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Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

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Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#31

Post by imron »

nyolfen wrote: post #22
simonw wrote: post #18

If I want to know how a classic trick is done I'll look at the Wikipedia page. It often won't reveal the secret directly, but if you check the page history you'll find an edit war between magicians which exposes exactly how it works.

now this is interesting! what exactly is the rationale used by those who would prefer it remain secret? i assume it's for the preservation of their job or hobby, but i doubt that would fly on its own.

A culture of a magician never reveals his secrets.

With the secret unknown it's 'magic'. With the secret known it becomes just a simple trick.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#32

Post by vacri »

hackuser wrote: post #24
seanp2k2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about an example of this. As someone who spends many hours reading Wikipedia, the time and effort put into very niche subjects seems fantastic. I haven't opened a physical encyclopedia in probably 10 years.

Britannica is online; you don't need to open a book. Go search it now.

Just trying now, it's slow, doesn't take me to the page by name ('Iraq' was my search), and was still trying to load from adservers as I type this. Slow to load, poorer layout that is harder to read (but not terrible), and split across multiple pages requiring another slow load. The 'demographics' section that I was looking for is needlessly split across pages. The page chugs as I scroll it up and down to read the one paragraph on-screen at any time (on a laptop with a decent CPU).

Is the information better? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know enough about the country to say. But it's a chore to read. Last updated in June 2013, so that's three-and-a-bit years without updates in a rapidly-changing part of the world.

My mother sold World Book encyclopedias when I was a kid, and we had a set. I grew up reading those cover-to-cover. There's something beautiful about having info at your fingertips that can be consumed at the speed of reading. Paper encyclopedias have it, and wikipedia has it, but online Britannica does not. Well, not from my excursion there just now.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#33

Post by klenwell »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #30
klenwell wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had something like this debate with manager at last job. Came to a head in my annual review. Manager: "As senior developer, you lack sufficient knowledge of our most important application." Me: "Wait. I am the one who wrote most the documentation that is in our knowledge base for that application. I am the one who set up the knowledge base." Manager: "That is not knowledge. Knowledge is what is in your head." Me: bli…

That's so bizarre. Was he trying to create some kind of official narrative on paper that he had the knowledge and you didn't? Or was he trying to tell you to document less and hide information?

> Was he trying to create some kind of official narrative on paper that he had the knowledge and you didn't?

Yes, this. We had actually worked together amicably for several years, he as senior, I as mid-level. Then we both got bumped up. As part of my new responsibilities as senior, I tried to surface issues and confront them transparently. I was mindful not to point fingers or show anyone up but rather identify them as shortcomings in our practices or policies.

For cultural reasons, I think he felt threatened by this and assumed it was his responsibility to hide issues and save his own face. It fell apart pretty quickly. It sucked but I've used it as a career lesson.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#34

Post by hackuser »

vacri wrote: post #32
hackuser wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britannica is online; you don't need to open a book. Go search it now.

Just trying now, it's slow, doesn't take me to the page by name ('Iraq' was my search), and was still trying to load from adservers as I type this. Slow to load, poorer layout that is harder to read (but not terrible), and split across multiple pages requiring another slow load. The 'demographics' section that I was looking for is needlessly split across pages. The page chugs as I scroll it up and down to read the on…

FWIW, I use Britannica regularly and don't recall ever seeing those problems. The information is clearly better, IME; there's nothing like being able to access instant expert knowledge on almost any topic. The main drawback is that the coverage is, of course, much narrower; no pokemon characters.

Crowd-sourcing can be a great tool, but not for high-integrity information. IMHO: As the public now widely accepts lies and propaganda, I've come to think that overlooking Wikipedia's accuracy problems was a forerunner to this situation. I'm sure much of Wikipedia's information is good; I just don't know which is correct and which is complete nonsense.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#35

Post by cyberferret »

I have been interested in magic for a long time, and have subscriptions or accounts at most major magic retailers in the world. I am not the best at performing magic tricks (mainly because I don't have that story telling personality that is needed to execute most tricks), but I love learning them and practicing them in my spare time.

No need to go to the dark net though - 99% of magic tricks are now readily exposed on Youtube public channels, and I am not just talking about the original instructions videos being leaked on there. A myriad of kids stand ready to either perform tricks so badly that they give away the techniques, or else outright show how things are done.

Still though, it is like seeing how a commercial airliner is flown. Watching hundreds of hours of video footage is no substitute for formal training and real like practice.

Also, one of the biggest draws of magic to me is hearing of the origins of most tricks, and researching guys who came up with these things over a hundred years ago.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#36

Post by nightcracker »

Animats wrote: post #15

These aren't exactly big secrets. Anyone can get copies of The Linking Ring, the magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and see ads for many of the tricks that require special props. (There used to be a competing publication, the "Magic-Gram", but it may be defunct.) Realistically, if there's a video of a trick, you can usually figure it out. If there are multiple videos from different angles, it's e…

There are many videos of hans moretti's cardboard box trick, but I still have no clue how it's done...

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#37

Post by vacri »

hackuser wrote: post #34
vacri wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just trying now, it's slow, doesn't take me to the page by name ('Iraq' was my search), and was still trying to load from adservers as I type this. Slow to load, poorer layout that is harder to read (but not terrible), and split across multiple pages requiring another slow load. The 'demographics' section that I was looking for is needlessly split across pages. The page chugs as I scroll it up and down to read the on…

FWIW, I use Britannica regularly and don't recall ever seeing those problems. The information is clearly better, IME; there's nothing like being able to access instant expert knowledge on almost any topic. The main drawback is that the coverage is, of course, much narrower; no pokemon characters. Crowd-sourcing can be a great tool, but not for high-integrity information. IMHO: As the public now widely accepts lies an…

I dunno, I'm not seeing it. I've just done another search, this time on 'resistor'. The Britannica article is a paragraph, whereas the Wikipedia one goes into a lot of depth on styles, history, etc. Notably, neither article has a diagram referring to the colour bars...

I get a similar differential with 'orchestra', where the wikipedia article goes into much more depth, not just about composition, but also about things like selection criteria. 'Grasses' gets the same kind of results as 'resistors' - one paragraph in EB, lengthy page on WP. At this point, I ran out of free views :)

(I was purposefully avoiding subjective topics like biographies, as no matter what is written in a biography, you can always find something to complain about.)

If it works for you, keep using it, I guess. But I found it slow, poorly laid-out, with fewer pictorial examples, and at least for the selections above, the inferior source.

> As the public now widely accepts lies and propaganda

The public has always done this. Yellow journalism has been there since the start, and propaganda goes back at least as far as Ancient Egyptian steles (damn, should have looked that one up). The only thing that's new (IMO) is the 24-hour news cycle, which has given everyone 'scandal fatigue'. When scandals are coming at you thick and strong, you just can't care about them anymore.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#38

Post by hackuser »

vacri wrote: post #37
hackuser wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I use Britannica regularly and don't recall ever seeing those problems. The information is clearly better, IME; there's nothing like being able to access instant expert knowledge on almost any topic. The main drawback is that the coverage is, of course, much narrower; no pokemon characters. Crowd-sourcing can be a great tool, but not for high-integrity information. IMHO: As the public now widely accepts lies an…

I dunno, I'm not seeing it. I've just done another search, this time on 'resistor'. The Britannica article is a paragraph, whereas the Wikipedia one goes into a lot of depth on styles, history, etc. Notably, neither article has a diagram referring to the colour bars... I get a similar differential with 'orchestra', where the wikipedia article goes into much more depth, not just about composition, but also about thing…

Rarely has Britannica been criticized for having articles that are too short. Certainly we can find plenty of 'stubs' in Wikipedia and plenty of long articles in Britannica.

Is more better? Is more mediocre information better than less? How do you know what you're reading is true?

>> As the public now widely accepts lies and propaganda

> The public has always done this.

It's always been true to a degree, just like there is always crime, but sometimes it's much worse than others. Right now there is plenty of evidence that the situation is bad.

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