lchengify

Very cool. I've also had to do multiple versions of something like this ... also for healthcare. I got very good at Sikuli and Charles Web Debugging proxy back in the day.

Yea that could have been worded better. My point was more that the banks didn't turn into software (an app) with just developers working on it, just that the labor force that was doing teller operations moved.

Two anecdotes I'll share:

First: Most people believe it was Netflix that killed Blockbuster, but that's not strictly correct. It was the combination of Netflix and Redbox that really sealed the deal for Blockbuster (and video rental generally). It normally takes not one, but at least two things to really fill the full functionality of a old paradigm. Also it's human nature to focus heavily on one thing (Blockbuster was aware of Netflix) but lose sight of getting flanked by something else.

Second: Not listed here is how banks themselves have changed to be almost entirely online, which in many cases is more of a outsourcing play than a labor destruction play. My favorite example of this is Capital One, where the vast majority of their credit card operations literally cannot be solved in a branch. You must call them to say, resolve a fraud dispute. Note that this still requires staffing and is (not yet) fully automated, just not branch staffing. It doesn't make sense to staff branches to do that.

I was so proud of myself in college when I could finally name all those books in the bar scene.

So I've driven Route 50 between Tahoe and Placerville a few times. Many of these times the weather has been quite bad. Many of these times I've had to wait for hours while an accident was cleared, or 12 foot snow drifts were plowed.

When I'm traveling in mountain snow, I'm always very neurotic about prep. AWD or 4x4, water, chains, food, emergency kits, etc ... I always assume I could be stuck for 24 hours or more.

In the meantime, I am constantly shocked by how many people make this trek with little or no respect for how deadly snow can be. The worst of it is when it puts others in danger: I'll never forget seeing a front-wheel drive sedan repeatedly driving up, then slipping back on a steep hill, while a line of 20 cars waited behind it.

Part of it is just not knowing (I grew up in the east coast), but part of it is just human nature to not understand some things to be inherently dangerous. Snow and cold looks so serene, but cold in it's various forms has killed many more people than heat.

I'm not that old, and I still remember being really disappointed when something wasn't in my home (book) Encyclopedia. Then you would trudge to the library to find maybe one book on the obscure topic.

You could request a book be sent from another library, but that would take weeks, and you had no idea what was in that book.

It was wild. Most things were just unknown, or whatever you parents told you.

Didn't know he worked on Black & White. Black & White was really ahead of it's time for 2001, it did a much better job of having NPC simulations in groups based on how you played as a god.

Was shocked to hear this news. I worked for Google years ago but I was in the NYC office, so we didn't run into the YouTube folks much.

Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined. It's a weird mix of a huge creator monetization network, a music channel, an education platform, a forever-store of niche content, and a utility.

It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels. It's easy to forget how novel creator monetization was when YouTube adopted it. They do a lot of active work to manage their creators, and now have grown into a music and podcast platform that is challenging Apple. To top it off, YouTube TV, despite costing just as much as cable, is objectively a good product.

Few products have the brand, the reach, monetization, and the endurance that YouTube has had within Google. And I know for a fact that this is in no small part due to the way it was managed.

I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at this point. Some of it sublime, some of it absurd, some of it critical for my work or my degree. I couldn't imagine a world without it.

RIP.

Ok I didn't believe you at first, but holy crap you're right, they didn't even do the voices.

Not going to lie part of my childhood died a little :(. "Help" is them though I watched that too.