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Dear! Tech! Forum!

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mauvais

mauvais

on reddit or something
At what point did the tech forum become a long line of duplicate threads tumbling off a baggage carousel of incremental product announcements, dull corporate rivalries and regurgitated Gizmodo news stories liberally doused in giddy hyperbole?

If I had to sum up Urban in general then it would have been the precise opposite of those things, but it turns out that I was wrong, and it's actually an enterprise primarily concerned with buying a £500 smartphone every two months because it has a better display or half an extra G or a bigger five button or a camera that's still objectively shit or a cool new app to track the growing futility of it all but using the cloud. Oh, so evolutionary! Fondle this press release while I puke up my brushed aluminum guts.

In the interval we will break for flag waving and some evangelical sub-He-Man tale from the front about Google's (hurray! boooo!) latest brave/evil struggle-or-malice against Apple's (boooo! hurray!) inherent evil/bravery, played out in some inconsequential triviality about some feature or patent or CEO remark on the weather that won't ever have any further impact beyond furthering my own profound distaste for this awful consumerist hell-view on a potentially interesting industry.

Was it always thus? Why haven't you people noticed that everything is shit? And what will you do if something genuinely interesting comes along?

Or! Do! You! All! Just! Work! For! Yahoo!?
 
I see lots of interesting threads, some about new products, some about helping user's tech problems, some asking for recommendations on gear/ISPs etc, as well as threads talking about current issues relating to the tech world.

I'm not sure what else you expect a tech forum to talk about, to be honest.
 
xes said:
got to admit, I have often wondered how many of these threads are posted by people paid to do so. How many sales have those threads generated? :D
Click to expand...
Bugger all, I imagine, although I'm sure personal recommendations have had an influence - as they should do.
 
mauvais said:
At what point did the tech forum become a long line of duplicate threads tumbling off a baggage carousel of incremental product announcements, dull corporate rivalries and regurgitated Gizmodo news stories liberally doused in giddy hyperbole?

If I had to sum up Urban in general then it would have been the precise opposite of those things, but it turns out that I was wrong, and it's actually an enterprise primarily concerned with buying a £500 smartphone every two months because it has a better display or half an extra G or a bigger five button or a camera that's still objectively shit or a cool new app to track the growing futility of it all but using the cloud. Oh, so evolutionary! Fondle this press release while I puke up my brushed aluminum guts.

In the interval we will break for flag waving and some evangelical sub-He-Man tale from the front about Google's (hurray! boooo!) latest brave/evil struggle-or-malice against Apple's (boooo! hurray!) inherent evil/bravery, played out in some inconsequential triviality about some feature or patent or CEO remark on the weather that won't ever have any further impact beyond furthering my own profound distaste for this awful consumerist hell-view on a potentially interesting industry.

Was it always thus? Why haven't you people noticed that everything is shit? And what will you do if something genuinely interesting comes along?

Or! Do! You! All! Just! Work! For! Yahoo!?
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more.

KE & editor baiting each other has been getting pretty tiresome for some time.
 
Well if you don't like the threads you see, it's not exactly challenging to start your own more interesting ones, is it?
 
editor said:
I see lots of interesting threads, some about new products, some about helping user's tech problems, some asking for recommendations on gear/ISPs etc, as well as threads talking about current issues relating to the tech world.

I'm not sure what else you expect a tech forum to talk about, to be honest.
Click to expand...
There are a handful 'please help me fix my 10 year old computer that I found in a skip' or 'please help me fix my 20 year old phone that it transpires is an actual housebrick' threads, and that is pretty much what I would expect. And not a tech forum, but the Urban tech forum. Does it not smack of bizarre lifestyle priorities?

Is it the Emperor's New Clothes? There is nothing interesting happening. The only interesting thing at MWC was that Nokia produced a camera that was actually good, and then they surrounded it in shit. Everything else is at best evolutionary, more likely treading water; we might as well have a crisp forum with threads titled, '5% Less Salt! Still Same Flavour!'. I know journalists have to write about something, but can't they do it alone in an empty forest?
 
mauvais said:
There are a handful 'please help me fix my 10 year old computer that I found in a skip' or 'please help me fix my 20 year old phone that it transpires is an actual housebrick' threads, and that is pretty much what I would expect. And not a tech forum, but the Urban tech forum.

Is it the Emperor's New Clothes? There is nothing interesting happening. The only interesting thing at MWC was that Nokia produced a camera that was actually good, and then they surrounded it in shit. Everything else is at best evolutionary, more likely treading water; we might as well have a crisp forum with threads titled, '5% Less Salt! Still Same Flavour!'. I know journalists have to write about something, but can't they do it alone in an empty forest?
Click to expand...
You seem to have adopted the arrogant stance that just because you don't find something interesting, then it can't be interesting to anyone else.

But instead of whining, why not lead by example and start some superior, more interesting threads of your own?
 
mauvais said:
At what point did the tech forum become a long line of duplicate threads tumbling off a baggage carousel of incremental product announcements, dull corporate rivalries and regurgitated Gizmodo news stories liberally doused in giddy hyperbole?

If I had to sum up Urban in general then it would have been the precise opposite of those things, but it turns out that I was wrong, and it's actually an enterprise primarily concerned with buying a £500 smartphone every two months because it has a better display or half an extra G or a bigger five button or a camera that's still objectively shit or a cool new app to track the growing futility of it all but using the cloud. Oh, so evolutionary! Fondle this press release while I puke up my brushed aluminum guts.

In the interval we will break for flag waving and some evangelical sub-He-Man tale from the front about Google's (hurray! boooo!) latest brave/evil struggle-or-malice against Apple's (boooo! hurray!) inherent evil/bravery, played out in some inconsequential triviality about some feature or patent or CEO remark on the weather that won't ever have any further impact beyond furthering my own profound distaste for this awful consumerist hell-view on a potentially interesting industry.

Was it always thus? Why haven't you people noticed that everything is shit? And what will you do if something genuinely interesting comes along?

Or! Do! You! All! Just! Work! For! Yahoo!?
Click to expand...

You've clearly got a shit phone and you are envious of our l33t skills.
 
There are also some very interesting threads, like the cinnamon huffing one, which get placed here on the spurious grounds that they are "an Internet meme" or a "youtube phenomenon", despite not really being about technology at all.
 
editor said:
You seem to have adopted the arrogant stance that just because you don't find something interesting, then it can't be interesting to anyone else.

But instead of whining, why not lead by example and start some superior, more interesting threads of your own?
Click to expand...
is the tech forum supposed to be interesting? I guess it could be, but I've always seen/used it as a refuge for those in trouble.
 
editor said:
You seem to have adopted the arrogant stance that just because you don't find something interesting, then it can't be interesting to anyone else.

But instead of whining, why not lead by example and start some superior, more interesting threads of your own?
Click to expand...
I did pen a superior, more interesting thread of my own. It was a particularly insightful piece into how evangelists and the ever more rampant, unthinking pursuit of consumerism are finding their way against a backdrop of product stagnation and a dearth of technological innovation. I thought it was brilliant, and I described it as such in a flurry of exclamation marks. Then I thought it would be profoundly depressing and I didn't post it at all.
 
Its not the most interesting time to be talking about technology, nobody here can help that. The internet has matured and with maturity comes dull corporate tedium.

I wouldn't expect U75 to be much of a shelter from this stuff, regardless of its strengths its not immune to wider trends or the stuff that comes with its own ageing.

I can still get excited about the raw potential of the net and all it could mean for human organisation, politics & economics. But the present reality does not live up to this billing, nor does the internet begin to match my younger dreams of what some sort of pirate tv network would be like, what sane and subversive antics could result from such a phenomenon. We get glimpses of it, but even these are overshadowed by the novelty having worn off, or of people getting sick of the downsides of the net, the hostility and human solidarity failures that can send people running back to their small trusted networks of friends.

Much is still possible, but I can't even begin to speculate as to what the catalysts might be for a more interesting change, and Im certainly not pointing a finger at u75 in particular. Yes we get into some very circular arguments that are mostly just rehashing old ground and do not exactly improve the quality of this place, but without such things I feel we would just have less talk here, not different talk. And Id be rather surprised if anything radical was born of u75 at this point, and Im not just talking about the technology front.
 
mauvais said:
At what point did the tech forum become a long line of duplicate threads tumbling off a baggage carousel of incremental product announcements, dull corporate rivalries and regurgitated Gizmodo news stories liberally doused in giddy hyperbole?
Click to expand...
You forgot the graphs!! Nothing says my-fave-tech's better than your-shitty-tech like a pretty graph, made by someone else, using someone's else's figures, but which comprehensively justifies ones own stance, and which should definitely be taken as gospel (unlike other poster's graphs, which are nothing but lies, damn lies!).
 
mauvais said:
we might as well have a crisp forum with threads titled, '5% Less Salt! Still Same Flavour!'. I know journalists have to write about something, but can't they do it alone in an empty forest?
Click to expand...
This is the problem I have with 90% of technology "journalism". Endless recycling of press releases and spoon-fed reports from gadget shows, with 2nd-hand "analysis" and "opinion". It's a never-ending echo chamber of banality. "Company has new phone! It's a bit better! We're DRIPPING WET FOR IT!" on a thousand sites, with not a rizla's gap between their "coverage".
 
EastEnder said:
You forgot the graphs!! Nothing says my-fave-tech's better than your-shitty-tech like a pretty graph, made by someone else, using someone's else's figures, but which comprehensively justifies ones own stance, and which should definitely be taken as gospel (unlike other poster's graphs, which are nothing but lies, damn lies!).
Click to expand...
android_vs_ios_graph.png
 
Hahahahahaha! Hahaha! Haha! Ha. Oh.

I post plenty in here. It's just a demoralising experience. But continue your circular back slapping.
 
Crispy said:
This is the problem I have with 90% of technology "journalism". Endless recycling of press releases and spoon-fed reports from gadget shows, with 2nd-hand "analysis" and "opinion". It's a never-ending echo chamber of banality. "Company has new phone! It's a bit better! We're DRIPPING WET FOR IT!" on a thousand sites, with not a rizla's gap between their "coverage".
Click to expand...

Yeah I don't think I've been satisfied with tech journalism since the days of some of the silly stuff in Your Sinclair and to an extent Crash!, although that probably only seemed interesting at the time because I was so young. Did they fancy themselves as the NME of computers or something?
 
This place used to be a great resource for programmers, developers and web designers. It's one of the reasons I ended up here!

I don't think the posters have changed, just that they no longer need to ask how to do X in java or whatever. That plus most of the questions have been answered elsewhere and there's better places to ask new questions.

I could start a thread on machine learning or whatever but I don't think I'd get much of a response.
 
Crispy said:
This is the problem I have with 90% of technology "journalism". Endless recycling of press releases and spoon-fed reports from gadget shows, with 2nd-hand "analysis" and "opinion". It's a never-ending echo chamber of banality. "Company has new phone! It's a bit better! We're DRIPPING WET FOR IT!" on a thousand sites, with not a rizla's gap between their "coverage".
Click to expand...
The worst is the interminable 'rumours' (i.e. complete lies) that these sites churn out - a ghastly phenomen that seems to be increasing (even august journals like the Telegraph were running pointless slabs of speculation pre-iPad launch).

But I don't blame the websites really - I blame the fucking idiots who keep lapping this stuff up even when mist be obvious to even the thickest fanboy that it's all made up.
 
fractionMan said:
This place used to be a great resource for programmers, developers and web designers. It's one of the reasons I ended up here!

I don't think the posters have changed, just that they no longer need to ask how to do X in java or whatever. That plus most of the questions have been answered elsewhere and there's better places to ask new questions.

I could start a thread on machine learning or whatever but I don't think I'd get much of a response.
Click to expand...
You promised me a god damn thread on machine learning a minute ago. Where is it? Where is it?

I don't know anything about it though.
 
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