[sv9]

I'm consistently amazed by HN's ability to take the most meaningless, inconsequential part of an article (the scroll behavior, the whitespace, the usage of the word "bricked"), and nitpick it to hell and back instead of actually discussing the article.

Bravo.

[newsbinator]

To me this is a feature, not a bug. I come here for the hacker lens, often on what I've already read elsewhere.

Sometimes while reading an article I silently curse the load time or layout or terminology. Then I see others here discussing that.

HN does not disappoint.

[DeathArrow]

Yes. People on reddit are too boring serious and straight to the point. Here on HN we can have a link about some programming language and we start discussing about physics, the Universe or cats. Much more creative. :)

[swat535]

People on reddit are serious ? Which subs are you following ? All I see everywhere there is one word comments such as @nice, @oof,..etc and witty remarks. The discussion quality on HN is far better. Granted we do nitpick here though..

[doc_gunthrop]

Sure the discussion quality is far better, if you're comparing to reddit in general. Discussion is often on par if you're on a niche subreddit focused on something technical.

From a personal perspective, the discussion quality on HN (on average) has declined over the past couple years. In the past the majority of comments were more substantial; it was more common to see paragraphs of well thought-out comments that delved into nitty gritty details when addressing a point.

But in the past couple years there's been a gradual increase in single-sentence comments that contribute nothing to discussion but only end up taking up screen space. Like the random person who wants to throw in their 2 cents, but have zero cents to offer.

Even HN is not immune to Eternal September.

[dang]

HN has always had that. I think you're running into the perception bias where it always seems like things are getting worse.

Complaints about HN getting more like Reddit go back to 2007, before it was even called Hacker News.

[DeathArrow]

Ask some philosophers "what you need to do to have a good life?". They will start discussing:

"What is life?" "What is good?" "What is need?" "What is you?" "What is what?"

And those discussions will never end unless the time itself ends.

[pier25]

If you ask Conan he will have a definite answer though:

> Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!

(this is a philosophical joke)

[toyg]

This is why Conan is a king and a pirate, and the philosophers are all dead.

[blunderkid]

Well put sistah!

[cygned]

Brown M&Ms (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232420). How am I supposed to assume your content is of any quality if you cannot get the details right?

[mmcnl]

Typical HN response, there is no multi-million dollar exchange going on here. How about filling in some of the blanks or correct the wrong parts yourself? This is such an unnecessary defensive response.

[ozim]

Great I love this response!

People go into Karen mode here, yes they bought expensive piece of hardware with expensive operating system. Though site is rather technically minded they still underestimate how complex are those things.

It just another "Dropbox? Who needs that I can do the same in an hour", but somehow they don't realize when you have a budget, timelines and as always not enough developers who understand this specific thing - it is different than sitting on your own and making perfect thing. (which then if scrutinized by some other dev would be labeled as crap :D)

[raverbashing]

Especially when it's a developing story and probably published in a rush (in less than ideal situations). Mistakes happen and the informative side is more important at these times.

[0xff00ffee]

FTA:

"Whenever the band found brown M&M's candies backstage, they immediately did a complete line check, inspecting every aspect of the sound, lighting and stage setup to make sure it was perfect. David Lee Roth would also trash the band’s dressing room to prove a point -- reinforcing his reputation in the process."

So, in summary: the team of roadies DIDN'T always do a a complete line check. And DLR would just make life hard for the hotel staff. That's just dumb all around.

[lrem]

I feel so conflicted after reading that article. On one end, it does a good job explaining a neat trick some smart people have used. On the other hand, it abuses it as "a proof" for some trivial and only vaguely related advice.

[tannhaeuser]

It's also used as a tactic to derange a discussion and get offtopic top comments to bore away or otherwise trap casual, click-happy readers. Not saying it is in this particular case.

[quickthrower2]

And there is the damn meta discussion about the nitpicks!

[DanBC]

You might be interested in what dang, a mod, says here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336417

[toomim]

Well, maybe it's because the article is hyping itself up in order to get more attention than its content justifies.

As a result, some large percentage of readers are let down by the actual content, and think it wasn't worth reading, let alone commenting on.

[FireBeyond]

> to get more attention than its content justifies

That your Mac can get to the point by an Apple OS update that you need to enter recovery mode? (Even as someone who is exclusively Apple, I have seen the mockery Microsoft has endured for similar).

Or worse, to the point that unless you have access to a spare Mac or the _currently closed_ Apple stores, you are shit out of luck?

"Eh, no big deal, not worth reading or commenting on".

[K0SM0S]

I'd go with the fact that Apple has always been a little finicky, but initially quite fixable; then it became more and more locked down and users had to accept that fact: some left, some stayed. Nowadays pretty much nobody around here is surprised by the shenanigans you may have to go through on Apple platforms outside of the core mainstream experience.

The fact that an OS update can brick a device is a non-event, it's happened before and will happen again. Apple is not perfect, no one is. They do a pretty good job most of the time, comparatively¹.

The fact that in the case of Apple you have to suffer the aforementioned shenanigans to maybe solve the problem is, well, coincidental. It's not an event in itself either.

Note this is why production machines in professional environments usually wait a few weeks-months to update. Also why security updates are generally offered on their own (shouldn't wait to install those).

____

1: Note that, I personally can't stand being at the mercy of 1 corporation so I took matters in my own hands and run Linux: it rarely fails. When it does, it's usually my fault, so I can assign blame, learn my lesson and move on. Otherwise, I'd have to accept that every so often, a proprietary vendor update may brick the device.

[na85]

Oh c'mon, the real issue here is Apple's abysmal quality control (and really it's an industry-wide trend). They're phoning it in with real, tangible effect, but based on the upvotes here at the time of writing, HN seems to consider the debate around what "bricked" implies to be the most important conversation.

[C19is20]

> I'm consistently amazed by HN's ability to take the most meaningless, inconsequential part of an article (the scroll behavior, the whitespace, the usage of the word "bricked"), and nitpick it to hell and back instead of actually discussing the article.

> Bravo.

'Bravi', or 'brave'(f) would be the plural of that.

[toyg]

In English and French, Bravo generically means “congratulations”, “that was great” etc. It’s never pluralised, in the same way foreign words are not pluralised in Italian (from “computer” to “pièce de resistance”...).

This thread is almost as shit as Catalina.

[qqssccfftt]

> 'Bravi', or 'brave'(f) would be the plural of that.

I have never heard anyone but you say this ergo it is wrong.

[amelius]

You never heard the expression "bravi tutti"?

[sethammons]

Nope. First time I ever encountered “bravi” was right above this. The first time I encountered “tutti” was your comment. I am from the US. It is a safe bet that as such I only speak one language and do so poorly.

[TheRealDunkirk]

To the others commenting on this comment: YHBT. HAND.

[john-radio]

Look, if the update might "brick" my MBP, meaning break it irreparably, then I have a reason to care about this, and since it can't, I don't. It's a semantic difference but an important one.

[Myrmornis]

It's partly the threading structure. If you ignore s subtree that seems uninteresting I think that helps what you're talking about.

[UweSchmidt]

I'd love to complain about all the meaningless parts of the article, but this website seems to detect my basic safety browser addons (uBlock Origin, uMatrix and Privacy Badger) and refuses to show me the content, giving me a lecture instead.

Most content is also available on non-spammy, ethical websites, and we shouldn't support bad actors.

[yodsanklai]

> the usage of the word "bricked"

Well, this is not nitpicking. The word "bricked" has a meaning, and this is not what the article describes. From the title, I thought that this update was actually bricking the computer. Thanks to the commenters for pointing it wasn't the case.

[nikofeyn]

and yet, there are responses here confirming that the bricking is indeed what happens in some cases. so yes, it is nitpicking.

[Dylan16807]

It's not like "everyone bashes apple" is a more interesting conversation.

Short articles don't have much to discuss. There's no need to get mad that someone isn't laser-focused on the two sentences you think are most important.

[amelius]

Perhaps the HN crowd finally got wise and migrated away from Apple because:

1. their devices are (or are on a path of becoming) non-general purpose computing devices.

2. developers are treated like junk on the app store.

[fauigerzigerk]

We'll see about (1) but (2) is unfortunately a structural problem that goes far beyond just Apple.

Developers are forced to operate in a "market" dominated by a few oligopolists that are obsessed with control, both on their own behalf and on the behalf of governments.

[doc_gunthrop]

I'd imagine there is a word or phrase that describes this kind of situation, kind of like bike-shedding, but something more fitting.

[qqssccfftt]

No technology is discussed.

[FriendlyNormie]

Something needs to be done about the default comment ordering or subthread collapsing ability on HN. I understand I can easily collapse a comment’s replies with a single tap in the correct tiny location, but that isn’t enough. I became increasingly fatigued as I scrolled down seeing reply after reply to the top comment all arguing over the definition of “bricked”, assuming that surely at any moment I’d reach the bottom of the subthread and be able to move on to read something more useful. Finally I became frustrated enough to scroll to the top and collapse the parent comment, and that worked this time, but the issue is that it isn’t always the top comment on the page you want to collapse, so it becomes a blind hunt for the correct comment to collapse. You probably won’t remember the exact indentation depth of the comment you need to collapse so you’re stuck deciding whether to waste time looking for it or tough out trying to scroll to the bottom of the subthread (while continuously getting excited then disappointed every time the indentation shifts left and you’re tricked into thinking you’ve finally reached the end). It’s a daily annoyance but I’m not sure what could remedy it.

Also I’ve read that submissions with too much early comment activity get removed automatically for seemingly being too controversial. If so then maybe that rule should apply to comments as well. Controversial comments could automatically sink lower despite upvote count, as well as older comments.

[okareaman]

You've described the best part of HN for me because I can always count on learning something super obscure but alos super interesting that nobody else would have thought of.

[tedunangst]

If only there were some way for article writers to avoid this trap.

[appleflaxen]

It appears you created this account just to make this massively derailing comment.

Regardless of what you think about HN comments, this is antisocial behavior, and can't possibly raise the quality of discussion.

[FriendlyNormie]

It could raise the quality of discussion in the future if it discourages people who nitpick definitions from doing it again.