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Cosmin_C commented on Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)   mcdreeamiemusings.com/blo... · Posted by u/tk75x
codeflo · 4 years ago
Linked from Tufte’s article, I found this interesting comment from someone’s experience at Microsoft: [1]

> Attempting to have slides serve both as projected visuals and as stand-alone handouts makes for bad visuals and bad documentation. Yet, this is a typical, acceptable approach. PowerPoint (or Keynote) is a tool for displaying visual information, information that helps you tell your story, make your case, or prove your point. PowerPoint is a terrible tool for making written documents, that's what word processors are for.

I think that’s on point for many companies. A lot of the terrible slides you see in meetings are actually intended as documentation after the fact, and few people recognize (or care) that this makes for a terrible presentation.

Ironically, I think Powerpoint isn’t such a bad tool for creating handouts. If the intended reader reads the document on their screen instead of printing it, a nice PDF with screen-shaped pages might actually be close to optimal.

You just have to be 100% clear whether you’re creating a document or a presentation.

[1] http://mamamusings.net/archives/2005/11/19/the_culture_of_th...

Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
I work in the medical field and my brain cells have been constantly assassinated for years by bad presentations. Every once in a while I find unicorns - people who tell a story, teach and present using Powerpoint/Keynote slides as support - conveying information that is hard to put into words -> a photograph, an animation, some simple flowcharts to refer back to whilst talking about what is really the subject of the matter.

I've seen Powerpoint since medical school evolve from trying to squeeze as much information as possible on slides to utter nonsense and hundreds of words per displayed page. Heck, just stay home and automate your presentation to display the slides and mail them to your students instead, don't do this.

I've also been guilty when having to turbo half ass wing a teaching session of stuffing a lot of text in my slides. But I was aware this was not appropriate and I always tried to not be "that person". However, when you have 30 million presentations per day around the world, this is almost impossible to do.

Dead Comment

Cosmin_C commented on Full consensus for disconnecting Russia from SWIFT achieved, process has begun   uawire.org/kyiv-full-cons... · Posted by u/_dp9d
mlatu · 4 years ago
my take is, he is testing the nato. it was originally there to oppose the warsaw pact, which broke with the soviet union. so what is natos purpose? we have seen time and again that nato bases are set up to opose the russian federation. then whats it gonna do if i poke it in a country that is formally not yet a member?

everybody is trying to get putin "back" to the table, they dont realize he already memorized what is on it and is not interested in anything that is being offered there...

there is a russian playbook from 1997 that putin might be playing by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con... it's outlining a possible version of russians geopolitical long game

Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
If there is anything we can take out of the current conflict is that being a NATO member as a country is exceedingly important. I am unsure Russia would have made all the moves it made against Ukraine if the latter were a NATO country.

Also, mr P managed to do what the US hasn't achieved - make Germany put a ridiculous amount of money in the defense budged - exceeding the 2% of the GDP that was asked by the US in the past.

Every way you look at the current situation it is undescribably stupid and dumb, I don't care about "super sekrit intelligence information", the backlash from the US and the EU to the Ukraine invasion is incredible and continues mounting up. All that mr P can hope right now is that he doesn't end up in jail for life at the end of this whole debacle.

Cosmin_C commented on Why I will never buy another Samsung device   lehtimaeki.medium.com/why... · Posted by u/farmerbb
orloffm · 4 years ago
Do you use Raspberry Pi 4? Does it handle 1080p h265? And 4K BluRay rips?
Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
The Pi mk4 can do up to 4k (HDR) with the most recent Kodi updates. Really nice. Mine unfortunately requires a smol fan because otherwise it would randomly reboot, luckily Noctua makes 40mm silent fans. Connected on the GPIO pins for 5V, it's more than enough.
Cosmin_C commented on Blade Runner 2099 Sequel Series Coming from Ridley Scott   consequence.net/2022/02/r... · Posted by u/evo_9
rrrrrrrrrrrryan · 4 years ago
For what it's worth, I watched Prometheus before watching Alien and loved it.

I think it's a great film on its own, and the people I've met who didn't like it expressed sentiments similar to yours (ruining the Alien universe").

Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
I'll try and write some thoughts on this so maybe you can understand where I'm coming from.

I feel that a lot that makes Prometheus a good movie in itself is how it's paced and the graphical effects, albeit it still suffers from bad writing in a lot of places. The story per-se however is a complete dumpster fire because it changes and retcons the Alien universe lore to fit a story that perhaps didn't need to be told. At the same time there were deleted scenes that literally would have added 10-15 minutes to the run time and would have made it at least a 20% better Alien movie.

What makes a good movie and what makes a great sequel/prequel/movie in an established universe are two different sets of things. A good movie can be a good moviein itself but at the same time an absolutely terrible sequel/prequel/movie in an established universe. If you're working on an original idea then all bets are off, but if the work you're doing is in the exact same universe as preceding works then it needs to follow the lore of that universe - or at least NOT contradict previously established things. And you have to ask yourself - is the story that you're telling belonging in this universe? Does it enrich it? Does it bring something new? And by this you answer if the movie is worth actually making from an art point of view.

Would you like to see a modern version of the Mona Lisa painted in 3D on a computer? What if this art would have a blonde woman in it? With curly hair? And skimpy clothing? It can be a great work of art in itself, but has no business piggy backing on the Mona Lisa original.

As another example, there is a school of thought to subvert expectations by writing really dumb stuff, whereas you could subvert expectations in a manner that fits the universe. Star Wars VII, VIII, IX, Prometheus, Alien: Covenant and a lot of other works basically step all over established lore to tell submediocre stories, thus harming the universe in the process. I mean with Star Wars there's a whole 'nother can of worms - they literally made a huge part of the universe that exists non-canon. Why would you discard a lot of good stuff just so you can push your sub-mediocre stuff is beyond me, but hey, it's their IP, they do with it what they wish. I just can't be over the moon about it.

Cosmin_C commented on Blade Runner 2099 Sequel Series Coming from Ridley Scott   consequence.net/2022/02/r... · Posted by u/evo_9
thinkingkong · 4 years ago
2049 was dennis Villeneuve though. The same person behind sicario, arrival, and dune. If anything the endorsement goes the other way.
Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
I agree, when Ridley Scott does something nowadays all I can think about is how he will ruin it. Villeneuve is an absolutely amazing director, but my personal feelings towards Ridley Scott after Prometheus and Alien Covenant is that he should retire, his job in ruining the Alien universe is done.
Cosmin_C commented on Newly declassified documents reveal previously secret CIA bulk collection   wyden.senate.gov/news/pre... · Posted by u/sneak
Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
When I access the post it sends me to the following page

--- Sorry, a potential security risk was detected in your submitted request. The Webmaster has been alerted.

Reference ID: *.****.*****.****

You can proceed to www.senate.gov.

If this problem persists, please contact the Office of the Secretary Webmaster at webmaster@sec.senate.gov. ---

All right, keep your secrets.

Cosmin_C commented on 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage   wired.com/story/22-year-o... · Posted by u/Tomte
hnthrowaway0315 · 4 years ago
I'm more interested how he managed to master the knowledge of chip manufacturing plus a ton of electronics repairs (see his microscope and other equipment) at such an early age. Very admirable.

Look at what he did:

> Photolithography machines are expensive—up to $150 million—and so Zeloof made his own by bolting a modified conference room projector bought on Amazon onto a microscope. It projects his designs at tiny scale onto silicon wafers that Zeloof coats in material sensitive to ultraviolet light.

> One of Zeloof’s best finds was a broken electron microscope that cost $250,000 in the early ’90s; he bought it for $1,000 and repaired it. He uses it to inspect his chips for flaws, as well as the nanostructures on butterfly wings.

Damn this guy is good.

Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
This guy is basically Tony Stark with a box of scraps. I'm speechless.
Cosmin_C commented on Norton is installing a Cryptocurrency miner called Norton Crypto (NCrypt.exe)   twitter.com/mAxius/status... · Posted by u/decrypt
grishka · 4 years ago
At this point I'm convinced that the entire antivirus industry is a scam scheme for the most part. They make everyone suffer for their own profit.

Users are scared into installing this crap and paying recurring payments for it, and then the performance of their computer goes to shit. Developers are given nightmares by having their software misdetected as a virus or broken by the antivirus changing the OS behavior in unexpected ways.

Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
A while ago I caved in and purchased and installed Bitdefender, which I knew was all right.

It wasn't. I didn't renew the license and uninstalled it.

FFWD a couple years and my best friend upgrades his PC. Threadripper Zen 2, 128GB RAM, 2x NVME RAID 0 for the system, another NVME for stuff and HDDs for backups. System was incredibly sluggish and unresponsive and his extra NVME was sometimes dropping from the list of drives shown by explorer. Uninstalled his Bitdefender and all the issues disappeared.

It's just complete robbery at this point. Malwarebytes is a good product for example and Windows Defender is enough. But the best stuff is disabling all of these and just use script blockers and safe browsing practices and you get to keep all the processing power you paid for.

Cosmin_C commented on Pixel prevented me from calling 911   old.reddit.com/r/GooglePi... · Posted by u/sohkamyung
JohnWhigham · 4 years ago
Google has popularized the practice of keeping hordes of UI designers on payroll and changing the UI every single release. It's fucking cancerous. Nothing can ever just stay the same and work. Users have to be in a constant state of headache to relearn shit for the nth time.

Software didn't have to be this way...

Cosmin_C · 4 years ago
Funnily enough I was reading the other day how some BMWs will come without a touchscreen due to the silicon/chip crisis and I actually thought that was a plus. Seriously, whomever thought it was a good idea to make cars use touch controls and going through 5 menus to turn the heat down should be just shipped to Antarctica to explain their thought process to the penguins.

u/Cosmin_C

KarmaCake day126June 20, 2014View Original