Cinemas essentially killed themselves in the early 2000s, at least over here in Europe. There used to be local cinemas everywhere, with one or at most 2 main halls and 2-4 small ones. The main hall or halls showed the Hollywood blockbuster of the month and the smaller ones the other movies, the ones that didn't fill the main hall.

Then all of those local cinemas started disappearing and were replaced with the massive cinemas we have today, with 10+ main halls and no small ones (or "small" ones the size that the main hall of local cinemas used to be). I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been there where these massive halls were filled to even somewhat near capacity. Most of the time you can pick wherever because there's 2-4 people per row. Make it 10% full if you want to be generous.

Of course that's not viable. They thought economy of scale. They thought they can have more efficiency than the local places by having fewer cashiers and popcorn sellers per customer. They thought on paper and not in the real world.

And to have even a chance to fill those halls, the only movies that they could show were blockbusters.

spot on

I can recommend to everyone to have at least one non-geek good friend. I'll reset your understanding of how "easy" tech actually is.

Or a photo from 30 years ago that looks nothing like them today, but if asked they can truthfully say that yes, it's a photo of them.

I think Apple doesn't understand what it had with the big iMac.

I still have my 2017 one around. When it came out, it was revolutionary. A full 5K display with a reasonable CPU and GPU at a very reasonable price. Built-in webcam and speakers. The only necessary cable was power (if you went bluetooth keyboard and mouse). A wonderfully uncluttered desktop with a mean machine that also looks nice.

Why would I make many steps back from that?

I've done the math last year. I also thought Mac mini + Studio Display (it's not that much more expensive than a good 4K display) would do it, but it turns out that once you upgrade the Mac mini to something actually useable for desktop work, you're not that far from a Studio price-wise.

I really, really, really wish someone took a big fence post and hammered some sense into the idiots at Apple.

They have. I've seen such in several different offices.

So finally a new 27" or even 30" iMac with an M4 chip?

Come on Apple, wake up. People want an affordable desktop machine, not $4k+ for a Studio+Display combo.

Reducing something to just over 1 % of its original planned size isn't "scaling down". That's an euphemism for "giving up, just finishing the stuff we've already largely built".

Converted to your typical house, it means instead of building the whole house you're building the tiny guest toilet and nothing else.

The pressures of capitalism can also work to force good quality for the money spent on education. Not everything in capitalism is about the lowest price. I know that cheap-cheap-cheap has become a kind of mantra, but that's not god-given.

It's the industrialisation of everything. Streamlining and defining processes for everything and then running the processes like a computer program not like a guideline for ordinary days.

I see a lot of that. It's bureaucracy, not capitalism.

Agreed.

What if he uses a tool to do that? Where is the line? wc to check if you satisfied the word count requirement? A spell-checker? An AI?

Assuming that the actual grading is still done by a human and AI is just one of several tools used in the process?

Don't understand the hate. This is actually AI being used in the right way. As an assistant. Not to replace a human, but to help with the repetitive ordinary tasks that are part of the job.

My own experience is similar. When I ask AI to generate some text for a purpose, the result is meh. But as a text critic or to get suggestions for improvements, as a proof reader, it's pretty good.

What should happen is that we don't take an AI output and just use it as-is, but use it as an input for a human who does the actual job. AI isn't magic, it's just a tool. Nobody complains that a lever enables us to excerpt more force than our muscles alone could.

My CD collection is about 2000 discs; during the last pass, I had two titles that had mysteriously become unreadable. Both were decades old, and no scratches - likely due to oxidation somehow.

You're welcome.

In case I wasn't entirely clear before, I was pissed off about things like (again, SPOILERS abound):

USA has been hit by nukes, and the gov't is in total chaos. In response, Russia refuses multiple calls from the acting gov't (both before and after American missiles fly) because the appointment of a new President hasn't happened yet. What?

A nuke is incoming to the USA's east coast, but the fictitious president keeps on delaying leaving for a secure location. What?

The fictitious Russian president knows that there's a substantial chance that his country will not be destroyed if he doesn't launch on warning, and can still destroy the USA even if he's wrong about where the missiles are heading - his subs, and their "dead man's switch" system ensure this - so he launches on warning, thus insuring the destruction of his country. WHAT?

The Secret Service loses the fictitious American president, because their EMP shielded vehicle doesn't shield from EMP. WHAT?

I mean, you have to accept that the entire scenario starts with North Korea launching strikes for no reason at all, assuming that China doesn't have some say over such an action, and Dear Leader knowing that doing such a thing is suicidal. WOT.

Let's hope that the screenplay is better than the book - it really had me on the seat of my pants, until it went totally stupid.

She absolutely included plot points that would never have been part of any wargame scenario, some of which bordered or ventured into inanity.

It would have been just as gripping a book, and perhaps more believable, had her characters been somewhat logical actors.

I think that time was of some essence, because they didn't know if North Korea would continue to fire missiles or barrage Seoul with artillery fire, but yeah, that would have made the most sense.

I did read the book, and I found Jacobsen's scenario to be problematic for several reasons (spoilers inbound):

• The USA's handling of the conflict was a comedy of errors beyond what was believable. They actually lose the president, and then they spend crucial time arguing about protocol afterwards.
• There was no good reason why the USA's missiles had to fly over Russia. Jacobsen herself makes it clear that the sub fleet would have more than sufficed to reduce all of North Korea to cinder.
• Russia's steadfast refusal to pick up the phone, despite desperate attempts by the USA to explain things and defuse the situation. I'm guessing that flying nukes might make it more likely that someone would have thought to pick up the phone, even just for shits and giggles.
• The Russian president had a choice of either launching on warning, or launching on impact. This was important because the Russian president knew that Russia's detection technology was unreliable, so he couldn't be certain what the target of the missiles was.
• If Russia launched on warning, it'd mean certain destruction, but would allow retaliatory destruction of the USA several times over. No best case here.
• If Russia would have waited for impact, the worst case would still be certain destruction, and would "only" allow retaliatory destruction of the USA without overkill. Best case would have been Russia being largely unscathed, and would have been the actual result.
• Despite this logic, the Russian president inexplicably launches on warning, for some use-it-or-lose-it logical fallacy that no one would have engaged in at that point. It seemed like Jacobsen just wanted to cut to the end.
• What Jacobsen should have gone with was that China would have taken umbrage at their territory being irradiated and damaged in the overkill strike on North Korea, and lobbed something back at the USA, thus further escalating toward total destruction. More believable, if that was her goal.
• Again, more reasonable would have been a more limited, but still horrible scenario, given North Korea's incitement of nuclear war.

Jacobsen's book started strong, but became weak and silly in the end. There was a lot of interesting info in the details of things, such as how the USA's interceptor technology is problematic, or the state of the art of Russia's threat detection systems. Not sure how true either is, but I'll accept them at face value.