You know what else is infuriating? Pages that won't load (at all—just show a blank page, or in this case a too many redirects error—if you do not have cookies and local storage enabled.
Agh, sorry about this! I'm one of the people building leaflet.pub, which this blog is running on. Just pushed a fix for this (ironically on nextjs/vercel). The redirect loop is to handle sharing auth between our "main" domain, and people's various custom subdomains. Auth, via the ATProtocol, is used for things like subscribing and commenting!
Well, their "About" page explains that it's a journal "dedicated to two big ideas…: equality under the law and global federalism." But more relevantly, also that they publish "short stories and memoirs, because stories — shared at the fire pit of hunting camps and at feasts on Thanksgiving Day or Eid al-Fitr — are also essential to who we are."
As with any kind of literary fiction, what moral (if any) you take from this story is largely up to you.
Not to disparage Stijn's efforts, but he's about a quarter century late to the AR ad-blocking game: when Steve Mann came give a talk at the University of Waterloo whilst I was an undergrad there (circa 1997–2000), one of the applications of his wearable computer that he demonstrated was the ability to recognise and block ads on posters and billboards.
Of course at the time the computing power needed just to do the image tracking was far in excess of what could be carried on his person, so it involved a (possibly pre-WiFi) radio link to a lab network of graphics workstations, and as far as I know the software wasn't doing any kind of AI ad identification, but only matching pre-tagged ad images (or maybe just tracking the physical locations of the user vs the known location of the ads, via GPS + INS + video tracking).
It was nevertheless an exceedingly impressive demo that it has taken quite some time to make a significant improvement on.
I read your comment as praise for Stijn for having made a somewhat practical and working prototype for a concept that could only be demoed in the most resource intensive and clunkiest ways 25 years ago.
Steve Mann's demo was I'm sure impressive, still the idea in itself is absolutely trivial (looking for ways to hide ads started the very day ads were born) and it all comes down to the execution.
"What type of irresponsible uses do you see for this technology, professor?"
"Uh, I think, like, advertising. Like that, that type of thing. One of the things that I'm trying to do is, is design filters to filter out advertising, so that when you're walking around, you could filter out real world spam. You know, already we have spam in the real world such as billboards, and things like that. So, what I envision is that the mediated reality could be used to filter out the spam."
He was my prof in undergrad. He was pretty much half insane; sometimes he would stop talking mid sentence and just stare at the class for a bit. He would do this even on days where he wasn’t wearing the glasses. Such a strange course. Did learn some cool things though.
> One of the things that I'm trying to do is, is design filters to filter out advertising, so that when you're walking around, you could filter out real world spam.
Instead, I totally expect Meta and the Quest X to not block ads, but replace any IRL ads with targeted ads. You will not be able to turn this off. Instead, they could Black Mirror it and highlight each ad found and force you to stare at it for at least 5 seconds so the impression will count. If you don't, it'll just blank out everything else except the ad.
Whenever the tell-all memoir of the next Meta AR ad executive comes out in a few years, I hope they credit your comment for giving them the inspiration of how to implement the Torment Nexus
[Ed.⁰ This is a colloquialism¹; 1 Samuel 13:14,Acts 13:22:
Colloquialisms were the original shibboleths, tbh, but no sexism or other -*isms intended or defended by the aforementioned, admittedly sexist, canonical quotation]
What's the incentive to keep using the headset in your dystopia? if Meta sold the product you're describing, why would anyone buy it? Are you imagining a world with government mandated AR goggles? Why wouldn't I just take them off?
I am obviously not the target audience for this, because it seems to be the opposite of what I want: I'd much rather just have a text-only homepage than anything with thumbnails.
I'd really love an iOS app for Reddit that made the site look more like this one (or like the old `.compact` version did).
Technology (e.g. highly addictive short-form video apps) seems like a likely explanation; fear of fentanyl is less plausible (it would not deter drinking or vaping). Surely the biggest factor, however, is just the interruption of social contagion?
I strongly suspect that physically separating highschool students from their older peers for a couple of years meant that most of the older kids who were in to drugs etc. graduated and were not around to introduce their younger peers to these vices.
It's the flip side of the phenomenon whereby many university societies shut down and either never reopened after the pandemic or struggled to get going again (examples I know about including swing dance clubs and solar car racing teams), because the only students with enough experience to teach their younger peers had by then all graduated.
I like this thought process your brought up here! I hadn't put much time into thinking about the physical separation of generations in organizations like schools. A certain absence of physical heritage if you will... A mini extinction event
Makes you think of other, perhaps smaller, things that may have gotten a gap in physical hand offs. Perhaps I'm generalizing too strongly here, but certainly someone that was a middle school teacher or something before and after covid might have some observations on little oddities that may have escaped the public eye.
The obvious reason for me is simply that everyone is much more health conscious now. That also plays much more of a role in social status than it did before. That also extends to showing off your healthy lifestyle on social media.
Well, given that it's in _The Guardian_, there's a pretty good chance that she is indeed now aware of it.
Minor quibble: the current Magic Circle is not "different from the last one" because it is the same organisation—though it has obviously had a significant change of policy and a considerable turnover of membership in the three and a half decades since Sophie Lloyd was accepted as a member.
Or, informal term for a group of corporate law firms based in the UK. It wasn't clear to me what the article was actually about until the very end, not sure why didn't feel like spending at least one sentence making it clear up front who they're talking about.
I also assumed they were talking about a magic circle law firm. It's compounded by the fact that this kind of story is something you wouldn't be surprised hearing about a law firm in the old days (though hopefully not as late as 1991).
Indeed, the headline is… technically accurate but seems clearly designed to mislead. The article body is a bit more clear:
> The Manchester Evening News reported that passengers accessing the wifi at Piccadilly station were directed to a webpage titled “we love you, Europe”, which contained Islamophobic messages and details of several terrorist attacks that have taken place in the UK and in Europe.
I think "[Stations] among those targeted with Islamophobic message" would have been a more informative wording.
