logoalt Hacker News

matherialtoday at 8:57 PM3 repliesview on HN

What an odd website. It explains everything in incredibly childish terms ("The display you’re reading this on is an absurd grid of exactly [wrong number] tiny, multicoloured light bulbs, known as pixels."), has lots of needless word-salad LLMisms ("Electricity made light effortless. The torch in your phone made darkness optional."), and all in all, feels like a wasted concept because it doesn't really say anything that isn't patently obvious: a phone has a screen and a camera and a CPU... okay? Not exactly mind-blowing.

It doesn't really even do anything to support its thesis that it's the "most intricate machine you've ever held". I don't know, I'm holding a Thinkpad laptop right now and I'm pretty sure it's a superset of what's inside a phone.


Replies

londons_exploretoday at 9:10 PM

You're absolutely right.

I guess this website isn't ready for primetime yet.

Let me rewrite it all only to still have most of the same issues it used to have, and a few extra ones too.

E-Machinetoday at 9:30 PM

Fair dos on the LLMisms. I'm still working on keeping my human voice despite being able to plug any words in to get a smooth AI version.

I'd push back on the childish terms. It is firmly pitched to a general audience, but I think it stands up in both depth and breadth. If you have better examples I'd love to see them.

I'd also square up on the thinkpad. It has larger and more powerful versions of some of the components, but it's also missing a lot of phones ones: the accelerometer, gyroscope, linear resonant actuator, magnetometer, barometer, multiple cameras, probably one with OIS; all in a much smaller device. Very keen to debate, tell me about your laptop!

show 2 replies
Retr0idtoday at 9:28 PM

I think a phone does beat a thinkpad, but not by much.

show 1 reply