Captain_Shakespeare @ Captain_Shakespeare @reddthat.com

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2

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28

Joined

2 yr. ago

It's definitely not for everyone! I like being able to group functions by size and position, vs just a bunch of app bubbles, and the cubist look is oddly satisfying.

It's useful for me to get the whole picture, or whip open a productivity app, in one tap or swipe, so I can get back to whatever else is happening. So, on a 6.2in, everything is very readable.

OK, sure, except that Netflix is incentivized to say as much, regardless of public sentiment.

I'm sure the hit they took to subscribers is worth it in terms of their balance sheets, else we would see a retraction, but there's no real way for them to know what the subscriber base would look like in the absence of anti-consumer policies (or their increasingly unsatisfying content production policies), based solely on historical subscriber data.

Users who got sick of it left, but we can only leave once, and Netflix wasn't going to try and retain us unless the exodus was unprecedented. I'd argue the real proof of customer dissatisfaction will be the piracy numbers on their various shows. Customers who want their content, but not their costs or policy restrictions, represent actual money left on the table.

As for their labor practices, well - like Adam Conover said, strikes are more effective than boycotts, and there are several ongoing. Won't do much for the user experience, but maybe the long term consequence is fewer, better shows with actual completed stories.

Same. I even self-host it now, no getting caught up in massive data breaches for me!

For the moment it is still a massive repository of useful esoteric knowledge. I've stopped using it for anything active / current, but so long as it exists and is searchable I don't see that I'll be able to move away from accessing it entirely.

Twitter, however, is dead to me.

The sequels trend towards fewer, longer stories with a bit more characterization as compared to Foundation, but it never really stops being a series about moments in a larger history. I'd say give either prelude to foundation or Foundation and Empire a try, but odds are if those don't grab you, none of them will.

(importantly for those who don't know already, the publishing dates vary widely across the series - with Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation released in the 50s, and the surrounding prequels and sequels arriving decades later. This can manifest as a jarring shift in writing style if you read them in chronological order instead of publishing order.)

An interesting time to be reading Forward.... Was that because of the TV series? Are you reading them in sequence?

I'm reading Michael Crichton's The Sphere. It's an odd one - Crichton rarely spends a lot of time on character, but Sphere in particular is barely interested in the people at all. It's situations and implications, a sense of mystery and dread, that the author is interested in, and he whips from one dilemma to the next so quickly its a little disorienting. that can sound like praise, but I'm not sure it is. This is an early work, and it feels rough now and then. Without strong characters, the only voice you really hear is Crichton's, and his tech-terror-explainer 'tone' can be a little tough to swallow in large amounts. all the same, I'm desperate to see where it goes, even as I suspect it will all be over much faster than most of his later novels.

I think anyone who was around, and online, before reddit/twitter/Facebook became the consolidated social media behemoths that they are, are willing to learn something new. The before-times were replete with smaller communities where your internet handle was the only real source of continuity (and even then, only if you wanted it to be).

But those whose ONLY experience of online discourse is the big 3? It's a lot to adjust to. I don't know if this is what will hit critical mass, but then, maybe that's setting the wrong goal to begin with. Can the communities connected here be self-sustaining for a time, regardless? Definitely.