pigeonburger
2hr ago
And that movie only 'works' because of that brief period where CRT TVs, VHS tapes, and landline phones were the most common tech of the day. I don't think you could remake it effectively now!
It could be argued that One Missed Call is an attempt at making The Ring for the cellphone generation. Of course, it's not nearly as good, but it's not the worst either.
And as I understand it the recent crop of horror films avoid this issue by making the horror come from psychological conditions that may or may not have a literal personification onscreen, sort of a 'the monster is inside you the whole time' concept, or more abstract "racism/sexism/right wing politics/relationship drama" as the looming allegorical danger.
This can be done in a fresh way, though; The Babadook is very on the nose, but the fact that it's something we can definitely sympathize with makes it work more than the monster was the personification of something we all reflexively condemn. The Boogeyman attempts it with another sympathetic metaphor but with much less skill.
And the concept of being 'locked in' and conscious whilst your body is compelled to commit violence against people you care about is indeed horrifying.
It indeed taps into the root of horror: powerlessness.
Exclusivity is what makes luxury goods sell for such a high price, the reputation for high quality, outside of sometimes the very initial push that started the company, is a cope so that one does not have to admit they are that so vain and easily manipulated that they bought a technologically inferior watch (automatics are technologically inferior to quartz watches) at car prices just to keep up with the joneses. Expensive materials and manufacturing techniques are also a cope. If Burberry had kept the exact same quality and sold their products cheaper at prices chavs could now afford, upper-class people would still have turned away from the brand; they were buying because it separated them from people like chavs.
In the digital world, exclusivity is difficult. Digital data is freely copiable. The only way you could get exclusivity of a digital product is through a database; a company would sell you an exclusive digital product and would ensure its exclusivity through control over their database. But that requires that you trust these people when they claim their product will be kept exclusive and that you trust that they will still exist in the future. If you bought an expensive pet or mount in a MMORPG, that lasts until the servers shut down, and if someone makes a server emulator for the game then anyone can have the pet or mount.
NFTs enabled true exclusivity in the digital world; not only is the ownership of an NFT on the ledger not copiable, but you can also guarantee exclusivity through code; the code itself limits issuance, meaning that at no point the issuer can decide to make your NFT mass market and destroy its value. What Yugo Labs and other collectible people figured is that the crypto crowd is ironic enough that they would be willing to purchase exclusivity tethered to something essentially worthless (generated ugly monkey avatars), after it took off they started adding a marketing cope to keep attracting less irony-pilled buyers to drive up prices, that it was actually membership into an club, that it gave you access to unique experiences, etc...
Note that I'm defending monkey pictures here not in the sense that I think they're a good thing, but that they're no more vapid than luxury goods that sell on being purposefully exclusive, they just have less of a fig leaf to hide that vapidness.
There's NFTs as in "monkey pictures" and NFTs as the technologies. NFTs enable digital property that escapes the issue of control over the database. Right now, digital ownership is based on a) the database admins will not tamper with "your property" and b) if they did, courts will adjudicate the issue and force the database owners to restore your property. In that context, it being your actual property is debatable, it's more of a contract you entered with the company to get certain services that is kept by that same company. The contract's original, binding version is not yours, the original is in the company's control and possession. NFTs means that this contract, for instance, digital show tickets, is inscribed onto a public ledger that is hardened against tampering, not just an entry in Ticketmaster's database. A house is actually a great example of what an NFT could represent; owning a house is not having the house in your pocket, it's having the deed in your name. An NFT could be the deed to a house; it would be unique, impossible to (practically) forge, kept on a public, safe ledger (again, not just an entry in someone's database), and there's all sort of neat stuff you could do with it; keys and locks that unlock with proof of ownership (or a revokable proof of access from the owner). Legal and financial transactions (like mortgages) that are adjudicated automatically by code, etc... Whether we'll get there anytime soon is questionable, but that's what the technology enables. Anything unique could be represented as an NFT.
The monkey picture kind of NFT is mostly just playing around with the economic effect of introducing exclusivity to a market, untethered from any other inherent usage value. The image is typically not even part of the NFT (as in, it's not written into the blockchain, as that is expensive, at least if you want to keep it on the base chain; it's kept externally), so what you're paying for is more like certificate. Often the image is created by an algorithm, so if you have the code and your token's properties you can recreate the image. You could recreate any of the other images too, but you wouldn't have the certificate to them. You can then use proof of ownership of that certificate programatically, for instance your ownership of a monkey could be verified by anyone and used as a ticket to access a party where you get your retinas burned.
pigeonburger
2d ago
Thanks! Personally, I'd reciprocate but sadly I doubt Canadians as a whole would, at least not these days.
pigeonburger
3d ago
It's also an added, compounding layer of difficulty and complexity launching and landing on them. A country being able to build carriers is impressive, but not as impressive as one that's able to launch planes like from them like clockwork with few accidents bar rounding errors, under stressful war conditions.
pigeonburger
3d ago
If nothing else she's useful to keep around in a visible role rhetorically, as she can be paraded as an example of Democrats moving so far left they're leaving their own behind.
pigeonburger
4d ago
I actually thought the right wing infighting a ~month ago had died down, but maybe it's coming back?
It's not, extremely online shock jockeys that only extremely online shock jockeys of both sides care about are not representative.
Sorry I couldn't find a link to the same clip that was not reposted by another extremely online shock jockey, but the right seems pretty united right now. https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2029586732614557943
pigeonburger
5d ago
There's nothing in it for them to do this, and in fact it does cost them.
Short term perhaps, but long term they gain healthier relationships with half the human population and the opportunity for many of them to meet guys that could be great matches for them but who have been conditioned to never approach them out of fear of the social consequences.
pigeonburger
6d ago
The reason I would recommend one that was a lease return or in that range is that he's thinking of a car in terms of how it would improve his love life; a car that looks close to new helps more in that case. Also, it's likely still under warranty (at least partly), if it's a lease return, it's had one owner, it's been likely maintained by the dealership at recommended intervals and you can assume it hasn't been beaten up too bad. If you just need reliable transportation and want to pay the least then I agree, a proven survivor in the deep part of the bathtub curve is a great choice.
pigeonburger
6d ago
If the plan is to enjoy it, oh absolutely. OP just didn't strike as someone who wants a fun car since I figured he'd already have a car or know he wants one if he was.
pigeonburger
6d ago
Absolutely get a car, a used one, in the "lease return" range (3-5 years old) of a popular, reliable Japanese brand. Toyota, Honda, Subaru. They'll be fairly expensive at first, but if you need to sell them in 2 years they'll barely have depreciated.
pigeonburger
7d ago
I don't think there's much that's deliberate in him anymore, he was already lolcow levels of crazy before Trump's first presidency (remember "JUST DO IT"?), but that just pushed him off the edge and he has yet to recover. He's kind of the negative universe Kanye West.
pigeonburger
7d ago
It marks the end of the genre I think of as 80s action, creates the 'modern', 90s-and-onwards genre
Yeah, Terminator 2 was the template until The Matrix came out.
pigeonburger
7d ago
What pisses me off is the constant drive to create sequels that recontextualize the originals as only one part of a larger narrative with higher stakes that is almost always less creative than the original vision. It actively damages story of the original unless you decide to be arbitrary with canon. See, for instance, Alien. The monster being just a monster that can hunt humans effectively is very good. It is actively harmed if you actually need to know that it was found because David in Alien Covenant did blah blah blah... and in Prometheus we learn that the xenomorphs are actually... None of that shit matters, let the monster be a monster, I don't WANT the answers, the unknown is better.
A sequel should be another story. For instance, in Ghostbusters II, they don't suddenly decide that actually, that Goser in first movie was just Vigo's lieutenant and now the real battle is happening. For all we know, the stakes are similar between the two movies, maybe even lower in the second one (after all, they're no longer facing a literal god of antiquity).
pigeonburger
7d ago
Prey was pretty good. Predator Badlands went a bit too hard in the "Predator and Alien are in a share universe you guys!" direction, but at least the action was pretty good.
pigeonburger
7d ago
I'm reminded that the US finally phased out floppy disks in the nuclear launch systems in 2019.
We're not talking 3 1/2" floppies. Not even 5 1/4", but big ol' 8" floppies.
It's not any one weapon, but a combination of factors- more satellites, better human intelligence, more stealth aircraft, better radar, more JDAMs and stand off munitions, cyberattacks, and now AI to help us identify targets
I think the main factor is the ability to do strikes. I don't mean as firing a missile from plane, that's just the culmination of the strike, but to have such a good understanding of the situation and the available materiel to plan and execute. The US is not sending a multirole fighter with a mix of air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles with a goal of "go kill this person, we believe he's hiding in this building and he's behind several layers of air defences and the might have some fighters in the area. Good luck and godspeed!". The actual mission involves clockwork removal of all known obstacles and contingencies for the unknowns. So the mission will be more like "launch at 0400, at 0600 tomahawks will destroy the air defenses in grid yyy, you will then destroy the marked target between 0615 and 0700, the airfield close will be the target of another strike in the morning, in case some of the jets manage to scramble before you will have an escort of F-22s."
Planning everything like that requires time, and these strike plans can expire as targets and defenses are moved, so if you are the US you plan as many strikes as you can for the opening of the war, start with an orgy of destruction to remove as many defenses as you can so that when you run out of pre-planned strikes you don't need to be as fastidious in your planning. If you're Iran, you can't do much to stop the strikes or cause much damage to the strike forces, so you shuffle your defenses and targets around and hope that by the time the US run out of preplanned strikes, they still don't have uncontested air superiority or achieved their objectives, then the US will either have to accept more risk in their operations or slow the cadence of strikes.
Looking at your resume, I see someone I'd invite to an interview for a tech or junior sysadmin role, if we had one open (we don't right now, but we had recently, twice in the last year).
I'll ask you the three questions I always ask in interviews, maybe it will help understand how the hiring process looks like from the other side of the table:
-
A user is unable to login to their computer, list as many possible reasons as you can think of this could happen.
-
Describe to me the process you go through to troubleshoot an issue you're never encountered before.
-
A piece of software on Windows crashes during a common operation, but there is no error message that pops up. Where do you go look to find more information.
Question one is an open-ended experience yardstick. Everyone who's worked operations has encountered login issues, they exist at every support "level", how many come to mind will tell me exactly how much shit you've seen. It can be as simple as "user is not entering the password correctly" and the slightly trickier "caps lock was on", then harder ones like AD account issues (lockouts) or the user might be trying to log on to an AD-joined computer with uncached credentials on a computer that isn't able to talk to a DC, the list really goes on and on... At your level, I would expect the easy "user error" ones and at least a few trickier ones.
Question two is to make sure you work in a structured way. I honestly don't really care what the process specifically is, as long as you DO have a way to untangle an issue you've never seen. I've had to work with juniors who did not have a process, and it was really annoying as they would either end up asking me every single thing or just spin their wheels making fruitless google searches with generic error messages or behaviors, before they even tried isolating the issue, eliminating possibilities, etc... If you tell me that you try to find error messages or logs that are unique to the issue, so that you can narrow your searches, that's good.
Question three, as long as it's not completely entry level, I expect you to at least go looking for log files, and ideally you'd mention the Event Viewer by name. If it's a linux position, log files and JournalD.
If I were sitting in an interview with you, if you got these three right, you'd get the thumbs up from me. If there are multiple candidates that got the thumbs up from me, then it comes down to whether I feel like you'd make our users/clients feel confident, etc...
Maybe my consulting firm is atypical since we specialize in non-tech, tricky, bespoke business software and in maintaining difficult codebases, but that has not been my experience. Devops mean the ops team has to waste more time in meetings with devs as they are involved at more steps of the process. Clients that have moved business software to the cloud needed as much or more ops support, some clients are moving those back to on-premise, and while "standard" cloud services like O365 are technically able to force multiply your ops team (less personnel required for same services), the expectations are increased to make up the difference rather than the hours cut. A small company before would not have expected the same services from 5-10 hours/week of an IT ops guy's time than they now do with Office 365.
Though as I said, my experience might be atypical. But in conservative fields outside of tech (manufacturing, agricultural, etc...), people tend to be multiple steps behind in the IT "tech tree". Most of the companies I deal with are in-between the virtualization era of IT operations and the cloud era. Mid to late 00's "tech level". None have reached the level of sophistication to employ tools like orchestration, let alone ops AI. I'm at about the mid-point of my career, so if AI starts eating all the jobs at the bleeding edge, I figure I've probably got time to reach retirement before it eats mine.
pigeonburger
12d ago
I work outside FAANG, sometimes do interviews and am involved in the hiring process and I tend to prefer 1 or 2 pages, with the most relevant information being at the top. Someone at the start of their career probably could do one page. Experience, skills, education.
I'm a (early) millenial. I failed out of college. I got into a decent career in IT ops despite it, including working at some pretty prestigious places. I didn't know a guy, at least not initially. Networking (the socializing kind, not the technical kind) is what got me my bigger breaks.
At the risk of sounding like a boomer, I still think my path would work out. Find a niche that underserved (in my case, it was secretarial support), and then learn how to do the socializing. Young people nowadays seem to expect life to be like train tracks, that it's systems that are keeping them out, that if they do the right thing the wheels will pop on top of the rails and everything will get into place. But ultimately it's all people that you need to convince. Personally, when I interview people, I don't care about education or credentials; everything I need to know, I'll figure out by talking to you.
pigeonburger
12d ago
And here's the blood boiling headline you would have just handed the press: "In a massive blow to Trump and the MAGA movement, even Republicans representatives say they are now turning away from fascism."
pigeonburger
12d ago
can tell that it's bait and that the winning move is to just simply answer in the most straingforward, simple and honest way possible
I don't think that works out either because your answer will be twisted into whatever is most convenient to the person framing it.
"Politician A says he supports position B but he voted for Bill C. We need less dishonest politicians in Washington, we need someone who not only talks the talks, but walks the walks. Vote for Politician D"
As long as there is a Bill C that can be, with the proper framing, made to seem like it's in opposition to position B (and there always is), then answering straightforwardly did nothing to help. Worse, it might make you seem gutless and insufficiently defiant to your base. Trump didn't go from laughing stock political outsider to 2 term POTUS by giving the straightforward, compliant answer to this kind of question, he got there by doubling down on "that's bait, fuck you" every time.
pigeonburger
15d ago
Not being able to see the puck to me is a weird complaint although I guess it might be valid for people not used to hockey. It's not so much that nuh-huh, you can see it, but that with a bit of awareness of the game and a decent sportscast, it's obvious where the puck is whether you see it or not. The player with the puck moves differently, other players move differently with regards to him and the camera usually follows the puck.
To me, relative powerlessness still counts.
Also, I don't mean necessarily personal physical weakness as powerlessness; I still see the uncertain and unknown as aspects of powerlessness.
I wouldn't consider Aliens' main genre to be horror because for the most part the marines don't feel helpless, but the parts that do feel more like horror are the ones where they relatively weakened; the first engagement where they have their ammo taken from them and can't see shit for instance. Ripley arming up with the flamethrower duct taped to the pulse rifle, or with the power loader, to confront the Queen and save Newt feels more like a victory lap, a crowning moment of badassery, when the character regains her power. Just like you know right from the start when you hear Hudson's cocky "I am the ultimate badass" speech that he will definitely die, you already know when you see Ripley riding that elevator looking actually badass that she will definitely win.
I feel like movies that really elevate horror to a new level are those that play with that powerlessness in less straightforward way, and as you mention the powerlessness can be being unable or uncertain to be able to protect a loved one. The Exorcist is a great example, the movie is a giant metaphor for parents feeling powerless to help a sick kid. Rosemary's Baby is a uniquely feminine horror movie, in that the powerlessness it targets is towards the loss of social power. A woman's power is in being able to compel people around her to care about and for her. In Rosemary's Baby, a woman that is used to having the status and deference given to her as a middle-class wife in a time and place that valued that role, has that power stripped away from her as she transitions into a motherhood role. Suddenly her worries and well-being are being ignored. No one listens to her. She's no longer the target of everyone's care and attentions, the baby is.
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