techopoly

That is a really clever alternative to the volunteerism that is becoming very popular in companies -- hire others to do it. Then you're helping two groups of people.

Of course that doesn't do much good for the company's employees that don't wind up volunteering / doing the work, perhaps even increasing the separation the employees may feel toward the less-privileged. Service projects, mission trips, etc. can do a lot toward increasing humility, gratitude, and a spirit of giving in a more-privileged person. One could argue this is partly why companies want to do this sort of thing, so their employees grow (among other good / less-than-good reasons).

Perhaps a company could split the difference. Hire others to do the manual labor that day, but take half the company's team to the jobsite do the work with them. Then on another day you do the same with the other half. That way, all parties involved receive some benefit, and everybody is getting to meet a human being behind the statistics. Just a thought.

P.S. It's a certain level of irony when a party steps in to "help," when in reality they're taking away opportunity from parties more prepared for that sort of work, and are probably doing a worse job, aka building shoddily-constructed houses for the poor. This is especially a problem in developing countries, when an organization or church flies a bunch of inexperienced people into the country, brings in supplies, etc., and virtually takes over the available construction projects in an area because they're doing it for free. All of a sudden the local tradespeople have their businesses dry up, and they may not be able to recover -- and they're the ones that the area needs to continue the work afterwards! A far better method, in my opinion, is to get the locals involved and ask how you can help. Volunteerism is fantastic, but we should do it wisely. </soapbox>

Personally, I don't see how this could be anything other than scary and unsettling.

First, we should be able to exist in a world where advertising isn't so pervasive we can't even figure out what is real anymore. We're already heading toward this Orwellian dystopia of a glossy marketing shine on everything (and that's another State Farm touchdown!). It's a problem because it dehumanizes the receiver as just another set of body organs to manipulate into spending money, and it seems to turn the receiver into an inattentive, quivering set of reflexes. I can't imagine most of us thinking that would be a desirable world to live in.

Second, I feel that a writer should be able to write something once and it be done with. If I were writing an article for the NYT, I would push back as hard as I could if the publisher wanted to have some AI algorithm tailoring my message to sell a product. That is the opposite of respectable journalism, and perhaps with the exception of novel cases, the opposite of respectable writing in general.

Third, I think we as a society should be able to read someone else's views and be able to exist with the tension of them being somewhat different than ours. I don't want everything personalized to me. Let me learn how other people see things. We as members of society should be able to see ourselves as contributing members of that society and not merely individuals. We need works of thought to parse and debate so we can participate in the Great Conversation that humanity has continued for millennia.

If what you're saying is the direction we are going, I'm not a fan.

Not a bad idea. As far as I know it's not required to be visible

This is a good point. People have an incentive to act as if they have 100% focus all the time, especially at the workplace, and especially in American-style culture. So, many people also feel as if they are broken because they get distracted. There is probably a significant portion of the population that truly has a disorder, but for the rest of the population, should we really be calling distraction behavior a "disorder" if it's a massive portion of the population?

I think much of the modern issue with focus can be attributed to the Digital Age. How can anyone focus with all these alerts and dings and emails and sounds everywhere all the time? And multitasking is worshipped like it's the modern man's solution to all problems. We're still drinking the 60s Kool-Aid, as if the modern, fancy, carefree Jetsons' lifestyle is right around the corner. It isn't. We're still the same human beings with the same old problems, except now we have additional problems due to the onset of technology.

(Not that technology doesn't solve certain issues, of course.)

I like this comment. What you're describing is essentially the Great Conversation, and there aren't enough participants. But, the door is always open!

I would think we should look at it somewhere in the middle. We can't truly know what Hokusai was thinking, or even if he truly understood the forces in his mind. But the art now has a life of its own. It represents just as much for him as it can for us.

Even the fact that a Japanist artist decided to look to Prussia for a certain color could suggest that Japan, or at least Hokusai, was opening up to the world, and to globalism and industrialism.

I like to remember James Joyce's words in Ulysses: "The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring."

I had a similar experience in college. In the classes I did best in, I studied for consistently throughout the week, working out problems and reading the book on my own. Then, when test time came, I still studied, but I largely understood the material already.

After a calculus class ended for the semester, I had the professor tell me that I was the only student that understood a certain basic concept of the class. I don't attribute that to me having a masterful intelligence, just that I happened to be diligent in the class and figured out a system based on seeking to really understand the material instead of just pass the tests.

The classes where I heavily procrastinated, I had more trouble with, or at least much more stress. There was one class where I procrastinated and then speed-read 300-400 pages in the textbook the days before the midterm, and aced the midterm...but that was really a freak exception to the rule. It probably did me a disservice, thinking I could do the same for other classes and still succeed.

I couldn't agree more. I keep maps in my vehicle for this reason, and people give me a hard time for it. No matter what I say I can't seem to get people to understand why it's still important to have maps.

Get out of cell phone service, which isn't uncommon in rural America...or lose the charge on your phone...and wind up on a winding country road...and see how well you can get yourself to civilization.

Two is one and one is none. With the way we depend on technology, it seems that society is always one power outage away from chaos.

On the other hand, extreme focus can and should be used to make a complex algorithm simple. It all depends on the programmer's competency to begin with. If he/she doesn't care or know how to make code readable, it never will be readable despite their level of concentration.

The corollary is true as well. I, as well as many others I imagine, have had to fix and maintain dumpster fires of spaghetti code developed under the standard distraction-filled modern business day.

Distraction doesn't beget good code; instead, a good programmer learns how to be as productive as they can despite the dysfunction of a typical modern business.

Huh, me too!

That's deep.

Agreed, drivers often do not check for this. If I'm merging into a lane, I prefer to do so when not sliding next to another car. If it's inevitable, I do it slowly.

Side question, do you think there's a market for this sort of game? Outdoor simulator I suppose?

I've been playing games off and on a long time. I had pretty much lost interest in social gaming, but Fortnite came around and it was fun enough for me to keep at it. Now I have decent enough skill to at least compete with the presumably younger people that sink hours and hours daily into it. And interestingly, I find that I approach the game tactics with a bit more wisdom and circumspection than I would've as a younger man, which can be an advantage.

Now, I wholeheartedly agree on your assessment of many games being cynical time and money sinks. It's really a shame. The coolest thing to me about a video game is the world it creates. And I'd rather not my time in that world be devoted to picking up coins everywhere. BioShock Infinite, I'm looking at you. Horizon Zero Dawn, on the other hand, does have some monotony, but overall the game is so enthralling you don't even mind. We need more games like that.

The loot box model was tried with the new Star Wars Battlefront II, and it had an amazing amount of pushback, to the extent the developer gave up on the model in the game. It seems these days the most successful monetization model is in-game purchases, particularly for skins and whatnot, a la Fortnite.

So why would you say that is?

Maybe to call if there's a plane in trouble?

I would argue that jazz is largely viewed as background music now. People go to a jazz club to...talk. If they wanted to listen to the music they'd go to a rock concert.

Edit: Another thought, maybe a large segment of modern jazz is uninspired renditions of the old greats, and maybe that's why people don't give it much credence? I don't go to a lot of jazz clubs, so I can't really say. Perhaps more people would listen to modern jazz if it was so groundbreaking it knocked them off their feet...unfortunately that honor seems to go to rock, hip-hop, electronica, and such these days.

Not sure what Lord of the Flies has to do with battle royale...

It's been a point of contention recently, the question of who created battle royale. Perhaps Greene is responsible for the modern iteration of it, but the last-man-standing concept has been around in gaming since Bomberman in 1983. And the concept of battle royale in general was popularized with the Hunger Games and of course the film named Battle Royale. And, "battle royale" as a phrase was used by Ralph Ellison in 1952 in his classic novel Invisible Man, describing a free-for-all boxing match that the protagonist must participate in. So Brendan Greene didn't come up with this out of thin air, or at least he wasn't the first.

On the other hand, I see no problem with him trying to profit from it either.

Edit: I correct myself -- in Invisible Man, the phrase was "battle royal," not "battle royale." It's still clearly similar however.

You're absolutely right, many developers seem only to want to pigeon-hole a particular use case into the newest framework or technology they want to learn. I guess it depends on the developer.

In the 70s, Clare Torry was paid £30 for providing the improvisational vocals in Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky" on "The Dark Side of the Moon." Over the next several decades, she received none of the revenue earned from the massive success of this album.

In 2005, she sued Pink Floyd and EMI for songwriting royalties, and reached a settlement with them. She is now credited as a composer of the song in modern releases of the album.

Most session musicians probably aren't so fortunate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Torry

I like waking up to the smell of bacon. Sue me!

Why do developers always get blamed for the state of everything? Developers love creating efficient, optimized solutions. Developer happiness is rooted in a feeling of fulfillment that comes from creating a good product.

There are many parties involved in designing the web, and developers aren't typically viewed as the subject-matter experts on how the UI of the web should work -- just on how to implement what's already been decided.

Oh, well, carry on then.

If I remember correctly, the Source engine increased the field of view from 75 degrees to 90. So you could definitely get sick on Half-Life 2 when Half-Life 1 is just fine for you. You might try lowering the field of view in Source games.

I would listen to this song.

Yes in addition to the lack of a front or back yard as mentioned in another comment, there's an increasing trend in city parenting to schedule the entire lives of their children, including "play dates". Not that play dates are inherently bad, but if you grow up with someone making all the social (and other) decisions for you, you kind of miss out on learning self-sufficiency and the ability to socialize with strangers.

More suburban and rural parenting tends toward unstructured time, in my observation. This likely does have a lot to do with the home setup being more conducive to spontaneity.

This is true, however, how does one know when the market is down? It's down now. But maybe it's falling much further and you're catching the falling knife? Maybe it starts a 5-year boom tomorrow and you've missed your chance?

I guess that extends the thought expressed in other comments that no one really knows when a recession is about to hit. If they did, it would be preventable.

A good investor knows his risk and his time horizons. Obviously, don't throw thousands into the stock market just before you're about to retire, even if the market looks to be down, if you don't have a very sizable nest egg. Additionally, a good investment should be a good investment even during the hard times -- for instance, I don't think Amazon is going anywhere for a while. Otherwise you're speculating, which is a valid form of investing, but you can't ignore the risk, i.e. you have to have cash and assets that will protect you if you lose all your money or the apocalypse happens.

It's complex. I'm not saying I'm a good investor, but I am trying to learn from the past!

This is really true -- on Reddit if you post a dissenting opinion, you're usually downvoted.