This is a complex issue and one that's hard to address succinctly. It gets into the larger matter of media and its role and interaction with society, which is profound. This includes political and social elements going far beyond consumerism and consumption, though those are part of the dynamic.

For a short answer: advertising is not the only problem, but is a large component of a set of conflicts concerning information and media. It both directly and indirectly promotes disinformation and misinformation, opens avenues to propaganda and manipulation, and fails to promote and support high-quality content. It also has very real costs: globally advertising is a $600 billion/year industry, largely paid out of consumer spending among the world's 1 billion or so wealthy inhabitants of Europe, North America, and Japan. This works out to about $600/year per person in direct expense. On top of the indirect and negative-externality factors. Internet advertising is roughly $100 billion, or $100/yr. per person if you live in the US, Canada, EU, UK, Japan, Australia, or New Zealand. The "free" Internet is not free.

And the system itself is directly implicated in a tremendous amount of the breakdown of media, politics, and society over the past several years. Jonathan Albright, ex-Googler, now a scholar of media at the Tow Center (and its research director), Columbia University in New York, "Who Hacked the Election? Ad Tech did. Through “Fake News,” Identity Resolution and Hyper-Personalization", and editor of d1g (estT) (on Medium).

[S]cores of highly sophisticated technology providers — mostly US-based companies that specialize in building advanced solutions for audience “identity resolution,” content tailoring and personalization, cross-platform targeting, and A/B message testing and optimization — are running the data show behind the worst of these “fake news” sites.

(Emphasis in original.)

A Media Reader

By way of a longer response, I'd suggest some reading, of which I've been doing a great deal. Among the starting points I'd suggest the following, in rough order. Further recommendations are very much welcomed.

Tim Wu

The Attention Merchants is a contemporary version of the media, attention, distraction, disinformation, manipulation, and power game that's discussed further in the following references. If you're looking for current state-of-the-art, start here. Ryan Holiday and Trust Me, I'm Lying is a 2012 expose of the online media system. For an older view, Vance Packard's 1950s classic (updated), The Hidden Persuaders gives perspective both on what methods are timeless, and what's changed. A 2007 New York Times essay on the book gives a good overview.

Hamilton Holt

Commercialism and Journalism (1909) is a brief, easy, and fact-filled account of the American publishing industry, especially of newspapers and magazines, at the dawn of the 20th century. Holt was himself a publisher, of The Independent, and delivered this book as a lecture at the University of California. It gives an account of the previous 50 years or so of development in publishing, including various technologies, but putting the greatest impact on advertising. I'm not aware that this is particularly well-noted, but I find it a wonderfully concise summary of many of the issues, and a view from near the start of the current system. Holt includes this quote from an unnamed New York journalist:

There is no such thing in America as an independent press. I am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New Yourk journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

(An HN commenter reveals that this was John Swinton.)

Jerry Mander

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. This is a 1970s classic that's held its value. Mander is an ad executive himself, though he took his talents to the Environmental movement, working closely with David Brower of the Sierra Club.

Adam Curtis

BBC documentarian, most especially The Century of the Self (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4), and Hypernormalisation. These documentaries, the first a four-part series, the second a self-contained 2h40m single session, focus on media and propaganda. The first especially on Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud (Bernays' uncle), advertising, and propaganda. The second on Vladimir Putin.

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. The title itself comes from Walter Lippmann and his earlier work, Public Opinion, which is something of a guide to its manufacture, and the genesis of "modern" 20th century media. The notion of mass media as having a political economy is a critical element in answering your question. That is: media is inherently political and economic, and advertising and propaganda (or as it was rebranded, "public relations"), all the more so.

Robert W. McChesney

McChesney has been continuing the exploration of media from a political-economic perspective and has an extensive bibliography. His Communication Revolution in particular discusses his own path through the field, including extensive references.

Marshall McLuhan

Particularly The Gutenberg Galaxy and The Medium is the Message.

Elisabeth Eisenstein

Either her book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change or the earlier (and much shorter) article that pressaged it, "Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report" (more interesting than its title, I promise). Eisenstein draws heavily on, and improves greatly on the rigour of, McLuhan.

Generally: Other 19th and 20th century media scholars and writers

H.L. Mencken, I.F. Stone, and perhaps Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. Mencken and Stone are particularly given to shorter essays (see especially The I.F. Stone Weekly Reader, The Best of I.F. Stone and his New York Review of Books articles) which can be readily digested. Mencken's "Bayard vs. Lionheart" whilst not specifically concerning advertising largely describes the crowd-psychology inherent in mediocre or pathological social-political outcomes, and is a short and brilliant read. Mencken has a long list of further writings.

Edward Bernays

Especially Propaganda and Public Relations. Bernays created the field of public relations, and largely drove the popular support of "democracy" (a WWI war bonds advertising slogan) in favour of the earlier "liberty". For Stone, I cannot recommend his Day at Night interview (~1974) highly enough. 30 minutes. Bernays' New York Times obituary makes interesting reading.

Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon

The Crowd: A study of the popular mind. "[C]onsidered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology." Wikipedia article.

Charles Mackay

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). "[O]ften cited as the best book ever written about market psychology." Wikipedia article.

I have yet to read all of these works, though they're on my list, and I've at least reviewed most of the works and authors and am familiar with major themes. Virtually all of these will lead to other sources -- books, articles, authors, fields of study -- by way of bibliographies (looking backward) and citations (looking forward). Among my favourite and most fruitful research techniques.

This is also really just a starting point, though I hope it's a good one. Media isn't my field, or rather, I'd thought that, working in technology, it wasn't, but I've come to realise that (1) "information technology" is in very large part "media technology", and (2) the interactions of media systems and society, politics, economics, even culture as a whole, are beyond deep, and highly underappreciated.

The role of mass media in the spread of early-20th century Fascism is a particularly sobering story. See "Radio and the Rise of The Nazis in Prewar Germany", and recognise that you could include cinema, magnetic audio tape recording, public address systems (it's hard to address three quarters of a million people without amplification). More recently, radio has been studied in conjunction with the 1994 Rwandan genocide. These remain extant issues.

Bootnote

Adapted from a StackExchange contribution.

Right now I dual boot windows 10 and fedora, windows for gaming, fedora for everything else. I'm considering running linux as my only native operating system, and running windows in a virtual machine for gaming. This will be more convenient than restarting my pc every time I want to play a game, and I'll feel better about having windows sandboxed in a VM than running natively on my computer.

To get gaming performance out of a virtual machine, I'm planning to have two gpus. One for linux to use, and one reserved exclusively for the virtual machine.

Have any of you set up a computer like this before? What was your experience like? How was the performance?

Introduction and motivation

In an effort to get more content on Tildes, I want to try and give an introduction on several 'hot topics' in semiconductor physics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Today's topic

I will start this series with an introduction to spintronics and spin transistors.

What is spintronics?

Spintronics is named in analogy to electronics. In electronics, the flow of current (consisting of electrons) is studied. Each electron has an electric charge, and by pulling at this charge we can move electrons through wires, transistors, creating modern electronics. Spintronics also studies the flow of electrons, but it uses another property of the electrons, spin, to create new kinds of transistors.

What are transistors?

Transistors are small electronic devices that act as an on-off switch for current. We can flip this on-off switch by sending a signal to the transistor, so that the current will flow. Transistors are the basis for all computers and as such are used very widely in modern life.

What is spin?

Spin arises from quantum mechanics. However, for the purpose of explaining spin transistors we can think of an electron's spin as a bar magnet. Each electron can be thought of as a bar magnet that will align itself to a nearby magnetic field. Think of it as a compass (the electron) aligning itself to a fridge magnet when it's held near the compass.

What are spin transistors and how do they work?

Spin transistors are a type of transistor whose on-off switch is created by magnets. We take two bar magnets, whose north poles are pointed in the same way, and put them next to each other, leaving a small gap between them. This gap is filled with a material through which the electrons can move. Now we connect wires to the big bar magnets and let current (electrons!) flow through both magnets, via the gap. When the electrons go through the first magnet, their internal magnets will align themselves to the big bar magnet. However, once they are in the gap the electrons' internal magnets will start rotating and no longer point in the same direction as the big bar magnets. So that when the electrons arrive at the second magnet, they will be repelled just like when you try to push the north poles of two magnets together. This means the current will not flow, and the device is off! So, how do we get it to turn on?

By exposing the gap to an electric field, we can control the amount of rotation the electrons experience (this is called the Rashba effect). If we change the strength of this electric field so that the electrons will make exactly one full rotation while crossing the gap, then by the time they reach the second big bar magnet they will once again be pointing in the right direction. Now the electrons are able to move through the second big bar magnet, and out its other end. So by turning this electric field on, the spin transistor will let current flow, and if we turn the electric field off, no current will flow. We have created an on-off switch using magnets and spin!

That's cool, but why go through the effort of doing this when we have perfectly fine electronics already?

The process of switching between the on and off states of these spin transistors is a lot more energy efficient than with regular transistors. These types of transistors leak a lot less too. Normal transistors will leak, meaning that a small amount of current will go through even when the transistor is off. With spin transistors, this leak is a lot smaller. This once again improves the energy efficiency of these devices. So in short, spin transistors will make your computer more energy efficient. This type of transistor can also be made smaller than normal transistors, which leads to more powerful computers.

Feedback and interest

As I mentioned, I wrote this post as a challenge to myself to explain modern physics to laypeople. Please let me know where I succeeded and where I failed. Also let me know if you like this type of content and if I should continue posting other similar topics in the same format.

Would there be a way to show the number of new posts on a topic since the last time you read it? I find a lot of threads tend to linger for a couple days, and I forget how many comments there were the last time I checked. It would be awesome if it could display something like '10 Comments (2 new)' on a topic I'd visited before.

It would also be awesome if there was a way to highlight the new comments on the page when you click through as well to make it easier to find them.

P.S.: Sorry if this has been covered somewhere else. Still not sure what the best way to find old topics without manually reading every post is.

Frozen chicken wings, about $5 a pound at the local Winco. Defrosted half in the microwave for about 5 minutes. Rubbed on Olive oil, threw in the air fryer for about 30 minutes at 400 degrees (f). Sprinkled on Tumeric, Paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper.

Holy shit is this good.

I noticed that Tildes docs make a point out of using words instead of labels. The stated reason is that icons may be difficult to understand, and I honestly don't get how is this the case.

Icons, when used right, are much more usable and intuitive than any text labels. They are small, distinct, they draw attention and you can tell what they do just by looking at them instead of reading them.

Take the classic upvote/downvote scrollers used on Reddit, Imgur, etc. It uses icons for upvotes and downvotes, but there isn't a single person I know who doesn't know what those mean. It's intuitive and usable. It doesn't require localization. It just works.

In contrast, the "Vote (10)" button on Tildes. It uses text, on a page full of text. It's an important UI element, one of the most used UI elements really, but it's not visually highlighted in any way. The amount of votes, which is an important metric, isn't distinct, making it hard to read. The "text button" style it uses is usually reserved for buttons that are used rarely, such as "Edit" or "Delete", or buttons that open more menus, such as "Edit" or "Reply". It's not intuitive.

Yes, this is a minor thing, but it's minor things that make the overall experience pleasant or unpleasant. And it shows how icons (and highlights), when used right, make user experience better.

I would have to say Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond. It's got a spacey presence in the beginning and the solos hit, which are so wonderfully crafted. The vocals come in and the chorus sounds magnificent and epic in nature. What are your thoughts?

fuck anybody who says my shit isn't cultured.

sorry if my language isn't okay on the site.

v drunk at the moment

here it goes anyway

enjoy.

or don't i guess,

either way.

j'en veux plus
exister
içi.

c'est impossible
à dormir
depuis

février quand
t'étais
parti

la bouteille
à remplacé
therapie

Tu m'as
donné pas de
sympathie

c'est parce'que
toi que je
ecris

tous les chansons
qui parle'd
mourir

ouais c'est
vrai q'je rêve
d'suicide

Je plonge
dans l'alcool
comme piscine

Daily still
wonder if
you miss me

Daddy still
gonna miss
his baby

I really miss
the way you'd
reassure me

comme

"Oauis, papa
c'est que tout va-t-
allez bien

Non, monsieur,
tu ne mourras pas
cette semaine.

Je vais, faire
sûr que je prends
soin de toi

I will love you,
cross my heart and
swear to God. "

"Oauis, papa
c'est que tout va-t-
allez bien

Non, monsieur,
tu ne mourras pas
cette semaine.

Je vais, faire
sûr que je prends
soin de toi

I will love you,
cross my heart and
swear to God. "

J'en veux plus
exister
sans toi

Je m'ai demandé
chaque nuit
pourquoi?

Tu m'as laiseé
completement
pantois

Je'm sens
maintenant
trop inadéquat

Would you like me
better if I had
some photoshop

Would you come to
visit if my breathing
ever stopped

Better yet, I
wonder if I'd rather
have you not

I just wish I had
some truth before
I fade to black

ouais, monsieur.

tu ne mourras pas
cette semaine

write something cool this week?

want to freestyle into the comments and see what you make?

this is your place to share something you wrote that youre proud of.

doesnt have to be a specific style or length, its just gotta be yours.

I know that users can manually set this option as default, but it can be confusing for newcomers to only see, say, 4 threads in the whole group when there are many more than that. This makes it easier to navigate content (especially with a smaller community with less being submitted), is two less clicks for someone who wants to see older submissions, and is easier for new users who may have not found the ‘time sorting’ setting.

So far, I haven’t seen too much moderation aside from bans, etc. dealt out by the admins (unless I’m wrong here and a moderation system is currently in place, please correct me if I’m wrong), but how will this work once Tildes is fully released to the public? Will people who show interest in a certain community be reached out to and asked?