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Serious question. What is the purpose of these articles? They seem to popup often on mainstream media sites. They have little or no information other than obvious stuff about belt and road, etc.

Is the purpose just clicks? Does China generate clicks?


This article wasn't obvious to me. Not everyone knows what you know.


Downvote me if you want but I love the massive amounts of text in the early version. For me. The web is better with more text and less whatever else.


For you and for other tech-heads like us, possibly.

For the public at large? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy#Prevalen...


That link scares the hell out of me. More alarm bells should be ringing about this issue.


I find this list fascinating, because it seems counterintuitive. I expected to find generally lower illiteracy in countries with simpler/fewer languages, but Romance languages (Italian, Spanish) top the list, while countries with multiple official languages (Switzerland, Canada) are in the middle, and at the bottom are countries with multiple languages and which are generally thought to be difficult to learn (Danish, Finnish). That seems almost backwards.

What I get from this is that when it comes to success in language learning, technical difficulty is mere rounding error compared to other factors.


More likely is that Netflix realized most people, including myself, aren't on Netflix to consume text content.

In fact, the text is more likely to spoil the show. "A space freighter has to take refuge on a desolate planet. Little does its crew know that their temporary shelter is infested with horrific parasites. But you do!"

I might as well be picking my next viewing from a selection of pictures and illustrations.

It's just television.


It seems somewhat counter-intuitive to go to an on-demand video delivery service and want to see a lot of text though, no? People didn't go to Blockbuster to go read a description of the movie on white note card. I see this mentality a lot on HN and it seems like there's a large population of "get off my lawn" techies who only want the WWW to be text and nothing else, ever. Not trying to criticize your opinion, which I know I probably am, but I just find that is a very vocal and common trend on here. Maybe me having grown up mostly with Web 2.0 and on I just have a different set of expectations of what the WWW can provide me.


Bear in mind that in 1999 they could not have done a modern-looking website even if their designers had crystal balls and could see what the web would evolve into. The browsers did not support the fonts and styling, and most people were on dial-up so anything image-heavy would have been unusable.


What else can you expect from techies that insist using their computers as a PDP-11 replica as if Xerox PARC never existed?


We are trying so hard to use Teams, but the performance is just not up to snuff. They took a shortcut using Electron to get it cross-platform. For such a large pervasive company, I don't think this shortcut is worth it as they should have just invested in native like their other desktop apps. It's going to hurt them long term in my opinion. I even submitted a user voice about the memory issue and slow UI.


Pretty sure they are working on a Universal App for Windows. Which means many of your concerns could be addressed. I haven't noticed any issues with the OSX version, but I don't use my Mac much.


Yep. You are truly happy and don't have to worry about urban issues which are huge stressors.


> You are truly happy*

* If you like what North Dakota has to offer, which is a very narrow set of options on the spectrum of life possibilities.

> don't have to worry about urban issues which are huge stressors.

Urban living can be stressful, but I'll take urban stressors over being trapped in a small pond if it's the wrong pond. Rural life can be awesome but it can also get incredibly boring. It's also prone to souring quickly if you have difficulties with the dozen or so people you might have regular contact with. I lived in a rural area for a spell and it turned out the local handyman had been stealing from everyone for years. What do you do when that guy is the only handyman in the county and his family blames you for his problems when he goes to jail? Not a good situation.

Urban conveniences are also awesome. It'll be hard for me to move somewhere that lacks the variety and quality of food options currently available to me now. People in rural areas seem quite content with comparatively awful and unhealthy food.


I recently moved to California from a more rural state, and I agree that parts of California are a huge pain in the ass. I was just surprised to see North Dakota at the top because it usually gets such negative coverage.


This should be the top comment. This sort of "debate" has happened since the dawn of programming and will continue to happen until AI programs for us.

The reality is it is all shite! Just get your job done.


Again, with questions as a metric, this could not necessarily be viewed as a decline but more as a maturation. Wouldn't you expect less React questions in 7 years or so as well?


I doubt it's related at all. A client probably wouldn't specifically ask for a "React Native" app.

I would think this trend has more to due with app marketplace saturation.


True but the consulting firm/company might find it cheaper and easier to find 'react native' devs than a swift programmer.


Certainly just the simple ability to see which accounts are scaling up or down and spending metrics can provide a huge business edge right?


Maybe. Still wouldn't be as much as google knows. Via android phone locations, apps installed, what people are saying in email/gchat/gvoice conversations, google home histories, youtube, etc. Not mentioning their other services like google cloud.

It would be very easy to use that data to know when and with who to invest.


I'm not sure why you are downvoted. It's not quite fair since you are answering the question. But in all honesty this kind of existence sounds strange to me.

Edit: changed horrific to strange. if my wife and I lived by todo lists on Alexa we would never have any fun.


I think I would agree with you, if I didnt have kids. But two kids under three, and you kind of dont know whats what after a few months.

My wife still uses pencil and pen so maybe someone will upvote me for that. Silly me thinking this was a tech audience.


*whole developed world's middle class.

Just a balancing out with developing nations right?


The middle class is not doing so well in some developing nations either. In my own country it's been shrinking for years.


To add further in India top 5-8 per-cent population is described as 'middle class' by media. Because real middle class there looks like malnourished, emaciated masses.

It hardly fits into narrative of young people doing modern jobs, have a motorized vehicles, eat out and go for movies every week.


Developing world wages wouldn't be so bad if we had correspondingly developing world prices.


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