andrewducker | Interesting Links for 14-01-2023

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Interesting Links for 14-01-2023

1. Jewish university students had swastikas drawn on them and told 'Hitler was right', damning NUS report reveals: (tags:students jews bigotry university unions )
2. What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games: (tags:games ux video )
3. A long thread of people whose fathers or partners just walked out one day: (tags:parenting OhForFucksSake men abandoned )
4. Quote Tweeting: Over 30 Studies Dispel Some Myths: (tags:Twitter communication research )
5. The age of energy abundance may be closer than we think: (tags:electricity renewables thefuture )
6. The Economic Secret Hidden in a Tiny, Discontinued Pasta (That once you lose the ability to manufacture something, no matter how simple, regaining it is a *lot* of work): (tags:pasta manufacturing Doom )
7. The idea that in earlier societies men were the hunters while women were the gatherers is a myth: (tags:gender society history prehistory )

Regarding 6. - my factory still has three antique electronic-assembly automated wire-wrap machines in use. There are maybe a dozen still running world-wide. On our newest machine, the warranty expired in 1970.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_wrap

There is no commercial source for the automated bits (the spinning split hollow tube that holds the wire as it is wrapped around a square peg); a single retired person working out of his garage makes them. It's a bit of an art - if you don't anneal, polish, and hand-tweak the edges of the bit it just right, you'll scratch the silver plating on the wires and increase the risk of latent "red plague" failures years in the future.

Tens of thousands of aircraft flying today have wire-wrapped circuitry in them. When the electronic assemblies wear out or are damaged, we are one of the few companies that can assemble replacements.

We've been telling our customers to redesign their products to use more modern designs, to no avail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_wrap#/media/File:Computerplatine_Wire-wrap_backplane_detail_Z80_Doppel-Europa-Format_1977.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_wrap#/media/File:PDP-8I-backplane.jpg

You're reminding me of a very particular XKCD cartoon about entire industries being dependant upon obscure-yet-vital components going back decades here.

https://xkcd.com/2347/

Exactly!

That's so ridiculous. When he stops I assume that you'll be forced to also stop, and then your customers will be fucked.

(Either that, or you need to get someone apprenticed to him ASAP!)

And that's not the only potential mode of failure. Many aircraft flying today don't have flat-screen displays, or even seven-segment LED displays to show numbers on their blinkylight panels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-segment_display

The wire-wrapped assemblies we make are connected to an array of seven tiny little incandescent light bulbs the size of a grain of rice. To display the number "8", seven antique light bulbs have to illuminate! Oshino in Japan has been begging us to let them shut down their assembly line for more than a decade.

The test equipment for the system is made by the Drive-In Theatre Manufacturing Company.

https://www.ditmco.com/about/

That's hilarious.

Has your company considered jacking the prices up? Because if you're the only remaining supplier...

It may also be relevant that 4) I have no idea how a "quote tweet" is different from a retweet, and if this piece explains that, it's buried somewhere in the verbiage, but I was most taken with 2) although I did not watch the whole thing, because I too am that person.

Several thoughts:

1) When I read the phrase "someone who doesn't play games," I think of board games like Monopoly. (Not card games, because what people who don't play those don't play is "cards.") What you mean in my vocabulary is video games.

2) Besides not being much of a game-playing person at all (see above re: board games), one major reason I never got interested in video games of the character-playing plot-based quality (as all of the ones discussed here are: as opposed to purely mechanical games like PacMan or the one whose title I'm misremembering as Space Adventure) is that I couldn't figure out what to do or master how to do it. I remember giving up on the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy game (this was 2? 3? 4? decades ago) because every time I tried I got killed before getting off Earth. This was sufficiently unfun that I had no incentive to try further.

3) These were all keyboard-based. I have never touched a game controller in my life and would have even less idea than videographer's wife how to use one. My reaction if you tried to show me the techniques described in the video would be "I am old: my brain is already full."

4) The learning curve (reaching the point where actions are instinctual) is not specific to video games. One of the most mentally terrifying experiences of my life was, many years ago, being drafted into a game of mah jongg. (The physical game, with tiles, played sitting around a table.) I knew nothing about it. My sergeant (I was drafted, so that's an appropriate term, and that's what he acted like) explained the procedures, and they were clear, but he still got terribly impatient that I didn't internalize them immediately: I had to stop and think.

5) The wife's problem in the video also remind me strikingly of what I found when teaching my mother to learn Windows. What most arrested me was finding that, when multiple overlapping windows were open on the screen, she had no instinctive sense whatever of where the edges were, of where one window stopped and another began. (Why did I not have this problem? Experience opening and closing them, I guess.)

Also not a video game player. I absolutely can't be arsed to spend double digits of hours learning the control system of each game. Plus controllers are the WORST UX EVER. Arbitrary and obscure. Joysticks (remember them?) were ZERO problem ... Why is that, I wonder.

I've also literally never found any game interesting enough. Even as a kid, I'd far rather program (and create something useful) or if it's hand eye training, learn/play an instrument. And write songs. Or draw. Or how vehicles /machines work and his to fix them (and maybe even make them better). Or go outside and have real adventures, exploring, climbing, bike riding. I'm still the same. But in my 30s I've added sailing - which pretty much covers most mental and physical skills you can think of.

I think with me, it's a combo of being primarily creatively driven (and I don't find an outlet for that in games) and being very very "embodied". I need all senses feedback to find a thing engaging. Not just sight. And valuing my time - if I'm going to learn a skill or solve a puzzle, for me, it has to be real. I mean I have issues enough with work because the layers between the puzzle I'm solving/ thing I'm creating and me getting food/warmth/shelter etc are too many!

Also on video games - the fact that your "head" / point of view can be moved WAY faster and in ways and patterns that you can't do with your real head and eyes - that's horrible. Utterly horrible.

Edited 2023-01-15 06:38 (UTC)

Your comments about creativity are offset and different from mine. Games like Dungeons & Dragons are sold as a chance to create your own adventure. There may be some element of that in video games also. But I don't want to create my own adventure. I want to read one created by an author more talented and imaginative than myself.

A joystick is incredibly simple. The original Atari ones were one stick and one button. But if you want more control (for instance to be able to look in one direction and move in another) then you need two sticks. And if you want to have the options to do a bunch of different things then you need a bunch of buttons to go with that.

I think that modern controllers have hit the point where most players can use them okay. But obviously they'll be excluding some people where 2 sticks and 12 buttons (four on each side, and two rear ones on each side) is too much to handle. There are a bunch of Nintendo games that only use one stick and 4 buttons though, which makes it a bit easier for people who find that much easier.

I ran up against the complexity and interface of game controllers in a project (not completed) for a person who was blind and Parkinsonian to control their own access to a library of sound content. There's stuff about the differences among learning curve, muscle memory, overall ability to learn these kinds of interface, and overall physical ability to manipulate them that I don't really understand enough. I did notice that there seems to be a split among people who think of a D-pad and a joy-stick as pretty much the same thing and people who don't.

Have you encountered the PlayStation accessibility controller?
https://blog.playstation.com/2023/01/04/introducing-project-leonardo-for-playstation-5-a-highly-customizable-accessibility-controller-kit/

4) A quote tweet is one where you retweet and add something to it. So you end up with something like this:

https://twitter.com/flaminhaystacks/status/1614937384667299840 - where she's reshared her earlier tweet with some additional commentary on it.

2) I agree that I should have been clearer. Particularly as someone who (in less child-infested times) played board games and roleplaying games!

I agree that for a lot of people the effort/reward ratio is not going to pay off at all. And as modern games assume that you'll have played plenty of games when younger they assume you'll already have (or will pick up) the basics really quickly.

Totally agreed on people who expect you to internalise a ruleset quickly - and then act on it almost through instinct. It take a bunch of time to internalise rules, learn what the best moves are, etc, etc. Expecting you to do this quickly in your first game is almost certain to make the game un-fun.

And again agreed with Windows. They've changed some of the user interface again with Windows 11, and I don't think they understand how many older/less experience people they're putting through a large amount of pain for very little gain.

I've always played board games - and stumbled into Dungeons & Dragons when it was 'new' [1973]. I only began playing video games ... due to no consoles & a very limited PC ... in 1998.

So I came to video games late - and mainly wanted to play 'Baldur's Gate'. I RTFM and slowly pecked my way around and loved the game. Later, a friend loaned me his PS2 & his copy of 'Final Fantasy X' ... which I fell in love with. THAT ended with me going, buying a PS2 & FFX and spending months playing that beautiful game.

I found other PS2 games that I loved -almost- as much, then later still was invited [coaxed] to play MMOs - which I enjoy.

I don't have 'twitch' motor skills, so avoid games with a lot of 'first-person shooting. I have terrible reflexes & avoid PvP [player vs player] - since I lose 95% of the time. I also have vision problems & a tendency towards motion sickness, so there are a lot of games I don't even try to play, since nausea is NO fun.

In general though, even coming late to the game, I enjoy it & spend a lot of time playing. My advice is to start with something that is interesting and learn how to play it. Could be that it's not in your skill-set, even after you know the basics. Then try something else. But that's just me.

Yeah, finding a game that does make it worth persevering with, and learning from there, makes a huge difference.

I don't think that there is such a thing for

calimac though.

3, separate item): I do know a man who walked out on his family. He didn't disappear from contact, or leave without any notice whatever, but he did just go. His reason is touched on in the thread: he just couldn't handle the responsibility any more, even though he'd already been doing so for several years. The contrast with his virtuoso handling of the complexity of his job and what I cannot do justice to the vastness of by calling his hobby was startling.

I can understand that. Some people find certain things very hard, even if they aren't theoretically that much harder (or even, sometimes, as hard) as other things in their life.

My work certainly requires me to work harder than childcare ever does - but it's not nearly as relentless, and emotionally I find that harder. Nowhere near so hard that I'd flee, but I can see what would cause some people to give up.

I am surprised that the man you know wasn't finding it easier as he went along - I certainly am with the kids. But if the family kept growing then that would have an impact too.

3. My mother "just walked out" several times, mostly from the same man, because he was beating her up whenever he came home from a long haul truck run. He broke her nose 7 times and her arm once in the year they were married. He'd find us and bring us all back, and then beat her some more. Once he kidnapped her and held her bound in a garage for six weeks - we kids were with our paternal grandparents, who he did not know and could not find. We didn't see her again for almost 6 months. I was convinced she had died and nobody would tell us.

I'm sorry that your mother went through that (and you as well). I hope he is no longer capable of hurting anyone.

Thanks. It was all pretty frightening at the time but it was also 45 years ago. I think he died a decade or more back. And Mom's been dead even longer.

The word is 'Desertion', for men who walked out on their wives, and never came back.

My maternal grandmother was a deserted child sometime at the turn of the last century: her father and his two brothers walked the cattle to market, sold them and pocketed the money, boarded the train to Cork and bought passage to America...

After her death, we found letters from him, and learned that he returned twice to Ireland: she had destroyed all other evidence of his existence and ensured that no hint of relatives in America would tempt other members in the family to emigrate.

We're still in touch with the Kelly family nearby in Narraghmore and Naas, who 'took in' a deserted wife and her daughter: they would have faced incarceration by the Magdalenes, or worse, for Ireland has never been kind to single mothers.

I'm glad that your grandmother was looked after. Such a horrifying situation - deserting a family, particularly when they'd have known what might have happened to them.

I clicked on #2 because I'm a board-gamer, saw that it was about video games, and watched because I'm like the narrator's wife: never learned this class of games, have been exposed to them and never knew what to do, wasn't taught, and concluded that the effort-to-payoff proportions would be way out of sync so didn't try.

Absolutely. I think that having someone play with you, and work through things is the best way to start off.

Sophia occasionally comes back to computer games, decides that they're a bit too tricky, and then goes back to other toys. I suspect that learning to read will make it much easier for her, but even then I shall support her through the tricky bits.

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Interesting Links for 14-01-2023

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