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koofdoof commented on The Reddits   ycombinator.com/blog/the-... · Posted by u/sandslash
jtriangle · 2 years ago
Not to mention Steve editing users' posts, Ellen Pao being in the same social circle as Epstein, Maxwellhill conspicuously going silent when Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested, promising and then failing to deliver on direct user funding and adrev sharing, and flatly ignoring user feedback for the better part of a decade.
koofdoof · 2 years ago
I think the connection between u/maxwellhill and Ghislaine Maxwell is dubious. The account is named after the town Maxwell Hill in Malaysia, and they had posted in Malaysian subreddits years before any of these theories came out. It seems more likely to me that the similar names are a coincidence and that the account owner quite reasonably stopped using the account when they became suspected of being involved in a major international conspiracy.
koofdoof commented on How did Christianity change the Roman Empire?   historytoday.com/archive/... · Posted by u/diodorus
mensetmanusman · 2 years ago
Constantine declared Rome Christian after the profound success of the jewish adopted family structure was opened to gentiles and had converted nearly half the population.

The insight has profoundly shaped billions of families since.

koofdoof · 2 years ago
Could you expand on what you mean by "jewish adopted family" structure? Is there something special about the way Jewish families were organized that led to rapid conversions to Christianity?
koofdoof commented on Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats   businessinsider.com/socia... · Posted by u/thunderbong
mulberry_seas · 3 years ago
Do you have a reference for where Benjamin wrote about this? I found this excerpt from "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction": "With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple. The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it."

But wasn't sure if this was exactly what you were referencing, or some other piece.

koofdoof · 3 years ago
Yes, thats the piece I was referencing. There are some other relevant sections too:

"a situation which Paul Valéry pointed up in this sentence: “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.” "

"technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph record. The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral production, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing room"

The whole essay is great, I'd really recommend reading it and Benjamin's other works.

koofdoof commented on Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats   businessinsider.com/socia... · Posted by u/thunderbong
mancerayder · 3 years ago
I've been observing a pattern that I've been trying to articulate here and I can best describe as a framework where stuff 'comes to you' whereas the Internet for a long time was an enabler of 'you go to stuff'. The pendulum swung back, thanks to ad tech, and centralization, that have or are trying to orchestrate a culture shift. Okay, here are some concrete examples.

1. Television/cable (absent a TiVo type device), things come to you (ads and programming were fixed and you had to conform to their schedule back in the not-so-old days). Early 2000s, we could download content (illegally), we could pay for Netflix to send us DVDs of our choosing, and the algorithm was benevolent: its recommendations were superb. Russian and French directors I positively rated -- ratings 1 through 5 stars plus a written review were permitted back then -- opened my world to suggestions for other movies that I got to select. Today, Netflix/HBO/etc display a limited UI set of options, highly hyped shows and movies shown repeatedly, and it now Comes To You. You have a tiny bit of choice, but not much.

2. Google search. Before, it was a resource for you to customize and find what you wanted: information about medicine, a product, or a store. Now, it Comes To You. You search for thing X, you end up in a rabbit hole of Y and Z topics or things, and a lot of things seem algorithmically generated or manufactured to steer you rather than help you.

There are many many patterns like this, from news searches to even tech problem searches and articles. Don't even get started on product comparisons. It's scary I can't even search on medicine interactions (I add reddit to the search field).

I should add, web sites all have their own mobile app so you get trapped, they can steer you, and you can't control ads, the UI, cut and paste, and so on. Thanks, world in which Things Come to Us now.

Such as it is: a heavy weight on pulling and steering us, and new generations growing up on phones not knowing it could be different.

Phones are an extension of our organ senses now. How will a world in which Things Come to Us and We Dont Go to Things anymore affect us cognitively long-term?

koofdoof · 3 years ago
Walter Benjamin wrote about this all the way back in the 1930s. He observed that early art like frescos painted on walls and sculptures in temples require the viewer to travel to them, but they gave way to paintings on canvas and busts that could travel to cities to meet audiences where they were.

Technology continued to push this trend, reproducing art through photography and printing in books and newspapers let it move even further to meet people in their own homes.

These current patterns you are seeing are an extension of this, the relationship between art and viewer has inverted, art is now expected to come to us, the focus has moved to within ourselves.

Marshall McLuhan also expanded on this and the idea of technology as extensions of us with his work "Understanding Media: The Extension of Man" if you'd like to read more.

koofdoof commented on The Antagonists: The rise and fall of type-in text games   if50.substack.com/p/the-a... · Posted by u/JohnHammersley
DylanSp · 3 years ago
Setting aside the type-in aspect, the idea of having a separate book (or other media) closely integrated with a game is interesting. I'm not sure how much sense it makes nowadays, since you can easily have a PDF/movie/etc on the computer as well, and once you're doing that you might as well integrate it fully into the game. Shenzhen I/O did something like this; it came with a list of datasheets for the electronic components you used in the game, and the devs recommended printing them out and putting them in a binder for added immersion. Some of the other Zachtronics games might have done something similar, I'm not sure.
koofdoof · 3 years ago
The PS2/DS game Flower Sun and Rain did this. There was an available book that was a guide for an in-game resort whose contents were used to solve puzzles. There was also a digital version within the game, but the physical book looks fun.
koofdoof commented on AOL pulls Nullsoft file-sharing software WASTE (2003)   web.archive.org/web/20030... · Posted by u/ecliptik
koofdoof · 3 years ago
Is the name WASTE a reference to Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49?
koofdoof commented on Cash App founder Bob Lee stabbed to death after argument about suspect's sister   nbcnews.com/news/us-news/... · Posted by u/RockyMcNuts
koofdoof · 3 years ago
The section about Berkeley having "no record of graduation or attendance" for Nima is interesting. What a mysterious figure.
koofdoof commented on Effective Spaced Repetition   borretti.me/article/effec... · Posted by u/g0xA52A2A
MisterPea · 3 years ago
Having tried spaced repetition methods for studying for swe interviews, I can concur that it is the most effective way for me learn.

It does require an intense amount of discipline though, so wonder how well it will work for me in execution for hobby learning.

koofdoof · 3 years ago
Are there any good premade decks you could recommend? Or particular topics you found well suited to spaced repetition?
koofdoof commented on Comparing Hobby PCB Vendors   lcamtuf.substack.com/p/co... · Posted by u/robin_reala
jnovek · 3 years ago
I’m a hobbyist and I’ve tried to pick up kicad but found it absolutely overwhelming. Any tips on how to get started?
koofdoof · 3 years ago
I found the Getting to Blinky series to be very easy to follow:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2022BX6EspFAKBCgRuEuzap...

koofdoof commented on F-150 Lightning Recall Due to SK Cells   finance.yahoo.com/news/fo... · Posted by u/imtig3rman
Neil44 · 3 years ago
I've toured a couple of car plants because I find them really interesting - Porsche, Mini - the level of refinement, sophistication and tracability of their ERP is always staggering.
koofdoof · 3 years ago
Do you need special connections to tour one? I would love to go, but I assume it would be difficult as a member of the public.

u/koofdoof

KarmaCake day138April 22, 2021View Original