Interesting Links for 17-01-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Dot Dot Dot - the finest review in the history of reviews (and a throwback to an earlier age of the internet)

(tags:games review funny video )

2. The art school reject who became one of the world's top glass artists

(tags:art glass scotland )

3. The Bitter Lesson for AI - it's better to design general learning systems and wait for processing power to catch up than to try and simulate human approaches

(tags:ai history computers )

4. The sound of the dialup, pictured (For very old people, who remember when the internet had a sound)

(tags:modem sound visualisation )

5. Why health-care services are in chaos everywhere

(tags:healthcare doom pandemic )

6. UK government blocks Scotland's gender reform bill in constitutional first

(tags:UK bigotry LGBT transgender Scotland OhForFucksSake conservatives )

7. Lasers used to guide lightning strikes to a safe target

(tags:lasers lightning technology cool )

8. Every so often I'm reminded that I'm really glad I don't have to date men

(tags:dating men wtf viaSwampers )

9. Toddlers inventing words is cute and funny

(tags:funny children language viaClare )

10. I'm sure that Apple used to at least *pretend* to do user friendly design

(tags:Apple ux epicfail OhForFucksSake )

11. What's the method that Westminster is using to block Scottish gender reform law?

(tags:Scotland UK law viaDanielDWilliam )

12. Amazon! Cancels! Clarkson!

(tags:TV Amazon )

13. Dreamwidth is updating its anti-spam approach - please ensure your email address is confirmed

(tags:dreamwidth spam email )

14. A raccoon tries to catch falling snow

(tags:raccoon snow video cute )

15. NHS will be 'no better off' under Labour than the Tories, say GPs amid backlash over Keir Starmer comments

(tags:nhs healthcare uk labour OhForFucksSake )

16. Lethal radiation from space played role in Earth's biggest mass extinction

(tags:radiation space extinction )

17. Netflix Has Created A Self-Fulfilling Cancelation Loop With Its New Shows

(tags:netflix doom business tv )

Comments

Re: 17 Netflix

[andrewducker]

Certainly used to be a lot more common, but Doctor Who was doing serial TV as far back as 1963, where the first season had 8 stories broken up into 42 episodes, shown weekly.

I think that syndication killed serial stories off a fair bit later on, but even then soap operas tended to have ongoing stories to make sure people kept tuning in every week.

Re: 17 Netflix

[calimac]

Maybe things worked differently in the UK, where the corporate structure of tv networks has always been entirely different, but as far as the US goes, you have it almost backwards.

Yes, there have always been serial shows - in the US, mostly soap operas - that had continuing plots with no closure, but those were shown once and never syndicated. (As a result of which, back in the day, the plots were very repetitious with lots of overlap between episodes, in case viewers missed some, because there was no way to rewatch.)

But in US prime time television, major network shows, were - before 30? years ago or so - except for the occasional two-parters, always complete stand-alone episodes, that wrapped up the story completely every time and could be shown in any order. And the reason for that is that they were shown in any order. Both in summer re-runs (when no new episodes were produced) and in syndication after the show went off the air - sold to fledgling networks and individual stations and usually shown on weekday late afternoons - there was in those days no way to keep them in order, so there was no compulsory order.

Later on, as I understand it, technical improvements in distribution enabled episodes to be kept in the original order in syndication and re-runs, so it became possible to employ arc plots.

Re: 17 Netflix

[andrewducker]

Sorry, yes, you're completely right about soap operas. Even in the UK you might get a second showing later in the week, but that was it.

And shows like early Doctor Who weren't designed to be reshown, which is why so many of them are now lost from the archives.

Even when Buffy was being shown in the UK you couldn't count on the channels to show them in the right order sometimes!

Re: 17 Netflix

[calimac]

I've read that, up to the early 1970s, the BBC used to wipe almost everything they made on videotape. Partly to save storage space, partly to reuse the tapes. So much is lost, not just Dr Who.

Lost early television was not much of a problem in the US, mostly for geographic reasons. Even early programs that were shown live were often saved on kinescope before on-the-spot videotaping became a thing.

The reason for that was mostly geographical. If you put on a show at 9 PM on the East Coast, that was 6 PM in California, too early to put it on. So you'd take an electronic recording somehow, zip it over the phone lines, and California would put it on when their 9 PM rolled around. I'm fuzzy on the technical details here.