks in the abstraction of value are actually a boon to some few powerful entities, the rules that govern the abstraction will fail to change and adapt and at some point the whole system becomes too heavy to support itself. As a whole, the system will eventually eat it's way to a heart attack.

Liquidity is the velocity of this process, and thus the velocity of consumption. There are pressures and systems and factors that metabolize the effects of the flow of capital, but the higher liquidity is the more burdened those systems become. We are currently in a place where the liquidity factor is > 1, by which I mean money can be spent before it is earned and most of it is (we have something like 5-20x debt to the pool of money, depending on how you measure it). This means that those deficiencies in the abstraction are accelerated and compounded by the same amount, which translates to an equal difference between the things we actually value as humans and the things we are capable of valuing as economic units.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#173

Post by unnamed76ri » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

gaoshan wrote: post #139

herodotus wrote: post #138

In the early 1990's, during my days as a Comp. Sci. prof, I was so excited about the emergence of the internet. When I saw the Mosaic browser (a precursor to Netscape and later Firefox) I knew the world had changed for the better. Now I have such mixed feelings. Magazines (like the Farmers Almanac) either go online completely or just disappear. They just cannot compete for advertising dollars with Google. And small f…

The aspect of small local stores functioning as a social hub really hits hard. The social hub, such as it is now, can be so much larger and less personal that it really does feel like a loss (a negative even). Is the social hub now something like Instagram or a specific forum/subreddit/space for a school or neighborhood? These are really insufficient replacements and people that grew up knowing nothing else likely do…

I attend a church where most of the folks are older and they don’t seem to get it that younger people won’t just find our church like in the old days because people aren’t connected by local businesses like they used to be. I don’t mind saying on here that I attend St John’s. It doesn’t matter because there’s over 1000 other St John’s in the country. No one can find us using modern means.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#174

Post by throw0101d » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #77

dannyphantom wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda all of the above. It did evolve into a scientific(-adjacent) thing, if that makes sense. My boyfriend’s parents have all of them sitting on a dedicated shelf. Interesting to read through. They definitely leaned into being a cultural artifact. Jokes, anecdotes, stories, how-tos, homeopathic recipes for things like cough syrups, etc. They all look kinda the same so either brand consistency or to keep the nostalgi…

They have to predict the weather for the year in a book that has to go through the publishing and distribution process ahead of time. My local weather news has all the benefits of real time data and weather models yet I think their accuracy rate is just as poor when it comes to producing the 7 day outlook. It’s common to hear a forecast for rain/cold front/etc in 7 day outlook that just never materializes. Also the t…

> My local weather news has all the benefits of real time data and weather models yet I think their accuracy rate is just as poor when it comes to producing the 7 day outlook.

Where is your local source getting their forecast from?

> A seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather about 80 percent of the time and a five-day forecast can accurately predict the weather approximately 90 percent of the time. However, a 10-day—or longer—forecast is only right about half the time.

* https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/k-12-education/weather-for...

There are also 'technicalities': I'm in Toronto, Canada, which is 40km east-to-east and 20km from the lake to the northern border. If rain hits the western half (around 427/Sherway/Etobicoke) but not the eastern half (Scarborough bluffs), is a "it will rain" forecast correct for the city? Some will perceive it as yes and some as no.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#175

Post by lumost » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

breakpointalpha wrote: post #167

localhost wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do social hubs need to be places of financial transactions? I was in Delft recently and I really loved their library/community center. Full of music practice rooms, people playing board games on the ground floor, a coffee bar and it was full of people at 8pm. It is open from 9am - 11pm M-F. You walk or cycle there (free indoor bicycle parking). There is a movie theater across the "street" (no cars).

They didn't need to be transactional spaces, they need to be spaces that attract people regularly. The local chicken farmer who works 16 hours a day to keep his farm running isn't going out of his way three times a week to visit the community center for board game night. He's definitely in the local Tractor Supply store three times a week though... It's about creating community where people naturally gather, not crea…

I suspect this is the major reason for lifestyle premium fitness gyms popularity in recent years.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#176

Post by autoexec » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

atomicnature wrote: post #99

khannn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say how everyone has the internet in their pocket, news and entertainment being one and the same, and the fact that nobody reads books anymore

Book sales in general (across all formats) are up I think - so there are still many, many readers around. We just have many new formats (EPUB, audiobooks, reader devices, etc.) and of course population is increasing over the globe. I'm pretty sure we have the highest number of readers on the planet right now than ever before in absolute terms.

I can't fault people for feeling that nobody reads anymore. In the US today the majority of Americans can't even understand books written at a 6th grade level and literacy has been trending downward. Only a small number of us are propping up book sales.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#177

Post by atomicnature » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

jbstack wrote: post #116

atomicnature wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Book sales in general (across all formats) are up I think - so there are still many, many readers around. We just have many new formats (EPUB, audiobooks, reader devices, etc.) and of course population is increasing over the globe. I'm pretty sure we have the highest number of readers on the planet right now than ever before in absolute terms.

I'm not sure that's still correct. There was an uplift because of Covid and people having more spare time, but whatever more recent (2024 - 2025) sources I can find suggest the trend has reversed. It's worth also considering demographics. If you narrow the focus to just younger generations (who, we can guess, are more addicted to smartphones) then the numbers look pretty bad. E.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2…

1. The survey seems limited to UK or so. Not sure - it doesn't look like a global report.

2. Don't confuse "enjoyment" with "number of readers". The previous generation may have enjoyed it more - because there were no better options.

3. People over the globe are more educated now, and engaged in knowledge work. They must read to get work done.

4. Don't forget the "pirate book" scene - such as lib gen, Anna's archive, etc. - in developing countries.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#178

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #141

gaoshan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The aspect of small local stores functioning as a social hub really hits hard. The social hub, such as it is now, can be so much larger and less personal that it really does feel like a loss (a negative even). Is the social hub now something like Instagram or a specific forum/subreddit/space for a school or neighborhood? These are really insufficient replacements and people that grew up knowing nothing else likely do…

But if it’s so valuable… why aren’t people willing to pay for it? Forgoing luxuries like a vacation to support local stores full of people you know and trust, that might charge 20% more for the same product, seems like an obvious thing… That almost no Americans do in reality.

They dont get a choice. You really can’t operate a small store anymore. The distribution networks were all destroyed by the top-5 retailers.

Regional supermarkets are capped by this. The lack of third party distribution means they have to have their own sourcing and distribution. They can’t grow and are slowly being picked off of PE and bigger chains.

It’s even hard for restaurants. When I worked in restaurants in college in my region, we had 6 local produce distributors. Now you have Sysco, US Foods, two regionals, one of which just went PE, and the vertically integrated Chinese markets that prefer to do business within their circle.

I think we are going to have significant political unrest, and the rollup of everything will continue until that federal power is exerted against it. Otherwise, welcome to WalmartKrogerHomeDepot.

Re: A Fond Farewell

#179

Post by olelele » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #152

wat10000 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if I do that, I lose my vacation and I don’t gain a local store full of people I know and trust. Collective action problems aren’t solved by individually performing the action, and therefore the fact that people aren’t doing it doesn’t show they don’t want it.

> Collective action problems aren’t solved by individually performing the action This is a truth that a lot of the west, particularly Americans, struggle to accept. We keep trying "the free market and individual incentives must solve all problems" over and over, and fail over and over. Huge problems require collective action to solve. Collective action requires good coordination, strong institutions, leadership, and…

Thank you

Re: A Fond Farewell

#180

Post by boznz » Fri, Nov 07, 2025, 6:01 PM UTC

sowbug wrote: post #156

MichaelZuo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if it’s so valuable… why aren’t people willing to pay for it? Forgoing luxuries like a vacation to support local stores full of people you know and trust, that might charge 20% more for the same product, seems like an obvious thing… That almost no Americans do in reality.

You think you have a choice to buy local. It's more complicated than that. "Local stores full of people you know and trust" is what advertising tries to approximate. Instead of forming lasting human bonds with shopkeepers and employees, we are informed by ads who we should patronize. And we pay, indirectly, for that service. Private equity also takes its pound of flesh. Try hiring a local plumber. They'll always say…

the McDonald's in our town says "locally owned and operated", same with the stores where everything (literally) is made in China. These sums up the absurdity of the phrase for me.