Comment by grishka
Remembering things reliably must be the most unsolvable problem in computer science.
Unless it's related to advertising. Then it works flawlessly and sometimes survives device transfers and factory resets.
Remembering things reliably must be the most unsolvable problem in computer science.
Unless it's related to advertising. Then it works flawlessly and sometimes survives device transfers and factory resets.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
Just to expand upon the reference, the comment you responded to is the first stanza of Allen Ginsberg poem "Howl" [0] published in 1956, which is what Hammerbacher paraphrased in the quote that I shared. "Howl" is amazing on its own though, and I highly recommend that people read the whole thing and/or watch the 2010 film about Ginsberg's life where James Franco recites it in its entirety[1]. And as a follow-up, I also highly recommend Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" that takes inspiration from the poem to analyze societal failures of coordination.
[0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049402/
[2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
I feel like advertising relies on getting it right "enough" not for everyone and ... they don't care.
Auth and settings people will tell you when it is wrong and that is generally thought of as a problem. Yet advertising doesn't care.
For years Amazon kept showing me women's products. I never once bought any or looked them up but man they were sure I wanted to buy some.
Google thought I was a Nebraska Cornhuskers fan but really I'm a fan of a rival, that's why I had to google a few things about them, but my old google news feed was sure I was a fan... even when they gave me a chance to say "no news about this team" they kept doing it ...
I hate how in macOS, I can double click a window's title bar to maximize it, and five minutes later the original window size will be forgotten so you can't restore it.
Windows 95 had this shit figured out on systems running a 486 and 6MB of RAM.
Not just the window size, but if you have more than one monitor, it won't always remember the screen.
Oh, you double clicked to make it bigger? How about making it postage stamp sized in the bottom left of a different monitor...
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."
-Jeff Hammerbacher