Comment by rflrob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rflrob | Hacker News Reader

> My iPod only holds 30GB of music, and I already have that much on there. So, every time I want to add a new album, I have to get rid of something else. I already chopped my music collection down to the 30GB limit in the first place. At this point, any new album I buy actually displaces an album I already know I love! That puts the price of discovery pretty high.

While I generally agree with the sentiment of the article, he really has trouble picking which of the 16 days of music to take off? My iTunes is set up to automatically load the most played couple thousand songs (4-5 days of music or so), the most recently added songs, the most recently played couple hundred songs, and then more or less randomly pick from the rest. There are songs I haven't listened to in literally years, and I find it hard to imagine that I will, while driving or elsewhere away from my computer, suddenly want to start listening to them right this instant. Talk about first-world problems...

I hate the term "first-world problems". It seems like every time it's used, it's in the manner of "I don't think this is an issue so I'll dismiss it by comparing it to starving children in Ethiopia".

Corporations snooping on all your internet traffic? Talk about a first world problem. Internet passwords being stolen? That's a first-world problem if I every heard of one. Health insurance backrupting you if you actually need to use it? Puh-lease, just having health insurance means you've got it better than most other people in the world!

Dismissing something as a "first-world problem" to imply that it shouldn't be worried about is intellectually dishonest.

Agreed. I've usually heard it used by someone to deprecate their own problems, when they know they're whining about something that isn't really a big deal. https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23firstworldproblem

> I hate the term "first-world problems".

It is not meant to be dismissive of arguments as much as self deprecating satire. Cheer up mate.

Agree. In my circles, it's never dismissive but always a brief "If that's a significant problem for you, you have it pretty good" distraction that the group laughs about before returning to the discussion.

I think in this case, the term was justified, for the reason Louis CK illustrates in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

Here we've got someone who has a magical device not much bigger than a wristwatch that holds 16 days worth of music, and he's complaining that it's not enough. For comparison, I was in college when Sony released the first Walkman, and we thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread-- a device the size of a paperback book that allowed you to listen to 90 minutes worth of music while walking around.

So, yeah: 30GB capacity on an iPod is a first-world problem, in my book.

This still doesn't change the fact that I have to plug my iPod in to get this setup (my iPod currently never leaves my car) and it still means some of my music is always inaccessible. Both of those things discourage me from buying new music.

i like my months of music. i never know when ill come across some new song ive never heard, but have, and now love. and just because i havent listented to a song in years, doesnt mean i never want to hear it again. maybe i forgot about it. maybe once in a blue moon that old Blind Melon song comes on, and it just takes you BACK! Know what I mean?

Some people have different use cases than you. Why do you think high-capacity portable music players are still made?

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