Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

computer parts posted:

When it breaks, you either hire a specialist to fix it or buy a new one. This scares people for some reason.

When personal computing has roots in kits you build yourself, or components that can be swapped out by the consumer, its logical that rolling any of that back (much less forcing programs into walled gardens) would be met with hesitation.

Cellphones were never really customisable (aside from Motorola's faceplates) so people don't really feel that same sense of loss. Though the recent trend to do away with swappable batteries, MicroSD and SIM cards had some push back.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2016 21:30

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 18, 2024 11:53

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Dead Cosmonaut posted:

Quite frankly any effort to privatize the internet and intellectual property, such as cracking down on pirating of movies and music, have failed miserably.

Alternate solutions have been much more successful.

By that I mean the Pandora's and Netflixes charging you for access to a library of content that you don't own.

Make it convenient enough and piracy isn't a concern anymore.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2016 22:40

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Avalanche posted:

I don't know if something exists already, but it would be cool if a future version of windows incorporated VMs that ran off of virtual hardware configurations so all a companies dogshit legacy software could be spooled up in separate VMs running older OS versions independent of the higher level OS.

My school district did that for their legacy student database system when Win7 came out. The VM ran XP and basically came pre-loaded with the software.

Turns out some internet voodoo in 7 made it unreliable. :confuoot:

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 22:22

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Subjunctive posted:

Sorry, friend. Early 1980s to early 2000s. I barely dodge it at 39, you're in the thick of it.

Personally, I don't think you can count anyone after 1995 as a millennial. Feels like you should be able to remember 9-11 :patriot:

to be a millennial. It's hard to have the millennial angst if you don't remember the high hog days of Pets.com

FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Feb 24, 2016

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 18:45

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Subjunctive posted:

I don't think many 8 year olds were tuned into pets.com.

Obviously you underestimate the value of a sock-puppet mascot. But even if you're 8, I think you can recognize "poo poo this 9-11 thing is bad and scary" and place it as a turning point of some kind. Even if it's just "All this news is taking Gundam off the TV!" like it was with Gulf War 1.

Marenghi posted:

They grew up in a time when communication technology was fully integrated into life. Their first phone was a smartphone, the internet was commonplace throughout their lives

That, too. Might be more apt to call it in MicroGen for some, but I really feel like post 95-97 is a starkly different age to grow up in. Hell, AIDS/HIV awareness alone wasn't ratcheted up to crazy levels like it was in the years before.

Radbot posted:

"Why doesn't everyone just get prime bartending shifts in big cities?" - Young, white woman

Also "Why can't you just, like, ask a friend to talk to the owner and get you a $16/hr job!?"

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 21:33

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

ProperGanderPusher posted:

People have been talking about a supposed cartoon golden age in the 90s for years now

Supposed? Three networks ran SatAM programming (4 if you count CBS's anemic schedule) for 4-5 years. 3 ran weekday afternoon programming (Fox Kids, WB! Kids, The Disney Afternoon).

Not all of that content was good -- I'm looking at you, Marsupalami -- but the amount of stuff produced was pretty significant.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 03:58

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

ComradeCosmobot posted:

You could easily argue that cartoons like Archer and much of the cartoon output of Adult Swim were literally built on top of the cultural priming that Fox Sunday nights in the 90s offered millennials (which arguably depended in turn on the childhood priming that the pre-1996 cartoon blocks gave)

And even if you're not going by the ubiquity of network produced animation, the 90s are like 3 years removed from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was credited as not only prompting a revival of classic Looney Tunes shorts but also saved a bunch of old knowledge and techniques as modern animators learned from some old pros.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 04:43

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Someone remind me why Marissa Meyer left a good job at google for this shitshow.

Golden parachuting her way to millions.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 00:24

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

MS developing a Smartphone OS would have been terrible terrible. They just wouldn't have the UI know-how that crazy Old Man Jobs had. And their hardware would have been shiiiiiiiiit.

Not to mention having to put your phone away for 20 minutes while WinDOS updates drivers and poo poo.

Yahoo could have tried to sell enterprise Email and undercut Outlook. Otherwise it's just sell while the brand means half a poo poo.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 03:24

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

silence_kit posted:

Smartphone OS programmers were/are in a great situation where they didn't have to worry about backwards compatibility and maintaining compatibility with many different hardware configurations.

This is MS under Bill Gates though. Notorious for asking 'but how does this allow us to sell more Office'.

Plus, I had one of those PocketOS phones from, like, a year before the iPhone hit. It was a mini version of Windows, with a little start menu, that lost all settings and basically factory reset if the battery went dead. There was an SD card port that could be used to add a WiFi card, but you had to install the driver on the phone by hooking it into your PC and poo poo.

It always felt like an inferior version of Windows.

IPhone not fragmenting its hardware, and later having apps run like programs on a regular computer, without having to worry about hardware problems, was like a revelation after that thing.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 04:36

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Mr.Radar posted:

Take a look at the original unveiling of the iPhone where Steve Jobs shows off how Safari could render and interact with the desktop version of the New York Times and Amazon web sites:

Actually yeah, that itself was huge. Not having to WAP your way through poo poo on your pocket PC was pretty cool.

Mirthless posted:

Jobs just refined the concept and marketed it better than anyone else did.

I think the arguable part of this is that the refinements individually were neat and not crazy (doing away with the stylus, using native rendering for webpages, using glass instead of plastic), but taken as a whole they created an experience that just wasn't available anywhere else at the time.

quote:

The hardware was poo poo, it's true, though at the time the iphone came out the top windows mobile phones were also far better - they had 3g support and could take SD cards, and also had bigger screens, pull-out keyboards, etc.

Ah! I had the 6600! It was a hand-me-down and it was amazing that I could play NES games on it.
That's been the prototypical PC/Windows problem though: You can get a Ti-Infinity graphics card and plug it into your 258GB RAM monsterboard, but the drivers suck and hardware compatibility is a black hole of suck so you spend 4 hours tracking down a fix.

quote:

I'm going to guess you had a pre-6700 windows mobile phone, and data loss on those devices all comes down to the battery technology, not any actual design flaws in the hardware itself.

That's a pretty crazy flaw that should never have made it through QA though. I'm somewhat reassured it wasn't incompetent design entirely...

quote:

I worked with smartphones on a helpdesk for a major cell carrier in 2007. It was a very, very weird time to be in the industry.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 00:40

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

WampaLord posted:

Are you kidding me? If she was getting paid and not getting yelled at for doing nothing that sounds like the perfect job.

Jobs like that suck because you just sit around all day and try to fill the 8 hours you're mandated to be there. After the second week of binge-watching something on Netflix, while occasionally answering emails or spending a handful of hours on a small project, you start going stir crazy.

Then you get home and say "what the gently caress am I doing with my life". Plus there's the suck of getting fired and not really being able to use the job on your resume.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 23:30

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Hughlander posted:

Smart homes with solar / wind cogeneration buying and selling power automatically.

LA's lower company is setting a $10 minimum service charge for Solar users. In the case you contributed more to the grid than you used, here's a bill!

# ¿ Mar 20, 2016 21:06

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Bushiz posted:

I think we've just had so much experience manipulating fear in media in the past forever, that we're, societally, too good at it for our own safety.

Oh yea, infinitely yes. Universal's Halloween Horror nights turns people into sweaty gibbering fools. But part of that is being able to scream with friends and share the experience.

Being alone with a VRu strapped to your head... Potentially more terrifying.

Kind of like the difference between watching a jumpscare on TV/in a theatre, or reaching for something while you're walking in your home at night and hitting something that should be be there.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 06:24

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

We're those the little cartoons everyone on FB posted for about a week before it got super annoying and caused Zuckerberg to write a way to ignore it?

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 20:09

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Seems pretty in line with the rest of the country's hiring practices post Big Recession.

In that they're shooting for the high end worker that can easily jump ship to a more prestigious job, instead of considering bringing in someone that's not as stellar, but could be molded into a dependable employee within a year or three.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 19:31

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I think digital currency is a good thing, but I think a digital currency in which money is created and backed by CPU cycles isn't long-term viable.

Any time I hear about the ridiculously longer times it takes to generate a hash or whatever on the BitCoin chain I'm reminded of that SciFi story where they ask the computer how to reverse entropy.

It'll be the heat-death of the universe and the final Onmiversal BitMiner will spit out the GodHash.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 00:34

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

blugu64 posted:

The nest is an absolutely terrible thermostat. I had one, and it would never follow the schedule you set if you left it in its 'learning' mode. Even with that mode disabled it seems to only keep the house about 5 degrees on the wrong side of whatever you set.

Glad I haven't been in the position to buy one yet. I admit, the idea of turning on the AC from my watch while my car Autodrives its way back from the store was very sci-fi awesome.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 18:17

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

blowfish posted:

This is actually much more pragmatically useful than I expected from the auto industry. More power to Volvo.

I wonder if it's because they can afford expensively ruthless corporate lawguys that will hem haw and stall any possible case to hell and back.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2016 08:46

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

So in the autonomocarpocalypse, do our emergency services vehicles still operate a hybrid mode with human-directed driving every now and then?

I'm assuming the Fire Dept/Ambulances will need meatspace pilots here and there, even if the roads magically part for them during an emergency.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 18:19

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

This reminds me of that tricorder bomb-sniffer that was sold to the US/Afghan forces during Gulf War Electric Boogaloo that was just a metal detector shell with random bits of cabling in it.

Rhesus Pieces posted:

Except Theranos isn't nearly as funny as the Soylent story.

Theranos alpha test hardware bugfix log:

v0.0.40 - Under advisement from Legal, soundbank from v0.0.39 removed
v0.0.39 - Added ~~Star Trek~~ sounds during analysis
v0.0.38 - Added "midichlorian count" mode
v0.0.37 - T-Cell Counter under review after reports of several erroneous measurements
v0.0.36 - Units now in Parts Per Million instead of Parts Per Miligram

FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Apr 14, 2016

# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 18:49

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Doc Hawkins posted:

Really? Hippie Essentialism? No True Hippie?

From way back in Triumph of the Nerds (the excellent PBS/Cringely documentary on the mid 90s pre-iMac computing industry): the guys who invented VisiCalc didn't trademark/copyright or protect their invention, on the basis that they were hippie bastard's that wanted to leave the world off better than they found it.

Jobs, meanwhile, is swiping UI from Xerox and browbeating employees to get boot times down 2 seconds. But they didn't need to wear suits at work!

# ¿ Apr 15, 2016 04:19

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

A Man With A Plan posted:

Elon Musk already 100% has a cult following around him.

I'm one of those wankers that stood in line to preorder the Model 3 (my wife wants one). Right before the doors opened some goober went down the line and said "OK on the count of THREE we're going to chant THANK YOU ELON! THREE times, ok?"

I'm like why the gently caress are we thanking the millionaire dude that didn't design the loving car and poo poo?

The free cookies and water and poo poo were a nice consolation for standing in line though.

# ¿ May 7, 2016 19:45

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

ocrumsprug posted:

Did you thank Him for the cookies at least?

Praise be to Elon. This feast of cookie and coffee is but a share of his clean burning glory.

I guess I should have mentioned the dude was recording on his phone to upload to YouTube or something.

# ¿ May 7, 2016 22:48

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Peztopiary posted:

, also did you do the cheer

poo poo no, man. I'd been standing in line for 3 hours at that point. All I wanted was to pay my wife's $1k reservation blood money, grab a bottle of water and have a real breakfast.

The damned car prototype wasn't even out at that point. Why the hell would I thank a dude for the privilege of giving him $1,000.00??

# ¿ May 9, 2016 17:58

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

cheese posted:

Holy poo poo it really is as bad as I thought it would be. Of COURSE its a middle aged white man, riding in to save a precinct full of black/brown cops, vanquishing centuries of crippling socioeconomic reality with his sweet new app and drones. Because, you know, the reason Cops couldn't find his friends killer is they struggle so much in foot pursuits...

Mind boggling, truly mind boggling.

I hope it gets one season.

So the last episode is literally "Turns out rich guy did it buy all the drones + ARgunz + PolizR App can't touch him because of Directive Riche"

# ¿ May 18, 2016 06:23

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Kobayashi posted:

Your business model and domain name are outdated sorry. Should have went with weld.io and positioned yourself as cloud-based marketplace platform for WaaS via rigorously trained, on demand welding professionals.

I feel this conflicts with my Weld.It app, which is a marketplace for welding bids for your project. Set the price and local artisanal "metallbenderz" will negotiate with you for the cheapest rate!

# ¿ May 20, 2016 19:18

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Liquid Communism posted:

Piracy wasn't even a -new- problem. They were hosed the minute the recordable cassette tape became common, because it was easy to just tape whatever song you wanted off the radio.

Cue the anecdote about Popular Band releasing a blank B side to Popular Cassette because "You're just going to copy it from a friend/the radio anyway"

The music industry had to be dragged kicking and bitching all the way. No pity for them.

I'd also add that they were beginning to be little bitches about CDRs and CD burning right around the time MP3s took off. So even without Napster/iTunes/iPod they would have found a way to complain about end users doing what they wanted with the music they paid for.

# ¿ May 25, 2016 06:07

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Paul MaudDib posted:

Actually yeah $4 billion is definitely a steal for an iconic sci-fi property. And Star Wars in particular is merchandising gold.

They're probably going to clear a bill on BB8 merchandise alone.

gently caress that adorable rolling egg.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 04:01

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

bullet3 posted:

Ya, great idea. Let's drive out all the tech companies keeping the city afloat and let SF complete it's transformation into a 3rd world slum.

So we get rid of the tech bros and hipsters, and also reverse the gentrification tap?

Sounds good comrade.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2016 23:28

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Wheany posted:

Hmm. Okay, how's this:

A mobile app to...

Better, but you still need a catchy name that either drops a vowel or is based on some geeky gently caress poo poo.

Like "Tithr"

Or "Unto Caeser"

Or "Silmarilleo"

# ¿ Jul 4, 2016 21:36

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Josh Lyman posted:

Wasn't America's Army a decent game though?

It had solid foundations for a TactiLOL pre-Modern Warfare affair.

It's quite sobering when a US Military recruitment tool is more in shape than something like Alien:Colonial Marines

# ¿ Jul 5, 2016 00:45

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Quandary posted:

That is unfortunately all too common in tech recruitment these days.

MS, especially, is that Steve Buscemi screen cap with the skateboard and hat going "What up my young homies".

Kind of weird knowing that Apple and MS were the bad boy hipster GenX corporate counterculture startups once upon a time.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2016 04:40

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

ToxicSlurpee posted:

The other snag is that there just isn't much consistency among bra sizes across companies. One company's B cup might be another's C. Women also don't fit neatly into a few categories either; a lot of women are kind of sort of between sizes but don't comfortably fit either of them. It gets even more confusing if you fit one company's 32B perfectly but another company's 32B is too small. Then styles, materials, and sizes change and...yeah.

I'm not a woman but pretty much every friend I've ever had that was a woman has complained about bras at least once.

That's before you get into the fact that elastic wears over time, or the fact that the D/DD range is the "ideal" but anything above that is suddenly holy poo poo are my tits really that big what the hell territory.

quote:

So of course you'll end up with companies that specialize in bras that you can go to to get fit properly, talk about how to fit a bra properly, and how to wear one properly. Will it cost more? Yes, but it's a place a company can do very well by being boob experts.

This is a weird aside, but the actress that played Vasquez in Aliens/John Connor's stepmother in T2 owns and operates a small chain of boutique bra shoppes in Los Angeles. Their motto is "The Alphabet Begins at D". It's pricey as hell, but everyone I know that I've recommended the shop to says they've never had more comfortable, fitted bras before (or cried as much as when they looked at the prices).

Of course IN THE FUTURE you will be able to have someone 3D scan your boobz and 3D print a perfect bra in hours for the low-low price of $300!

# ¿ Jul 23, 2016 02:47

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

I miss the halcyon days of "Well if you're driving to the airport already why not use Uber to get some extra $$$!"

# ¿ Jul 31, 2016 23:42

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Had to listen to a presentation today at work by one of those X groups that provides cash to push the boundaries of technology.

Blockchain is revolutionary. Don't teach kids to code, AI will do that. Tech is exponential on and on and on. Disrupt the classroom. Free global supercomputer WiFi Avenger JARVIS Kurtzweil singularity.

Hooray for the future of rich white guy tech.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 21:32

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Dude's pretty much a highly placed executive in the org, so I did all I could not to laugh when he said Blockchain.

Yeah man, the wave of the cryptosecure future is tiny furnace computers slaving away on increasingly complex nonsense. (Also, way to prop up the preferred currency of Darknet pedophiles).

OH BUT WAIT QUANTUM COMPUTING!

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 22:24

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Schubalts posted:

For real. There are laws that make absolutely no sense and should not exist, and laws about what day of the week a store can operate on fall under that.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it were some stealth anti-jewish poo poo there.
Oh you're closed on a Saturday eh? Well we God-Fearing folks like to take our breaks on the lord's sabbath, Sunday thank you very much.
Or, to be slightly more hopeful, maybe it was a "Please let your workers have at least one day off a week thanks" law.

So why aren't all the techblogs just flaming the ever loving gently caress out of a presentation by someone that was barred from performing lab work???

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 16:24

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Whatever happened to CarMax?

Not an app so significantly not disruptive enough.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 16:51

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 18, 2024 11:53

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

One of the Bitexchanges got hacked or something and they're out $60 million American dollars.

B-b-b-but my cryptographic security!

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 06:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

«‹›5 »