They're putting blue food coloring in everything | Hacker News Reader

They're putting blue food coloring in everything

blog.foxtrotluna.social

63 pointstodsacerdoti15 comments

Honestly a quick, enjoyable and fully reflective of the moment read.

The most important part, the part that not enough people are talking about is

"The price of my (blue) milk went up. They blamed it on inflation, on innovations they've made in bottlecap technology. The blue milk now comes in a very fancy new (and very blue) package. But I knew the truth. The company that made blue food coloring had made it almost completely flavorless, and once all the food distributors got used to including it, the price had skyrocketed."

I was promised a Free Market that Satisfies Needs. Maybe it's time to read the fine print disclaimers on that.

(The author made the story about AI but I'm reading it more generally)

very poignant story about the inescapability of smart tvs

I'm finally looking for a new TV and i was devastated to learn that all the gaming monitor companies made 46"+ monitors like 3 years ago that didn't sell and have all been discontinued or replaced with Smart models. Missed my chance and didn't even know it.

I don't know if a commercial display will be low latency enough for gaming.

The story works for any tech pushed on people for profit rather than to scratch their itch.

Or flat screens in cars. I just want a dial for my radio and real buttons.

The story made me think of my Google Nest subscription rising from AUD12 month to AUD15 per month. 25% increase.

Of course Google has shoe-horned blue into it as well.

I assume this is some AI allegory of it crammed in everywhere?

Pretty poor story, not to just say it outright what they're really trying to say.

I took it to be about plastics.

Maybe the fact that different people can take different meanings from it makes it a better story than if they just said it was about one specific thing.

The last line makes it clear what the intended meaning was.

That's called, alternatively "burying the lede" or "overly literal," depending on whether you think the writer should have included it. I think the piece would have been better if they'd left it out, but up to that point I thought it was pretty good.

The last line the A and the I are blue.

I was half hoping it was about SaaS subscriptions. Or ads. Or the Smurfs.

Yeah the A and I in the last line are highlighted to hammer it home. I'm not sure where this ire comes from, I'm annoyed at seeing dumb AI gimmick features pushed everywhere too, but it has uses and doesn't seem to warrant the weird moral high ground people seem to take about it. This post too repeats the "burning down a forest" line that continues to be silly and the people who repeat it don't seem to care that it's false.

We were a blockchain-first company! And now we are AI-first! Please think we are still a relevant company! Please invest in us! Give us money!

It's a bit transparent, is it not?

Only on HN. In my actual life some of the tools I use have added the (yes, annoying) "Try our AI!" buttons but I haven't been anywhere near driven to blog about it. Sometimes it's even useful (Google Drive has handled this pretty well I think). But blog posts like this have a kind of "Think of the children!" vibe that I haven't fully understood yet.

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