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Glasshole

penny-arcade.com

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Re: Glasshole

#31

Post by replicatorblog »

teej wrote: post #12
JDGM wrote: post #8

I was amazed to see this on the front page, assuming it was a link to today's comic, which would possibly have been the first time I witnessed a non-xkcd submitted to HN. That would've been cool, it's a good one. The fact that this is actually a link to the accompanying article from Tycho is great as his pieces are usually quite interesting but I miss out because they don't come up on the Penny Arcade website until a…

The writing on Penny Arcade has always been insightful and funny. I think being great writers is what makes them great comic artists. If you're interested in games news, I've found the Penny Arcade Report to be fantastic. It hasn't been around long, but I several articles from it have already hit the front page of HN. http://penny-arcade.com/report/

Totally agree — Penny Arcade Report is super impressive. They cover such a wide variety of stuff and have an incredibly broad range from Kickstarted board games to AAA console franchises.

Re: Glasshole

#32

Post by DanHulton »

teej wrote: post #12
JDGM wrote: post #8

I was amazed to see this on the front page, assuming it was a link to today's comic, which would possibly have been the first time I witnessed a non-xkcd submitted to HN. That would've been cool, it's a good one. The fact that this is actually a link to the accompanying article from Tycho is great as his pieces are usually quite interesting but I miss out because they don't come up on the Penny Arcade website until a…

The writing on Penny Arcade has always been insightful and funny. I think being great writers is what makes them great comic artists. If you're interested in games news, I've found the Penny Arcade Report to be fantastic. It hasn't been around long, but I several articles from it have already hit the front page of HN. http://penny-arcade.com/report/

Gabe's writing has gotten much, much better of the years, though Tycho's has always been good.

But seriously, I remember early Gabe newsposts and they were just full of typos and spelling errors and I honestly lost a little respect for him. Then again, I was an arrogant little shite ten years ago, so don't read much into that.

Re: Glasshole

#33

Post by oinksoft »

enraged_camel wrote: post #16

I think there is good discussion to be had here, but holy shit , I have never been able to get over how utterly pretentious Jerry's writing is. The comics are usually fantastic and at strange odds with the accompanying news.

I've always found the comic pretentious and unfunny. Probably because a character almost always is given a mouth-breathing look of stupidity in at least one panel. The joke of the comic has always seemed to be, "look at this thing I've seen people doing, wow that's idiotic, here's the flawed thinking that led to that."

This is only based on the Penny Arcade comics I've seen that have gone viral, so perhaps it is not representative.

Re: Glasshole

#34

Post by marshray »

Kylekramer wrote: post #7
mjolk wrote: post #2

I've been trying not to get too worked up over the whole NSA/PRISM issue, but the potential success Google Glass changes the magnitude of the issue. By proxy, every Google Glass owner will be acting as a remote recording device for government agencies. Everyone in the line of site/hearing range of the device forfeits privacy.

The companies implicated in PRISM already produce the software and/or hardware for the vast majority of computers and smartphones in the world. Seems like if you are convinced that PRISM is as far reaching and effective as being able to turn Glass in a remote recording device for the NSA, the magitude would hardly change much.

You don't see the difference between say, having a camera next to you on the seat of your car and driving the Google StreetView car everywhere you go?

Re: Glasshole

#35

Post by nitrogen »

Zikes wrote: post #25
Kylekramer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the sheer amount of noise (in the intelligence agencies' eyes) produced by Glass make it a fairly useless data source? If I worked for the secret shadowy three initial organizations I rather have access to call logs and email. At least it would have some curation.

I think that's the key point here. The sheer amount of data being stored is surely almost completely useless when it comes to preventing crime, but would be invaluable when it comes time to investigate a crime, or if you want to target a specific individual to harass.

Noise becomes data when you have the right algorithm.

Re: Glasshole

#36

Post by wonderzombie »

enraged_camel wrote: post #16

I think there is good discussion to be had here, but holy shit , I have never been able to get over how utterly pretentious Jerry's writing is. The comics are usually fantastic and at strange odds with the accompanying news.

The man loves words and writing and such. I don't think there's anything pretentious about it.

Re: Glasshole

#37

Post by Zikes »

nitrogen wrote: post #35
Zikes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the key point here. The sheer amount of data being stored is surely almost completely useless when it comes to preventing crime, but would be invaluable when it comes time to investigate a crime, or if you want to target a specific individual to harass.

Noise becomes data when you have the right algorithm.

I'm sure there is some useful information they could glean, but in large part key indicators of pre-crime are already blatantly obvious or present too great a risk of false positives.

The latter is what worries me. If they come up with what they believe to be the right algorithm and run it against their data, what then? Are we then in the position where we have to a) prove our innocence in a crime that hasn't even been committed, or b) become the targets of increased scrutiny and restrictions?

Re: Glasshole

#38

Post by [deleted] »

doktrin wrote: post #29

It will take a while before I am comfortable with others wearing Glass around me. The thought of speaking to someone wearing the device makes me a little uncomfortable. I realize that may sound a little luddite-esque to certain members of this community, but there you have it. This is a resistance that I'm sure is shared by many in the general public. It's something we all may get used to eventually, but I honestly p…

[deleted]

Re: Glasshole

#39

Post by wisty »

enraged_camel wrote: post #16

I think there is good discussion to be had here, but holy shit , I have never been able to get over how utterly pretentious Jerry's writing is. The comics are usually fantastic and at strange odds with the accompanying news.

He probably writes the way he speaks. Bad idea. People are generally fantastic at parsing speech, and terrible at parsing writing.

Or, as I'd say it:

Well, if I had to guess, I'd say he probably writes in a similar way to the way he speaks; or at least; the way he would like to speak if he had three minutes to think up every sentence he had to utter. This may not be such a good idea as it sounds, unless you have a term paper due, of course. Because human beings have been speaking for roughly the same time that we've been making jokes about funny shaped fruit, we have fantastic wiring in our noggins for translating the sounds we utter into thoughts, but simply don't have the same capacity to decode the same kind of syntax if it has been scratched on cave walls, or written on parchment, of displayed in glyphs on some kind of screen or whatever your medium of choice is for writing.

Re: Glasshole

#40

Post by sliverstorm »

derefr wrote: post #22
enraged_camel wrote: post #16

I think there is good discussion to be had here, but holy shit , I have never been able to get over how utterly pretentious Jerry's writing is. The comics are usually fantastic and at strange odds with the accompanying news.

It has never occurred to me to call the way Jerry writes "pretentious." Most of the time I would call it "comedic" (specifically, containing great amounts of bathos )--he makes very creative, unexpected, and over-the-top use of the English language to convey relatively normal opinions on relatively boring subjects, in a way that makes me want to read his thoughts on things I couldn't otherwise care less about.

That's pretty much the impression I've always taken. It doesn't seem like he is taking himself seriously when he speaks those words.
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