“The joy of sharing has been driven from me“ • Hacker News Board

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#271

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

bena wrote: post #159

dylan-m wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have seen the same thing happen to Star Wars where the legitimate criticism was painted as toxicity of the fandom. Hold on a minute here. Yes, the racist assholes got more attention than they deserved. But Rise of the Skywalker was thrown together by a bunch of marketing executives looking through all that “legitimate criticism”, making a big checklist, and feeding it into their lifeless movie factory to create…

This is one area where I think Nintendo and Apple really excel at. They hardly, if ever, cave to user "wants", because they understand that often, the user has no fucking clue what they actually want. It's why they manage to succeed despite initial opinions being so against them. It's because often the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Looking at a thing can only tell you so much, it's only when you are able to…

Users often don't know what they want, but they frequently know better than rando companies.

Apple's strategy worked during the era of Steve Jobs because Steve Jobs was miraculously good at intuiting what users want. Since his death, Apple has lost that ability. See: The Butterfly Keyboard, the Touchbar, the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple's recent successes have been things consumers very much said they wanted: iPhones with larger screens, Macs with better performance and incredible battery life.

Nintendo does seem to have some leaders with Steve Jobs's talent, but I'd argue they're more hit or miss than he was. The Wii U didn't go so well, and the Wii—while an initial success—was ultimately kind of mixed.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#272

Post by bena » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 10:55 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #271

bena wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one area where I think Nintendo and Apple really excel at. They hardly, if ever, cave to user "wants", because they understand that often, the user has no fucking clue what they actually want. It's why they manage to succeed despite initial opinions being so against them. It's because often the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Looking at a thing can only tell you so much, it's only when you are able to…

Users often don't know what they want, but they frequently know better than rando companies. Apple's strategy worked during the era of Steve Jobs because Steve Jobs was miraculously good at intuiting what users want. Since his death, Apple has lost that ability. See: The Butterfly Keyboard, the Touchbar, the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple's recent successes have been things consumers very much said they wanted: iPhones with lar…

The reason I explicitly noted Nintendo and Apple is because they are not "rando companies". They are companies with explicit track records of not focus grouping every product to death.

You say the Wii was "mixed", but that's just wrong. It outsold the PS3 and XBox 360.

The Wii U was a misstep, but the Switch is essentially a Wii U/Game Boy hybrid. Because Nintendo saw what was off with the Switch and made the changes.

As for Apple, they were lambasted for removing the Home button, removing the audio jack, making their own chips. But those have all been not the major missteps people thought they were.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#273

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #272

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users often don't know what they want, but they frequently know better than rando companies. Apple's strategy worked during the era of Steve Jobs because Steve Jobs was miraculously good at intuiting what users want. Since his death, Apple has lost that ability. See: The Butterfly Keyboard, the Touchbar, the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple's recent successes have been things consumers very much said they wanted: iPhones with lar…

The reason I explicitly noted Nintendo and Apple is because they are not "rando companies". They are companies with explicit track records of not focus grouping every product to death. You say the Wii was "mixed", but that's just wrong. It outsold the PS3 and XBox 360. The Wii U was a misstep, but the Switch is essentially a Wii U/Game Boy hybrid. Because Nintendo saw what was off with the Switch and made the changes…

> You say the Wii was "mixed", but that's just wrong. It outsold the PS3 and XBox 360.

It did, but many of the people who bought it purchased few (if any) games. It's not clear to me that the Wii was more profitable than the PS360 when you take the full ecosystem into account. And even if it was, remember that those competing consoles made major technical missteps—the PS3's high initial cost and weird Cell processor, and the 360's red ring of death.

> As for Apple, they were lambasted for removing the Home button, removing the audio jack, making their own chips. But those have all been not the major missteps people thought they were.

I don't remember as much outcry about the home button's removal. But I bet if you asked a focus group what they wanted in an iPhone, "the biggest possible screen in the smallest possible body" would have been high on the list, and that ultimately necessitates removing the home button. Android phones had already been moving in this direction.

Similar situation with Apple Silicon. Normal consumers don't know what a cpu architecture is, but I'm sure a focus group would have asked for a Mac which was faster and lasted longer on battery.

The headphone jack's removal was a money grab, pure and simple. It allows Apple to exert more control over the ecosystem and receive more money in licensing fees. Consumers didn't like it, they were merely willing to put up with it.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#274

Post by _nalply » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 7:57 AM UTC

barrysteve wrote: post #263

_nalply wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually don't play computer games. But I know Minecraft because my children play this game. To understand the game dynamics, I played Minecraft for a few days and watched Youtube videos and consumed other contents about the game. I am sure I don't know many subtleties and the Minecraft subculture, but this is not neccessary to understand what "entitlement simulator" means: I watched how my son casually killed a vil…

You play video games for long enough and the symbol of "llama" wears off and it starts to become a symbol of "crafting ingredient for this recipe I need" and then later on it becomes "a series of button presses on the road to a speed run goal". The callousness is not against the animal. The callousness is against an uncaring mathematical system he wants to get through and towards his own goals. He doesn't see llamas…

Thanks, that was something I am trying to understand.

In other words, these are only pixels on a screen and these affect me in a different way than a real llama does.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#275

Post by _nalply » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 8:00 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #264

_nalply wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually don't play computer games. But I know Minecraft because my children play this game. To understand the game dynamics, I played Minecraft for a few days and watched Youtube videos and consumed other contents about the game. I am sure I don't know many subtleties and the Minecraft subculture, but this is not neccessary to understand what "entitlement simulator" means: I watched how my son casually killed a vil…

That's not your son being entitled, that's him being entertained in a sandbox. Even without video games your kid will stand up action figures and kill some of them with the others. Even without action figures at some point he'll play a game where killing is part of the play. Even animals in the animal kingdom do mock battles with their fellow lion cubs and wolf pups. It's completely natural.

What does mean entitled, then?

My other son tried to push his brother from the stool in the kitchen because he wanted to take that place. Is this entitled?

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#276

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 8:08 AM UTC

If you don't want negative comments don't post on Internet. I still don't understand how freaking stupid people have to be not to understand this reality. You are not entitled to positive comments.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#277

Post by nicolas_t » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #262

nicolas_t wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I went to High School in France, I lived in the country side so it took an hour by bus to go there which means that I left home at 7:05am and would come back home at 7:10pm 4 days a week and, on Wednesday, I'd do 7:05am to 1:10pm Between this + homework and the stress in the last year to get in the grande école I wanted lest I miss my one shot at it, it was the second most grueling work schedule I've…

I don’t know it must be people dependent I guess. I was in the same situation distance wise from high-school than you also in the French countryside and it was some of the easiest of my life. Workload is low. You don’t have much courses. The material is easy. I was an awkward teenager but all in all people were pretty nice. I don’t really have a complaint about high school. Prépa was annoying however but mostly for t…

I did a prépa intégré and it was significantly easier, mostly because, I lived on campus, I didn't have to commute (I get car sick so close to two hours of bus every day was tough in high school) and I didn't need to stay all the time in a school. When I had free time, I could go back to my place...

So, I guess it's not the workload so much as the butt-in-chair, long hours always being in the same place. Similar to being in Japan actually, low productivity, but long long hours... I also had a lot of stress/anxiety in making sure I get admitted to the school I wanted so I did a lot of busy work to make sure my grades were perfect above and beyond just learning and understanding the materials. In retrospect, it was overkill and pretty much un-needed.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#278

Post by johnfn » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

Beltalowda wrote: post #69

chomp wrote: post #14

Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen. It's astounding. Someone wants to create something, and there's just so much hate and negativity on something that people didn't even pay for. I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then people pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism. No one is asking for blind praise for what they create, but surely there's a middle ground between…

> I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then people pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism. I said this a while ago as well[1], but there's a strong bias towards people who are unhappy with $something (for any value of $something). If you think everything is just great then you don't actually all that much to say beyond "hey, looks great!" Sometimes you can expand that to a paragraph of t…

This isn't actually true, though. Existence proof: Tim Rogers. The man can write a 6 hour video essay about how much he loves a game and not even be halfway done. The truth is, we all have the ability - though most of us don't exercise it for whatever reason.

The real problem is that people like quick negative comments more than quick positive ones.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#279

Post by zaphar » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #275

chrisco255 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not your son being entitled, that's him being entertained in a sandbox. Even without video games your kid will stand up action figures and kill some of them with the others. Even without action figures at some point he'll play a game where killing is part of the play. Even animals in the animal kingdom do mock battles with their fellow lion cubs and wolf pups. It's completely natural.

What does mean entitled, then? My other son tried to push his brother from the stool in the kitchen because he wanted to take that place. Is this entitled?

If your son thought he was "entitled" to that place it would be a form of entitlement.

Most children start out feeling entitled. Learning that the world doesn't exist for their benefit is something that is learned. Even games teach you the concept. The game doesn't care about your goals and won't modify it's rules just so you can reach those goals. You learn while playing the game that there is a system there you need to work within. You can learn to exploit that system to reach your goals but the system itself won't modify itself to meet your goals. Games don't teach entitlement they teach you how to understand and adapt to a specific system to reach your goals.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#280

Post by zaphar » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #155

belfalas wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine a bar where every time you walked in the door a half dozen dudes invariably turned around on their barstools and told you your clothes look like shit, your face is disgusting, you hair style is stupid, you smell like trash and, you should just fucking kill yourself now. How often would you want to go there? Replace the word 'bar' with 'school' and this sounds like a write-up of my much of my pre-university…

I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at least in the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like, structurally, that's just what they are , almost unavoidably without totally changing how they work. Even decent school experiences are, by the standards of the adult world, crazy-bad. How many people have anxiety-nightmares for a decade or more after graduating high school? How many unavoidable experiences in life s…

I can't comment on what public school is like from the inside since I was lucky and my parents homeschooled me. But from the outside when talking to my friends it did indeed look like a form of child abuse. It's sad because, while you can opt out in theory the way my parents did, it requires a lot of sacrifice on the part of the parent.

Either you spend money on private schools if you can find one without the same pathologies as the public school or you have to give up one income in the family. Not everyone can afford to do that although it's easier than some people think. Public school is mostly subsidized child care for many so it's not easily changed and getting enough public funds to employ enough qualified people to reduce the worst pathologies to a manageable level is pretty expensive.