Most tech content is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#311

Post by rapind » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #279

Call me a cynic, but the whole "think critically and figure it out for yourself" solution is inefficient at best, harmful at worst. Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts. There are very effective ways to get high quality recommendations, with minimal effort on your part. Want to get good medical advice? F…

Many of us were told growing up that we were a special snowflake. Not sure there's correlation (not sure how you'd prove it), but I have my suspicions. IMO we're in the age of individualism. Hopefully it's just a cycle.

The real kicker is it seems to be self-fulfilling. If experts are no longer trusted or respected, the market / margin for expertise shrinks. You get lots of self-proclaimed experts to fill in the gaps with less investment (lower margin == lower investment, clickbait), and then the individual is justified in thinking most expertise is crap... because it is now crap (advertiser supported business model).

Maybe we wake up some day and say "Holy shit, it's all just bullshit!" and then expertise can again attract an audience that's willing to pay for it.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#312

Post by mecki » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

"Don't consume. Create."

vs

"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#313

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

beckingz wrote: post #249

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My life became a lot better when I stopped reading towards data science (on Medium). It was just so much terrible tutorial content which was not only wrong, but actively misleading.

What are your sources for data science news?

Books if you need to learn a topic.

Papers if you need to keep up with a topic.

I used to follow statsblogs, but that's dead now (the collection, most of the blogs still exist).

Anything that isn't covered in these forums probably isn't important enough to worry about.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#314

Post by lmilcin » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

So... the author works as a developer since 2017.

The reality is most tech content is written by people with relatively little experience. People with lots of experience tend to have way more on their plates to bother writing blog posts or (tech) books.

Also the market is stacked against content for advanced users. Whether you are for ad impressions, visitors, likes, subscribes, book sales, you want to produce content that sells to masses of people and making it advanced is definitely going to cut your readership.

There is still a lot of value browsing through it. The reason is that since finding good information is difficult, the nuggets of wisdom make up for the lost time reading cruft.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#315

Post by tasssko » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

My two cents many people can't think individually any more. Tech has become complex some people can only justify a decision based on what other people did. Honestly the solution is a combination of the scientific method, hacker mindset and being prepared to RTFM. No tech content is worth its character count it is just one persons perspective, their biases and mistakes. However reading code is another story, that tells a story I don't think you need to write content if you code. A project on GitHub is worth more than 1000 words.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#316

Post by yawaramin » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

monocularvision wrote: post #258

alibarber wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uggh - this! Maybe I'm so used to it for programming queries, but I've gotten back into electronics and ham radio after a long time, and have always dreamed of owning a decent oscilloscope. Googling 'good digital hobbyist oscilloscope' just now was a frustrating waste of time. It's just pages and pages of regurgitated specs and affiliate links, no useful _actual_ reviews or anything... Take this top 10 result. It's o…

The first paragraph: > Best Oscilloscopes are not a common field where people would choose to spend their spare time relaxing. However, analyzing and measuring signals might be an interesting fact for most engineers or people looking for complexity, isn’t it? That’s what we actually thought about before doing our research. Reads like it went through Google translate twice.

Actually, that looks like a filled-in template with some relevant keywords for content marketing.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#317

Post by yawaramin » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

maps7 wrote: post #252

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I find presentations at conferences not all that interesting; I've been to conferences where I've not attended a single presentation. There are some good talks, but they're not common. Giving a good presentation requires a few different skill and some practice – I'm not good at it either. The value is mostly in hanging out with various people. The best experience has generally been when I went alone and me…

How did you meet people if you didn't go to the talks?

You meet them in the hallways outside the talks.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#318

Post by jacobobryant » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

polytely wrote: post #309

jacobobryant wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Logically then, the time is ripe for a new search engine to disrupt but the problem - that of determining intrinsic worth - is really hard to solve, so as yet nobody has I'm sort-of trying to solve this with a recommender system approach.[1] Search isn't my primary objective; I'm mainly focusing on the case where you want to be made aware of relevant information on an ongoing basis but you aren't necessarily lookin…

Quick question about findka, Is the idea to only upvote/downvote things you have actually experienced and liked or dislike, or do you also upvote/downvote things you don't know but like or dislike? I would think the first case would result in way better data (which is why (I think) last.fm recommendation system is so good), but the latter case seems to be the natural thing to do, humans love to judge shit without act…

Mainly the former. Ideally you've experienced the things you've rated, but in many cases you can probably judge fairly accurately if you're interested in something based on a short description.

That brings up a key point which I'm not sure is clear to users or not: voting on items specifically means "this is/is not a good recommendation for me". It's not a judgment on the goodness of the item in general. So if findka showed me e.g. an article on pottery that looked high quality, I'd probably still downvote it since I'm not into pottery.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#319

Post by pas » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #157

tracerbulletx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, it might be true that a lot of inexperienced people are writing blogs now as a way to build a personal brand. But your reaction is an over-reaction. There are also lots of incredible experts writing, and writing its self is an incredibly rewarding and educational activity. It's not a waste of time, no matter how busy you are.

I know half a dozen students who have published "Intro to React" tutorials. They themselves know they are crap, but also know that recruiters will be impressed by the publishing without reading it.

While that's absolutely true that doesn't sound like a real problem. (It won't throw off Google and the problems with recruitment were already pretty bad.)

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#320

Post by yawaramin » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

ShroudedNight wrote: post #189

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The entire talk seemed pretty useless to me. To you. On the flip side, it provided an introductory level overview of a concept many watching/attending may not have looked into themselves, or were thinking of looking into. It also provided a different form of introduction, which could be valuable for attendees with a learning style preference different to that of look-at-a-how-to or check-out-the-docs. >the guy repli…

If I go to a talk about a piece of technology, I expect the presenter to have enough experience with it to be able to provide me with a means of determining where I am situated in said technology's landscape, and what frame of reference is required to evaluate how to move about that landscape. It doesn't matter how eloquent and thorough the introductory tutorial is, if the presenter has not experienced the technology…

Well this talk was at a local Meetup so presumably the attendees got what they paid for. If you expect a high-quality talk I'm sure you would shell out an appropriate amount of money for it.