vili's recent activity
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Comment on DuckDuckGo seems like a significantly worse search engine than Google despite SEO bloat, and I think community discussions mislead people by omitting that in ~tech
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Comment on What made the classic game 'Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker’ unique in ~games
vili LinkAlthough the article talks about two versions of the Moonwalker game, there were actually three. And the third one, released for home computers, is I think the most interesting of the bunch. While...- Exemplary
Although the article talks about two versions of the Moonwalker game, there were actually three. And the third one, released for home computers, is I think the most interesting of the bunch.
While the arcade and home console versions are extremely loose adaptations of the film's "Smooth Criminal" section that also venture into "Thriller" territory, as if Sega wasn't entirely convinced that they could sell a Michael Jackson game based on material from his new album alone, the home computer version follows the full Moonwalker film more faithfully.
The first part of the home computer game is a nightmarish portrayal of fame, where you play as Michael from a top-down perspective. Just like in the film, you have just exited a film shoot, and are now being chased down by crazy tourists, fans and the press in a labyrinthine film studio environment. Everyone wants a piece of you and naturally your only way to escape and survive is to put on a golden rabbit costume, get on a motorcycle, then a speed boat, and finally a sports car, just to get away from it all. Because that's the life of Michael Jackson in the 1980s.
It's a long and frankly quite tiring section of the game, but whether intentionally or not, it conveys the absurdity and torment of an international superstar pretty well. So much so that I remember how playing this game as a kid actually did make me think about my own relationship with my heroes, and why this version of the game left me with such a strong impression.
The Amiga version's sound world is particularly fitting here, as in the first half you hear a four-second loop based on the song "Bad", over and over again, with Michael's disturbed breathing added on top of it. Listen to that continuously for 15-30 minutes and you are sure to experience vertigo of some sorts.
Later, once you get moving with the various vehicles, the soundtrack switches into a loop created from the song "Speed Demon", but sounding more like Sam Cooke's Chain Gang, a song about prison labour. It feels very fitting.
Other home computer versions have different soundtracks, and while the Amiga version I think best fits the claustrophobic mood of the beginning of the game, I must also draw your attention to the absolutely brilliant SID chip adaptation of "Speed Demon" that was included for the vehicle sections of the Commodore 64 version. If you know the original song, give this freewheeling adaptation a listen.
The second section of the game takes the player into the "Smooth Criminal" section of the film, and therefore closer to the two Sega versions. But the home computer version has none of that "charm the enemies with your dance moves" nonsense. No, in this one bullets fly everywhere as Michael dashes across the bar to grab an assault rifle and, dodging the enemies' relentless shelling, cold-bloodedly kills them all. Or dies himself, depending on your skill level as a player.
The third and final part of the game has Michael turn into a robot, just like he does in the film, and kill the rest of the baddies with lasers, as well as taking care of the big bad destroyer beam which the villain of the film tries to use before Michael puts a stop to it. The Amiga version's soundtrack disappointingly recycles the "chaing gang" loop from earlier, while the Commodore 64 version decides to go down the full-on bizarro route (even for this game) and gives you a rather happy sounding SID chip version of "The Way You Make Me Feel", which always made me laugh. And oh so very happy.
All in all, it's a wonderful experience. While the home computer Moonwalker is, objectively, a much worse game than either the pretty good console Moonwalker, or the excellent arcade Moonwalker, I would still argue that it is the most interesting and unique of the three, and also the most faithful to its source material.
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Comment on Riven (2024) | Launch trailer in ~games
vili Link ParentRiven is more organic than Myst in that the puzzles feel a bit more like an integral part of the world and its people, rather than some puzzles that someone put into a world, which is the vibe...Riven is more organic than Myst in that the puzzles feel a bit more like an integral part of the world and its people, rather than some puzzles that someone put into a world, which is the vibe that Myst often has. The puzzles themselves are still fairly similar, but I would say that Riven is in every way a better game and a more enjoyable experience. It's a bit like Myst was a test run and Riven was the final product.
Unlike in something like The Witness, where your progress as a player comes primarily from learning the puzzle language of the game, in Myst and Riven, your progress is measured in you progressing in the story, or in your understanding of the story and unlocking new areas. If the story is of no interest to you, and the virtual worlds that you get to explore don't excite you, these games may feel quite directionless.
I would say that if you can spare both the money for Riven and a couple of evenings to get to know it properly, do give it a try, partly for historical reasons, but mainly to fulfil a dream which that kid version of yourself had once upon a time. I think we owe it to our younger selves to indulge in things that we didn't get to experience when younger.
And if you don't like the game, then you know you don't like it. Puzzle solved.
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Comment on My Windows computer just doesn't feel like mine anymore in ~tech
vili Link ParentThanks for mentioning this! I too need to deal with MS Office files at work and while I was hoping that either the browser versions or LibreOffice could work for me, it's great to hear a strong...OnlyOffice is a native Linux app built in Office XML and works great for MS files if I need to work offline
Thanks for mentioning this! I too need to deal with MS Office files at work and while I was hoping that either the browser versions or LibreOffice could work for me, it's great to hear a strong recommendation for another alternative.
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Comment on I'm looking for a suggestion on how best to organize my ideas for my weekly RPG in ~games.tabletop
vili LinkI have used Trello when running games, for all notes and ideas. The way I can create and organise cards on a board, and add comments and attachments within cards, works well for my purposes. Their...I have used Trello when running games, for all notes and ideas. The way I can create and organise cards on a board, and add comments and attachments within cards, works well for my purposes. Their mobile app is not the slickest, but it's functional enough.
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Comment on My Windows computer just doesn't feel like mine anymore in ~tech
vili LinkCoincidentally just yesterday, I spent much of my day installing Linux (Mint) to my desktop computer that I do most of my work on. It was a bit more hassle than I anticipated but about exactly the...Coincidentally just yesterday, I spent much of my day installing Linux (Mint) to my desktop computer that I do most of my work on. It was a bit more hassle than I anticipated but about exactly the same as I feared, as I ended up doing it the hard way: have it dual boot with Windows 11 on a UEFI machine, maintain Bitlocker and encrypt the Linux drive, and so on. But now I have it running fine, and Windows seems to be functioning normally as well.
Over the past quarter of a century, I have tried to make the jump to Linux every couple of years. But apart from a brief detour to OS/2 in the 90s and switching to using a MacBook as my laptop a couple of years ago, I have been a Windows user. Despite my best efforts, Linux has just always been too much hassle to switch to.
And while I'm not sure if it will stick this time around either, I think I'm more determined to make it a success than ever. I had many issues with Windows 10 but I could still live with it. Meanwhile, Windows 11 seems to have many issues with me, and I'm not really prepared to live with that. Nothing major as such, but so many little things that just make using the OS unpleasant. And I feel I've given Windows 11 enough time to get its act together, without seeing much progress.
Meanwhile, the Linux ecosystem keeps developing features that make it an increasingly attractive option for me. I actually found it hilarious that while I've been having major issues getting Windows 11 to support my wifi and printer/scanner properly, Linux Mint automatically detected both and they seem to work out of the box. This used to go the other way around. The recent announcement that Linux Mint will likely soon natively support Microsoft OneDrive sync (Ubuntu I think already does) will be a big help for me because of work, and the quickly growing gaming support on Linux also attracts me. And my switch to a MacBook a couple of years back has already broken many of my earlier Windows-only dependencies anyway.
I feel this is how Microsoft may gradually lose its OS market share. Not with a bang but a whimper.
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Comment on Astronauts stranded in space due to multiple issues with Boeing's Starliner — and the window for a return flight is closing in ~space
vili Link ParentI think the answer to that question depends on whether they can trust the manoeuvrability of the service module. Starliner is made of two pieces: the crew capsule and the service module. The crew...- Exemplary
I think the answer to that question depends on whether they can trust the manoeuvrability of the service module.
Starliner is made of two pieces: the crew capsule and the service module. The crew capsule is the piece that holds the astronauts. It's reusable, it comes back to Earth and flies again one day. The service module is the piece that provides thrust and electricity to the crew capsule and is needed to manoeuvre the spacecraft. It's not reusable. It gets detached from the crew capsule before re-entry and burns up in the atmosphere.
As far as I know, the issues with Starliner are with the service module. It's leaking helium. They already knew of one leak at the time of launch and have detected I think four others since. They are small leaks, but leaks nonetheless. Additionally, they had an issue with four of the thrusters at the time of docking and have since concluded that one thruster is not functional enough to be trusted, so it will not be used going forward. These things happen, especially on a test vehicle.
They are currently doing tests to better understand the leaks and the thruster issues. Since the service module will get destroyed on re-entry, this is the only time that they can study it, so it is understandable that they want to take their time.
They also need to operate with the day-to-day schedule on ISS in mind. For the next week, two spacewalks are planned: one to retrieve an antenna and to collect microbial samples, and another to replace a camera and a light and do some other maintenance work. Spacewalks are careful ballets and you don't want a spacecraft hovering around during that time frame, so the earliest that Starliner can undock is probably after those spacewalks.
While they did have that anomaly with the thrusters during docking, and they were leaking more helium than anticipated, Starliner seems to have performed adequately on the way to the station and they have had full control of the spacecraft throughout the mission. My totally unqualified and uninformed assumption is that unless they discover bigger issues with the service module during their focused testing, they'll give Starliner the go-ahead to return when they have gathered enough data, and everything proceeds as planned, if a little behind schedule and a little leakier than desired.
And with a lot more homework for Boeing to do than anyone had hoped before Starliner's next flight can take place.
Things will get more complicated if they decide that they can't be sure that the service module can be trusted to bring the crew capsule to re-entry safely. In that case, they might decide to return Starliner without the crew. This is unlikely, but the ISS has enough supplies for extra crew, and knowing NASA there are procedures already in place regarding what they will do next if this happens. A SpaceX Crew Dragon rescue mission could be a possibility, and although Starliner's crew most likely hasn't been trained to fly Dragon and their spacesuits are also not compatible with Dragon's, I'm sure there are ready solutions to those problems as well.
The worst case scenario is that NASA and Boeing determine that the service module can't be trusted at all, and that they can't return it even empty. I have no idea what would happen then. But based on what I have seen so far, I would think that this is very unlikely, and that the most likely outcome is that once they have studied the service module as much as they can, the mission will proceed as planned, with the astronauts getting home safely on Starliner.
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Comment on Astronauts stranded in space due to multiple issues with Boeing's Starliner — and the window for a return flight is closing in ~space
vili Link ParentWell, Boeing did build the first stage of the Saturn V rocket, which launched all of NASA's moon missions. The iconic moon buggy was also built by Boeing. So they were in fact very much involved...- Exemplary
Boeing wasn't involved.
Well, Boeing did build the first stage of the Saturn V rocket, which launched all of NASA's moon missions. The iconic moon buggy was also built by Boeing. So they were in fact very much involved in getting mankind on the moon.
Whether today's Boeing is the same Boeing is of course something of a Ship of Theseus question.
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Comment on Co-op game recommendations in ~games
vili Link ParentYou are welcome! Like you, I actually had zero interest in soulsikes, but my friends pushed me to join them in the first Remnant and I ended up really liking it. One of the friends later suggested...You are welcome!
Like you, I actually had zero interest in soulsikes, but my friends pushed me to join them in the first Remnant and I ended up really liking it. One of the friends later suggested Nioh 2 to me and I thought why not, especially as it kind of has a connection to Akira Kurosawa, a film director I really like. And while it has nothing really to do with Kurosawa, Nioh 2 has become one of my favourite games ever. I don't typically like really hard games at all, but there is something magical about dying together, over and over again, but each time seeing that you are getting better, together. And I guess like Remnant, Nioh is a bit more forgiving than the more hard-core soulslikes. And the mechanics are really well polished.
But I shall stop pitching it to you now!
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Comment on Co-op game recommendations in ~games
vili LinkI can highly recommend Nioh 2 which I have played with a friend for the past nine months and it's been amazing. I'm not typically a soulslike player, but together in co-op it's been a blast. And...I can highly recommend Nioh 2 which I have played with a friend for the past nine months and it's been amazing. I'm not typically a soulslike player, but together in co-op it's been a blast. And there is a lot of game there as each new game cycle adds something. Also, I've learnt a lot about Japanese folklore from the game.
My last year's co-op game was Remnant II, which is also sort of soulslike (but with guns), so maybe I do like soulslikes in the end. It's a wonderful game, as was the first in the series. I do remember it was a bit tough on older systems when it was released though, so you may want to double check what the situation is before you commit.
The We Were Here series games are co-operative puzzle games, a bit like room escape games where you are in the same space but physically separated and need to talk to solve puzzles together. They are good games and I think the first one is free. Not particularly long though.
Gloomhaven is another brilliant puzzle game. A digital version of the hit board game of the same name, it has an excellent game loop and while the story isn't anything to write home about, I loved every minute of the campaign with our three-player group.
From more recent games, Helldrivers 2 is quite fun with two players, although I must say I grew tired of it after about 40 hours. It got a bit repetitive and I didn't feel there was any meaningful progress. Still, I feel I got my money's worth and I'm sure we'll return one day to see if they have changed something.
Also, since you like Halo, have you played the Gears of War games? I really like the series, and I thought Gears 5 was pretty decent as well.
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Comment on Do you use an RSS reader? in ~tech
vili LinkI have used RSS feeds since the early 2000s. They are practically my window to the internet, Tildes included. I currently run FreshRSS on my home NAS, accessing it from a browser on my computers...I have used RSS feeds since the early 2000s. They are practically my window to the internet, Tildes included. I currently run FreshRSS on my home NAS, accessing it from a browser on my computers and through the NetNewsWire app on my iPhone.
For those self hosting, I can recommend rss-bridge and reddit-top-rss, if you want to generate feeds from websites that either don't support them, or don't offer you the options that you would like to have. I've additionally dabbled with RSSHub but have less experience with it, and also run some of my own scraper scripts.
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A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs (my favourite podcast)
I noticed that Tildes has had no previous discussion of Andrew Hickey's wonderful music podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. So I thought I'd write a little about it, in case it might...
I noticed that Tildes has had no previous discussion of Andrew Hickey's wonderful music podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. So I thought I'd write a little about it, in case it might bring as much joy to someone here as it has brought me. It's easily my favourite podcast, and it might actually be my favourite work on music history in any medium. It's really that good.
The podcast started something like six years ago, and like its name suggests, it presents a history of rock music. But not just the "four white guys and some guitars" rock music of the 1970s and beyond, but a far more in-depth exploration of where the genre came from and how it has evolved. This is not one of those podcasts where a host or hosts have chosen a topic, done some light resarch and then talk about what comes to their mind. Instead, each episode is thoroughly researched, pre-written and edited. It is a high quality audio lecture delivered by an excellent and witty storyteller who knows what he is talking about.
The first episode was on "Flying Home" by the Benny Goodman Sextet, a jazz and jump blues track released in 1939, and therefore naturally not really a rock song, but something that works as a good starting point in the wider discussion of the genre's evolution. From there, episode by episode, Hickey has told us about the (or rather "a") history of rock music chronologically, taking us through the 40s and 50s, and currently heading towards the end of the 60s. He has indicated that just as 1939 was a somewhat arbitrary starting point, his 500-song history will end with a song that was released in 1999. Looking at his current pace, it may be a while until we get there.
The latest episode is song #174, "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", first released in 1967. It's part one of a two-part narration, with the current episode concentrating on the song's early history and its writers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, while the upcoming episode two will look at Marvin Gaye's version and career at that point.
Hickey has in fact recently started to split some songs into multiple episodes, and he did it also with the previous song, song #173, Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower", first released in 1967. That one had Part 1 that concentrated on Dylan's version, and then Part 2 that covered Jimi Hendrix's version. Although, when I say that those episodes concentrate on Dylan's and Hendrix's versions of the song, that's not exactly true. It would be more accurate to say that Part 1 concentrates on Dylan's career in the late 60s, as well some related subjects and artists from the era, while Part 2 looked at Hendrix's career at the time, as well as subjects and artists related to him around that time.
And this is actually an important point to make. While the episodes certainly tell you a lot about the song that they are discussing, they are not solely about the song in question, and they never really aim to give you a subjective interpretation of the song or anything like that. Instead, you are given plenty of historical facts, you hear a lot of interesting stories, and you find out how the song and the people who were involved with it fit into a larger narrative of rock music. And you also get to hear excerpts of some really good music along the way. Hickey is very much an expert in the topic, a great storyteller, and seems like someone who knows how to do his research.
The podcast's early episodes were shorter, about half an hour or so, while some of the more recent episodes have become much longer, some reaching over four hours, which is the reason why Hickey has started to split some episodes into multiple parts. In addition to the main podcast, there are also Patreon bonus episodes which are not part of the main narrative, but which I can highly recommend. They function as companion pieces to the main story, and typically last between 10 to 30 minutes; for instance, the bonus episode for the first "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" episode was on the song "Bend Me, Shape Me" by Amen Corner. And so, although he is officially just at song #174, Hickey has probably covered well over three hundred songs so far.
The podcasts are free of ads and fully community supported. You should be able to find the podcast on all the main podcast providers, and it has a dedicated website at 500songs.com. If you don't know where to start, the double episode on "All Along the Watchtower" that I mentioned earlier could be a good way to check if the podcast is for you. Or, if you have some favourite artists or songs from the 40s, 50s or 60s, check out the tags on the website to see if he has made episodes on them. Or you can of course just start from the beginning, like I did.
Last year, Hickey was also a guest on Rick Rubin's podcast, and that interview could also be a good introduction to Hickey and his work.
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Comment on People without an inner voice have poorer verbal memory in ~humanities.languages
vili LinkIn addition to the lack of an inner voice seemingly affecting performance in verbal memory tasks, I found this suggestion quite interesting: "there is one field where we suspect that having an...In addition to the lack of an inner voice seemingly affecting performance in verbal memory tasks, I found this suggestion quite interesting: "there is one field where we suspect that having an inner voice plays a role, and that is therapy; in the widely used cognitive behavioural therapy, for example, you need to identify and change adverse thought patterns, and having an inner voice may be very important in such a process. However, it is still uncertain whether differences in the experience of an inner voice are related to how people respond to different types of therapy".
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People without an inner voice have poorer verbal memory
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Comment on Is there a documentary from a reputable source that documents the relationship between the Jews and Israel/Palestine? in ~misc
vili LinkI did a bit of reading following the attacks in October, trying to wrap my head around the history of the conflict, like I have done when tensions have risen. I can't say I came out with any sort...I did a bit of reading following the attacks in October, trying to wrap my head around the history of the conflict, like I have done when tensions have risen. I can't say I came out with any sort of a better understanding of what ways out of the cycle of violence there could be, but I can recommend The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict as a fairly good, level-headed and pretty kaleidoscopic look at the history and potential futures of the conflict.
Other books that I found interesting, although always fairly biased towards or against one side, were Alain Dieckhoff's The Invention of a Nation, Maryanne A. Rhett's The Global History of the Balfour Declaration, and Jean-Pierre Filiu's Gaza. I must stress though, that each of those books presents a fairly one-sided view of the situation. What I liked about the Routledge Handbook, which I read after these (and others), was its more academically neutral overall approach, although individual authors do lean towards one side more than the other there as well.
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Comment on From its start, Gmail conditioned us to trade privacy for free services in ~tech
vili Link ParentI think Hotmail launched with 2 MB of free space in 1996 [source]. They upped it to 250 MB at the time of Gmail's launch. The other major player in the 90s, RocketMail, I think had something...I don't recall what something like Hotmail had at the time, but it was definitely substantially less.
I think Hotmail launched with 2 MB of free space in 1996 [source]. They upped it to 250 MB at the time of Gmail's launch.
The other major player in the 90s, RocketMail, I think had something similar, but I can't find the exact figure. When Gmail launched, it was upped to 100mb, although by then it had also become Yahoo! Mail.
So yes, I also remember Gmail's 1 GB being an insane offer. It felt like you could never reach that limit. But then again, 2 MB also felt perfectly adequate back in 1996. And now I'm using something like 15 GB on my work Gmail account.
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Comment on Hey, monthly mystery commenters, what's up with the hit-and-runs? in ~tildes
vili LinkMost of the comments that I write, I don't post. I look at what I have written and don't see that I'm really adding any value to the conversation, or can't formulate my thoughts properly, and so I...Most of the comments that I write, I don't post. I look at what I have written and don't see that I'm really adding any value to the conversation, or can't formulate my thoughts properly, and so I delete what I have I written. In these cases, the only trace of me appreciating another person's comment is the anonymous vote that I may give it.
This comment actually is one of those that I would normally delete, as I don't think I'm quite able to make a coherent and original point here, especially given the amount of space that it's taking, but I decided to keep it, in the spirit of the topic.
There is also one situation which is pretty much from the other extreme: when I ask advice, I think I tend to write too many "thanks, this is helpful" type comments, which just don't add any value to the conversation. But when I have asked for information or advice and receive it, it also feels too anonymous to only give a vote to the comment. And using an "exemplary" label wouldn't be proper form, either.
In fact, I feel it would be helpful to have something like a "thanks" label. Something that would work a little like "exemplary", but would only be shown to the person that you are thanking. As with "exemplary", you could add a small message, including your name, if you so wish. It would give me the possibility of telling the commenter that I've really appreciated their comment, but I don't have anything meaningful or constructive to add to the conversation. So, basically, information that is important to me and the other person, but total noise for everyone else. Something that in a face-to-face conversation would be conveyed with a nod or a smile or a similar gesture. I guess I could use a private message for something like that, but that again feels quite out of place, as it is the opening of another communication channel, when the whole point is that I want to close the old one.
Also, like others, I do tend to disappear and come back, sometimes not visiting for half a year or so. Recently, I've been following Tildes more consistently as I discovered that I can get new posts through an RSS feed. But that of course doesn't promote comment activity from me, since I rarely visit the front page and therefore don't re-visit threads where interesting conversation may be happening. And I also only notice that someone has replied to a comment of mine when I visit the website, which only happens when I see something interesting in my feed. This is certainly a problem very much of my own doing, and the solution would be to just visit the website more often, but at the same time, I just don't really have the mental bandwidth to explicitly visit websites to check if something interesting is happening. That's what my RSS reader, email account and my mobile phone's notifications are for.
With users like me, getting more activity out of us would probably require some sort of a notification system (RSS, email, something), which would tell me about replies to my posts and comments, and perhaps more importantly, would somehow promote to me threads that contain interesting discussion. Could there for instance be an RSS feed that promotes particularly active threads (without notifying about every single new comment)?
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Comment on Favorite hobby / subculture YouTube channels? in ~hobbies
vili Link ParentA cheap popcorn machine. That's pretty much it! I think I paid 20 euros for it. I do use my phone as a timer, a sieve to cool the coffee beans down quickly, and I do the roasting under the...What's your home roasting setup?
A cheap popcorn machine.
That's pretty much it! I think I paid 20 euros for it. I do use my phone as a timer, a sieve to cool the coffee beans down quickly, and I do the roasting under the ventilation of a kitchen hood, while wearing a mask.
Naturally, the results are not perfect. But they are surprisingly good. The challenge is that with a cheap popcorn machine, the heat is applied very quickly, so the time it takes for the roast to go from "light roast" to "burnt beans" is fairly short, about a minute or so. The roasts are also slightly different from one batch to another, as the method is fairly inconsistent, and I can only roast about 70-80 grams of beans at a time.
But it's fun. The biggest issue I suspect is the short time frame, as it seems to result in somewhat thinner flavour profiles than if the roasting process was able to run for longer. Now, there definitely are plenty of aromas in the coffee that I roast, and they drink fine black, in fact much better than anything I can buy in a supermarket, but there isn't the kind of depth to the flavour that you can get from the best artisan roasters with proper equipment. It's especially noticeable with lattes and cappuccinos, as the flavours of my home roasted beans get more lost when milk is introduced to the coffee.
And because it's such a short time window for the roast, and because of the inconsistencies introduced by the popcorn machine, it's difficult to target any specific level of acidity or bitterness, and especially sweetness, with this setup. Since both acidity and bitterness are basically a function of time, acidity decreasing the longer you roast while bitterness increases, I can still ballpark those two, but sweetness is trickier to manage, as it peaks somewhere in the middle of the roasting process, and I have no way of really knowing when that is. So, it's always a little bit of a surprise what comes out. But in a way, that's part of the fun.
I haven't stopped ordering roasted beans from local speciality shops, but roasting my own is a fun and relatively inexpensive hobby.
What do you do in the industry?
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Comment on Favorite hobby / subculture YouTube channels? in ~hobbies
vili LinkSome of my current absolute favourites: Food: Internet Shaquille - Perhaps my favourite channel on YouTube. I wish all videos were like this: he goes straight to the point, doesn't add filler...- Exemplary
Some of my current absolute favourites:
Food:
- Internet Shaquille - Perhaps my favourite channel on YouTube. I wish all videos were like this: he goes straight to the point, doesn't add filler content, keeps things informative, and makes foods that are actually easy to make at home, while also being witty. Chef's kiss.
- Alvin Zhou - In a way, the very opposite of Internet Shaquille: this one makes food very, very slowly, and doesn't share much information. His latest project was a ramen that took him 200 hours to put together. The videos are calming, beautiful, and funny.
- Tasting History - Max digs up an interesting old recipe (like, from ancient Rome or something), makes it, tells a bit of history around that dish, and then tastes what comes out and tells you whether to make it or to avoid it. I've made several of the foods that he's covered, and some have been genuinely wonderful. I can particularly highly recommend the Parthian Chicken.
- James Hoffmann - Coffee videos, done by someone who not only knows his stuff, but also seems like a genuinely lovely person. Before I stumbled into his channel, I never liked coffee, and never in my 40 years of life made myself a cup of coffee. Because, yuck. Fast forward about two years, and I'm now roasting my own coffee beans at home. My introduction to him was actually on the Tom Scott Plus channel, where he made Tom Scott like coffee.
- Hames Joffmann - If you follow James Hoffmann, and have the sense of humour of a six-year-old, you also need to follow his döppelgänger, Hames.
Retro computing:
- Retro Recipes - Just a wonderful person, who in addition to retro computer stuff also does some other retro projects, most recently converting a Tesla into a KITTesla, i.e. trying to make it function like the car from the 80s TV show Knight Rider. I love just about everything about this channel.
- The 8-Bit Guy - I guess you already know this if you are into retro computing at all. But if you don't, you definitely should check him out.
- Iftkryo - Makes music with Commodore 64s. And I mean that literally: his most recent project is the C=TAR, a guitar-like instrument built on top of a C64. Still, my favourite of his is The Commodordion, an accordion-like instrument built from two C64s, and old diskettes.
Science & Tech & Space & Stuff:
- Dr Geoff Lindsey - My favourite linguist on YouTube. Excellent videos on speech, mainly focusing on English phonetics and phonology. And I'm someone whose interest in linguistics is generally far more in the fields of syntax and morphology.
- Sabine Hossenfelder - She has recently started to put out videos almost daily, making her channel a bit more hit-or-miss than it used to be before, and taking her away from her core strengths and into more of a general science channel. But it's still good. She's also fairly opinionated, which can be both good and bad. I love her humour.
- Technology Connections - A channel that looks at all sorts of everyday technology that we live with. I have learnt so much about household appliances from this one.
- Technology Connextras - More Technology Connections. Which is a good thing.
- Everyday Astronaut - Pitches himself as making rocket science accessible to everyday people. I think it's not quite true, as some of his videos can be quite challenging to follow, but they are generally well made. His live coverage of launches is also my default way to watch the bigger events. Incidentally, the last launch of the Delta IV Heavy rocket will happen today, and the channel will live stream it.
- Scott Manley - Scott is, I feel, THE authority on space related things on YouTube. While Everyday Astronaut is constantly upping his own game with 8K videos and highly produced content, Scott mainly just turns on the camera and talks, and what he says is almost always very interesting.
- Nutrition Made Simple - I tend to shy away from recommending nutrition information sources because it seems to me that what and how you eat has basically replaced religious fanaticism in many parts of the world. But I will still recommend this one. They are not the sleekest produced videos out there, but I like the kind of information that he shares and how he does it.
Music (sort of):
- Bill McClintock - The best mashups I have ever heard. I mean, just check out this Donna Summer + Ozzy Osbourne track.
- There I Ruined It - This channel ruins perfectly good (or bad) music. The latest video was Simon & Garfunkel singing "Baby Got Back". That's all you need to know. Either you like the humour or you don't. I do. Just check out this Pulp Fiction musical.
Puzzles:
- Cracking the Cryptic - Videos where a guy solves a sudoku, or a cryptic crossword. Although I like puzzles, I would never ever in my life have thought that I would find this interesting. But I do. I particularly love the longer (2+ hour) solves, and make a point to watch every single one of their weekly cryptic crossword videos. Their patreon also has quite a bit of extra content, if you get hooked.
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Comment on Let's talk about Eurovision Song Contest 2024 in ~music
vili Link ParentI could pretty much have written everything that you wrote above. I have largely the same history with the competition, the same insistence of not listening to songs beforehand, and the same habit...I could pretty much have written everything that you wrote above. I have largely the same history with the competition, the same insistence of not listening to songs beforehand, and the same habit of checking some music videos afterwards.
Correct me if I remember things wrong, but I think still back in the 90s, it was explicitly forbidden to release a competing song in any form before the competition, including radio play. Does anyone remember if this was actually true, or have I made it up? Of course, nowadays, with the internet and the national competitions that are used to select the songs, this would be impossible.
I love being surprised and hearing the songs for the first time in the semi-finals. It's also really interesting how a song that I didn't really care about in a semi-final suddenly sounds much better in the final, or the other way around. You learn new things about yourself. Eurovision can be educational.
Also, for some reason, Thursday's semi-final almost always sounds much better than Tuesday's. I'm not sure if it's the song selection, or does watching Tuesday's semi-final calibrate my brain to accept Thursday's songs easier? It's been a bit of a mystery to me over the years.
I think one reason for your experience might be that search results on both Google and DuckDuckGo are heavily dependant on the person making the searches. Google personalises results if you let it, and at least based on my personal experience DDG stumbles more often with searches that are done using smaller languages, or that target products or services in regions that use those languages. So, for instance, DDG's results may look much better for someone who has always blocked Google from following them online, while DDG's results may look much worse for someone who searches for things that DDG isn't particularly good at finding.
Another reason why you might be seeing people talk about the quality of these search engines in a way that doesn't align with your perceived reality may be that neither Google Search nor DuckDuckGo are entirely stable products, but ones that evolve and change over time. Most people probably aren't comparing search results on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis, so when they are saying that one search engine is better than the other, they aren't necessarily telling you what the situation is now, but rather what it was when they last checked, which may well have been a year or two ago when they made a decision about what search engine to use.
My own observations were that Google's results started to get quite bad sometime in the mid-to-late-2010s, and for a few years I tried to find a working alternative without much success, until DDG's search results got better sometime around 2020. I was actually reasonably happy with DDG for a year or so, but then its results suddenly started to get much worse again, at which point I tried to return to Google, saw that it was a bit better than I remembered it to be but still bad enough to make me miserable, looked around some more, and finally came across another search engine that I have been quite happily using ever since. My point being: had you asked me ten years ago which was better, Google or DDG, I would have said Google, a few years after that DDG, then perhaps again Google, and nowadays... well, I would probably say DDG, but my opinion shouldn't really count since I haven't used either for over two years.