Genres come and go. The superhero genre has run its course. Poor writing hasn't helped. M-She-U, anybody? Ugh!
Give people something entertaining and they'll pay to watch it. Barbie and Oppenheimer weren't superhero movies. Nor was The Eras Tour. All three made a bundle.
...laura
If women aren't interested in such careers, who cares? We're all different.
If there are barriers to womens' participation in technology, that is a problem. Some workplaces are a little too much of a frat house atmosphere. This is a bona fide problem, but it's not the subject of this silly article.
Yes, sometimes I get tired sometimes of being the only woman in the office or in meetings. It's a rare treat when there are other women around, whether we go for coffee and doodle equations on napkins, discuss fashion trends or DSP algorithms over lunch, whatever.
...laura
Oh balderdash.
He's being held because he's criminally insane. He's not only expressed an intent to continue with crime, but he's not firing on all cylinders mentally and he's been physically violent on multiple occasions.
He's not being punished at this point. He's being held because he's going to hurt people again when he gets out. So comparing it to punishments for other crimes is absurd.
And now they're all consolidating and merging and raising prices, so now streaming will be like cable again.
Unfortunately, it's the only revenue model that's actually been shown to work over the long-term.
You can't mandate a technology that doesn't work unless you have other goals in mind.
We (I'm Canadian) don't have the electricity infrastructure, nor will we by 2035. Danielle Smith and Scott Moe have been shouting this until they're blue in the face but the feds are so driven by dogma they don't listen. Here in B.C. we have good answers, 98% of our electricity is generated by hydro dams, but we need a lot more capacity. Big capacity, Site C-level, not solar farms that don't generate at night or in the winter.
In time the technology will be useful and cost-effective and people will adopt it. EVs have their attractions - I'd be happy to have one as an around-town runabout if I had somewhere to plug it in at home - but they're not there yet. I look forward to the day when they will be. They have a lot to offer.
...laura
I was there the second night and wasn't at all surprised that the show was seismic. I assume the big seismograph peaks coincided with 22 and Shake It Off. Lumen Field was really bouncing around.
...laura
I'm currently doing development on Android and iOS. On Android we use Firebase. On Apple we use APNS directly.
As recommended by both Apple and Google our notification payloads are minimal: "You've got mail!". The app then phones home to retrieve its messages. I'm curious what you could learn from the notifications. We know the messages themselves are sensitive and take care to protect them. We know about CALEA and related laws, but this is way about my paygrade.
...laura
Personally, I find myself conflicted on this one.
In principle, I'm all for open cross-platform messaging. If it were up to me, I'd love to go back to the days of Trillian where you could interface with all of the major chat networks using a single client. As much of a pain as multiple networks is, it stops mattering when everything is accessible in the same client. Beeper Mini doesn't go that far, of course, but it would be one step closer. And as an added bonus, this is easy E2EE, which is always great to have in a network.
On the other hand, apparently the program was relying on an Apple code module ripped from an older version of macOS, which is how it was able to register with Apple's servers to begin with. So this wasn't a clean room reverse engineered implementation of the complete iMessage stack. Redistributing OS components in end-user software just kind of scummy - you didn't earn the knowledge for yourself - and goes against the traditional hacker ethos of making a product based on someone else's spec (e.g. BIOS).
On the third hand, I'm not sure I want any random yahoo having access to the iMessage network. iMessage spam basically doesn't exist; it's quite nice. I'm not sure Apple is prepared for, or ever could fully handle, the spam that would come with an open network.
Well there is the optional trim package with FTL capabilities. But at only a 2,000ly distance, it's enough to give anyone range anxiety.
How did they all get to Dubai? Oh. Right. OK...
If such a conference is necessary and must happen in person, it might be a nice touch to have it in a town that is genuinely on the front line. In Canada I nominate Timmins, Ontario or Prince George, BC.
That the climate is changing is obvious. What to do about it (if anything) is not at all obvious. Socialism always seems to be the answer, no matter what the actual problem is...
...laura
Years ago my employers decided we needed maps on our web-based application. Google Maps was in its infancy and didn't really have commercial terms, so we bought a mapping package (MapInfo) and figured out how to make it play with our software. The initial performance was disastrous. I figured out how to make it less disastrous.
I also spent some time designing attractive maps. I collected paper maps (I like maps anyway), picked out the ones I liked, tried to identify why I liked them. Made MapInfo draw similar maps. Liked what I saw. I even bought a couple of fonts from Adobe to dress up the presentation, to try to make the maps ours. I subsequently attended a map design session at a MapInfo user's conference and confirmed I was generally on the right track.
Then the Powers That Be said our maps had to look like Google Maps. So they did.
...laura
I loved The Eras Tour, first time I'd seen a movie in a theater snce Skyfall.
On TV/streaming I'm just finishing up Reacher, but that's a 2022 leftover.
...laura
We know where Taytay stands on various subjects (e.g. Lavender Haze, You Need To Calm Down), but it's never intrusive. Her music comes first. Fans respect that.
I saw her in Seattle back in July. A spectacular show, worth every penny.
...laura
Give people what they want and they'll pay money to see it. Don't, and they won't.
Taylor Swift's home movie was the second-highest-grossing concert film before it even opened.
...laura
Why bother hiring a room full of actors when you can just re-use some digital ones?
You say this like it's a bad thing.
Even though extras get paid breadcrumbs, the costs of using them is incredibly high due to all of the work required to prep and manage them. Replacing them with CGI, when tastefully done, would greatly improve efficiency on the set. It would be the film equivalent of getting rid of the secretarial pool and giving executives computers.
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
