I had that happen once in my three years in the fleet and they didn’t open them for us (long time ago). We did have kegs & BBQ on the pier in GITMO once, too (“pigs on the pier”). I was in when they were just starting a/the tobacco ban on the ship. You could smoke them, but you couldn’t buy them . It created an excellent black market opportunity for entrepreneurs onboard. Last fun fact - my ship was catered by Krispy Kreme donuts every morning when we were in port - long, long before they were a nationwide brand.
Ah, Unisys. I used to buy/sell refurbished laptops and stumbled upon a couple thousand Unisys laptops, one time. Pentium 133’s & 166’s. I wasn’t very familiar with them, but luckily they were all in “like new” condition when I got them. At that time I was probably paying sub $1/Mhz and selling them for $3-4-5/Mhz…so I have very fond memories of Unisys as well. The good old days.
Most interesting part of this post (to me) is to see how far the perceived importance of net neutrality has fallen on HN. 96 points in 5 hours as of this comment.
Net neutrality is still important but it no longer matters how we feel about it because our government and the courts have been bribed and captured by industry and they're intent on screwing us. This is just one of what will be a very long list of important regulations and oversight we're going to see stripped away. Might as well get used to it.
net neutrality laws giving the FCC broad powers, just isn't that important though.
Late nineties I remember one hot topic in society was prayer in school, and nowadays I hardly hear about that anymore, 9/11 had something to do with that though.
Seriously, government gets into these fads, The Next Big Thing, and, since usually a whole new group of young, idealistic, inexperienced humans comes of age, it seems like a hot button item.
It rarely is, certainly not enough for the government to "do something" about it. We as individuals can fix the problems ourselves, if allowed to.
I agree with all that but don't forget the astroturfing cycle. Net neutrality was a big fight between the ISPs and big tech companies years ago. Now that they've mostly reached a stable armistice and it's clear from variances in state to state law and policy that have arisen in the meantime that this is not a make or break issue for either side there's no money being poured onto the fire to whip people into a frenzy.
might just be bad timing. It is the day after the US holiday season.
May be by design too. 2 days ago, we got more formal reporting on how Russia may have been involved in manipulating elections. Again. But it was on New Years' Eve. (not that I expect that news to last long on HN).
If I wasn't so tired of all this falling on deaf ears, I'd chuckle at the irony.
In the context of discovering brand-new companies, it does come across as somewhat ironic.
Maybe consider the "Kodak recipe" for an alternative? [1]: "Keep it short, easy to pronounce, and avoid similarities to existing names or associations." (short is harder in 2024 though!)
I'm on the fence on whether the name should have meaning. There are plenty of successful companies on either side.
I guess my question is: why? "Cable boxes" are uniformly awful to use in my experience. The UI is clunky, they take up space and it's another remote and another tangle of wires to try to hide. What advantage do they offer in 2024?
Don’t act so surprised—-streaming is a pain in the ass to figure out. People have been trained to tolerate a 3-second UI lag for every button press (seemingly all cable boxes are godawfully shitty like this—-it must be the server-side UI rendering design?)
BUT! You can record your game and the cable TV DVR is dead reliable and with high quality. There is no fear of competing for Wi-Fi bandwidth with your apartment or driveway neighbors, and the DVR still works even if cable is out. And as long as you haven’t deleted the recording it won’t go away for some stupid f’ing reason.
Finally, the cable TV DVR will let you fast forward through commercials—-or you can pause live TV to break for bathroom and make a snack, so you can build up a little buffer, now you are fast forwarding commercials on nearly-live TV. You can’t fast forward commercials with most mainstream streaming anymore. Who broadcasts your big games? Big players like Paramount+ won’t let you skip commercials anymore. The experience is now arguably worse. Once you settle in, forward 30sec back 30sec buttons work rather smoothly (that’s one part of cable TV boxes that has sub-half-second latency).
Your concern about extra remotes and extra boxes and hiding wires is a vanity most don’t care about. They are grateful for how compact big-screen TVs are these days compared to the CRTs or projection TVs of the past. They probably have their kids’ game console and a DVD/BluRay player on the same TV stand anyway.
Apparently movies purchased on Roku are now on Vudu. I hope that people who bought movies on Roku were able to figure it out. This is how technology sucks. Movies purchased with my cable provider’s Video On Demand are still with me, slow as shit as navigating to them is.
I last regularly used a DirecTV DVR. There were a surprising number of times where it wouldn't let me fast forward through ads. Not only that, sometimes it would connect out to the internet to download new targeted forced ads on stuff that was recorded a while ago.
You have access to all the shows from the major networks. You don’t need to subscribe to Peacock and Paramount and Hulu and the TBS app and Discovery+ and…
Better yet, they’re all combined in one interface as opposed to all trying to be the only thing that you use.
Also, especially if you grew up with it, there is absolutely a simplicity in linear TV. Everyone was used to a DVR. And yeah the interface sucks, but it sucked for everyone already anyway so they’re used to it. Don’t know what you wanna watch? Turn on a channel you watch and just see what’s on. No looking at 400 things to pick between.
I’ve seen people switch off and have serious trouble because it’s such a different way of watching TV from what they were used to. They end up using something like Hulu Live or YouTube TV to try and get the experience they’re used to back.
This. I’m exactly in this YouTube tv camp and most the time just miss the simplicity of the old cable. Having to find things to watch is for me and awful experience. Then when I do want to watch something trying to figure out which app it’s actually on is awful. I think we subscribed to a dozen different things, it’s so damn fragmented. Even in early days if Netflix, I was a holdout that kept going to blockbuster because the UI of visually scanning a wall/shelf of DVDs was far superior to the Netflix version of the same IMO.
This is definitely turning into my version of an old man rant. “Back in my day…” the main benefit of it all is I actually just don’t watch as much as I once did. The friction is too high. Or, the commitment is too high-I dont usually want to jump into some 10 episode series.
Well I haven’t gone back to linear TV, I totally get it.
I don’t subscribe to anything that doesn’t work with my Apple TV. Netflix for example won’t integrate with it the way Hulu does. So whatever show I’m watching on Netflix? Wouldn’t show up in my show list on my Apple TV. I forget it exists.
So I don’t subscribe to it. Or anything else like that. You are NOT more important than me, service I pay for.
The only two exceptions are YouTube (which obviously works differently) and Plex for the few things that I already already owned on DVD or can’t get on any service.
It works well enough for me. But I still find myself missing a linear TV now and then.
I've certainly listened to some fascinating documentaries on BBC Radio 4 on subjects which it would never have occurred to me to seek out. There's definitely some advantages to linear broadcast.
I don't have TV but I watched the Euro football team matches at my mom's because guess what watching sport streams at 480p is no fun- and it frequently breaks because the internet wasn't meant for live broadcasting to a large audience.
From my experience? The ability to punch in a channel number (or not even that) and get something playing, instantly, without the need to make a choice.
For many people, often those with backgrounds that make them unlikely to frequent HN, the experience they're looking for is "1. get home, 2. open beer, 3. turn TV on, 4. watch."
The default state of a streaming app is to ask you what you want to watch, and then show you exactly the thing you selected. The default state of traditional TV is to show you something, and let you switch to something else if you can't stand the thing you're watching right now or have something specific in mind. Surprisingly, many people prefer the latter over the former.
The same applies to radio versus streaming, many family members of mine don't use streaming, because all it takes to turn on the radio is turning the key in the ignition, which they have to do anyway.
There is a "here's ours" link in the first sentence on the homepage. Sadly the css hides all it's link styling. (Proper "brutalist webdesign" would have that as underlined blue text)
I saw the reply chain and I feel like there's some fundamental misunderstandings.
I don't think GP means adding links is spam, they're saying the links themselves are spam (wt definition 2, content automatically generated for marketing purposes) because that's what they are.
They're saying it's crass (wt definition 2: materialistic, or 1: lacking discrimination) because the goal of TFA is to move away from the machine-curated overly-commercialized impersonal/mechanical web and bring back a web focused on human touch. Creating a list with those commercial, machine-facing pages misses that goal.
They're not saying it's bad - obviously the only way someone would view your link page is if someone posted the link page somewhere of interest to them, it's not like you're pushing it in their faces. In fact, I think they thought the juxtaposition interesting and metaphoric for current social forces.
It's possible that you are an SEO geek and find new SEO marketing pages exciting, and have a circle of friends you share marketing pages with, maybe over coffee, in which case the one who misunderstood everything is me.
[edit] @wizzwizz4 Is it crass to edit your comment multiple times (with no declaration) to address a reply to your comment?
Lol. Thats how the site works. It asks you for a URL and a title for the link. It’s my page, my account, so I linked to my site when trying it out. C’mon. I’m not going to argue about it anymore. Y’all can keep downvoting me if you want to.
That would indeed be crass; but I thought my edits came in before your reply. I apologise if they didn't.
To actually address your comment: "my page" and "my account" are irrelevant. (You're not entitled to anything on someone else's server, except in special cases.) If you're linking those pages because you would like those they're relevant to to visit them, perception matters. If not… well, the perception of "spam" can lead people to treat your site as spammy. (Related: https://www.kjartan.co.uk/.)
I know I said I was done, but, let me get this straight. If I sign up for a website that was created for people to sign up to save links, and in doing so it requires you to submit a URL and a title for the link - and I use the page title as the title for the link: 1) I’m not entitled to do that and 2) It means my website is similar to a geocities page?
Interesting, really! Yes. And I should not step into a bar fight! ;-)
You are both right!
I love that you posted the link. You made it easy for me to get the point of the site as I did not want to use my mail. You effectively lowered my barrier of entry and I thank you for that.
Buuut. You did do the equivalent of just hitting "asdf" on the keyboard. I just put in "my own site". That was not clear to me up front either. I "felt" it "spammy" as well.
While disclaimers are often overused this would however had been nice. "Here you go (just dumb links to my own site)". That would actually have encouraged me even more to visit you.
Someone on the Internet was wrong. Please, no knives :-D
I haven't wanted to wade into this because I want people to use and experience the site in the way they want but also I am kinda interested in the discussion about what kind of "rules" should exist.
Honestly, I appreciate @Cabinguy for taking the initative to show people how it works and if the price of admission is some links to his stuff all the better. Furthermore, this is exactly what it is for. I guess in some ways it IS spammy but that's sort of the point is the market your own links. Generally this url then gets put in your instagram / tiktok / whatever bio that only allows one link.
I like that @WizzWizz4 (the greatest of the WizzWizzes in my opinion) was defending the "sanctity" of my site but also probably more importantly to them this site. However, I just don't think it is needed here. As the website was used as exactly it was intended.
You've generalised in a direction that erases the distinctions I'm trying to highlight. I'm talking about perception (specifically, perceived spamminess), and you're talking about what is permitted. If you don't care about the perception, then that's fine and you can safely ignore me.
1) I'm entitled to pour custard on my head. Doesn't mean that will achieve my goals if I do it in an investor meeting. 2) Sadly, I'm not comparing your page to the positive aspects of Kjartan Poskitt's homepage. Look at the bottom row of links, and the analogy should become clearer.
At least the links have nofollow on them (so only the ignorant/lazy/fraudulent SEO bottomfeeders will try to abuse this. Which I guess, to a first approximation, is "all of them"...)
Thanks! That’s all I wanted to see, and you provided a good example. “viscerally offensive” and “SEO spam” made my eyes roll like a slot machine wheel.
I know my project is unworthy of upvotes from HN, but I’ve been working (hard) on a simple real estate site https://davegooden.com. No big deal. No real tech. Just lots of work and lots of potential upside.
