HN has always been like this

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

The hype cycle of 3D printers has probably plateaued into productivity now. Certainly the Maker movement is alive and well but it's not the hot new thing like it was a decade or a dozen years ago. Makerspaces aren't sprouting like mushrooms like they were before (partly because critical mass was already reached, partly because the pandemic reduction of physicality I'd guess), you don't see gimmicky 3D-printing kiosks at the mall anymore.

Not to mention they're probably thinking of motivations more along the lines of "brand-burnishing."

Perhaps it's natural then that when Palm went on to make WebOS they included the cards system for quick accessibility.

I've heard of Season 1 described as "Don Draper teaming up with Walter White", which makes it sound far more juicy than it is. The entire show gets way into the melodrama of the characters' personal lives, but S1 is no better than the rest in terms of that; it's strongest when the personal melodrama is rooted in the tech, like Joe's self-sabotage of their COMDEX demo followed by the fateful realization in the hotel room of their doom. There's a really great article in Grantland about HCF, Silicon Valley, and Microserfs by Douglas Coupland which points out that these characters are not great men, because they are but footnotes of history:

> The story twists again: Joe loses his nerve. The Giant goes to market as a regular old fast/cheap PC. Then, in a Comdex hotel room darkened as if for a séance, Joe comes face-to-face with his first Macintosh, and realizes he’s made the wrong call: “It speaks,” he says, his voice full of wonder and dread. We realize we’ve spent the better part of a season watching these characters fail — that Gordon and Joe aren’t going to become the Jobs and Wozniak of this world because Jobs and Wozniak are the Jobs and Wozniak of this world.

https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/silicon-valley-ha...

Cameron is just sort of an unstable tortured genius with a lot of baggage, and while Donna ends up being the responsible "den mother", it is really far from girlbossing, and rather trivializes those seasons and the characters to put it in such a way. And Joe does not take a backseat at all! He ends up being the main foil for most of the show, which is a really interesting turn for the character!

I do think Gordon gets sidelined (with a debilitating disease, no less!) far too easily. But then he's also sort of doomed to be a footnote, his fate is just all the more tragic for it.

There just wasn't much for Gordon. He existed as a foil, or a mirror, for the other, richer characters.

I get why the writers ended up just sort of shrugging their shoulders and excluding him so often.

Grew up with an Acer running Windows 95 that came with this preinstalled… now that’s bloatware that ain’t bloat. Descent floatware.

The costuming and sets and CGI are impressive, but the lighting is unnecessarily murky and the dark industrial tunnels aesthetic makes me think of Red Dwarf, which I can’t imagine was a very lavish production.

The earlier Red Dwarf episodes were filmed in the BBC cafeteria and other similar locations. The difference is that Red Dwarf was supposed to look grimy. They were on a mining ship with few luxuries. Red Dwarf was more in the territory of Dark Star, and played into that. (Early Red Dwarf tended to use physical models and costumes for a lot of effects. CGI has never been especially great on RD.)

I did watch Babylon 5 when it first came out in the UK. Deep Space 9 definitely had better looking effects, but I preferred B5 to DS9 on the basis of other factors.

I think B5 has a variety of environments, and some of them are quite nice, and I like the moody bustling alien cantina type spaces. But they also have too many dark industrial passages, which doesn’t always fit the scenes and come off rather cheap.

The article is so empty beyond meaningless, overawrought metaphors, it doesn’t even indicate whether the author is a wannabe entrepreneur, or an obsessive autodidact, or a tortured artiste, or what.

Ouch! Honestly, I'm probably all those things (and worse). But I found the concept of "metaprojects" helpful for shrinking the footprint of my ambitions. Instead of wanting everything, now I'm happier pursuing fewer things :-) At some point, I'll hopefully learn to let go even more. I hope other folks can learn/resonate from my particular brand of crazy

You neither explain what a metaproject is, nor how it is different from having multiple projects, nor how they overcome the problem of endless backlogs.

As someone who takes on _a lot_ of side projects, I like your idea of a metaproject!

I often wonder what draws me to pick up so many interests and goals. I used to think its leading me towards something but after so many years I have started to wonder if that is really whats going on. Maybe there is something more essential I can tease out of all my side projects that reveals what I am really after..

Can you give us examples of metaprojects?

You are the project, and getting through your idea to something, is about building a better you. Which points back to the beginning: -- Publish that novella, build an OS, converse in Mandarin, release an indie game, publish that other novella, dominate a continent -- --

Seem to be a lot of complaints about this post, I'm enjoying it. Interesting flow of thoughts and share similar frustration with all my ideas and trying to channel them, and get to something. If I get to something close to my thoughts that's a huge win for me.