543 karma · joined December 16, 2014
Then I realized the "problem" was the Daylight Saving Time changes... existential sigh
(Where do I submit a pull request to address that obvious bug??)
Guess intellectual curiosity isn't everyone's forte. That's fine.
However, when you say "boomers of the family ate fat and sugar like it was going out of style", 1) I'm assuming you meant "my family", and 2) the point of the link is that Boomers as a whole didn't eat a lot of sugar until fat was demonized by campaigns specifically intended to "downplay the risks of sugar and highlight the hazards of fat"†.
And I don't believe they consumed comparatively nearly as much sugar as their children. And let's not even get started on the topic of high fructose corn syrup (which is problematic for more reasons than potential negative health effects.) Seriously, if you look at just how many food products in a typical American supermarket have added sweeteners, it's can be staggering.
† https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
If one were to "push a Honda Civic to the limits" with an array of engine and suspension modifications, for purposes of discussion you're going to sound like you're just splitting hairs by asking "Is it really still a Civic, tho??", even if you could be technically correct.
The author has the right to title their content as they desire and you can just rewrite it as "Modding the OG Xbox to within an inch of its life" in your head...
My advice for anyone who runs a company (or may): make an active effort to learn about (healthy) human interactions, as well as how to figuratively take one on the chin. Like much of life, you can't choose how you'll feel about circumstances you find yourself in, but you absolutely can consciously decide how you'll respond.
> “Everybody is looking at the Metaverse as something to experiment with and be in, but they never talk about the creation,” said Descamps, the former general manager for Zynga, the company best known for its viral Facebook hit game, FarmVille. “Even in [the film] ‘Ready, Player, One,’ who actually made the Metaverse there? ...”
Unless I'm misunderstanding the quote, did Descamps miss the entire premise for the movie?? That would be so deliciously poetic in context of the film and the article that it deserves an emphatic chef's kiss.
I digress... more on topic to the point at hand, one of my children spends quite a bit of time playing Fortnite and I realized several months back that much of that was in the game's "Creative" mode (largely with school friends) participating in things that might best described as "schoolyard-like"? Say, akin to four square or (loosely-organized) soccer. There's a fair amount of good-natured ribbing (which has escalated to unhealthy levels on a couple occasions with actual friends, not unlike what may occur during those aforementioned IRL examples), camaraderie-building teamwork/competition, and most of the other social dynamics that are exercised among young adolescents. Of course this is all minus such aspects as actual exercise or body language.
And that was long before the whole coronavirus situation disconnected them physically. Now it's effectively the de facto substitute casual social gathering for his circle of friends, for better or worse (plenty of both, best I can assess at this stage.)
However, all that said, there's absolutely nothing that suggests to me that Fortnite is—or ever could become—the (a?) metaverse. My view for now is that it is, frankly, very much a fad.
That isn't to say it won't leave lasting cultural effects. Just look at AOL: their reign of dominance was deep, wide, and surprisingly (if ultimately anticlimactically) long-tailed. They were The Internet to a vast number of Americans. But now? And I only pose that with the slightest dash of cynicism on top of a heaping serving of bland "time will tell"...
edit(s): minor grammar/clarity
Every data point gathered builds towards a more comprehensive knowledge they have on you. It hardly matters if you never log in to a third-party site using credentials from Facebook/Google/etc., that's just icing on the icing on the icing for them. They'll know if you logged in regardless, as long as their widgets or services are in place on a site.
While cookies are certainly the most common means of following you around the internet, there's other means of fingerprinting that, while perhaps not as laser precise, certainly provide more data than most people realize.
Why do you think ISPs are so ardently against people's ability to use them as dumb pipes? And why has the smart TV platform landscape grown like gangbusters (spoiler alert: Roku's CEO has outright said why https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17595384/roku-ceo-anthony...)?
edit: clarifying grammar
> I have never used FaceBook [sic] login for anything
> Facebook doesn't even have my phone number, only my name and my business email address.
People, if any company has A-N-Y-thing that can be associated with you, online or offline, you have no privacy. None. It is gone forever.
There is billions of dollars at stake for companies to build as complete a picture as possible of you and every detail of your life. And billions more remains on the table. That is plenty motivation to fuel a highly-lucrative market for accurate, meaningful profiling for years.
Sure, there's a long list of actions you could take to begin minimizing your exposure, the practicality of each varying widely. But frankly, most of them would only serve to make going about daily life inconvenient. (And the correlation between effectiveness and convenience isn't 1:1...)
The best case scenario is your data becoming stale, such that its values diminishes to a degree that makes it effectively background noise.
There is simply no means of unembedding yourself. But also, more discouragingly, for most people there is no practical means to avoid being ingested.
edit: grammar
Because not all variables are well-defined and outcomes known is not a reason to do nothing. You don't always just wait until you're neck deep in the consequences to begin considering the solving it.
If there's a well-established tendency for a problem to occur, it's prudent to consider measures that may prevent it and/or have contingencies ready for such events. Especially when there is documented historical precedent AND potential solutions.
Moreso when it is regarding a resource that having reasonable access to can have very real, material effects on people's lives. The obvious examples being clean water, electricity, and various means of communication, reliably and affordably available. It's hardly a discussion at this point as to whether internet access is one of those resources, so it seems entirely acceptable to risk overshooting on protecting access.
A rare anecdote of Joe Schmo not getting his 97.54 payout is effectively meaningless.
To protect their business by protecting their reputation.
The scale of Google's advertising business(es) means that a loss in revenue from poor public perception of their ads is likely to be far more than a few thousand small ad buyers (those spending <US$5000/mo) getting cut off, which would barely register as a rounding error (<0.1% of just AdWords revenue alone.)
It's a solution not without compromise in terms of management and accounting but does achieve an outcome that would fit the apparent need.
An approach that has some form of checks, however formal (for purposes of quality and accountability), is entirely reasonable, and especially where there is a notable risk of exploitation (historical or likely potential.)
But I've worked full-time essentially non-stop for a quarter century in a wide range of organizations (in an employee context: 3-person small business up through several thousand people enterprises), and default distrust is a red flag regardless.
If this is something that goes through your mind, the organization you are at is broken and probably dangerously hostile.
I was referring to the potential for a metric that could backfire in the context of a performance review. (And that'd be a relatively tame surprise in one of those god-forsaken events...)
I wouldn't knowingly join an employer that pigeonholes anyone across their organization. I'd also propose that a role with little or no horizontal or vertical professional mobility is probably a good candidate for automation and a human shouldn't be subject to it for longer than necessary anyhow.
That's a great idea in theory because tackling a real world problem tends to motivate towards a real world solution.
However, learning invariably encompasses failure which rarely measures up well with typical (if arguably useful/useless) performance metrics that developers contend with.
An operating system is software. Most software eventually stops being updated.
Microsoft has historically done a pretty reasonable job at delivering security patches to old versions of Windows but that eventually ends.
Apple tends to EOL their OS updates relatively sooner but they will still sign security patches for older versions at times.
Your dad's computer may continue to be technically operable but will inevitably become functionally obsolete.
It's unfortunate but it happens.
Automobiles that required leaded gas to run right might be a good analog here: you could/can keep them running, but at what cost. Leaded gas was a known health danger so the benefits in that regard were clear, but also look at the advances that have been made in internal combustion engines since leaded gasoline was phased out.
Likewise, an old computer (namely one that is connected to the internet) becomes a risk and Microsoft does not have the impetus to continue supporting it.
And this is the point when the suggestion to install a friendly version of Linux is made. But frankly I'm not sure I'd even go to that trouble before reviewing what your dad's needs actually are and considering other devices that may actually be a better solution for the time and money.