Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

People are weird.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I really should read my own blog.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

No one could have predicted…

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: The Zuckerverse Will Not Grok the ‘Fun’ Algorithm

Late Night Open Thread: The Zuckerverse Will Not Grok the ‘Fun’ Algorithm

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ICYMI:

I’m just so glad I don’t work in an office any more…


Reader Interactions

59Comments

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    For the academics here.

    @profmusgrave

    the two professorial varieties: * 1) has every word of the lecture written out, with copious footnotes and stage directions like LAUGH IN A NORMAL HUMAN MANNER HERE * 2) notes for 2-hour lecture: the scrawled words “Raven – Scythians – Derivatives” with a blot of ketchup

  4. 4.

    Urza

    My company just spent a disgusting amount of money on what was called a Metaverse play.  Thankfully they don’t seem to keen on implementing it for us.  I hear all these people whine about Zoom calls all day, its rare that we even bother to turn a camera on for meetings, which might explain a few bugs for people using the same program we do.

    I was actually not selected for Zoom jury duty cause I wasn’t paying attention while the other jurors were being asked questions.  Not that I wasn’t planning to work through the trial, but the real issue was I set my phone up somewhat to the side so it was easy to tell I wasn’t staring at it when looking at a monitor.

  7. 7.

    Urza

    @dmsilev: The reality of anything like Snowcrash is probably more like Augmented Reality ads spammed in your vision till you can barely see anything else.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    @Urza: Moving slightly later in Stephenson’s writing, there was a throwaway line in The Diamond Age along those lines, something about a guy whose retinal implants got infected by advertising malware that spammed ads onto his retinas nonstop until eventually he killed himself.

  9. 9.

    Jerzy Russian

    I don’t understand a word of this post, and as far as I can tell that is probably for the better.

  10. 10.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jerzy Russian: I understood far too much of it, and yeah, you’re better off in uncomprehending bliss.

    I worked with SecondLife back in 2007, and hooboy, the things people do to their VR avatars …. oh man oh man oh man.  If anything, @haircut_hippie is seriously understating.

  11. 11.

    Another Scott

    I remember seeing some VR thing using Occulus goggles at a museum – about some Mexican mythology – and it was less than impressive. Very low resolution, not natural (moving one’s head could induce nausea), and even the people encouraging visitors to try it seemed bored with it. Wearing a headset is bad enough – nobody is going to want to wear VR goggles for hours at a time.

    IBM tried to get people interested in avatars moving around in some virtual world around 20 years ago, also too. It was a desolate wasteland.

    Maybe some day this meta thing will take off. But as tweets above say, it will do so for non-work things first if it does (probably pr0n)…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  14. 14.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Another Scott: Does anybody remember when there was a mini-epidemic of gamers using VR headsets, who were coming down with coordination problems when back in real life?  It seems that the inaccuracy of the VR simulation of newtonian mechanics was completely fucking-up their motor coordination back IRL.

  15. 15.

    Jerzy Russian

    Also too, what is wrong with Zoom calls?  Sure, we would all like to be in person, but if being in person is not possible, Zoom calls seems like the best alternative one could realistically hope for (we are a long way from holograms like the Jedi Council uses).

  16. 16.

    Kent

    I have a feeling that a whole bunch of companies and organizations are going to quickly realize that the age-old staff meeting with free bagels, muffins, and coffee paid for by the office secretary out of petty cash was the far far superior alternative.

  17. 17.

    Kent

    @Jerzy Russian:Also too, what is wrong with Zoom calls?  Sure, we would all like to be in person, but if being in person is not possible, Zoom calls seems like the best alternative one could realistically hope for (we are a long way from holograms like the Jedi Council uses).

    Zoom is actually pretty fucking horrible old technology.  Over 20 years ago I was doing frequent video conference calls when I worked for NOAA in Alaska and we had weekly video staff meetings with branch offices in Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Sitka, and Anchorage all dialing into the main office in Juneau.  The technology we were using then that auto focused and zoomed in on whoever was speaking was superior to zoom.  And that was maybe 1998 or 2000.  The only reason people use zoom is because it is “free”

  19. 19.

    danielx

    I have one zoom-type meeting a week, and that is quite enough. Seeing all these people before they have gone through morning cleanup is….probably about like seeing me, something I would not voluntarily inflict upon anyone.

    Have not had a haircut in a while, and bed head is increasingly Eraserhead.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Heck, I was experiencing various iterations of Bell/AT&T teleconferencing back in the 70s and into the early 80s.

  22. 22.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Kent:   Yes, I have been on a few of those conference calls.   On those cases, most people were in-person, and a few people in other places called in.

    In terms of “realistically” available to large numbers of people like university students, Zoom seems to me to be satisfactory.

  23. 23.

    Yarrow

    That video in the quote tweet at the top of the post is just hilarious. The tweet claims it’s a rave. It is the saddest excuse for a rave I can imagine. A handful of people just standing around while some electronic music blares. Gonna need some good drugs to make that sort of thing interesting.

  26. 26.

    Kent

    My daughter is a freshman at UW in Seattle.  These past two weeks they have been on semi-remote mode at the discretion of the teacher but going back to full time in-person starting next Monday.

    One thing she did just tell me is that live zoom lectures are about 100x more engaging than taped lectures.  Her physics professor is doing live zoom lectures and his TAs are curating and supervising the parallel zoom chat in which students watching are commenting, asking questions, etc. in real time  They are also using real-time engagement questions using poll everywhere and other apps.  While her chemistry professor is just posting up links to last year’s video lectures for students to watch and take notes at their leisure on their own time.  Essentially the same content, but my daughter says that doing it live with accompanying chat and Q&A is about 100x more engaging and fun, even if both are still video.

    I found that to be an interesting comment and not something I had specifically considered before.

  27. 27.

    The Dangerman

    The radio DJ tonight was talking about a virtual wedding reception in Australia or New Zealand or someplace. If I got an invite to a virtual wedding reception, it would only be fair to arrive with a virtual gift, if you get my drift.

  28. 28.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus:  I realize I don’t understand this metaverse crap but is there some reason most of the people are just standing still? It’s supposed to be a rave. Aren’t people supposed to dance or at least move at a rave? There’s nothing happening. What’s the appeal?

  30. 30.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Kent:   I haven’t taped any of my lectures, mostly for reasons your daughter has pointed out.  I post the Zoom recordings on Canvas, but I don’t otherwise reuse them.   My class  demonstrations involving arc lamps and diffraction gratings are impossible over Zoom, but I have found other ways to get the point across.

  31. 31.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Kent:   Also, too:  Your daughter is taking physics and chemistry in the same semester?  Well, I guess if you are young you can keep that sort of schedule…

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    When I worked in pro sports, so many people who were always traveling and almost never came in the office we held 4 – 1hr phone conferences on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, because there were actually 4 different groups outside the office. It actually worked out fine, other than the one time I was on the road – driving and someone cut me off and my alone time driving swearing mode kicked in automatically. It’s fun being the hit of the office that always valiantly attempts to maintain proper decorum.

  34. 34.

    Wakeshift

    It looks like the virtual manifestation of a threadful of lurkers. The 3D immersion should add to experience, but instead it is somehow *less*.

    I say this as an avowed and studious lurker, and i predict it as the inevitable future of metaverse: minimally-engaged occupants enduring a crescendo of “clap LOUDER!”

  36. 36.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus:  It’s terribly sad and hilarious at the same time. If they’re trying to sell people on how great their product is I don’t think this video is going to do it.

  37. 37.

    the pollyanna from hell

    @Wakeshift: The true wisdom and majesty of BJ is found only among the lurkers. Just wait til we get ready to say something, you’ll see.

  39. 39.

    Kent

    @Jerzy Russian:@Kent:   Also, too:  Your daughter is taking physics and chemistry in the same semester?  Well, I guess if you are young you can keep that sort of schedule…

    Yeah, she wants to get the requirements out of the way so she can move onto the more interesting stuff.  She is also taking an honors class on infectious diseases.  I told her there was no rush and we will pay her tuition either way. But she is a type A personality and with no marching band during winter quarter she felt she had the time to do it.  She’s more of an eclectic science type and not at all interested in chasing medical school so she isn’t GPA focused like many of her peers.  But she’s still doing fine.  I think her GPA was 3.6 during fall quarter with nearly the same schedule plus marching band and adjusting to life in college.  There was much trauma after her first Chemistry midterm last fall until I told her to check the curve and then….”Oh, I guess an 84 isn’t so bad if it puts me in the top 5% of the class”

  40. 40.

    ruemara

    Companies: Quick to embrace faddish tech, slow to offer good pay, benefits, sane work environment, childcare, etc.

  41. 41.

    Wakeshift

    How long will this development stage last, before I should really start to worry about techbros trying to monetize IRL social interactions? AR glasses with profile data popups, hot-or-not style crowdsourced pickup line suggestions?

    I’m grossing myself out, and realizing I probably just gave away the next couple billion $ IPOs.

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    i absolutely refuse to implement any kind of solution that will require me to write up a policy on what kind of dress code everyone’s avatar has to adhere to, i just can’t and won’t fucking do it.

    LOL!

  48. 48.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    boss: people are tired of zoom calls, could you take a look at [website for some half-baked shitty office metaverse solution].
    me: this is worse. however tired of zoom calls people are, i absolutely promise you, this would be so much worse. i am not defying you, i am saving you.

    Damn. I *knew* there was a reason I suspected I’d really like t his twitter user.

  51. 51.

    DMcK

    This post reminds me of an idea for an SF concept that’s been floating around in my head for quite awhile and have no ambition to pursue any further. *ahem*: A sudden [insert random apocalyptic event here] wipes out the whole of the human race, but the well-fortified and perpetually powered-up servers that track and store our online profiles, interactions, preferences, chats, posts, downloads, avatars, dialogues and whatever else keep chugging along. Therefore, our self-consciously (or otherwise) constructed online personae — untethered from actual human control — that persist within the algorithms of these servers now represent, by default, the entirety of human consciousness and civilization. The psychology and behavior of each “individual” within this new society are defined exclusively by their online activity as aggregated on said servers prior to the aforementioned apocalypse, and absolutely nothing else. What the fuck would THAT be like?

  53. 53.

    Ken

    @DMcK: I read a short (2 pages or so) story with a similar though not post-apocalyptic idea. The idea was that as auto-reply systems got better, eventually it would be difficult to tell that someone had died (if you only ever interacted with them online). It was almost lyrical about how  the entire species could die out, but our interactions would keep going.

  56. 56.

    Grum Grumby

    @DMcK: Kinda similar to the backstory of the creation of the Cylons in the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica – as depicted in the prequel series Caprica.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica)

    Graystone Industries, led by Daniel Graystone, is one of the major tech companies. They are involved in computing, AI, robotics, and probably all kinds of other things I cant remember because they dont relate to the story.

    They also have a very advanced and extremely pervasive metaverse, which everyone uses recreationally for escapism the same reason people go to Westworld, except they are there virtually. But they go to do crimes, have sex, etc. Graystone is the biggest player in the Holobands used to access the metaverse.

    Graystone’s daughter Zoe is also extremely brilliant, and is secretly working on her own more advanced system for avatars, and HERS is the only one that is actually loaded into the system.

    Graystone Industries is working on robotic soldiers, which they have dubbed Cylons (Cybernetic Lifeform Nodes), but they run into a wall because they arent performing nearly as well as desired.

    Zoe is killed in some sort of terrorism-related incident.  Daniel discovers the existence of her vastly more advanced avatar and installs it into one of the cylons, and it becomes vastly more effective. However, initially it seems like the process somehow kills the Zoe avatar/consciousness that had briefy revived Zoe in the cylon body.

    The terrorism incident relates to a growing cult called Soldiers of the One (STO), a radical religious organization that dismisses the Colonies’ polytheism (namely the Lords of Kobol) in favor of monotheism.   Surprise, Zoe is secretly an active member.  The monotheistic aspects of her personality form the basis of the cylon self-awareness and belief system, which is why they eventually attack the colonies to wipe out the infidel humans.

    I’m probably doing a bad job explaining this based half on recollection and half on a glance at the wikipedia page.

    -Pete

  57. 57.

    Bill Arnold

    The only reason people use zoom is because it is “free”

    Zoom is also fairly reliable, and there are versions for most operating systems, including the common desktop/laptop Linuxes. In my current job, there are at least 4 web conferencing systems regularly used, and Zoom (well zoomgov) works the most reliably.

  58. 58.

    Miss Bianca

    I gotta say I don’t get this metaverse thing. All I can think of is Sims, or Sim City, whatever it was called, which dates me. (Never played it, just watched my best friend’s kid get immersed in it and all I could think of is “Why? Why not just either watch a movie or read a book?”

    That *really* dates me, I guess.

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