ViktorRay

Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encountered an iPhone. Or an iPad? I remember those days I would read tech news and sites like Ars Technica and comments were sometimes snarky and indignant but generally people were enthusiastic about reading tech because it offered glimpses into more technically advanced futures.

I wasn't browsing HN back then but I imaging the same thing was true of HN in the late 2000's and early 2010's.

Now tech sites like Ars Technica consistently have comment sections filled with immense negativity cynicism indigation and just plain old boiling rage. I avoid those comment sections now because reading such things negatively affects my mood and certainly isn't fun.

And over the past few years HN has gradually become more negative and nasty.

All this sucks. This isn't why I became interested in tech. This isn't why I used to spend time reading about technology and science.

San Fierro was based on San Francisco of the 1990's. Lots of good memories playing GTA San Andreas and exploring 90's San Francisco.

And then there’s the inverse square law too.

This is due to exposure to the radiation from intra operative x rays.

They thought too much sun was bad for you because back then tanned skin was considering a mark of being poor and pale skin was a mark of being wealthy since rich people didn’t have to work outside.

They also had puritanical Victorian notions of modesty and covering up.

There was no knowledge linking sun exposure to cancer or negative health effects. People in the past indeed were ignorant on many things.

I have no idea if that was actually done here but that’s usually how these statements are justified.

Of course we are all individuals so it may not apply to everyone but you can say that for everything in medicine. Only thing we can do is look for statistically significant differences between groups in double blind controlled studies after controlling for all other factors.

It is bad for the same reasons that the Amazon Tax mentioned in the post is bad…

Many times I search for a restaurant like McDonalds and the top result won’t be the one nearest to me…it will be a sponsored result for one that is farther away from me.

Pretty wild that Google does this. It’s bad for people. It’s bad because instead of picking the best choice to be the top, Google is showing a worser choice for money.

The same reason why this blog mentions that the Amazon Tax is bad.

So many folks have been posting Twitter links from this exchange in separate threads here on HN and arguing about them.

I’m sure these threads are being argued about in other forums and social media platforms.

Sometimes you get the feeling that there is one social media extravaganza going on and all the different forums and social media platforms are just conduits to access the extravanangza.

See how TikTokers make their videos and upload identical copies to their TikTok accounts and then also YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc etc

Each platform the same just a different lens into the same cacophony

Microsoft had over 98 percent market share at one point. In the 90’s every country in the world including Russia, China, Iran, etc all began using American operating systems developed by Microsoft. Were there arguments back then similar to this piece?

I remember in the 2000’s and 2010’s Richard Stallman would go to counties like India and promote Linux and free software. During those presentations he would mention kind of offhand an argument that Microsoft was engaging in a form of colonialism through its control of Windows. He made the argument somewhat awkwardly in those presentations and the Indian audience received the argument with hesitance. It seemed kind of exaggerated to conflate Microsoft and Windows with colonialism…especially in India.

But that was the 2000’s and 2010’s. Would the argument be received differently now? Were these arguments for Linux considered mainstream by Linux proponents back then or was this some Richard Stallman thing?

And now we have articles like this in the 2020’s basically making the same arguments for AI. People explicitly saying open weights AI can be a hedge against this. China developing their own models.

What I want to know if if there was broad support or even broad arguments for this kind of thing back in the 90’s when Microsoft ruled all computing even in countries not super friendly or even hostile to America. The biggest competitor to Microsoft back then was a small nearly bankrupt Apple which was also American. Linux was a tiny little thing.

Many hacker news commentators were around back then. What was it like in this regard?

Their definition of “video gamer” is literally just somebody who says they play games.

I don’t see what the big deal is. Lots of young people play games every now and then.

Many medical students play video games. You don’t see articles saying “America’s new surgeons…are video gamers!”

I get folks don’t like Zuckerberg and his company and don’t trust his intentions… I don’t either.

But this is an unquestionably good thing right?. The more open source software out there the better. And the more open weights or even over source AI stuff the better too right? More competition the better generally speaking I think.

Unless I’m missing something and am getting this whole situation wrong. Please let me know if I am.

That’s almost 6 years ago. The PlayStation 6 and the new Xbox should be launching soon. If not this fall then perhaps next fall when it will be 7 years from the launch of the current generation.

How will the memory crisis impact all of this?

Also I find it kind of ironic. In the 2010’s PC gamers would go online all the time and sneer about how consoles were holding back PC gaming. How they could upgrade their PC’s but games were still not unlocking the full potential of their PCs due to having to optimize for the old PS4 and Xbox One hardware.

And now on the same forums PC gamers actually keep talking about how they don’t want Sony and Microsoft to release new hardware. And they talk about how devs should be optimizing for old hardware. So many complaints about Doom The Dark Ages requiring ray tracing and requiring new hardware…. The hardware that Doom the Dark Ages (2025) requires all came out a few years prior. Imagine somebody in 2004 when Half life 2 came out complaining their Half life 1 (1998) hardware didn’t work for that game…but that’s what many gamers online said when their rigs that could play Doom Eternal (2020) couldn’t play Doom the Dark Ages (2025). “How the turn tables” as Michael Scott famously said I guess.

Are there any documented essays or reactions from the great chefs of back in the day reacting to the first microwave dinners?

I remember back many years ago I would only think about politics and all that when I read The Economist once every few days. Or I would read NewsWeek once a week.

Aside from that I wouldn’t think about the news at all.

Nowadays with smartphones the constant bombardment of news….thats what the new smoking. Not the news in of itself.

Actually if you look at the negative cognitive effects of constant news reading….I would say that reading the news is the new drinking rather than the new smoking.

“an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm”

Source:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snark

Indignant definition:

“feeling or showing anger because of something unjust or unworthy”

Source:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indignant

So just based on these definitions that comment seems neither snarky nor indignant? There’s no anger because he’s a moderator calmly stating one of the rules of the site. And there don’t seem to be anything mocking, irreverent or sarcastic about him calmly stating the site guidelines?

Do you have any specific examples of where dang or another moderator posted in that way?

The above quote is from a character from one of JRR Tolkien’s books. (Gandalf from Return of the King.)

Tolkien fought in the Battle of the Somme which was one of the most destructive battles in human history. So I think his views have some weight here.

Bad things have always happened in the world. Despair is a useless emotion that just precludes action that can better the world or even better a single other’s person’s life. For each person belongs to the world and by improving one life you improve the world. This cannot be accomplished through despair but through joy.

If Mahatma Gandhi had lived in despair over the horrible things the British were doing to the Indians, would he have been able to help anyone? It was through joyous resistance that he managed to inspire a movement to defeat them.

I think it’s entirely plausible that this kid chose to write their first HN post in that same formal style.

I could be wrong though. But I always wonder if there would be moments where someone writes a genuine thing and it’s mistaken for AI.

But I really was referring to “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”.

I hope what I am about to write below in the rest of my comment here isn’t too much of a spoiler. It might be. I encourage anyone reading this thread to read that short story before reading the rest of my comment here.

But with (hopefully minimal) spoilers,

the character Dana in “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” realizes something at the very end of the story about a certain event that had happened earlier in Dana’s life. The story made me realize the same thing about certain events in my life.

Of course the events in my life are very different from what happened with Dana in the short story. But the realization Dana has is applicable to many things in people’s lives. Especially events related to emotions of regret and guilt.

His novella “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” altered the course of my life. It changed the way I looked back at certain pivotal moments in my life and taught me to think about those pivotal moments differently than how I was thinking about them. Similar to what happens to one of the characters in the story who ends up changing their perception of a key moment in their life.

I won’t go into detail because I don’t want to spoil the story but I highly recommend it. Actually I recommend all his stories to be honest.

“If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.” - Steve Jobs

No doctor makes this much for a 15 minute conversation. A small portion of that money is going to the doctor. Much of it goes to all the other aspects of healthcare. The facility, other people involved in care, etc.

And no 15 minute visit costs 1000 dollars to the patient as well. That’s a pretty big exaggeration.

On Saturdays, in the town of Surfside, I would frequently see many Orthodox Jewish people at the beaches and cheerfully going for walks and so on. A pleasant and wonderful atmosphere.

This happens with every technological innovation. It’s called creative destruction. The idea that some technology will lead to mass unemployment and then some kind of revolution…that is a myth that’s been around since Marx. Actually even before him.

I predict the same thing will happen. Some jobs will go away. Others will take their place. The people of the 1700’s and 1800’s couldn’t have even begun to imagine the kinds of jobs many do today.