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If we'd started to replace airplanes with affordable $200 flying saucers, and somebody came up with a $1.8M human-propelled airplane as "innovation", I bet it w

by sedatk 4y ago

If we'd started to replace airplanes with affordable $200 flying saucers, and somebody came up with a $1.8M human-propelled airplane as "innovation", I bet it wouldn't have been liked as much.

samatman 4y ago
Why compare with flying saucers, why not bikes? It's the bike industry existing which makes enormous gossamer human-powered craft possible, after all. Most art has little reason to exist, kind of by definition, and is seriously expensive at the high end. This is engineering art, where most expensive wristwatches are just art, specifically jewelry. I wouldn't expect the latest Hublot limited to end up on the front page of HN, but a 1.75mm mechanical wristwatch? Gratified my intellectual curiousity!
- sedatk 4y ago
  Because that's just a lightweight version of an old technology. No new value is being added here. Had this watch provided, say, some smartwatch features mechanically (such as an analog heart monitor, or an analog altimeter etc) I might have found it interesting despite the technology still being old. This feels like just a flex on contemporary manufacturing capabilities. They just spent more money than everyone else.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    Indeed, it's a bit like finding it hard to get all that hyped up about the latest Intel i9 whatever-K. Sure it's objectively a monstrous amount of processing on a sliver of matter (just like the one before it), but it's "just" throwing more transistors and fab at the same thing as the [whatever-1]-K. And then this is basically just an "if you know, you know" flex for a rich person. At least the incremental CPU "tick" or "tock" was somewhat useful, even if the -K variant is not especially useful in the general case.
  - lgvld 4y ago
    Maybe we shouldn’t be pushig that hard towards reducing the size of processors/transistors?
    - sedatk 4y ago
      If we're doing it for aesthetics, I agree, we shouldn't.

by sedatk 4y ago

If we'd started to replace airplanes with affordable $200 flying saucers, and somebody came up with a $1.8M human-propelled airplane as "innovation", I bet it wouldn't have been liked as much.

samatman 4y ago

Why compare with flying saucers, why not bikes? It's the bike industry existing which makes enormous gossamer human-powered craft possible, after all. Most art has little reason to exist, kind of by definition, and is seriously expensive at the high end. This is engineering art, where most expensive wristwatches are just art, specifically jewelry. I wouldn't expect the latest Hublot limited to end up on the front page of HN, but a 1.75mm mechanical wristwatch? Gratified my intellectual curiousity!

sedatk 4y ago
Because that's just a lightweight version of an old technology. No new value is being added here. Had this watch provided, say, some smartwatch features mechanically (such as an analog heart monitor, or an analog altimeter etc) I might have found it interesting despite the technology still being old. This feels like just a flex on contemporary manufacturing capabilities. They just spent more money than everyone else.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Indeed, it's a bit like finding it hard to get all that hyped up about the latest Intel i9 whatever-K. Sure it's objectively a monstrous amount of processing on a sliver of matter (just like the one before it), but it's "just" throwing more transistors and fab at the same thing as the [whatever-1]-K. And then this is basically just an "if you know, you know" flex for a rich person. At least the incremental CPU "tick" or "tock" was somewhat useful, even if the -K variant is not especially useful in the general case.
- lgvld 4y ago
  Maybe we shouldn’t be pushig that hard towards reducing the size of processors/transistors?
  - sedatk 4y ago
    If we're doing it for aesthetics, I agree, we shouldn't.