adrianhon

adrianhon, 2 months ago to random

RIP to a real one. Practically everything he wrote was decades ahead of its time, not to mention superbly entertaining and deeply humanist. https://file770.com/vernor-vinge-1944-2024/

cstross, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to random

Just ended up in the Apple Store this afternoon and saw a midnight black 15" Macbook Air.

Oh, the shiny!

I lost my saving throw, so of course I had to buy one ... for @feorag . (I'm not ready to replace my M1Pro MBP, dammit, but F needs a new laptop and end-of-accounting-year is looming.)

adrianhon, 2 months ago to random

Did Walter Benjamin come up with “you're not the customer, you're the product" in this passage about covered shopping arcades?

“The flâneur sabotages the traffic. Moreover, he is no buyer. He is merchandise.”

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

One of them destroys the commons in favour of an environmentally unfriendly, isolating, private interaction and the other is https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/apple-cancels-work-on-electric-car-shifts-team-to-generative-ai

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

OK I wrote up my dopamine rant so now I will never have to speak upon it again (until next week) https://mssv.net/2024/02/20/dopamine-for-me-addiction-for-thee/

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

My interview with Science Friday has reappeared for some reason, so you can once again listen to me talk about why gamification can be bad, actually! https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/gamification-society/

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

Goddammit people need to stop misusing “dopamine” already. “Addictive” or “habit-forming” are perfectly respectable words that, even better, are not the name of a neurotransmitter that too many people think is a happiness chemical.

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

OK my last thing on scams (for now):

The idea that "being smarter” can help people avoid scams is like training people to run faster to dodge traffic rather than enforcing road safety and building pedestrian crossings – it’s not that it’s worthless, but it places the burden on individual citizens rather than addressing the larger societal problem.

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

Awful, awful story. Even smart, informed people can fall for scams when they’re up against a veritable tiger team. https://www.thecut.com/article/amazon-scam-call-ftc-arrest-warrants.html

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

I keep thinking about this @simoncarless post on how the vast catalog of Steam games – so many of which are still playable and polished – means that new games are competing with all games.

It used to be that constant hardware and OS changes meant older games were harder to play, and perhaps not worth playing. Now that things are more stable and it's easy to distribute bug fixes and updates online, that's all changed.

And it's happening to consoles, too... https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/just-how-big-have-pc-and-console

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

Loved this piece by Hamilton Nolan on writing and editing; silly, but I agree! https://flaminghydra.com/how-to-write-good/

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

Holly Gramazio has written a very good post about how she solved a crucial puzzle for her Husband Generator webtoy:

How do you make some of the husbands appealing? https://buttondown.email/holly/archive/an-infinite-supply-of-husbands/

adrianhon, 3 months ago to random

“The Vision Pro can literally DRM your eyes — if you’re watching a movie in the Apple TV app or Disney Plus and go to take a screen capture, the content blacks out.”

Welcome to the future! https://www.theverge.com/24054862/apple-vision-pro-review-vr-ar-headset-features-price

adrianhon, 4 months ago to random

Apple nerds in the US, for the love of god:

Stop bleating on about how EU regulators are terrible, they don’t know anything, wont do anything, don’t represent what EU citizens want.

The world is not America. The EU is not America. They do not always want or value the same things. Maybe try talking to some Europeans?!

adrianhon, 4 months ago to random

This is huge. If these rules had applied to all users worldwide, my company would’ve saved six figures, maybe seven, on App Store fees for our games.

It also enables new kinds of apps like eBook stores that would’ve been impossible if you had to pay Apple up to 30% for each sale - more than your entire margin. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-changes-to-ios-safari-and-the-app-store-in-the-european-union/