51–60 of 77 posts
About 15 years ago, I remember Zikes offering to let me borrow a web development book he had finished reading. I turned down the offer, thinking I had little use for such things. Fast forward 10 years and I end up going back to school for programming and slapping myself for not getting into it back then. Can definitely see the difference that experience makes.
Oh wow, 15 years ago? Did we go to school together?
All you ruined was the fun of photoshopping his face into things. Let me draw a parallel with a story of my grandfather, whom I never knew: Apparently a great hobby of his used to be to collect sayings from people. Whenever he'd meet anyone, let it be new or already known, he'd ask them if they knew any new sayings. He wrote all of them down in his little book of sayings. My father started picking up the hobby and th…
before the internet, there was real capital in knowing jokes, and the same for unusual facts. you wanted to know who was in that movie? you called your friend who knew those things. now just IMDB it. i suppose that is part of the reason for the appeal in the seemingly recent interest in bar trivia nights. i think we are still working out the kinks in the things we lost due to the internet.
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pacific rim was a good movie (a stable 7 on a 4 year old movie). from what i can remember, most alien movies are liberal if not apolitical. the PHD, philosopher, or scientist somehow has keen insights on how to stop the alien juggernaut if it weren't for those stupid military people getting in the way. a bit ironic that you choose pacific rim and moved onto the topic of pro-walls, when that movie was very apposed to…
The more formulaic the movie, the more it becomes a vehicle for the novelty of its premise, precisely because the familiarity and shallowness of a formulaic film serve to focus your attention on the symbolism that distinguishes it from other formulaic movies. In this case it's destructive aliens, massive walls (albeit of limited effectiveness), heavy manufacturing, and nuclear apocalypse (for the bad guys). The actua…
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So you're saying social-bonding hacks/disruptions sometimes ruin the fun. What about other situations? Will gatherings be less fun when Alexa becomes the life of the party, cracking jokes and proposing toasts? Will Siri join in the dinner conversation (parent, friend or good-listener mode, with wit, personality and intelligence sliders). Will fans be turned off when self-driving cars start winning the Indy 500? How a…
Yes to all of those questions. If people can't imaginatively project themselves into winning circumstances, then they become despondent because their escapist fantasies (which some people take seriously enough to make into real accomplishments) are now dashed forever. This is something technologists and scientists largely don't get. People are always 'look at how many material comforts and and entertainment options y…
People have ALWAYS told stories of humans / Gods / Demigods with super powers. I agree that a lot of modern cinema / entertainment is VERY lame, but this is not a sign of the end times. I'm sure a few people rolled their eyes at stories of Zeus. People have told these stories for centuries.
I have to use Slack at work, and it is fun. But when I'm trying to focus on programming, it is like being in an all day long meeting without an agenda.
I have to use Slack at work, and it is fun. But when I'm trying to focus on programming, it is like being in an all day long meeting without an agenda.
My only recourse on some days is to shut down the app on my desktop, and let my iPhone ping me if I get a DM or mention. @here messes it all up, but I've found a way to at-a-glance determine if it's directed to me without losing much concentration. Has anyone else gotten a good way to merge things like slack/email with Pomodoro or other focus hacks?
This alone makes Slack far more useful for me than HipChat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying social-bonding hacks/disruptions sometimes ruin the fun. What about other situations? Will gatherings be less fun when Alexa becomes the life of the party, cracking jokes and proposing toasts? Will Siri join in the dinner conversation (parent, friend or good-listener mode, with wit, personality and intelligence sliders). Will fans be turned off when self-driving cars start winning the Indy 500? How a…
> social-bonding hacks/disruptions First, honest question: is there some secret lease that needs to be signed before posting on HN that requires that every real-world phenomenon be framed using 1337 h4x0r terminology? For some reason, it really rubs me the wrong way, people trying to shoebox anything and everything into a faux-technological perspective. Also, the reason Vinyls still sell is that there is a sense of o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying social-bonding hacks/disruptions sometimes ruin the fun. What about other situations? Will gatherings be less fun when Alexa becomes the life of the party, cracking jokes and proposing toasts? Will Siri join in the dinner conversation (parent, friend or good-listener mode, with wit, personality and intelligence sliders). Will fans be turned off when self-driving cars start winning the Indy 500? How a…
Yes to all of those questions. If people can't imaginatively project themselves into winning circumstances, then they become despondent because their escapist fantasies (which some people take seriously enough to make into real accomplishments) are now dashed forever. This is something technologists and scientists largely don't get. People are always 'look at how many material comforts and and entertainment options y…
I think the problem isn't so much that we're running out of things to turn into consumables (that don't quickly bore us), but as you said, the parceling and abstraction of everything in the first place, that we turn things into consumables instead of ourselves into creators/gardeners of our lives and the world around us. I mean, there is still a lot of fauna to discover, and what's more, there's still a lot of living in peace with and appreciation of a lot of fauna we already know about to do. Heck, if we just let up a "little", new exciting things and interactions can occur. And one lifetime is not enough to learn about even just a small section of animals. It is possible for "humans knowing everything about lions", and me not ever even having seen a photo of one, if you know what I mean.
And then there are other people. Who could be fascinating mysteries, friends and enemies, instead of boring potential threats of resources. Of course, when the only way we relate to each other is "so what 'are' you?" (what are you mostly earning your money with at the moment), "do you know $reference, too?", "do you also dis/like $food/$music/$actor/$politician", having more billions of people with those knobs at various positions can not really help the boredom.
"All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."There is something to this, on many levels. We can hardly look each other and ourselves in the face: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1J6TFHCevg really think of them, I say there is hardly anything as "exciting" as the idea that this is still going on, it doesn't need to, and it shouldn't.
> preserving the earth for future generations feels nice but is never really done and so can't deliver any sense of adventure or accomplishment
I still firmly believe that we for the most part actually do want to be able to look into the mirror and the eyes of our children and be more than fools telling hysterical lies, in hiding for fear of someone calling them out. Just look at the mental gymnastics of people either rationalizing their complacency as being actually the decent thing to do, or as them having no choice. It's not because they want to defend their being "bad", it's because they really don't want to be bad, and even just getting up in the morning and living the day as themselves is a struggle/achievement for some.
But you know, both many great scientists and philosophers and psychologists and so on, sometimes just "authors", have written and talked about alienation for decades if not centuries. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but what is even worse is the people who think a fat salary and the fact that they are alive, while those greats are dead, somehow means they don't have to understand any of it. Calling them "technologists" is just about right. To what I would call thinkers and scientists they're like someone who realizes they can catch rain in a barrel instead of just holding their head back and mouth open, to drink at will -- and shows up in a Poseidon costume the next day. That's how little they know about how little they know. End rant :)
The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.
Are we standing on the shoulders of giants, climbing even; or sliding down their backs?
All you ruined was the fun of photoshopping his face into things. Let me draw a parallel with a story of my grandfather, whom I never knew: Apparently a great hobby of his used to be to collect sayings from people. Whenever he'd meet anyone, let it be new or already known, he'd ask them if they knew any new sayings. He wrote all of them down in his little book of sayings. My father started picking up the hobby and th…
before the internet, there was real capital in knowing jokes, and the same for unusual facts. you wanted to know who was in that movie? you called your friend who knew those things. now just IMDB it. i suppose that is part of the reason for the appeal in the seemingly recent interest in bar trivia nights. i think we are still working out the kinks in the things we lost due to the internet.