everdrive

Can you really think of no other problems in addition to cars?

The whole world is California, and the most important thing we can do is pack more and more people into the same space. People from here, people from there. We want more crowdedness, and everyhing that comes with it: crime, noise, pollution, lack of social cohesion. Everything. Every place must be like this, and everything must grow forever.

Pretty sure a lot of people would need a fainting couch if they learned that they might need to avoid restaurants that only have QR-code menus. We seem to have an incredibly-infantilized stock of people these days, which is why I don't know that awareness will really help much.

Agreed wholeheartedly, thanks for the response.

Thanks for the clarification. The interesting thing about the 2024 election was that Trump's turnout was higher than 2016, and in addition, according to the polling and analysis I saw, this was one of the first times in a long time where if _more_ people had voted, he would have had _more_ votes. This is in pretty stark contrast to presidential voting trends for the last 30-40 years. So although I think you could paint 2016 as an "apathy" election (I would still argue that 2016 was more about two deeply unpopular candidates than anything else) I'm not sure that same analysis really applies to 2024. I'm basing a lot of this on this very interesting interview here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0J7dIlL7c -- so to the extent that I'm wrong or you disagree, this at least gives some context to my claims.

Workplace next!

They only win if you buy them. Never purchase subscriptions. At this point, the default position should be to NEVER purchase a subscription. Exceptions can be made with specific research, and in exceptional cases. But that exception process must be singularly critical and rare.

I couldn't disagree with this more. Yes, you individually control whether or not you use your smartphone, but the device itself is terrible in ways that I have no control over:

- touch controls rather than a real UI

- a terrible app store full of monetized garbage

- incredibly bad privacy options

- etc ..

In addition to that, modern society is moving towards requiring the usage of these devices. It's harder to opt out more and more every year. This is very much not a choice I can make. My employer would NOT accommodate me if I did not have a place to install their OTP app.

I forgot it started at $399. That's the model I got. It was a really good value, if not a bit pricey at the time. Steam Deck is my favorite gaming device, but I just cannot imagine dropping $800+ if mine fails.

It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, something that's been an important part of every human culture for longer than recorded history.

But what if someone were uncomfortable briefly? Did you ever consider that? Technology exists to infantilize us while slowly ruining everything that makes us human. Shame on you for attempting to interrupt human progress.

I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism.

Whatever else you'd want to say about Trump supporters, I wouldn't call them apathetic. Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong, but I can't see how anyone could characterize Trump's base as "apathetic."

Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?

Talking to people on HN, the answer is a resounding "NO." If I point out that smart phones are contributing to mental illness and have enabled mass-scale surveillance larger than ever previously thought possible, the response has been "but I might have trouble paying for parking and some restaurants don't have menus."

Populism is on the rise, and nearly everyone is discontent. The discontent has gotten so out of hand that much of it is quite ridiculous, but it's serious enough that it must be dealt with. Given the past 20 years, I expect politicians to completely fumble this easy layup and find ways to force data centers anyhow.

Interesting if it's not vaporware. As others have said, it's too soon to feel certain about this yet. It looks really exciting though.

Why single out bad Chinese coding?

You know precisely why anyone would single out China here. They are egregiously bad, and you know it, and everyone else knows. No amount of "what about this other bad thing that's also bad" could possibly allow any normal person to escape this conclusion.

I have a stupid question about seasonal wildfires. I was under the impression that a lot of wildfires occurred because too much brush had built up and natural burns had been foolishly prevented by firefighters. However in the past 10 years, it seems that there are many, yearly, huge wildfires in the same areas.

Why doesn't the brush get burned down? ie, why is there not a Canadian wildfire every 5-10 years? Why yearly? Is it different locations? Does dry bush just accumulate that quickly? I'm aware that global warming is a factor, but if there's less to burn I'd think that warmer temperatures eventually hit a wall.

Well said. "Smart" watches seem to make the argument that somehow your phone was not accessible enough, not ever-present enough, and the best solution would be to build a phone relay and strap it to your body. Although the smart phone did flatten most people's impulse control to near zero, it seems the last little bit of progress in the area of impulse-control-destruction could be achieved by strapping a phone relay to your wrist. Too tough to pull your phone out of your pocket? Good news, now that stupid post / notification / chime / whatever is on your wrist and you can never get away from it.

I could be wrong, but my personal impression is that much like on HN, it's the enthusiasts who are quite into niche stuff like indie games and bemoan the graphics race, where as the silent mass of "average" gamers are more like "oh man, the new Call of Duty has even better graphics! I can't imagine playing the old one anymore."

All while getting cheaper in the process.

All while getting worse; advertisements, terrible interfaces, privacy invasions, frame gen, weird color options, etc. I don't hate capitalism or anything, but new TVs are dumb as heck.

It's very interesting. I played that new-ish Marvel: Cosmic Invasion game and recently played Fight 'N Rage. I believe both are built in the exact same game engine. Fight 'N Rage, which is undoubtedly the better of the two games (although both are quite fun) had a tiny roster. I think there was a single primary developer, and then one guy did the music and maybe 1-2 other people helped with things. The Marvel game was made by a "real" studio and had tens (hundreds?) of staff to build what was effectively a slightly lower quality game. (although the Marvel game had a much smaller staff than anything like a modern AAA release.) Famously, Doom and Quake were made by quite small teams.

I don't know what the answer is, but there just seems to be unavoidable bloat all around. Staff, cost, complexity, system requirements, etc.

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd, but consumers are also demanding better graphics.

The industry and its fans are its own worst enemies. However, if you don't go bonkers over recent AAA games, gaming has never been more accessible or cheaper. I didn't buy a game this steam sale for more than $3, and each game would run on more or less anything.

I'm just so frustrated by how quickly and easily people give in to these things. People face relatively small inconveniences and quickly give away their rights. Smart phones and social media (in large part, enabled by always-on, always-present smart phones) have so, so many negatives effects and people won't even consider moving on. "It's hard to find parking" or "some restaurants are now inconvenient to eat at" are measured next to "the suicide rate of teen girls is spiking" and "we've enabled government tracking and surveillance on a scale never before thought possible." I don't know how else to be. People are so obsessed with immediate impulse satisfaction and immediate comfort that they'd give up anything. I think if you offered to remove someone's right to vote, but told them they would be able to gamble for free once a month you'd lose half the votes in the country.

Well, I guess our only choice is to own an expensive corporate surveillance device. There's no other option. The ancient polynesians managed to learn to navigate huge, open seas by memorizing the stars. The ancient Greeks managed to measure the size of the sun with trigonometry and grit alone. We've mapped the genome and soon we may even cure inherited illnesses, or bring extinct species back to live.

But I hear you. What if I wanted to know what movies were playing, but I was already at a restaurant? What could I possibly do? The only answer is a smart phone. There's no choice, and no escape.

Ah, sorry, I wasn't familiar with him. Looks like he was born in 1989, and so is not so young. I'm a bit baffled to hear that he doesn't think he can escape his smartphone given that he was resourceful enough to jailbreak an iPhone 4 back in the day. I understand he's speaking poetically and emotionally. Maybe he just means he has the knowledge but not the means.

ChatGPT does not know more than you.

Maybe in the area of your expertise, but ChatGPT probably knows most of the Habsburg dynasty. (just as one example) The breadth of knowledge, even when the depth is quirky and limited, is genuinely a big deal.

I really like this style of writing in short bursts, and I appreciate the author's tone and concerns.

I do wonder if the author is very young. As much as I enjoyed his small essay, a few things stuck right out at me:

I tried having a flip phone once (2014), but you couldn’t find out what time the movies were playing because moviephone just redirected you to their app.

This has been a solved problem for a long time: you look up the movie times and such prior to departing for the movies. No smartphone needed.

And it’s not like there’s anywhere to go. The real world is strip malls and axe throwing and escape rooms. Oh god people actually go on a hinge date to axe throwing and think it’s the real world.

You can escape, but you'll never hear about it by either checking online, or by listening to very-online people. Go on a hike. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Just go do it. Maybe say hi to some people you meet while you're there. You probably won't develop a deep friendship with them, but you will have a real, face-to-face human interaction.

Living away from the internet can now only be done intentionally. It can be done, though, but it's not the automatic choice. It's not even difficult ... it's just "manual." You must always think about what you want to do and how you want to do it. It's a skill that will come back to you. Or, if the author never learned it, a skill he still has a chance to learn.

What we've lost is getting to feel like you're connected to a common culture. This is a big, big loss, but it is not everything. The tools you need to escape are all around you. Power off your devices. Get some books at your local library. Try leaving your devices off all weekend, even when you get anxious, and bored, and your brain cries out for the easy, automatic stimulation it's become so accustomed to. Lay in bed and stare at the ceiling until your brain creates interesting thoughts out of your boredom. It's possible.

This problem is doubly worse if you have a family. No one keeps track of their subscriptions. I found out my wife had a NYTimes game subscription she'd forgotten about. She never used it and it cost us an unknown (but likely $100-$200) before we figured it out. Is this the end of the world? No, but we wasted money because these things intentionally obfuscate themselves and received no benefit whatsoever. When was the last time you paid $200 for software? It's been a while for me, but we paid a bunch of money for some stupid subscription that escaped our notice.

Can anyone explain why coverage networks even exist? What exactly makes it so expensive for an insurance provider to deal with an out-of-network health care provider? That same health care provider would not be expensive for an in-network insurance provider. I have no sense whatsoever for why the same health care provider would be expensive in one case and inexpensive in another case.

For mobile apps? I don't. Mobile apps are generally worse than anything you can get on a real computer. I use as few mobile apps as possible. I certainly don't add additional mobile apps unless there's no other choice. (ie, OTP app from work)

No, no, never. Subscriptions never benefit the consumer. They all work exactly the same way:

- Get the user hooked into their ecosystem

- Slowly make the service worse / more expensive / different over time

- The user is paying for a subscription which feels like an investment, so they put up with more crap than they would otherwise.

Trust me. If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change under your feet. It will get worse, and in effect, it will be taken from you.

I'm not paying for the subscriptions. If everyone moves towards subscriptions, I'll move into a shack in the woods. I don't care. I don't want your subscriptions. If you think subscriptions are a good idea I don't want to hear from you, and I wish you had no say in how anything was built.

[edit]

If the counter-point is that mobile apps will suffer, then good. I don't like or any want any mobile apps whatsoever.