Marvin

entropys said:

AppleZulu said:

entropys said:

chasm said:

entropys said:

Writing by committee is no doubt a key factor in the malaise plaguing Hollywood these days. That and risk averse studios doing remakes, sequels and having series run way beyond their use by date.  

I think you misread the article somewhat. Stewart is arguing FOR writing by committee, but that’s not how most streaming shows work — scripts now are generally written by a single person or a very small team (two, three people tops).

Your comments on the problems with risk-averse studios, however, I heartily agree with.

Oh, I didn’t read it wrong,
I just whole heartedly disagree with Stewart’s view. In fact his whinging he only had four writers instead of his usual 14 seemed like a “let them eat cake” moment. 

Each story as a general rule should only have one writer. One.  maybe I would admit a writer and an apprentice. But that’s it. 

This is why we can’t have nice things. People who have no comprehension of how something is made or done come in as management and treat everything like interchangeable widgets. They walk in, look at a process they know absolutely nothing about, slash staff and costs, then wonder why the result is terrible. 

So you fire all but one and a half of the writers and demand that they “produce content” on a tighter deadline. You only register the lower quality when viewership falls, because as a widgeteer, you have no idea what’s funny or not. 

Next, you fire the writer and keep the less expensive apprentice. Things get worse. You threaten to replace the apprentice writer with AI, which ironically “produces content” by distilling and regurgitating the output of all those writers rooms that used to exist, but algorithms have no actual sense of what’s funny, so that “product” stinks as well, and nobody’s watching your more efficiently managed show any more. 

But sure, you know more than the “whinging” Jon Stewart, who has nurtured and shepherded a writers room that produced a generation of the top comic actors and writers who have themselves gone on to collectively produce billions of dollars worth of the best comedic “content” in the last couple of decades. 

Of course, you’ll be oblivious to what you’ve destroyed and file a report on how you saved money, first by cutting the 14 writers, then by closing down a failing production unit. Your fellow widgeteers will reward you for all the money you saved and give you a huge bonus. Next thing you know, you’re a hot commodity hired by Boeing because they need an expert Vice President of Widgeteers to slash costs to meet their mysteriously falling revenue. 

It isn’t about money, I just don’t believe you can be creative by committee. You don’t get a work of art with 14 people working on it at once. Heck I would be happy if the one writer got paid as much as the 14 currently do cumulatively, if the product was good.

Writing by committee is the path to mediocrity.

jdw said:

As I've mentioned under other articles in the past, my experience with ChatGPT4o isn't that great.  I want like to use it to check multiple online sources quickly, in the hope it can Google faster than I can on my own.  And it is fast.  But the problem is, it lies a lot.  So I always ask it for sources.  Then it gives me stupid links that when clicked on, open nothing.  So I have to then as it for plain text URLs.  It complies, but none of them ever work.  EVER!  They lead to the expected domain, but they always result a 404 file not found.  ALWAYS!  I then complain to ChatGPT saying it needs to read the articles it links for me to ensure the article truly exists and exists at the plain text URL it will give to me.  It apologizes and seemingly complies, but it continues to give me more bogus URLs.  I have repeated that cycle multiple times in a row, until my free sessions with GPT4o expires.  It never learns from its mistakes.  It never gets it right.  I've been using it for months, and it hasn't improved at all in that regard.  So I mostly find it useless.  And this experience remains valid even if some GPT lover comes along a raves about how well it summarizes text.  Fine and well, but it still lies and gives bogus URLs to its source info.    

dominikhoffmann said:

I have had an issue for quite some time, possibly since Ventura, where the dialog asking me to allow the USB device to connect disappearing within a fraction of a second. I miss the dialog altogether. My workaround has been to unplug the device and plug it in again, repeatedly in necessary, until I can okay it. From then on I don’t have a problem with the device.

The confirm dialog disappearing so fast is really badly designed, I don't know how that got past testing. There's a preference in System Settings to avoid manual approval of new devices:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/allow-accessories-to-connect-mchlf779ae93/mac

Another fix that can sometimes work for drives not mounting is force quitting the diskarbitrationd process and plugging the drive in again.

pulseimages said:

Any idea how many units have been sold?

There's some information from the wearables revenue:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_earnings/2024/q3/filing/_10-Q-Q3-2024-As-Filed.pdf

Wearables, home and accessories in 9 months ending June 29th 2024 = $27.9b. The same period the year before was $30.5b. The Apple Watch makes up around half the total. iPhone/iPad accessories (AirPods, cases, chargers, keyboards) make a significant amount, mainly AirPods, which are estimated to be close to half the amount too. AirPods + Watch are easily 80-90% of the total wearables category, possibly more.

1m Vision Pro units would be over $3.5b. Given that the total fell nearly $3b, it's not likely Apple Vision Pro made over $1b, < 300k sales in 9 months.

Not too surprising considering it had a US-only launch initially and the fact that $500 VR headsets like Meta Quest only sell 5-10m units per year.

A sub-$2000 headset would sell millions of units.

jdw said:

Marvin said:

Keeping support for it on computers is what keeps manufacturers making the products with USB-A. 

nor will a decision by Apple to drop all USB-A ports on the Mac Mini dictate what the Windoze PC world will do.

Apple is pretty influential these days, especially with mobile and this isn't a decision that's going against the grain. PC manufacturers would love to have the mobility Apple has with the latest standards. They don't have that luxury because their competitors adding more ports count as competitive features and there's little brand loyalty among low quality brands.

PCs are trying to make thinner laptops now and they are only fitting the USB-A ports at the thickest parts of the laptops. This one has 2x USB-C/Thunderbolt and 1x USB-A:

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Zenbook-Touchscreen-i7-13700H-Thunderbolts/dp/B0CDD8BFH1/

Mobiles are all USB-C and come with USB-C cables and chargers. That hugely influences the ports that are added to computers.

jdw said:

Marvin said:

Keeping support for it on computers is what keeps manufacturers making the products with USB-A. 

By the way, I just bought the single best 1TB Thumbdrive SSD today on Amazon only 1 hour ago, and guess what?  The connector only comes in USB-A.  Check it out too, because it beats any other thumb drive out there.  Pretty incredible.  And yeah, I'll need to use a STUPID DONGLE with it on my 16" M1 Max MBP

There's also the Kingston USB-C drive, which will give mostly the same real-world speed:

https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-DataTraveler-256GB-USB-C-Performance/dp/B09DVPH8NQ

The external SSDs are almost as compact as thumb drives now, some are faster and offer more capacity:

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-1TB-Extreme-Portable-SDSSDE61-1T00-G25/dp/B08GTYFC37/

This is 100mm x 52mm x 9mm
vs
92mm x 30mm x 14mm for the thumb drive

This one is around the same size and 3x faster because of USB-C/Thunderbolt3:

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Professional-1TB-PRO-G40-SDPS31H-001T-GBCND/dp/B0BGYMJBQF/

Once you own a USB-C-only computer, you will gradually move all the peripherals to USB-C connectors/cables and the exceptions will eventually drop to one or two products. Changing standards over the years have always been painful (firewire, displayport, mini-displayport, ADC, DVI-I, DVI-D etc) but this is one of the least painful because it's a compatible port.