What Lived Up to the Hype?

The Illiad. As the foundation of Western literature, it may have received the greatest amount of hype that it is possible to receive.

I had attempted to read it and The Odyssey when I was much younger, in middle school, maybe too young, and failed miserably. But as it is always with cultural touchstones, references to it are inescapable, and a few years ago, in my mid 50s I overcame the reluctance accumulated in the intervening time and set out to read the Samuel Butler prose translation of 1898. Most of the translations I'd previously approached were in verse, which is in some ways its own hill to climb when one is customarily a prose reader, so this seemed perfect.

And so it was, and I was bowled over. It was a mind bending experience for me the likes of which I experience much to infrequently as age and experience take their toll on the novelties of youth. I can't say the last work I read I experienced as electrically. For all the stiltedness of epic story telling, the personalities of Agamemnon, Achilles, Zeus, et al are both vivid and convincing; the violence of battle is horrible, electric, and wierdly beautiful in a way that will resonate recognizably with fans Sam Peckinpaugh or Hong Kong action movies. Though the characterizations are far more stereotyped, as befits the age in which it was produced, than modern readers are accustomed to, they still evince a polish that rises above conventional story telling into true literature. Worth every ounce of effort you expend to summit this one.

The Wire.

I'd tried to watch it a few times, but only a few months ago actually got past the first two episodes. I think it helped that I quite quickly saw it as a morally ambiguous discussion of the institutional ineptitude of conservative western cultures in mitigating the effects of crime, rather than a typical 'good vs bad' cop show.

With that mindset, the possibly-underwhelming finale of S1 is much more effective, and the sudden pace-change in S2 is more meaningful.

Factorio!!! (It wasn't really hyped, but if it was, it would have lived up to it.)

Actual video from the game doesn't qualify as hype! And the code is rock solid and wicked efficient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR01YdFtWFI&ab_channel=Facto...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVvXv1Z6EY8&ab_channel=Facto...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqaAjgpsoW8&ab_channel=Facto...

Every national park I've visited in North America seems to not only live up to hype but surpass expectations once visited. I've been to many parks in the U.S and Canada. I don't have a favorite. My favorite usually winds up the park that I last visited. So, currently that would be the rainforest, beaches and mountains of the Olympic peninsula in Washington. Camping inside the parks makes a big difference. Backpacking, even more so.

One park that I visited on a whim was Capitol Reef, in Utah. My plans for several days backcountry camping in Zion fell through because of snow fall late in season. I had to improvise. Hikers are some of the most friendly people and love sharing knowledge on the trail. One suggested I check out Capitol Reef. What a gem! It was far less crowded than Zion and absolutely gorgeous.

See the parks! Camp there! You'll need to plan 6 months in advance for permits to the most popular destinations.

AMD's Zen microarchitecture. At the time, AMD was years behind Intel in both performance and power consumption. There were constant jokes about the Bulldozer cores burning people's houses down. The few remaining 'team red' loyalists had been hyping Zen were largely ignored.

Then, boom. Over night AMD leapfrogged Intel, and now on the third generation has a firm lead in mid range desk top all the way up to high end server silicon. Obviously, Intel has major partnerships with most OEMs, so despite their shortcomings they're still doing strong.

Of course, if ARM or RISCV really is the future this is just a blip. Honestly, I don't see x64 going anywhere for at least 15 years - though hope I can look back at this and roll my eyes someday...

As far as video game examples go... The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. The trailers made them out to be the pinnacle of their respective franchises, and people's expectations for the two games was sky high. This plus all the changes made to the 3D Zelda and Mario formats meant there was a lot riding on these titles.

But both delivered on that hype. They've both done extremely well in terms of reviews (97% review score average on Metacritic) and sales (best selling games in their respective series), and delivered absolutely magical experiences that made the Nintendo Switch extraordinarily successful in its first year on the market.

Hamilton. I'm not big into theater nor musicals, and I had heard so much about it by the time I watched it on Disney+, I wasn't expecting it to blow me away but it totally did. I'm a huge fan now, watched it several times, listened to the album hundreds of times, read the book, and recommend it every time I can :)

I'm loving my Apple Watch. I wasn't entirely sure yet what to think of the watch as a form factor, given that a phone can do everything it can and more. But there's three interesting aspects that have really added value for me.

1) is health data, in a way a computer or phone just can't do. It tracks things like heartrate that a phone + heartrate strap is too convoluted for, for non-athletes. Plus it's all-day and quite accurate. My phone counts my steps in my pocket for example, but not when I'm at home or in the office. My watch can differentiate when I'm cycling to work with my phone in my jacket and detect exercise, whereas my phone may think I'm in a tram or on a motorised scooter.

2) is gamification of exercise. Closing rings, notifications, nudges, vibrations, competitions. It all demands attention and lets you 'jump in' from the wrist much easier, than an app on a phone. It's been a great extrinsic motivational tool to jump-start a change in behaviour for a few months, that can then turn into a long-term intrinsic habit.

3) freedom from the phone. You can open digital locks with the watch, pay with the watch, listen to music or podcasts, get directions on maps, make calls, send (dictated) messages, keep an eye on your mail and calendar etc. I can reliable leave my phone at home, or just leave it in my jacket when I'm visiting friends. Notifications can be set to only allow priority ones in certain settings. It's the first time in 10 years that I'm moving away from having a phone available and in-vision all the time. The Watch doesn't induce mindless scrolling and consumption in a way a phone does, and can be configured to only demand your attention for things you want it to (e.g. certain notifications).

It's definitely not quite where I'd like it to be. Things like battery life, looks, software etc, there's much to gain still. But as a form factor I'm pretty convinced I will be using this for many years to come, and getting upgrades when they become available.

First time series 6 user by the way.

Stadia, the initial reviews were actually pretty bad, but I'm blown away by how good it is. There's something undeniably cool about playing cyberpunk on a macbook air with full graphical detail, and then switching over to play on my TV exactly where I left off. The latency is virtually imperceptible to me, and I love that I don't need a 50 GB download just to try out a new game. Everytime I use it I'm honestly impressed that it works as well as it does. My only concern now is whether I can trust Google not to eventually kill it, given their recent track record.

Interesting that people are substituting the hard question (what has been hyped and has lived up to it) with the easier question (what is good and has stood the test of time) and answering that instead, a form of attribute substitution bias [0].

My answers would be Mr Robot, especially after seeing what happened with Game Of Thrones. Having a story that is planned out from start to finish is miles better than improvising as one goes along;

and also React, especially hooks. Hooks are an incredible mechanism for creating compositional lifecycles, something I've seen only discussed really in this Flutter implementation issue [1], and it should be seen as an amazing contribution to complex tree management systems.

[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution

[1] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/51752

When the M1 chip was introduced I was a bit underwhelmed. Apple being so vague about their performance didn't exactly inspire confidence.

But as more information has come out it seems like the hype has actually increased.

- A lot of people watch it with no background knowledge and subsequently don’t quite understand the “best film ever” label, but Citizen Kane is indeed a fantastic film. Just read about Orson Welles first.

- Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. The Bible (especially certain books like Ecclesiastes or Proverbs), The Quran, The Upanishads, to name a few. Again, don’t just go in blind, or you’ll walk away thinking none of it makes any sense.

- Lifting weights is indeed worth the hype, and its benefits are more diffuse than just “being able to lift heavy things.”

- In terms of old books that are made into modern sci-fi films, I’ve found Philip K. Dick to be absolutely worth the hype. Don’t think I’ve read a bad story by him.

LeBron James was touted as the Next Great Hope for basketball, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated at age 17, and his high school games were televised on ESPN.

Since then he's won 4 NBA championships, opened a school in his hometown, and become arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.

Hype depends on who you interact with, but a few impressions:

I was really impressed with Jonathan Blow's The Witness. Exquisitely designed and thought out.

The animated series Primal by Genndy Tartakovsky. A pulpy cartoon without dialogue unlike anything else animated from the US.

The tv series Doom Patrol. Clever, revels in the absurd but still manages serious drama on what it means to not be completely human any more.

Philosophy in general. I've always seen it as academic wank, but i couldn't have been more wrong. It gives you the ability to step back in a way that pure science cannot. Excellent tool to learn about yourself too.

On a more controversial note, I was initially put off by critical race theory (talking explicitly about race in academia? Putting blame on the prosperous west?), but I must say it makes a lot of sense.

Blade Runner: 2049. Considering how highly regarded the original 1984 movie is it didn't seem possible for the sequel to nail it. Not only that but it managed to improve Blade Runner's (original) films story along the way.

The main From Software games (Demon Souls, DS, DS3, BB, and Sekiro). They really are special, and a cut above games like Witcher 3 or BoTW imo. I don't think I have ever played a game where nearly every element was best in class and worked so well together.

The "stories" are brilliant, and the way they are told is perfect for the medium. There is an incredible world, that is awe inspiring and fascinating, with deep and expansive lore, and yet it never gets in the way, or suffers from a disconnect with the player. In BoTW the vast majority of my actions make no sense in the context of the plot. In the DS games or BB the world doesn't revolve around my character, so my actions are those of an inhabitant rather than the driver of the plot, and thus my actions don't destroy my suspension of disbelief, despite the freedom given to me, the same way they do in a game like Cyberpunk where my player clearly exists in the separate plane from the one the the world is in.

The music matches the atmosphere and gameplay seamlessly, with very few disconnects. Especially Sekiro, which links its music to the gameplay nearly flawlessly. I won't claim it superior to Undertale, but it still lives in the very upper echelons.

The gameplay is genre defining. I don't think much more needs to be said of it, other than that the difficulty has been grossly misrepresented. My former roommate, who struggled with the tutorial levels of fallout 4 beat Sekiro. These games aren't easy, but they also probably aren't "too hard" for your average player.

And the level design is brilliant, intricate and varied, awe inspiring, and encouraging/requiring exploration without it feeling like a chore (swamps excepted).

Go play these games, jeez.

Zelda Breath of the Wild exceeded my expectations completely. I played it years after it came out and was gobsmacked by how good it was.

A strange mixture of pleasant, mildly challenging, big and awe inspiring world.

iPhone (2007)

Ok, maybe not so much the original 2007 model, arguably it wasn't until the iPhone 4 (2010) until it really came into its own. But few products released in my lifetime changed modern life as the iPhone did. And unlike most other seismic tech products (world-wide-web, linux) that took years to build momentum, it had lots of pre-release hype.

Retina displays. Not sure they were hyped (depends on the definition of hype of course), but I could never set my eyes on regular low DPI displays (e.g. 1080p at 27’’) again, ever, after working with one for a few days.

Two finales:

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When the seventh book came out in 2007 there was this fear among the fandom that JK Rowling couldn't deliver a great ending. I think most people agreed she did very well (even more than expected, considering the complexity of the story in the prior six books).

- Breaking Bad last season / last episode: there aren't many tv shows that can end in a high note (check Game of Thrones, for example). I think Breaking Bad - and in general, what separates the best tv shows from great tv shows - is that they are able to have a good ending.

You could make a case for The Mandalorian, although that didn't get as much hype due to the internets... dislike ...of the sequel trilogy.

Another one I can think of is Breath of The Wild, and probably Mario Odyssey. I've also heard good things about the FF7 remake, but haven't played it.

The WWW.

It was a huge bubble when it came out, and then the dot-com crash came and a lot of people were like "Oh, it was a fad, it's over now." But it wasn't. The Web ended up changing society far more than was predicted in 1995 and remaking both the economy and likely soon the political environment.

Vim: Although I use IDE for coding, Vim has been a good all-around editor for my past 8 years. I just hate working on editor without vim kb binding.

MacOSX: As a veteran developer on Windows (and Linux), I really liked how everything worked well in GUI. While I can't explain it all, everything looks and feels intuitive and easier to work with, even little things like the command key, its various keyboard shortcuts, and other UI/UX elements that are very subtle yet makes everything better as a whole.

Next thing on the list of hypes that I plan on trying: * Emacs (and Lisp) * 4k monitor * Docker

1. Okami. I've always been slightly frustrated by video games. Here we have the opportunity to create truly fantastical worlds with the only limits being what we can imagine and so much effort goes in to creating WW2 shooters or football games or whatever. When the first trailer was revealed for Okami at e3 in 2005, wow. That fake celestial language starts up, showing flowers blooming in the path of the sun god as she runs and then, at the press of a button, the whole screen turns into parchment and you paint on it with a celestial brush to instantiate your nature god powers. I almost cried. I tried not to get my hopes up too much because I thought there was no way for it to live up to my imagination. And then it did. Easily the greatest video game experience I have ever had. Windwaker and Hollowknight are close seconds.

2. Worm. Heavily hyped in my friend circles, I waited for it to finish. Not without its flaws but holy hell, ruined a lot of traditional fiction for me with its length, depth, and quality of ending.

3. As an adult reading the books that childhood movies were based on: The Princess Bride and The Neverending story were both incredibly satisfying books.

4. Therevada Buddhism. Many things in life focus on individual insights. Only a few focus on strengthening the machinery that generates insights. I write about it here: http://neuroticgradientdescent.blogspot.com/2020/01/mistrans...

The Beatles. They were the definition of hype during their boy-band years in the early 60s, but pivoted mid-decade to a more experimental sound and more accomplished musicianship that remains unique, relevant, and impressive a half-century later.

I can't think of a modern equivalent. I guess it would be like if BTS somehow transformed into The Decemberists.

The Impossible burger is pretty good. I was skeptical. They did a good job creating non animal meat.

I'm gonna go back a short bit and say, for me? Ruby on Rails.

In 2007 I was plugging away at PHP with whatever frameworks were around at the time -- the vast majority of web dev that I saw then was pure procedural scripting down the page, maybe some `include` statements to pull in database functions. Especially in PHP, which encouraged mixing logic and HTML. The consultancy I was with had built custom stuff on top of Zend framework, and it helped a lot.

But around summer of 2007 is when I started hearing folks crow about Ruby on Rails, this hot new web framework written by a Dane in a Japanese programming language. It had been out for a few years and it was the hot topic in web dev circles, and so I decided to see what the fuss was about one weekend.

Instantly stuff I'd always had to do by hand was done for me. A decent data access layer with a few lines of code per db table, that automatically handled preparing and executing statements, and could handle keeping the database up to date with migrations. A REPL where I could load up the code I'd written for the app and use it for one-off debugging or maintenance tasks. A thriving plugin scene where many of the things I'd bashed together over the years were available, for free, just by cloning a repo.

That weekend I reimplemented the core functionality of one of the apps we'd been working on for a client. We'd taken about 10 weeks to get this thing into rough shape and I had its equivalent in two not-very-busy days. Authentication, authorization, CRUD, and fancy database queries I'd all had to hand-roll before just fell out of Rails.

I'm not overselling it when I say that for me, Rails was an absolute game-changer, and I myself and many folks I know owe their careers to the Ruby community and its (not always perfect) attitudes about software development. MINASWAN.

(I'm still active in Rails and the local Ruby community [Columbus Ruby Brigade!] but I'm running an Elixir/Phoenix shop now, which feels to me like the next step on the path Rails forged us.)

Serenity. I wasn't part of the 'original run' of Firefly fan base, but when I read the story I get the filling that it lived and surpassed the hype by a wide margin.

How about Radiohead's 2007 album In Rainbows?

Maybe OK Computer too, but I don't know how much hype there were because I was too young then...

Haskell typeclasses. They really are interfaces that don’t leak.

Solid state disks. Huge speed boost.

The Internet becoming mass market. In the early to mid 90s there was a lot of very recognisable hype about online shopping, TV streaming, use of it for phone/video calls etc. And a lot of skeptics too.

World of Warcraft.

Blizzard mentioned development of a MMORG in the late 1990's and started teasing in the early 2000's, and really ramped it up prior to launch.

And when it landed, holy hell: it devastated worker's and student's sleep schedules for years.

Plus it lived up to the hype: the world was huge and immersive, and they had tuned raiding & PvP based on the experience with co-operative Battle.net.

I saw contrarian opinions, but I believe Avengers: End Game pretty much delivered the insane hype cultivated for 10 years.

Re-usable first stage rockets from SpaceX. They hyped the hell out of this idea before it was possible. The reality (at least visually) is even cooler than anything they ever rendered and sold as a vision.

This thread is clarifying to me. I now have more anecdotal data to back up my anecdotal feeling that I don't agree with most people on HN on matters such as this. The highest voted answers are things I feel are overhyped.

Harry Potter, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Apple Watch, Ruby on Rails, Hamilton.

I'm not saying these things are bad, but the hype level far exceeds the delivered value, in my opinion.

I had to scroll down to things like M1, AMD Zen, and the original iPhone before I felt a sense of agreement. Perhaps I am overly sensitive to hype, so fewer things can possibly measure up for me.

Electric toothbrushes. I always saw ads for them but they were expensive and I thought, how much better can they be? Finally listened to my dentist’s recommendation to buy one and my teeth have so much less plaque now to where I barely notice a difference after getting my teeth cleaned and the dentist takes much less time to do it.

Lisp (specifically, I've learned Common Lisp). The power is amazing, being able to have code write code was something I didn't realize I was trying to do over and over in different languages, but to have it all just be code....amazing. And the parentheses are also great, just a simple syntax and auto formatting with a decent editor.

Which brings me to Emacs. Still learning and being amazed at what can be done in there, the more of my computing life in there the better it gets.

The 1989 version of Batman. The hype was huge. You couldn’t move without seeing marketing for it. And it was one of the most successful comic book movies ever made, certainly one of the better DC movies.

> In the months before Batman's release in June 1989, a popular culture phenomenon known as "Batmania" began. Over $750 million worth of merchandise was sold

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(1989_film)

Vue 3.

It was highly anticipated but when it was initially announced everyone including HNers were up in arms about how it's going to kill Vue. I can't find the thread but I do remember it vaguely.

Thankfully the release not only lived up to its hype (faster, smaller, easier) but also put to rest almost all objections about backward compatibility. I really think the Vue team did an awesome job with their next release.

Climate change.

Drought,unseasonal rainfall, ravaging bwildfires, breaking ice shelfs...

Some reports [0] indicate Oil and Gas knew about it in the early 80s.

0: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382

htmx.org and Svelte: two JavaScript libraries that I use and like very much. Natural extensions of HTML and CSS, tiny downloads for the user, very efficient.

Spotify: I resisted for a long time. People laughed at my small bookcase of CDs. But, OK, I’m sold. The premium subscription is the best return on the dollar I’ve seen since Wo Hop’s.

Learning to converse in a foreign language. A lot of work, but very rewarding.

The Avengers: no, not that one. The 1960’s series, specifically (and only) the two seasons with Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel. It appeared on Amazon and I started watching out of nostalgia, but—wow.

Julia (the programming language). The power of the type system and its version of multiple dispatch lives up to the hype.

Virtual reality.

Now don't get me wrong, the games ecosystem is still quite limited, but I think Half-Life: Alyx really showed what kind of phenomenal experiences the technology can provide when given a huge budget. If it ever becomes economically viable then there's going to be a ton more experiences like this on the market one day.

Against all odds, these super expensive bulky headsets with only a few games has shipped millions of units to early adopters. Even if it all fails, I'm happy to have been a part of it.

DooM 1993. I’ve played it on and off for decades, but it had been a while. After playing Doom 2016 I got curious how the original would stand up. With gzdoom, it was one of the best games I’ve played in recent years, better than Doom 2016. The navigation, movement speed, sound effects, enemy ai, map design are just brilliant. Lots of features don’t look impressive today, but judged from a “how fun is it” perspective, even the buggy ai is fantastic and gives massive replayability - decades of it apparently as long as you take 5 year breaks here or there and add mouse look

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” tv series.

Enjoyable storyline with one of the most unique and satisfying endings. Great option to watch with the kids and it teaches life lessons along the way.

The Sega Saturn. No I'm not kidding! Panzer Dragoon 1/Zwei and Saga, Nights (and Christmas Nights!), Radiant Silvergun, Virtua Fighter Megamix, X-Men Vs Street fighter, Burning Rangers, Guardian Heroes, Grandia, the digital and analogue pads. I got fired from a computer game shop for convincing customers to buy it instead of the PlayStation, but to this day I'll stand by that amazing underappreciated black box.

The lord of the rings trilogy - how long we’ve been waiting for a fantasy to actually make it onto the big screen? The return of the king sweeping the Oscars with a cherry on top. Final fantasy 7 remake delivering. the Mac to Intel transition.

GNU/Linux phones, Pinephone and Librem 5. Even though they aren’t daily drivers for everyone yet, they are truly full computers in you pocket without stupid restrictions of the duopoly.

I'd say Avengers: Endgame lived up to the decade of hype, which is no small feat.

LotR sequels probably had a lot of hype prior to release.

The latest God of War had a great release afaik.

To be honest, it's hard to remember which things were really hyped up before release and met expectations. I keep thinking of stuff I heard was good after it was release, and things which were hyped and failed, or havr not yet fully delivered on the hype. I can't think of any tech which fits the bill. Maybe raytracing? Most tech tends to be overhyped.

Dr Andrew Ng's courses on machine learning and deep learning

Beautiful explained lectures. I can't believe what a great instructor he is. I feel he truly embodies the Feynman learning technique.

COVID-19, back in December 2019 it was starting to get hot - but it really exploded at about March 2020 onward.

I thought a little bit about this and I would say Apple Watch for me. When it first came out it was not perfect and there were lots of limitations to it but then Apple iterated on it with focus on Fitness based features and I finally ended up buying Series 5 version. I could definitely say the gamification (nudging you to close the rings and monthly challenges) has changed my habits and I am more active than ever before because of Apple Watch. It lived up to the hype for me!

Cormac McCarthy. Finally started "bingeing" his books from the local library and not since Virginia Woolf has a writer's use of words to paint pictures made such an impression on me.

The internet, computers, iPhone, The Mandalorian, SSDs, GTA3, bitcoin (so far), mRNA, SpaceX, graphene, cars

Still hoping nuclear fusion and carbon removal pulls through.

The Good Place has the best ending of any show that ever got created, i'd say yes it lived to the hype.

printf

Man, when I first read about it I was like “whaaaaa???” A little interpreted language in my print statements? That’s crazy talk!

Now it’s like ... everywhere!

> Cyberpunk’s reviews paint it as a tire fire. I think it’s a fun game, but it doesn’t live up to the expectation - it’s not the next Witcher 3.

You have a short memory though. Witcher 3 was also deeply criticized for several aspects when it was just out as well before being recognized as a massive game a few months later. I'd say you should probably wait half a year to evaluate Cyberpunk properly.

Starcraft 2. It's not perfect, but it's an excellent successor to the original 98 game.

It’s a Wonderful Life. As a father of little ones now, there are some scenes in that movie that cut me to the core like nothing else.

The Iliad. Hard to put my finger on one thing in particular, but after having finally read it earlier this year I continually find myself doing some task and randomly thinking about it, pausing, and just saying “wow”.

Any old skateboarders here on HN?

I remember when Lakai Fully Flared came out, it felt like a crescendo in skateboarding, and IMO lived up it. The Mike Mo switch kickflip + napalm explosion was seared into my 13 year old brain forever:

https://youtu.be/zIu8NfUGScc?t=242

Lionel Messi. He recently even surpassed most goals for a club. He was touted as maradona successor which is an impossible bar and he has lived up to it. In contrast, not a single "messi" successor is even remotely close to him.

AWS. Sure, it's complicated and sometimes weirdly obfuscated (currently debugging a load balancer health check in a very locked down environment sucks) but it's really changed a lot of the IT ecosystem forever. (some may argue for the worse, others, for the better)

And from my sysadmin experience, the move to devops. Using a language like Puppet or Ansible allowed me to deploy complex software on limited hardware. Terraform lets me apply that knowledge to AWS/Azure/GCP and more.

Tenet.

Just watched it last night and found it to be absolutely incredibly well done.

Dialogue audio was weirdly quiet, but that was solved by cranking the center channel up relative to other channels.

Venice lives up to the hype. It’s got everything you’ll hate about overrun tourist cities, but it’s also everything they promise.

Joe Posnanski's sports writing. A friend turned me onto his blog in 2008 and since then I've read nearly everything he's written. It amazes me one can be so prolific and write with such beauty and grace for such an extended timeframe.

For television I think the original "Arrested Development" series was absolutely as good as my friends were telling me. And "The Good Place" deserved every bit of hype it got.

Half-Life 2

I preordered it in 2003, before the big hack/leak caused Valve to delay release into 2004. Because of the success of the original and the long wait, combined with Valve being almost complete silence during development, there was a huge buildup of hype leading up to the release.

Totally worth it.

Type hints in python. Structured programming in general.

Rust. It took me a long time to get remotely comfortable, but once it starts to click, it's awesome how the structure guides your development. Worth the investment, but don't expect to be able to grok it immediately.

Nier: Automata definitely lived up to the hype for me. A beautiful game through and through. I would say it's still very underappreciated.

The Last of Us 2. A lot of people were anticipating the game. And I'm surprised how many people hated it. Maybe to them, it didn't live up to the hype. But it lived up to the hype for me. I just finished the game and loved it.

Functional Programming. I've been doing FP for almost 10 years. I've drank the kool aid. Give me those monads and referential transparency.

The 2020 elections.

Hagrids motorbike roller coaster at universal studios in Orlando was worth the wait (if you get the front row and ride at night).

The West Wing lived up to the hype for me. People told me to watch it. I've now watched the first 5 seasons probably 5-6 times. I've even met non USA people for whom it's their favorite series ever.

VMWare.

We take virtualization for granted now but I thought it was smoke and mirrors when it was announced. But nope, it did exactly what it said on the tin.

Flutter.

It's what React Native wanted to be, but JavaScript has too much baggage

SpaceX reusable first stages. They were pretty hyped by SpaceX and they delivered much to the astonishment of their detractors.

Quake 1-3. Q3 was my favorite.

Docker. After using it with almost every web I've developed since 2015 I think they delivered on what it promised to do. It's not a 100% quality of life improvement since certain things take a bit longer to do vs not using Docker (starting containers have a penalty, installing a new package dependency takes a long time to build since layers aren't diffed for changes, etc.). But overall I've found it very much worth using.

Mad Max. It’s raw. It’s real. It’s insane. It tells a suspenseful story without much dialogue.

Avatar, Titanic, Avengers: End Game, The Matrix, Gostbusters 1984

Call of Duty I, Quake, Full Metal Furies, Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training DS, Donkey Kong Country Returns Wii

Google Street View, Google Maps

Windows 10

Mac Retina 2012

Zoom

Live Music: The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, James Brown, Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, Outkast, Pixies, Bruno Mars (a surprise to me), Harry Connick Jr., Rufus Wainwright, Prince, Billy Joel

Las Vegas... I got married there and it was amazing

Sydney Beaches

Schwarzwald in Southern Germany

Full Moon Party on Koh Pannang

Varkala cliffs in Kerala, India

Jazz @ Harry’s American Bar in Paris

Glastonbury Festival

Tokyo

Millennium Party on Bondi Beach 2000 ( Mobile Home )

PHP7 (coming from earlier versions comparatively)

Death Stranding, many who felt the hype then played, wrote it off as a walking/delivery simulator, but miss how well, and in detail, the story and gameplay melded. Sure it could feel at times that it was simply about walking to point A/B, but with that came the challenges and points being made throughout the game. That alone challenges can be overcome, but there will be more obstacles, and the weight of burden (literally and metaphorically in the game) will crush one's morale, motivation, and ability. Together, with the right motives, we can accomplish more to benefit everyone. But the ones who only build or help for self gain/their reward system, will ultimately be corrupted and left empty by their own doing, as their structures will whither unless they exhaustively maintain them to gain pointless intangible/abstract rewards/social scores.

The satisfaction that comes with collaboration and helping one another is where one finds true satisfaction with this game.

It's also just a lot of fun, challenging, and beautiful in general, aside from the story :p

This might not be around what's asked, but I remember that people in Silicon Valley and around Google had buzzwords like "Social Mobile Cloud" back around ~2010 or ~2012.

https://www.wired.com/insights/2012/05/social-mobile-cloud/

Some people rolled their eyes, maybe including myself at time. (I was never dismissive publicly, but probably didn't pay as much attention as I could have). I would have to say that the buzzword turned out to be pretty accurate: those 3 things largely defined the last decade in terms of software technology, as I see it.

Especially for young people -- there is no world where they don't use some form of social media on their phones (including ones that didn't exist in 2012).

They use cloud applications rather than desktop ones -- that's the "default". Businesses also use cloud infrastructure -- that's the "default".

Lots of money was made in these 3 areas.

I have 2 answers.

1. Coronavirus

The hype

I have a Chinese girlfriend, and when the coronavirus was breaking out in China, she was freaking out, buying masks and so forth. She was really hyping it as a big deal!

Needless to say, it's been a big deal.

2. Election fraud

The hype

Before the election, the President was massively hyping mail-in ballot fraud.

It didn't happen

For those living in the world at large there really was none (dozens of lawsuits were thrown out, the attorney general said there was no evidence.)

But for me it lived up to the hype

But for those living in the President's filter bubble (like me), this election definitely lived up to the hype, and keeps living up to the hype. Those of us in the filter bubble wrongly think we're seeing a massive conspiracy to hide a total of literally hundreds of thousands of fraud ballots across many states in a coordinated collusion. So for me personally (even though I am wrong and living in a filter bubble of proven lies) the voter fraud definitely lived up to the hype!

(I am a conspiracy theorist and everything I believe on this subject had been disproven.)

It is definitely living up to the hype though!

Star Wars (1977).

I suspect most people who read HN weren't around when this movie came out, but I was around then.

There was tremendous hype -- the excitement that this film generated led to lines of people waiting outside movie theaters just to get their chance to see it. People would watch it and then get back into line to watch it again. I remember hearing of people who watched it 15, 20, 25 times.

Star Wars substantially advanced special effects. If you want to get an idea of what the state of special effects were in that era, watch Star Trek (the original series).

"Star Wars" felt _real_. Lightsabers, the use of a "Force" where you could physically moves things from a distance, the glissando effect when a starship goes into hyperspace-- these were all incredibly credible and mind-blowing to people back then.

Star Wars didn't just live up to its hype-- it has exceeded it, becoming a fixture in American culture, and becoming a franchise that continues to generate interest and income today.

The ending of The Game, with Michael Douglas. From final climax to the final shot. Chef’s kiss.

Shakespeare, but I didn't understand the enduring brilliance until I started reading it side-by-side with a modern translation: https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/msnd/page_38/

Elfen Lied.

For whatever reason, I only watched it about a year ago despite being inside of the initial hype in secondary school when everyone was talking about it.

I later hard that it was purely shock value from nudity and gore, but it actually had a very coherent plot and very interesting characters, and a tragic serial killer protagonist is always nice, of course.

The reMarkable 2 tablet! As long as you don't expect it to do more than what it's designed for, I've been loving using it and it's helped me enjoy writing a lot more.

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Healy. I can’t read the other translations at all but that book is incredible with his wording. It’s a dark story of warriors, glory, monsters, tiny kingdoms carved out by champions, and gives a rare look at how Christianity blended with paganism in those days to create a unique literary folklore

The Sopranos - even though the end was controversial it was the consistently the best TV ever created.

Ken Burns Docs Series - especially Civil War and Vietnam

Nassim Taleb's - Incerto - so much interesting and useful info int those books. Really eye-opening stuff.

Robert Caro's Biographies - I am not finished with all of them yet but the ones I have read are excellent

Having a kid. Every day is filled with joy, and sometimes sadness, but it's so great to watch him grow and learn.

Unpopular opinion - Java virtual machine (JVM).

The Popeyes Chicken Sandwich.

It's honestly the best fast food item I've ever eaten.

I just got Disney+ to enjoy while I’m off and as someone who had to try 3 times to get through the latest Star Wars movie: the mandalorian is good.

The iPhone. Unbelievable hype when it launched and it delivered beyond what was expected in 2007.

Setting a goal for yourself and following it through to completion.

Delayed gratification and hard work.

Doing the right thing, when everyone else is doing the easy thing.

Avatar the Movie (from director of Titanic, not the anime). I remember how hyped it was before the release and I felt it definitely delivered (second one is slated for 2022 release)

Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Both released this year, both with much hype. No disappointment on both.

But regarding Cyberpunk, we should be fair. Witcher 3 wasn't the beloved Wircher 3 from today at release either. It had also problems and took it's time to ripe. People forget it.

Similar think happend at No Mans Sky. Released to early, and still grew in a fantastic game after all the shitstorms. Some games just need longer to satisfy the hype.

Interstellar, the 2014 movie. Waited for it for a long time and I went to the theatre on the first day. I was stunned. I keep re-watching it every now and then too.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe Finale (infinity wars/endgame)

I remember I saw Iron Man 1 in high school and it really felt like it was the beginning of something different. This movie wasn't like the other ones that came out each year...

Of course there were some boring ones in the 22 movie run, but overall I think the final 2 were tremendous and pretty much everyone loved them with very little disappointment.

Spacex landing those rockets.

Rust! The theme is similar to C++ but the script is a lot tighter and you really care about the types. Only on season two though.

TBH, I really enjoy playing Cyberpunk 2077, and I think of it as one of the best game ever. For me it lived up to the hype.

Fiber internet. Aww inspiring speeds that never waver. It's a giant leap above cable and dsl in my experience.

I'd like to nominate Apocalypse Now. Very particularly, Marlon Brando's performance. The whole movie is built up to this mythic man, a god among mortals, a figure that human psyche cannot understand, the end to an Odyssey. And Brando and Coppola have managed to surpass all the expectations.

The original iPod.

I was a teen listening to tons of music on MP3 CD players and cheap MP3 players with 64-128MB of flash memory. The 5GB iPod cost about four weeks pay, was so far ahead of any other option. I could almost fit my entire music library onto it!

I was a staunch PC+Windows supporter who thought Apple was dumb. The iPod was the only Apple product I owned, but it was obviously the best music player. There was no competition in my mind.

Unnecessary nostalgia: the original iPod was Firewire only, so I had to buy a PCI card to be able to plug it in to my PC. The first iPod came out before iTunes was ported to Windows, so the official solution for Windows users was MusicMatch Jukebox with a shitty iPod plugin. Eventually I discovered EphPod, an excellent third-party software, which I used for the life of my iPod.

Robot Vacuum, cleaning the floors in my place used to honestly be a task that took well over an hour I used to only really do it when it started to look bad. Do it all the time now and every time it's done you walk in the room and are surprised how nice it suddenly looks.

The OA, season 2.

I doubt there was much hype about the printing press when Gutenberg introduced invented it circa 1440 but if there was any hype, the printing press certainly lived up to the hype. I can think of no mechanism which has enabled such widespread transmission of knowledge/information (without distortion) in human history. No great success or failure is usually the result of one cause but I'd wager that most of technological progress in the last 5 centuries has been greatly enabled by the printing press.

Some (light) reading on the topic :

https://www.history.com/news/printing-press-renaissance

iPhone definitely did. It was months between the announcement and an actual premiere, and people were very hyped.

Apple’s M1 and iPad as well.

Arguably, SpaceX and Tesla.

Also arguably, Facebook. I remember thinking it was overhyped at it’s initial IPO valuation.

Oh, and of course Internet - it was massively hyped up 1996-1999.

Total solar eclipse. Unbelievable. Life changing. Partial is meh. Totality made me cry.

Game of Thrones^^

Friends raved about it, but I just am not into fantasy genre so ignored it for a few years. When I finally caved, after a few episodes I fell hook-line-and-sinker into what is an incredibly well crafted story about the human condition: greed, lust, loyalty, ambition, betrayal... you name it, it has it all.

What it has in common with other amazing writing (e.g. Breaking Bad) is realistic (i.e. human) responses to incredible situations.

Edit: ^^ excluding the last season and the horrid finale!!

Martin's books are exquisitly well written and the early seasons were a credit to them - not so much once they diverted.

La Sagadra Familia.

I had seen a bunch of other Gaudi buildings, and wasn't all that impressed. The outside of La Sagadra Famailia just seemed tedious.

I went inside and ... words fail me to describe the experience.

Channel Tunnel

Games: Portal, FSX. Incredible, even now, and still what I play the most (not that I'm much of a gamer)

Science: Mars Opportunity Rover, Starship

Music: Nathaniel Rateliff && and the Night Sweats. Incredible.

Electronics/Radio: Arduino, QRP Labs QCX radio kits.

Internet: YouTube. When I first heard about it in the mid-2000's I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of. But lately, I've been having more fun with it than ever. Love it or hate it, it's incredible in so many ways. Except the ads. Those suck.

Bose QC-15 headphones. Yeah, I know they're now old and there are newer and better models that are wireless. But I bought mine in 2010 I believe and they have exceeded my expectations by a huge margin. Biggest benefits: (1) ability to concentrate/focus in noisy office environment, (2) heard sounds in music that I had never heard before (for music that I had known for decades), and (3) made flying dramatically more comfortable. Mine are old but they still work great.

Mmm, nobody mentioning the Starship launches like the recent SN8? Even though it crashed on landing, the fact that it did everything else perfectly is absolutely mind-blowing.

games from valve, blizzard, Nintendo or rockstar. They usually get quite a bit of pre release hype and then great reception afterwards. I mean gta5 might not be my personal taste but i cant say it did not deliver.

I believe cyberpunk will still deliver, actually. These huge single player rpgs tend to have buggy releases and cyberpunk was still worse than others, but five years from now people will still be talking about them and i doubt cyberpunk will be very different.

Nintendo Switch. Still play boxing fitness game 2 player with my gf every day. Despite the fact that we have VR systems, PCs, and smart phones that all cost way more.

fast DNA/RNA sequencing - we're sequencing everything now; sequencing thousands of COVID variants and making trees of whats happening around the world.

AirPods

Not even the pros, although they're even better in some ways, but just the original AirPods. They don't even sound all that great, but the sound quality was an acceptable compromise for the freedom and convenience that they brought. I used headphones far more often in situations when I didn't normally use headphones because they were so much more convenient to use than any other headphones I've owned.

Jagged Alliance 2.

I played the demo for longer than I played whole other games, and I still play the game that was released in 1999 regularly.

In my top five video games ever made.

Oof, seeing Reddit karma farming style posts upvoted on hacker news is... disappointing. I hope we do not see more of these in the future.

Since its tenth anniversary release is soon, Wonderful Everyday.

I'm only five chapters in, but so far it's a deeply constructed story with a lot of cultural references woven in seamlessly. Even halfway through there are still more mysteries being hinted at. It also speaks about topics like perception, the purpose of existence and the ego. I hope to finish it soon.

Apps on the iPhone.

When Apple introduced the iPhone, they told third-party developers to build web apps for the phone, presumably because they hadn't the dev tools ready yet. But everybody wanted to build native apps.

That's the funny thing, Apple didn't create the hype, the eager dev community did. Then the tools and the apps came. The rest is history, as they say.

I love my reMarkable. The software might not be as polished as an iPad, but the marker, the feel of writing on the device, and the focus that it gives me is incredible. I love writing on paper, but I hate my disorganization with storing and referencing notebooks. The 8 month pre-order had me quite worried, but I’m so glad I waited it out.

over my life ive seen dozens of new languages show up claiming c like speed and not living up to that. Rust did.

Coronavirus.

When I first heard alarmists at mid-January 2020, I couldn't have imagined that they would turn out so correct.

A couple games and/or systems: Super Nintendo, Super Mario 3, Starcraft 2, street fighter 2, Warcraft 3...

Bitcoin is pretty big these days, at least in price. I earn half of my income in Bitcoin, as a consultant.

Isaac Asimov’s body of work, especially his short stories, especially “The Last Question” and “The Egg”.

Dave Matthews. ~1998.

Bitcoin

Ryzen 5xxx assuming you could buy one

Half-life 2. It delivered way more than expected. Looking back, it also feels that the hype was more genuine, mostly fed from the bottom by fans rather than orchestrated by PR and marketing departments. May be that could be a part of it's apparent overdelivery?

Tesla. Acceleration of their cars and autopilot actually being impressive.

I would also add to this electric bikes.

Overhyped is one thing, unfinished is another.

For all it's faults and failings, Duke Nukem Forever worked. In the literal functioning sense.

Cyberpunk is just unfinished. We went from "when's it done" to "burn the customer on a fast release" in a few short decades.

World of Warcraft. I grew up with WC1 and 2 being just childhood defining games. WoW let me explore endless hours of childhood imagination of what the world was like. And it was everything I hoped it could be. Exploring was amazing.

The gameplay was okay.

Yeezy 350 v1/v2, never owned a pair but they were definitely extremely coveted when they released and have certainly made a lasting impact on public perception of Adidas as a brand, trimmer sneaker profiles, and men’s fashion.

- Halt & Catch Fire

- IntelliJ

- Toyota having dependable cars.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey. It's the one that got me sucked into the series.

Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrel. I heard it hyped on radio and interviews for weeks before I bought a copy, and it was even better than the hype.

Batman Arkham series

Phoenix LiveView

A solid meditation practice.

Surprised no one mentioned all the Grand Theft Auto games. Right from Vice City, every game has been an overload of fun to play.

GTA 5, especially, had a lot of hype for a long time and it lived up to every bit of it.

Maybe I just paid less attention to the hype, but I think Cyberpunk lived up to it for me. I've been perfectly happy with it. Sure, it has some bugs, but they're being addressed rapidly.

. NET Core

Windows 95

The Instant Pot

The Taj Mahal.

It's perhaps the most beautiful thing ever built by anyone.

I've done a fair amount of traveling, and it's easy to get a bit jaded, but the Taj Mahal is every bit as spectacular as you imagine.

Chess is an amazing game. It has personality and if you know a bit about the game it has infinite depth. Players have playing style. There is a rich history going back hundreds of years.

The iPhone. At first there was hype, confusion and criticism (who would use a software keyboard?).. and with time, it redefined computing in a way few devices did.

The Manhattan Project.

The stock market hype during the beginning of the pandemic.

LED lighting, especially in its application to bicycles.

The Remarkable tablet!

It has completely replaced paper for me. Diagraming, reading, etc. I waited 5 months for the device, and it was definitely worth the wait.

Not one of motorcycles, horses, cuban cigars, Bach, Helene Grimaud, faith, and as a super weird outlier, Freemasonry, has disappointed me.

Deadwood: The Movie

It’s been a while but Skyrim is definitely up there

mRNA vaccines and big pharma in general. In a big, “we went to the moon” kind of way.

Avengers: Endgame, I feel like they did a great job bringing an end to the slow build up of all the previous movies.

Linux, and the entire free/open source world.

In my opinion, it is the greatest achievement in modern human history.

Climate Change

Lebron James. I thought for sure he was gonna crash and burn after the absolutely insane hype.

The Dark Knight Rises.

Overdelivered on top of the hype behind the first 2 movies.

The second one was really hard to beat.

Stanford. I didn't complete public higher education when I was younger, so I've been filling in some of the blanks through independent study lately. So far I've really clicked with cs106a/b homework assignments and Youtube video of Classical Mechanics lectures.

Bloodstained. A remake of Castlevania. It's better than the originals.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It has a well deserved reputation of impenetrability, and it takes a bit of mental adjustment to shift into the gear necessary to negotiate it. My first time through, at approx 20 was easily my third or fourth attempt at it, and was possible only because I forced myself to continue through it at a relatively normal pace without stopping too long to go "wha...." and try to figure out what was really going on. I would compare it to the reading version of what you have to do with your eyes to see those MagicEye images. It worked and I made it through after a few weeks and I think it is the book that in some way taught me to read other books, and I only actually arrived at that reflection as writing this, but it is a true statement. While the plot of the book is clearly discernible from beginning to end, the frequent shift of setting, characters, tone, voice, etc occurs nearly continuously, at least within the first section. Its like one of those movies where a different director shoots a single plot thread, only in this case its as though there were a different director for every scene or cut.

The quantity of invention on display for the 700-however many pages it consumes, is titanic. And the various pastiches that Pynchon pulls off with both accuracy and love are astonishingly numerous. Its like he was daring the world to come up with something he couldn't write and had so far come out on top. The additional pay off for all the work required to consume GR is that it is outrageously funny. Jokes and Broadway numbers performed transparently by the characters, complete with blocking directions straight out of Gene Kelly - Vincent Minnelli musical.

Gravity's Rainbow is one of those ciphers of modern American literature, in which the reality of it, and the cultural parodies it has inspired, like one of my other electrifying reads, IJ, almost perfectly balance. For every proto-hipster than insists that it is to be disregarded for its self indulgence and self-consciousness of pretensions, a serious reader who will stipulate to all of the above, but go on to acknowledge and assert that all the cultural baggage aside, there really is a THERE there.

I think its probably good that Pynchon writes so infrequently, because it prevents him from becoming his own self-parody. There is something remarkable to me about V., GR, Mason & Dixon, and to a lesser extent, ATD. They all exude an empathy with their characters, that is remarkable anywhere. I'm not sure what happened with Vineland, Inherent Vice, or The Bleeding Edge, except to say that though the plot devices and Pynchonian character names, which are frequently even more omnisciently specific than anyone since Dickens, can be entertaining, the characters themselves prompted zero interest or engagement with me. They are as pure a mechanical constructs. I felt with the first group, that it was clear and emotionally satisfying to me when Pynchon demonstrated that he cared for a given character, and it made reading them a transporting experience the first time around. I kept working to get myself emotionally invested in the characters of the second group only to fail for lack of purchase. I recall reading the DFW thought Pynchon a failed genius because he tended to trivialize his own work and never really betray any emotional engagement to the reader. I wonder if he was responding to the same thing I am describing.

Anyway, Gravity's Rainbow, way worth the hype, as well as the effort to complete it.

Stripe

CRISPR

Wifi

Computers, the Internet, 3D Computer Graphics - all exceeded their hype.

JavaScript. Here’s the press release announcing it in 1995: https://tech-insider.org/java/research/1995/1204.html

The Bornless Rite. Damn.

Space X and the Falcon 9

Popeyes Chicken Sandwich

As far as recent video games go - Sekiro, DMC5 and Doom Eternal.

SideKick, Turbo Pascal 7.0, GIT, SSD drives, Moore's Law

Breaking Bad. Refused to watch it for years due to the hype.

Air Fryers and Costco.

Doom eternal, it build up on everything Doom 2016 did well

I have not read reviews, but I did complete Cyberpunk 2077, and it was awesome. Easily best game I played in years. I don't know what did you expect from the game, but my expectations were exceeded.

Interstellar.

Tool's Fear Inoculum.

The Expanse.

Mozart's and Beethoven's careers

Counter Strike, MacBook Pro 2014, Alaska.

I see lots of TV/Movies but no music, so I’ll throw in Deadmau5.

He combines thoughtful chords and composition, innovative and quirky showmanship, and deep personal care in mixing, mastering, and general sound crafting. He’s about as original as they come in the electronic scene and probably a major inspiration to the last decade of new artists. His album titles are things like “while(1<2)” and “W:/2016Album/“ and he’s stuck to that theme for as long as I can remember.

The Spectacle, an idea from the Situationist International, it viewed the collective experience that we have in our society as a Spectacle(a reality simulacrum with images).

"All that once was directly lived has become mere representation. The decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." Guy Debord

This inspired the Matrix, most recently also demonstrated and inspired Black Mirrors episodes, exploring capitalism and participation in hyperreality.

Illmatic, Nas' debut album.

DMT - jesus christ did it ever.

- Half Life 2, Ep1 & Ep2, Alyx

- Empire Strikes Back

- Tumbbad

Bitcoin Apple AWS New Zealand

Animal Crossing - New Horizon

Not a huge amount of hype, but heard really good things about the Back to the Future musical. Thanks Covid.

Avengers

Starlink

Zelda Breadth of the wild

Final fantasy 7 remake.

The Iphone. Nuff said

mRNA and the vaccines that speedily came from it.

The Aeropress.

Cameron’s Avatar

Avengers finale

SpaceX, Tesla.

uzumaki naruto had fantastic ending.

Lebron james.

Lebron James.

Lebron James.

The Internet

FTTH VoWiFi

Covid19

AirPods.

Computers

Hamilton.

The McRib

Tesla. Or rather, TSLA. (So far)

LeBron James.

mRNA vaccines. Note that the COVID vaccine is Moderna’s first approved product. Moderna was founded in 2010.

Rust

A very old example, but Quake 1 did. It came out at the time when everyone was thrilled by DooM 2, the game that took the world by storm. Quake 1 was the second game in the row from the same developer that did so.

Diablo 2 was hotly anticipated and it did deliver.

Half Life Alyx did, and in my opinion exceeded it.

Avengers end game lived up to the hype.

Covid 19

Mad Men. Solid to the end. Last few seasons answered a lot of questions. Don's devolution accelerated into a spectacular finale.

Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, he did actually deliver on many of his promises. Some speculate he followed through because he views relationships as transactional.

TESLA

Ocarina of Time

The Chronic 2001

Daniel Day Lewis

Halo 2

Richie Hawtin

Aliens

Barack Obama

Freedom (J. Franzen)

the cronut, i will not elaborate further

Overpopulation and ecological collapse scare.

TSLA stock forged many new millionaires this year. Unbelievable price action.

This, just found out that it was released a few days ago... saves so much time - https://www.unitmeasure.xyz/vatcalculator.html