Slack Feed
This is a very plain blog with quotes from and links to articles I found interesting, thought-provoking, or relevant to the times. Linking is neither endorsement nor condemnation. Run by http://willslack.com
18 March, 2024
The War on the Woke Trumps the Truth for Many Heterodox Thinkers
It isn’t that all the heterodox types have gone full MAGA. It’s just that they seem to loathe racial and social justice activists much more than they oppose Trump, or favor reform. So any time a counter-narrative emerges, they tend to ditch their avowed skepticism and latch onto it.
In the end, despite heterodoxism’s claims to be a tribeless, iconoclastic way of thinking that gives it some special powers to get to the truth, it’s really just a different sort of ideological tribe, with the same biases, preconceptions, and vulnerability to audience capture as any other.
Once you’ve let your opposition to orthodoxies define you, you’re just another orthodoxy.
Vision Pro is an over-engineered “devkit” // Hardware bleeds genius & audacity but software story is disheartening // What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right // Why Meta could finally have its Android moment
https://hugo.blog/2024/03/11/vision-pro/
Friends and colleagues have been asking me to share my perspective on the Apple Vision Pro as a product. Inspired by my dear friend Matt Mullenweg’s 40th post, I decided to put pen to paper.
This started as a blog post and became an essay before too long, so I’ve structured my writing in multiple sections each with a clear lead to make it a bit easier to digest — peppered with my own ‘takes’. I’ve tried to stick to original thoughts for the most part and link to what others have said where applicable.
Some of the topics I touch on:
- Why I believe Vision Pro may be an over-engineered “devkit”
- The genius & audacity behind some of Apple’s hardware decisions
- Gaze & pinch is an incredible UI superpower and major industry ah-ha moment
- Why the Vision Pro software/content story is so dull and unimaginative
- Why most people won’t use Vision Pro for watching TV/movies
- Apple’s bet in immersive video is a total game-changer for Live Sports
- Why I returned my Vision Pro… and my Top 10 wishlist to reconsider
- Apple’s VR debut is the best thing that ever happened to Oculus/Meta
- My unsolicited product advice to Meta for Quest Pro 2 and beyond
16 March, 2024
A Minneapolis cop told Somali American teens (in 2015) he was proud U.S. troops killed ‘you folk’ during Black Hawk Down.
blogger.com/blog/posts/3710883320079265557
A moment later, the dashcam recording stops. But two Minneapolis Park Police officers, responding to a backup call, had their cameras and microphones running to capture what Weber said just seconds later.
“Do you remember what happened in Black Hawk Down when we killed a bunch of you folk? I’m proud of that,” Officer Weber said.
“We didn’t finish the job over there, ‘cause if we had finished the job, you guys wouldn’t be over here right now,” Weber added.
10 March, 2024
Trump campaign insider recounts failed hunt for 2020 fraud in new book
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/10/trump-ken-block-campaign-fraud-book/
Block writes in the book that it has disturbed him to see so many Republicans embrace Trump’s false claims, including in his home state of Rhode Island. And he says he fears that even more claims will come this year from Trump and those who follow him.
“It’s important to understand why the claims of fraud that were made were not just wrong but were demonstrably wrong. We have a narrative that’s false that the election was stolen,” he said in an interview. “The election wasn’t stolen, and you can prove it.”
06 March, 2024
u/Namtara on Jenny in Forrest Gump
02 March, 2024
Pluralistic: Sympathy for the spammer (15 Jan 2024)
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/
Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.
These people reason – correctly – that all the people getting reallyrich are scamming. If Amazon can make $38b/year selling "ads" that push worse products that cost more to the top of their search results, why should the mere fact that an "opportunity" is obviously predatory and fraudulent disqualify it?
28 February, 2024
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing by Scott Shapiro review – a gripping study of five extraordinary hacks
What are the takeaways from this absorbing tour of cyberspace’s netherworld? Four things stand out. One: “Hacking is not a dark art, and those who practise it are not 400lb wizards or idiot savants.” Two: it’s not a hobby, but a business, conducted by rational people out to make a living, or a killing. Just like bankers, in fact. Three: we could do a lot to reduce our vulnerability to it, but governments will first have to make it a crime not to take precautions. And four: mass media plays a really malignant role by providing an endless loop of scare stories and zero understanding of the problem.
27 February, 2024
‘Naked-person-on-bus is surprisingly common’: meet the cool-headed controllers who really run the country
When my train is delayed, or I find myself on a motorway suddenly closed, I don’t get irate. With a job like mine, you appreciate what’s happening behind the scenes. Trust me, countless people are working flat out to minimise disruption.