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Comment by nu11p01n73R | Hacker News Reader

> There were other data packs available; the "news pack" would let me....

Consider a hypothetical situation where you are talking with your friend and they tell you about a wonderful blog that they read recently. You get very much interested in the idea that as soon as you reach home you want to read them all. Unfortunately you own a "video pack".

What you mentioned about the data packs make sense for many people. People who spend most of the time on Netflix, Facebook etc. But that is not what internet is all about. Internet is not Facebook or Google or Netflix. What makes internet great is the fact that any random unknown person can host any idea that they want to share with others and I can find that note and read it from other part of the world.

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Absolutely; that's the ideological goal that everyone wants to keep.

To reiterate the argument in my previous message, I had exactly what you described. The data pack only had a tiny 100MB cap (yup!!) and I (without any other form of internet at the time, actually now I remember this was 2005) easily blew through that as my mindset at the time was "if it moves then I'm gonna see if if the stupid HTML renderer in this thing will load it".

So I eventually had to accept having no internet. I could use email though. So the thing is, I experienced this, but there was no hype and freakout about it, it was just incredibly annoying and frustrating.

I honestly don't know if this was a "curated" freakout. The collective "...wait." is absolutely genuine and the problem absolutely undeniable, I can't possibly argue that; it's just... this isn't really that new to me.

Well, sorry to break it to you but for most people the internet is FB, Google and Nf ...

And if you want to take a look at a blog and you have the video pack - just get the blog pack or ask a friend - or maybe your other friend can just download it and send it to you?

"Nf"?

"N(et)f(lix)"!

I know this is a little off track from the pertinent argument, but why abbreviate Netflix? You aren't saving any time in typing out your response and it can only serve to confuse the reader (I also had no clue what Nf meant).

the parent explicitly refers to nf.

The parent explicitly refers to Netflix, not "nf" or "Nf". You might say it was clear from context, but for at least two people that read the comment it was not at all clear. It's not a big deal, I'm just always curious about everyone abbreviating things.

Netflix

You are correct, "for most people". That is why I mentioned > "data packs make sense for many people." I assume that the audience here does not belong to "most people"

> And if you want to take a look at a blog and you have the video pack - just get the blog pack or ask a friend - or maybe your other friend can just download it and send it to you?

This is good. But what if I want to read something without letting my friends know I am reading it.

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