How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#101

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

owlninja wrote: post #29

QasimK wrote: post #12

For all the negative comments about the presentation, which I might normally agree with, I liked this format this time. It took a while to load (thank you multi-threading). I got through it because I treated it like an interactive video with subtitles, which is better than a video. I liked the sound - which, in my iPhone, was muted at the started as my phone was muted, so I didn't even realise there was audio. I like…

I agree, it is not that bad. HN is a grumpy bunch who wants everything to be a text file and every millisecond of loading is precious time wasted.

I’m always a little amused and disappointed when I read a really enjoyable long-form piece, with a lot of local color and literary detail, and some of the top comments on HN are to the effect of “the author kept meandering for most of it and didn’t get to the point until the end.” It’s as if reading is only a delivery method for information, and never something to be enjoyed on its own.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#102

Post by hamstercat » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #73

Are people there still using the Bolivar? Why haven't they switched to some alternative currency? Wouldn't that solve many of the current problems?

I don't know if that's still the case, but last year the government set his own rate for bolivar to USD conversion inside the country. Rates which are of course only realistic in fantasy land. The only alternative was the black market, with all it entails.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#103

Post by admax88q » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

WrathOfJay wrote: post #15

QasimK wrote: post #12

For all the negative comments about the presentation, which I might normally agree with, I liked this format this time. It took a while to load (thank you multi-threading). I got through it because I treated it like an interactive video with subtitles, which is better than a video. I liked the sound - which, in my iPhone, was muted at the started as my phone was muted, so I didn't even realise there was audio. I like…

I actually found this to be worth the time. I haven't paid much attention to the situation down there, and seeing it was enlightening. Onto the content... I wonder, can someone tell me why there are so many obese people in these video clips, if food is so hard to come by? Why does there seem to be so many people sitting around? Surely with so much manpower available, there are way to make them productive on a large s…

Food is cheap, but nutrition is expensive.

In many ways obesity is a symptom of malnutrition. When money is tight the cheapest foods available are little more than starch and/or sugar, they lack the any significant amount of nutrients, causing you to have hard to ignore cravings for more food.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#104

Post by sodafountan » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

tigershark wrote: post #48

Inflation in Venezuela is over 25k%. People are jailed during demonstrations when they are not shot in cold blood. Children are dying of malnutrition. But for everyone on HN the biggest problem is the article format. Utterly and completely unbelievable...

Couldn't agree more, the article is meant for accessibility, not everyone wants to read a multi-thousand word article and then analyze specific points. The point is Venezuelans are suffering terribly under a socialist dictatorship.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#105

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

oppositelock wrote: post #90

lisper wrote: post #33

This is not an article, it's a movie with subtitles. (It should have a [video] tag.) And it doesn't address how to survive when money is worthless, it just shows some vignettes from Venezuela that illustrate how hard it is to survive when money is worthless.

Those of us who lived through the fall of communism in Eastern Europe know exactly what it's like to survive when money is worthless, and it's not pretty. Worthless money doesn't quite destroy the country's infrastructure, so you have water, and electricity, unreliably. It's good to stockpile water. Shelter will generally be ok. If you've got a place to live, the economy collapsing around you doesn't remove it - the…

[deleted]

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#106

Post by csomar » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

The format is not bad. I think what made the experience a bit bad for me is the slow Internet connection. It would help if the presentation force you to wait until everything is loaded.

Now back to complaining about the content: It is very light on details. I'm very interested in the Venezuela crisis but this gives practically no numbers and thus no idea about how bad the situation is.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#107

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #72

"U.S. Papers Hail Venezuelan Coup as Pro-Democracy Move" - June 2002 - https://fair.org/extra/u-s-papers-hail-venezuelan-coup-as-pr...

Not as insane as it sounds. When the government in power is dismantling democracy, removing the government in power can in fact be a pro-democracy move. (A coup is a somewhat unusual way to do it, however...)

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#108

Post by Fnoord » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

tigershark wrote: post #48

Inflation in Venezuela is over 25k%. People are jailed during demonstrations when they are not shot in cold blood. Children are dying of malnutrition. But for everyone on HN the biggest problem is the article format. Utterly and completely unbelievable...

Your valuable contribution is also exactly zero. You're the pot calling the kettle black.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#109

Post by ken » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

tigershark wrote: post #48

Inflation in Venezuela is over 25k%. People are jailed during demonstrations when they are not shot in cold blood. Children are dying of malnutrition. But for everyone on HN the biggest problem is the article format. Utterly and completely unbelievable...

You typed 24 words of plain text and painted a picture of the situation in Venezuela -- how hard was that?

We're not talking about the font-family being unfashionable. This NYTimes page simply doesn't work (i.e., let me view its content) for me here on the latest version of a major web browser. This is a big, mature organization whose purpose is telling stories about the world, and it's failing at that.

By attempting to publish using cool web technologies that don't always work (apparently), they made the story about their medium, not their message. In the Scott McCloud system, they chose to emphasize step 6 (Surface) rather than step 5 (Craft). That's a perfectly valid artistic choice to make but they can't complain when people focus on that.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#110

Post by throwaway413 » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

sodafountan wrote: post #104

tigershark wrote: post #48

Inflation in Venezuela is over 25k%. People are jailed during demonstrations when they are not shot in cold blood. Children are dying of malnutrition. But for everyone on HN the biggest problem is the article format. Utterly and completely unbelievable...

Couldn't agree more, the article is meant for accessibility, not everyone wants to read a multi-thousand word article and then analyze specific points. The point is Venezuelans are suffering terribly under a socialist dictatorship.

I wonder if any of the people complaining watch movies, or exclusively just read books. It’s like multiple media formats can’t exist to convey different experiences.