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montagg commented on Why are there no good dinosaur films?   briannazigler.substack.co... · Posted by u/fremden
losvedir · 2 months ago
Can any young person confirm that the original Jurassic Park is actually good?

Now that I'm approaching middle age, I can't help but note that a lot of pieces like this are written by similar people who likely have a lot of nostalgia (like me). Like, of course Jurassic Park from my childhood is going to be better than whatever recent stuff came out when I was an adult.

But is it actually better? I, like any human, am very good about justification and defending a position after the fact that I didn't rationally reason myself into beforehand. So all the highbrow technical explanations in this article could very easily be done just to defend the movie they liked as a kid.

montagg · 2 months ago
It can be good anyway.

It’s a solid movie. If a young person doesn’t like it, that’s fine, but I shit you not, your feelings about that movie are not just nostalgia. It’s executed very well.

montagg commented on Why are there no good dinosaur films?   briannazigler.substack.co... · Posted by u/fremden
bartread · 2 months ago
> And, of course, they never even bothered to make sequels to The Matrix.

Like you, this is the reality I choose to inhabit.

The Matrix was an incredible film, still stands as an incredible film, but that sequel tease at the end? Should have been a tease, or perhaps a prompt, for the viewer’s imagination only.

There are no sequels to The Matrix.

montagg · 2 months ago
I know this sequel doesn’t exist.

I know that when I watch it, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.

After 26 years, you know what I realize?

Ignorance is bliss.

montagg commented on Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists   holovaty.com/writing/chat... · Posted by u/adrianh
jll29 · 2 months ago
> The problem is executives want to completely remove humans from the loop, which almost universally leads to disastrous results

Thanks for your words of wisdom, which touch on a very important other point I want to raise: often, we (i.e., developers, researchers) construct a technology that would be helpful and "net benign" if deployed as a tool for humans to use, instead of deploying it in order to replace humans. But then along comes a greedy business manager who reckons recklessly that using said technology not as a tool, but in full automation mode, results will be 5% worse, but save 15% of staff costs; and they decide that that is a fantastic trade-off for the company - yet employees may lose and customers may lose.

The big problem is that developers/researchers lose control of what they develop, usually once the project is completed if they ever had control in the first place. What can we do? Perhaps write open source licenses that are less liberal?

montagg · 2 months ago
I think you’re describing the principle/agent problem that people have wrestled with forever. Oppenheimer comes to mind.

You make something, but because you don’t own it—others caused and directed the effort—you don’t control it. But the people who control things can’t make things.

Should only the people who can make things decide how they are used though? I think that’s also folly. What about the rest of society affected by those things?

It’s ultimately a societal decision-making problem: who has power, and why, and how does the use of power affect who has power (accountability).

montagg commented on Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels   freyaindia.co.uk/p/nobody... · Posted by u/drankl
montagg · 2 months ago
Someone needs to play Metal Gear Solid 2.
montagg commented on I extracted the safety filters from Apple Intelligence models   github.com/BlueFalconHD/a... · Posted by u/BlueFalconHD
qingcharles · 2 months ago
It's totally performative. There's no way to stay ahead of the new language that people create.

At what point do the new words become the actual words? Are there many instances of people using unalive IRL?

montagg · 2 months ago
They become the “real words” later. This is the way all trust & safety works. It’s an evolution over time. Adding some friction does improve things, but some people will always try to get around the filters. Doesn’t mean it’s simply performative or one shouldn’t try.
montagg commented on Hidden interface controls that affect usability   interactions.acm.org/arch... · Posted by u/cxr
userbinator · 2 months ago
This is what happens when "designers" who are nothing more than artists take control of UI decisions. They want things to look "clean" at the expense of discoverability and forget that affordances make people learn.

Contrast this with something like an airplane cockpit, which while full of controls and assuming expert knowledge, still has them all labeled.

montagg · 2 months ago
Most people are intimidated by airplane cockpits. I think you’re right that specialists in certain situations where they’re familiar have much higher tolerance for visual density because, to them, it isn’t dense, it’s meaningful.

Most people for most situations, using most phone apps, do not have that familiarity. Mobile design has to simultaneously provide a lot of power and progressively disclose it such that it keeps users at or just past their optimal level of comfort, and that involves tradeoffs to hide some things and expose others at different levels of depth.

So while I agree that a lot of mobile design, and OS design in particular, pulls back way too far on providing affordances for actions, I would not use an airplane cockpit as a good guide, unless you’re also talking about a specialist tool.

montagg commented on A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts   newyorker.com/culture/inf... · Posted by u/thoughtpeddler
timr · 2 months ago
It’s only homogenizing your thoughts if you don’t think for yourself.

(I realize this might be a weak point for many people.)

montagg · 2 months ago
The “do your own research” types end up with some of the biggest groupthink I’ve ever seen though.
montagg commented on Apple announces App Store changes in the EU   9to5mac.com/2025/06/26/ap... · Posted by u/saubeidl
danieldk · 2 months ago
Yep, I have been a Mac user since 2007 and iPhone user since 2009. But all the malicious compliance and pettiness has me looking at alternatives (at least for iPhone, since it has good alternatives).

I don't recognize the fun, playful Apple of the 00s and early 10s anymore. Its soul has been replaced.

montagg · 2 months ago
“Cook chose poorly.” https://www.theverge.com/apple/659296/apple-failed-complianc...

I think Cook’s time as CEO will be remembered both by enabling massive scale for the most successful consumer product in history—the iPhone—while sacrificing the company’s soul on the alter of efficiency.

montagg commented on Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc   apple.com/newsroom/2025/0... · Posted by u/thm
daveidol · 3 months ago
To me it looks more like Windows Vista's "Aero" than OS X's "Aqua".
montagg · 3 months ago
It's the second coming of Frutger Aero[1]

[1]: https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero

montagg commented on Ditching Obsidian and building my own   amberwilliams.io/blogs/bu... · Posted by u/williamsss
montagg · 3 months ago
Wait. Sync is “free” if you want to use some other service other than Obsidian’s. I pay for Obsidian sync partially for slightly more convenience (fewer non-integrated points of failure) and also to support the app itself.

I’d gladly pay $1000 over a decade for a crucial tool. If the concern is open source and true longevity, I get it, you don’t get that here. But cost for value? Holy shit. $1000 over a decade is absolutely worth it for something you depend on.

If you’re a regular at a bar or restaurant, you pay an order of magnitude over $1000 a year for THAT service. This one is probably worth more.

I can, however, relate to the “every five years my system changes” problem. It’s not fun. At the same time, this is a reasonable cadence to re-evaluate things. If you found something perfect for you that works >5 years, holy crap. You are blessed. That honestly should not be the standard for tools these days—ESPECIALLY in a today’s world.

All that said: I don’t knock the author for trying to build software that can work for someone for 20 years or more. I salute that attempt—and I hope they can do it!—even if I think the specific details of how they got there are flawed.

u/montagg

KarmaCake day790January 17, 2011View Original