Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I must preface by saying that no form of tobacco is safe for consumption, and no reasonable person should use tobacco for any reason other than maybe in religious ceremonies. I just happen to be an unreasonable person.

I took a bunch of my stuff that was stored in my mother's house this week, among them some snuff tobacco in a good state of conservation. I like the smell and the ritual. I went by a tobacco shop and bought two additional tiny containers of snuff -- mint, and cinnamon. It was very cheap. I enjoy using it throughout the day.

A lot of people snort it like cocaine, but that is not the way to do it. You should simply press your thumb into the snuff (which will get some of it on the thumb), block one nostril with said thumb, and then gently breathe with the other nostril. It has a high that is similar to smoking, but milder and more gradual. I find it very pleasant.

You shouldn't ever use tobacco. But, if you have used snuff tobacco, I would like to know how was your experience.

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

It's officially Christmas in New Zealand. Australian parents are telling their kids they want just a few more minutes to sleep in. Santa is over Zambia.

I hope you all enjoy your time with family and friends (and kooky internet weirdos such as myself.)

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

The previous thread is pretty crowded with running a variety of prompts. I would like to create a separate one dedicated to talking about the implications and applications of such AI systems in the everyday world.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Edit: Some interactions with the bot I posted in the comments, if you are curious about potential prompts: https://tildes.net/~tech/13lj/lets_talk_about_chatgpt#comment-7lw6

I have been obsessively reading about ChatGPT since it came out. I'm going to skip introducing it for those who don't know yet (please go ahead and click the link, and do some googling), because I just.. need to vent.

I have experimented with it. A bunch. I'm also pretty familiar with GPT's capabilities from before. And ChatGPT still took me by surprise.

Still, as of four days ago, I did not believe we were there yet. Hell, I didn't believe we would get there within my lifetime, and now, it's there.

"But Adys, you don't understand the limitations!"

Yeah, no, see, I understand the limitations. I understand this is the version that is still in its infancy, is crippled by stupid decisions from OpenAI, is not running on GPT-4 yet, and doesn't yet have things such as some layer of eg. checking correctness.

But I also understand the potential. HN has been full of people crying out how we're not at AGI yet but DOES THIS MATTER? Planes are still decades away from displacing most bird jobs.

I think anyone who isn't currently in utter shock at how good ChatGPT is, is either:

• Somehow woefully misinformed (eg. the less tech literates I've shown it to have asked me "Can't Siri do this?")
• In complete denial about the potential of the technology
• Utterly thick

I want to cry on every corner of every street that we are at the edge of the AI revolution.

The "problems" that are left are not necessarily easy, but they're also not necessarily hard. For example, GPT's tendency to bullshit is problematic but there are ways to verify output, and those ways can themselves be automated and feed back into GPT.

I have never, in my life, been so taken aback by a technological advancement. I'm flashing back to the scene in Westworld: "It's not possible. Technology isn't there yet."

Like, no, this isn't skynet, person of interest, westworld, or anything like this. But it is something. Something very different, very unique. The world is about to completely change. And I want to stress this: EVERYONE I've seen argue against this has been in very obvious denial. I'll be happy to hear you out if you disagree, but if your only argument is that this isn't exactly the AI you expected / it can't solve the exact problem you throw at it, I'll refer you to better birds and faster horses.

Some very mild spoilers for The Mandalorian

I have not been really following Star Wars since Disney took over, I think I saw one or two of the new sequels (they were forgetable) and I saw Rouge One (It's great, would even call it the most Star Wars Star Wars movie)

I had some time last weeks and I saw Andor and I was just stunned. Good to great actors, great worldbuilding, a bit on the nose but still engaging social critic and themes, an interesting and intense story based in gritty realism while still being very Star Wars. I think everybody who likes science fiction and/or spythrillers should watch it.
So I was like: oooooh so they finally found a way to do new and interesting stuff with the Galaxy far far away. Everybody says nice things about the Mandalorian, let's check that one out. It got 92% on RT so I'm shure it's nice....

I seem to hate it and it makes me angry that it turned out the way it did, because i still like a lot about it. It makes me sad that they botched it so badly.
Maybe having a main character whitout a face is not helping? so i need a robot to tell me what Mando is feeling? Pedro Pascal is actually doing an incredible job working with body language and voice, but I don't think it's enough to actually be able to salvage this dumpsterfire of an realisation. Or maybe they should have kept with Mando being an unrelatable asshole, and not make him a disney daddy?
And then they still show his face.... in the most anticlimactic way ever... why? just why do that? It makes me angry just thinking about it, how can you fuck that up so badly, that could be a series defining payoff, but no! They just waste it in the most boring and unconcequencial way ever.

Then there is the Rule of Cool or Why is Everybody a Badass?. Mando is cool, i get it. He has an amazing Look (obviously the helmet is crazy good). He has very interesting and powerful weapons. But then I he still gets mostly his as kicked by nearly everything and everybody all the time?? I mean why do you tell me with every character and all his design that he is a force of nature and than he gets his ass kicked by a fucking dinohead on two legs that looks like a joke and is a joke (I dont actually mind that, i like the design and the joke) I just makes no sense to me.
Nearly everybody else looks cool and is presented as a badass as well, there is just to much of it. there are no weak people, there are no hurt people, there are just badasses and cannonfodder.

Then there is the storytelling... It ranges from quite ok to fucking horrible. I mean, who thought it is a good Idea to NOT cut the motherfucking prisonship episode? It's some of the worst TV i saw in a long while. It does nothing for the overall story. it does nothing for the characters. It does nothing for the viewer. It does nothing for nobody. Its just full of bad acting, bad direction, bad and lazy set design, bad editing, bad jokes, and the worst storytelling. why did they leave that piece of shit in there? the whole series is worse for it. It makes me angry.

So I finally checked the wikipedia page and I understood. Jon Favreau.... Jon Favreau!!! I mean not all of his work is that bad. I liked Iron man and Chef, and I love Cowboys and Aliens (really! it's so bad it's good, but you can not expect differently with that name) I hated his Lion King.

I don't now where I'm going with this. I think I just needed to share my feelings about it. It's just so full of potential, there is so much they could have done with it. they could have explored so many themes and share so much lore... but they just fucked it up and everybody seems to like it, i dont get it.

/rant

so are the other Star Wars shows worth a watch?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

There's a type of watch that's very popular. It has a clean, clear, design. It's definitely a classic. I have mixed feelings about it because of the origins of the design.

The watch is big. I has a black dial with white numbers and index marks. At the 12 o'clock position there's a triangle. There's plenty of lume on the dial. They usually have a leather strap, and that strap often has two rivets.

Sometimes the dial has two index rings, the inner ring has hour markings and the outer ring has minute markings.

IWC makes the most well known example: https://www.iwc.com/en/watch-collections/pilot-watches/iw329301-big-pilots-watch-43.html

There are lots of homages:

https://whamond.com/products/laco-watch-pilot-original-heidelberg-39-862094?variant=20123598716982&currency=GBP&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=google+shopping&gclid=CjwKCAiAp7GcBhA0EiwA9U0mtgW5zl3U-UDVpOj2xzQugfY8gjG7C01nWLIjDNRRPNV9C5Ybim0tFRoCrtUQAvD_BwE

https://www.jurawatches.co.uk/products/laco-watch-pilot-basic-aachen-42-861690-2?utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=Shopping&variant=10940401025060&sfdr_ptcid=3694_524_461850736&sfdr_hash=d57409f84f1ff15872832c2e5817a3ae&gclid=CjwKCAiAp7GcBhA0EiwA9U0mtpzVPcdQyfLtQzP4-E5jrfi5c7FKYtNrpJD8SnV0DqRqgYthNF70PBoCXgcQAvD_BwE

https://shop.diywatch.club/products/new-arrival-diy-watchmaking-kit-f01-lite-vintage-pilot-watch-with-date?variant=42068938358997

https://www.watchshop.com/watches/mens-sekonda-aviator-watch-3347.pdp

https://mwcwatches.com/products/vintage-ww2-style-german-pilots-watch-1

This style of watch is called "B Uhr", or "B Uhren"and you get many results if you use that search term. It's German, and it's an abbreviation for "Beobachtungs-uhren" which means "observation watch".

My problem with the watch is that is that it was specifically designed for the Luftwaffe in WW2.

https://monochrome-watches.com/the-history-of-the-pilot-watch-part-five-b-uhr/

After the war other airforces, including the British RAF, started using very similar watches.

Most watch sellers do not celebrate the Nazi history of the watch. But some do: https://b-uhr.com/en/collection/b-uhr-luftwaffe-flieger-chronograph.html

So, I don't know how I feel about this watch. Can its clean design be appreciated when I know of its Nazi link? Can I separate the creator from the product?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I wrote the following as a Twitter thread first but I think this idea could work for Reddit/Tildes/Mastadon and would love to know what you folks think of it.

Here is how I would monetize a social network that could work for Twitter.

First of all, don’t charge your most valuable users - the power users that create the content for you. Instead focus on the users that get more value from your system - the consumers of the content.

The idea is simple - introduce a small time delay before content gets seen from the time it is published. For example, on Twitter it could be 1 minute. On Reddit it could be 10 minutes.

Paid subscribers would have no delay. Importantly - lift the delay for the users that generate a lot of views.

You can do revenue share with your content creators in proportion to how much time paid subscribers spent on their content.

And you can also identify your most valuable audience - the paid subscribers. This will help prioritize content moderation decisions, identify abuse, and prioritize appeals.

The delay would allow you to prioritize which content needs to be indexed instantly (ie from creators that paid subscribers are following) and which you can process on a best effort basis - saving on production costs.

You can gift subscriptions to your friends and family.

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

There were a few years when RTS was a popular genre with games like Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, and Starcraft being very popular examples.

But these games have mostly died out, and I was wondering if maybe I'm just not aware of modern RTS variants, or if there are good reasons why these games died off.

Like, are Tower Defence games a form of RTS?

Are there any RTS games where teams play against each other, so 2v2 rather than 1v1?

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

(Inspired by this conversation thread)

Any and all thoughts on visual novels are welcome. Some potential questions for jumping off points:

What are your thoughts on the VN genre/format?

What are some of the best VNs you’ve played/read?

What would you recommend to someone who’s new to VNs and wants to try one out?

How do you think VNs compare to games, literature, and other interactive fiction?

So, quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. Let's try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week/fortnight?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Do you thrive on chaos or structure? Are your personal spaces clean or populated by all kinds or objects? Do you wear bright colors or white shirt and jeans? Do you prefer fast cuts or meditative editing? Probability or deduction? Heidegger or Russel? Buñuel or Buster Keaton? Lynch or Spielberg? Godart or Hitchcock? John Lennon or Paul McCartney? A party or a small gathering? A lot or just a little?

:)

Question is for our users here who work/worked in the tech industry (in any capacity) or in a techy position in any industry.

What have you learned?
How did it change you?

Previous questions in series:

What have you learned from...
...being a parent?
...going through a breakup?
...moving to a new place?

These threads remain open, so feel free to comment on old ones if you have something to add!

I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/

The opinion asserts that in response to liberalization of Chinese life, driven by capitalistic economic growth, is the reason that Xi Pinjing "cracked down in every sphere imaginable — attacking the private sector, humiliating billionaires, reviving Communist ideology, purging the party of corrupt officials and ramping up nationalism (mostly anti-Western) in both word and deed."

My conspiratorial brain latched on to the humiliating billionaires line, and started thinking about a between the lines message along the lines that billionaires are good and should not be humiliated, a subtle warning-response to the progressive grumblings here in the U.S. that a failure to support capitalism will result in totalitarianism.

Then I started thinking about the questions, are billionaires good for society? I had always held the position that a billionaire is a market failure (in my econ 101 understanding of the term), much like pollution. It is improper hoarding and unfair leveraging of capital into disproportionate and un-earned degree of pesonal privilege.

It is certainly a by-product of euro-american capitalism, whereby the desires and welfare of the many are trodden on by those with the ability to fight and to shape the regulatory machine meant to protect the interests of the common-wealth.

I see a few possibilities. One, is that my understanding of economics is wrong, and producing as many billionaires as possible is the ultimate goal of capitalism and in fact good for everyone, even in theory.

Two, it is indeed as I suspect, a market failure. And the failure here is one of degree, it is not, in fact problematic to have some individuals with significantly greater wealth among us, and is, in fact, beneficial overall, but to have some with so much more than the rest of us (wealth inequaility) is a result of getting in the way of a clean functioning marketplace.

Three, economic theory is working as described, and economic theory/activity is an insufficient foundation for the maintenance and success of a whole society, and we need to find a way to constrain it to its own sphere, so that it provides us with what we need to be healthy and happy, but no more.

I turn to the bright minds of tildes: am I looking at this right?

So, I know quite a few people don't like/watch video content, and don't like seeing the homepage filled with videos. I'd like to try something new, see if it sticks.

What are the best videos you have watched this past week?

Toward the end of August, I signed up for a trial of Kagi -- a privacy-focused search engine.

You get 50 free searches, and then, if you want to continue, you can convert to a paid account at $10 a month.

I mentioned here that I wasn't planning on converting to paid, as $10/month felt very steep and I didn't think I could make it my default search on my iOS phone, but @pallas's comment here ultimately made me want to give it a try.

Thus, I dropped the $10 bucks to turn the free trial into a paid one-month trial.

I'm very glad that I did.

The free trial itself was actually not very convincing to me. Knowing that I had limited searches and not wanting to run through them more than I needed, my searches were in the single digits each day. I was very judicious about what I searched and how I typed it. Furthermore, I kicked myself if I instinctively typed something like "imdb everything everywhere all at once" into Firefox's search bar instead of going to imdb.com and then typing in the movie title, as that meant I'd wasted 2% of my allotment on what wasn't technically a search but more of an internet navigation optimization.

On the searches I did I felt like I got good results, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the quality of the service or if it was because I'd simply thought more about what I was actually typing in. Also, the trial made me way too aware that I was searching with limited queries to really make me feel at ease about actually using the service.

Now that I've paid for a month, however, I've just used it as a stand-in for how I used to use DuckDuckGo -- "wikipedia steam deck"-style searches and all.

Kagi doesn't track your search contents, but they do track your number of searches. I have completed roughly 400 searches this month, which Kagi says costs roughly $5.00 out of the $10.00 that I paid them. I don't know nearly enough about any of this to know whether this is an accurate accounting of actual costs or overstating things, but I will say that the $10 price that I initially felt was steep has looked a lot more worth spending after a month on the service.

Kagi generally finds what I'm looking for within the first link. If it's not the top link, it's in the top 3. Furthermore, it seems to dredge up less junk. With DuckDuckGo, I loved that I wasn't being tracked for the purposes of advertising, but it felt like DDG had no problem serving me pages that were built specifically for that purpose. I'd often look up product reviews and get re-routed to sites that appeared to be nothing more than machine-generated lists of recommendations with Amazon affiliate links. I've had to deal with less of these while on Kagi. Some of them still come up, but they're either further down the rankings or they're put into their own "Listicles" section.

Where Kagi really shines though, is local searches. Pretty much the only time I would bang through to Google from DDG was for local stuff. I don't know if it's my location in particular, but DDG is not great about giving me things that are specific to my area, often preferring to give me a smattering of things that are from similarly named locales from elsewhere around the world. Kagi, on the other hand, gives me the kind of local results I get from Google.

Most local searches of that type tend to come from my phone, and this also helped me understand that better search on a phone matters WAY more than better search on desktop. The smaller screen and limited view means that it's significantly more important for the top result to be the one I want on my phone than it is on desktop. As such, Kagi is winning me over because it's made mobile searching frictionless -- something I couldn't say for DDG. That aspect alone is probably going to be what keeps me on the service. I'm planning on paying for at least another month, though after that I might go back to DDG for a month to see how I feel in comparison.

I mentioned earlier that I didn't think I could make it a default search on iOS. I mistakenly thought Apple had that locked down? Turns out it's actually possible through an app. Also, Kagi apparently has an entire browser for macOS/iOS. I tried it out and it works quite nicely, though AdGuard+Safari seemed to do a bit better ad-blocking than the stuff they'd built into Orion, so I've stayed on Safari.

There's actually a whole lot of cool looking power-user stuff on offer from Kagi (you can individually prioritize and de-prioritize specific domains across your searches, for example), but I'm not the kind of user that needs significant search depth, so I can't really speak to anything other than the standard search experience.

What I can say is that I've been very happy with that experience so far.

Also, it should hopefully go without saying, but this post isn't sponsored in any way nor was I requested to post it by Kagi. This is me choosing to give my own experiences with the service because I thought people here might be interested.

I struck me while using my Steam Deck the other day to watch Twitch that the device has almost everything it needs to provide users with a tablet-like experience alongside being a gaming device. When you're not in desktop mode Steam provides you with a high quality UI optimized for many of the same constraints as a tablet. For "great on deck" games and the store/library UI you get an easily navigable touch screen-supporting experience. If Valve can bring in Android apps for Twitch, YouTube etc. we could get that kind of experience universally.

Desktop mode can peacefully co-exist with a tablet experience as you will switch between the two distinct modes of operation. This seems like a great way to capture a market of users normally turned off by ideas of tablets replacing their normal computers. I haven't used a tablet in years but I would use one that was a full Linux gaming OS at the same time.