lumenwrites

Are there games similar to Diplomacy that you can play in 1-1.5 hours, over discord video chat?

Not enough nitpicky corrections that devolve into even more nitpicky nerd arguments about semantics and usage of words that are entirely missing the high-level picture or the ability to understand the meaning of sentences based on their context.

Also, this could use more critical replies discussing why this project couldn't possibly work, or how this article is a result of living in a bubble.

And, of course, someone managing to steer a technical subject into a divisive political argument.

But seriously - very fun project, I love this!

Doesn't it get exhausting to jump through so many mental hoops to minimize someone's accomplishments?

I don't understand what people get out of this, is it really that painful to admit that some guy has done some pretty cool things with his life? All the effort it takes to research all the negative things about someone could've been spent doing something productive. Being willing to admit that someone did something awesome could've been exciting or inspiring.

And yet people work so hard to think around all the good things, and take the most negative view possible. Ugh, I don't like this part of human nature.

What's the best way to learn marketing?

> American ideas and values are inconspicuously spread through memes (in the original sense of the term) and foreign children, teenagers and young adults are raised on them.

Honestly, in the case of my country (and probably many others), this is a huge improvement. Thank god the internet and social media have exposed me to the American ideas and values as I was growing up. I don't agree with all of them, but living with my head filled with the culture and values of my own country would've been so much worse.

All that stuff about "freedom" and "human rights" and "spreading democracy" may sound corny, unless you live in a place that doesn't have enough of those.

Exporting its values is probably the best thing America could've done for my country.

I could stand to hear less about American politics though)

> Any nation that wants to retain control over their culture and values should have social media sovereignty.

I'd rather control my own culture and values myself (by choosing what things to read and what websites to visit), than having someone else control them for me (which, in practice, just means censorship and/or propaganda).

I don't know about other people, but it's the 2nd most useful device I own (after my laptop), and it is the device I use the most by far (if you look at the time I'm using it).

To me, an iPad is a notebook that's always with me, where I write down all my thoughts in my journal, practice writing and screenwriting, do task management and planning (most of that in Obsidian). I also watch video courses, listen to music, browse the internet, all the stuff everyone uses their mobile devices for.

Smartphone is too small for typing, and not as convenient, no other tablet is anywhere near as convenient to use. iPad mini is the perfect form factor for me.

Wow, thank you for posting this, I was just thinking this!

Most people here focus on autocorrect, which isn't such a big problem for me since I'm used to having it off.

But what the hell is wrong with the cursor placement? It is so incredibly broken, it has a mind of its own, and never goes to where I mean to put it.

Simply tapping on text puts it in the wrong places, but holding and dragging cursor or holding and dragging on the spacebar to move it also works terribly, somehow it never does what I need it to.

Selecting text is just as terrible.

It's also impossible to put the cursor in the middle of a word. WHY NOT? Just put the cursor where I tap! It is so easy to do on Android.

I find it much easier to type and move cursor on my Galaxy S9 than on my iPad mini, despite the iPad having a much bigger screen.

Thanks!

It is built with Next.js and hosted on Vercel.

That's all there is to it, there's no database, just a big json file that contains all the courses.

Oh, thanks a lot for letting me know! The website got to the front page of HN, and I ran out of my free tier limits on Vercel, had to upgrade to the pro account.

Already fixed.

Thanks, I'm really happy you think this is useful!

This is just a small hobby project I have done over a couple of weekends. I don't have huge plans for it, I just want to keep finding more screenplays and adding them to the library, to make it even more useful to people.

Maybe I'll enable users submit their own screenplays and add them to the library (and create a new category for unproduced/spec scripts). Technically, they can do that already by sending me an email, but if there's interest I can make that process more convenient.

Also, I'm thinking that maybe it could help me build a discord community of aspiring screenwriters, where we'd brainstorm ideas together and exchange feedback about our work. Like an online writer's room for exchanging ideas and advice.

I have done that for my other hobby (writing adventures for roleplaying games like DnD), and it worked really well, it's very fun, and people love it:

https://rpgadventures.io/writers-room

It would take a lot of time and energy to run, but it could be helpful and worth doing, so I might do that if there's some interest.

Thanks, I hope it will be useful to people!

The website is built with Next.js and deployed on Vercel.

It's so fast because Next and Vercel do a lot of smart optimizations with the code and the images.

Also, because the screenplays are not stored in the database, just one large local json file, so the server doesn't have to make an extra request to the database.

Thanks!

I think this is a good idea, and I think it wouldn't be all that difficult to convert pdfs into text. At least some of them, since some are represented as text and some are just picture scans, which would be much more difficult to deal with.

I will look into this!

I'm hoping I won't get into too much trouble, since:

- The intention of this library is to be a free educational resource for screenwriters, it's just a hobby project that I'm not making any money off of.

- I'm simply collecting and organizing the screenplays that are freely available online already (just with a nicer UI/UX, and with more convenient searching/sorting/filtering functionality).

- On the about page I have left an email people can use to submit a takedown request, if they want to remove their screenplay from the library.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm hoping this is enough to qualify for "fair use", or something like that.

I don't know how people get screenplays originally, I'm just searching and organizing ones that are freely available online already.

Thanks!

Yes, I think it will soon be the largest library of the screenplays on the internet (if it isn't already), the idea is to find as many screenplays that are freely available online as possible, and add them to a library that is easy to search and to browse. And make it good looking, with nice UX.

Thank you, I'm glad you like this!

This is a great idea, I will add the full-text search feature.

Although it probably wouldn't work for your particular use case - TV shows rarely release the screenplays for all of their episodes, only a few select ones.

It's very interesting and useful for screenwriters looking to read screenplays to get better at their craft, but it's not enough to do a full-text search over a whole TV show.

Wow, this is amazing, thank you for sharing this! This was annoying me for years.

This would be such an amazing premise for a scifi movie. One such planet drifts through the solar system, and we have like 3-5 years to make contact with whatever lives there before it drifts away.

> Only pull the lever if you are sure. With an action you assume responsibility for the outcome.

Letting people die just because I don't feel super comfortable assuming the responsibility sounds pretty close to the definition of evil to me.

Take a look at the recent Kurzgesagt video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEENEFaVUzU

If humanity plays its cards right, there will be trillions and trillions of humans living in the future, all over the galaxy. Everyone who lives right now, or has ever lived, is barely noticeable compared to that.

Take a look at the recent Less Wrong post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a...

I don't see any flaws in this argument, we all are on a fast-track to getting killed by AI, and the smartest people on the planet don't have a plan on how to fix it. "Build an AI that burns all GPUs to prevent all the future AIs, and hopefully doesn't kill us all in the process" is the best idea they've got.

If you believe that we're about to kill trillions and trillions of potential future human beings, these priorities make sense.

Wouldn't comment counts incentivize controversy-inducing content instead?

Then how would you rank the articles, measure their quality, and choose what to put on the front page?

"Rationality: From AI to Zombies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Location: Birmingham, UK

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: React, Next.js, Node, JavaScript, TypeScript, Figma, Godot.

Résumé/CV: https://lumenwrites.dev/

Email: lumenwrites@gmail.com

I am a full-stack web developer specializing in building interactive websites and applications using the modern technologies (React, Next.js, Node, GraphQL, etc). I have a Master's degree in Computer Science, and a wide variety of skills I have used to design, build, and launch websites and web apps currently used by thousands of people.

I'm interested in working for a startup or a web design/development/marketing agency. I'm also very interested in becoming a programming mentor/teacher/coach (I have some teaching experience, and I really love doing it).

If you guys are working with Godot - please do reach out, it's not my specialty, but it is a favorite hobby I'm getting pretty good at, and I'd love to find opportunities to work with it.

I'm interested in full-time positions, as well as freelance/contracting/part-time.

I'm also currently working on a small web design/development/marketing agency (https://nexylabs.io), if you know anyone who would be interested in our services - send me a message!

It would be more constructive if instead of name-calling you'd offer a convincing counterargument to what they're saying.

Or do you agree with their arguments, and just have an issue with how they convey them to the general audience?

If you're short on time - the top comment provides an excellent summary.

I think that subreddits work extremely well for finding people with similar interests, they're basically the perfect tool for that. Discord servers too. If anything, the issue is that they're too good, so I get addicted, and have to force myself to stop.

There could be some kind of solution, based on NLP, or maybe even just finding patterns and clusters in links. But it'd suffer from the same problem subreddits and google do - instantly getting hijacked by the spammers and SEO people trying to promote their stuff.

To the degree that having a popular blog is valuable, people will be motivated to find ways to promote it. And when people want to promote stuff, they'll try game whatever system is available. And so the system will have to implement the anti-spam measures, leading to moderation and probably banning most of the blogs.

Hmm... Maybe that's why we ended up with HN comments and subreddit text-posts working so well. Yes, you can't get the "networking" value out of them (because nobody cares about your username, and there's no such thing as subscribers), but it's not a bug, but a feature - without the personal value there's no incentive to game the system, so you just have people posting for the sake of the conversation.

But that would also mean that becoming even a "micro" celebrity will always be at least somewhat difficult - to the extent that it's valuable, there will be people trying to game the system, and measures trying to stop that, and competition.

The biggest challenge is getting people to read what you wrote, and care enough to respond.

I started a blog recently where I want to write notes for my writing practice and explore different subjects I'm interested in. Of course it'd be nice if someone had actually read it, for my personal vanity, and all those conversations and opportunities people claim blogging leads to.

But it's not the kind of project it would make sense to drive ads to, or even to niche down and grow an audience around a specific topic, since the whole point is to write whatever "gratifies my intellectual curiosity". But you can't really submit this kind of thing to reddit or to forums, they ban "blogspam" for very good reasons. There's no obvious way to promote it and put it in front of people.

Instead of blogging I could try engaging in conversations here and on reddit (and maybe on discord or twitter), and that, at least HN and reddit, works amazingly well for having good discussions (if not for making personal connections).

But the biggest problem with engaging in social media is that it quickly becomes extremely unhealthy and addictive (in the way that blogging doesn't). I want to write, and I want to talk to people, but I don't want to get addicted to refreshing my profile page to look for upvotes and comment notifications (I do have a big problem with the internet addiction).

I'm not sure what the right solution to that would be. Does anyone have good ideas? How do you make actual human connection over the internet and engage in intelligent conversations, without getting your dopamine hijacked and skinnerboxed by the social media algorithms?

Maybe there's a space for a platform that would encourage thoughtful discussion somehow, and limit the immediate rewards that make social media so addictive. But then nobody would use that platform, right?

Haha, this thread is amazing to read! People who reply to your post try to explain why the writer's block is a thing, and inadvertently demonstrate the reason it is a thing for them and not for you.

They talk about how easy it is to write random words and how hard it is to write well, and you keep explaining that you're supposed to remove the filters, start by writing random words, and then edit until it's good.

I think that's the difference between the people who have writer's block and the people who don't. People without the writer's block are able to relax their filters, people who suffer from writer's block are trying to write well right away, and it's hard and painful.

Ha said that, even understanding your advice consciously, I still find it incredibly difficult to apply. Logically, I see that there's no reason to be ashamed of writing a bad draft, I don't feel like I'm afraid of being judged by people, or like I judge myself, I think that I want to be able to just babble until I stumble upon something good I can refine. But for some reason, my brain just refuses to do that.

Maybe it's difficult because my brain feels like "babbling" is a waste of time and energy, and I always give up before it gets good. Maybe because it's difficult to motivate myself to do things when I don't have a plan, don't feel like I have control over what's going on, don't have the guarantee that my efforts will pay off. Maybe it has something to do with status or confidence or insecurities that apply these filters whether or not I choose to. I dunno. I know that these reservations are silly, but I see why people struggle with it, I do too.

I think that relaxing the filters, letting go of control, and trusting in your brain's ability to generate random words and make them good later on is also a skill, and some people find it easier than others.