IPad as hip flask | Hacker News Reader

IPad as hip flask

johndcook.com

I ain't gonna lie. I was imagining an iPad's guts being removed and it's husk being filled with whiskey or home made absinthe or something when I first saw this.

Me too. And filled with: http://www.leopoldbros.com/New_York_Apple_Whiskey.html (no connection)

To me, a high end smartphone seems more like a hip flask in terms of inconspicuousness and mobility. When I'm in public and someone whips out an ipad, I definitely notice. A cell phone, not so much.

Indeed. In fact, in my experience, an iPad is more conspicuous than a laptop because laptops are pretty commonplace now and no one gives them a second look, whereas the iPad is still something of a novelty and still attracts some attention.

If someone whips out an actual hip flask, I would notice too.

I don't think that someone noticing is the social threshold, here. Rather, it's whether pulling one out makes a stir, or causes you to stir as your rearrange your surroundings to accomodate what you've carried along with you.

If one or more people see you pull it out, but everyone carries on with what they were doing, then it's like a hip flask. Even if an isolated individual rolls their eyes in judgement as you bathe your neurons in a rush of dopamine.

So true. I would never get away with taking a laptop to bed, but my wife doesn't seem to take issue with my tablet. It's a guilty pleasure. As much as I enjoy it, it feels a little wrong.

All I can say is that when I bought my first-ever laptop in 2006, it completely revolutionized my trips to the bathroom.

I expect 2007 was the year you discovered your first hemorrhoid?

You no longer had to keep stacks of that magazine around in the bathroom? You know... for the articles?

I think the same thing is going on with the iPad now, that went on with Pocket Calculators, when they first hit the scene. There was a lot of this kind of thinking, that pocket calculators, and the ease with which they can be whipped out and use, was 'ruining peoples ability to do math'.. and well .. after all the iPad is just a pocket calculator on steroids. I don't see people complaining about calculators nowadays, but then again the generation that complained about them have all retired, I suppose ..

My calculator did ruin my ability to do mental arithmetic, because I had it in my pocket basically every weekday between the ages of 11 and 17. Damn school blazers and their capacious pockets.

My general ability to do maths (in terms of understanding and applying mathematical concepts) is good, I got a degree in computer science, but my ability to do maths in my head is really bad.

Bad analogy. A laptop is not only more conspicuous than an iPad, but heavier, louder, larger, and much less convenient. I'm not sure what he's angling at by the comparison to a hip flask but I'm quite sure I don't like the implications.

You could make the same argument about a modern smartphone.

I think he is saying that the iPad is a more convenient form-factor for fueling our addiction to consuming social media (I would include other internet content on here - HN is a mild addiction for me although I would consider it to be a little more enlightened and useful than your average social media). The implication is that we are much less productive and also less aware of other more important things in life when we are addicted to social media. I wholeheartedly support any efforts to minimize its role in our daily lives.

  >I wholeheartedly support any efforts to minimize its role in our daily lives.

While getting addicted to anything is a bad idea, isn't this a bit extreme? There's absolutely nothing wrong with social media.

Saying "there's absolutely nothing wrong with ____" is a bad idea.

The sentiment is that too much social media is bad, so he is for reducing the amount. And if things are addictive at some point it is easier to go cold turkey than to manage use, it's a much simpler rule.

I was sort of overstating for dramatic effect although that's hard to convey online. From time to time, though, I really find myself consuming more and more and producing less. I can't really tell if its getting worse but I think it's a good idea to schedule internet consumption quiet-periods every now and again.

One of the things I keep hearing over and over is that people are being flooded with so much crap that they can't keep up. Thats not the problem. The problem is that theres such a glut of good material that people can't keep up. If it was all crap people would ignore it. The thing is, a lot of this stuff is interesting, and thats where it gets tricky.

To read all the stuff that you want to read will leave you with no time to actually do anything. But on the other hand not reading anything will stunt your ability to generate new ideas. This is the question: How much do you need to read before you've read enough that the diminishing returns are no longer worth it.

Reading is sort of a thing that becomes less and less useful the more of it you do. Eventually the returns from reading become low enough that it makes more sense to actually go do something.

If you've been following hacker news long enough to be sick of it you've probably hit that point.

The returns from reading are completely nonlinear.

If you find yourself doing cost-benefit analysis on the benefits of reading, you're doing too much cost-benefit analysis.

Economic valuation of words and ideas is absurd.

(Disclosure: I have never taken a financial math course.)

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog...

Apparently at the time of writing it's worth $34.78 on paperback. You could argue that that's the printing costs. However, if I were to copy that book with a scanner and distribute it online for a cost of $0 it would be copyright infringement. Thus the words and ideas themselves must have some form of economic value. (Or at least perceived economic value.)

You can already measure one variable associated with reading: Time spent. After all, by some metrics time translates to money and vice versa. And okay, the benefits of reading are nonlinear. So instead make it a probability. What is the chance that the book I am about to read will, even in conjunction with other books, will have justified the amount of time I spent reading it? (You can probably use some subjective measures here like happiness generated from fantasy.) In the case of reading to enrich your knowledge in a particular field you ask an important subset of that question: What is the chance that this book will, even in conjunction with other books, have a significant impact on my ability to work in my chosen field versus the chance that if I went and started one of my projects right now I would succeed?

Theres more than one project I have right now for which I've said "Nope, need to do more reading.".

>However, if I were to copy that book with a scanner and distribute it online for a cost of $0 it would be copyright infringement. Thus the words and ideas themselves must have some form of economic value. (Or at least perceived economic value.)

Percieved, perhaps, but keep in mind that copyright is nothing more than a government granted monopoly. There is no requirement that something have a certain value (or even positive value) for copyright to apply.

After all, just because I perceive my blog to be worth $1,000,000 doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot, even though it's copyrighted ;)

You know, this is probably the first set of downvotes I've recieved that I can point to as being plainly hypocritical.

This is a social media site after all.. So I've somehow committed some kind of error for saying it's a bit extreme to want to cut the influence of social media in our daily lives?

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