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How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

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Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#61

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

webkike wrote: post #38
exergy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Vinyls also still exist because some people prefer analog sound. There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias.

>There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias

Vinyls do have a characteristic compressed warmth that subjectively a lot of people enjoy. The pops and crackles that come with vinyl are pleasing to many also.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#62

Post by megablast »

exergy wrote: post #31
nealabq wrote: post #23

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…

Did you just discover a new saying or phrase?

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#63

Post by webkike »

gdilla wrote: post #40
webkike wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vinyls also still exist because some people prefer analog sound. There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias.

Also people who dj. In fact, the most popular digital dj interface is serato which let's you use vinyl as an interface.

Oh absolutely. My DJ friends love using vinyl it seems

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#64

Post by teknologist »

mosselman wrote: post #17

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…

But making a saying doesn't take any source material. I'd imagine there's a lot of fun in giving this bot an image and seeing where it puts the faces and which "poses" it opts to use. Have a look at the examples where there are heads put in random places and some more obvious positions left out. The hilarity is in the imperfections.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#65

Post by handedness »

fzeroracer wrote: post #60
autokad wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this is also why we see continuous growth in the Vinyl industry. People like the internet, but they also want the option to go offline with whatever they buy and have something tangible.

Continuous growth since the bottom, yes, but from a value that was asymptotically close to $0 in the prior decade:

http://diffuser.fm/files/2015/01/vinyl-chart.jpg

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#66

Post by sprobertson »

jasonzwalker wrote: post #12

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.

> like being in an all day long meeting without an agenda.

By far the best summary of the "slack effect" that I've come across.

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#67

Post by whowalrus »

webkike wrote: post #38
exergy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Vinyls also still exist because some people prefer analog sound. There might not be any substantive reason for this other than random bias.

Another oft-cited reason is because vinyls can't have a "brick-walled" dynamic range, as it often happens with new digital music thanks to the loudness war [1]. So audiophiles tend to favor it.

From the article:

As explained earlier, due to the physical limitations of vinyl, there are limits as to how loud you can press a record, and because vinyl is “for audiophiles” – there is less incentive for record companies to compromise the quality of vinyl releases. As a result, many vinyl records are mastered differently to the CD release with more dynamic range and at lower volumes.

[1]: http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-...

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#68

Post by ashark »

mosselman wrote: post #17

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…

Vonnegut's Bluebeard:

I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives—maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.

That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist".

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"

Re: How I Ruined Office Productivity with a Face-Replacing Slack Bot

#69

Post by [deleted] »

anigbrowl wrote: post #36
nealabq wrote: post #23

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…

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