si1entstill's comments

si1entstill | 1 year ago | on: The Atlantic Did Me Dirty

Agreed. When I was younger, talking to older (40+ year age gap) people was a bit of a minor shift in vocab or syntax, but I wouldn't call it a "code switch."

If we have hit a point where communicating with people speaking the same language in the same region who are only a generation removed (or 2 at most) requires a "code switch" carrying substantial cognitive overhead... we have a problem.

I'm not claiming that it isn't happening, but it seems like a misstep to just accept it as inevitable. Communication with most of the rest of the same-dialect speaking population of a region should be an innate skill by the time someone is in middle/high school.

(non native speakers or transplants are a whole different ballgame, but I don't think that is what the author is discussing here)

si1entstill | 1 year ago | on: Stephen Fry – AI: A Means to an End or a Means to Our End?

I think both can be true. Most liberal western economies are highly individualistic in terms of form and law, but large firms naturally come into being and thrive. I guess one could argue that this isn't due to the need for "bureaucracy" but instead "labor" and that the bureaucracy is an unavoidable side-effect, but there is undeniably large-scale organization.

Context seems like the most interesting thing to consider. I suspect the attitude and outlook of the individuals toward the organization is the key component (and their capacity to undermine the organization in some manner). All of this is to say that I don't believe organization is inherently against the human sentiment, it just needs to be seen as justified, sensible, and a net-positive to those involved.

si1entstill | 2 years ago | on: How to compete with Patreon

> Whereas if they have two separate $1 charges, that reduces the loss somehow

This is what is being questioned. I've spent several years working in merchant processing, and I've never heard of a billing structured offered by a processor in which it would be advantageous to split charges up. No one understands why Patreon would be losing money by bundling. It could be something with anti-fraud or anti-carding, but I'd have to chew on that a bit more.

si1entstill | 2 years ago | on: Is Design Dead? (2004)

> I think companies not prone to this are ones where their product is a technical one like cloud services where the business really is the engineering and engineering isn't a means to an end.

I currently work for a company providing "cloud services" to other software shops. Part of what drew me here was that the ethos around how we get stuff done does encapsulate this. The engineering culture is pervasive. Here's to hoping we can maintain that as we grow.

si1entstill | 2 years ago | on: Playing video games can help to reduce stress and anxiety, and improve mood

I think there is a crucial semantic disconnect here, that may be partially stemmed from how much heavy lifting the relatively new term "military industrial complex" is doing. I'm likely partially to blame.

I use the term to refer to the the status quo of the relationship between interest groups, legislative bodies, and the bureaucratic system. I don't think I've forgotten anything. Some degree of defense was, and still is, necessary. I'm not refuting that. But, I believe that current manifestations of this relationship has lead to a system that is largely driven by private interests that have little to do with the defense or security of the people.

si1entstill | 2 years ago | on: Playing video games can help to reduce stress and anxiety, and improve mood

I'd say that, colloquially at least (and maybe in a literary sense as well), the "military industrial complex" broadly covers the flow of money from a government and its military to the defense industry at large. (terms again can be a bit strange here, but the "defense-industry" describes an area of economic activity not "the refinement of raw materials into products").

si1entstill | 2 years ago | on: Playing video games can help to reduce stress and anxiety, and improve mood

I feel like I am and always have been a "day-to-day" optimist, but I struggle to apply that to larger, societal problems.

Our impact on the environment is measurable and the impacts look dire. Income disparity seems to be increasing locally and globally. The military industrial complex of the largest nation-states feels eternal, as if it is a fundamental part of neoliberal capitalism.

I can "half-full" almost everything day to day. Financial issues, medical issues, family problems... never easy, but doable. I can handle it, smile on my face, and tough it out. But when I'm left alone with my thoughts, its hard for me not to draw the conclusion that the world my children (or their children) grow up in will be worse-off, and they will live harder lives than we have.

si1entstill | 3 years ago | on: The reason content creators worry about ChatGPT

> the reason why content creators get paid is because people buy shit they don't need, and AI will amplify this much more easily than humans

Eh, I think this may be undervaluing the human part of content creation. People spend thousands of dollars for single seats at concerts because they've decided (or been told by taste-makers) that "this is what is good." I don't see that paradigm of consumption changing. I think it will vary by medium but some artistic mediums seem to really maintain a strong "creator connection." That is, a lot of the appreciation of the art seems to stem from some form of adoration for its creator. Sure, sure, "death of the artist" and all, but as you said, we need take into account the current form, not the "content creators inside a bubble."

si1entstill | 3 years ago | on: Netlify acquires Gatsby

They give you really nice incremental builds out of the box, which are particularly easy to set up with gatsby cloud (the actual purchase here). Their abstractions are more opinionated, but a lot more "just works" off the shelf with configuration instead of coding.

si1entstill | 3 years ago | on: Eve Online's most notorious player has quit the game

Our stories sound similar.

I led a small corp and our whole play was to declare war on high-sec mining corporations (a formal war deceleration allowed one to avoid the wrath of the "CONCORD" police force). We'd then gank them until they'd pay us a ransom to end the war.

Eventually, some of our former targets started paying us to target other mining groups that they were competing with!

It was really great fun and a set of systems that facilitated the "emergent storytelling" that so many new open-world/survival games aspire to.

si1entstill | 4 years ago | on: Are there limits to economic growth?

> Energy and material intensity of GDP is falling.

Is this true globally, or just for specific economies? (My true quandary is probably evident:) Are those economies getting measurably more efficient overall, or have we just offloaded the energy and material intensive production?

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