In my experience in the real word, VR is a lot like racing sims. No one I know owns a VR headset, no one I know talks about it, no one I know is very interested in it at all, but both exist as ticketed experience at places in and around malls.
So from where I'm sitting in my middle class suburbs, it's certainly not dead, but it's basically the modern equivalent of those actuated flight sim entertainment experiences from the 80s/90s.
VR seems to be much bigger among the perpetually online. For us normies VR is hardly a blip on the radar.
I still don't even really understand what Horizon Worlds or the Metaverse even was, or if there's a distinction between the two. I've heard of VRChat, but from the little I've seen, it seems extremely unappealing.
I still think that most people don't want to strap a computer screen to their face, for any reason. I've done it, it's not very pleasant.
As someone who has both interest in VR and racing sims (and other sims), and tried VR and loved it, I am genuinely NOT INTERESTED in owning a headset for the obvious health reasons that come with using one.
There is no way this ever can be close to safe for your health than, say, not using it.
Yes. But doing the investigation negates much of the incentive for using AI.
Look for similar to play out elsewhere --- using unreliable tools for decision making is not a good, responsible business plan. And lawyers are just waiting to press the point.
In this case it sounds as though AI could have been used to generate preliminary leads. When someone calls a tip line with information, police don’t just take their word for it, they investigate it. They know that tips they receive may be incorrect. They should have done the exact same here, but they didn’t.
I’m very opposed to AI in general, but this one is clearly human failure.
The noteworthy AI angle is the undeserved credence police gave to AI information. But that is ultimately their failure; they should be investigating all information they receive.
The failure starts with tool vendors who market these statistical/probabilistic pattern searchers as "intelligent". The Fargo police failed to fully evaluate these marketing claims before applying them to their work.
So in the same way that the failure rolled down hill, liability needs to roll back up.
I have an Anova sous vide cooker that is also about 10 years old and has an app, but is fully functional without it.
When I bought it the app was free, but then later became a subscription addon. However they grandfathered all original owners into a free lifetime subscription. Pretty classy.
You rented the devices with a full up-front payment, but the manufacturer stuck you with the e-waste problem when they decided to be come an absentee landlord.
This needs to be fixed by regulation. If a device requires an online service to function it (a) needs to be clearly advertised as rental and not a purchase, and (b) the device manufacturer must take the devices back and deal with the e-waste if they discontinue the services or release the software stack (including complete and corresponding source code and build environment) to allow third-parties to host it.
This! Absolutely needed regulation. Why is it that such a clearly beneficial and necessary piece of legislation is not making its way through the legislative bodies of the world while age checks somehow magically appeared universally?
Needing an app for these things is stupid in the first place, but the real kick in the metaphorical nuts is that the needed app should be stored on the device. Want to use your phone to control the device load the program to do so off the device itself.
We really only have one tech stack where this actually works, the web. And I consider this to be either the great failure of the app ecosystem(why on earth do apps need a manual install step?) or amazement that the corporate overlords let the web slip through the gaps.
Is there a way to do web over bluetooth? or is that another missing piece?
For the one I have the app is completely optional. It doesn’t add any capability, it just lets you control it remotely. It will perform all its capabilities just fine without you ever taking your phone out.
For the subscription you also get additional content like recipes and such that I don’t care about. I wouldn’t pay for it.
I distinctly remember gaming on CRTs and then LCD screens and it was night and day difference, in favor of LCD. Monitors have only gotten better and I certainly don’t miss CRTs, least of all how hot they were.
I'm curious what the primary causes of that are. Like, I had a similiar experience growing up in the 90's. I think it was just the sheer increase in resolution. Text looked so much better, and you could fit more on a screen.
Same here, I very distinctly remember the first time I got to use desktop-class LCD monitors (it was at a new job at the time) and four things stood out:
- The screen size. Going from a 17” or maybe 19” CRT at home to a 19” LCD but without the CRT bezel — the screen looked HUGE.
- The clarity and flatness. The lack of smudging on text, the consistent geometry, being able to see the screen edge right up to the bezel without any wasted space (which you often had on a CRT if you wanted an image without excessive pincushion / bulge).
- The relative lack of ghosting when compared to laptop LCD screens I’d used in the past.
- The colour gamut. Looking back I think those monitors I first saw were relatively wide gamut monitors being used with Windows XP and no colour profiles. The colour saturation was impressive (not accurate, but striking).
I never remember CRTs looking better than any desktop LCD from that point on overall, but I dare say I just didn’t have access to any high-end CRTs at the time.
I also never remember CRTs having true black levels close to OLED, which is another thing I hear people say sometimes. I mean you could get deep blacks, but you’d be sacrificing brightness and white/gray detail at the white end. Again though might have just been the CRTs I knew of at the time.
I went from a 19" CRT capable of 1600x1200@75Hz to a 17" LCD capable of 1280x1024@60Hz, basically because that CRT would've taken up a huge chunk of desk real estate in my dorm.
My first impressions were that the screen was bright as hell, sharp (but I was torn on whether that was good or bad, given the blockiness that it introduced), thin and light (awesome!), and sucked to run at anything but the native resolution. After a few hours, I realized that my eyes weren't getting tired looking at it, and that it was nice not to have the subtle hum around anymore.
The CRT was a decent screen (for 1999), and the LCD was a decent screen (for 2003). Of course, I just got used to the differences, since the LCD was much more practical in my life. I still have it in storage right now.
You forgot one thing: flickering. At 60 Hz, a CRT is murder on the eyes. A few years ago I used a CRT for the first time in like ten years and my eyes hurt almost immediately.
I was never incredibly disturbed by 60Hz though I did notice it.
You reminded me of something I had forgotten though — remember when 100Hz / 120Hz TVs first became a thing? That I noticed!
I think most of my PC CRTs ran at 72Hz / 75Hz IIRC. At least with the monitor I had I remember pushing it to 90Hz but that would add bluriness / lose clarity so I never used it at that rate.
Agreed a 100% CRTS were wobbly flickery mess. Especially in the 60Hz era. Everyhting below 90Hz on a crt gave me horrible migraines when working longer than 4 hours.
LCDs that were just constantly lit were so much easier on the eyes than a CRT where every bright pixel is flashing at 60Hz.
But one thing is true: a low res game designed to look good on a CRT looks much worse on a low res LCD. CRTs being a blurry mess gave you free 'antialiasing'.
I'm a _bit of a snob_ when it comes to that both due to my film & tv background as well as my game collection (jesus, that's a lot of games including full snes, n64 sets, mega drive, nes, etc). I have various broadcast monitors from PVMs to BVMs as well as some of the finest consumer ones including B&O etc. I can say that now with ultrafast OLEDs (240Hz) we're 95% there now, finally. With high quality shaders or hardware gadgets it's really nice. For that 5% more I think those things like ultra high DPI OLEDs and phosphor dot level emulation shaders with black frame insertions will get us there. Until then - good ol' Trinitron is still superb choice if you want 100%. Another thing, outside of actual display is that old console + CRT are almost zero lag input to screen experiences which I actually think plays significant role in the overall experience.
Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult. I don't think it's fair to ask children to resist social media through sheer willpower when there are legions of highly educated adults on the other side trying to increase engagement.
It should be no surprise that children can be manipulated by highly intelligent adults.
I just wish for once one of these egomaniacal billionaires would actually put all their efforts and resources into solving climate change or ending world hunger.
Even his medical initiative Chan-Zuckerberg biohub is a self-congratulatory shell game. I worked in the same building as them for years, literally all they did was have parties, conferences, networking events and self-congratulatory schmooze things and never prioritized actual lab research or clinical advancements.
Be careful what you wish for. Serious, persistent world hunger in certain countries primarily exists not due to climate change or lack of food or even lack of money but because of local violence and corruption. For example, the notorious 1980s famine in Ethiopia attracted much attention in developed countries and many people (including billionaires) donated money to help. There was a drought which made farming difficult but the main problem was a violent civil war. Armed groups used food as a weapon against the civilian population by destroying crops and stealing foreign aid.
So, if you want "these egomaniacal billionaires" to end world hunger then you're effectively asking them to form private militias and impose peace by force in the developing world. The new colonialism. Is that what you want?
>to end world hunger then you're effectively asking them to form private militias and impose peace by force in the developing world
Does this happen to be your space? If this comment were posted to a forum of experts, I imagine they would hotly debate whether a range of ideas would work.
I struggle to imagine the private militia concept would be suggested in that context; with that said, I know nothing.
Incentives drive outcomes, do they not? It's too easy to become a billionaire as a charlatan and too hard as somebody able to make a difference. Rather than granting Zuck nearly unlimited power and politely asking him to use it wisely if he doesn't overly mind the inconvenience, why not create a world where monsters can't have that much power in the first place?
Yeah, but who is going to lobby for it? Certainly nobody with actual money to pay for the lobbying.
And which politician would want to vote that in? Certainly no one with any rich friends who donate to their campaigns. Which means no politician that supports this is ever going to have the budget to get elected in the first place.
And then you have the problem that you cannot just fix this in one country. Because then all these rich people will find tax loopholes to claim they’re not nationals and thus exempt from this tax. So you have to convince every rich person and every politician in every country to change.
And now that you’ve created a wealth vacuum, you need to ensure that nobody rises up to flip the system again, using their wealth to manipulate everyone into repealing these new laws.
And now we are at the stage of having to change the nature of humanity…
The problem we have is that economics is driven by scarcity and consumption; and humans are largely driven by greed (or at the very least, a desire to make life comfortable). And we can’t have a future where rich people aren’t greedy, without changing the entire way economics works. Which also requires changing human nature too.
The basic concept of an impenetrable global taxation scheme came to mind about a decade ago, but at the time I was hopeful such a thing would be possible. (Ain’t no communist, but realize nice to have public roads etc. to get your employees to work - everyone chips in -> we all make more money.)
Is it human nature to rise up once a breaking point is reached? Since I concede it is not in our nature to finish our shift at our third job and go knock on neighbors’ doors, rock the vote. (agitating to elect the least greedy capable people)
I just find it ridiculous that we as a society have allowed CEOs to become that wealthy. It's one thing to make your money from lucky investments, and become a billionaire. It's another to get there by simply running a corporation.
I mind the tolerance of society when some of these billionaires make their money on the back of negative externalities.
When "small" conflicts, like unpermissioned surveillance they use to psychological leverage against us, literally paying for content that gets eyeballs without taking any responsibility for the misinformation and hate they are financing to get produced, actively algorithmically pushing attention getting material without taking any responsibly for misinformation or hate material they are actively promoting, when they get paid for ads, but take no responsibility for taking money from scams and promoting them, and all the other seemingly "minor" but pervasive negative externalities that they hyper scale, people get hurt, and all of society gets degraded.
As everyone points out: incentives. If you don't take perverse incentives away from billionaires, or continue to give them perverse safe harbors, then those billionaires will relentlessly reinvest and innovate, in more harms, at ever greater scales. Things we still think are minor ethical issues, are not when they are hyper scaled.
This isn't some passive, life is rough sometimes situation, that people should be expected to weather. This highly financed, highly managed psychological, social and political harm, for profit. Even if the harm is distributed and seemingly low in any given incident. It adds up to a visibly degraded society.
Somehow social media gets treated with all the lack of responsibility of a neutral web site server. But they are highly active in how they operate. They should be responsible for their very active choices.
> I just wish for once one of these egomaniacal billionaires would actually put all their efforts and resources into solving climate change or ending world hunger.
I don’t. That presupposes that they have anything to contribute to begin with.
Their wealth beyond some millions (edit: being generous) is built on exploitation. That’s not necessarily a transferrable... skill.
> Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult.
This obviously means that tech is going to have no choice but to do "age verification". And I don't think there's much of a way to do that that wouldn't be uncomfortable for a lot of us.
I would prefer Meta make their products less addictive for children, with the side-effect that they're perhaps less stimulating for adults, than for Meta to keep their products the way they are, gatekept behind a system that allows them access to even more of my personal data.
I understand why they would want the opposite. They can f*ck right off.
There are ways, like double blind age verification, in which neither the website knows anything other than "yes, >18", nor the verificator knows anything other than "I was asked if user X is >18, checked, yes". Website doesn't know actual age, verificator doesn't know which website it is or for what action was the request performed.
Oh, corporstions pushed age verification, so of course they will not have any choice now. But before that they could just stop being addictive regardless of age.
Meta is not blameless here. Responsibility can be shared when Meta (and others) are essentially preying on children. It’s an uphill battle for parents by Meta’s design.
Sure, parents do bear some responsibility here too. But we are talking about a platform that is engineered to be addictive to adults too. So it’s not as if the platform isn’t still predatory even if we find a way to parent every child on the internet.
So from where I'm sitting in my middle class suburbs, it's certainly not dead, but it's basically the modern equivalent of those actuated flight sim entertainment experiences from the 80s/90s.
VR seems to be much bigger among the perpetually online. For us normies VR is hardly a blip on the radar.
I still don't even really understand what Horizon Worlds or the Metaverse even was, or if there's a distinction between the two. I've heard of VRChat, but from the little I've seen, it seems extremely unappealing.
I still think that most people don't want to strap a computer screen to their face, for any reason. I've done it, it's not very pleasant.
reply