I thought it couldn't be that bad but... it's bad...
Make it need JavaScript so you can make scrolling into a slow, clunky slideshow where the text has additional delay before appearing... Absolutely brilliant /s
Good example of modern bad website design... at least in my opinion. Sigh... that's what web frameworks and the 10 layers of complexity are for right?
A talk at a scientific conference, attended by adult scientists, was pulled, and one of the reasons given was "in order to ensure the safety and dignity of all of our members".
A __talk__ at a __scientific conference__, attended by __adult scientists__, was __pulled__, and one of the reasons given was "in order to __ensure the safety and dignity__ of all our members".
Disagree with the talk, don't attend, but apparently adult scientists need to be protected from listening to speech now...
Fragile little buggers... (or one hell of a violent talk...)
Its intentional language. Lawyerspeak, if you like.
Not all talks at a conference are serious; some are humorous, some are meta-commentary on problems in the field, etc. If you say you are cancelling the talk because it's not scientific or not relevant to the field, the aggrieved party can complain about those other talks. In reality it was cancelled for all of the above reasons, but the one that is most inarguable is that they are not being hostile to a minority that attends the conference.
Going a bit on side venture here with this comment, but I'd so much prefer this to be well written up instead of a two and half hour video. And it's so ubiquitous, watching videos over people reading, and I can't help but think it's extremely hurtful on a cultural/societal level. And the fact that it's creeping in more and more, even on HN, just shows that I must be more and more of an outlier,... is this what it feels to get old?
Writing > Video, because:
a) I have control over pace. Not just how fast I read, but how long I look at a graphic, or a slide, or I might reread a significant sentence, skip a paragraph where the author dwells on something for too long, stop reading to research something,... this also allows me to skim something to see if I'm interested... this is very hard to do with a 2 1/2 hour video... to the point of where I'm not looking into it for that very fact alone, I'm sad to say. I don't want my attention grabbed by 20 minutes of video watching to find out if it's worth watching...
b) Text automatically engages your critical thinking completely differently.
In text form it's far easier to see argumentative structure, and you are far more critically engaged in a subject matter. This applies to the reader, who can far more accurately scrutinize the arguments and logic applied, but also to the author while writing, who therefore produces by average far more valuable content. If you don't believe me transcribe audio to text (whether most speeches, podcasts, or other), and read it critically as if it was a book and find how (in most cases) horrendously it performs as text. This is by the way something we completely lost. Politicians long gone spoke modeled after written text. Speeches transcribed from Abraham Lincoln and fellow politicians of the era read like formally written up arguments... barely anyone can talk like this anymore (we've lost so much in that department).
c) Writing is in some ways more and in some ways less effort than a video. And I'd argue it benefits the content itself. All that energy going into video production, editing, having a nice background and good sunlight for talking to the camera, would be so much better spent on properly writing, researching, citing sources... I'm in no way saying none of it is done, but priorities are completely different when "producing a video essay" versus "I'll write something proper that can stand scrutiny". And I'd argue the latter produces higher quality content.
d) Text is far more easily accessible. I need a static HTML page to host text, it doesn't need any bandwidth to speak of, I can easily host it on my own site, on a blog hosting service, move hosting services, you could even use a pastebin and tweet the link. It's searchable, it can be fully indexed by search engines, it can be accessed via screen readers, easily auto-translated via any tools of ones choosing, easily copy-pasted into your own notes, can be easily cited, extended, worked on...
God I wish people would write more, read more, and in turn produce less videos, and watch less videos... but I might just be a walking dinosaur, or (since I am not even middle aged) just have grown up differently, so... I don't know...
You're right about all of that. But people use different media to convey different things, and to reach different people, and engage different states of mind. Every advantage you list is also a disadvantage from another perspective. Video is not just text poured into a different container - even if it's just a video of a talking head!
For example, it's well-known that video engages empathy in ways that text does not. When you're documenting a kind of widespread tragedy, that could be essential.
So, are you sure the video didn't work on you? If someone had just posted a giant article would you have read it, or wanted to read more with the same interest? And even if that would have worked for you, a popular video like this can create a proven demand for journalists to write more stories and authors to write more books.
Yeah, text is superior for these kinds of topics. But ads and SEO spam have destroyed discoverability for writing. The same hasn't happened for videos yet. They can still be monetized and that justifies the time and effort needed to make a video.
You could probably find a written article about the subject. For many things I prefer a written source. But these videos from Dan Olsen are entertainment. The subject is kind of dry and boring really, I don't care that much. Yet he presents all his videos in an entertaining way.
"Documentary make makes a documentary when I wanted a book" feels like an invalid complaint.
I share your preference for text over video in many cases, although I think Dan Olson makes extremely effective use of his medium in a way many other "video essayists" do not. As far as age goes: before the Internet or even TV, people would go to see lectures and presentations for entertainment. Political speeches and debates were much longer, too. I think there's always been a desire for information delivered verbally in a compelling way. We just have different ways of delivering it now.
I also wouldn't take the transcription of older speeches too literally.
Dan usually publishes transcripts on Patreon (or, at least he has done for 'Line Goes Up' etc.). He even puts them into EPUB format for e-readers which is quite nice.
You can also just rip the captions straight from YouTube (which Dan generally does a good job with), though you miss all the on-screen visuals, which can be quite amusing to pause and read.
I'm with you there. I just look at the transcript when I'm interested in the content and can't find a proper written alternative.
On the other hand, if there's no written alternative, chances are that the content was irrelevant anyway, so maybe it's fine to ignore in the first place.
A few points I'd like to make regarding your assumptions and my view of Japan, which I'm not claiming is fully correct, but has a different perspective to offer:
a) I'm not an expert, but Japan's debt is mostly domestically owned (companies in Japan, Bank of Japan, et cetera) and they hold huge reserves in foreign currencies. Economics is more complicated than a simple debt figure, and I'm not well informed about the details, but the ratio of "debt to GDP" by itself isn't the holy grail as far as I know. Devil's in the details. It's a huge problem, but not as large as the number by itself indicates.
b) Japan is self contained. They have a unique self contained non-extremely-western-poisoned culture, an aging population without relying on immigration, their ethnicity makeup is 98% Japanese (I'm sure them being an island, the language and culture barrier are a factor). Find that bad or good, but I think there's something to that, and I think it's important when discussing their culture or their country.
c) Japan is a paradise for geeks, regarding how many possessions are treated and treasured. You've seen outdated tech and thought it was bad? I'm here ordering old consoles, games, dvds, books from Japan and the condition "slightly worn" from a Japenese seller is the American equivalent to "As good as new, perfect condition". Japan is a paradise for cameras, old game consoles, hard to find hardware, watches, ... arcades you wouldn't be able to find in any other country because they've given way to "the times" in other countries... you see a fax machine, or I guess potentially minidisc player, a discman, old cassette player... sold as "new" and think it's bad? I'd love the fact and buy all of them...
d) Toyota is one of the top 10 companies by revenue in the world, still one of the largest car manufacturers, and famous (among other Japanese companies) for efficient and world pioneering management techniques... Japan has the third highest GDP and ranks 19th in the HDI... is it maybe too soon to sing their demise?
Not picking a fight, but from my perspective your comment comes off as condescending, culturally biased and close-minded... Deriding a whole country/culture/economy because of how you interpreted certain things while visiting...you're citing Japanese toilet buttons as an example for their technological demise given their bad UI (having buttons)? Should it be voice controlled, have a touch panel, connect via Bluetooth to your smartphone and have its own bespoke App, offer fancy usage statistics...
You were there for months and this is your cynical take? How could I, as an outsider applying a similar spirit to yours, rate China (censorship, the CCP, inequality, corruption, certain infrastructure projects, technological tracking), the US (politics, cultural crazes, depression, high school system, prison system, weapons, policing), Europe (immigration and identity crisis, EU, ...), Russia/Ukraine..., Mexico, Brazil,...
This is meant to illustrate: a cynical take is easy to come by...
On (a), depends on whether you subscribe to the view the Modern Monetary Theory(MMT) is sustainable or a dangerous experiment that has unknowable consequences.
(b) Japan lacks natural resources (mineral, oil/gas etc.) and is hugely reliant on exports to keep the domestic economy running.
(c) There's a lot of cool stuff at a cultural level if you're a geek. Geeks are alas a small percentage of the population and that cool stuff is often kind of cool because it is a snapshot of the past. Not sure the curiosities are enough to keep the show on the rails.
(d) This one amused me. I recall IBMers talking about how IBM was one of the top companies by revenue right before it entered free fall and gave the tech industry to the modern tech giants. Kanban, Just-in-time manufacturing etc. were interesting and have their place. But something's gone wrong with the Japanese mindset. The thinking that produced interesting innovation back in the 70s, 80s and maybe even early 90s seems to have given way to a stagnant way of thinking that's evident everywhere you look. There's niches of creativity in things like anime but the innovation in technology and in process improvement that once enabled the amazing growth that Japan saw seems to have given way to a rigid way of thinking and a culture of just following the once innovative processes instead of continually improving them.
As for the voice controlled touch panel, probably not - but could the functions be simplified to less buttons and a more intuitive UI, for sure... unless you've embraced or complacently fallen into a culture of stagnation.
On your points re: China, they're innovating in ways Japan can only dream of without the fanfare or buzzwords. It's why most of the products we buy come out of Chongqing or Shenzhen. There's stuff wrong with China for sure but they're knocking it out of the park economically compared to Japan that's kind of riding the train over the cliff.
Re: The US etc., everywhere has issues but Europe/The US does not have the observable stagnation that can be witnessed in Japan. That's not about condescension but about looking at what I see with an open mind and not being afraid to make critical observations based on what I see before me.
I'd suggest Japan might be something of a warning for us in the West - if we stay complacent, keep worrying about superficial stuff that doesn't matter and let the core economic/innovating metrics trend in the wrong direction for too long we risk getting into a similar muddle.
> (b) Japan lacks natural resources (mineral, oil/gas etc.) and is hugely reliant on exports to keep the domestic economy running.
Natural resources aren't a good predictor of economic success. In fact, most resource rich countries seem to suffer from the "resource curse".
> but the innovation in technology and in process improvement that once enabled the amazing growth that Japan saw seems to have given way to a rigid way of thinking and a culture of just following the once innovative processes instead of continually improving them.
To be frank, I think they were just as rigid back then - if not more so. The only real difference was demographics and an asset bubble. As their population ages, they stop spending. Lower spending means lower income for companies who then slash R&D and new product development. It's visible in other sectors too like entertainment, not just technology. Jpop today is a shadow of its former self.
> China, they're innovating in ways Japan can only dream of without the fanfare or buzzwords.
The same thing that happened to Japan is happening to China now - end of demographic dividend, popping of asset bubble, ... China is likely to stagnate the next few decades. The only difference is Japan got rich before things went south while China is still climbing that ladder.
> Re: The US etc., everywhere has issues but Europe/The US does not have the observable stagnation that can be witnessed in Japan.
Again, it probably comes down to demographics. The West is willing to import people to keep their population rising - possibly at the expense of social stability. The Japanese decided to "go down with the ship" and just deal with the fallout as it comes. China ... doesn't really have much a choice but to go down with the ship. Who the heck is going to immigrate there?
Your really not addressing their comments and kinda missing the point..
But I’ll address toyota - unlike ibm they make a product that is well regarded and not in any danger of being supplemented- while they dropped the ball on ev for hydrogen their existing hybrid tech means “drop in a bigger battery and call it a day” - I think comparing them to imb is a poor comparison at best
And there are many other companies doing quite well in Japan so you shouldn’t be focusing one just one
There’s niche players that are very successful. But the success that once was Japan was about being competitive in more than just niche markets.
Not sure transitioning from hybrid to EV is just a case of drop in a bigger battery. That was kind of the point I made before. From toilets to EVs, the mindset is about preserving the once advanced status quo instead of actually continuing to do “continuous improvement”.
For all the adherents of Kaizen in the West or the apologists for what Japan once was, perhaps it would be wise to question why the place has managed to lose its edge across a range of metrics for multiple decades.
Well, to each their own I guess, I read their response and thought it gave an excellent point-by-point analysis.
At a higher level, I didn't read manxman posts as saying Japan is some sort of tech hellscape, or that their previous high-flying tech companies are all dead, but I think it's pretty easy to argue that innovation in Japan has seriously stagnated over the past 2 decades. I left another comment where I listed tons of Japanese tech I used to have in my (US) house - now I have almost none.
Regarding Toyota, I strongly disagree with "unlike ibm they make a product that is well regarded and not in any danger of being supplanted". I had a Toyota which I loved (it was crazy reliable) for nearly 2 decades that I replaced about 7 years ago - with an EV, and have since bought another EV. I just went to Toyota's website and they only offer a single all-electric EV, the "bZ4X", which I honestly have never heard of. You say it's as easy as "drop in a bigger battery and call it a day" - well, why haven't they then? Toyota is going to get killed in the EV market, which in not too long will be the entire auto market.
I must note while IBM is no longer a shining beacon of innovation, it still exists, still employs almost 300K people, still part of SP100 and still one of the largest technology companies in the world. It may eventually diminish even more than it has now, but I don't think it's time yet to talk about it as if it were dead and buried.
I'm a bit surprised it does get this many upvotes. The wikipedia article is a stub. The guardian article quoted (and posted here in the comments) doesn't do a good job detailing the exact situation he found himself in. For example what (if any) mental issues he might have had to be kept in the hospital, to what degree he was intelligible when talking (even to someone speaking Hungarian), to what degree he even tried to communicate, in what way he was treated or might have been medicated, etc...
Without any of this information the story is a bit of interesting trivia, little more, and provides very little to discuss in my opinion. The quality of comments so far reflect this lack of substance.
And just to make sure: None of what I said is meant to belittle his situation from a personal/human perspective.
Don't be so cynical... apparently it was liked by 'hundreds'...
sigh...
written by two employees working in the 'low-carbon division'. Maybe they're about to quit to create a ton of Social Media accounts and produce Youtube videos and to deride themselves as heroes...
To anyone bothered by my demeanor: excuse the cynicism, I have little respect for "open letters", it's childish and narcissistic. I'm sorry the evil hierarchical structure doesn't give your opinion enough credit, you, who should obviously be running this place. So yeah, better cause a media stir like a little child in a supermarket wanting chocolate... also little respect for the blown up media coverage around such minor events.
Thank you for posting this. The koolaid-drinkers are vocal, but rest assured your perspective is generally shared by those who do things and have responsibility.
You'll be attacked by the sullen crowd who believe wearing pink ribbons fight cancer, but please don't waver in saying what you think is right.
I have no idea what your point is. Is your point that those “do things” and have responsibilities support destroying our planet through climate change?
People who care about the environment are naive hippies, but the business people are the serious ones who “take responsibility” and know how the world works
I think the point is that “signing” an open letter is mere slacktivism, barely one step above clicking “like” on a social media post. Very little effort required, or results obtained.
I wonder if mozilla isn't already spread too thin... given some outdated documentation I regularly stumble upon, and my bad experience with their vpn offering.
One issue w/ their vpn was stability and speed (not extremely bad, but better now on a different provider), but the main crux was that they officially supported Ubuntu but would only support a new Ubuntu release many weeks after release date. So you were left without vpn (think they don't support plain wireguard/openvpn from CLI, you're stuck with a client not available for your officially supported OS...) or had to hack around to install the old version... An E-Mail I sent to support asking about this was ignored, I never received a response (as a paying customer, mind you).
Cancelled my vpn account then and there. Getting into the issue of running and moderating social media? Seems like the last thing I'd like to get into, when my goal is to write software and get stuff done. Especially with how toxically PC and about x-rights here/there/everywhere and "pseudo tolerant" parts of the software ecosystem have become (and those will be the ones most active on such platforms)...
Work on browser fingerprinting prevention, or on your browser engine, or consider maintaining an easy to install privacy respecting de-googled android fork... (bit out there already, still better than running a social media server...), bring more add-ons to firefox mobile, port more tor browser technologies to mainline firefox to be togabble in the settings...
Thanks for sharing as it might be helpful to people struggling w/ the same problem.
But obviously my point is that if I'm officially stuck to your client, maybe give me a working version when Ubuntu is updated, instead of me getting warnings about "no matching release candidate" (or whatever the exact wording) and me being vpn-less for weeks. If I pay I shouldn't have to rely on hacky stuff to just use your service. Also maybe react to an E-Mail I send to support? Also I personally am not using mozilla vpn anymore, but as said: maybe someone else can profit from your link.
Sorry to comment just on one singular aspect but...
85 GB of free storage listed as minimum system requirement?
Granted, I haven't seriously played any major games for at least 10 years I'd say. My occasional playing is limited in time and scope and usually involves reliving some old titles... is this really a new normal? We're also not talking about a big MMORPG with an incredibly wide world... Counter Strike is still a FPS you play on small maps right?
(edit: I just rechecked to make sure it doesn't say 8.5 GB, which would have also seemed a lot to me... I'm really getting old)
RAGE, a game from 2011 takes 25 GB, with compression and blurry graphics. DOOM (2016) is 55GB and Doom Eternal is 80GB.
The reason: huge textures, where every detail is unique and that look good up close. Let's say you map the world at a millimeter scale, let's a byte per mm2, 1GB is 1000m2, which is about the size of a typical backyard, small maps are bigger than that, have a bunch of them and you can get to tens of GB easily. Plus textures are not just colors. Normals, material properties, etc... are mapped to textures too.
I don't know how Counter-Strike 2 gets to 85GB, but if you want things to look good up close and avoid repetition you get these sizes. Also, storage is cheap, so if it makes the game look better, why not use it?
Halo Infinite is around 50gb but has compressed textures and audio so it can fit on a blueray disk for Xbox One (the third xbox). It's a very cookie-cutter game and also far far smaller on biomes compared to previous halo games (I think it's only 2-3: mountain grasslands, and desert on a multiplayer map, and interiors if together you want to call them a biome).
PC games will tend not to use compressed textures and audio so the games load faster (they don't need to spend time decompressing) so they can easily reach 85gb. Faster loads is more important in games where there are many matches.
Borderlands 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare are about 135gb.
ARK is the poster child of unoptimized messes, though. It might be a bad example.
Someone hit me with the trivia: How big was Titanfall 1 initially, with its library of totally uncompressed audio for every localization in the base install?
Ark Survival Evolved ?
Base game should be around 135GB, and you don't have to install all the different maps at the same time since you won't be switching between them frequently.
If you want to run a dedicated server on top of that, those are around 25GB per map, so it is not that crazy I think.
No idea. I am just reporting what I saw when I clicked "install" for her. I'm not into survival games so I don't play it, I just know I was stunned at the requirement and that she had to remove other games to fit it on her PC's SSD.
High quality models, textures, animations and more takes a lot of space, like a lot a lot.
But, I just installed CS2 and I think it only downloaded about 20GB or so, that maybe decompresses to about 40GB in the end. Maybe someone else can verify what it ended up taking on disk?
That's a lot of high def textures, yep. Every (base) gun, user model, map. If you'd asked me over/under on 90 gigs I'd have really struggled to guess right.
Thanks for the number. Why do they inflate the disk space needed by a factor of ~2.5 I wonder...
I understand you would want to have some leeway so someone playing the game doesn't surpass the 'disk space required' within the first three days just because of a few additional maps/skins/textures downloaded while playing... but over 50 gb of leeway given an install size of 33.6 gb?
Maybe pointing towards something else about gaming I don't understand...
I'm sorry if my comment isn't regarded as constructive... but you skimmed an 'article' consisting of three paragraphs, that takes maybe two minutes to read, but bothered to leave a comment on it?
When I read "I'll admit I only skimmed this article" I though maybe due to blocked JavaScripts the article didn't load for me and I only read the preface of the actual article or something...
> The piece features Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the tape recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Due to the room's particular size and geometry, certain frequencies of the recording are emphasized while others are attenuated. Eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the characteristic resonant frequencies of the room itself.
I used a similar concept to repeatedly upscale and zoom in on an image with different AI-based super resolution algorithms. At some point only the idiosyncrasies of the algorithm remain: https://rybakov.com/project/im_sitting_in_ai/
The experiment has also been brought to the 21st century and its video and audio codecs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icruGcSsPp0 - uploading a video 1000 times to YouTube.
reminds me of the old days of 4 track recording where you'd bounce 3 channels down to one, rerecord, bounce again. lather rinse repeat. by the time you got to the 3 or so round (depending on the quality of the tape) it would be pretty gnarly.
back when i worked in a VHS dubbing facility, we'd get bored and do stupid stuff like this taking a master to VHS, then using the VHS as a master to make dub of dub of dub. after the 8th dub, it was pretty trash. Similarly, we'd take a video in -> video out to another VCR -> video out cascading down until the original signal to the video in of the last VCR was trash. (the place was wired correctly with proper video DAs. we did this because it was 3rd shift and no supervision)
This brings back memories of art school, a friend recorded themselves running up and down a hill and made many copies of copies of the video on VHS. They displayed different generations of the degrading video side by side on a bank of monitors.
Make it need JavaScript so you can make scrolling into a slow, clunky slideshow where the text has additional delay before appearing... Absolutely brilliant /s
Good example of modern bad website design... at least in my opinion. Sigh... that's what web frameworks and the 10 layers of complexity are for right?