7 ms·

All you ruined was the fun of photoshopping his face into things. Let me draw a parallel with a story of my grandfather, whom I never knew: Apparently a great

All you ruined was the fun of photoshopping his face into things. Let me draw a parallel with a story of my grandfather, whom I never knew: Apparently a great hobby of his used to be to collect sayings from people. Whenever he'd meet anyone, let it be new or already known, he'd ask them if they knew any new sayings. He wrote all of them down in his little book of sayings. My father started picking up the hobby and they'd get excited when they had learned a saying the other didn't know yet. They'd do this at diner, around the fire place, you name it. Then came my grandfather's birthday and one of the 'gifts' he received was an encyclopedia of sayings, within it were almost all the sayings in existence. Suffice to say the fun of collecting new sayings was gone, the interest in sayings was gone and a great hobby got ruined. So all I can see is that you took something that was a culture thing in your team and you took a nice fat automated dump on it. The tech is very cool nonetheless :)

nealabq 10y ago
So you're saying social-bonding hacks/disruptions sometimes ruin the fun. What about other situations? Will gatherings be less fun when Alexa becomes the life of the party, cracking jokes and proposing toasts? Will Siri join in the dinner conversation (parent, friend or good-listener mode, with wit, personality and intelligence sliders). Will fans be turned off when self-driving cars start winning the Indy 500? How about when the Boston Dynamics Red Sox win the World Series?
- pjc50 10y ago
  Yes to all of those?
- exergy 10y ago
  > social-bonding hacks/disruptions First, honest question: is there some secret lease that needs to be signed before posting on HN that requires that every real-world phenomenon be framed using 1337 h4x0r terminology? For some reason, it really rubs me the wrong way, people trying to shoebox anything and everything into a faux-technological perspective. Also, the reason Vinyls still sell is that there is a sense of occassion about taking a record out of it's cover, carefully placing the needle on it, sitting back to focus on the music and nothing else. Same reason the physical joy of playing a piano will always have a place despite being able to get nearly the same sounds out of a computer. I'd hate to watch two self driving cars competing against each other to see which has the best code. That sounds tedious as all hell. I'm not sure about the others, but fuck yeah I categorically do NOT want an AI cracking jokes at a party. Somethings are better when they are lower tech.
  - yayitswei 10y ago
    Well the site is called Hacker News.
    - grzm 10y ago
      True, though neither word in that name is used to limit topic or language.
  - webkike 10y ago
    Vinyls also still exist because some people prefer analog sound. There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias.
    - gdilla 10y ago
      Also people who dj. In fact, the most popular digital dj interface is serato which let's you use vinyl as an interface.
      - webkike 10y ago
        Oh absolutely. My DJ friends love using vinyl it seems
    - JauntyHatAngle 10y ago
      >There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias Vinyls do have a characteristic compressed warmth that subjectively a lot of people enjoy. The pops and crackles that come with vinyl are pleasing to many also.
    - whowalrus 10y ago
      Another oft-cited reason is because vinyls can't have a "brick-walled" dynamic range, as it often happens with new digital music thanks to the loudness war [1]. So audiophiles tend to favor it. From the article: As explained earlier, due to the physical limitations of vinyl, there are limits as to how loud you can press a record, and because vinyl is “for audiophiles” – there is less incentive for record companies to compromise the quality of vinyl releases. As a result, many vinyl records are mastered differently to the CD release with more dynamic range and at lower volumes. [1]: http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-war/ http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-...
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Yes to all of those questions. If people can't imaginatively project themselves into winning circumstances, then they become despondent because their escapist fantasies (which some people take seriously enough to make into real accomplishments) are now dashed forever. This is something technologists and scientists largely don't get. People are always 'look at how many material comforts and and entertainment options you have now, are you not entertained?' Likewise scientists are often 'I spent years of my life and a small fortune learning to be expert about this obscure thing that you'll never be able to experience directly, isn't it awesome?' And people are entertained and they are awed - to an extent. But they're also sad because the more the world is codified and quantified and parceled out for ownership. there are no new countries to discover, no more large exotic fauna to find, we're constantly reminded that religion and magic are illusory and that the economics of capitalism are inevitable, so there's nothing to look forward to in life beyond being ground up in the gears of the consumerist machine. That's why there are so many movies about superheroes and rebellious people with psychic powers and so on. People need something to believe in other than the ultimately extremely boring prospect of working, raising a family, and retiring. They want 'adventure and excitement and really wild things.' This is why we now have an administration whose stated Big Idea is the construction of a giant wall* because at least that sounds like a project you could get absorbed in for its own sake, whereas preserving the earth for future generations feels nice but is never really done and so can't deliver any sense of adventure or accomplishment for more than a few people with the resources to get a PhD. It's also why countries (soo to include the US) are apprehensive of war but develop tremendous enthusiasm for it once it's declared, because it provides a massive uncertainty that offers the possibility for drastic change, heroism, betrayal, defeat, victory and so on. I don't know how to articulate this better than by saying that capitalism is boring for most people, in the same way that if you are playing Monopoly there's a point at which you realize who's going to win and all the fun goes out of the game for everyone else in direct proportion to their declining odds of success. * If you don't mind losing 2 hours on a bad movie. go watch Pacific Rim, a stupid science-fiction romp about giant robots vs giant aliens. It's stupid in the sense of not really caring about the science at all to the point o making jokes about how stupid it is - at one critical moment, someone 'solves' the problem of The System collapsing due to 3v1l h4x0rs but remembering that they have a nuclear-powered robot and exclaiming 'It's not digital! It's nuclear- it's analog!!'. The very badness of this movie makes it worth studying because the psychological symbolism is so thinly disguised. Almost all alien invasion movies are vehicles for conservative ideology, and it's not an accident that a political campaign for building a giant wall was anticipated by various movies involving the construction of giant walls.
autokad 10y ago
before the internet, there was real capital in knowing jokes, and the same for unusual facts. you wanted to know who was in that movie? you called your friend who knew those things. now just IMDB it. i suppose that is part of the reason for the appeal in the seemingly recent interest in bar trivia nights. i think we are still working out the kinks in the things we lost due to the internet.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  I thought that pub quiz nights were becoming popular because people were getting so much useless information from IMDB et al, and needed somewhere to use it.
- fzeroracer 10y ago
  I think this is also why we see continuous growth in the Vinyl industry. People like the internet, but they also want the option to go offline with whatever they buy and have something tangible.
  - handedness 10y ago
    Continuous growth since the bottom, yes, but from a value that was asymptotically close to $0 in the prior decade: http://diffuser.fm/files/2015/01/vinyl-chart.jpg http://diffuser.fm/files/2015/01/vinyl-chart.jpg
- kop316 10y ago
  Personally, I think the big appeal of trivia nights is very much the same reason for the resurgence of board games, it's an in person social thing to do. I can go out with some friends, have fun, and I have met some other people and made new friends that way too. I have tried to do a lot of the online video games (even with friends), but to me, it doesn't have nearly the appeal of having friends over and we all play a game together For me, the Nintendo 64 was one of the best consoles to do this.
emodendroket 10y ago
How could a book possibly capture "all the sayings in existence"? That's a lot of sayings.
- samstave 10y ago
  so says you!
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Put it in the book.
teknologist 10y ago
But making a saying doesn't take any source material. I'd imagine there's a lot of fun in giving this bot an image and seeing where it puts the faces and which "poses" it opts to use. Have a look at the examples where there are heads put in random places and some more obvious positions left out. The hilarity is in the imperfections.
ashark 10y ago
Vonnegut's Bluebeard: I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives—maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on. That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions. The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist". How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"

nealabq 10y ago

So you're saying social-bonding hacks/disruptions sometimes ruin the fun. What about other situations? Will gatherings be less fun when Alexa becomes the life of the party, cracking jokes and proposing toasts? Will Siri join in the dinner conversation (parent, friend or good-listener mode, with wit, personality and intelligence sliders). Will fans be turned off when self-driving cars start winning the Indy 500? How about when the Boston Dynamics Red Sox win the World Series?

pjc50 10y ago
Yes to all of those?
exergy 10y ago
> social-bonding hacks/disruptions First, honest question: is there some secret lease that needs to be signed before posting on HN that requires that every real-world phenomenon be framed using 1337 h4x0r terminology? For some reason, it really rubs me the wrong way, people trying to shoebox anything and everything into a faux-technological perspective. Also, the reason Vinyls still sell is that there is a sense of occassion about taking a record out of it's cover, carefully placing the needle on it, sitting back to focus on the music and nothing else. Same reason the physical joy of playing a piano will always have a place despite being able to get nearly the same sounds out of a computer. I'd hate to watch two self driving cars competing against each other to see which has the best code. That sounds tedious as all hell. I'm not sure about the others, but fuck yeah I categorically do NOT want an AI cracking jokes at a party. Somethings are better when they are lower tech.
- yayitswei 10y ago
  Well the site is called Hacker News.
  - grzm 10y ago
    True, though neither word in that name is used to limit topic or language.
- webkike 10y ago
  Vinyls also still exist because some people prefer analog sound. There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias.
  - gdilla 10y ago
    Also people who dj. In fact, the most popular digital dj interface is serato which let's you use vinyl as an interface.
    - webkike 10y ago
      Oh absolutely. My DJ friends love using vinyl it seems
  - JauntyHatAngle 10y ago
    >There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias Vinyls do have a characteristic compressed warmth that subjectively a lot of people enjoy. The pops and crackles that come with vinyl are pleasing to many also.
  - whowalrus 10y ago
    Another oft-cited reason is because vinyls can't have a "brick-walled" dynamic range, as it often happens with new digital music thanks to the loudness war [1]. So audiophiles tend to favor it. From the article: As explained earlier, due to the physical limitations of vinyl, there are limits as to how loud you can press a record, and because vinyl is “for audiophiles” – there is less incentive for record companies to compromise the quality of vinyl releases. As a result, many vinyl records are mastered differently to the CD release with more dynamic range and at lower volumes. [1]: http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-war/ http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-...
anigbrowl 10y ago
Yes to all of those questions. If people can't imaginatively project themselves into winning circumstances, then they become despondent because their escapist fantasies (which some people take seriously enough to make into real accomplishments) are now dashed forever. This is something technologists and scientists largely don't get. People are always 'look at how many material comforts and and entertainment options you have now, are you not entertained?' Likewise scientists are often 'I spent years of my life and a small fortune learning to be expert about this obscure thing that you'll never be able to experience directly, isn't it awesome?' And people are entertained and they are awed - to an extent. But they're also sad because the more the world is codified and quantified and parceled out for ownership. there are no new countries to discover, no more large exotic fauna to find, we're constantly reminded that religion and magic are illusory and that the economics of capitalism are inevitable, so there's nothing to look forward to in life beyond being ground up in the gears of the consumerist machine. That's why there are so many movies about superheroes and rebellious people with psychic powers and so on. People need something to believe in other than the ultimately extremely boring prospect of working, raising a family, and retiring. They want 'adventure and excitement and really wild things.' This is why we now have an administration whose stated Big Idea is the construction of a giant wall* because at least that sounds like a project you could get absorbed in for its own sake, whereas preserving the earth for future generations feels nice but is never really done and so can't deliver any sense of adventure or accomplishment for more than a few people with the resources to get a PhD. It's also why countries (soo to include the US) are apprehensive of war but develop tremendous enthusiasm for it once it's declared, because it provides a massive uncertainty that offers the possibility for drastic change, heroism, betrayal, defeat, victory and so on. I don't know how to articulate this better than by saying that capitalism is boring for most people, in the same way that if you are playing Monopoly there's a point at which you realize who's going to win and all the fun goes out of the game for everyone else in direct proportion to their declining odds of success. * If you don't mind losing 2 hours on a bad movie. go watch Pacific Rim, a stupid science-fiction romp about giant robots vs giant aliens. It's stupid in the sense of not really caring about the science at all to the point o making jokes about how stupid it is - at one critical moment, someone 'solves' the problem of The System collapsing due to 3v1l h4x0rs but remembering that they have a nuclear-powered robot and exclaiming 'It's not digital! It's nuclear- it's analog!!'. The very badness of this movie makes it worth studying because the psychological symbolism is so thinly disguised. Almost all alien invasion movies are vehicles for conservative ideology, and it's not an accident that a political campaign for building a giant wall was anticipated by various movies involving the construction of giant walls.

autokad 10y ago

before the internet, there was real capital in knowing jokes, and the same for unusual facts. you wanted to know who was in that movie? you called your friend who knew those things. now just IMDB it. i suppose that is part of the reason for the appeal in the seemingly recent interest in bar trivia nights. i think we are still working out the kinks in the things we lost due to the internet.

toomanybeersies 10y ago
I thought that pub quiz nights were becoming popular because people were getting so much useless information from IMDB et al, and needed somewhere to use it.
fzeroracer 10y ago
I think this is also why we see continuous growth in the Vinyl industry. People like the internet, but they also want the option to go offline with whatever they buy and have something tangible.
- handedness 10y ago
  Continuous growth since the bottom, yes, but from a value that was asymptotically close to $0 in the prior decade: http://diffuser.fm/files/2015/01/vinyl-chart.jpg http://diffuser.fm/files/2015/01/vinyl-chart.jpg
kop316 10y ago
Personally, I think the big appeal of trivia nights is very much the same reason for the resurgence of board games, it's an in person social thing to do. I can go out with some friends, have fun, and I have met some other people and made new friends that way too. I have tried to do a lot of the online video games (even with friends), but to me, it doesn't have nearly the appeal of having friends over and we all play a game together For me, the Nintendo 64 was one of the best consoles to do this.

emodendroket 10y ago

How could a book possibly capture "all the sayings in existence"? That's a lot of sayings.

samstave 10y ago
so says you!
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Put it in the book.

teknologist 10y ago

But making a saying doesn't take any source material. I'd imagine there's a lot of fun in giving this bot an image and seeing where it puts the faces and which "poses" it opts to use. Have a look at the examples where there are heads put in random places and some more obvious positions left out. The hilarity is in the imperfections.

ashark 10y ago

Vonnegut's Bluebeard: I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives—maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on. That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions. The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist". How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"