Yes, and the very few games that really tried to make use of the interface were amazing. Zelda Skyward Sword was incredibly fun. I remember slashing around thinking there was no way we were going back to regular controls from then on, but I was wrong. I think we have invested so much in the current controller layout that it's difficult for new ideas to get off the ground.
> There’s VR, but I believe there will be a new category introduced within the next five years that will change the gaming landscape.
I have been dreaming of better interfaces (controllers) for games for decades. The Wii, despite it's limited power, was a huge leap forward in how we played games. Unfortunately Nintendo is the only gaming company taking risks while Microsoft and Sony keep doubling down on graphics with the same controllers from 30 years ago. If someone made a non-VR console with VR-style controllers it would be a huge leap. Instead we keep getting the same old immersion-killing 4-button-mashing consoles and games with upgraded graphics cards.
One weird thing I noticed at a particular FAANG was that there were many teams that were either overwhelmingly Indian or Chinese. It seemed very unlikely that these could be random, as they were minorities. I made sure to avoid any team like that. Although to be fair it also happens with white people, but at least they are the majority so it seems more likely to occur randomly. I've even overheard certain teams having technical discussions in other languages beside English, which seemed weird because if I was in the team it would make me feel very uncomfortable or excluded.
Is there a way a social app targeted at young people in the US doesn't end up looking as if their success comes from sexualizing girls? I don't use any social media, but Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat also seemed to me like that in their early stages. Maybe Whatsapp is an exception, and that might be why they largely failed here but took off elsewhere.
I think being part of a big company will always be like that. The 10x performers will get paid 1.3x and the .5 performers will get paid .8x, so if you're smart and not particularly passionate about your work it makes much more sense to be a .5x performer. Also, usually the codebases tend to be quite complex with little to no documentation since that kind of work is not rewarded. This means the hundreds of engineers who later work on that will take 10x as long to complete anything but it doesn't matter because the person who wrote it already got promoted and left the company. Then these engineers lose motivation as a task that should have taken 1 month takes 10 months, and that also brings productivity down. This is why I look for teams that use open source technology because there is competition there and if your documentation sucks no one will use your code or another competitor will take over. This is why I'm convinced places that use proprietary tech are going to fail in the future since the natural forces of competition will cause the internal technology to stagnate.
If this becomes a problem, I think cameras and smartphones would be upgraded with a way to certify they are real videos. I have no idea how, and it would likely have to keep evolving, but if the financial incentives are there I'm sure someone will figure it out. Maybe the video gets signed by the phone and can only be verified by that device?
For queries that fall in the realm of "conspiracy" like alternative medicine, flat earth, telepathy, anti-vax, etc. I think results from certain "high quality" sources like Wikipedia should be weighed higher even if the content doesn't seem as relevant. For that specific example, the wikipedia article on telepathy would seem more appropriate than many of the results. There is also plenty of literature from psychology that suggests a link between belief in telepathy and certain mental illnesses, so maybe that can also be surfaced more prominently than services that claim they can talk to your dead dog. However this is not about one specific example, this is about indirectly validating false information by simply making it more accessible. On the internet a lot of conspiracies have more "social proof" (through prominence on social networks and search results) than the boring reality so they spread faster than they should.
The problem here is that false information spreads quickly and is validated though sites like Google and Facebook through higher exposure. This has real consequences like the rise of anti-vaxers and other anti-science movements.
I think we're just regressing to the mean. Throughout most or all of human history we believed all kinds of crazy ideas, and it wasn't until very recently that we started really valuing teaching the scientific method and good education mostly based on facts. This required filtering lots of information and putting a lot of trust in many institutions. This worked extremely well right up until the internet became mainstream. Now unfiltered information is available everywhere again, and a significant portion of the population have a hard time distinguishing what is real or not. I grew up religious so I very well understand how for many (maybe most) the burden of proof is simply that it is written down somewhere. Of course the institutions aren't blameless here, and I don't know how to solve this without all the major SV companies agreeing to lose a lot of money.
I have a family member with a mental illness and they think they can talk to animals through telepathy. I was worried it was a sign of schizophrenia and tried to convince them that they needed help. Unfortunately when you google "animal telepathy" or any other query to get information on telepathic communication with animals, the top results are all absolute batshit crazy sites that confirm people can do that. Now I see how someone can start to believe all kinds of crazy things. Since Google probably optimizes for some type of engagement under the hood, all sorts of alternative medicine and crazy ideas end up as top results. I really think the whole "let's make all information/speech available with no filters except for sex because clearly sex is evil" approach from SV companies is causing huge harm. Most people don't grow up thinking they need to read several scientific, peer reviewed, reproducible papers to believe new ideas.
Google is a classic case of "show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome". Google's performance reviews and promotions are based on building shiny complex things, not on simple but grungy work that solves real problems. So they constantly come up with things nobody uses or cancel products that many use but aren't shiny enough to get a bunch of people promoted so no leaders want to own them.
I've been wondering about this as well. As you mentioned, monogamy may have evolved due to polygamous societies being less stable. The US is going towards a winner-take-all future where only a few humans will be able to have their psychological needs met. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, fewer and fewer people are able to even fulfill the bottom layer. This means that the majority of people will eventually have no incentive to keep society intact. I think we're already seeing the beginning of these effects with societal unrest, rising extremism, rising and younger suicides, etc. I know this sounds like incel-speak, but I have been in a long term relationship for several years and I'm starting to be very worried about the future of the US society and am reconsidering my plans to have children. I think at a high level this is due to the extreme wealth inequalities that exist, so if we don't fix that we might be heading towards a very violent future. I think part of the reason for wars was to tame this instability by giving men some sense of purpose while at the same time getting rid of them or the men of the other side. Unfortunately, this kind of discussion is forbidden in public and you will be labeled a misogynist or incel if you mention it.
This seems like a straight up ad with affiliate links. The price of SSDs has been going down for months, and if anything they went up since the pandemic began. You can check the price history of popular ones on camelcamelcamel to confirm.
I have visited several times and even before this virus I saw people wearing masks all the time. At grocery stores I remember seeing the workers who were stocking things wearing masks and gloves, which I never see in the US. Wearing masks while sick was already expected and has been for decades. Maybe since it's already in their culture to do what they can to stop spreading diseases, they were much better prepared than the rest of the world. They could also be lying, but that seems unlikely since the information would get out very quickly.
I hear the argument that deadlifts are great if you have perfect form a lot. However, if you don't have perfect form they can be extremely dangerous. Very few other excercises have such high risks, and there are plenty that are just as good. A lot of people think they have great form but don't record themselves from the side so they don't notice how much their back is bending. On the other hand excercises like the pull up, push up, dumbbell press, row, dumbbell squat, etc are also very good with little potential for life threatening injuries even if you have bad form.
Many (most?) Of the time the choice isn't between video games and a fullfilling career. It's between a shitty job and games. It's very easy for me to say I would never do that, but I also have a pretty good job and a decent social life. Games also provide some sense of community that is increasingly harder to find in real life, especially if you're not successful by some metric.
What is "physics" as a job? The problem with physics is that there are few applied physics jobs compared to CS and applied CS (software developer) jobs. Similar things can be said about CS, there aren't very many CS jobs and I'd say it's comparable in difficulty to physics.