Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nobody cares

grantslatton.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

921–930 of 1001 posts

Re: Nobody cares

#921

Post by maeil »

crabbone wrote: post #593
tqi wrote: post #425

Its ironic, because this dude doesn't seem to care enough to even the slightest bit of research to understand why any of these problems he highlights are the way they are, and lazily attributes everything to OTHER people not caring. LEDs last longer, are more energy efficient, and also reduce light pollution because they are more directional[1]. Took me 30 seconds to google. There are enormous design standards for de…

I live in the Netherlands, in the burbs, and have to cycle a lot. That picture of a bike ramp... I can feel it. Whatever that document you googled says, it's wrong, if it justifies building ramps like that. That ramp is bad. There's no two ways about it. But, responding to this particular example is missing the point of the article. Let me, for a moment, agree with you, and say that the ramp is within acceptable para…

>But, when I go to work, things change. Not only people around me don't care, they very much want everyone to not care, because that would show them in a bad light.

In your country this starts way back in middle school, where this phenomenon is worse than I've seen in any other place. It would be incredibly surprising if this suddenly changed in the workplace when it's all people have ever known.

As long as the culture doesn't change at that age, there's no hope for changing it later in life.

Re: Nobody cares

#922

Post by SamPatt »

bccdee wrote: post #833
ericmay wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Ugly architecture" is subjective. I think this actually illustrates the author's point and gets at the heart of the cultural malaise we are experiencing. If everything is subjective, nothing can be improved because nothing can be better than something else. But this isn't the case. The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted. Architecture is no different. Some buildings quite literally ar…

> The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted. No it isn't. If I saw one of your paintings and liked it better, there would be no way for you to prove me wrong. My opinion might be highly unpopular, but that wouldn't make it objectively incorrect.

Some elements of beauty are objective. As in, they are hardwired into our brains.

Some cities are more beautiful than others. Prague is more beautiful than Detroit.

Re: Nobody cares

#923

Post by TimSchumann »

bagels wrote: post #909
stevedekorte wrote: post #883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But street lights don't have to use harsh 3000 kelvin LEDs, there are warm light LEDs (2400-2700 kelvin). For example, these lights are widely available for home, yet most people just buy the 3000K LED bulbs because (IME) it doesn't occur to them that there is a strong aesthetic (and health) difference between these colors. i.e. They don't care.

Besides the color temperature, they are way too bright. It's like daylight in front of my house since they changed the lamps.

They shine through my windows at night and are truly horrific.

They’re down the entire alleyway behind my place, and a walk to the grocery store at 7pm during the winter makes your body and mind think it’s sunrise.

Re: Nobody cares

#924

Post by maeil »

rrrx3 wrote: post #775
jl2718 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an interesting anecdote about that. I was consulting for a very large tech company on their advertising product. They essentially wanted an upsell product to sell to advertisers, like a premium offering to increase their reach. My first step is always to establish a baseline by backtesting their algorithm against simple zeroth and first-order estimators. Measuring this is a little bit complicated, but it seeme…

> They have to find ways to split up the tranches of conversion probability and sell them all separately, without revealing that this is only possible by selling ad placements that are intentionally not as good as they could be. I worked in the adtech space for almost 10 years and can confirm this is where we landed, too. >The short story is that they didn’t want a better algorithm. They wanted an upsell feature. Thi…

Is there a solution? Obviously those companies are not going to change, so what can everyone else do about it - besides already being very rich, starting a competing ad-tech without funding, managing to get market share, and managing to remain one of the good guys.

The only thing I can think of is to use things like influencer ads on places like Instagram or Youtube which ironically sound like much better value for money as you actually know what you're getting for the money.

Re: Nobody cares

#925

Post by maeil »

bruce511 wrote: post #380
amatecha wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it's not good enough that you're already a paying customer- they have to try their best to manipulate and coerce you into spending even more. It's insulting, abusive and honestly pathetic. These thirsty lamers have to try every trick in the book to eke a few more cents out of me? Embarrassing. Modern tech/business does not have a shred of pride or dignity, as per TFA.

Businesses aren't in business to prioritize the customer point of view [1]. They are not in business to prioritize the employees point of view. They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit. If you work for a business, your job is to work on their priorities. By all means object or quit if you don't agree with them. (And yes, assume you'll be fired for refusing to do their tasks.) If you're a customer, and you…

It does not have to be this way. This should not be claimed as some kind of law of gravity-like nature of the universe. Businesses have operated in an enormous variety of manners over the years and continue to do so. Businesses have agency.

Just look at EA vs Nintendo for one. And I'm not even a Nintendo fan.

Re: Nobody cares

#926

Post by maeil »

aaron695 wrote: post #371
azeirah wrote: post #210

> The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the programmer, the executives. None of these people care. I was working in this space! And I got fired for refusing to work on more upsell features for clients like Coca Cola and such. I don't want to work on adding fucking ADS into c…

McDonald's touch-screen were only profitable because users ordered more. Possibly Covid and processes to get costs down have changed this, but not to begin. I feel like your comment falls under "Nobody cares" I love the touch screens and having the time to order what I want. I used to rush my order at the checkout and never got exactly what I wanted. If you did a start-up 'ethical ordering' you'd care, made money, an…

> In South Korea it asks the user are you sure, here's the extra kJ, when it does an upsell.

Really? I guess I've just never taken up such an upsell, but I'll try to remember it next time I go just to see the UI. Barely ever go there now that ironically Lotteria has more veggie burger options here (1) than McDonalds (0), and their chicken burgers are imo worse than KFC's.

Re: Nobody cares

#927

Post by maeil »

hoosier2gator wrote: post #344

As a physician who does care, I found it interesting that he chose to include doctors in this tirade but then patted himself on the back for squashing bugs quickly and feeling badly about having written buggy code. I know that there are outliers, but in meeting and working with literally hundreds of other physicians at this point in my career, I can count on one hand the doctors who truly do not care. And boy do we f…

Let me ask you a question. What's the longest time you've spent on a single patient over the last month? What do you think that number is like for your fellow physicians?

Of course this will massively depend on your specific workplace, the ratio of doctors to patients in your vicinity, and so on. But I've seen plenty of doctors for who that statistic can't be higher than 10 minutes.

I'll freely admit I'm biased. I have a medical issue that despite visiting a good number of different doctors, none have properly diagnosed. This is despite the symptoms being visible, audible and showing up on certain scans (inflammation), so it can't be disregarded as "it's in your head". Some have made an attempt, and after that failed quickly did the equivalent of throwing their hands up and saying "I don't know", providing no further path.

Re: Nobody cares

#928

Post by [deleted] »

marcosdumay wrote: post #862
pastage wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like zooming when you bicycle in those tight spaces at 9-12 km/h, which is a third of what you calld zooming. The point is that a collision at 12 km/h is pretty ok. The problem is that cyclists are always close to pedestrians so it feels unsafe even at slow speeds. The accident rate between cyclists and pedestrians are incredibly low so it is not really dangerous, but it feels like it.

The article explicitly says cyclists crash there going at ~30 km/h.

[deleted]

Re: Nobody cares

#929

Post by pastage »

marcosdumay wrote: post #862
pastage wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like zooming when you bicycle in those tight spaces at 9-12 km/h, which is a third of what you calld zooming. The point is that a collision at 12 km/h is pretty ok. The problem is that cyclists are always close to pedestrians so it feels unsafe even at slow speeds. The accident rate between cyclists and pedestrians are incredibly low so it is not really dangerous, but it feels like it.

The article explicitly says cyclists crash there going at ~30 km/h.

Crashes are another thing, cars going 100 mph here is probably proportionally the same as the people trying to take that at 30 km/h. The streetview of the location makes it even worse than I thought especially looking at the history of the spot.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/EcG7qKSNDDHjzWJk9

Re: Nobody cares

#930

Post by Cthulhu_ »

SamPatt wrote: post #922
bccdee wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted. No it isn't. If I saw one of your paintings and liked it better, there would be no way for you to prove me wrong. My opinion might be highly unpopular, but that wouldn't make it objectively incorrect.

Some elements of beauty are objective. As in, they are hardwired into our brains. Some cities are more beautiful than others. Prague is more beautiful than Detroit.

And yet, it's not as clear cut as that. There is some hardwired stuff in our brains (see e.g. the "bouba / kiki" effect [0]) but most people will agree that what is considered pretty, good, etc is cultural, not to mention changing over time - like architecture trends as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but also painting styles.

That said, a few posts back a commenter mentioned that the Mona Lisa is "objectively better" than anything they made; while I won't comment on aesthetics and appreciation, the assertion that the artist is more skilled in the arts than the poster is something definitely objectively true, simply because of education and experience. That's no guarantee that the outcome is better, but still.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

Post reply on HN