There are many examples of overhyped releases: Duke Nukem Forever, the Matrix sequels, etc. What got hyped and actually delivered?
I had attempted to read it and The Odyssey when I was much younger, in middle school, maybe too young, and failed miserably. But as it is always with cultural touchstones, references to it are inescapable, and a few years ago, in my mid 50s I overcame the reluctance accumulated in the intervening time and set out to read the Samuel Butler prose translation of 1898. Most of the translations I'd previously approached were in verse, which is in some ways its own hill to climb when one is customarily a prose reader, so this seemed perfect.
And so it was, and I was bowled over. It was a mind bending experience for me the likes of which I experience much to infrequently as age and experience take their toll on the novelties of youth. I can't say the last work I read I experienced as electrically. For all the stiltedness of epic story telling, the personalities of Agamemnon, Achilles, Zeus, et al are both vivid and convincing; the violence of battle is horrible, electric, and wierdly beautiful in a way that will resonate recognizably with fans Sam Peckinpaugh or Hong Kong action movies. Though the characterizations are far more stereotyped, as befits the age in which it was produced, than modern readers are accustomed to, they still evince a polish that rises above conventional story telling into true literature. Worth every ounce of effort you expend to summit this one.
Anime tends to share with Japanese theater a much more lingering emphasis on the atmosphere of the setting and the emotional states and thoughts of the characters compared to fast-paced, exposition-heavy Western media.
Of course there are plenty of exceptions, and some anime is even explicitly styled after Western media.
https://www.capstan.be/british-scholar-emily-wilsons-fresh-a...
From reading her notes (and her twitter account) I've definitely gained an appreciation of how much an art in itself translation is.
"Complicated" seems trite, almost meaningless. Though I'm willing to read beyond the first line of their translation.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus
I'd tried to watch it a few times, but only a few months ago actually got past the first two episodes. I think it helped that I quite quickly saw it as a morally ambiguous discussion of the institutional ineptitude of conservative western cultures in mitigating the effects of crime, rather than a typical 'good vs bad' cop show.
With that mindset, the possibly-underwhelming finale of S1 is much more effective, and the sudden pace-change in S2 is more meaningful.
Keep going beyond the second season, it gets better, when the lines between the gangs and the government blur
Oh, what a downer that season was. On the other hand, Homeland Season 1 was one of the best bits of television I’ve seen.
It's disappointing, because the season's focus on journalism and public optics was really interesting and educational and in many ways well-executed. But the serial murder stuff just made it kind of goofy.
Seasons 1 - 4 are so good that it's not a big deal, but it seems so rare that multi-season shows stick a graceful landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0ylNZhOJI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2-NkZ8lGsA
And it's still consistent with the "institutional ineptitude of conservative western cultures" (as @ddek puts it above) theme.
Season four broke my heart with the adolescent kids. I can’t believe how good they all were in their roles, phenomenal performances.
The one minor scene that always wrecks me is where Bodie is talking to McNulty near the end of the series and says, “I feel old...”
The character is supposed to be a late teenager in that scene, and is already feeling worn out of life he has almost no chance of escaping.
That to me was the big takeaway. Too many things are stuck where they are: people, systems, etc.
As Marlo says, “You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.”
Okay I’m done fan-boying. Yes, I’m this annoying when I tell my irl friends about the show as well.
Season 2 was good, but I didn't understand why they kept the drug dealers plot on ice. It seemed like filler.
By season 3 it turned into every other TV show where characters are just tools used to express a story rather real people.
I stopped watching a few episodes into season 4 because I couldn't be bothered to care.
I would understand the heaps of praise The Wire gets if it were limited to season 1 (maybe 2 as well), but the reset doesn't seem that good.
But maybe instead I can give you an example of a thing that I hadn’t noticed, but once pointed out, became my favorite thing about the show: the first scene of the first episode of each season is an encapsulation of that whole season’s theme.
(Spoiler) in the first scene of the whole series, McNulty is asking a street kid about another kid, “Snot Boogie,” who had gotten gunned down. The kid explains that their friends had an ongoing dice game, and sometimes Snot would try to steal the money that was on the table. They would chase him down and beat him and go back to the game, and the next night Snot would just do it again. McNulty is incredulous, “if he always tries to steal, why do you let him play? If you keep beating him up, why does he come back?” “You’ve got to let him play. This is America.”
It’s easy to draw the parallel between Snot and the various players of the drug trade, who all play the game, some working their way higher up the ranks than others, but inevitably being beaten down, but they keep playing because it’s the only game in town. But that’s also the cops. Half of the are crooked and the there’s no “exit” and they’re fighting a war that can’t be won. Everyone in this game is Snot Boogie.
The set-up for the second season is even better, and the scene with Snoop and that nailgun... god
I’m going to give the series another watch alongside this podcast that goes through the episodes one at a time. Haven’t listened yet so I can’t vouch, but I’m intrigued. https://overcast.fm/+Zg-euhrSU
I did the same thing, and I'm not sure why. The first couple episodes are fine in retrospect, but at the time... I just couldn't get into them and couldn't keep the characters straight. When I finally did get over that hump though, it turned out to be one of my all-time favorite series.
The first time I watched it the first few episodes felt a little weak (like a network tv cop show), almost gave up on it but glad I didn't.
I suspect a lot of it flies under the radar because The Wire purposefully used a style that wasn't overly pretty, was closer to verite than visually stunning. But there's some great ideas there. The utter commitment to diagetic sound (barring one scene in the first season). The use of complex camera movements and an Altman-esque zoom to provide a documentary or even voyeuristic perspective.
You could make an argument that The Wire is more innovative in filmmaking than a lot of the typical prestige TV, who simply mimicked Hollywood big budget artistry.
Yes! Was that the one where Avon, String, and Stinkum arrive with the cash bonuses? I am rewatching a third time right now and couldn't figure out why it stood out as somewhat clumsy. It even popped into my head while I was driving yesterday. You've just reminded me, so thank you.
There's also the end of season montages, but I'm a lot more forgiving towards non-diegetic music for montages
Some of the background they give is that the cast and crew didn't think there would be a Season 2, that David Simon wrote Season 5 without Dennis Lehane or George Pelecanos, etc.
https://www.theringer.com/way-down-in-the-hole Now that The Ringer has been bought by Spotify you might have to be a subscriber to listen to it.
That's a mouthful.
Basically you're saying that the cops operated questionably due to or because of the conservative government's inability to effectively fight crime?
> morally ambiguous
No character (save some in S5) is totally black or white. Take Omar, for example. When Omar responds to Levy in the S2 courtroom scene, we sympathise with Omar. When Bunk applies almost exactly the same criticism in S3, we don’t.
> institutional ineptitude
The show covers more institutions than just the BPD. S2 covers traditional economics, S3 has politics, S4 education, and S5 media.
> conservative western cultures
I kinda wanted to say ‘America’ here, but that wouldn’t entirely be true. I’m from Glasgow, a city which has been directly compared to the Wire’s version of Baltimore. Look up the ice cream wars.
These problems aren’t uniquely America’s, but are inherent to all (small c) conservative western cultures. Parts of Europe (Scandinavia, Netherlands) have made huge progress through progressive policy. This isn’t an issue of which government is in power - the US had 8 years of Obama, the UK had 13 of Blair/Brown, and made no progress.
> mitigating the effects of crime
The true victims of the drug trade are the bystanders. However, the war on drugs is fought through virtuous motivation - drugs are bad, impure, and destroy people and society. This motivation omits those most affected by the drug trade, the bystanders. Between street dealing, turf wars, and aggressive policing; the drug trade devastates communities.
Actual video from the game doesn't qualify as hype! And the code is rock solid and wicked efficient.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR01YdFtWFI&ab_channel=Facto...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVvXv1Z6EY8&ab_channel=Facto...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqaAjgpsoW8&ab_channel=Facto...
I would say to enjoy the game you really have to play it to the point where you build robots. Factorio is a game that is amazing for many reasons, but to me the main one is exponential growth.
At a certain inflection point you can basically tear down everything you've ever built by hand, and have robots recreate it all in a minute or two.
The combination of blueprints and robots turn the game from some tedium to a game purely of mind and very little tedium.
Also, a lot of the stuff that's kind of tedious and awkward, like laying out complex belt systems, gets a lot easier when you get construction bots and can start building from blueprints. It's like a different game from that point.
A theme of the game seems to be to make the player do things that are hard or laborious but which can be accomplished in an easier way by using the the tools at hand more effectively, or eventually the problems can be worked around with new technology. It's not quite like a puzzle game where you have to solve each problem in front of you correctly before you can advance; rather you can keep advancing until the point where you're overwhelmed by technical debt (e.g. you end up spending most of your time running around fixing train deadlocks).
Not everything that's awkward or hard is a deliberate game mechanic, though. In the 1.1 release they've said they're planning to change some things that have been pain points for users.
It turns out the UI is fairly configurable and after I made it so right click cancels I sort of adapted.
But yes, when I first played it the UI was horrible. It needs some sane defaults like more common RTS games.
I am looking forward to its complexity :)
The multiplayer gameplay also reveals a lot of fundamental truths about collaborative engineering as the player must debate architecture, prioritize and balance between the short term and the long term, join individual efforts into a group product, discover Schelling points, and so on.
You factory isn’t big enough if the game is still very performant ;) The factory must grow.
[0] The overwhelming majority of what you make gets thrown into a blender and turned into Science Juice.
One of my recent side projects has been building out a modded multiplayer server that allows me to sell plots of land to players. My idea is to create a city of player-owned museums and shops, all with the backdrop of a custom story narrative in a high-end designed mall of sorts. My inspiration for doing so has been from watching first person videos of people walking in Japan, wanting to experience that but being unable due to the lock-downs. My favorite aspect has been creating an in-game 'paid' train line that lead the player out of the dense concrete shopping district and into one of the beautiful blue and green tree parks, the visual switch-up makes the experience fantastically enjoyable. I'm not really sure I'll end up making any real income from it but the process has been a complete blast. Playing the game in this fashion feels the same as Minecraft did, just with more automation and potential for world building.
Although not strictly Factorio related, something else I've pursued within the game has been setting up a semi-interactive self in my room. I have a few small monitors all linked up playing, and I just set my character to hang out in various places online. One game sits in a train-world just cruising along, another sits in a beautifully animated forest, another still hangs out on a pristine beach that I found. Sitting inside a small room day after day due to the pandemic has been brutal but this setup has greatly improved my sense of connection to the outside. Apart from getting to look over and see something that is visually appealing (and green now that bleakness of winter is here), I'll occasionally see random people join a server and become friends trying to build something together, it's awesome! My shelf has become an interactive, aquarium, IRC, hybrid, all thanks to this game.
It’s almost a perfect game for a software developer. Unlike software which is difficult to visualize, factorio is all about the visualization. It makes it really easy to see your “hacks”, your “scaling”, and your “async”. It also makes it really easy to see your bugs as well. It’s like working on a program that is always running, in a debugger, but with the ability to dynamically add and change the running code in real time.
Another observation: it’s kind of like Excel. The sheet is always live and the sheet acts as a debugger (you see the data and not the code, you see the outputs not the transforms).
Can’t recommend it enough.
[1] https://twitter.com/sriramk/status/1339257751873064961?s=21
Which is actually pretty true of actual real world environments like SmallTalk.
Rimworld is all about character management and anecdote creation in my view. The challenge and interest is about managing randomness and character driven conflict in a game designed to produce conflict.
They play very differently in my experience.
Rimworld is much more of a social/survival game, with hunting, gathering, cooking, diseases, invaders, exploration, character emotions, etc.
Factorio has basically none of that; it's much more about plumbing together inputs and outputs into increasingly complex and useful items. The survival aspect of Factorio is just that you are surrounded by bugs that will attack you if you pollute too much or antagonize them.
Factorio is fantastic if you love automation and building complex production pipelines. The game gives you incredible control over building and controlling the manufacturing of stuff. The main motivation is to optimize that, and there are many avenues to do so. You care very little about your “person” (the being that you control) except to keep it alive.
Rimworld is much more rich in what you can choose to do, since it’s primarily a story generation game. You have a lot less control over your manufacturing pipeline. You also have to deal with the humanity of your pawns, who need to eat, sleep and enjoy recreation. You have to keep them alive through natural disasters and raids. Your pawns may die but the story doesn’t end there.
They’re really different games. When I get upset with stupidity of pawns and want more precise automation, I switch to factorio. When I get bored with the dreariness of an automated factory churning out trinkets, I switch to rimworld.
It doesn't matter anyway. A good copy can be better than the original.
If you want want an economy simulation MMO then checkout prosperous universe.
I have to imagine that if you tried to take a Factorio mega-factory (like a 1 rocket per minute factory) and load up the equivalent in Satisfactory, with its 3d graphics and off-the-shelf rigid body dynamics, it would crash to desktop immediately.
Don’t get me wrong, Satisfactory looks like a fun game! But nothing can match Factorio’s depth.
Designing big factories in Satisfactory feels awkward - it’s very hard to refactor and redesign because the buildings are so big and you need to build them one by one. The engineer in me is always vaguely dissatisfied with what I make in satisfactory. Satisfactory’s world is beautiful to explore - but that makes it a different sort of game.
And shapez was ok, but it lacks factorio’s loop. In factorio you build things out of what you mine and construct. Shapez needs its artificial level structure to motivate you to do anything - and I find that much less satisfying because it saps my intrinsic motivation. Factorio feels grounded in the world, whereas shapez feels like a puzzle game with almost no constraints.
The factorio modding scene is also incredible. Their are so many alternate ways to play factorio - complete with way deeper tech trees, or a base that teleports between planets every 10 minutes, Seaworld - where you start on a tiny island with nothing but ocean in every direction. And as others have mentioned, the game is rock solid. Multiplayer is an absolute blast.
...and after a few minutes, a new goal comes to mind: Launch one rocket every minute. And that’s when the deep game begins. You’ll need massive power production and manufacturing infrastructure, you’ll start using the online calculators to figure out ratios of this to that, and when you get to 1 rocket per minute, you’ll want to see if you can design a system that does that while running completely untouched for 24 hours.
I experienced exactly what you meant on my first run. Launched a rocket after a lot of slog, and lost interest after that. But I never got to actually use eg the nuclear tech very much, which itself makes me want to go back and try it again.
Personally, I wish there were more combat/enemy dynamics involved rather than “just” insectoids swarming the base. And that’s just one angle: other compelling reasons to build more efficient factories would have made me want to go back too.
I try every now and then to start from scratch, but just the idea of starting from the basics seems so daunting and not motivating enough so I kinda just give up after the first day.
Before that, it was amazing.
"Do I fumble my way forward with my current way of doing things or try this new thing? (struggle struggle) Oh wow!"
One park that I visited on a whim was Capitol Reef, in Utah. My plans for several days backcountry camping in Zion fell through because of snow fall late in season. I had to improvise. Hikers are some of the most friendly people and love sharing knowledge on the trail. One suggested I check out Capitol Reef. What a gem! It was far less crowded than Zion and absolutely gorgeous.
See the parks! Camp there! You'll need to plan 6 months in advance for permits to the most popular destinations.
I can’t tell you how many times I had seen pictures of The Grand Canyon only to be completely overwhelmed when we walked through the parking lot and bam! there it is in all its glory.
I live in Seattle and thus near-ish to Mount Rainer National Park. I love seeing “the mountain out” on sunny days in the city, but being right next to it in the park is unbelievable.
Here’s hoping I have the opportunity to see many others.
I went to Yosemite once mid-summer and it was crowded. Slightly off-season (after school starts for example) and it's a much different experience.
Then, boom. Over night AMD leapfrogged Intel, and now on the third generation has a firm lead in mid range desk top all the way up to high end server silicon. Obviously, Intel has major partnerships with most OEMs, so despite their shortcomings they're still doing strong.
Of course, if ARM or RISCV really is the future this is just a blip. Honestly, I don't see x64 going anywhere for at least 15 years - though hope I can look back at this and roll my eyes someday...
There's this weird obsession with blaming AMD shortcomings on Intel...
AMD can't produce enough chips for OEMs so they get left out in places. End of story.
It's fun to joke about "14nm++++++" but it just so happens actually being able to stock your chips is a pretty big competitive advantage.
Take for example the 'Ultrabook' branding. It's an Intel trademark, and for a few years that word was _everywhere_. However, to get the shiny badge on your system you had to give a lot of control to Intel over the design and characteristics [1]. That's not to say AMD doesn't do the same thing to a degree - They own the term "APU" and will never let Intel refer to an i7 with 'Iris Xe Graphics' as an APU, Never.
The point is that Intel for a long time had leverage over most of the PC industry and used it to get exclusivity over certain parts of the market.
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[1] https://www.eweek.com/mobile/intel-ultrabook-partners-look-f...
I mean take things like the Ultrabook... you realize your article is literally a decade old?
I remember those days Intel was literally inventing a term and paying developers to come up with "ultrabook app ideas" and stuff. Now the usage of the term is pretty much toothless: https://store.hp.com/us/en/dlp/amd-ultrabook
And that was a bizarre example to choose anyways if you're willing to dig into ancient history, there was a point OEMs were afraid to work with AMD because of Intel...
-
Now a days their iron grip has waned, but AMD literally cannot produce. It's that simple.
And regarding AMD's production capabilities, that seems to be old news. According to a report [1] from August, there don't seem to be any major logistical issues anymore. They've massively scaled up output from TSMC, at some points this year making up about 20% of their production output [2]. Whether this is on the same level as Intel, it's hard to say - If you have information comparing them I'd love to see it.
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[1] https://wccftech.com/exclusive-the-state-of-amds-supply-chai...
[2] https://hothardware.com/news/amd-7nm-production-at-tsmc-set-...
I dislike when I'm talking about something and start to get the impression the person rebutting is just googling random stuff to throw out and see what sticks.
Because then it falls on me to apply context to everything they say (since JIT googling doesn't give you that)
For example, anyone claiming that their mobile production issues are "old news" as HP is literally cancelling Ryzen based laptop orders and pitching Intel replacements a couple of months after that article https://phonemantra.com/amd-ryzen-mobile-shortage-confirmed-..., is obviously not up to date on the situation.
And I mean you're bringing up TSMC numbers but ignoring the fact consoles are a large chunk of that output and the fact the 20 percent number means literally nothing in a vacuum.
AMD is a public company, it's in their best interest to always say things will be better on the horizon.
-
The fact is OEMs are supply constrained on Ryzen laptops and not on Intel laptops. To the point they're retconning Ryzen skus.
This damages AMDs relationship with OEMs and is not Intel's fault.
I'm going to leave it at that.
- Typed from my Laptop running Linux
Personally, I don't particularly care whether my computer runs RISC-V or not (for the reason above, it's only open source at the edges) - I'm more concerned with the openness of the rest of the machine
Maybe via Stadia :).
ARM generates less than $2B in revenue. Apple posts $275B in revenue. Are ARM's fees just a rounding error to anyone with scale? And ARM knows that it needs to remain competitive on its licensing fees to make sure that people don't move to RISC-V.
I'd guess that a lot of ARM's revenue actually comes from the processor design, not the ISA. ARM will license you cores. RISC-V won't license you cores since they're not designing them.
It's possible that RISC-V will see great things, but I'm kinda thinking that ARM's license fees probably aren't much. Apple especially wouldn't be paying much since they're not licensing cores. Anyone that is licensing cores would need to replace that R&D with their own - which might be more expensive than it's worth. Qualcomm seems to still lean on ARM's designs.
And I think there's certainly a big head start in optimizing things for ARM that will be tough to overcome.
I just think it seems unlikely that current customers will drop ARM to save 0.1% of their revenue - especially if they need to start taking on the costs of designing the chips themselves, contributing to compilers, etc.
The exception I can see is China. China might want a free-and-clear route to their own processors without worrying about other nations denying them access to IP.
I don't really, I was just keeping the comment short and avoiding the ire of any RISC-V fans. It could be either, but it's important to remember that instruction sets don't usually win solely based on merit.
For example, if you read most compiler books - because they were written in the early 2000s or late 90s, they spend almost all of their time discussing various RISC architectures (particularly the Alpha). The (then) 386 is usually mentioned in passing, ARM isn't even mentioned at all.
(You probably can guess what I'm getting towards) They're all dead, somehow ARM lives. It's also not really a question of money, Itanium wasn't that bad and Intel couldn't save it.
If I were God, the only CPU that I really really want to see make it to Silicon (even just to see if they're right) is the Mill. Even if they can't walk the walk it's a really nice concept (I think the belt will see use after their patent expires)
ISAs change, and there was a recent article written about this particular situation too: https://codasip.com/2020/12/22/does-isa-ownership-matter-a-t...
I'm not sure Risc-V will win out over ARM, but if it does, I think the acquisition by nvidia will play a big part of it. It really depends on how open and cooperative Nvidia is with ARM IP now that they have it.
To improve yields they used a number of 8-core "chiplets" manufactured in 7nm tied together with a 14nm I/O die. This meant that while a certain blue competitor was still trying to get 28+ core monolithic dies, AMD could scale to huge core counts without reducing yields by tying together more chiplets.
Their 64-core 128-thread Threadripper workstation parts should have yields almost exactly as good as their low-end CPUs. The Xeon W 28-core monolithic monster? Not so much.
AMD did a lot of things right this time. Intel's got some catching up to do.
(Yes, I'm aware of Samsung.)
GloFo isn't really interested in building anything super competitive moving forward either - they announced they weren't going to pursue 7nm.
I think Intel's still pretty dead set of getting back into the foundry game, doing so is kind of necessary for defense contracts right?
Maybe we'll see On Semi get in the game. They did pick up IBM's Fab 10 from GloFo last year.
But both delivered on that hype. They've both done extremely well in terms of reviews (97% review score average on Metacritic) and sales (best selling games in their respective series), and delivered absolutely magical experiences that made the Nintendo Switch extraordinarily successful in its first year on the market.
Really funny how that works out.
Extremely high levels of popularity + no competition + unambitious creators that are out of touch with their audience/userbase can equal a mediocre product or series that just ticks along without any attempt to live up to its own promise.
And then I played it and holy hot damn was I wrong, I think it will go down as one of my favorites of all time. So so so well executed, the world never once felt empty and pointless, as was one of my main issue with other attempts at open world. Just an amazing title.
Mario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYJx5xt2cB0 Zelda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T15-xfUr8z4
I think that eariler titles in both series had better balance between quantity and quality of content and what I like best about both titles is the mechanics while the content it acts upon feels sort of thin.
Fanboys will be happy regardless.
As time goes on BOTW is being realized as lackluster. Empty, bad graphics, same story, boring environment.
It both treats it's subject matter incredibly intelligently, yet never tries to show off with braininess and focuses on memorable stage characters and top notch songs.
It's so good on so many layers.
it was more than worth it -- it was absolutely beautiful (although tiresome -- it's three hours of music with just a small intermission).
i watched the disney+ version and it's great. but it's not the same due to the angles they chose -- it feels more like a movie, than a broadway play.
Something about Rent aged poorly, especially if you saw it around 2009 during the recession. It was just hard to relate to characters who had no interest in work struggling to pay rent in a gentrifying slum while in the present day, people were struggling to pay rent and find a job.
I don't like the pacing of Wicked, but the staging and performance of Defying Gravity is amazing. I can't remember exactly what it was, but there was morality lesson that felt shoehorned in. Maybe Doctor Dillamond was an allegory on racism? I enjoy Wicked, but I felt like it need more work.
Phantom of the Opera is ok, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. I'm also not really an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.
I later discovered that there was a third cabinet battle, which was cut from the final script. You can hear a demo of it on the Hamilton Mixtape album. It features the main cast discussing a letter from Ben Franklin asking for slavery to be abolished. On the one hand, I can see why it was cut - 3 might be too many cabinet meetings - but it adds so much to the thematic tragedy to have Hamilton quietly give up his morals for practicality. He starts act 2 with his youth, his career, his family, and his idealism; by the end, he loses the first three, and the foreshadowing was there for him to lose the fourth, but it doesn't have the payoff.
The show that WAS over-hyped and did NOT live up to it for me was Lion King. I saw it back in 2002-ish and was very disappointed. Sure the costumes were cool but the rest of the production was minimal and boring.
1) is health data, in a way a computer or phone just can't do. It tracks things like heartrate that a phone + heartrate strap is too convoluted for, for non-athletes. Plus it's all-day and quite accurate. My phone counts my steps in my pocket for example, but not when I'm at home or in the office. My watch can differentiate when I'm cycling to work with my phone in my jacket and detect exercise, whereas my phone may think I'm in a tram or on a motorised scooter.
2) is gamification of exercise. Closing rings, notifications, nudges, vibrations, competitions. It all demands attention and lets you 'jump in' from the wrist much easier, than an app on a phone. It's been a great extrinsic motivational tool to jump-start a change in behaviour for a few months, that can then turn into a long-term intrinsic habit.
3) freedom from the phone. You can open digital locks with the watch, pay with the watch, listen to music or podcasts, get directions on maps, make calls, send (dictated) messages, keep an eye on your mail and calendar etc. I can reliable leave my phone at home, or just leave it in my jacket when I'm visiting friends. Notifications can be set to only allow priority ones in certain settings. It's the first time in 10 years that I'm moving away from having a phone available and in-vision all the time. The Watch doesn't induce mindless scrolling and consumption in a way a phone does, and can be configured to only demand your attention for things you want it to (e.g. certain notifications).
It's definitely not quite where I'd like it to be. Things like battery life, looks, software etc, there's much to gain still. But as a form factor I'm pretty convinced I will be using this for many years to come, and getting upgrades when they become available.
First time series 6 user by the way.
Not sure I'd have gotten it otherwise. But at the same time, it's pretty easy to rationalise any cost when looking at it as a monthly payment haha. A 3-year usage and a 20% resale value on the SE ($280) will get you a $6 a month price. If that improves your daily activity by just 5 or 10%, that's probably the cheapest medical intervention in your life, ever. That's probably why the insurance companies offer cashbacks, it's a cool model. They can give me a watch for free every few years and get in return a person who, on average, spends >1x the apple watch less on healthcare costs, every year.
At least for me it is. And thus I get around 2 days battery life with a 4 year old series 2 watch.
Their official test includes "45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth"[0] - so unless you plan on doing that you can easily expect double the battery time.
It doesn’t take long to get a reasonable charge on it. I usually keep it around 80% at most anyway. It gets me through the day at 80% and through the night since I use it for sleep tracking and alarm.
My colleague gets 24 hours battery life on her series 6. Still uncomfortable compared to the usual week+ battery life Garmins.
On the cheaper side, another colleague has an Amazfit Blip Lite which lasts 30 days on a 2 hour charge and can withstand up to 30 meters underwater.
I think the difference is the Series 6 screen never fully turns off. I imagine disabling "always on" mode would likely push battery life much higher, but that's just a guess
This plus the first few Google search results tell me it's not going to work without an iPhone.
This is why I do not buy into the Apple ecosystem, even if individual elements are superior to competitors. I do not want to be completely constricted to one ecosystem. My world involves Microsoft, Google, Steam, Epic, Blizzard, Logitech, Fossil, Asus, HP, Lenovo, etc. and I will continue to swap in and out components as desired.
But I am sad that WearOS options are generally so terrible (at least in performance and features, though some of the physical designs are much better than anything else). And a little jealous of the happy M1-based Macbook users with their battery life!
Ah to dream of having your cake and eating it, too. But we each must choose our own collection of compromises!
If I just wear it without running anything, then yes, it can last days. But if all I want is to track heart rate, sleep, and such, I can get that with a much cheaper watch.
* I can answer calls while driving and not have to fumble around for my phone while driving my truck (The wife's SUV has fancy bluetooth integration)
* I can open and close my garage from my watch.
* I can voice message my family through Messages.
I only wish that the battery life were much longer than it is and that Apple could settle on one method of charging their devices, especially in vehicles with limited room.
It just collects dust now.
- The health tracking and gamification of exercise was somewhere between meh and useless for me. I don’t have exercise issues.
- The freedom from the phone has potential, but the ostensible ease of use just isn’t worth the hassle of wearing a watch. I’m ok just pulling out my phone.
- The deep breathing option was probably the app i liked most. Now I just do deep breathing exercises at regular times during the day for, what I assume, are similar effects.
I can certainly imagine that it can improve the quality of life for some (many?) people, but I don’t find myself to be one of these people.
That said, I really wish I did have a profound experience with it. I’m always down for good quality of life improvements.
If anyone has ideas for using the Apple Watch that some people seem to miss, please let me know. I’m willing to give it another go.
Contactless payments are fairly nice as you can double tap the button, and hold the watchface over a reader, no need to get out your wallet and find the card you want to pay with.
Back when going out with others was a thing, it’s calculator has features for tips and splitting checks.
Being able to listen to podcasts and audio-books on my watch while going for walks and running errands has been great. With Apple Pay I don't even need to take my wallet with me and can just tap with my watch.
Also the reminder to "close my rings" and being able to enter "competitions" with friends has been a great motivator for me to exercise.
The Apple Watch is much more versatile and general purpose. Having access to Siri on my wrist has been pretty helpful, paired with AirPods and I can navigate most of life without my phone.
We’re quite habituated to charging our phones every night. Doing the same with your watch (especially if you purchase a stand for it), is a very low friction habit to follow.
What is BT?
As a fitness tracker I'd say it's superior to the apple watch.
But to me, while a fitness-focused watch does signal sportiness etc, which are great qualities, so does a heartrate strap or sweat band. You wouldn't wear it in the office, at a dinner, or at a party. Of course those are some extreme examples that aren't 1:1 comparable with a garmin. But the general principle to me is the same, to me a garmin 945 looks great on people doing sports, and out-of-place on people not wearing sports clothes.
I think this looks really classy for example, and could easily be worn on something casual (that's not sport clothes) or formal, without looking out of place: https://media.karousell.com/media/photos/products/2019/04/15...
The way that the watch is mostly screen and that screen can show a style compatible with any situation, with swappable bands, is a lot more stylish and versatile than something bulky, with a very large bezel, limited watch face choices, a dim low-resolution screen, often not always-on etc. (not sure 'bout the 945 on all of these btw, just my general impression).
But it's just that in Norway, sports wear is so in fashion that it bleeds over to everyday- and even formal clothing. Instead of a wool sweater, one wears a sporty wool baselayer like "kari traa". Instead of sun glasses it's sports glasses. Instead of a winter coat it's a ski jacket etc.
Well that's what I told my brother, don't get one because you do sports 3-4 times a week anyway. For me it was a motivational thing, seeing my trends in activity, getting nudges, doing competitions with friends, seeing my Vo2max go up over-time, are all great, but unnecessary for my brother.
> the ostensible ease of use just isn’t worth the hassle of wearing a watch. I’m ok just pulling out my phone.
I'd say there's a mix-up here. The watch isn't easy to use versus the phone, which is the primary reason that it allows freedom from a digital device that demands constant attention. Secondly, if you're okay pulling out your phone, then you're really saying you don't have any wish to be free from your phone, so there's an audience mismatch here.
The freedom from the phone first requires you to actually agree that you need it, for many of us that's the case. If you do, the second part is being able to leave your phone at home when you go for a walk, go to the gym, go see friends, go clubbing etc. But for many that's a step too far, without any alternative offering functionality like payments, music, maps, messages, calls. The watch offers that, but in a way that's not super easy to use, but will get the job done. This is why the watch will never be a place where you scroll through social media for hours, or refresh your 5 news apps for the news junkies among us, but the easy-to-use phone, will be.
These things are not life changing, but they have their fun use cases. If you can accept that it’s not going to 10x your productivity and just want something technically neat maybe you’ll find a use for it again.
Or not, and you can just sell it for a quick buck :p
I thought I might only wear it when I was training, but it turns out having information on my heart rate all day long is super interesting, and I'm really happy I have it.
Also I have turned off most of the notifications, but having the ones I want on my wrist without taking out my phone is actually super nice.
They don't allow your phone to show Fitness+ on the TV through HDMI, nor through airplay. The phone screen is just way too small.
So what's left are iPads, which can be a really great experience, particularly on the 12 inch pro, but it's a shame they don't allow Macbooks... I'm okay with the buy-in to some extent but man... A watch, phone and an apple tv is necessary, all from the same company, plus a subscription just to do a video-assisted workout that shows your heartrate on the screen? That's a pretty insane proposition. Would've been great if they allowed more options or third-party stuff. Just casting from my iPhone would've been a good start, or casting on my macbook... Honestly it's pretty ridiculous.
Happy Macbook, iPhone, Apple Watch and Airpod Pro user, otherwise.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/14/apple-fitness-plus-no-a...
1) activity tracking is fake. Turn over on sofa, get told "congrats! you finished your activity"
2) sleep tracking is fake. Forget to wear it, get told "You slept great!
3) water proof is useless. I bought it because I was going to be surfing and wanted to know if it was close to time to meet up with others. But, while it is water proof you can't use it if the screen is wet
4) Not good for telling time - because often I'd twist my wrist and the face would not light up, try again fail, try again fail, RAGE! get out other hand to manually wake it up
Sold it 2 months after I got it.
It’s great! I silence the hell out of my phone (on top of having almost all notifications off) so the watch vibrations are useful to me for not missing messages I care about.
Super easy to read 2FA codes through SMS without digging up the phone. The LastPass Authenticator has a watch integration but it’s never worked for me. I’m sure there are other authenticator apps that work for the watch though.
Logging workouts is easy, it’s fun to compare rings with my partner but we’re not serious about it and don’t really need the watch to get motivated about being active.
Hands down my favorite feature is surprisingly the maps integration. If you just ignore the baseless memes about “Apple Maps bad” (works fine for me these days, but I saw how bad it was at its inception back in the day too) and just use it, you get the watch integration for free too. The vibrations for left/right turn are a very nice feature that don’t require averting attention at all, but you have the option of viewing the watch for a quick preview of the maps route (distance to next event and a visual, i.e. right three lanes to exit right).
Just some feedback from a guy without strong opinions for or against the thing.
To play on a TV you’ll need a chromecast ultra and the Stadia controller ($100) https://store.google.com/us/product/stadia
Source: I also bought Stadia for Cyberpunk
It just has to be recognized as an HTML5 gamepad (there are various HTML5 tester sites online)
Lucky you, I can't even play on most TVs hooked as-is via HDMI because of horrendous render lag.
Makes me think people that say this have never played on a high end PC, which in turn has lower latency compared to a last gen console. And that's considering the fact that even modern PC have a TON of latency. NVIDIA seems to be working towards that, thankfully.
I bet playing Quake 3 Arena multiplayer on Stadia would be noticeably worse that on a PC from 20 years ago.
I mainly play twitchy shooters on a fairly high-end PC (CSGO, Tarkov, Q3A back in the day) and was super impressed with Stadia to play games like Assassin's Creed. It felt like I had my PC anywhere, but I attribute that to the forgiving latency requirements for the game.
I wouldn't expect CSGO to work as well (though I'd definitely try it).
5ms ping to your local Stadia server is at least 5ms of additional latency compared to a high end PC. Add virtualisation costs, CPU steal time, packet loss, video compression and decompression etc for another measurable increase.
I'm not sure if I can tell the difference between 32 ms and 37 ms.
And the Stadia market isn't people with fast monitors, Ethernet connected and ultra stable internet, but high latency TVs, avg tier Wifi, slow hardware to decode video.
I meant to assume 5ms CPU time: 12 input + 5 processing + 15 output = 32. Add 5 for network round-trip to get 37.
> 5ms roundtrip
5 ms network round-trip or less is common in offices or homes with fiber. Here's ICMP ping 1.1.1.1 from my office just now: rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4.075/4.700/6.407/0.459 ms. (UDP wouldn't be so different.) Of course, on wifi or low-speed broadband it wouldn't be so fast.
> high latency TVs
High-latency displays makes network latency less noticeable relative to a conventional console game (but more noticeable relative to a PC game on a fast-updating screen).
It's surprising people still don't get this. Operating a computer miles away will always be slower than operating a computer centimetres away. You can be smart about it and optimise as much as possible, but Google isn't running alien tech that magically is orders of magnitude better than consumer hardware so that it overcomes the distance issue.
- You can go to a friend's apartment with a Chromecast and just start playing games YOU own like CyberPunk & Assasins Creed within seconds on their TV (assuming they have a controller or you brought your own)
- You can go to Stadia.com on Chrome and just start playing these games from the browser using the Keyboard/Mouse
- The other day I was parked at a Target and I was able to play Cyberpunk on my phone using my phone's internet connection
- You don't have to keep worrying about constantly updating hardware, downloading game patches, deleting stored games etc.
- Time to load the game between saved checkpoints and missions is also much faster since the games run on a superior hardware.
For example, the Neo Geo AES launched at a cost of $650 (~$1300 in today's dollars), with games costing $200 or more back then. Some versions of afterburner climax have a servo equipped chair which can tilt on multiple axes as well as vibrate, police 911 has body position sensors, and many of the music games have hardware that's completely impractical for home.
From that perspective, the games as a service makes more sense. Stadia doesn't really offer any of that, the games are the same as any other platform.
You can’t take the games out (or resell them) so it’s a hard sell for me.
Except YOU don’t own them, google does, which exactly why I would never get stadia.
The current sale matches steam for the games I checked.
Library size is still a concern.
I found the library of games generally unappealing. I did play a few titles, including Player Unknown. The stuttering and lag in the game reminded me of playing Quake 3 Arena on a 56K circa 1999.
Also, graphically the game wouldn’t run at my monitors 1440p. The graphics generally looked washed out. I thought it was just a poorly built game, but then I saw gameplay (non Stadia) on YouTube and realized the Stadia version was itself awful.
I want is a service that:
* Lets me play my existing library of games (what I own on Steam, Origin, Battle.net)
* Has League of Legends
* Streams in 1440p 144fps
I haven't found anything that does this.
Do you have source for this? This sounds incorrect. My impression is that the Stadia Pro is capable of sending 4K, assuming the game developer can optimize their game to run at a good framerate with 4K.
It is also worth mentioning that ray-tracing will offer new depths for highdef textures and sophisticated lighting effects so I don't expect this trend to change soon.
[1] https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-docs/wiki/Setu...
You could try wrangling 1440p144 from your hardware, not sure how high quality it can get
144 fps is one frame every 7ms. Are there even any residential internet offers where you can get a ping that low to anything on the internet?
There are some free games included, of course, but I didn't find anything I was interested in playing there.
What I want is something like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, where you pay a fixed price per month to play the full library of games, with nothing else on top of that. A Netflix for games, if you will. I don't want to shell out $60 for Cyberpunk 2077.
(The absence of an easy way to trial games on consoles is problematic, in my opinion. I purchased Cyberpunk on my Xbox One before I realized how bad it performs on that console, and fortunately I was able to get a refund.)
Unfortunately, Xbox Game Pass is predictably hobbled by a very limited library (and they keep removing good stuff), and the fact that the games are tied to the platform they've been developed for.
What I'd like is basically Game Pass + Stadia.
My answers would be Mr Robot, especially after seeing what happened with Game Of Thrones. Having a story that is planned out from start to finish is miles better than improvising as one goes along;
and also React, especially hooks. Hooks are an incredible mechanism for creating compositional lifecycles, something I've seen only discussed really in this Flutter implementation issue [1], and it should be seen as an amazing contribution to complex tree management systems.
At least for me - though I think most viewers felt the same way. To each their own.
Check out Adam Haile's S.js and Surplus if you want a better example of this approach (which came LONG before "hooks"). Surplus also tops performance charts consistently, and has done so for years. Really underrated framework that is lightweight and battle tested.
I think it's the way you're reading the answers (and the question). If you look at it as "What was hyped to you and lived up to the hype when you finally experienced it", then the answers make sense and there's no confusion.
But as more information has come out it seems like the hype has actually increased.
If I was mainly writing and doing some simple graphical work I’d ditch my other devices in a heartbeat.
As a Chromebook fan (and I used one as my daily driver), it seems like Apple has out-Chromebooked all Chromebooks with the M1 MBA. Unless AMD or Qualcomm pulls a rabbit out of their collective hats in the next 6 months, the MBA will be my next laptop.
They're both locked down with fury and will eventually be rendered useless due to no software updates.
You can attempt to install Linux to those but... Will you succeed?
The M1 seems to fit the bill. But I'm hesitant to buy into something that I can't run linux on.
Exactly. Apple is even introducing further restrictions on macOS, to turn it into a closed system like ios totally under Apple's control. (They've already crippled all application firewalls so that they cannot block any apple authorised software from accessing the internet, and they can even bypass VPNs, all in the marketing speak of "security" while the real reason is to better spy on its users).
Not really. Apple's vice is the tendency to lock down their platforms too much and we're seeing this with the new laptops; their track record with regards to privacy is pretty good.
So was Google's. Till they decided to screw their users. Once bitten, twice shy.
If Apple was serious about user privacy, it wouldn't be crippling application firewall on the new macOS to allow Apple apps to bypass them, even if the user is explicitly blocking them. Nor would they be forcing us to create a unique id to track and record our every activity on their device (yes, they treat it as their device by giving you an illusion of ownership). Nor would they be crippling Safari to not allow you to block all coookies or cripple its extension apis that would have allowed better ad blockers and trackers to be developed. Nor would they be forcing us to use App stores, forcing themselves in between u users and developers to gauge us both of money, while also invading our privacy.
Apple Silicon was hyped and that hype was backed by some early benchmarks; I still was sceptical because it goes against all my Ryzen logic essentially :D
Got my hands on the Air M1 this week finally and this thing is absolutely impossible. Single-core math benchmarks (scimark4) are 10-15% faster than my trusty ryzen 3900X. Synthetic tests apart - C/C++ compilation is more than 2 (two!) times faster than macbook pro with 6core i7 CPU, that is a huge deal for me. All that with passive cooling!
On a different not another hyped thing that I really want (and waiting for) is a new Raspberry Pi 400 - it is a quite capable tiny computer embedded in a keyboard, those things are a piece of beauty I think :)
There are still some rough edges: for serious development a lot of things are not quite there yet: e.g. last time I checked, there's no native release for NodeJS, and home-brew is still hit-or-miss. A lot of things work with Rosetta, but it surely takes more tweaking and trial and error to get things running than normal. But I've been programming mostly in Rust lately, and that works flawlessly on nightly, so I haven't really thought about compatibility since I was kicking the tires the second day I had it. YMMV depending on which tools you use.
All in all, I think this is the most I have really had fun using a laptop since I got my first MBA in 2012 or so. It was so light to travel with, and powerful enough for everything I needed, so it pretty quickly replaced my other laptop for pretty much everything.
Marketing can do that. And as Apple seems to be betting its future on ARM chips, you can bet that they will "market" the hell out of it.
- Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. The Bible (especially certain books like Ecclesiastes or Proverbs), The Quran, The Upanishads, to name a few. Again, don’t just go in blind, or you’ll walk away thinking none of it makes any sense.
- Lifting weights is indeed worth the hype, and its benefits are more diffuse than just “being able to lift heavy things.”
- In terms of old books that are made into modern sci-fi films, I’ve found Philip K. Dick to be absolutely worth the hype. Don’t think I’ve read a bad story by him.
Interesting. About 10 years ago I was tired of modern cinema and completely stopped watching new films. After some pause I decided to start watching classic cinema from 1930 onward in more or less chronological order (in the last year i've stopped at ~1800 movies, up to 1995).
In general, the quality of 1932-1942 american cinema (and, to a lesser degree, 1945-1950) far exceeded my expectations. And, while Citizen Kane is a very good film and deserves to be seen (it was actually one of the few "critically acclaimed" classic films that I've actually enjoyed), but when seen in context of what was filmed at the time, Citizen Kane doesn't really stand out among its contemporaries that much. A lot of technical details (but not all) that are praised by modern critics were more or less a common thing back at the time. I'd argue that Kane wasn't even the best film of the 1941 year (Sullivan's Travel was better and H.M. Pulham, Esq its equal) and definitely not the best film of the 1930-1950 "golden age" that ended at a very high point with Sunset Blvd. before plunging into the abyss in 1950s.
That's all of course only my opinion.
On a related note, if you enjoyed Citizen Kane, I'd highly recommend to see a soviet film from 1962 Nine Days in One Year. One of the most visually stunning b/w films in my experience. Thematically different, but stylistically very similar.
I’m not sure what a modern equivalent would look like, but imagine a $200 million studio film that eloquently attacks the heads of CNN, The NY Times, and another half-dozen top media firms. That sort of thing would never get made today.
Thanks for the other suggestion though, I’ll look into it for sure!
Most critics would, though. And I've never heard that its importance is in any way tied to its production. Welles took film from "filmed stage plays" and literally opened up the genre. He ripped up floorboards to get the right perspective. He innovated direction right and left.
The only aspect of the film being about Hearst was that its debut was canned, distribution was shot, and he would never (really) be allowed to make another film again.
Anyway, here's some from my list from the last year (the list of ones I didn't like is MUCH longer and includes many that are highly rated on IMDB)
"Now, Voyager" (1942)
"Boom Town" (1940)
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1947)
"The Little Princess" (1939)
"Destry Rides Again" (1939)
"Baby Face" (1933)
"Adam's Rib" (1949)
"In a Lonely Place" (1950)
"It Happened One Night" (1934)
"The Woman of the Year" (1942)
"The Awful Truth" (1937)
"Broken Arrow" (1950)
"The Lady Eve" (1941)
"His Girl Friday" (1940)
"12 O'Clock High" (1949)
"You Can't Take It With You" (1938)
"The Far County" (1954)
"Random Harvest" (1942)
"The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)
"The Philadelphia Story" (1940)
"Cry Danger" (1951)
"This Gun For Hire" (1942)
"Casablanca" (1942). I didn't get it at 23 where as I shook from crying at 50. Basically I needed to truly feel Rick's loss and what he was going through (Bogart's character). At 23 I didn't. At 50 I did. I suppose you could have similar experiences to Rick at a younger age or you could never have them and then not have it do anything for you.
I don't think any of them are "lesser known". Basically I just look up IMDB. If it's rated > 7 and sounds mildly interesting I'll take a look. Tons of them don't work for me. Those above did. As recent examples of ones that didn't "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947), "Waterloo Bridge" (1940), "The Bishop's Wife" (1947), "Spellbound" (1945), "Fort Apache" (1948). Those are just from the last 2 weeks (^^;)
Anyway, If you are interested in classic movies I think the best way to start is with Frank Capra (1932 - American Madness, 1933 - Lady for a Day, 1934 - It Happened One Night, 1936 - Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 1938 - You Can't Take It with You, 1939 - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), Preston Sturges (1940 - The Great McGinty, 1940 - Christmas in July, 1941 - Sullivan's Travels), some of Myrna Loy & William Powell films (1934 - Thin Man, 1936 - After the Thin Man, 1936 - Libeled Lady) and possibly Charlie Chaplin later films (1931 - City Lights, 1952 - Limelight). Continue to
Dramas: 1957 - Le notti di Cabiria - Federico Fellini; 1957 - Il Grido - Michelangelo Antonioni; 1957 - Paths of Glory - Stanley Kubrick; 1952 - Ikiru - Akira Kurosawa; 1954 - A Big Family - Iosif Kheifits; 1951 - The Browning Version - Anthony Asquith; 1959 - Les quatre cents coups - Francois Truffaut; 1959 - Room At The Top - Jack Clayton; 1962 - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Tony Richardson; 1962 - Nine Days in a Year - Mikhail Romm; 1960 - The Lady with the Dog - Iosif Kheifits; 1962 - Il Sorpasso - Dino Risi; 1961 - La Ragazza con la valigia - Valerio Zurlini; 1948 - Ladri di biciclette - Vittorio De Sica; 1945 - Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne - Robert Bresson; 1936 - Dodsworth - William Wyler; 1937 - La Grande Illusion - Jean Renoir; 1940 - City for Conquest - Anatole Litvak; 1941 - Citizen Kane - Orson Welles; 1941 - H.M. Pulham, Esq - King Vidor; 1946 - The Best Years of Our Lives - William Wyler; 1942 - Now, Voyager - Irving Rapper; 1942 - Random Harvest - Mervyn LeRoy; 1960 - The Apartment - Billy Wilder; 1950 - Sunset Blvd. - Billy Wilder; 1962 - Lonely Are the Brave - David Miller; 1964 - The Americanization of Emily; 1965 - The Hill - Sidney Lumet; 1966 - A Man for All Seasons - Fred Zinnemann; 1966 - Nayak - Satyajit Ray; 1968 - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Robert Ellis Miller; 1971 - The Hospital - Arthur Hiller; 1975 - Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick; 1975 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Milos Forman; 1977 - Saturday Night Fever - John Badham; 1979 - ...And Justice for All - Norman Jewison.
Comedies: 1940 - The Shop Around The Corner - Ernst Lubitsch; 1939 - Destry Rides Again - George Marshall; 1950 - Father of the Bride - Vincente Minnelli; 1940 - Pride and Prejudice - Robert Z. Leonard; 1939 - Day-Time Wife - Gregory Ratoff; 1934 - Little Miss Marker - Alexander Hall; 1935 - The Gilded Lily - Wesley Ruggles; 1935 - If You Could Only Cook - William A. Seiter; 1935 - Ruggles of Red Gap - Leo McCarey; 1936 - My Man Godfrey - Gregory La Cava; 1937 - Easy Living - Mitchel Liesen; 1937 - Topper - Norman Z. McLeod; 1938 - Merrily We Live - Norman Z. McLeod; 1940 - My Favorite Wife - Garson Kanin; 1941 - Ball of Fire - Howard Hawks; 1941 - It Started with Eve - Henry Koster; 1941 - Charley's Aunt - Archie Mayo; 1942 - Larceny, Inc. - Lloyd Bacon; 1942 - The Big Street - Irving Reis; 1942 - The Major and the Minor - Billy Wilder; 1943 - The More the Merrier - George Stevens; 1948 - Sitting Pretty - Walter Lang; 1947 - Miracle on 34th Street - George Seaton; 1947 - Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House - H.C. Potter; 1949 - Little Women - Mervyn LeRoy; 1955 - Marty - Delbert Mann; 1956 - Spring on Zarechnaya Street - Marlen Khutsiev; 1957 - Porte Des Lilas - Rene Clair; 1958 - Mon Oncle - Jascques Tati; 1959 - Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder; 1960 - Make Mine Mink - Robert Asher; 1963 - Sunday in New York - Peter Tewksbury; 1963 - Il Giovedi - Dino Risi; 1963 - Three Plus Two - Genrikh Oganisyan; 1964 - Walking the Streets of Moscow - Georgiy Daneliya; 1964 - A Hard Day's Night - Richard Lester; 1968 - The Odd Couple - Gene Saks; 1977 - The Goodbye Girl - Herbert Ross; 1978 - Same Time Next Year - Robert Mulligan
Crime/Action: 1969 - The Italian Job - Peter Collinson; 1974 - The Taking of Pelham One Two Three - Joseph Sargent; 1967 - Le Samurai - Jean-Pierre Melville; 1960 - Le Trou - Jacques Becker; 1960 - Un taxi pour Tobrouk - Denys de La Patelliere; 1970 - They Call Me Trinity - Enzo Barboni; 1973 - Papillon - Franklin J. Schaffner; 1973 - The Sting - George Roy Hill; 1973 - The Last Detail - Hal Ashby; 1975 - The Great Waldo Pepper - George Roy Hill; 1975 - Three Days of the Condor - Sydney Pollack; 1976 - The Seven-Per-Cent Solution - Herbert Ross; 1977 - Capricorn One - Peter Hyams; 1977 - Smokey and the Bandit - Hal Needham; 1939 - The Roaring Twenties - Raoul Walsh; 1939 - Beau Geste - William A. Wellman; 1939 - Stagecoach - John Ford; 1941 - The Gay Falcon - Irving Reis; 1941 - I Wake Up Screaming - Bruce Humberstone; 1941 - Johnny Eager - Mervyn LeRoy
I didn't like any film noir but three: 1946 - Nobody Lives Forever - Jean Negulesco; 1946 - The Killers - Robert Siodmak; 1956 - The Killing - Stanley Kubrick. There also were two great spoofs 1947 - My Favorite Brunette - Elliott Nugent and 1971 - Gumshoe - Stephen Frears.
I don't enjoy musicals, westerns and 'epic' historical films, so I can't recommend anything.
Funnily enough, my favourite old Hollywood genres are musicals and westerns.
I grew up only really being exposed to post 1960 movie musicals which I never really liked. About seven years ago I thought, "I've never really watched any old movie musicals", and just started watching them. It was a revelation to discover the (to me) amazing stuff from the 30s, 40s and 50s. My ideal movie musical was made in the 1930s, stars Fred Astaire, and has songs by the Gershwins, Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.
Some highlights for me would be:
42nd Street (1933) Not the first `backstage musical' but sets the template. One of the things I love about old movie musicals is that people don't randomly start singing and dancing: they sing and/or dance because they are singers or songwriters or dancers or choreographers creating or rehearsing or performing.
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) More Busby Berkeley.
Footlight Parade (1933) More Busby Berkeley. James Cagney stars.
On the Avenue (1937)
Shall we Dance (1937)
Lady be Good (1941)
You Were Never Lovelier (1942)
The Gang's All Here (1943)
Anchors Aweigh (1945)
The Pirate (1948) Don't listen to the naysayers, this film to me is pretty much perfect.
An American in Paris (1951) Contains the amazing sequence in which Oscar Levant is portrayed conducting, playing every instrument, and being the audience of Gershwin's Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra (which I think is much better than the more famous Rhapsody in Blue).
The Band Wagon (1953)
Daddy Long Legs (1955)
High Society (1956)
Funny Face (1957)
Gypsy (1962)
And then a couple of years ago, I asked myself: which film genres have I never really watched? Westerns (and Horror, still haven't gone there) being my answer. Turns out I really love westerns.
Some favourites:
Destry Rides Again (1939)
Stagecoach (1939)
Fort Apache (1948) To me, this is the best of John Ford's `cavalry trilogy'
Red River (1948)
Winchester '73 (1950) My favourite of the Anthony Mann / James Stewart westerns.
Vera Cruz (1954) Action movies weren't invented in the 1980s.
The Man from Laramie (1955)
Seven Men from Now (1956) The best of the Budd Boetticher / Randolph Scott westerns.
Man of the West (1958)
The Horse Soldiers (1959)
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
Two Rode Together (1961)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
El Dorado (1966) Rio Bravo gets all the love, but this is the more satisfying result for me.
1. I agree, that final scene in An American in Paris is just mindblowing (for the lack of a better word). I've seen it at least 20 times and it still amazes me. Vincente Minnelli was a one of a kind genius. Another highlight for me was Astair's Puttin' on the Ritz from Blue Skies. And as for Gershwin - I myself prefer his Piano concerto.
2. As far as I know, musicals were the most popular genre in 1930s-40s and a lot of talent was put in their creation (and it shows). That said, I just don't like the genre for two reasons:
- Astair/Rogers-style, where actors suddenly transition from dialog to dancing, just seem too weird and far fetched to me;
- Busby Berkeley-style extravaganzas are, indeed, better and, as a rule, visually stunning. But for me they fail as films simply because there is usually not enough plot/dialogues (that is, the whole plot is just a vehicle to show dancing sequences). These type of films are better enjoyed as short clips on youtube :-) Uncharacteristically, I've enjoyed much later Saturday Night Fever and Dirty Dancing, both made in this style. Although I think these two films could have been even better if their creators were more ambitious. There were a lot of unused potential in them.
3. I have no objections to the westerns as a genre. I've included both Destry Rides Again and Stagecoach. It's just that I've seen ~10 westerns from 50s and 60s, didn't like any of them and decided to skip the genre altogether. I might return to them some time in the future.
Survivorship bias? I'm sure there was as much schlock produced back then as there is now, it's just we elevated the best and have forgotten the rest.
Revisiting the bad stuff is the entire premise of MST3K:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000
I don't have enough cinema culture to comment on cinema specifically, but I believe this is pretty obvious in music. Comparing things like Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies to any modern music (especially if comparing only the main themes, given today's preference for very short form music), it's obvious that there is nothing similar, and even modern audiences generally recognize the superiority of the older one.
As a more focused comparison, it's also obvious and largely uncontroversial that the amount of good rock music being produced has plummeted since at least the 1970s-1980s. There are still a few good bands (Rammstein has been an unexpected highlight for me), but compared to a period when you had Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Queen, Deep Purple, Metallica, The Rolling Stones and a good many others, it's obvious that something has gone down in the highest highs of music.
And indeed, the large & majestic sound of a symphonic orchestra has no parallels with the modern music. But on the other hand I think we can easily compare classical chamber music with jazz/tango/rock. And in this field I'd rather listen something like [1] than any classical quartet/quinter regardless whether it was written by Beethoven or by Shostakovich.
1. The best films of this period far surpassed my expectations from the technical point of view. And there were a lot of decent-to-exceptional films produced at the time; I could name at least 50 american films worth watching from 1930 to 1950. In comparison, I could hardly name 10 films from 1951 to 1960 that are at least decent (and yes, Paths of Glory, named below, is the best).
I think it was mostly due to the fact that all personnel, connected with the creation of a film at the time were still largely pioneers at the field and they had all possible expertiese in it (films in the 60s and especially in the 70s became noticeably more amateur; 50s suffered due to McCarthy). Movies were still relatively new and there were a lot of innovation in it each year. On top of that, it was a time of the Great Depression and high unemploymend. Hollywood were one of the better off industries and so were able to easlily atrract best of the best.
2. Even B-movies from rich studios had high production values. From the same 1941 I could easily recommend for example The Gay Falcon - Irving Reis - RKO/Nothing But the Truth - Elliott Nugent - Paramount/Charley's Aunt - Archie Mayo - 20 Fox. All are relatively simple, but well worth the watch.
3. What's more important, the 30s and 40s cinema had its own unique style and dynamic, very different from later decades. I'd say it was closer to Imre Kalman and Franz Lehar operettas, rather than more convential movies we are used today. It was, if I may say so, a thing-in-itself, hardly comparable with what came later.
It was also neat to see the film shot just like a play where there are very particular sets each scene. I wish I could have the scene the original play once.
A few things I didn't like though was the flashback. There was no subtlety and poor writing. They could have started the film with their time in France. The real plot point wasn't that the two characters knew each other but _why_ she left him.
And it was also odd to me that the general was in his headquarters when he learned about the escape attempt but then showed up at the airport... without any men.
Anyway, I did enjoy the movie and am grateful to it for introducing As Time Goes By.
To me, the `La Marseillaise` scene[1] is incredibly powerful. The crowd trying to out-sing the German soldiers with the French national anthem, and the sheer raw emotion of the scene. Amazing character moments from Ricky, Victor, and Illsa.
I haven't looked into the veracity, but the legend around the scene is that most of the extras in the bar were French refuges - and the emotion of the scene was very much present on set. Casablanca was filmed during the height of WW2, and came out in 1942, so it does seem plausible.
Louis's brief "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" - Handed a pile of his winnings by the croupier - "Oh, thank you very much." exchange [2] is also a fantastically memorable comedic exchange.
All art is produced in a specific historical moment.
But like many great works of art context can add even more to their enjoyment and impact.
They really haven't. Not a single one of them. There is, however, organized religion around them that has twisted those book to mean whatever it is that brings the flock.
Are they influential? Yes. Have they stood the test of time? Hell, no
Its just one of those things that is so popular that people find any way possible to criticize.
The Bible a huge book of ancient texts with little structure and inscrutable context that is as alien to a modern person as Mesopotamic cuneiform. Ah, yes, inhabitants of Maktesh, and son of Pethuel, and Cyrus king of Persia, and Sheshbazzar, and... what's for dinner?
Separating the social structures around the bible from the book and trying to talk about it as if it is a product following the same rules as Tom Clancy's next novel is gross and laughable.
There’s probably a reason the Bible was the only available book instead of no books being available in Europe.
And that 5 billion number includes a very significant chunk of bibles which are just distributed through various religious centers (same goes for all other religious texts).
And, of course, the number of books sold says literally nothing about whether a book has stood the test of time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books?wpr...
None of that makes the Bible "stand the test of time" or make it popular in the same sense as Harry Potter is popular. Compare Bible's "popularity" to Quotations from the Works of Mao Zedong (emphasis mine) [1]:
--- start quote ---
It has been reported that 800 million copies of the red-covered booklet Quotations from the Works of Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) were sold or distributed between June 1966, when possession became virtually mandatory in China, and September 1971, when its promoter Marshal Lin Biao died in an air crash.
--- end quote ---
I doubt any significant number of Bibles are actually sold anymore (especially in what's called "developed world"), but are distributed via churches or other religious organisations. Gideon distributes 50 million bibles per year [2]. Most available statistics talk about "printed" or "distributed" when talking about number of bibles sold which is definitely not the same.
For example [3] (emphasis mine):
--- start quote ---
The Bible is by far the worlds best-selling book of all time. No other book, fact or fiction, even comes close. Most estimates place the number of Bibles printed each year at over 100 million. 20 million Bibles are sold each year in the United States alone.
--- end quote ---
The United States is quite religious, and it still only manages ~20 million books per year for a population of ~400 million people. This number will be significantly smaller in less religious countries, and higher in more religious countries. But once again it hardly makes it popular in the same sense as Harry Potter is popular.
And, of course, once you make more and more books available to people, you will inevitably have smaller numbers of those books sold, but a greater number of them in total. There are 650 million books sold in the US each year. [4] There are 300 thousand new titles each year [5]
But yeah, the Bible is "popular" because it's pushed through an organised religion and has for centuries been a required reading for everyone (for everyone who could read that is, as literacy was scarce at best). And even today it's possible that most bibles go to the same people ("The average American Christian owns 9 Bibles and wants to purchase more" [2])
[1] https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-sell...
[2] https://brandongaille.com/27-good-bible-sales-statistics/
[3] https://thebibleanswer.org/bibles-sold-each-year/
[4] https://www.statista.com/topics/1177/book-market/
[5] https://www.theifod.com/how-many-new-books-are-published-eac...
- Only 1 in 3 Bible owners know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Billy Graham is a more popular answer than the correct answer.
- 12%. That’s the percentage of Christians who believed that Noah was married to Joan of Arc.
https://brandongaille.com/27-good-bible-sales-statistics/
:)
For more garbage please visit https://www.sacred-texts.com/
Listing parts of those books and linking to their texts proves nothing about them standing the test of time.
This was unexpected, but true. I started a few month ago, because I moved and noticed that carrying the goceries in the 4th floor interrupted my whole day...
Every movement includes moving weight. It basically makes the whole life easier
The sooner one starts the better.
Seeing as how the Quran was "written" over decades and the Bible over millennia, they DON'T make sense. They're both self-contradictory, with various authors pushing various purposes depending on what they wrote and when. There's value in each, but let's not pretend they're towering forks of art with a singular purpose and vision.
Humans started to stay in one location after the invention of agriculture which is quite recent about 10000 years. The mass gathering and agriculture Only after the invention of agriculture some people were able to have leisure time and mass organization became necessary. Bible is roughly 2000 years old. Islam is probably 800 years old. The vedic caste Hinduism is about probably 600 to 800 years old.
Religion is blip within a blip.Since then he's won 4 NBA championships, opened a school in his hometown, and become arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.
LeBron is definitely the best of his era but he's not touching Jordan in terms of greatest player of all time, even if he does pull off two more championships. During the 90s, Jordan was as close to a demi-god in the sports world as you could get.
What you don’t notice is that the gather step is used for many more movements other than a euro step, but the euro step also has a change of direction and change of acceleration that combine to make the movement look illegal to someone who doesn’t understand the rules.
I agree that Jordan was an amazing player, and I think he narrowly tops Lebron as the best of all time, but I also think Jordan benefited from a very precise moment in NBA history: the league's media reach became truly global and the established media was still pretty much the only source of information about NBA players. No TMZ, no random phone videos from clubs, no social media. It was the perfect setup to convince a huge number of people that this dude was a demi-god. If Jordan played today, I think he'd face way more scrutiny of the gambler/"apolitical"/bully parts of his personality, and while he'd probably win plenty of MVPs, I don't think he'd achieve the same iconic status.
All you have to do is go on YouTube and watch the fights from the 1980s. And of course everyone is familiar with how Jordan was brutalized in the 1987-1993 era, playing teams like the Knicks and Pistons. Today's NBA is soft, fragile, weak, and little more than a three point shooting exercise. It's mediocre basketball. Do a comparison on steal figures now vs then; during his prime it was normal for Jordan to have 2.8 to 3.2 steals per game in a season, today the NBA leader will be closer to 2 to 2.2 per game.
Now you can barely sneeze on the offensive player with the ball or it's a foul. Combined with 3-point chucking and zero defense, it fully explains why scores are so comically high now versus the 1990s and so many players average over 20-25 points per game. It's the equivalent to the NFL becoming soft, watering down passing defense, so they can run up scores and turn the league into a 90% passing game so they can pump up ratings for the $$$ (same fraud MLB pulled jacking up homerun figures).
I agree that the NBA was far more physical in Jordan's era and that LeBron has never had to go through that. But the style of play cuts both ways! The biggest difference, I think, is that zone defense was illegal for (almost) Jordan's whole career. This allowed Jordan to showcase his isolation scoring, and I think Jordan was clearly the best isolation scorer ever.
This argument is more or less convincing depending on how you factor in the greater physicality (e.g. handchecking). My hypothesis is that LeBron would have been extremely hard to guard alone even with the relaxed rules. IIRC, Miami Lebron weighed 260+ and was still faster than most wings; Jordan topped out around 220 in the 2nd 3-peat. The available evidence suggests that LeBron is pretty hard to hurt -- unless you think all NBA players have somehow become more injury-prone, his almost spotless injury record relative to his peers is remarkable.
We seem to have different aesthetic preferences for basketball. I think late 90s basketball is ugly as hell! But I'll argue that the cross-era comparisons are not that easy, and both players are hard to extricate from the style of their eras anyway.
It is really hard to speculate on these things.
Lebron put in a long shift and went back to give them a title.
* https://twitter.com/getnickwright/status/1316013808469463041
Lebron likely won't win as many rings as Jordan and Tiger won't win as many majors as Jack.
It's insane how much hype he had at a young age and how he's delivered again and again. The only players with similar [amount delivered] * [hype] values are peyton manning and tim duncan, but lebron's is way bigger.
Also worth mentioning in his accolades: brought a championship to his hometown, has never had any PR disasters (except for "the decision"), has many charities (scholarships, gives out bikes, etc), and elevated his friends and family to make them successful as well. He's basically done everything right.
And I say this as a long time celtics fan and lebron hater.
I was really impressed with Jonathan Blow's The Witness. Exquisitely designed and thought out.
The animated series Primal by Genndy Tartakovsky. A pulpy cartoon without dialogue unlike anything else animated from the US.
The tv series Doom Patrol. Clever, revels in the absurd but still manages serious drama on what it means to not be completely human any more.
Philosophy in general. I've always seen it as academic wank, but i couldn't have been more wrong. It gives you the ability to step back in a way that pure science cannot. Excellent tool to learn about yourself too.
On a more controversial note, I was initially put off by critical race theory (talking explicitly about race in academia? Putting blame on the prosperous west?), but I must say it makes a lot of sense.
The animation and storytelling are masterful. I really enjoyed the second half of the first season in particular the episodes "Plague of Madness", "Coven of the Damned", and "Slave of the Scorpion".
Arrival is another well done flick by him.
In terms of visual spectacle, it may be tops. The detail and research highlighted by this 'coincidence':
https://images.news18.com/ibnlive/uploads/2020/09/1599807108...
I hadn't thought about it until now, but these days, science fiction and fantasy movies that end without everything exploding should get bonus points.
I mention this mainly because I doubted my memories when I saw the date 1984, which would have put me in uni rather than as still at school.
At that time, I was probably more of an arsehole than I am now, but I credit the film for making me rethink some really important things, mainly to do with rights/respect for others. I would like to think that its effect on me was positive.
At the time of watching it in the cinema (1982, with the explanatory voiceover "I knew the lingo, every good cop did" etc), I remember being uneasy with Deckhard's pressuring of Rachael to kiss him etc. But it didn't spoil the film for me.
Years later, I got a DVD collection with various cinematic releases and director's cut (without the voiceover narrative and with previously cut scenes) etc. I was surprised that the Deckhard/Rachael stuff hadn't been revisited; years after having watched it in the cinema, it looked to me to be even more like an abuse thing. However, I still rate the film for providing a slap in the face about discrimination etc.
I'd like to see another cut - with the voiceover, which helped me and I like it - but with revisions to the Rachael/Deckhard pressured relationship thing.
It isn't as though Harrison Ford hasn't had revisionists messing with his work, after all. We all know that Han shot first. ;-)
I recommend reading some of Philip K. Dick's works for more of that, which I would summarize as "what it is to be human".
The "stories" are brilliant, and the way they are told is perfect for the medium. There is an incredible world, that is awe inspiring and fascinating, with deep and expansive lore, and yet it never gets in the way, or suffers from a disconnect with the player. In BoTW the vast majority of my actions make no sense in the context of the plot. In the DS games or BB the world doesn't revolve around my character, so my actions are those of an inhabitant rather than the driver of the plot, and thus my actions don't destroy my suspension of disbelief, despite the freedom given to me, the same way they do in a game like Cyberpunk where my player clearly exists in the separate plane from the one the the world is in.
The music matches the atmosphere and gameplay seamlessly, with very few disconnects. Especially Sekiro, which links its music to the gameplay nearly flawlessly. I won't claim it superior to Undertale, but it still lives in the very upper echelons.
The gameplay is genre defining. I don't think much more needs to be said of it, other than that the difficulty has been grossly misrepresented. My former roommate, who struggled with the tutorial levels of fallout 4 beat Sekiro. These games aren't easy, but they also probably aren't "too hard" for your average player.
And the level design is brilliant, intricate and varied, awe inspiring, and encouraging/requiring exploration without it feeling like a chore (swamps excepted).
Go play these games, jeez.
Only advice I'd pay to newbies is to get good at dodgerolling instead of using a shield. Turtling behind a shield is very effective in Dark Souls 1 (fixed in later installments) but becomes dreadfully boring after a while. The game has a reputation as being difficult but if you summon NPCs or other players for boss fights they are quite easy (purists might say this defeats the entire point).
Very special and challenging gameplay that is done right. There are no advantages to you as a player, and you need to watch your every step. I am on the same page regarding storytelling - it is a masterpiece. Couple that with the great artwork they've done, and you're put right in the middle of some fantasy land.
Umbasa!
A strange mixture of pleasant, mildly challenging, big and awe inspiring world.
> Content sparsity. Like many open world games, most of Hyrule just feels dead to me. Towns aren't as populated and lively as OoT / WW / MM, the main reason being that there aren't as many overlapping storylines that have you return to the same location as you progress through the game. The game basically encourages you to clear a region and never return. The random encounters are repetitive.
> The shrines, what the heck were they thinking?! It feels like Nintendo hired a bunch of interns that year and needed to give them something to do. All the shrines were clearly made in a generic level editor. Felt really out of place to me.
> Most of the music in BoTW is quiet and subdued, unlike previous entries in the series. This is good for setting a certain tone, but it's less effective unless there's some flashier music to contrast with. To me, the lack of music made the game feel even emptier.
> Shallow combat mechanics, even compared to other entries in the series like OoT. Just mash buttons until enemy dead. Armor / weapons don't really matter beyond the stat boosts and occasionally some elemental matching. Guardians / Lynels require some strategy, but once you figure out the tricks it's not hard to brute force those too.
I had fun playing, for sure. It just doesn't rank very highly on my list. I'm looking forward to BotW 2, where hopefully they'll use their game engine to make a great game!
I think the sparsity of people is deliberate, it's post apocalyptic where most travelers you encounter are probably assassins from an enemy cult.
In general I felt like it was the result of a very different game approach than something like cyberpunk, where they added small things to the game one by one while making sure they meshed and were polished to a mirror finish.
The one in the Korok forest where you have to figure out the relationship between the star map and the stones took me a long time and felt so satisfying to complete.
The game is polarising because it works only for a certain kind of player. I love just jumping in a random point of the map to chill and explore and suddenly find some surprise in the middle of nowhere, but if you prefer some linear and story-driven game I don't think BOTW is for you.
Hilariously, I had the opposite experience. BotW was the first Zelda game I played extensively (I have some memories from OoT and MM because a friend had an N64 back in the day, but never played it myself for anything more than 10 minutes).
After finishing BotW, I wanted to play the Link's Awakening remake. But I had to walk away from it after about an hour because the endless barrage of music was annoying me to no end. (I have since adjusted to it.) I'm currently playing Age of Calamity, where the soundtrack does not feel as obnoxious because there's actual action going on all the time. After that, I might be able to go back to Link's Awakening.
Also:
> it's less effective unless there's some flashier music to contrast with
IMO there is tons of flashy music in this game. The cities' motifs, the champion's motifs, the castle music, the Divine Beast tracks, the fight tracks in general. I have hours-long playlists of all of that as my go-to background music for work.
Then I got a Switch for Christmas last year (I didn't ask for one, they just sprung it on me), and proceeded to buy and play through the game in its entirety again.
Ok, maybe not so much the original 2007 model, arguably it wasn't until the iPhone 4 (2010) until it really came into its own. But few products released in my lifetime changed modern life as the iPhone did. And unlike most other seismic tech products (world-wide-web, linux) that took years to build momentum, it had lots of pre-release hype.
FWIW, I remember my uncle in 2007 trying to game his contract with Verizon just so he could get AT&T and the iPhone. I thought he was being stupid for what I gathered was a useless toy. But now...
Until that iPhone unveil, no-one had ever seen swipe-to-scroll, now its second nature to at least half the planet.
Video of the 2007 unveil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ
Apple themselves positioned the iPhone against devices with physical keyboards: https://i.imgur.com/hXtRmbG.png
I would argue "decent virtual keyboard" is an oxymoron :)
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-typical-on-screen-keyb...
Before the iPhone became popular, there was so much variety in phone design like the Juke or Nokia Ngage. Today billions of people use a phone that resembles an iPhone.
>Ok, maybe not so much the original 2007 model
It was. Original iPhone was extremely hyped before it was announced in the tech / Apple circles. In case anyone arguing that is a small niche, the same argument could be used for Games as the OP used in examples. It is very rare to see Technology Announcement being used on Front Page newspaper.( Remember that thing we used to buy every day?) And this wasn't just in US alone.
Original iPhone ( 2007 ) was only available in US, and it was very expensive at the time, $499 with contract. And Apple was selling every iPhone as fast as they could make it. And around the world iPhone continue the same strategy of only contract with iPhone. Arguably it wasn't until iPhone 5 before it was readily available , I guess Steve Jobs relented on making iPhone Just in Time before passing away because it could never match the huge demand.
And yes, not only did it lived up to its hype, it was more than anyone could ever imagine.
Have a 24" 1080p second screen which is good for checking content on, and it really just keeps reinforcing how good hdpi is.
I ended up getting Gigabyte Aero 15 with 4K display. It was a great decision.
It's a little like when widescreen monitors came out and people were trying to figure out how to play their 4x3 games.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When the seventh book came out in 2007 there was this fear among the fandom that JK Rowling couldn't deliver a great ending. I think most people agreed she did very well (even more than expected, considering the complexity of the story in the prior six books).
- Breaking Bad last season / last episode: there aren't many tv shows that can end in a high note (check Game of Thrones, for example). I think Breaking Bad - and in general, what separates the best tv shows from great tv shows - is that they are able to have a good ending.
Man... there is way too much deus ex machina at every plot point of that book to give it any credit. If you have the end of the 6th book as a starting point and the end of series that Rowling had in mind as an end, then Deathly Hallows is just connecting those two points using plot conveniences at every single opportunity. Too many fortunate coincidences in a very short period of time. (Half-Blood Prince is still peak Harry Potter IMO).
I'm sorry, that's plain incorrect. First, they're at Privet Drive, then the Burrow, then Grimmauld Place, then they camp for a few weeks-months but it's highly condensed plot-wise. They don't "run around the woods" at any point, that silly chase scene with the snatchers is onlyin the film.
Why do they hide? Because there is ZERO safe-space in the rest of the UK. They are forced into hiding to maintain their safety until such time as the horcruxes are gone and battle can commence. How is that much different from Frodo and Sam wandering the wilds alone at the last 2 LotR books? In HP, they are in society and non-wilderness far more than Frodo and Sam. And then they do a lot of epic shit at the end that has nothing to do with the woods.
Re-read the book, the woods part is a very small aspect.
Well, ok, second most if we're going by the books, there was the two chapters of bombadil
Why was the book centered around a children’s story that we didn’t hear about until book 7? Why were the deathly hollows items not mentioned at all throughout the entire rest of the series? Why do we not find out until the last book that the invisibility cloak should have faded a long time ago? That last point especially irritates me because it just smells like lazy writing.
I love Harry Potter. I have read the series many many times. I sincerely wish I had never read the last book. It felt rushed, unplanned, and almost desperate.
There is a fluid cohesion between books 1-6 that completely disappears in book 7.
While HP:DH does have a "summary" vibe, going back to all the old places and seeing all the old characters' plots wrapped up nicely, I do think she needed SOME new material in there. She needed to create new tension, she needed new suspense; simply wrapping up things she'd already devised wouldn't have been fresh enough for her, or for us, I think.
If I had to change just two things about DH, I think I'd remove the epilogue (it could just be an online essay, there's no need to put a second bow on top of the present, you know?) and I'd remove wand lore. The idea that your wand changes allegiance whenever someone bests you in any way, physical or magical? Come on, that is borderline plot manipulation. Now, Harry wins the fight at the end because Voldemort's wand knew that Harry's hands pulled some wands out of Draco's hand, who in turn disarmed a Dumbledore who wasn't trying to not be disarmed? I mean, ugh, wand lore was a sort of hand-wavey MEH aspect, IMO.
I think Book 6 and Book 3 are the pinnacles...they don't feature battles with Lord Voldemort, they're nicely self-contained, they have fantastic endings, I'm getting chills thinking of them.
Little, if any, mention is made of wizards/witches from other countries unless absolutely required, and none are portrayed as being equal to the one based in England. There is not even a mention of Ministries of Magic of other nations (China?) or in former colonies (US? India?).
I believe there's very little deus ex machina. The main point is that Voldemort delved too greedily into dark magic, weakening himself very much, while Lily's love magic was pure and protected her son against Voldemort's evil magic. This is why Harry can see into his mind and why he manages amazing feats like Gringotts or escape at Godric's Hollow, because Voldemort's hubris handed Harry the tools. It's all explained in the chapter "King's Cross", re-read that chapter and you'll gain fresh clarity.
JKR does introduce new concepts and history unknown previously to Harry, but name a book she doesn't do that. She'd be raked over the coals if she didn't offer anything new in one of her longest of the seven books. She needed the Deathly Hallows as a new mystery, a new suspense that creates tension throughout the book, pulling you onwards and competing for the horcruxes. It also highlights Harry's temptation to attain that which Dumbledore sought, but ultimately Harry chose the wiser path than Albus.
The other new concept was wand lore, which was not very fleshed out before DH. I don't love that wand lore dictated the final duel so heavily, why does Harry have to win based on overpowering a 3rd wizard, the wand truly knows that? Why not just have Harry's courageous, love-inspired magic overcome Voldemorts? It's kind of a letdown that Harry beats Voldy because he took 3 wands from Draco's hand...
Other than these two concepts, I don't see anything new and cheap like a deus ex machina. That term would literally mean that Harry is defeated by Voldemort in the end (he never was), only to be saved by a God at the last minute (he never was). Harry won on his and his allies' courage, and Voldemort lost due to his own hubris and his own determination to focus on wands and to tell all his servants not to kill Harry.
> Deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
Examples from Deathly Hallows.
Having no idea how to proceed on your quest of finding and destroying Horcruxes? The only soul who was there with Voldemort when the locket was planted, happens also to be magically bound to Harry and have obligation to obey Harry's every command.
Need to impersonate someone? Just pick a hair off your cloak for the potion.
Don't know where the next horcrux is? Immediate vision from Voldemort's mind to help you.
A character who has crucial information is killed? Well no, instead of using a spell like any other time, Voldemort decides to leave Snape to slowly die giving him just enough time to share his memories with Harry.
Need to check if your mortal enemy is really dead? Don't verify yourself but send the only person in the group who has any incentive to lie to you about it. (And you're supposed to be able to magically tell when people are lying by the way).
The way to destroy a horcrux is hidden in a place accessible only to those who speak parseltongue? Nope, Ron can just guess his way into an ability that was previously established to be hereditary or transfered through magic.
I could go on... the point isn't any single one of these, it's more about how they accumulate throughout the book.
- Yeah finding the locket was a bit too serendipitous but Kreacher has been shown before to obey Harry _contemptuously_. When asked to report on Draco's activities in HBP, he reports the most mundane things, making his report essentially useless without breaking his obligation. He only finally cooperated when Harry looked at him as a creature with feelings, not just a servant. Ties back to when he asked Dobby to sit down in CoS, which sends the elf wailing at the decency.
- Polyjuice has been established since CoS, along with the cost of using/making it and its limits. Hardly sudden and hardly an unfair advantage.
- Did a Voldyvision ever lead Harry directly to a Horcrux? I don't remember so. The closest I recall is Harry willingly slipping into this trance to verify Voldemort's anger at discovering the loss of the locket---not a huge advantage and a reasonable tactical move. The diadem, Harry had to rack his brains for that, even empathize with a ghost.
- Voldemort couldn't Avada Kedavra Snape because he believes Snape is the Elder Wand's master.
- Snape lied to Voldemort to the very end, his legillimency is not infallible. Sending Narcissa Malfoy is a bit of good luck, I'll grant, though it also emphasizes how one of Voldemort's weaknesses is his inability or plain refusal to read people. He failed to see that Snape loved Lily so, which caused him to turn for the good, and he failed to see how much Narcissa cared for her son---he didn't consider she'd have a reason to lie to him.
- Ron "speaking" Parseltongue as a plot turn feels a bit rushed and unsatisfying indeed but is not at all miraculous. I can say "Spasibo" to thank my Russian coworkers even if I'm not Russian and hardly has training in Russian.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistborn
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson
'Booktuber' Merphy Napier recently did two videos on magic systems in fantasy novels:
Sanderson has lectures on a system of rules for magic in books to balance their coolness against deus ex machina: https://stormlightarchive.fandom.com/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws...
The books deliver a fantastical, childish view of morality where the world will always save you from having to make difficult decisions.
Almost like they were written for children...
To this day i'm pretty confident I could pick up a Harry Potter book and enjoy it. There are different types of storytelling, and not every kind has to have balanced stakes or world-building that stands up to scrutiny. And it's not like Asimov's work doesn't have similar flaws: as much as I love the scope of the Foundation series, it does settle into a bit of a pattern of setting up seemingly insurmountable challenges and then resolving them through neat changes to the rules of engagement of psychohistory (though as a much more ambitious series than HP, it's more understandable).
[1] Literally; I was ravenous
On the subject of tv shows, ‘Peep Show’, the British sitcom, also had a very strong final season and final episode.
I agree the last season felt rushed but overall I felt the whole course of the show was more cohesive than most series.
"Dexter" has made this painfully clear.
https://news.sky.com/story/dexter-one-of-tvs-best-known-seri...
It was a great time, having midnight release parties for a book!
Also it doesn't hurt the MCU's legacy that there is the obvious comparison with Game of Thrones that magnificently failed a very similar task the exact weekend that End Game came out.
I watched End Game in the theatre and have not seen it again since. I really didn't enjoy the whole "goofy time travel" aspect, and re-visiting all the prior movies/events.
It is certainly more comic-booky than some of the other MCU movies and the acceptance of that will vary from person to person. It also isn't a completely unique concept. They basically stole it from Back To The Future 2 which was also a big hit.
That Rise of Skywalker and the final season of Game of Thrones came out in the same year helps to contrast how much most things don't stick the landing.
Someone who was a teenager when it came out could easily be in their thirties now. So could someone who started in on the series when they were a kid, and kept up with it as they grew.
[1]https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Death_(The_Tale_of_the_T...
[2]https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Three_Br...
I actually thought BB went downhill and quit mid-way through the last season, but I understand I'm in the minority.
> A dispute with his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, led to his offering the work to William Collins in 1950. Tolkien intended The Silmarillion (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with The Lord of the Rings, but Allen & Unwin were unwilling to do this. After Milton Waldman, his contact at Collins, expressed the belief that The Lord of the Rings itself "urgently wanted cutting", Tolkien eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. Collins did not; and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying, "I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff", fearing his work would never see the light of day.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings#Receptio...
Another one I can think of is Breath of The Wild, and probably Mario Odyssey. I've also heard good things about the FF7 remake, but haven't played it.
“can you help me?”
“only if you complete this task that makes you look like a bad ass”
repeated 8 times
Sure there's a formula, but few stories, if any at all, are original in their foundations. Their success seems to be more in the execution of such story/production and immersion of audiences.
Or is it more of an issue of the predictability in knowing what the "quest" objectives and items are, and from that extrapolating the outcome? Imo, both cases are understandable, as many times the main story quests can feel on rails/going through the motions, but again those quests seem to be more about the audience's immersion (including player playthrough/execution in games) in the modeled experience.
Tldr: I totally understand your point, and can agree to an extent. Though I believe one can find enjoyment in well curated/executed experiences/productions/writing/immersion, rather than seeking "originality" in story telling, as on rails/predictable as they can be
1) Thematically feels like Star Wars and ties into the established world, and
2) Meets the minimal standard for good writing/storytelling.
"I'll allow it."
Even though the formula is simple, the events didn’t feel predictable to me.
And I could easily imagine more complex plot that would be less satisfying to watch.
This is all I've been thinking throughout the series. The writing is damn good, the character development is on point, it's not forceful (no pun intended) or disingenuous in trending social themes, cinematography is amazing, great casting, it's immersive in keeping to canon. It's something you can point to and say, "That's Star Wars".
One could only wish those two get a shot at making the full lengths.
https://www.thewrap.com/the-mandalorian-ahsoka-tano-star-war...
I think most of my actual exposure was through toys and advertising. The movies were only on TV every couple of years. I remember listening to Star Wars on the radio
Incredibly well executed and fantastic characters.
Disney dropped the ball on every single thing other than R1 and Mandalorian.
1. Rogue One 2. Revenge of The Sith 3. Empire Strikes Back
Playing it at the moment, and I'm nearly done with it. I think it's a great game. Its' beautiful, and has a nice mix of carrying forward old storylines and settings and mixing in new things. It also made a lot of characters more authentic to me than the original one - e.g. the turks felt more like real bad guys. Aerith character is great too.
What I'm not too sure about is whether it was the right decision to stretch the Midgar part of the story that much (I'm already at 45 hours in chapter 17). The original FF7 had a lot more places to offer, and climbing up a buildling or moving through sewers or tunnels for 2 hours isn't that exciting compared to that.
It was a huge bubble when it came out, and then the dot-com crash came and a lot of people were like "Oh, it was a fad, it's over now." But it wasn't. The Web ended up changing society far more than was predicted in 1995 and remaking both the economy and likely soon the political environment.
- sites don't make use of link options (news sites not linking sources etc.)
- more walled gardens
- apps replacing websites
Got a C on the paper, mostly because the instructor found it too unrealistic and so not convincing. I misplaced it at some point, I really wish I still had a copy of it.
MacOSX: As a veteran developer on Windows (and Linux), I really liked how everything worked well in GUI. While I can't explain it all, everything looks and feels intuitive and easier to work with, even little things like the command key, its various keyboard shortcuts, and other UI/UX elements that are very subtle yet makes everything better as a whole.
Next thing on the list of hypes that I plan on trying: * Emacs (and Lisp) * 4k monitor * Docker
I find a lot of things annoying. I'm mostly used to it now and don't mind the day to day experience, but it was jarring and I know it's not ideal.
* If I want to maximize a window, I have to hover over the green button and then select 'Zoom' from the drop down menu. So it takes multiple seconds to maximize. (I have noticed for a long time throughout university and employment that it is common style for Mac users to have many windows floating around, and to never maximize.)
* If you decide to use 'Full Screen' / 'tiling', notifications don't work while you are in full screen mode. Maybe there is a way to change this or maybe some people find this desirable.
* Because of how long the green button hovering takes, I tried to setup keyboard shortcuts for maximizing windows and also for "Move Window to Left Side of Screen" and move to the right. The shortcuts randomly don't work for me, so I no longer use them.
* If I drag a window to the left edge of the screen, it doesn't snap to take up the left half of my screen. Again, have to do the annoying green hover.
This is all in contrast to KDE where it was simple to snap windows onto sides of the screen, or into corners, or to maximize windows. It never failed. Continuing...
* On KDE I could setup a separate 'task bar' for each monitor with those boxes/buttons that show up on the bottom of your screen for each window you have open on that monitor. So I can switch between windows independently on each monitor. On MacOS you can only have one dock. When you click a dock icon, it brings the window to the front on each display, possibly blocking something you had in the front on a display.
* When you have multiple displays on MacOS, moving your mouse around in the bottom area of the screen can move the dock to that display. This is easy to accidentally trigger, and sometimes it's hard to do this 'mouse wiggle' on the other display to put it back. That is, I have spent 10+ seconds wiggling my mouse in different ways to put my dock back on the display I want it on.
* Oh, back to full screen mode. If you are in full screen mode and you try to do something toward the top of the window, the macOS menu bar drops down and blocks you, and you have to wait for it to go away and then carefully go for the button you were aiming for. (Imagine flinging your mouse up to the address bar of your browser and then being blocked by the menu bar for multiple seconds each time.)
By the way, about your list... Emacs is good and works great on the Mac. Mapping the Caps Lock key to be Ctrl (in the system settings, not just for Emacs) and using sticky keys has completely mitigated any 'accessibility' concerns / sore pinky for me.
Lisps I like a lot too. I did the first few chapters of SICP quite a while ago, which gave me a great feel for recursion and probably some other things. I like Clojure a lot and learnt it super quickly by reading this book free online. The Emacs setup works pretty good. https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/
The MBP display was my first high-res / high-dpi. It looks great. Then I tried plugging my mac into multiple different 1080 monitors I wanted to use with it. Looked absolutely terrible. I thought it was broken. Couldn't find any fix online. Now I do notice how much worse (than retina) 1080 looks on Windows and Linux, but I'm pretty sure on Mac it is much much worse for some reason. I bought a 24" 4k monitor from LG for $300 bucks, and it looks about identical to my MBP display. I'm very happy with it. The smaller screen size helps keep high DPI, so I definitely don't see any pixels. Happy Holidays!
MacOS has a predictable UI. However, Apple products have the LEAST customizable UIs of any system I've used (probably predictable = 1/customizable)
It may be fine for people who literally have used macs their entire lives, but as a windows and linux user before using a mac, it is super frustrating at times.
2. Worm. Heavily hyped in my friend circles, I waited for it to finish. Not without its flaws but holy hell, ruined a lot of traditional fiction for me with its length, depth, and quality of ending.
3. As an adult reading the books that childhood movies were based on: The Princess Bride and The Neverending story were both incredibly satisfying books.
4. Therevada Buddhism. Many things in life focus on individual insights. Only a few focus on strengthening the machinery that generates insights. I write about it here: http://neuroticgradientdescent.blogspot.com/2020/01/mistrans...
I can't think of a modern equivalent. I guess it would be like if BTS somehow transformed into The Decemberists.
In 2007 I was plugging away at PHP with whatever frameworks were around at the time -- the vast majority of web dev that I saw then was pure procedural scripting down the page, maybe some `include` statements to pull in database functions. Especially in PHP, which encouraged mixing logic and HTML. The consultancy I was with had built custom stuff on top of Zend framework, and it helped a lot.
But around summer of 2007 is when I started hearing folks crow about Ruby on Rails, this hot new web framework written by a Dane in a Japanese programming language. It had been out for a few years and it was the hot topic in web dev circles, and so I decided to see what the fuss was about one weekend.
Instantly stuff I'd always had to do by hand was done for me. A decent data access layer with a few lines of code per db table, that automatically handled preparing and executing statements, and could handle keeping the database up to date with migrations. A REPL where I could load up the code I'd written for the app and use it for one-off debugging or maintenance tasks. A thriving plugin scene where many of the things I'd bashed together over the years were available, for free, just by cloning a repo.
That weekend I reimplemented the core functionality of one of the apps we'd been working on for a client. We'd taken about 10 weeks to get this thing into rough shape and I had its equivalent in two not-very-busy days. Authentication, authorization, CRUD, and fancy database queries I'd all had to hand-roll before just fell out of Rails.
I'm not overselling it when I say that for me, Rails was an absolute game-changer, and I myself and many folks I know owe their careers to the Ruby community and its (not always perfect) attitudes about software development. MINASWAN.
(I'm still active in Rails and the local Ruby community [Columbus Ruby Brigade!] but I'm running an Elixir/Phoenix shop now, which feels to me like the next step on the path Rails forged us.)
For me, the big hurdles early were Blocks, which seem strange at first but make sense, and some of the metaprogramming stuff which you can definitely ignore to start and be just fine.
But with Rails I had a reason to pick up Ruby in the first place. So I didn't know a damn thing about metaprogramming or duck-typing going in, but I knew Rails was lightning and I wanted to capture it.
Its a funky learning curve where all team members are effective and few need to have extensive experience with the framework.
Not gonna take a side on the Rails vs Django deal though. Like you said, if a team can effectively ship software with it that's the only measure that counts.
The convention over configuration was brilliant - the implicit mappings made so much more sense. I could look at any given url and imply so much about what route/controller/view code was going to execute. The standardized code organization. ActiveRecord using the column names as data attributes.
Was CoverMyMeds written in Rails?
Most other apps and services at CMM were written in Rails after we showed that we could ship better software faster with it, and it now accounts for the vast majority of code there.
To some degree I think it's a matter of taste, but I would much rather start from a blank slate, with a set of sensible tools to build my solution up from scratch, rather than having an almost finished product I have to carve my solution out of.
Now that I'm hiring devs, I do not want to pay them to build a CRUD framework from scratch, I'd rather have them building business logic we can't get off the shelf for free.
But whatever ends up working for you is cool!
I feel like this is implicit in the name: these are the guide rails, stay on them and you will deliver more value in less time than you ever have before. If you need to do anything where you have to leave them, you have deRailed the whole thing.
The train metaphor is actually a pretty good one.
I think this is arguable. It's also not that hard, for instance, to get a bare-bones node API up and running and pair it with a React single-page app. And that approach is more modular so you can replace components in the future in a way which is harder than with rails.
Then I ran into finding myself spending time on background jobs, authentication management (not the basic functionality but tinkering & modification past password reset / session management, blacklist/expiry if jwt's, etc), file upload integrations, db management (when not utilizing prisma or hasura), etc. High variety of effort spent on tasks where I found myself asking the question, "why am I having to work on this...?"
I still ship more in Rails. It's still a better tool for most things. There are cases where I'll reach to node when needs are simple and short-lived. Other tools have the potential to exceed Rails (and I hope they do), but they're not there yet.
One of my least favorite things about Rails, & one of the best ideas to emerge in the past decade or so, is react. The componentization of views driven by state is such a useful approach. Rails has historically had a has & belong to many relationship between controller contexts and views, which is essentially global and easy to get super confusing. React (and now browser-react aka web components) provide a better way of tackling this problem.
And... they hook up directly to my cache? They provide a great way of broadcasting dom updates directly? They interoperate with web components no problem where I need high fidelity interaction/performance? etc etc. Rails... has done it again.
No getting away from how useful it is.
A majority of online information based systems take input via forms and retrieve data from a database based on that input.
This is where Rails is the GOAT.
One thing that still felt rough around the edges was the tie in with npm packages. Has that part been improving?
You have an `assets/` dir that contains your javascript stuff, and out of the box Webpack is set up there, but besides that it's all your choice, with the exception of the pre-shipped stuff for Channels and LiveView.
I am working on a new web app. Initially, Elixir/Phoenix was looking like an excellent option, but then I looked at hosting and decided it would be easier to use something like the Serverless framework for AWS deployment which JAMstack+lambdas seems to match better — no need to manage VMs and networking infrastructure, mostly.
I'm a big fan of rendering majority on a server and then shipping it, especially with Phoenix's LiveView which allows you to write reactive UI without writing Javascript.
But I said it in another comment: shipping value beats everything. If you can ship quickly and effectively in JAMstack to lambda, don't let anyone tell you that's wrong.
Maybe OK Computer too, but I don't know how much hype there were because I was too young then...
I believe this was a 'first' and there was more hype about that than the album itself.
In Rainbows is my favorite Radiohead album for sure, closely followed by the Bends.
Therefore, there was virtually no hype...
The other half see them as bandwagon music.
I think they're music is alright but I think most people dive into like it's the bible or something and you can't say anything bad about them.
The other half see them as bandwagon music.
They are both right. OK Computer and Kid A deserve all their praise and more. They were like nothing else in popular music at the time. After those two records, they were rather bandwagonesque, although to their credit, they did create the bandwagon they have ridden on since then. Although the self-release they did for In Rainbows certainly changed the artist relationship with fans and media companies. How they released that album was far more the game changer than the content.
tons of people copy this now, it’s not even notable. but at the time, the idea that they would let you type in $0 was shocking.
I think of Radiohead as our late stage Beatles. Experimental and exciting, even if there's a jagged edge now and then.
In Rainbows was very accessible and holds up in my view.
OK Computer was more of a surprise. Listen to The Bends first, and you will hear what a break it was in quality and style. Their next release, Kid A, was the one that was hotly anticipated. It was also a huge departure, but when they were the biggest band in the world.
Kid A holds up too.
I think Radiohead lives up to the hype. One way to check on this is to watch them live (say, on YouTube) or pick up some of their concerts on etree (a free taper sharing site). They make headphone records, and then they replicate most of their sounds in real time.
Solid state disks. Huge speed boost.
But golly, Haskell has (had) a lot of hype. Monads, lazy evaluation, random lens stuff is fine and all, but type classes are unreal. you get to specify up front what capabilities you want to buy into.
I guess, just try implementing Num of Float as the first derivative. It's pretty magical how much power the compiler provides. And you _know_ it's doing what you think it's doing.
Haskell opens up a bunch of rabbit holes. but really getting a good grasp on interfaces that don't leak is, well from my background, really really mind expanding. There's a large difference between being real smart and having the compiler enforce assumptions. I dunno. I think the Haskell hype lives up to the claims from type classes alone.
That was an amazing boost that I'm so very glad to have purchased. Ironically enough, it was to have enough space to install Cyberpunk 2077 :)
Funny you should mention type classes-- that's one of the biggest things that Elm, the little brother to Haskell in many ways, doesn't support (and doesn't intend to, for reasons of limiting the footguns available to devs and also keeping to the high standard it sets for itself for error messages IIRC...)
You should have seen the leap from tapes to magnetic disks :)
Blizzard mentioned development of a MMORG in the late 1990's and started teasing in the early 2000's, and really ramped it up prior to launch.
And when it landed, holy hell: it devastated worker's and student's sleep schedules for years.
Plus it lived up to the hype: the world was huge and immersive, and they had tuned raiding & PvP based on the experience with co-operative Battle.net.
The main limits on free play are you can't have as many different characters, and you don't get some of the newer features or you get limited versions of them.
If you can remember your old account information, your account will have limits and abilities somewhere between a paid account and a new free account.
Some big changes since the old days, aside from a very large number of new zones, include:
1. The game is much more solo friendly. I had no trouble soloing a bard a couple years ago to around level 60 on a free play old account. I then switched to paid and got him to the mid 80s. There I stopped, not because it was getting difficult to solo, but because I'd satisfied my nostalgia need.
2. Related to #1, you can hire an NPC mercenary. There are tank, healer, and DPS mercenaries. There are apprentice mercenaries and journeyman mercenaries, with four different tiers of each type (lower tiers cost less, but are wimpier). If you play a healer or DPS class and hire a tier 4 apprentice tank mercenary, you and the mercenary will be able to take on nearly any content that would normally require a full group, up to around level 60. Same of you play a tank class and hire a healer mercenary.
Only paid accounts get to use journeyman mercenaries. That was the main reason I switched to paid after level 60.
3. There are a large number of good quests now. You can go to a lot of the expansion zones and find quests that will involve taking you to all the interesting spots in the zone. The Hero's Journey quest, which you get in a book at the start of the game, will suggest a path that can keep you busy and advancing for the next 60 levels.
4. Lots of UI improvements.
5. Veteran Rewards for existing accounts. For each year of your account, you get certain bonuses. One big one, which will almost certainly be on your old account, is a free resurrection. Once a week real time, you can go to an NPC healer in certain zones and ask them for a resurrection, and they will summon all your corpses and then give you a 100% XP resurrection.
Other Veteran Rewards include a 15 minute resist, stats, and run speed boost, usable once every 20 hours, a health/mana/endurance complete restoration usable every 3 days, 30 minutes of double XP usable once every 20 hours, one that summons a banker to your location and one that summons a merchant (both usable every 20 hours), and a few more.
All in all, free play EQ is nowadays a quite good solo game, at least for 30 levels or so, and for at least 50-60 levels if you have an old account, and for quite a bit farther on a paid account.
PS: system requirements are quite low by today's standards. My ancient PC (Asus P5Q, Core 2 Duo e8400, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 460) has no trouble running two instances of EQ at once. It could probably do 3.
> The game is much more solo friendly
Music to my ears. I don't have a gaming posse anymore and need more flexible play hours due to family. Downloading now...!
Anyway, I got past the stiffness of it and it's kinda fun. Can't seem to change my fonts so its a bit of an eye chart thought. LOL. Good stuff!
I played a small one Ashen Empires because it had an amazing local community. Then WOW because it was so well made, everyone was playing it and I loved blizzard. After a few years of both, any MMO hasn’t been able to keep me interested for more than a few days.
It wraps up all the existing plots, and introduces new ones. There's a lot of hints on what went wrong with time travel, and if you read up on Marvel lore, there are plenty of villains who are able to maneuver time travel better than the heroes.
Also I was so looking forward to how they were gonna manage to track down antman
Then it’s a rat ex machina
Vision really disappointed in the penultimate. I think his character was hyped up a lot in Age of Ultron. Became disappointing seeing him go so easily.
Older Thanos was a really well-thought and played villain. One which many people got to identify with (based on his goals in the movie). Captain America delivered when he proved worthy. I think Captain Marvel was an arrogant addition that needed to fill in pieces to the story, like how Stark and Nebula get saved.
It's going to be a classic series in the decades to come. Marvel delivered.
To be fair most overpowered characters where nerfed in Endgame. eg. Fat Thor, Dr. Strange aside of the battle containing a flood, Captain Marvel arriving last minute and being knocked out immediately, Hulk as Prof. Hulk. The stakes can't be that high if all superheroes are at their full performance.
Harry Potter, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Apple Watch, Ruby on Rails, Hamilton.
I'm not saying these things are bad, but the hype level far exceeds the delivered value, in my opinion.
I had to scroll down to things like M1, AMD Zen, and the original iPhone before I felt a sense of agreement. Perhaps I am overly sensitive to hype, so fewer things can possibly measure up for me.
Electricity, cars, reusable rockets I think all belong to this category yet due to their popularity people don't even consider them as things that at some point were hyped and critiqued.
Opinion of my own is that the actor Daniel Day-Lewis is indeed the greatest actor who has ever lived. It is just his dedication to the craft that sets him apart from the rest so clearly by total immersion to the character which I've never seen anyone else replicate. Many other actors still remain "themselves" in the process but he can truly transform in a way no one else can and with such great range of characters. Granted we do not have accurate historical data over the course of the whole human civilization but well, I'd say it's a good guess.
The answers from the second category are answers to the question that OP actually asked: what are the things that were hyped prior to their release (or shortly after) and didn't disappoint. Unlike the first question, this can be answered somewhat objectively, because it's not about the opinion of some semi-anonymous HN user anymore, it's about things that are hyped before the release and having impact after. You personally may not like the original iPhone, but you'll have to admit that the early hype didn't really fade — maybe it's a shitty product in your opinion, but it did conquer the market. And even if people are answering/upvoting that based on subjective feelings, in the end it's still turns out to be a somewhat fair assessment of the topic: because a product was hyped before the release a long time ago (well, not M1) and enough people still can vouch that it "lived up to the hype". That's impact.
Exceptions here are Apple Watch and Ruby on Rails, because they received some, uh, prenatal hype, but let's be honest: Apple Watch doesn't have nearly the amount of adoption iPhone had, and while Ruby on Rails was quite a significant thing at some point of time, it isn't anymore, other frameworks and languages filled the domain and now it's just "one of them" at best.
I got one at my dentists recommendation. Manual toothbrushes are ruined forever.
You're supposed to be making tons of small circular strokes and reaching every surface and taking the right amount of time... but it's easy to mess that up subtly. A lot of people make wide strokes for example or are unable to get the large head of the toothbrush in the corners of their teeth or use too much pressure...
That's why I went with the reciprocating electric toothbrush over the vibrating kind. The reciprocating type has a smaller head that can reach more places, and it's less dependent on correct usage than the vibrating kind.
Mine vibrates to let me know roughly how long to spend in each quadrant of my mouth and lights up red if I'm pushing too hard
Which brings me to Emacs. Still learning and being amazed at what can be done in there, the more of my computing life in there the better it gets.
For me the power was really just in trying it out, seeing the joy of using a REPL and that everything is code. The development process is just better and more fun.
[1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ [2] http://landoflisp.com/ [3] https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl
> In the months before Batman's release in June 1989, a popular culture phenomenon known as "Batmania" began. Over $750 million worth of merchandise was sold
For me Jack Nicholson Joker > Heath Ledger Joker.
It was highly anticipated but when it was initially announced everyone including HNers were up in arms about how it's going to kill Vue. I can't find the thread but I do remember it vaguely.
Thankfully the release not only lived up to its hype (faster, smaller, easier) but also put to rest almost all objections about backward compatibility. I really think the Vue team did an awesome job with their next release.
Since React I'd say maybe Svelte delivered the most in relation to it's hype. Otherwise nothing special happened in the frontend framework world.
My theory was that not having the router and vuex ready on day one had hindered the hype. Maybe I've been wrong.
I have no doubt Vue 3 is the bee's knees, but I'm rather enjoying React.
Drought,unseasonal rainfall, ravaging bwildfires, breaking ice shelfs...
Some reports [0] indicate Oil and Gas knew about it in the early 80s.
Spotify: I resisted for a long time. People laughed at my small bookcase of CDs. But, OK, I’m sold. The premium subscription is the best return on the dollar I’ve seen since Wo Hop’s.
Learning to converse in a foreign language. A lot of work, but very rewarding.
The Avengers: no, not that one. The 1960’s series, specifically (and only) the two seasons with Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel. It appeared on Amazon and I started watching out of nostalgia, but—wow.
Julia (the programming language). The power of the type system and its version of multiple dispatch lives up to the hype.
Now don't get me wrong, the games ecosystem is still quite limited, but I think Half-Life: Alyx really showed what kind of phenomenal experiences the technology can provide when given a huge budget. If it ever becomes economically viable then there's going to be a ton more experiences like this on the market one day.
Against all odds, these super expensive bulky headsets with only a few games has shipped millions of units to early adopters. Even if it all fails, I'm happy to have been a part of it.
After I played multiple games and I had the impression, I just want a regular FPS, with mouse and keyboard and a VR headset as display.
Regular VR games are too tyring with all the standing, ducking, holding and aiming weapons.
I do exercise, though.
Cardio and weights, multiple times a week.
But somehow I think games should be more chill.
Enjoyable storyline with one of the most unique and satisfying endings. Great option to watch with the kids and it teaches life lessons along the way.
I'll throw in Saturn Bomberman with 2 6-player taps for a total of 10-player mayhem on a single screen.
Also, if you haven't seen it... https://bravewave.net/panzerdragoonsaga
Nobody is talking about it anymore now 6 months later, so I'd say it did not live up to the hype.
Instead, I think the movies are sincerely better than the books.
For the film, it is really the pacing issue that is most crucial: FotR is already a long and complicated movie, and it really doesn’t have a second to spare on unnecessary scenes. And, unlike a book, movies can’t really be digested slowly (especially not in a theater). The Bombadil scene is a small oddity in the book but it could have been a fatal flaw in the film, disengaging audiences before we even get to Bree.
I think Bombadil could have been effective later in the trilogy - where the fact that the Ring has no affect on him would carry more dramatic weight, and where the “tonal inconsistency” would be surprising and refreshing rather than confusing. Perhaps shortly after meeting the Ents - it would strengthen the idea that Bombadil is vastly powerful (even compared to Sauron) but aloof from human/elf/dwarf concerns.
Definitely going to look at breaking away from their control with my next phone, whenever that may be.
LotR sequels probably had a lot of hype prior to release.
The latest God of War had a great release afaik.
To be honest, it's hard to remember which things were really hyped up before release and met expectations. I keep thinking of stuff I heard was good after it was release, and things which were hyped and failed, or havr not yet fully delivered on the hype. I can't think of any tech which fits the bill. Maybe raytracing? Most tech tends to be overhyped.
It really didn't. "Let's take a compelling villain and a nice-ish philosophical dilemma, create a world that's reeling in the aftermath of said villain's actions... and just quantum time travel kill the villain with no effort and literally exactly zero consequences for anyone involved." Oh. Right. Boohoo exactly one single character died with exactly zero consequences for anyone because his contract with the studio ran out.
None of the perceived trauma exists, except in the minds of avid fans.
Many (not all) marvel movies lived up to the hype, but I think the challenge was hardest for endgame.
Beautiful explained lectures. I can't believe what a great instructor he is. I feel he truly embodies the Feynman learning technique.
Have you checked out the new stuff he added a while ago? I assume it's just as good but haven't made the time yet.
I've also enjoyed Elmore Leonard quite a bit recently. More pulpy I suppose, but well written. Out of Sight is a good one with a somewhat faithful movie version as well.
Normal People by Sally Rooney is something I read recently that I liked.
Unless by literature you actually mean classic literature, in which case I'm really not qualified to recommend anything :-)
Still hoping nuclear fusion and carbon removal pulls through.
Why would people use an illiquid currency when there are others that have the same advantages of being able to use money electronically except for actually being able to make cheap and fast transactions?
If there was a version of gold that fluid and easy to transact with, people would use that instead gold.
There is no reason for bitcoin to exist without transaction throughput except for speculation using IOUs from exchanges.
Unless it was built on complex technology that most people don't understand. Hence comments like yours calling it a failure because there's still a stigma around it. Luckily the are others that have done their research and are investing heavily and helping build out the ecosystem.
Second, I never said there was a 'stigma' around it, that's also something you hallucinated.
> Luckily the are others that have done their research and are investing heavily and helping build out the ecosystem.
People who 'have done their research' say the same thing and people 'building out the ecosystem' aren't doing it with the one cryptocurrency that is purposely trying not to scale well.
Ask me anything you want instead of the lazy rationalization of 'they just don't understand'. Some people have been involved before /r/bitcoin was taken over and turned into a propaganda machine to churn out people that actually buy into the 'digital gold' nonsense.
You didn't actually confront anything I said at all, you just avoided it with a flimsy dismissal.
Man, when I first read about it I was like “whaaaaa???” A little interpreted language in my print statements? That’s crazy talk!
Now it’s like ... everywhere!
`I am ${variable.foo} ${variable.bar}.` - Life changing!
You have a short memory though. Witcher 3 was also deeply criticized for several aspects when it was just out as well before being recognized as a massive game a few months later. I'd say you should probably wait half a year to evaluate Cyberpunk properly.
The Iliad. Hard to put my finger on one thing in particular, but after having finally read it earlier this year I continually find myself doing some task and randomly thinking about it, pausing, and just saying “wow”.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand how the Iliad was hyped. The thing is 3000 years old. Or we are not talking about [0]?
I remember when Lakai Fully Flared came out, it felt like a crescendo in skateboarding, and IMO lived up it. The Mike Mo switch kickflip + napalm explosion was seared into my 13 year old brain forever:
Maradona was a drug addict and wife beater who fathered a dozen unrecognised children and was a horrible person overall. He became a national embarrassment for Argentina ever since he was kicked out of the world cup for doping.
In contrast, Messi's positive legacy will hopefully endure for longer.
The two has different histories, and should not be compared I think., except on the football side.
And from my sysadmin experience, the move to devops. Using a language like Puppet or Ansible allowed me to deploy complex software on limited hardware. Terraform lets me apply that knowledge to AWS/Azure/GCP and more.
Just watched it last night and found it to be absolutely incredibly well done.
Dialogue audio was weirdly quiet, but that was solved by cranking the center channel up relative to other channels.
That's Nolan for you. His sound quality (there is probably a more precise word for this) is appalling. A lot of the music in Interstellar is too loud while the dialogue is hard to make out. Same with Dunkirk - the gunfire in the opening had me cover my ears in the cinema to protect my hearing and throughout the rest of film I was wishing there were subtitles.
Most people won’t like it because it gets more and more confusing, and at some point you’re like okay whatever and give up trying to understand. That’s the way it was for me.
They were trying to shove too many complex ideas into too short of a timeframe and it didn’t work. It felt very self- indulgent to me.
I completely disagree.
The worst part wasn't the unenjoyably convoluted plot, it was the director who insisted the dialog be spoken like a grade 5 play: utterly unnatural. Every spoken sentence ends with a unnatural pause before the response, like a grade 5 play. I could only force myself to get through half the movie before I had to turn it off.
All cities should be car-free. Noise, fumes, and bad use of city space are a disservice to humanity.
For television I think the original "Arrested Development" series was absolutely as good as my friends were telling me. And "The Good Place" deserved every bit of hype it got.
I preordered it in 2003, before the big hack/leak caused Valve to delay release into 2004. Because of the success of the original and the long wait, combined with Valve being almost complete silence during development, there was a huge buildup of hype leading up to the release.
Totally worth it.
Then along came Episode 1 and Episode 2, cut down and polished to perfection like a pair of gemstones.
Rust. It took me a long time to get remotely comfortable, but once it starts to click, it's awesome how the structure guides your development. Worth the investment, but don't expect to be able to grok it immediately.
I use Clion which is also super helpful in letting me inspect, autocomplete, and lint code before compiling.
The main rust-lang.org is quite good, but beyond that nothing in particular stands out. But lots of one-off blog posts on specific topics help get through certain blocks, eg how to write traits/impls.
It looks like there’s a Rust mentorship program here: https://rustbeginners.github.io/awesome-rust-mentors/
Reading r/rust a lot... asking questions in comments.
Doug Milford is also worth following, although aimed more at Rust beginners: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmBgC0JN41HjyjAXfkdkp-Q/pla...
Man, so many features and the syntax is so heavily annotated and the subjective feeling that everything you interact with is some vaguely defined overcomplicated computer science concept ("what you get back from this function is not a vector but an immutable future-closure-trait-promise-with-sprinkles, you must be familiar with those already").
Not a critcism towards the language, I'm sure that it would make much more sense if I put in the time to study it systematically, but the beginner learning experience hasn't been great. It doesn't seem like a language that you can just dip your toes in, you need to go deep to see the benefits.
It really is. Hence why I list it as living up to the hype, you really have to buy in to it to "get" the hype.
There needs to be a corpus of different skill levels of Rust programs to study, not just intro snippets.
Functional Programming. I've been doing FP for almost 10 years. I've drank the kool aid. Give me those monads and referential transparency.
Probably because of the 'second half'.
A lot of people were invested in the Ellie and Joel stuff, and weren't really interested in other characters, so for a lot of folks it was a matter of slogging through story line(s) that had no appeal to them.
All for seemingly making the moral lesson of 'revenge can be costly' and 'forgiveness makes you a better person'.
The reason was less the second half of the game (which I actually found refreshing), but more that the whole thing felt continuosly slow, very violent, and surfaced the worst about humanity. I'm typically not sensitive to games and have played my fair amount of shooters - but this one felt like a bit too much.
2016 had the real threat of both never-Trumpers and Bernie-or-busters, and a lot of weird drama with pizzagate, grab them by the pussy, and her emails. 2020 had nothing anywhere near that and had a comfy and predictable ending.
We take virtualization for granted now but I thought it was smoke and mirrors when it was announced. But nope, it did exactly what it said on the tin.
I was on that bandwagon pretty early around 2000, although back then it was mainly to be able to test sites on older versions of IE than whatever was out back then.
Crazy to think my smartwatch is probably more powerful than the laptop I used to run VMWare back then (I'm guessing it was a Pentium 3).
It's what React Native wanted to be, but JavaScript has too much baggage
Docker. After using it with almost every web I've developed since 2015 I think they delivered on what it promised to do. It's not a 100% quality of life improvement since certain things take a bit longer to do vs not using Docker (starting containers have a penalty, installing a new package dependency takes a long time to build since layers aren't diffed for changes, etc.). But overall I've found it very much worth using.
Call of Duty I, Quake, Full Metal Furies, Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training DS, Donkey Kong Country Returns Wii
Google Street View, Google Maps
Windows 10
Mac Retina 2012
Zoom
Live Music: The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, James Brown, Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, Outkast, Pixies, Bruno Mars (a surprise to me), Harry Connick Jr., Rufus Wainwright, Prince, Billy Joel
Las Vegas... I got married there and it was amazing
Sydney Beaches
Schwarzwald in Southern Germany
Full Moon Party on Koh Pannang
Varkala cliffs in Kerala, India
Jazz @ Harry’s American Bar in Paris
Glastonbury Festival
Tokyo
Millennium Party on Bondi Beach 2000 ( Mobile Home )
The satisfaction that comes with collaboration and helping one another is where one finds true satisfaction with this game.
It's also just a lot of fun, challenging, and beautiful in general, aside from the story :p
https://www.wired.com/insights/2012/05/social-mobile-cloud/
Some people rolled their eyes, maybe including myself at time. (I was never dismissive publicly, but probably didn't pay as much attention as I could have). I would have to say that the buzzword turned out to be pretty accurate: those 3 things largely defined the last decade in terms of software technology, as I see it.
Especially for young people -- there is no world where they don't use some form of social media on their phones (including ones that didn't exist in 2012).
They use cloud applications rather than desktop ones -- that's the "default". Businesses also use cloud infrastructure -- that's the "default".
Lots of money was made in these 3 areas.
1. Coronavirus
The hype
I have a Chinese girlfriend, and when the coronavirus was breaking out in China, she was freaking out, buying masks and so forth. She was really hyping it as a big deal!
Needless to say, it's been a big deal.
2. Election fraud
The hype
Before the election, the President was massively hyping mail-in ballot fraud.
It didn't happen
For those living in the world at large there really was none (dozens of lawsuits were thrown out, the attorney general said there was no evidence.)
But for me it lived up to the hype
But for those living in the President's filter bubble (like me), this election definitely lived up to the hype, and keeps living up to the hype. Those of us in the filter bubble wrongly think we're seeing a massive conspiracy to hide a total of literally hundreds of thousands of fraud ballots across many states in a coordinated collusion. So for me personally (even though I am wrong and living in a filter bubble of proven lies) the voter fraud definitely lived up to the hype!
(I am a conspiracy theorist and everything I believe on this subject had been disproven.)
It is definitely living up to the hype though!
I can't tell if this is sarcasm, hyperbole or what? lol
I suspect most people who read HN weren't around when this movie came out, but I was around then.
There was tremendous hype -- the excitement that this film generated led to lines of people waiting outside movie theaters just to get their chance to see it. People would watch it and then get back into line to watch it again. I remember hearing of people who watched it 15, 20, 25 times.
Star Wars substantially advanced special effects. If you want to get an idea of what the state of special effects were in that era, watch Star Trek (the original series).
"Star Wars" felt _real_. Lightsabers, the use of a "Force" where you could physically moves things from a distance, the glissando effect when a starship goes into hyperspace-- these were all incredibly credible and mind-blowing to people back then.
Star Wars didn't just live up to its hype-- it has exceeded it, becoming a fixture in American culture, and becoming a franchise that continues to generate interest and income today.
For whatever reason, I only watched it about a year ago despite being inside of the initial hype in secondary school when everyone was talking about it.
I later hard that it was purely shock value from nudity and gore, but it actually had a very coherent plot and very interesting characters, and a tragic serial killer protagonist is always nice, of course.
I sketch blog posts for my blog on it. It has pushed me to write end-to-end without distractions because there's no browser tab to check. I also don't end up finding existing blog posts and ending up demotivated.
I download sheet music from imslp and put it on the tablet, I study and annotate the sheet music and use the tablet to read on the piano.
Sometimes I draw on it, too...
Ken Burns Docs Series - especially Civil War and Vietnam
Nassim Taleb's - Incerto - so much interesting and useful info int those books. Really eye-opening stuff.
Robert Caro's Biographies - I am not finished with all of them yet but the ones I have read are excellent
It's honestly the best fast food item I've ever eaten.
Rouge one had the most one dimensional and forgettable villain ever. We like it because it was a very pretty and unusually unique and dark war movie. It's not like the story or world building was up to the standards of the original trilogy...
That said, as an adult, after being let down immensely by eps 1-3, and finding mediocre/nostalgic entertainment in 7-9, rogue one actually feels better to me than all other movies.
I can't really compare it with Mandalorian though, except that they compliment each other nicely. I like RO because of it's dark, everybody dies in the end, that is totally NOT something you'd expect from ANY disney movie.
Delayed gratification and hard work.
Doing the right thing, when everyone else is doing the easy thing.
But regarding Cyberpunk, we should be fair. Witcher 3 wasn't the beloved Wircher 3 from today at release either. It had also problems and took it's time to ripe. People forget it.
Similar think happend at No Mans Sky. Released to early, and still grew in a fantastic game after all the shitstorms. Some games just need longer to satisfy the hype.
I remember I saw Iron Man 1 in high school and it really felt like it was the beginning of something different. This movie wasn't like the other ones that came out each year...
Of course there were some boring ones in the 22 movie run, but overall I think the final 2 were tremendous and pretty much everyone loved them with very little disappointment.
I can only get ~400mbps out of my 1gbps connection since all of my devices are wireless, and this is still so fast that I cannot justify the work of adding a physical cable to my setup.
I can already stream 4K video in WiFi. What would I have to lose the freedom to watch it anywhere in my house?
I was a teen listening to tons of music on MP3 CD players and cheap MP3 players with 64-128MB of flash memory. The 5GB iPod cost about four weeks pay, was so far ahead of any other option. I could almost fit my entire music library onto it!
I was a staunch PC+Windows supporter who thought Apple was dumb. The iPod was the only Apple product I owned, but it was obviously the best music player. There was no competition in my mind.
Unnecessary nostalgia: the original iPod was Firewire only, so I had to buy a PCI card to be able to plug it in to my PC. The first iPod came out before iTunes was ported to Windows, so the official solution for Windows users was MusicMatch Jukebox with a shitty iPod plugin. Eventually I discovered EphPod, an excellent third-party software, which I used for the life of my iPod.
Setup had issues with android, which is sad (but the iphone app is rock solid).
I love how easy they are to clean and service (compared to taking apart bulky vacuums), and they do a shockingly good job if you get the top-shelf models.
Some (light) reading on the topic :
Apple’s M1 and iPad as well.
Arguably, SpaceX and Tesla.
Also arguably, Facebook. I remember thinking it was overhyped at it’s initial IPO valuation.
Oh, and of course Internet - it was massively hyped up 1996-1999.
Friends raved about it, but I just am not into fantasy genre so ignored it for a few years. When I finally caved, after a few episodes I fell hook-line-and-sinker into what is an incredibly well crafted story about the human condition: greed, lust, loyalty, ambition, betrayal... you name it, it has it all.
What it has in common with other amazing writing (e.g. Breaking Bad) is realistic (i.e. human) responses to incredible situations.
Edit: ^^ excluding the last season and the horrid finale!!
Martin's books are exquisitly well written and the early seasons were a credit to them - not so much once they diverted.
It's so bad I never wanna rewatch it nor do I anticipate the books anymore. The end made me totally be over it and only sometimes complain about being pissed off at last few seasons and especially the last one, like I am now.
Hell we've been stuck at home for almost the entire year and I've never seen or heard anyone saying something along the lines of "I'm gonna rewatch GoT".
So it was only after a number of years that I started watching the serial. I had no hope for it, but I found the first episodes unexpectedly great, and then again and again. Well of course, as usual it went down when the book material went thin and finally ran out, and ended in a wreck, but still the first seasons were up to the hype. The only thing I may have against it is the abuse of colour filters: a cheap, too cheap, trick to build a mood, give a graphical style, or like in this case indicate a setting, that way too many directors use and abuse.
I had seen a bunch of other Gaudi buildings, and wasn't all that impressed. The outside of La Sagadra Famailia just seemed tedious.
I went inside and ... words fail me to describe the experience.
Science: Mars Opportunity Rover, Starship
Music: Nathaniel Rateliff && and the Night Sweats. Incredible.
Electronics/Radio: Arduino, QRP Labs QCX radio kits.
Internet: YouTube. When I first heard about it in the mid-2000's I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of. But lately, I've been having more fun with it than ever. Love it or hate it, it's incredible in so many ways. Except the ads. Those suck.
I believe cyberpunk will still deliver, actually. These huge single player rpgs tend to have buggy releases and cyberpunk was still worse than others, but five years from now people will still be talking about them and i doubt cyberpunk will be very different.
Not even the pros, although they're even better in some ways, but just the original AirPods. They don't even sound all that great, but the sound quality was an acceptable compromise for the freedom and convenience that they brought. I used headphones far more often in situations when I didn't normally use headphones because they were so much more convenient to use than any other headphones I've owned.
I played the demo for longer than I played whole other games, and I still play the game that was released in 1999 regularly.
In my top five video games ever made.
I'm only five chapters in, but so far it's a deeply constructed story with a lot of cultural references woven in seamlessly. Even halfway through there are still more mysteries being hinted at. It also speaks about topics like perception, the purpose of existence and the ego. I hope to finish it soon.
When Apple introduced the iPhone, they told third-party developers to build web apps for the phone, presumably because they hadn't the dev tools ready yet. But everybody wanted to build native apps.
That's the funny thing, Apple didn't create the hype, the eager dev community did. Then the tools and the apps came. The rest is history, as they say.
When I first heard alarmists at mid-January 2020, I couldn't have imagined that they would turn out so correct.
So it isn’t. Andy Weir. My mistake.
Then I found Ethereum, which lived up to the hype.
I would also add to this electric bikes.
For all it's faults and failings, Duke Nukem Forever worked. In the literal functioning sense.
Cyberpunk is just unfinished. We went from "when's it done" to "burn the customer on a fast release" in a few short decades.
The gameplay was okay.
- IntelliJ
- Toyota having dependable cars.
Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrel. I heard it hyped on radio and interviews for weeks before I bought a copy, and it was even better than the hype.
Batman Arkham series
GTA 5, especially, had a lot of hype for a long time and it lived up to every bit of it.
There are certainly a few rough spots on non-windows platforms if you want to port legacy .NET Framework apps, but for most enterprisey use cases, .NET Core is an amazing fit.
The performance also constantly staggers me. AspNetCore is trading blows within the top 10 slots of the techempower composite benchmark these days.
It's perhaps the most beautiful thing ever built by anyone.
I've done a fair amount of traveling, and it's easy to get a bit jaded, but the Taj Mahal is every bit as spectacular as you imagine.
Chess is growing in popularity on sites like Twitch and Youtube.
It has completely replaced paper for me. Diagraming, reading, etc. I waited 5 months for the device, and it was definitely worth the wait.
In my opinion, it is the greatest achievement in modern human history.
Overdelivered on top of the hype behind the first 2 movies.
The second one was really hard to beat.
The quantity of invention on display for the 700-however many pages it consumes, is titanic. And the various pastiches that Pynchon pulls off with both accuracy and love are astonishingly numerous. Its like he was daring the world to come up with something he couldn't write and had so far come out on top. The additional pay off for all the work required to consume GR is that it is outrageously funny. Jokes and Broadway numbers performed transparently by the characters, complete with blocking directions straight out of Gene Kelly - Vincent Minnelli musical.
Gravity's Rainbow is one of those ciphers of modern American literature, in which the reality of it, and the cultural parodies it has inspired, like one of my other electrifying reads, IJ, almost perfectly balance. For every proto-hipster than insists that it is to be disregarded for its self indulgence and self-consciousness of pretensions, a serious reader who will stipulate to all of the above, but go on to acknowledge and assert that all the cultural baggage aside, there really is a THERE there.
I think its probably good that Pynchon writes so infrequently, because it prevents him from becoming his own self-parody. There is something remarkable to me about V., GR, Mason & Dixon, and to a lesser extent, ATD. They all exude an empathy with their characters, that is remarkable anywhere. I'm not sure what happened with Vineland, Inherent Vice, or The Bleeding Edge, except to say that though the plot devices and Pynchonian character names, which are frequently even more omnisciently specific than anyone since Dickens, can be entertaining, the characters themselves prompted zero interest or engagement with me. They are as pure a mechanical constructs. I felt with the first group, that it was clear and emotionally satisfying to me when Pynchon demonstrated that he cared for a given character, and it made reading them a transporting experience the first time around. I kept working to get myself emotionally invested in the characters of the second group only to fail for lack of purchase. I recall reading the DFW thought Pynchon a failed genius because he tended to trivialize his own work and never really betray any emotional engagement to the reader. I wonder if he was responding to the same thing I am describing.
Anyway, Gravity's Rainbow, way worth the hype, as well as the effort to complete it.
Tool's Fear Inoculum.
The Expanse.
However, I think it's still in that "only time will tell" phase. Like Cameron's Avatar---mindblowing during it's time and for a few years after but now just mostly remembered for the implications of Na'vi anatomy and the lazily named unobtanium---Interstellar might yet be remembered more for the cheesy bits than its storytelling.
I still have very high hopes for it though! But I'm giving it maybe five more years, at least a decade. Fingers crossed!
He combines thoughtful chords and composition, innovative and quirky showmanship, and deep personal care in mixing, mastering, and general sound crafting. He’s about as original as they come in the electronic scene and probably a major inspiration to the last decade of new artists. His album titles are things like “while(1<2)” and “W:/2016Album/“ and he’s stuck to that theme for as long as I can remember.
"All that once was directly lived has become mere representation. The decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." Guy Debord
This inspired the Matrix, most recently also demonstrated and inspired Black Mirrors episodes, exploring capitalism and participation in hyperreality.
- Empire Strikes Back
- Tumbbad
Avengers finale
Diablo 2 was hotly anticipated and it did deliver.
(not contesting thr experience itself, I just don't remember the pre-release hype)
I was a VR buff and a Half Life fan but I was blown away by how good it was and it’s ending.
Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, he did actually deliver on many of his promises. Some speculate he followed through because he views relationships as transactional.
Wall? Nope, been assigned far less money, very ineffective. Jobs? The trend that started with Obama worsened and got obliterated by the pandemic.
Global respect? Nope.
https://medium.com/@DavisJames/making-the-decision-from-a-st...
The Chronic 2001
Daniel Day Lewis
Halo 2
Richie Hawtin
Aliens
Barack Obama
Freedom (J. Franzen)
Why Israel?
No.