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The Last Quiet Thing

terrygodier.com

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Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#141

Post by pjc50 »

strken wrote: post #114
ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote: post #111

I’m 41 and drive a 2011 car: no touchscreen, no GPS—just filling up, checking tire pressure, and an occasional oil change. None of my household appliances are smart, and I don’t have a smartwatch. I subscribe to two podcasts and pay a few euros a month for a VPS and a handful of domains. No Spotify, no Netflix, no subscription software. At the beginning of the year, I bought one of those e-scooters you ride while sta…

If that's a rhetorical question then it's meant to have an effect on the reader, but I can't for the life of me understand what you were trying to say. Losing a phone is almost the same "problem" as losing your wallet, and solving it takes maybe half a day.

Hmm. How easy is it to swap all these third party authenticators (Steam, Microsoft Authenticator, etc) and passkeys, etc?

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#142

Post by pjc50 »

rendx wrote: post #115
Fwirt wrote: post #71

I realize the purpose of the essay, and I agree with the author's sentiment that our possessions ask more of us than is necessary, and more than ever before. But I disagree that any object is finished . That Casio that the author mentions, yes it goes 7 years without a battery change, but the day the battery dies will be the day that you have to buy a new battery, figure out how to open it, and change it. Or (as many…

> Some people choose to rent instead of buying because they don't want to deal with property upkeep (which is undoubtedly a bad deal, but one that some choose to make regardless.) Is it? My understanding is that strictly return-wise, index funds are distinctly better than property value in most countries, especially if you factor in all the maintenance cost and risks. Some countries have pretty good tenant protection…

This really depends 100% on how good your landlord is, over and above the tenancy protection you mention.

> index funds are distinctly better than property value in most countries

It's much easier to borrow £200k to buy a house than to buy stocks, and then you don't have to pay CGT on it. Housing is the only asset the general public can leverage gains on.

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#143

Post by pjc50 »

gcr wrote: post #136

For the record, Pangram reports that 100% of this post is likely AI generated: https://www.pangram.com/history/0c785fe7-13b0-4f00-8cd2-b359... The author posted about “AI slop is eating the world” a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42167020 I wonder what changed their mind.

Is it possible that Pangram makes mistakes?

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#144

Post by throwaway27448 »

graemep wrote: post #129
strken wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's a rhetorical question then it's meant to have an effect on the reader, but I can't for the life of me understand what you were trying to say. Losing a phone is almost the same "problem" as losing your wallet, and solving it takes maybe half a day.

Except a phone does a lot more than a wallet. For many people it replaces their wallet, and their phone, their car keys and many other things. Therefore the impact of losing it is greater. It is taken out more, so you are more likely to lose it. I often see people with their phones out on a table in a cafe, or even on a flight while they are asleep. I think it would be more effort to replace a phone than a wallet. Yo…

Car keys? Replacing your car keys with a phone seems insanely risky, especially since the car is often a primary method of charging your phone.

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#145

Post by bombcar »

greedo wrote: post #99
pimlottc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I think the idea of products being done is a temporary illusion. Older analog technology needed a lot more maintenance over time. I doubt someone in the 1970s would agree with this; most things then needed to be regularly mended, fixed, tuned, serviced, repaired, refilled, what have you. It’s only in the last few decades that materials and manufacturing have gotten good enough that you can expect gadgets to…

I don't agree. Older tech was simpler, and often more reliable. They didn't depend on being able to connect to a networked time clock for sync, didn't need networking period. Today's systems are inherently fragile. I grew up in the 70's. About the only thing I would say is less fragile are cars. Today's cars are just better in so many ways but are unmaintainable by the average user. And people throw out things instea…

Cars are actually surprisingly maintainable by an "average" user - if you maintain them the same way the repair shops do - replacing parts.

What old cars had was the ability to fix things without replacing parts - but most of those kinds of repairs (think: adjusting points, etc) are no longer necessary at all.

A modern car tells you what is wrong (usually) and you can have an auto parts store read the codes, search YouTube for a video on it, and order parts and replace it yourself.

You need to go back pretty far to find vehicles that can be repaired by the side of the road in Outer Mongolia with nothing but a hammer and a bag of random pieces of metal (iirc, this was in the extended features of Planet Earth, maybe the Snow Leopard episode - sadly, not about macOS at all ;).

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#146

Post by throwaway27448 »

rendx wrote: post #115
Fwirt wrote: post #71

I realize the purpose of the essay, and I agree with the author's sentiment that our possessions ask more of us than is necessary, and more than ever before. But I disagree that any object is finished . That Casio that the author mentions, yes it goes 7 years without a battery change, but the day the battery dies will be the day that you have to buy a new battery, figure out how to open it, and change it. Or (as many…

> Some people choose to rent instead of buying because they don't want to deal with property upkeep (which is undoubtedly a bad deal, but one that some choose to make regardless.) Is it? My understanding is that strictly return-wise, index funds are distinctly better than property value in most countries, especially if you factor in all the maintenance cost and risks. Some countries have pretty good tenant protection…

Land is not an investment (at least, not without explicitly improving the land). Buildings depreciate. If land (or the buildings on the land) are returning anything close to an index investment, an economy is seriously sick.

Edit: yes, you can rent the property out—but, societally, that's just shunting the problem down the road.

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#147

Post by MarkusWandel »

A smartphone doesn't have to rule your life. If you don't install social media apps on it, sure, you get text message and email pings but that's it. You pull it out because you want to do something, not because it wants you to do something. Mine has logged-in social apps on it (Whatsapp, Facebook and Strava) but maybe I'm just not that popular or my (old) cohort isn't big social media users, but the interruption rate is very low, on the order of one an hour or less.

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#148

Post by gcr »

pjc50 wrote: post #143
gcr wrote: post #136

For the record, Pangram reports that 100% of this post is likely AI generated: https://www.pangram.com/history/0c785fe7-13b0-4f00-8cd2-b359... The author posted about “AI slop is eating the world” a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42167020 I wonder what changed their mind.

Is it possible that Pangram makes mistakes?

Oh certainly, but this particular article also reads very strongly like LLM output to me.

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#149

Post by Lucent »

gcr wrote: post #136

For the record, Pangram reports that 100% of this post is likely AI generated: https://www.pangram.com/history/0c785fe7-13b0-4f00-8cd2-b359... The author posted about “AI slop is eating the world” a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42167020 I wonder what changed their mind.

I am shocked it resonated with readers here so universally. It was well-presented visually, but genuinely miserable to read with all the worst tells of AI writing. It contained two or three actual sentences of content with intense repetition, obnoxious signposting, and disjoint "what the fatcats don't want you to know" framing throughout. "Nobody in a position of power is saying this. The reason is simple: They sold you the condition. Now they sell you the treatment." The single worst thing I've read on Hacker News this year.

Re: The Last Quiet Thing

#150

Post by moondance »

gcr wrote: post #136

For the record, Pangram reports that 100% of this post is likely AI generated: https://www.pangram.com/history/0c785fe7-13b0-4f00-8cd2-b359... The author posted about “AI slop is eating the world” a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42167020 I wonder what changed their mind.

“Low hum” was the clincher for me. Chatbots just love to talk about things humming.
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