Found the thread on HN. Here's what (I'm guessing) a mod had to say:
It set off the flamewar detector, got flagged by users, and got downweighted by a mod.
The 'customer support of last resort' genre is common and not usually a good fit for HN [1]. If people feel this story is unusually relevant and interesting, I'm not sure I agree—long experience has taught us that one-sided articles like this nearly always leave out critical information—but I also don't mind yielding in an occasional specific case, so I've rolled back the penalties on this thread.
The issue from our point of view is not about story X or company Y—it's a systemic one: the most popular genres of submission (especially the rage-inducing ones) get massively over-represented by default, so countervailing mechanisms are needed [2] if we're to have a space for the more intellectually curious stories that the site is meant for.
I'm curious if Sony had properly advertised their account creation requirement much earlier on if people would've accepted.
It's not even that they didn't properly advertise it. It's that they changed the requirements completely. Here's a before and after of one of their FAQ pages:
I'm not quite that young. Netizen is a "citizen of the internet", IIRC. More specifically, it's a portmanteau of "internet" and "citizen".
I had also heard what the meaning of GIF was, though not so often that I could remember it off the top of my head.
I'm not quite as old as the JPG format, but I do still remember using dial-up. I still remember accidentally logging into the internet when my dad was on the phone one day. I could hear his voice through the computer speakers. I immediately closed the browser. It was something that'd, surprisingly, never happened while I was on the computer before.
It's at least partially because these games have been available on PC in areas where PSN isn't available. So people bought them, not knowing that, eventually, PSN would be required.
What's more, Sony has also removed the game from sale on PC where PSN isn't available. So now some people can't even buy the game on PC anymore. And people who do own the game are left with two choices: violate Sony's own TOS to create a PSN account for a country they don't live in (something that, ironically, some of Sony's own support reps have supposedly suggested) or attempt to refund the game.
It's also worth noting that some countries actually require you to own a PlayStation console to even be able to create a PSN account. You have to create an account via the console. It's not available on a web browser. One country in particular that I've heard this is an issue in is Ukraine.
It doesn't just happen when both people are trying to turn. I have a busy multi-lane road near me with a left turn lane that's just past a stoplight (the stoplight is behind me, but in front of the people whose lanes I need to cross to get to where I need to go.
I'll be stopped in the turn lane waiting for traffic to clear. The stoplight will turn red, and oncoming traffic will back up past the turn lane I'm in. Someone in one of the oncoming traffic lanes will stop before the turn lane to try to let me past, but the people in the other oncoming traffic lane (who are now in my blind spot thanks to the car that stopped to try to let me through) will keep on coming. That's just an accident waiting to happen at that point.
A server I'm in actually has a bot that, whenever a user types a command, will respond to a question with an answer.
Simple example:
@\Johnny: "Hey, my browser says 404, what does that mean?"
@\Support: !\404 @\Johnny"
@\Bot (using Discord's reply feature to reply to Johnny's post): "'404' is a common error message that can be caused by a variety of issues. Here are steps to resolve the most common issues:..."
I didn't feel like typing out steps to check if the website is down for everyone or to fix it if it's just you, but you get the idea.
The server I'm in doesn't typically handle questions about that, either. They're more specialized to something more specific that that, but, again, you get the idea.
I just got a ping the other day from a Discord server that said they'd finished moving their support onto a forum on their website specifically because Discord's forum feature is terrible.
With the second paragraph, I was mainly referring to your first comment about it being cumbersome (sorry for doing that out of order), which I took to be referring to the whole process. I probably could've phrased that a lot better.
Honestly, it's easier for me to just double-tap the power button to open the camera and scan the QR code than to have to open my bookmarks.
And I don't mind that the SSID for the wifi changes every time. Again, it's simply faster to turn off data and scan the QR code than it is to force my phone to connect to a network that isn't connected to the internet.
Yeah, there's more convenient ways this could've been done, but it's not a horrible design.
Edit: fixed a typo ("eventually time" -> "every time")
Found the thread on HN. Here's what (I'm guessing) a mod had to say: