Amarok's recent activity
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Comment on Winamp has announced that it is opening up its source code to enable collaborative development of its legendary player for Windows in ~tech
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Comment on Postmodernism, conservatism, reactionarism: A brief attempt at deconstructing the purist fans in ~humanities
Amarok LinkI think this overcomplicates something that's at heart dirt simple. The analysis of the fan interaction is on point surely, but are we all certain that isn't just the consequence of the way...I think this overcomplicates something that's at heart dirt simple. The analysis of the fan interaction is on point surely, but are we all certain that isn't just the consequence of the way algorithms recommend entertainment? They love to book the fight, so to speak, and are not innocent in this mess.
The basic plots of our now zombie franchises are, no joke, far less adult and intelligent overall than the cartoons I watched on Saturday morning back in the 80s. That's not hyperbole, that's fact - go watch the He-Man / She-Ra crossover five part movie sometime, and you'll find all the plot, character, and world building that's missing from post-covid entertainment. Thundercats had their fair share of multi-part episodes, so did Transformers. These are children's cartoons that contain objectively better storytelling than Star Wars, Rings of Power, and so on - from a half century ago. What the fuck happend, and isn't that the real question?
Watching a modern writing team try to adapt Star Wars or Lord of the Rings is rather like watching a pack of howler monkeys try to pilot a star ship. They just aren't mentally capable, period. This leads to not-story bullshit like 'feels' and 'inclusiveness' being more important than meaningful storytelling structure, which means the plot is trash to anyone with a positive IQ. It's good entertainment for kids whose brains aren't all there yet, but adults are going to roll their eyes and tune out. Modern television runs on the power of convenient coincidences, which is writing I'd fire someone for instantly. Get better or pick a new profession.
This is I think why they are so desperate to 'mine franchises for IP' as Kurtzman put it. The name recognition alone is the only reason these tepid franchise entries get any press or air time, and they are never ever what they claim to be. Hollywood is bankrupting itself with rancid fan fiction, and as they continue to bleed money there's going to be an awful lot less of this crap out there - thank god.
I think Foundation makes a good example. There were no guns and protagonists fighting, and yet the show is full of it, along with character actions that not only weren't in the books, they are actions the characters in the books would never ever do. In fact some of the things the characters in the show do are intentionally the exact opposite of what the same character does in the books. Why exactly is it even legal for them to falsely advertise this as the 'Foundation' series when it has only nouns in common with it? Call it 'Empire' and lift all the inspiration from Foundation you like, just don't call it Foundation or we are going to have a problem. The only thing a bad adaptation is capable of doing is assassinating the character of the original work, effectively censoring it. Some people think that's the point but I'm not ready to attribute it to malice instead of industrial-levels of stupidity just yet.
None of these writers are even fit to shine Asimov's shoes, and yet we're forced to watch his work get subverted and trashed by lesser minds writing juvenile stories. That will piss off every single fan of the books. It's false advertising, shit writing, and hubris on the part of the companies that pay these clowns to run their adaptions for them. Your post, while thought provoking, strikes me as a lot of gymnastics to avoid recognizing this simple basic fact of adopting properties.
They'd be better off launching these properties they create as original series, rather than passing them off as properties that they actively insult by existing in the first place. Then there's no reason for the fighting, because there's no comparison to a prior, bestselling, beloved property that has stood the test of time with multiple generations running. I maintain the reason they continue to do this is because they know that no one is going to watch their crap without the name recognition. It's simply not good enough to make a name for itself on its own, unlike the original masterworks they are basically ripping off for views which earned their popularity by being, you know, good.
I say this as someone who only gives the original Lord of the Rings trilogy an 8/10 as an adaptation, so you have some idea where my own standards are. I dig it, but I won't call it a great adaptation, just a good one. I don't miss Bombadil, but I did miss The Scouring and I'm docking them points for leaving out the part of the book that drives all of the themes in it home. Perhaps everyone has forgotten Xen-Arwen showing up at Helm's Deep - the backlash against that got it cut from the finished films because unlike most modern producers, Peter Jackson had the brains to listen to his
fanscustomers. That's why we all have the special editions sitting on our DVD shelves. I won't be putting 'Rings of Power' on that shelf, that's for sure.Take the latest Fallout adaptation. Everything in it is a 9/10 except the plot, which once again can't stand up to a moment's analysis. It's just an ever escalating collection of 'cool' scenes the writers thought up, with no muscle to stitch it all together and none of it making sense. It got by on ferret shock and member berries alone. It is not a great piece of art, and people will not be talking about it several decades hence. That is certainly not what Todd and Amazon wanted, but it's what they got, because they didn't vet their writing team and hire competent writers to handle the adaptation.
They are happy with a silly Fallout-themed soap opera. What's the point in even making a show if you aren't going for the brass ring, anyway? Where's the commitment to making good art? Do we just excuse every crummy decision in every show and pretend they are all great? If that's the case you'll probably love the coming era of 99% AI-written/produced content, with GPT-Omega spitting out ten series a minute. I know that a GPT can come up with better stories than this drek even now. :P
I really think they have set themselves up for the dissolution of the industry as we know it. Kids with AI tools can and will create better original stories than this, and that wave of new media is undoubtedly going to come with dozens of new creations that don't have this adaptation malaise and still knock their fresh world building and their storytelling out of the park.
As for the reactionary stuff, well, we know how the algorithms love to mine outrage - it's the one single thing they've been programmed to do since they were created. That opens up financial opportunities for new critics and other voices who get to make money that hollywood left on the table by being utterly abysmal at their jobs. If the show isn't enjoyable, there's good money to be made MST3K'ing the piss out of it. I look at it as recycling a property you wouldn't even bother with into at least one evening's entertainment lampooning it for the trash it is. If these properties were good, this sort of content would have no views and generate no money. They aren't, and so it does. Yay capitalism. :P
I suppose the point I want to illustrate is this - these stories are objectively bad under any level of analysis. Let's not lose sight of the fact that it's all polish on turds, and justifications for why those stinkers are somehow magically better than they appear to be, and should be given an apologist's kid-gloves treatment rather than a scathing literary critique. I invite anyone to imagine what Siskel and Ebert would have to say about anything released in the last decade.
Take a look at the original plot lines, universes, and stories in manga, and ask yourself why manga is making more money than hollywood lately. The simple fact is, tinseltown is now creatively bankrupt, and the numbers bear that out more with every release and each passing day.
I can only presume that it is somehow a taboo to pin blame the writers for failing miserably at their jobs. That is the totality of the entire problem right there. Having everything written by committees filling out forms and check boxes (the norm now) is clearly doing their creative works no favors. We don't need a committee to cook a meal, and we don't need one to write a story either. Too many line order cooks, not enough Chefs.
I'd send a bad dish right back at a restaurant, and I have the same reaction when I pay for Lord of the Rings and get Rings of Power. This isn't what I ordered, and I couldn't give a damn about the Chef's opinion - I'm the one who has to eat this meal, and I'm ultimately the one paying for it, which makes me the boss. That's not up for debate or other opinions. I'm not going to argue with the Chef, either - I'm going to find other, better restaurants who give me what I order and spend my money there.
Just my take on the mess. I do have one other interesting observation, though... the reactionary channels out there are missing a golden opportunity by just focusing on the negative. Their primary mission should be to find new, good content and get the word out about it, rather than focusing exclusively on the missteps of the major properties. That's fun, but it's not really productive. They should be reviewing comics from patreon, films from overseas, manga, anime, indie games - anything that's got a quality shine on it. The best way to kill the stupid is to provide a pile of superior content, and get the money going into better hands.
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Comment on The West doesn’t understand how much Russia has changed in ~misc
Amarok (edited )Link ParentWe are, but at least we are aware of it and working on the problem now. That's why the major push to reshore everything came in, and that last aid package was as much about upgrading our own armed...We are, but at least we are aware of it and working on the problem now. That's why the major push to reshore everything came in, and that last aid package was as much about upgrading our own armed forces as it was about helping Ukraine continue.
That's not our biggest problem, though. This is. We and almost everyone else remain dependent on China's natural resources. It's not that they have exclusive access to those resources, it's just that they've built out the supply chain on their end to mine the raw materials and nobody else has. Our factories produce bupkis without those materials, and it's going to take us the better part of two decades to catch up to producing them all ourselves.
That's assuming you can sell the environmentally paranoid public on a 'strip-mining America' campaign. It'd take opening hundreds of mines across the US to give us that level of raw input, and frankly, the US doesn't mine its own resources - it's borderline taboo here. We have everything we need in the ground, more or less, but getting it out is going to be a serious political issue.
Here's the full summary of China's mineral advantages.
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Comment on Honest Question: Why did PHP remove dynamic properties in 8.x? in ~comp
Amarok Link ParentAny sysadmin worth his salt would have looked at v8's patch notes and changelog before pulling that trigger and caught this, it's an obvious major change. Everyone knows that if there is a most...Any sysadmin worth his salt would have looked at v8's patch notes and changelog before pulling that trigger and caught this, it's an obvious major change. Everyone knows that if there is a most appropriate time to be wary of the patch notes it's always the major releases. That's a slapdash shop if it caught their admins by surprise when all the user complaints rolled in. This would make me very likely to abandon the provider. Probably not PHP though. :)
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Comment on How do you organize your Linux packages? in ~comp
Amarok LinkLet the package managers handle it, they are all grown up now and pretty damn good at their jobs. :) For everything else... I like keeping my stuff and the operating system's stuff completely...Let the package managers handle it, they are all grown up now and pretty damn good at their jobs. :)
For everything else... I like keeping my stuff and the operating system's stuff completely separate. The interactions just aren't worth the hassle and are easily avoided. Put all of custom stuff that you do not want the operating system to interfere with into the /opt directory. That is its original purpose and I've never seen any distro touch that directory for anything.
Build it out with its own /opt/etc and /opt/lib and /opt/bin and /opt/databases and make your app live there entirely. Compile your own libraries and services, then use symlinks. For example /opt/postgres links to /opt/databases/postgres-12.4.5 until you upgrade to /opt/databases/postgres-13.0.0 and change the link. You can keep a rolling version repository that makes developers and sysadmins happy for every library and app in there.
Give each app its own user dir in /home/app and you set up the scripts and environment variables and cron that way. That's where your server scripts live and data processing occurs when needed. That's where developers and sysadmins log in to run things and troubleshoot. If that user needs permissions to start and stop custom services in /opt it's easy enough to grant them to the user account.
The advantage of doing it this way is that all you need to do to move it all to a new system, even one running a radically different distro, is move the /opt and /home/apps directories over to the new system and set up any user permissions again. This lets you give zero fucks about what the operating system has or does and it lets you install a very minimalist secure os if you use this in a production server scenario. Disaster recovery is a nothingburger with it all so easy to back up and restore in not much more than the data restore time itself.
There are tools like Perlbrew that also take this approach and expect to be setting things up on a per-user-account basis. They can save a lot of time.
This is the old-school unix way of doing things and when it's done well it makes sysadmin work very light indeed. It's how I managed my datacenters and built out the servers in them. Nowadays everyone uses containers instead. :P
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Comment on GPT-4o in ~tech
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Comment on Sounds Vintage Presents: Radio Fallout in ~music
Amarok (edited )LinkThis is a monster set list of all of the music used in the Fallout games, radio mod packs, the TV series, and related media... plus almost two hundred other tracks that they either never thought...This is a monster set list of all of the music used in the Fallout games, radio mod packs, the TV series, and related media... plus almost two hundred other tracks that they either never thought to use or couldn't afford to license. There are also some appropriate radio drama series at the end of the playlist.
It's been lightly mix-tape-ified through the first third, and I'm chipping away at it and cleaning it up as I find the time. It's easily the best Fallout playlist on the entire internet already - frankly, most of them recycle the same five dozen tracks and it gets a bit old. Not everyone shares my obsession with cratedigging or vintage sounds.
The only notable missing content is the legendary Atomic Platters collection, which is not on Spotify. Many of the tracks were still there on other releases, though, so I got most of it.
This playlist is more listener friendly than the games and the mod packs. I removed tracks that were just there for a gimmick and not particularly pleasant for background listening. I took the liberty of adding 1960s-era tracks to it, that ship sailed when Bethesda decided to use Dion's Wanderer as the title track of Fallout 4. It also contains many tracks from modern artists who still produce new music in these old styles, and I'll bet you can't spot most of them without checking release dates. ;)
Enjoy the trip down memory lane into the world of post world war two era music. If you know any more tracks that fit the theme, I'm happy to add them to the pot. Just drop the artist and track name in a reply.
I also need to plug this mighty playlist of old rarities I found while cratedigging. The radio dramas alone make it a goldmine.
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Sounds Vintage Presents: Radio Fallout
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Comment on OpenAI insists it's not launching a search engine nor GPT-5 on Monday in ~tech
Amarok Link ParentThe closest thing out there to solid information on this is from AI Explained. He covered several papers that dropped in the last two weeks that shed some light on recent developments. Also covers...The closest thing out there to solid information on this is from AI Explained. He covered several papers that dropped in the last two weeks that shed some light on recent developments. Also covers MedGemini which is the most badass application of AI I've yet seen.
New OpenAI Model 'Imminent' and AI Stakes Get Raised (plus Med Gemini, GPT 2 Chatbot and Scale AI)
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Comment on Early tests of H5N1 prevalence in milk suggest US bird flu outbreak in cows is widespread in ~health
Amarok Link ParentFrom what I've read the flu has a superpower that makes it particularly nasty. It can and will find and recombine with leftover flu bits that an organism was infected with at an earlier date. This...From what I've read the flu has a superpower that makes it particularly nasty. It can and will find and recombine with leftover flu bits that an organism was infected with at an earlier date. This gives it the ability to basically pick up parts from other H-virus and swap them out for genetic upgrades. This isn't done in any kind of intelligent way, it's just how the virus operates, and it's random chance if it even finds such a bit to use when replicating.
If it someday gobbles up the right piece of covid or the regular flu, it can inherit features of those other viruses and create a hybrid. That's how H5 could make a fast jump into other species. It's a rare event as I understand it, but the point is this - every infection it pulls off in a human, or in any other species, is like playing roulette. It could instantly become as transmissible as that other flu, though odds are any such mutations are going to be less lethal because it'll also inherit other genetic properties. Less lethal in this context can still get you a 45% death rate globally, wiping out fully half of the world population in under a year.
Having it floating around in raw milk for people to drink is taking unnecessary risks, it's frankly insane. That should be stopped, period. Deny it the opportunity to mutate. Make sure we have a working mRNA vaccine that works on H5N1 and variants, get the bugs out of that tech because we're going to need it someday. It's just a matter of time.
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Comment on The (simple) theory that explains everything | Neil Turok in ~science
Amarok LinkIf a theory of everything interests you at all, make the time for it and bring some coffee. Neil has Feynman's touch when it comes to explanations, so this one's a ringer. Relevant papers, talks,...Physicist Neil Turok, recipient of the James Clerk Maxwell Medal and Prize, and the John Torrence Tate Award for International Leadership in Physics, joins Curt Jaimungal and Theories of Everything to discuss his new hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe. Building on Stephen Hawking's geometrical model, Turok proposes a theoretical approach that avoids the singularity at the Big Bang by suggesting a minimal, mirror universe scenario without requiring inflation.
If a theory of everything interests you at all, make the time for it and bring some coffee. Neil has Feynman's touch when it comes to explanations, so this one's a ringer. Relevant papers, talks, and timestamps are in the video description.
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The (simple) theory that explains everything | Neil Turok
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Comment on New evidence found for Planet 9 in ~space
Amarok LinkOne of the authors of the paper walks everyone through it and answers a lot of questions about it in this episode of Event Horizon. This is conclusive. There is something larger than any of the...One of the authors of the paper walks everyone through it and answers a lot of questions about it in this episode of Event Horizon. This is conclusive. There is something larger than any of the inner planets out there and that question is now settled with hard evidence, period. The what and where are the more interesting part, and now we can start looking for it instead of entertaining arguments about if it exists in the first place. It will be an awful lot more easy to get telescope time for this hunt going forward.
They may name it "David Bowie" if for no other reason than all Greek names are already spoken for with other celestial objects.
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Comment on Iran launches dozens of drones toward Israel in ~news
Amarok Link ParentI'd expect Israel to level Iran's drone factories. They'll be encouraged to do that by the US/EU, because it hurts Russia critically in the Ukraine war when their only flow of decent drone...I'd expect Israel to level Iran's drone factories. They'll be encouraged to do that by the US/EU, because it hurts Russia critically in the Ukraine war when their only flow of decent drone hardware dries up. What Iran does after that we'll just have to see. I'm sure Iran isn't happy with the hit rate they got out of that epic salvo - it was a total joke it went so poorly. If they hit back again, it's going to get hot over there, but at this point they don't even look like a threat. Hard times when your epic flex leaves you flat on your face looking like an idiot.
I just watch Biden's aid posse. If they bug out of Gaza (which they are prepared to do at a moment's notice in a matter of hours) then that means US intelligence has decided to nope out of the area because they expect it to get worse. So far they haven't moved, and seeing pilots from four different countries all combine air forces in that region to shoot all of this stuff out of the sky is at least one single good sign in this mess.
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Comment on If we can't block users can we at least filter out topics posted by those users? in ~tildes
Amarok Link ParentIt's a good feature to have, and it has value beyond just what it offers the individual user. I think it's also an underexplored avenue for detecting problematic users. If someone is collecting an...It's a good feature to have, and it has value beyond just what it offers the individual user. I think it's also an underexplored avenue for detecting problematic users. If someone is collecting an awful lot of blocks that's a sign there is an issue. Not sure exactly what to do with that information as a sort of 'reform' process yet, but the possibility to do something is there.
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Comment on With a near-unprecedented official license for its fan server, 'City of Heroes' lives again in ~games
Amarok LinkProps to NCSoft for having an informed and intelligent leadership team. This is the sort of thing that makes me like a gaming company more, and want to support them.Props to NCSoft for having an informed and intelligent leadership team. This is the sort of thing that makes me like a gaming company more, and want to support them.
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Comment on Researcher calls out misuse of research in book on American white rural rage - suggests resentment over rage in ~misc
Amarok Link ParentSpeaking as a rural American, I can say this: Anyone running in primaries for both parties that I actually liked has never once in my entire life come out the frontrunner in any election. I look...Speaking as a rural American, I can say this: Anyone running in primaries for both parties that I actually liked has never once in my entire life come out the frontrunner in any election. I look at the primary process as a method of screening out the kind of people you talk about, not as a process of finding the best candidates. I see no purpose in following or participating in it anymore. The game is rigged to select the insiders and only the insiders from the get go, especially at the presidential level. They are a poisonous joke that is never to be trusted or believed. They'll get no money, or even words from me ever again. If it were up to me I'd delete the entire concept of a 'party' from the system in favor of voting for individuals, rather than Amway with a track team.
I'll just sit here and worry exclusively about myself, because that is all our government allows us to do and all I have the time to do thanks to them. Once an actual third party rises up I'll vote them in by default out of pure spite without a thought for policy, just to punish and harm the other two for their decades of idiotic failures and bald-faced lies. I feel like I owe them that much - to do the little I can to help them both become minority parties, or better yet, no party at all. The Red vs Blue crap is not a democracy. It's a farce any child can see straight through.
I couldn't even care less why it's like this, that's how far past apathy I am on politics now.
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Comment on Megathread: April Fools’ Day 2024 on the internet in ~talk
Amarok LinkThe Critical Drinker retires from Youtube to pursue making short films. I was a minute into that one before I realized what day it was.The Critical Drinker retires from Youtube to pursue making short films.
I was a minute into that one before I realized what day it was. -
Comment on Israel is a strategic liability for the United States. The special relationship does not benefit Washington and is endangering US interests across the globe. in ~misc
Amarok Link ParentThat ticks me off the most out of this entire mess. We were so damn close, and now it's going to be set back decades. I honestly got the impression from the negotiations that they were ready to...might actually have seen a treaty with Saudi Arabia by now
That ticks me off the most out of this entire mess. We were so damn close, and now it's going to be set back decades. I honestly got the impression from the negotiations that they were ready to give it a chance, but now we're disappointed again. The blessings of peace are for the prophets, not for their peoples.
It's possible that the USA will simply pack up and bug out wholesale from the entire middle east - we make our own oil now from shale, and once more of our own light/sweet refineries come online we're looking at energy independence, which means we have our oil covered in-house. Haven't had to tap Alaska yet to get there either. That means we don't have any reason to play traffic cop in the middle east anymore, especially if we're prepared to ditch globalization wholesale after re-shoring everything.
I'm wondering how the whole picture of geopolitics changes once the rest of the world starts to finally understand the US is able to walk away, won't feel it in the pocketbook by doing so, and kinda wants to walk away after decades of listening to everyone else complain about our security policies and pick fights with their neighbors like angry children do.
Have fun, your security is your own problem now. We'll still sell both sides guns, but not because we're assholes. We try to stop the wars - we're just smart enough to know that you won't, and jaded enough by now that we don't mind making money on your misery. We'll keep a friends and family plan open for allies, of course, but you won't like those deals at all compared to the ones you've been getting. We're going to be investing in america now - the continents, not just the US. It's time to support the neighbors we share a real border with and can reach by train networks yet to be built, something we should have done a lot more of over the last half century. Manifest destiny version two, north-south edition - this time with less colonialism. :P
If your region steps up and remains stable, awesome, we're more than happy to shake new hands and keep on trading anything and everything under the sun. Just don't expect us to keep bailing everyone out forever. Even the IMF's money isn't bottomless. If the aid always results in rockets instead of infrastructure, eventually it will stop coming and it will stay gone.
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Comment on Israel is a strategic liability for the United States. The special relationship does not benefit Washington and is endangering US interests across the globe. in ~misc
Amarok Link ParentZeihan covered this a week ago. His take is that we are looking at swapping Israel for Turkey, and that's a win if it happens. They'd make for a far better ally, they are already democratic and...Zeihan covered this a week ago. His take is that we are looking at swapping Israel for Turkey, and that's a win if it happens. They'd make for a far better ally, they are already democratic and they have a larger military than all of their neighbors put together - Americans love that. That also cuts the rug out from under many issues arab states have with the US and incentivizes them to come together, leaving just Israel and Iran out of the loop. Frankly that is a massive improvement for the US and I don't doubt they'd make that trade.
Oh boy. Sign me up for Linamp alpha. Pair it with TagScanner if your collection is getting messy. Both of them work just fine under Wine already, but I'd much rather have native versions. :)