Eh, I like an interesting spin on a classic. I’ve seen/heard the Frankenstein plot and small variations on it many times, taking a different direction is a good way to keep in a general universe but develop something new. If you’re not going to come up with new interesting content, at least don’t rehash the exact story I’ve heard many times. But that’s just my preference—I really enjoyed it and have become a fan of Guillermo del Toro works recently (due to exposure on Netflix). I’m not huge critic really so I won’t speak to artistic merit but I can at least say I really enjoyed it.
I would argue not good enough but better. A home cinema depending on viewing distance can have superb visual qualify. Comfort is going to be impossible to beat to being at home. A lot of theater projectors top out at 4k just like home TVs and they’re not as bright. Also information density is lower (it’s 4k spread over a huge wall).
The only shortcoming now really is if you want to view with several people and socialize after, it may be difficult for someone to accommodate a large party with good viewing in their home without a theater setup. And of course audio, audio is where theaters can still stand out. It’s a pain in the ass for most homes to setup a good sound system, you really often do want a dedicated theater area which most aren’t going to have. A soundbar helps. You can Jerry rig some surround speakers into any space but it’s often a pain. So that’s really the last barrier: cheap low latency sound that can beat a theater.
For me comfort trumps the slightly degraded sound. Plus some baby crying or random person chatting during the movie can break that as well.
Businesses are great at optimizing in profit and left to their own accord, that’s ultimately what they’ll do. In many cases that means risking safety, externalizing costs to others, creating anticompetitive unions like cartels, and so on.
Regulation exists to guide that optimization process so it’s forced to factor in other things like safety, environment, competitiveness for consumers and so on. The point being that if you can optimize in a way for profit AND for society at large then we have a reasonable balance to justify your existence. If you can’t, well then we probably shouldn’t be doing what you’re tying to do because the costs you would otherwise opaquely externalize on society are too high for your profit motive.
That isn’t to say things can’t go awry. Over regulation can occur where constraints are added that become crippling and the constraints are too risk averse or just poorly constructed that they do more to break the process than actually protect society. But whenever someone cries at over regulation, they need to point out the specific regulation(s) and why they’re nonsensical.
I’ve worked in highly regulated environments and you’re often very aware of what regulations you need to conform to. Part of that process is often asking why it exists because it can be frustrating having a roadblock presented before you with no rationale. Most the time I can think of good reasons something exists and it’s easy to consider and honor that. Meanwhile there are some regulations I scratch my head and can’t find what they justify, so there should be a channel back to lawmakers or regulators where people can inquire and work can be done to see if those regulation are actually effective or not at achieving their goal, or if they’re just constraints that makes things more expensive.
It's a double edged sword. It creates a floor but also lowers the ceiling so a company can't lock out competitors through brute force. it's best to introduce such regulation before we have to worry about monopolies, though.
Yes, and a distinct feature are pressure groups funded by corporations drumming up fake issues in order to get regulations passed that remove the competitors to those corporations.
The sidelining of tort law also didn't help one bit.
So we're going to ignore the pressure groups who are deregulating in real time to tear down regulations that also remove competitors to those corporations? Or is it okay to be anti-competitive when it helps you get paid?
Well in contrast to the enterprises which can survive free competition, those which rely on regulations to survive receive rents for which no corresponding benefit to consumers can be recovered. This is what rentseeking is.
There is a very big difference between succeeding against competition because you're able to deliver a cheaper or better product, as in free competition, and succeeding because a government decree happens to exclude your product from certain liabilities that your competitors aren't excluded from.
This is the Schoolhouse Rock version that ignores the real phenomenon of regulatory capture, formalized by Stigler way back in 1971.
“We propose the general hypothesis: every industry or occupation that has enough political power to utilize the state will seek to control entry. In addition, the regulatory policy will often be so fashioned as to retard the rate of growth of new firms.”
You’re never gonna get these people to understand basic economics if they don’t already. It’s mindblowing people do not understand that more regulation = more red tape = less competition as the only companies that can afford to do business in that environment are the ones already in power with resources. Taxation and regulation genuinely only further embed those in power. Ironically, most leftists that advocate for more taxation and regulation in an effort to help the poor and working classes seem to have no grasp of economic realities at all.
Having just visited South Korea last year, one thing that sort of caught me off guard was the lack of Google Maps or other major direction system. I wasn’t aware but turns out anything considered “detailed mapping” infrastructure has to be ran stored and on South Korean soil, probably lots of other requirements. So you’re stuck with some shotty local mapping systems that are just bad.
There may be a point in time it made sense but high resolution detailed satellite imagery is plenty accessible and someone could put a road and basically planning structure atop it, especially a foreign nation wishing to invade or whatever they’re protecting against.
Some argument may be made that it would be a heavy lift for North Korea but I don’t buy it, incredibly inconvenient for tourists for no obvious reason.
Several other countries have similar requirements with regards to storing and serving maps locally.
If you take a moment to think about it, what's weird is that so many countries have simply resorted to relying on Google Maps for everyday mapping and navigation needs. This has become such a necessity nowadays that relying on a foreign private corporation for it sounds like a liability.
OSM is competitive with google maps in most places. Even if a person uses google maps, its inaccurate to say they "rely" on it when they could fail over to osm if google maps went down.
Local mapping efforts and allowing Google Maps to operate aren't mutually exclusive though. I don't see how it's weird that people can choose which map app they use.
Agreed, I would expect a government to provide their own mapping system, independent of any private entity. It’s so critical for a governments operation and general security needs.
What’s odd (to me) is trying to regulate other groups from generating maps of your nation when you have no jurisdiction over them. That’s akin to the US telling all South Korean governments they can’t create maps of the US unless they operate under heavy supervision or something of that nature.
It’s impractical, largely unenforceable, and any nation probably has independent mapping of foreign nations, especially their adversaries, should they need them for conflicts, regardless of what some nation wants to oppose over them in terms of restrictions. I guarantee the US government has highly detailed maps of Korea.
So who exactly are these regulations protecting? In this case they’re just protecting private mapping groups that reside in their country against competition.
Why didn't you use Kakao Maps or Naver Maps? They're not shotty and work just fine, even if you don't read Korean, you can quickly guess the UI based on the icons.
I tried both and the lack of an English UI made a lot of it non-unintuitive, especially when it came to search and finding local businesses walking around. There were some other annoyances, like when I travel for leisure I enjoy researching an area ahead of time bookmarking places to overlay on a map, and being able to organically explore the area as I move around. I found that very difficult on Naver (I don’t recall the details but I know being able to search for types of businesses in English was part of the issue).
I believe performance wise it was also pretty sluggish from what I remember. I’m by no means saying it was unusable, it got me through somewhat functionally but with a lot of extra effort on my behalf. I also had an international data plan and wasn’t able to see if I could precache the map set vs streaming it as needed over wireless.
I often like to look at restaurants, menus, prices, reviews as well to scope out a place quickly before going there. That process was also tedious (to be fair it could be that I’m not familiar with the UI).
The question is why did I have to use Naver or Kakao in the first place. I’d rather just use the system I already enjoy and am quite proficient with using it, not be forced to play with some new app that I need useful information from for some unclear reason.
Agree, Naver maps for navigating public transit in Seoul is excellent. Easier to figure out than public transit in any American city I've been to and I don't read or speak Korean. iirc it even tells the fastest routes/best carriage to be on to optimize transferring between lines.
I was there few months ago and I found them to be quite good too, both in coverage (shops, bus/metro networks) and accuracy.
Obviously, not the apps I'm used to so & the language but otherwise, it was okay.
I heard similar complaints from friends that came to visit. But they were using the English version of the apps, which, when I tested, were indeed harder to use, but never a miss for me when I helped them. OTOH, I always find my destinations within the first three options when I search in Korean. So maybe it's subpar internationlization.
> They lack a lot of polish. [...] some interactions are janky
I see. I guess I wouldn't know. It's not janky for me, and I think that I am so used to it that when I need to use Google Maps, or any other, I feel a bit frustrated by the unfamiliar interface that I start wishing I could be using Kakao or Naver Maps instead.
I used both English and Hangul to search. Searching for general things like food was good, but if I was trying to find a specific address it was very difficult. Sometimes it would just return completely wrong garbage. One time I was trying to meet up with someone and only realized halfway that the destination was wrong because Naver decided to take me somewhere else despite me copying the exact address in Hangul.
Maybe more about my unfamiliarity with the Korean address format than anything else tbh.
Some things about Naver I kind of miss from Apple/Google maps, but international software in general feels much more user friendly and better UX than Korean software.
The original sin was writing a signed confession of their crimes and packaging it up with a video of them commiting said crimes.
You dont have to bury the report if it is never written. The only reason you would write it is if you think you are actually doing gods work, think you can whitewash it and manipulate the outcome to say you are or you are grossly incompetent.
The underlying issue here isn’t AI based policing, it’s the fact private entities have enough unregulated influence on peoples’ daily life that their use of these or any such policy mechanisms are undemocratically effecting people in notably significant ways. The Facebook example is, whatever, but what if it’s some landlord renting making a decision, some health insurance company deciding your coverage, etc.
Now obviously this won’t stop with private entities, state and federal law enforcement are gung-ho to leverage any of these sorts of systems and have been for ages. It doesn’t help the current direction the US specifically is moving in, promoting such authoritarian policies.
We already live in this world for health insurance. The ai can make plausible sounding denials which a doctor can rubber stamp. You have no ability to sue the doctor for malpractice, you cannot appeal the decision.
Medical insurance is quickly becoming a simple scam where you are forced to pay a private entity that refuses to ever perform its function.
Worth noting this isn't hypothetical. There was a story a while back where a health insurance company would hire real doctors to sit at computers all day clicking "accept AI resolution" over and over (they were fired if they rejected AI resolutions) because the law required that.
Yup! Just fought three denials with Cigna over the last 6 months for rejections of basic appointments for a physical, an ambulance ride for a family member, and one bigger ticket health expense.
They haven’t approved a single insurance claim submitted without calling and fighting it out with them. Each rejection letter looks plausible, although often nonsensical given the situation.
It almost makes me wonder if the solution is the same as for arbitration clause. Giving users the ability to fight it in a semi-automatic way as well ( so AI generated response plan, calls and so on ). I am not entirely certain where it would go, but.. where we are at is already annoying. I have a good medical insurance and they still keep trying to chisel any way they can ( wife just got a letter asking to confirm she does not, in fact, have a health plan in her job ).
As an American, it's funny how ahead and "first world" the US can be in some things, but how backwards and "developing country" the US can be in other things.
Medicine itself is very first-world. But medical insurance is one of those "worse than developing country" things. The fact that Americans need medical insurance at all is appalling to many countries, first world and otherwise.
And of course, by funny I mean "I can only laugh otherwise I'd cry"
Good question. Technology, for one. Is it the first in technology? Probably not. But when comparing first world countries with developing countries, technology is where the US's economic output is.
And also military, though I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of.
I mean, I no longer work at this place.. and I have no idea what % of customers used Facebook to login to their accounts, but I'm sure someone would have been mad they couldn't get the famous butter biscuits reward if I had gotten banned, and Facebook had proceeded to ban our FB app. ;)
> what if it’s some landlord renting making a decision, some health insurance company deciding your coverage, etc.
Then you simply use the services of another private company. Here, in fact, there are no particular dangers, after all, private companies provide services to people because it is profitable for private companies.
- There is real competition. It's less and less the case for many important things, such as food, accommodations, health, etc.
- Companies pay a price for misbehaving that is much higher than what they got from misbehaving. Also less and less the case, thanks to lobbying, huge law firms, corruption, etc.
- The cost of switching is fair. Moving to another places is very expensive. Doing it several times in a row is rarely possible for most people.
- Some practice are not just generalized in the whole industry. In IT tracking is, spying is, and preventing you from managing your device yourself is more and more trendy.
Basically, this view you are presenting is increasingly naive and even dangerous for any citizen practicing it.
Yea, where’s the theft of my time and labor for now performing part of your business transaction process you should be performing by hiring staff to check me out.
You don’t want to pay people to do that and put yourself in a higher theft situation, then you haggle the customer even more by treating them like a criminal.
I had one of these happen at a self checkout the other day where the system did object tracking and it turns out I had many duplicate items to scan so I used the same item scan code to save time even though its weight system forces me to do one at a time I can at least have a prealigned code handy. I ended up doing some tricky hand switching between items (crossing over) while doing it quickly and that tripped up the object tracking system, so an employee came over and reviewed the video of my checkout right in front of me… at a grocery store for a $2 item.
The anti consumer sentiment is high for an economy based so highly off consumerism.
> Yea, where’s the theft of my time and labor for now performing part of your business transaction process you should be performing by hiring staff to check me out.
I've seen this sentiment in recent years, but with respect to time, self-checkout was always faster than human cashiers. You didn't need to wait while the cashiers did procedures like counting the money in the drawer and waiting for a supervisor to sign-off on it. The lines were unified so that your line was served by 4-8 checkouts rather than 1 cashier (or 2 as is the case with walmart). That meant that any issue with a particular customer e.g. arguing over pricing presented on the shelf vs on the system, needing to send someone out to verify the shelf, didn't affect the time you needed to wait as much. They were a very positive thing for customers when they were introduced.
Basically, instead of having to get in a line of 3-6 people and having to wait for each of those to be served before you by one cashier, you just instantly check-out with usually no line.
With respect to labor, it's basically the same. That's unless, in your part of the world, they let you use the self-checkout with huge quantities of groceries that need bagging. In my experience, there's (always?) a limit on the number of items for self-checkout.
If the self check out is configured to trust you, it is faster. Each store seems to implement this differently. It's good that you shop at a store that lets you do this yourself. There's one grocery store near me where I have to wait for an attendant to confirm each item because it doesn't like the weight of it, or I scanned it too fast, or something. That one is very much noticeably slower. I avoid shopping there.
The trust is the key. If we are trusted, Home Depot should not be secretly keeping tabs on us...
> That's unless, in your part of the world, they let you use the self-checkout with huge quantities of groceries that need bagging. In my experience, there's (always?) a limit on the number of items for self-checkout.
Where I am there is a limit that many people ignore and I have almost never seen any employee try to enforce
Also, self-checkout itself is faster here anyway. We don't have baggers, so in the cashier lanes you have to unload onto the conveyor and put your items into the bags yourself, with some awkward maneuvering since the register is between the conveyor and the bagging area. In self-checkout unloading and bagging is combined into one action: Lift item from cart, pass over scanner on the way to the bags, place in bag, and pay at the end without even having to move. No real additional work on the customer's part.
Also like the other response, I hadn't heard of explicit limits either, as long as everything fits on the bagging scale.
I think self check-out is only faster if you compare it to really, really slow checkout clerks with no dedicated bagger. I've been in grocery stores with fantastic checkout staff where 100 items were checked out and bagged in a minute and a half. Ain't no way I'm going to achieve that rate standing by myself there over a tiny kiosk where I need to find a bag, put every item into bags before scanning the next one.
They don't make a race of it, but I think they go at a reasonable "marathon" pace. There are also dedicated baggers. I should note that cashiers also accommodate other services like paying utility bills, or making withdrawals from one's checking account.
It's not just about speed, though, it's particularly about the unified lane and the fact that 2 self-checkout stations easily fit in the space of a single human cashier station (that may be unoccupied because of a store's hiring budget). It's also about peoples' patience. If a store hires less cashiers and enough people are still willing to wait in line such that there's profit, well...
>Yea, where’s the theft of my time and labor for now performing part of your business transaction process you should be performing by hiring staff to check me out.
Yikes, the entitlement. Should they also have someone push your cart around the store and load it for you?
If you don't like it, you have the freedom of association to use a different store.
I sort of fear tribalism will typically win more and more in the future. There’s a large enough population in the conservative end that’s fine with tribalism. And while there’s certainly a fair share of it on the democratic side, the democratic side tends to lure in educated and anti-authoritarian folks who question things, formulate opinions outside the pack, and will have more difficult electing a cohesive candidate. Meanwhile the Conservative Party targeting religious folks already have a group of people who tend to be OK with just me following whatever it’s told to them without question or with little question.
There's a good read that was put out by OK Cupid (the dating site) 15 years ago outlining exactly this. They had a lot of personality questions that they'd use to match people, so they had a lot of this data correlated with a lot of demographics.
One of the interesting takeaways was about dating compatibility (they are a dating site after all). They found that republicans tended to pair well with other republicans, more than any other group paired with itself, and far better than democrats paired with other democrats.
I think this analysis ignores that the Republican party is winning because they expanded their coalition outside of their base of religious and upper-income voters. Trump pulled in lots of either non-voters or formerly Democrat voters. That's hurting the Dems it has made them more uniformly the party of the educated and upper-middle class and losing broader appeal The flip side is that the GOP now needs to manage a more diverse (racial, religious, cultural, income) coalition along with that. Trump is unifying to across the coalition to a large degree but its hardly assured that his successor will be able to continue that.
The GoP does not need to make things work. One of its pillars has been to ensure a hamstrung government, and take a position that government is ineffective.
Any time the other party comes to power, they are unable to make significant change or headway - and the Republicans are proven right.
The Dems are by default the party of Governance so unless they too get on board with gutting institutions, and removing safety nets, they will always be stuck with this weak hand.
The Republican strategies (all of which are publicly discussed in various news articles over the years) do not need to manage a big tent, because even when out of power, they simply need to ensure governance is ineffective.
And given their near mind control via Fox and their content economy - they can even blame the opposition for problems when they are in power.
This is why I think Liberalism is on the outs. Its whole premise is that we can rationally manage society, but there's no romance in this. The Old Left had romance, as did Fascism. Trumpism has a certain amount of it. Abundance and the traditional neoliberal platform of the Democrats simply don't. Only a very small percentage of the population can get their blood up about means-tested social programs.
A Democratic party that was serious about winning elections would turn sharply left, get new candidates, and start the long process of selling voters on things that they can feel some romance in: ending suffering, universal childcare, universal healthcare, good union jobs, a struggle to take back our country from the money interests. Imagining a future where we aren't all climate refugees in Northern Canada.
Unfortunately, the Democratic party is not serious about winning elections. They keep their fossilized leadership in place while their mental capacity deteriorates until it's simply no longer tenable to pretend that they are capable of governing. Younger candidates are considered a success if they can successfully fundraise, even it they can't actually win the elections that they're fundraising for. In every instance, party operators are out for themselves rather than trying to win and deliver material benefits to voters. Republicans at least win (barely, and usually with some extreme gerrymandering), even if they can't deliver materially.
The only alternative I can see right now is a return to the Old Left playbook: a confrontational labor movement. Maybe there are other alternatives that will emerge but I've yet to see one as promising as just organizing your workplace.
Progressives needed to show up at the polls as a bloc. Unfortunately, there is a pervasive belief that this is a symmetric game between Dems and Republicans.
This belief gives people a reason to expect that their protest is recognized, without doing significant harm to electoral outcomes.
This isn’t the ONLY problem here, theres reasons progressives feel disillusioned by the party, but the rule of power is that its must be grasped.
The Tea Party movement ate the Republican Party from the inside - they primaried politicians and used their Fox/Media economy well.
I hear you but I think there are much deeper problems. The material basis for the post-war order (high employment in high-margin industry in the developed countries, globally marketized resource extraction everywhere else) is collapsing. "Progressives" are just as lost as the rest of the broadly left coalition, but they're Liberals too, and their world is over.
obviously it would be malicious and unethical, but since that didn't seem to stop Tea users, I'd be interested in what their arguments against it would be.
reply