It was a fun suggestion but going with it would have reminded me of the world exemplified by the movie Idiocracy. We are heading in that direction with the likes of adult colouring books, but I think it's a good sign that there is still some form of resistance.
Just my observation that adults are regressing into child like behaviour as each generation takes over. Less people taking responsibility for themselves, more people hiding from the world through escapism and a general irreverence for history and tradition. I might be wrong but it keeps bubbling up.
You're not alone; I definitely see this pattern and it's quite frightening. It's not just juvenile, which has existed for a while, it's infantile. And that's new and it's worrisome.
What would you like to happen? That people stop doing things they feel enjoyable in order to achieve a requisite level of gravitas that would satisfy your aesthetic sense about how society should present itself?
No matter how dumb of a name it's given, it will be responsible for cutting edge research. Trying to keep some levity is not at all incompatible with accomplishing real serious science. Bill Nye's the Science Guy (the show) is practically a slapstick variety show, but it's also responsible for making science accessible to countless children.
Adult coloring books range from valuable therapeutic outlets to merely pleasant creative expression, and comparing it to the literal downfall of society due to lack of intelligence is a stretch at best.
Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.
The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to manipulate you. The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. If something is important then it is far better to discover it outside of Facebook. In the end, nothing is that important.
There are other ways of keeping up with old friends and relatives. Listen to gossip from other friends and family. Keep in contact with them using email, telephone and post. If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.
> The things that happen on Facebook don't matter.
In my own experience, that's just not true. Facebook has facilitated lots of social interactions for me that simply would not have happened otherwise. Some examples:
- I was doing an internship in Australia for a few months. I posted a picture of the beach on Facebook, an old friend from highschool whom I hadn't talked to in years saw it, commented that I should come visit her in Melbourne. I did, and we met and caught up on life.
- A friend of mine invited me to go to a music festival with her friends. She added me to a group message on Facebook that they were using to plan logistics, etc. After the festival, we continued using the chat to plan other social activities.
- Casual acquaintances that I met once or twice invite me to parties, etc.
Can these things happen without Facebook? Technically, I suppose so. Realistically, I think they would happen less frequently. IMO there's a big difference between Messenger/Events/Groups (facilitates a lot of real interactions) vs News Feed/Profiles (stalking other people).
> There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship.
It's up to us to define what friendship we consider real or not. Personally I find mystery an unpleasant waste of time.
> It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.
Huh? There's no asymmetry if you're both using Facebook.
> If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.
Screw your "should". Plenty of times I've found out via Facebook that someone was going to an event near me, or just had a common interest, and met up with them as a result. And that's been fun.
> The only thing I can think of is that the developers use the shiny new hardware and it runs okay for them.
I think that was one of the problems with Google+ in the early days. They launched a social network that assumed a huge screen resolution (because that's what they used), so the interface was too big and clunky for a lot of people.
I think the best power supplies are those commissioned by big manufacturers to go with their hardware. The HP Touchpad's power plug being a good example. These brands don't want a poorly designed adapter killing their products.
I was going to say something similar. I often use USB power supplies that came from old phones/laptops for my various little robot/gizmo projects. I do this with the (naive) assumption that If I'm Apple/Dell/Samsung/etc. I don't want to taint my products because of bad power supplies.
Other than using my non-pro knowledge and tools to roughly test voltage stability, sustained amperage, and output voltages on some of the power supplies, I don't have any hard evidence that this is true- but if I'm choosing between an Apple USB power supply or a no-name power supply from Amazon for a project, I'm taking the Apple one because I can assume it's a minimum level of quality that's good enough for my use. I've got a couple of iPad USB power adapters that I guard pretty closely because the other USB power supplies I have that say they're good for at least an amp or two are from no-name suppliers.
My (Asus) Nexus 7 charger died, and none of the cheap replacement chargers I found would charge my tablet. Bought an HP Touchpad power plug off of eBay based on an XDA Developers recommendation. Worked perfectly for years.
That's a big reason why private businesses are better than public ones. There's no need to push for unsustainable growth at the behest of busybody investors.
Don't know about secretly (they could probably set up a stealth LLC and file it under "strategic investment"), but they've had a stock buyback program for a while.
The problem is that a lot of "investors" actually aren't investors; they are traders or speculators. They demand immediate growth and are unwilling to allow the company to eat losses in order to invest in long term, ultimately more profitable R&D / projects.
>They demand immediate growth and are unwilling to allow the company to eat losses
Or...they are unwilling to allow the company to eat losses to pretend to invest in the long term, but are in reality on their way to failure (for example). Let's not act like companies, in general, have this figured out and know what's best. Lots of them fail.
If you want long term growth, you're free to invest that way. But don't impose your preferences on others, or assume their method is wrong. The only way speculators, or anyone, can buy shares is by someone else deciding to sell, uncoerced.
that pressure comes from shareholders who want to make money on their ownership stake, whether the company is traded on public markets or not. it's not carl icahn pushing 5-year exit strategies on startups.
It seems like the whole modern connected infrastructure we rely on relies on money from the ad industry. Google, webmail services, free websites, all of them rely on a small subset of companies that buy eyeballs. From an outsider, it certainly seems like Mozilla is the only company in the space that's trying to make the Internet better, rather than making the browser a path into their own ecosystem of services (and consequently ads).
Firefox was created to be a browser in which the developers and the community can have a voice, rather than having all decisions made by the enterprise. I know there are many heroic stories and tales, but after all those are the two goals.
Why are there laundromat, 99 cent store, Deli place and a bus stop next to a street full of homes? Next to a college campus you'd find Deli and street food vendors? Of course one can give out free food and you can always choose to work from home so you never have to deal with pedestrian jam or the smoke coming from the grill. For example I can skip WSJ paywall by not registering any account and not reading any WSJ online articles. That's fine and the anology of this is finding a suburban home. The public Internet is like New York City, so many people, so many business, so much to navigate (but of course as a NY resident I can get tired of the city myself). If you want no ads, you have to lobby a group of politicians (actually companies) and convenience them your plan is better and is more profitable. The thing is that once there is a collation of business opportunity, uniting that knot is very difficult because everyone has a piece in it. Few people want to bet on new plan.
> Firefox was created to be a browser in which the developers and the community can have a voice, rather than having all decisions made by the enterprise. I know there are many heroic stories and tales, but after all those are the two goals.
While I like these ideas, this isn't quite accurate. That may describe Mozilla Application Suite (now Seamonkey) to some extent, but not Firefox. Mozilla's mission is to promote the open Internet, as opposed to the proprietary one (originally represented by IE's market dominance):
Clementine comes from an place where software is aimed at all levels of user - without sacrificing expert features. If your idea of UI and UX (I don't know) is the modern trend of hiding features to make software into toys then that won't go well with its users.
I know a lot of expert tools with complex features and with beautiful design/nice to use design. One thing is not a trade-off of the other. That's a fallacy that doesn't help the stigma that OSS tools should continue to do IMO.
Exactly. Amarok was one of the few pieces of software I looked at and thought, from a feature perspective... that's perfect. Was so glad Clementine appeared on the scene and rescued the player from its well intentioned fall from grace.
I'm not that bothered by them personally, but I would rather see these international taxi brands gone. They take away income and entrepreneurship from local economies.
The world is slowly becoming a boring homogeneous place run by multinational brands. It's like fast food outlets, coffee shops and so on, most of them are run from another country and look exactly the same - there's no character.
I feel you. I moved to Seoul, South Korea a few months ago, a city of many thousands of coffeeshops. Among the natives, Starbucks is really popular -- meanwhile I go out of my way to avoid going there, because it's frustrating to move 8500km and not feel the distance traveled after putting the effort into it. The rising popularity of IKEA, which arrived in Korea about two years ago, is concerning for the same reason.
It's really not about naively craving exoticism (which inevitably wears off anyway), it's just a desire for an environmental confirmation of a major life change, the absence of which is psychologically disconcerting.
Luckily there's still a boatload of little unique, charming. non-chain coffeeshops to go to, too.
I'm hoping for Uber and Lyft to take over the world and put the traditional taxi companies out of business completely, to the extent that I dislike going to places where Uber isn't present.
Most recent example - Athens, Greece, where a 15 minute ride to the airport is 50 euro, in a stinky old cab, with driver not speaking English. I've already contributed a couple k to your economy, but you still need to fleece me on my airport ride? Will be avoiding that country in the future.
Sometimes it's really nice to see a multinational corporation. They can help reduce corruption and set higher standards for all sorts of things. Yeah, they sometimes displace local entrepreneurs, but the consumers generally benefit (though there are some downsides for consumers as well).
If you travel enough, everything starts to look the same, whether it's a multinational corporation or some local character.
I have gone through a similar phase. Got rid of social media, switched back to a feature phone, am reading real books, listening to music on physical media, using cash where possible and whatever else.
The Internet has gone from a place with a high barrier of entry (and the interesting characters that self selected for that barrier), to an all encompassing entity with a load of moralisers, businesses and governments fighting over the ability to call the shots.
In its current state, I think it's better to take a step back. View the Internet as an occasional tool for getting things done, rather than a place to live within and rely upon. Let the masses have their addictions fulfilled, while technology enthusiasts move on and enjoy real life.
I use a Samsung flip phone. I still prefer the flip ergonomics to a touch-screen one (for ordinary voice call use obviously). Someone calls me, I pick up the phone, flip it open to answer if I want to, talk, close it to end the call, all with one hand, without having to even look at the thing (I can check the outside lcd to see who it is before answering it also). When I want to call someone (I only call about 5 people regularly (wife, mom, dad, sister, closest friends), I just flip it open and press the corresponding speed dial button. For this kind of use, a touch screen doesn't come close.
Many of us depend on it to pay the bills, though. On the internet, to build stuff for other people to use the internet more and generate more internet related jobs...
The difference is, it's old school in here. The content, the people, the UI, it's all very different from the modern social media. I had trouble staying regular here when I first discovered HN but after a while, it feels nice to come and see people talking differently from the rest of the Internet. The closest thing to HN is a few reddit subs. This is what feels home now, not Facebook or Twitter like it used to.
I wish I could get a feature phone that just had Maps (and maybe Lyft). Being able to get a map of where I am, anywhere, is a pretty amazing thing. On the other hand, I wish I could get all of those notifications out of my pocket asap.
