Blade Runner is different because of the attention it received due to the "Final Cut" version that came out in 2007. If it hadn't been for that, references to it would probably be a lot less recognizable with the younger crowd. Case in point: I recently made a "2001: A Space Odyssey" reference in front of a room full of 20-something programmers and not one person picked up on it. It wasn't even that obscure -- it was a picture of the monolith, one of the most recognizable images from the movie (and in science fiction in general). The people in the room generally just hadn't seen or even heard of (really all that is required to get the reference) the movie.
> Maybe this speaks to my bias against people who bend reasonable rules for profit.
I share the same "bias" (I would actually refer to it as "normal thinking", but hey…) and think it's a shame people in Silicon Valley have collectively decided it's fine to break the law as long as you can get away with it and get a high valuation out of it.
To take one example, AirBnB has clearly had a negative impact on many local rental markets via units being taken off the normal market and instead being turned into unlicensed hotel rooms, but their response has been basically complete and utter defiance to anyone to stop them, and this attitude gets applauded here on HN and elsewhere.
I don't know why you're being downvoted for that; your interpretation, while uncharitable, is still most likely the correct one, given Apple's history.
Not to mention the games market for the iOS App Store is very saturated and most of the money has likely been sucked out of it for the time being, so now Apple finds they don't have much to lose by allowing the possibility of OpenGL-based games for iOS which bypass the App Store.
In case anyone is quick doubt or dismiss the above criticism, just recall that for years Apple's iAd framework officially supported WebGL, but Safari and UIWebView did not. This implies that Apple could have released WebGL support in Safari and/or UIWebView any time they wanted; they simply chose not to for for non-technical (i.e., business) reasons.
Although I disagree that it was purely non-technical limitations. Quite possibly they didn't want to enable webgl in the wild until they had the out-of-process, super sandboxed webview implementation.
The end result is the same though? If you want to publish a game through the web, your game (or your game engine) has to target webgl. If you go native, your game (or your game engine) can target metal instead and gain a massive performance advantage.
No, you don't target metal - you use the Unreal engine which is now using metal underneath in an implementation detail that most developers wont worry about.
There is a big difference between a simple meeting and the overly-gimmicky nonsense ritual that is known as the "standup". I've even seen standups where people are forced to hold a heavy book as they talk just to ensure they don't talk too long.
How about people drop all the BS and just learn how to properly run a meeting? The gimmickry of the standup is a covert way of saying "no one here trusts anyone else to exercise restraint and common courtesy, so instead we have to come up with these harebrained schemes to enforce it".
How about people drop all the BS and just learn how to properly run a meeting?
The tribal knowledge in startup management is to half-ass a blog post you once read about how to manage employees. Why would someone invest valuable mental cycles making a company run better when they could be planning their exit?
It is scary to think that while this article start out with an example of "almost 10,000 hours" in isolation as something horrific, here is a prisoner in the US who has been in isolation more than 20 times longer than that, and the courts have upheld this treatment as legal.
Fast facts: Silverstein was imprisoned for bank robbery. While in prison he was convicted for murder of another inmate, albeit on questionable evidence. Silverstein kiled and was convicted of murder for killing another inmate who was seeking revenge for the first killing he was convicted of. He led the Aryan Nation prison gang for a time. In 1983, he was convicted for a particularly brutal murder of a prison guard. Since then he has been kept in ADX (aka Supermax) custody and had no visitors. He is seen by a prison psychiatrist once a month and otherwise only sees his guards when they deliver food. Like other supermax prisoners he occupies a cell within a containment suite, so there's no chance of him communicating with other prisoners by shouting or suchlike.
Now, obviously Silverstein is all kinds of bad, but I don't buy the argument that the risk profile he presents has not changed at all in the last 31 years. It's worth bearing in mind that male criminality peaks in the late teens and then the decline steepens after age 40. Yeah, of course it's risky to grant him additional privileges, but there's a big gap between the risk that he'll attack someone in a controlled environment, and the (unacceptable) outcome of him escaping and inflicting a danger on society at large.
Even just allowing visitors without allowing physical interaction would have to be a vast improvement from total isolation. They've already got a visitor room set up but don't allow it to be used.
Is that really that difficult? The alternative is, of course, not having him in solitary confinement for 27 years. It's not that difficult to allow some level of social interaction while still preventing violence.
Well, they could probably turn off the lights from time to time. Night vision cameras aren't expensive compared to all of the other costs here...
"Thomas Silverstein has been locked under the tightest conditions in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in total isolation since he murdered a correctional officer in 1983. The lights are kept on 24 hours a day in his cell."
