JakeTheAndroid

I wouldn't consider myself part of the lower denominator of action movie fans. I like a wide range of movies and I look for positive things in even the worst movies. I am generally along for the ride no matter the premise or film quality or even acting depending on the situation. I just like stories.

The last two movies just aren't that great. They aren't terrible, but they leave a lot to be desired. The second movie is fine, it gives us a lot of cool ideas, but the pacing is a bit off. It tries hard to manage being a cool sci-fi movie all about the concepts and an action movie. They just don't nail the balance, but it's not a complete miss as a blockbuster movie.

The third movie is where things really fall off. Everything setup in the second movie is ruined with this movie. They are balancing too many things; The Matrix world and the real world all with multiple subplots, and the concepts with the characters and action. They try to force in new characters that don't have any time to really develop, so we don't really care. And the last fight scene is just a bit dumb and the CGI is pretty bad. It's really just a lazy ending and fan pandering trying to capture the fight scene from the first movie. And because this is tying up the stuff we get in the second movie, it just makes all the cool stuff of that one sort of lackluster.

I won't flame you for liking all three, that's the joy of art. But I think people also have reasonable criticisms of the trilogy overall.

Thank you kindly!

Oh looks interesting, I haven't seen that. Thanks!

I listen to a lot of progressive metal/math metal and they basically live and die by music theory. While I am not the most musically educated individual, from my listening experience it allows them to defy the listeners expectations. Without this structure the complexity of their music would be closer to grindcore or something which is more chaotic.

Using music theory they can understand why certain composition works and then use the listeners intuition against them to subvert those expectations while still providing something coherent.

An example is something like Bleed by Meshuggah. Most people assume it uses some complex time signature but I am pretty sure its just 4/4. Periphery will have pieces that sound 4/4 but are actually 6/8s. Basically most time signatures (if not all, idk) are effectively extended 4/4, so they can create a riff that eventually hits the 4/4 your internal clock expects to hear but in between you can't necessarily find the pattern.

But like you said, music theory tells you all the rules so you can break them. It's sort of like any other set of rules. You need to understand why they are there so you can understand the right why to subvert them.

My only issue with this is that Boxing isn't as dominate of a combat sport as it once was. MMA/UFC has split the market share and by most accounts is more popular than Boxing. This reduces the total number of professional boxers that actually "make it" since most paid boxers rarely get a fight card that is worth significant cash.

But if you combine MMA/UFC with Boxing I would bet you're math is reasonable.

well there are legal consequences of causing or being part of an accident, unlike spreading COVID or Influenza. So we don't consider road deaths okay by nearly any metric. If you want to call out bad comparisons your position should be included in that. Not only do we put tons of safety precautions in place on the road, people get in serious trouble when they have been negligent. And we also have tons of companies currently trying to remove the human driver error from the equation entirely.

The idea of conflating other causes of death with COVID is just perfection over progress. Sure there are other systems that aren't perfect but that doesn't mean COVID isn't worth addressing.

Thats fair. I am all for the hybrid situation where there is an office people can use while also supporting the remote workforce. IDK if it's economical but I think the choice helps ensure everyone has the opportunity to the work environment they work best in.

I am confused then. You want to go into an office so that you can stay living in a small apartment? The position was that the WFH situation helped those that had their own space. But you're saying that not having your own space is a choice.

It would seem that this issue is more around the pandemic itself and less around WFH. Once things open up your home would only be a place where you work and sleep, and you'll be able to spend most of your time away from your apartment. And if you expanded the size of your apartment to a 1 bed instead of a studio, you could theoretically reduce this issue by having an isolated work space that you don't share with your recreational activities.

I am not sure where you live, but I would expect that WHF allows those under 30 a similar financial relief to those above. For you to be forced to live in an 800 sqft place working in tech, I would assume you live in one of the larger metropolitan areas. WFH should allow you to move further away and capture more space for your dollar, even if you don't end up owning the property like those over 30 might.

At the start of the pandemic I lived in a house full of people working at tech startups in Oakland. So I understand having no space as I worked/lived from my tiny room. But, I was able to leave the bay area, as were my roommates and now we all have our own places (some rent some own) because the same rent in Oakland was able to afford private spaces in other parts of CA.

So I empathize with your position. I recommend trying to move out of the locale that only allows you to afford an 800 sqft studio. Even the shittiest tech jobs in the Bay would allow for you to have your own 2 bedroom apt in other parts of CA. This is how you take advantage of the WFH opportunity as a younger person.

Honestly, I loved Atlantis and Universe. Atlantis was purely character driven imo. The plot was more or less a rehash of SG-1 missions to the point they directly start referencing the SG-1 mission report lol. But McKay, Sheppard, Weir, Ronan, Teyla, Carson, and Todd were all very fun characters. SG-1 was carried by the strong performances from O'Neil, Carter, Jackson, Teal'c and Hammond + interesting plots. So I was able to forgive the lazy plots in Atlantis since they focused more on the characters.

Universe was really cool. They made some critical mistakes early that made it hard to see where the show could go, but the last season was so good and setup some cool stuff just to never get the opportunity to explain it. Rush getting control of Destiny so early really messed up the pacing of the show imo, but I would have loved to see the show continue.

Yet WeWork happened still. And tons of investors get screwed by scams or companies completely lying.

Makeup company Coty couldn't verify Kylie Jenners companies earning and once they audited it they found out that it wasn't making nearly as much as they thought.

So it's not like its uncommon for investors to get taken for a ride. Why should we then treat them differently than lower income investors?

I don't believe it's that simple. At least in the past. When you have no options to buy another product then all the trends will point towards that being the consumer demand.

That's like saying everyone loves Comcast because everyone in my area has them. They are the only provider, so maybe sales numbers isn't the best metric to determine consumer desire in all cases.

Within recent years this argument becomes a bit less viable as there are so many ways to purchase clothing and near infinite options, but it then becomes about brand reputation and quality. How many vendors have the capability to meet consumer demand with a high quality, available product. And how easy is it to get funding for this business when, as you say, consumers don't APPEAR to want it?

So this argument feels lazy imo. I don't think it's a conspiracy insofar there is a cabal refusing to put pockets in their clothing for some nefarious reason. But that doesn't mean that the consumers are being listened to, and brands aren't responsible for the lack of available pocket space in women's clothing.

Discord is more like a ventrilo replacement for gamers. It was primarily voice chat in its early days. They've done a lot of work to make the chatroom space on par with any other chat application you'd use otherwise. They also now allow for direct screenshare and game streaming.

I wouldn't ever have considered Discord for Enterprise use at a serious company, but I guess it could do everything Slack can. For personal use it's more versatile for group stuff like gaming or group presentations (my friends have used it for music/video production meetings).

If its not someone you just played with and isn't on your friends list, I feel like most people don't really interact with the message. CSGO has had so many skin scammers through chats that it's basically expected that you're being hit up by someone trying to get into your account for skins or trade scam you.

This is much worse than those situations, but luckily (and unluckily) I think the CSGO culture is fairly prepared to avoid random invites to parties.

I usually search for things using the Google widget on my home screen. And from there I will "Open the link in Chrome". This means that I end up opening an massive AMP link not the direct link in Chrome. So I have to basically copy the title of the article from the AMP'd version, and paste that into Google through a new Chrome tab and usually that works.

But why is using the Google AMP service through the Google widget so terrible? I would expect a more fluid experience, but you end up with this really terrible experience trying to leverage the Google ecosystem. Theres nothing from stopping me from opening FireFox and searching the article title in Bing or DDG at that point.

The amount of effort it can take to the the actual link to the article is just insane. Trying to share something through your phone that has been AMP'd is basically signaling it's not worth the effort to send the article at all.

Add that to how untrustworthy the link looks, it's just terrible execution on an idea that might have merit.

I find plenty of these types of communities through Discord, and I think that is part of the equation that's left out here. I don't really like discord much, but the reason I get when I do is to go check in on those friends. Usually these communities are just people that I've met playing games.

I don't know that these would qualify as counter-culture or subculture, but they are free of marketing and advertising, and people are there because we have shared interests. The conversations are organic and not curated for us and we are isolated from anyone else we don't want to be part of that group.

So, my gut tells me that the younger generations are using Discord like people used IRC.

No, I would argue hedge funds and banks are treating BTC like any other investment; They believe it will make money.

Banks and hedge funds don't inherently care about currencies. They care about the currency that governs their lives but beyond that everything is an investment. Banks don't provide mortgages because homes provide a stable economy or a stable currency. They do so because they will make money back on what they lend through interest. The fact that you store your dollars there is just one way for them to collect tons of assets for lending (among other things). This doesn't means banks care much about the volatility or exchange rate of the currency itself.

Hedge funds would only care about currencies insofar that it's an investment vehicle and investing in currencies can be a good investment. Bonds or other currency investments can increase over time without the volatility of BTC. A hedge fund is literally just an investment group, so it's pretty obvious they don't NEED to care about BTC stability or any stability at all.

Now, the question could be why would banks and hedge funds be willing to invest into such a volatile currency when they are usually risk adverse (banks more than hedge funds). And that would be a good question, except BTC has kept going up and now crypto as a whole is just another ETF market. So there are plenty of safe ways to hedge your bets on BTC or crypto generically without actually believing in the underlying philosophical justifications.

EDIT: Also, I don't think that it's impossible to have a crypto currency that is viable and stable. I think Ethereum has a fairly logical approach to their core issues that could solve the issues down the road. We'll see. I do think it'll be hard for BTC to become a viable currency because of how pumped up it is, and people treat it like an infinite money machine. Until the systemic issues of the BTC ethos are solved, I don't see a promising future for BTC as a widespread currency. But, it might have value in setting up the infra that the future crypto that IS viable will use.

Bitcoin innovated through a blockchain years ago and the world has already adopted that. But the current state of bitcoin makes it bad at its other 'innovation', digital currency.

Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a widespread, standard currency which seems to be the "reason" people say it's worth as much as it is. But it will never be a widespread currency until it has stability. So it's a chicken/egg situation, one of the two has to come first for the other, and both ideas rely on each other.

Most people that hold bitcoin today are doing so because they think it will increase in value, NOT because they care about the stability or viability of currency. That's pretty selfish insofar there are plenty of developing nations that would benefit greatly from a stable currency. Bitcoin might still be more stable than some countries, but that doesn't negate the issues.

So, because many people look at bitcoin as a wealth generator that produces tons of heat and waste, and it starts to look like a perfect marriage of shitty human behaviors.

I don't know that it's entirely fair to say there is literally a single competitor. While Android is a single platform, you're free to get it from a range of vendors that all add their own flavor to Android. Some are really locked down, some are root by default. So you actually have a range of competing platforms even if they are powered by only 2 OSes.

And in the case of both devices (Apple and Android) you can still flash your own "competing" OS on the hardware. It's far easier to do this on an Android device than an Apple one, but the hardware is separate from the software you're running. But there are multiple mobile OSes not named Android or iOS.

What qualifies as a competitor, and what responsibility does Apple or Android have at creating new competitors? What actions are Google or Apple taking to actively stomp out mobile based OSes? Didn't Mozilla give it a shot? Didn't Ubunutu put out a mobile version of their OS? The lack of competitor for OSes seems like an odd argument to make. They exist even if they don't have marketshare, and there is no requisite business structure behind an OS in order for it to be a competing software. There are options. They may not be the single most accessible, and they may not meet your needs, but they exist.

One thing that, while possible, would take time and be non-trivial is their network hardware distribution. They are have more compute locations globally than Amazon, and it's not close. And one of the main focuses Cloudflare has worked hard at doing is driving down peering prices and offering IX services to get into competitive centers.

Google could replicate this, as could Amazon (that would be more my bet personally), but Cloudflare has no vendor lock allowing customers to use any infra. Google could do the same, but it would almost always have better and more robust support on GCP, and that would create a disconnect. Same for Microsoft and Azure. They're incentivized to vendor-lock you into their compute services. Cloudflare isn't.

But, there is room for multiple competitors across the space. For instance Akamai is still a dominate player in the CDN space and Fastly has been strong. Luckily there are plenty of businesses available that they all can eat. Google muscling in might hurt Cloudflare down the line, but it wouldn't necessarily reduce the staying power of Cloudflare. Again, it's hard to achieve and undo their physical network distribution.

And we arrive at the premise. They can build the tech, but they can't be bothered to navigate the social dynamics that make up the rest of the world.

"Right" and "wrong" are dependent upon the system and how it rewards you.I would agree that most prosecutors what to serve justice for malfeasance that has been committed. That's different than whether a case is the "right" or "wrong" one to take.

If a case seems unclear, and you could spend years working on a conviction that will ultimately fall through, that hurts your ability to do justice for more readily winnable cases. You have to spend the time building a case, do all the paperwork, go to trial, etc. That's opportunity cost. So spending that on a case you have 10% chance of winning just isn't a good use of time. Add that to the fact that conviction rate is a metric used to quantify skill, you're rewarded for serving justice successfully. And that then dictates how much money you can get which can help fund enforcing justice.

I believe you're looking at the moral right/wrong, and I don't believe that is the same right/wrong being discussed in terms of how lawyers often choose cases. At the end of the day, lawyers need work and they get that mostly through word of mouth and reputation. You don't really get either of those when you lose cases.

Well in fairness to WSB, it was really built around loss porn, not sticking it to the hedge funds. So even those people losing their life savings are contributing the to the WSB cause so long as they show off all the red.

Okay, but that wouldn't open up the researcher for a lawsuit, it would just provide the company with a PR leg to stand on. Nothing about this case is similar to what you outlined, and would not meet the legal requirements for a successful libel or slander case.

If any company comes out and says the product 100% secure, the tech community basically scoffs at them. It's not a good PR strategy for a company anyways. Now, relying on the reputation of another firm through audits is a totally normal way of doing business. This does not compete with researchers, and has by and large included researchers (stuff like Bug Bounty/Responsible Disclosure programs) as a good control. So any researcher looking for this stuff would likely have a protected way to disclose their findings.

Further, this is supported by another compliance body in the SEC via SOX. There has to be a protected whistleblower program for publicly traded companies. So, the ability to disclose security gaps is not neutered in any way by this court case, no matter how it plays out.

Would security researchers or watchdogs go around and say things publicly without evidence to defend their claims? Because thats what opened up Rudy for this lawsuit. He made unsubstantiated claims that possibly damaged the reputation of the company.

How would this be used against researchers or watchdogs in your opinion?

> the New Yorker replaced their human editors with AI ones, then the outcome is the same and they are still publishers.

Okay, but being a publisher doesn't MEAN anything. Not socially, not legally. And MY point was that the New Yorker makes it explicit that what they post is approved and endorsed by them. It's IMPLIED.

On Facebook, where is the IMPLIED ownership of your comments on Facebook? Where is the delay between your status and some form of review to endorse or support the status? That never happens, and I don't think anyone on Facebook believes that personal status updates are reflective of Facebooks ethos.

Thats the chasm between a news outlet and a service built around user generated content.

The New Yorker gets submissions or requests the use of different stories or whatever. They are EXPLICITLY seeking this information out to display on their site. Facebook does not.

> And on your Gmail point, Google is not a publisher, it acts like a phone service. You send your email, the recipient receives it, unconditionally, without modification.

Not always true. Headers can be modified, you might not have the proper records in place for people to get your emails, or if they don't like or trust your attachment. Google creates a barrier that must be overcome and can limit your direct person to person communication.

> Facebook actively shadow-bans, time-delays and puts fact-check warnings on posts. Since that show they disapprove of some posts, it kind of implies that they approve of all the others.

Okay, so your point is ANYONE that moderates content is now a publisher? So every BBS or forum is a publisher? Is Weebly a publisher? Is Github a publisher? I mean, I just want to understand where this line is drawn.

Well in your case with the New Yorker, they actually review and actively publish the information. Where is the peer reviewed check from Facebook? Where do these status' imply that Facebook supports and endorses them?

And what is the social difference between a publisher and a platform in terms of expected social responsibility? This distinction only now exists because people attempted to use a legal definition that isn't real. So, again, I think this entire line of thinking falls flat upon inception.

> But too often do we give Facebook a pass since it doesn't make the content, it only curates it.

But that is true, no? Do we honestly believe that between ML and a real person Facebook is validating and approving every comment on Facebook? I sure don't. Do we believe that Google is publisher because mailing lists can exist or because they allow an email to be sent while blocking perceived malicious emails? Is that not some form of validation that happens that we could imply makes Google a publisher of every email sent from GSuite?

I just don't agree that an algorithm is undeniably curation in the same sense as a newspaper. The process isn't the same, the intended outcome isn't the same, and the inherent approval of the content isn't the same. So while they may be like conceptually, they aren't the same functionally whether you measure it by the spirit or letter of the systems.

The idea of user moderation vs service based moderation is purely a feature set. If we don't like that feature set or it doesn't meet the needs of the way we use the service, the service sucks at it's job. The correct solution isn't to try and have all these convoluted/philosophical discussion around where to draw the line. The solution is to have a service that does it better get the userbase. Today people like Facebook because it already achieved a wide enough userbase, which lead to default integration into other services. It seems we are willing to trade convenience for expectations, which is an issue for the user, not the service.

Now, if we want to say that they practice anti-competitive market strategies and are monopolies, I can entertain that argument. It still does not require this discussion at all.

Facebook doesn't create the content that you share. Is Google a publisher because you have a gmail account? What we are talking about at its core is a platform that allows you to talk to people you know or might want to know. Is it objectionable that my text messages are displayed in terms of arrival time? What if I want it sorted alphabetically by contact but the SMS app won't let me? And you can still send all the same information to people you know off of Facebook or on peoples walls or through messenger. Facebook doesn't create the content, you do. So how are they publishers?

Also, there is no meaningful difference between "publisher" and "platform" here[0]. So the entire conversation is built on a faulty premise.

What specific regulations does the NYT have for showing you news? What specific regulations does Google have for promoting different sites? The NYT gets to decide what they report on, they have no obligation to show you "the other side". How is that any different than the FB algo?

Now, their lack of moderation is a different discussion worth having. We can argue that it's harder to moderate at scale and be forgiving, or we can say that doesn't matter and that they still have the obligation all the same.

[0] eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-it-doesnt-matter

If we want to continue down a path of honest discussion, at no point did people who firmly believed Trump was guilty of collusion with Russia devolve into storming a government building.

And, the Russia topic by and large never called into question the legitimacy of the ballots cast, attempting to disenfranchise voters. The Russia narrative followed a path of legal investigation into questionable situations. Trump did not get impeached for the outcomes of the Mueller report. Dems did not force their way into political buildings. They (at least the mainstream ones) never called for violence.

So, it seems that the left, in the end, did believe it was a fair election in terms of ballot numbers, and never suggested that the democratic election be overturned.

The last part of your statement says something entirely different than the first part. I don't think anyone is claiming that Dems haven't worked hard to undermine Trump during his time in office. Just like I don't think anyone claimed Republicans weren't working to undermine Obama when they took control of the Senate. That's politics, good or bad. But that does not correlate to a belief that a fair election should be overturned.

Not really an apt comparison in my opinion.