Seems like the title here on HN is bait testing for people not reading the article - and most of you failed.
I came here to see what people have to say about his vector DBs comparisons
Couple years back I joined a paid accelerator program to write a mobile game under the wings of some company. My eyes were opened after having a fun time creating my game when the time came to publishing and tweaking. My mentors from the company explained to me the _requirements_ for it to succeed. Basically every change from that point was about manipulation. In order for the game to be high on the charts it needs to meet very specific metrics so subsequently the game was dumbed down so as much people can "have fun" as possible, levels were tweaked to control exactly how much time people spend on their "sessions". Mechanisms were introduced to limit how fast the game can be played and for how long (without paying). Certain tresholds were introduced where difficulty would be unfairly raised in order to create frustration and at the calculated times fake "promotions" of in-game purchases were supposed to be introduced. Updating the game exactly after getting a positive google review with game rating option - click 5 stars to get a reward and be forwarded to game page to post a review ; or click less than 5 stars and just have the pop-up closed without forwarding.
Even thogh my game wasn't a simple clicking and getting rewarded and I put a lot of work into making it fun, challenging, dynamic and generally _mine_ I was sucked into the same situation as everyone else on the mobile games market. My game lost all the appeal to me and I couldn't keep it up. Creating another exploitation machine takes all the fun out of gamedev.
Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4
Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.
Tinder and Bumble implement many of the same patterns. I expect it’s a matter of what the company feels it can get away with while maintaining their preferred brand image. Nintendo is famously protective but even stalwarts like Disney seem to be chasing breadth over quality these days.
I don't know how much you actually tried coffeescript but I find your opinion strange. Coffee wasn't ever like J or anything crazy terse. Its appeal came not merely from making things shorter (it did that, but not by a crazy margin), but from adding a lot of useful things to the language like ? operator, spread operator, destructuring, classes, ranges, better iteration, etc. Almost every coffeescript feature was ultimately added to Javascript (and with very similar syntax) which made coffee somewhat obsolete. Coffee's lack of brackets and semicolons everywhere and @foo instead of this.foo, as well as usage of other features certainly didn't take away any readability or explicitness, if anything - they made it better; the same way those same features make Javascript better and more readable (and, ekhm. "easier to reason about") as long as you _know_ them.
Coffee added really nice and productive language features to what at the time still was a very primitive and simplistic Javascript. It also offered a different syntax to existing and new features.
The first part was great and deserves credit for pushing the language to evolve. The second part made it a terrible dev experience. My experience was identical to the gp: writing it was fast and intuitive, but reading it was much, much worse. Not just reading other people's code, but even my own: my ability to understand my own code degraded not in weeks or months, but mere days. It was so bad, the overall result was a net negative and I quickly stopped using it. I say this as someone who has enjoyed writing code in over a dozen languages, from assembly all the way to Haskell.
I would be very careful with this sentiment. Pretty much any creative endeavour consists of parts that are not strictly fun. Coding in particular is filled with difficulty, tediousness, deep and wide thinking, etc. It's also the best creative tool that I know of, deeply engaging, very intelectually stimulating and fulfilling and lets you create things of extreme sophistication with very little limits. It's easy to rationalize your lack of motivation or discipline with a statement like: "I don't feel like doing it so it must not be something that I like" but creating an environment and a mindset to pursue fun, creative projects is not easy.
I would agree that the fun/work line is different for everyone, but I would also submit that a really low bar can also lead to an interesting hobby life over the long term.
I would consider that I give up on stuff pretty early when it becomes "not fun [1]." I'm in my 50's and I've been doing it for a long time. Since I'm always obsessed with something and each time I try something I get at least a little better, I have built up a pretty decent background in a lot of different areas and the amount I can accomplish before something becomes "not fun" gets to be more and more. I like to say I have a Metahobby: I collect hobbies.
I know this isn't a viable solution for most, but at least it's an alternative to feeling crappy about not finishing stuff. Also this:https://youtu.be/GHrmKL2XKcE
[1] For hobby projects. In my career, I know it's work, someone's paying me.
I could have phrased it more carefully : "If it's for fun and none of it feels fun and all of it feels like work, maybe it's time to consider you don't really want to do that for fun".
Of course any creative endeavour is not only fun, but I know the feeling of trying to do something "for fun" and it ends up feeling like work. Some people like to hustle, and that's fine. But just not doing it and finding something else you find fun instead is something to keep in mind.
I thought the "maybes" and several questions made it clear, but I'll state it regardless: there is no one-size fits all answer, and what I said is just a possibility that should be kept in mind. While it happens to be the one that worked best for me, I'm aware it's not the answer for everyone.
I listen to music mostly when working on my own projects. I don't talk much about ongoing projects until I have already progressed very far, and when I do I'm deliberately keeping most of the plans and further ideas out of the conversation - I've realized that it's easy to reward myself too much by talking to someone so that afterwards a lot of motivation is not there anymore. I also try no to listen to suggestions too much since it does create some weird obligations in my mind. And, most of all, I try to not ever fall into the mindset of creating something with a specific goal in mind - I find that it's better to focus on the process itself and not on the final product. This means I often pivot ideas or completely abandon then in favor of something that became more interesting.
Also, if you have that option, working in the same room with friends.
For anyone interested I've transcribed this song [1] using the replicate link the author provided (Colab throws errors for me) using mode music-piano-v2. It spits out mp3s there instead of midis so you can hear how it did [2]
I can't help but feel it is heavily impacted by ambience of the recording as well. The midi is of course a very rigid and literal interpretation of what the model is hearing as pitches over time, but of course it lacks the subtlety of realizing a pitch is sustaining because of an ambient effect, or that the attach is is actually a little bit before the beginning of the pitch, etc.
If it could be enhanced to consider such things, I bet you would get much cleaner, more machine-like midis, which are generally preferable.
Music's a lot more than a collection of notes ... and the timbre of one piano is about as far away from a mixture of reeds and dulcit electronics as you can get. (The Fulero is very nice.)
As usual, here on HN, any time something is posted that relates to cryptocurrencies the discussion gets filled with negativity and even, seemingly unprovoked, outright hostility toward the idea. Overall HN (in my opinion) has a very good quality of discussion and I often read the comments before opening a link or even just for the sake of it. Nevertheless when it comes to cryptocurrencies that assumption goes out the window and I'm bound to see overly negative attitude to the point of irrationality. It's surprising to me how, out of all the places, HN would be the one where that's the case.
I wonder if anyone has any theories on why that is? I dare to assume that it's not just my ignorance of some fundamental, unrecoverable flaw in the concept itself that motivates some to speak against it with such certainty. It might be partly a lack of understanding of the multitude of available options (and even those not yet conceived) and how different - "cryptos" can be from each other but I don't understand how that would translate to people writing unprovoked, unsubstantiated claims or even just unrelated but unhelpful, overly negative remarks. Is it some negative experience someone had that traumatized them? Why HN has this problem?
I think there's a certain trap that many software engineer & technical types fall into with crypto. Crypto & blockchain are often portrayed as technically superior solutions to many problems, especially by non-technical people. Many of these problems, upon technical scrutiny, are actually not better with crypto: for most crypto use-cases, one could build a more efficient, simpler & "technically superior" solution using centralized services like, I don't know - a Postgres database and a REST API. In this way, a lot of technical people see crypto as a solution in search of a problem.
But the interesting thing about crypto is - in my opinion - not technical: it's social, and economical. Due to the decentralization, it changes the kinds of systems & solutions that are socially and economically viable. When I say "economical", I don't mean that the solutions are necessarily cheaper in the dollar sense, but in the sense that it changes which parties can participate in and profit from those systems. DeFi, for example, lets individuals participate in, and benefit from, transactions that used to only be provided by traditional banks.
So while there are many technical types that do see this side of crypto, there are many for whom their deeper technical understanding is a bit of a liability on the topic.
I agree with you about the importance of the social and economic ramifications - after all, that's the main idea behind a lot of cryptocurrencies, conceptually. I guess you might be right though that this isn't obvious or some perhaps not think of it as an important objective.
I'm not sure about the trap though - or maybe I think of it differently - because what you're describing I associate only with some form of business bastardization of the idea where people are led to believe false things without ever actually grasping the underlying concepts. In which case, sure, there's your postgres or your web panel or whatever. But if you know any better you'll realize that if you *can* build something without requiring blockchain or other such systems then you're simply doing something else entirely and it might be completely unrelated. The whole point is that you can't just host an application with Postgres backend or create anything that is more efficient or "technically superior" (not easily, anyway) without compromising the uncompromisable which is some crucial property of the system, eg. decentralization, permisionlessness. I can easily conjure up "better" solutions to an infinite pool of problems if I can simply reject the requirements.
The cryptocurrency space has been almost entirely overtaken by people whose sole interest is to get rich from coins increasing in value. These people don’t actually care about the technical aspects or real-world use outside of how it creates buzz that makes the price go up.
The field is basically fuel for the worst elements of the wider financial world - pure speculation, hype, volatility and discourse appealing to greed and FOMO, with the actual fundamentals negligible outside of a few niche uses.
Meanwhile HN is filled mostly with engineers and tech-minded people (“geeks” if you will - I include myself in that group), and it is no surprise that there would be distaste for a formerly technologically promising field that has turned into a playground for trend-following marketers.
I don't find it surprising that this space is being crowded with opportunists, marketers, scammers or people motivated by greed because that's the most obvious thing that would happen when you mix vast amounts of money with new technology that offers such possibilities. Their existence doesn't invalidate any actual premises.
Ignore those people then. There are communities dedicated to their projects and care about the underlying tech and long-term vision. Every industry, especially those involving money, will have unsavory elements. It's human nature.
I would say that depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to get an overview of the space then probably one of the best ways of going about it to locate key figures that are involved in different projects (e.g. Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson) and listen to some podcasts with them or read stuff that they wrote. If you're trying to get a fairly good understanding of some specific technology or aspect of it then you must do your own research and that should be enough to be able to identify and ignore "those people" + as a bonus you might gain insights about the shortcomings or trade-offs of that thing.
But then if you're looking for investment opportunities then you should definitely have a very good understanding of what you're getting into, any why - especially if you're being purely speculative and not doing stuff like arbitrage or some form of DeFi farming, etc.
HN doesn't(as a rule) have economic philosophers in its userbase. What it does have are people who have built their livelihood within the familiar framework and set of rules abided by nations. The system has worked for them, and if it works for you, you're going to be deeply attached to it, in the "attachment theory" sense. When you are attached to an idea, you defend it like it's your kid while also denying that you are doing something exceptional and possibly risky to yourself in defending it. Right from the beginning, Bitcoin made its stance clear that it was going to attack the top-down framework of money. At first this seemed mostly hypothetical, even though the implementation worked. It could be easily dismissed and called dead. Now it's a whole industry with broad, complex impacts. It is winning the war.
The less toy-like crypto becomes, the more you see people freak out about it and try to push it back in the Pandora's box it came from. It's the same kind of thing that happens when people get deeply involved in politics and see an "us and them" and their side loses. They ghash their teeth and spread falsities to keep it from haunting them. And that is most cryptocurrency threads among crypto haters: deep down, they really want the state to enforce the market, because that is "how the world should be".
Not everyone registered is posting on every topic. Not everyone having an opinion is posting in the topic they read.
Making unsubstantiated claims is easier than laying down concrete arguments.
You quickly run out of pearls to throw before the swine.
“Venting” is more socially acceptable than “preaching”.
And there is a matter of customs and culture: people see that badmouthing happens more often than singing praises, and so the cycle continues. HN is evidently the place where you don’t often see positive discussions of the merits on the front page, so that’s exactly what you see, and even if you have something to say you’d rather keep your mouth shut. But you see slandering comments in every topic so if you want to leave another then by all means, feel right at home.
All of this does not even take into account whether there are any technical merits worthy of continued discussion and fervent defense, or everything on this particular topic has been said already and perceived as general knowledge among the literate.
> the discussion gets filled with negativity and even, seemingly unprovoked, outright hostility toward the idea
"the discussion gets filled with negativity and even, seemingly unprovoked, outright hostility toward the IMPLEMENTATION" - here, I fixed it for you :)
If you will read any longer comments about crypto here, then most of them will approve THE IDEA of crypto, and half will admit that they were early supporters of it. But not now.
So you generally find commenters here to be smart and knowledgeable about tech topics, but you feel that crypto is the exception...
Is it also possible that you're just wrong about crypto?
Most of the people I know who are very enthusiastic about it also deeply misunderstand the technology and also some basic economics (e.g. deflationary vs. inflationary assets).
I think HN users get angry because the crypto space is a neverending parade of people getting tricked by pump-and-dump, wealthy elites, etc.
Recently, a friend was gushing about Dfinity and telling me I'm basically stupid for not seeing the promise of it... and now we find out it was a scam and the technology is just tokenized, centralized AWS.
When this happens often enough, it can be upsetting. It feels like being a doctor having to talk to antivaxxers over and over again.
I usually discern rational approach by the merit of the argument not because "someone wrote it on HN". If there is no argument but instead just blanket statements and negative remarks then I can somewhat safely assume that some thought process must've failed that person at some point - or at least I can gain no direct insight from it.
I'm not really a crypto evangelist nor anyone involved in it technically (at the moment) but I do know enough to at least somewhat understand the scope of the Idea - which is enough to never dismiss the whole thing based on some perceived flaw of some implementation.
It's slightly possible though, that HN commenters aren't approaching the topic of crypto significantly differently than other ones - but instead I just notice irrational comments more in relation to this subject - perhaps even because I know enough to recognize them easily. But it's very unlikely, even if true, that this would explain the whole thing away.
Just because your friend misunderstood and jumped on a bandwagon doesn't mean that they're wrong. They have the right idea. Even non-technical people understand that cryptocurrency can solve real problems. However, not all implementations will be executed properly. Any new technology will have more failures than successes, and nobody can say which ones will come out on top until after hindsight. It's risky, it's business.
