beyondcompute

Cool project! However, the map-globe navigation feels confusing and unintuitive compared to a more conventional 2D map UI. Also the clustering algorithm makes labels “jump” in a jarring way during zooming. I’d tune it somehow so that it feels better to the users.

Why won’t they use my browser for downloads, for example through TestCafe? That would also allow downloading premium quality (for subscribers) and so on.

Is London City a busy airport?

Remember the days when most people who were on the internet could build their own websites? And those were rather unique, sometimes quaint and sincere? And you didn’t need a help from a solar-system-engulfing corporation to accomplish that? What if I told you that it is still possible? Or, have we as the tech community “succeeded” in making the barrier of entry so much higher?

Web MiniDisc:

https://github.com/asivery/webminidisc

Great news!

Consume less = exclude myself from certain kinds of social relationships with other people, show less appreciation to the labor of inventors, engineers and people who make stuff with their hands (appreciation in action, not just in words)?

Everyone is entitled to live the way they prefer (within certain limits), of course! :) But I would want to “consume better” instead of “consuming less”.

Consume things made sustainably, buy quality products made by small/family businesses, purchase more services rather than goods, avoid consuming things made by big corporations under regimes that go against the values I believe in, support technologies that move humanity closer to the future that appears to be “a better future”, etc.. I hope that this does not sound too contrarian and does not offend anybody! Peace and happy New Year to everyone!

Should consumers start pushing back against subscription-based pricing models more actively at this point?

That got downvoted fast! A price one pays in modern society for having an opinion different from that of a crowd.

I hope that after they’ll be forced to use USB-C port there will be people who convert them back to lightning.

So has the Japanese government indeed been struggling (I doubt there are that many things that would make such an organization struggle) or was it just avoiding running after every fashionable technological trend there was? I imagine that other governments have spent hundreds of millions in taxpayers’ money going through generations of quickly-becoming-obsolete tech in the same time.

Are we simply dealing here with different philosophies in regarding what’s important in life?

Good news!

I recommend having a look at WebStorm as well. I’ve been using it or IDEA Ultimate (which also includes it) for last 5 years at least if not more.

While it has some bugs and rough edges its capabilities are still quite impressive.

There’s not that much wrong with Facebook or Instagram. They are what we make them. You won’t have a new kind of community unless you somehow create a new kind of human. Or unless you introduce some kind of requirements for people who wish to enter. But that’s maybe “elitist”, right? :)

I support this!

Reader mode in mobile Safari is basically one of the two things that keep me on iOS (the other one is dictation).

I would not necessarily call it “pointless” as in “totally pointless”. The benefits could be: 1) “Trickling down” of new technologies. Development of new production and operation methods that could be used elsewhere. 2) New jobs, taxes, etc. Again there are “schools of thought” (or rather ideological movements) that dislike the idea of economic growth and ignore its positive impact on people’s standards of living. (Agains it’s not an excuse for unsustainability, of course). 3) As applied to transportation, direct increase of productivity (e.g., you are happier because you were able to visit your friends over a weekend). 4) (Probably one of the underrated aspects). Inspiration. More people would go on to become engineers, scientists, etc. Less people will become disappointed in civilization, technological progress and join weird political and ideological movements, etc.

The Design of Everyday Things – Donald Norman

That’s when the smart people exited the field. Because they felt that computers will soon stop being fun (that’s what happened in the early nineties indeed). And now we are stuck in this bells-and-whistles industry (software and web). While real engineers and scientists are focused on the fields that matter, like transportation, space exploration, robotics, construction, food production, medicine…

Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?

Looks like a very interesting project. Thanks for sharing it!

Would be very interesting to learn why this was downvoted. I am somewhat loosing faith in humanity recently. If people express their negative feelings towards someone who thanks another person and is politely trying to clarify his previous message, I am not sure what future do we all have.

Thanks for your reply but it was more of a rhetorical question! :)

That looks so good! Can I see more images somewhere? Is electronic version of the book available?

Why “bizzare”? And what is “Logan’s Run”? That building is absolutely breathtaking! It’s maybe my favorite structure on the planet. And it would be so cool if it got rebuilt (without the asbestos)!

By the way, I really enjoyed this documentary: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/nakagincapsuletower

Thanks for the information! But I did some research recently plus one of my friends got into VR not so long ago. I should have expressed myself more clearly. By “visually immersive” I meant “virtual representations of real places so realistic that many people in many cases wouldn’t want to bother with visiting a real place afterwards”. I still think that: 1) graphics is not “realistic enough” (especially if we are talking about more consumer-oriented systems). 2) there’s not enough content yet.

When I will be able to visit a museum or to travel to some real place (or to a place that is inspired by a real one and retains “detalization”, for example, various small objects that you’d find in a real place) that will be interesting to me.

Games, on the other hand, do not really sound so compelling.

1. Passengers can spend time in VR (I want to believe that fairly visually immersive VR tech will be available already in “several years”).

2. We need hypersleep tech. There’s no way around it, as it seems.

Did someone need to downvote me to disagree with my opinion? What kind of person are they?

Now, some points.

  what economics is a science now

Are you kidding? 3D-animation is not a science but you still can understand how it is done and what works better and what doesn’t. Economic life is a physical process that has been observed for quite a while and some patterns appear to have been understood. We may not be right in 100% of cases but the fact is, that consumption has been a crucial factor in (at least) some instances of economic growth in the past.

  how much can you control the effects of whar you consume other than by controlling how much

That’s easy. By choosing alternative products/services. You boycott companies that are not doing too good of a job and support those (“vote with your wallet”) that you believe to be doing better.

  You might buy vegan patties…

That part looks a bit confusing to me. But in my example I was talking about things that I deem “actually relevant to moral questions”. (It depends how you define the term “moral”, I suppose). But to me a life of a sentient being that has individuality trumps many other concerns related to political ideologies, people’s convenience, etc.

  you only have partial power over it's good-faith nature

“Its nature”. I do not think that this part of the argument looks so clearly-defined. What is “partial” versus “non-partial”? To me it’s all “partial” and it’s “good enough”. I’ll take “partial” any day! Besides, in any case you still need to eat and you still need to make those choices.

  If you really want to keep your hands clean

That’s definitely not the ultimate goal or a cornerstone of my ethics or “philosophy”. In general I am fairly concerned with people who pay too much attention to “cleanliness” or “purity”. Not really an argument, just a note. :)

  more than you absolutely need to for your survival

I think, it’s really cruel to expect someone to spend their lives only at physical survival level. People do have needs beyond physical. So it makes it necessary to spend “beyond that level” and therefore it makes this “morally ambiguous act” necessary. But that’s what I said! We are back to a “very general philosophical level” and we are discussing that “(almost) everything is morally ambiguous”. Yes, I agree with that. (But I also think that it’s a fairly useless question compared to a very practical question, “Do we need to consume to make our friends’ parents live longer and happier?”)

  we absolutely need the economy to grow for continued prosperity

Could you define “continued prosperity”? Do you propose to just stay at the same level we are on already? Or do you propose to go back to a level where many people with serious diseases (who depend on high-tech medicine and equipment) to survive every day will not survive? By the way, I was not speaking about “continued prosperity”. I was talking about “better prosperity”. There’s too much suffering in the world currently in my opinion! We need better medical technologies, we need “cultured meat”, we need robotic helpers for old lonely people, we need to make Earth-born life multi-planetary (or multi-space-habitat) otherwise it will be gone in several hundred million years! Again, opinion. Please don’t “argue” with that!

  preposterous

Preposterous means “utterly absurd”. You could argue that the statement is dubious probably. But to call it “absurd” right away… The statement might actually be true. It might actually be “the only way for societies on certain stages”.

  It's clearly A method

I agree with this! Meaning, it might not be the _only_ method. There might be some nano-robots that make stuff for people out of the air and then no one needs to compete and do unpleasant work and everything is so good, yadda yadda.

  a glorified Ponzi scheme 

Now that’s actually interesting. Do you have links to any serious works which show that economic growth (in all circumstances) is 100% a Ponzi scheme? Because when there’s such a scheme in an economy it’s called “a bubble” and it’s recognized as its own thing and then there’s an argument that sometimes bubbles are not so “bad” and that they might contribute to economic growth (whether we say that economic growth is a good or a bad thing). But again, it’s dubious to me that every instance of a growing economy is 100% a “bubble”.