That is what I think is really fascinating about the world right now. A lot of people in tech don't seem to think that there in the last three actually were ways of doing all of the things they can imagine. A lot of stuff isn't actually new any longer. - ThreadSky

techconnectify.bsky.social • 56 days ago

That is what I think is really fascinating about the world right now.

A lot of people in tech don't seem to think that there in the last three actually were ways of doing all of the things they can imagine. A lot of stuff isn't actually new any longer.

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highlearn.bsky.social•56 days ago

Maybe to get farther down the rathole on that - they want complex attribution with multiple dimensions (google ads style) and might have different partners/agencies sending those in. You can back that out of a singular code, but it's not as easy as dimensions.

highlearn.bsky.social•56 days ago

It is entirely true though that this is looking at the problem "attribution" through the lens of what they know - online ad spend/traffic attribution. Every tool a hammer, etc

epcot.bsky.social•56 days ago

Eventually you do get into wacky situations like Timelox not realllly working with RFID keys, 1980s-era LMS not being compliant with modern security (no SSO, limited ability to restrict access to signin page), connections to other property software like Matra breaking

epcot.bsky.social•56 days ago

Granted the hotel I worked at had… unusual requirements compared to a random Hilton. But was it worth millions of dollars for Opera? Idk lol

theterroirist.bsky.social•56 days ago

I mean it really feels like the last two decades of tech 'innovations' has too often been just taking something that already exists and re-inventing it.

Eg hotels, taxis, delivery, trains (always trains. why does every tech billionaire try to reinvent trains?), etc...

xaiax.net•56 days ago

Almost every “*share” company comes down to the idea of “what if we invented public owned infrastructure but also got a cut every time it was used, and also we still got the public to build and maintain the actual infrastructure?”

xaiax.net•56 days ago

I.e., AirBnB is just “what if there were publicly owned housing and we got a cut every time someone made a reservation and also someone else build and maintains the housing”.

Years and years of zero interest loans being used to subsidize the development of new forms of rent.

alice.aliciousintent.com•56 days ago

I’m in cybersecurity which is very much a self-justifying part of tech. Our work is, at the end of the day, plugging holes that the tech industry opened (most often without thinking). The culture here is pretty weird in relation to things like ”why we even exist” and ”are we the bad guys”.

techconnectify.bsky.social•56 days ago

*in the past there actually were... quite a confusing typo there

voxcpw.bsky.social•56 days ago

But! Cloud! AI! Subscription models! App ecosystems! Synergies! Business models! Meaningless gibberish disguised as marketing wank!

woodworkk.bsky.social•56 days ago

I think another piece of it is that our tech/patent/copyright/licensing ecosystem discourages developers from putting energy into iterative improvements to smooth out existing pain points in favor of trying to shoot the moon and become the next billionaire via disruption and revolution!

woodworkk.bsky.social•56 days ago

And also in a lot of ways discourages even *awareness* of the current status quo or preexisting solutions to problems--if any piece of my new product is too similar to an existing one, and I knew about the existing one beforehand, I'm more likely to get involved in expensive legal proceedings etc

rcurrie.bsky.social•56 days ago

People need a reminder that daily newspapers were possible without computers. (And no, Linotype machines were not computers. Monotype machines were closer, but still no.)

gerhard.innerfire.net•56 days ago

The older way isn't necessarily better though. To put this another way: We used to use big coils to convert voltages but then someone discovered we could make them smaller and more power efficient if we add a micro-controller.

tinyiota.com•56 days ago

TC is not claiming the old way was better. Just that the new way is unnecessarily complex and bloated.

gerhard.innerfire.net•56 days ago

The point I'm trying to make is that the compatibility layers make things more complex and bloated.

Also the age: Do modern machines even have the correct ports and drivers available for DOS? What happens when they finally eliminate the 8080 boot mode DOS depends on? Emulators add complexity too.

tinyiota.com•56 days ago

I think we’re having two different conversations here. You’re right, old doesn’t mean better and forcing old tech to work with new tech can have its own problems.

I think we can also both agree that a lot of software today has features/bloat in it that don’t have a direct benefit to the user.

gerhard.innerfire.net•56 days ago

Agreed

techconnectify.bsky.social•56 days ago

No, but that's exactly the question that needs asking. Is this actually better?

At this point I'm pretty confident that a lot of what the larger tech industry does is purely to justify itself. Because until we're in the matrix the real world does eventually present limits to what tech can do.

bedwyr.bsky.social•56 days ago

Something Ed Zitron had held forth on about the current collection of bubbles we have (Meta is in particular trouble and currently flailing).

gerhard.innerfire.net•56 days ago

That made my brain twitch. A lot of Meta's problems were business decisions to design things in a way that maximizes short term profit over long term user happiness.

They tanked their own ad click through rates by not removing obvious fraud in the process making people afraid to buy anything.

bedwyr.bsky.social•56 days ago

I think parts of it are down to Zuck still being in control when they need a mature company leader and not a startup owner. He has tried to shoot the moon in some really stupid ways trying to recapture old magic.

gerhard.innerfire.net•56 days ago

A good startup owner will aim to make the users happy. Zuck lost that somewhere. The new meta ignores what the users are trying to tell them. Don't throw fraud ads in my face, don't forward videos. Definitely don't forward from a church service to a girl gaming in her underwear (this happened).

babblingfringe.bsky.social•56 days ago

Don’t get me started on companies that expect/plan on a 100% adoption rate of their app as they move into the new year.

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