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fir3drill's comments
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fir3drill  ·  3902 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

    VR ain't tough. Two screens headphones motion tracking = VR. Everything else is optimization.

Creating a purely functional VR experience may not be tough, but a user-friendly and cost-effective experience hasn't been feasible until very recently.

    Grasping at straws, however, does not a strategy make.

Grasping at straws isn't a good strategy. Facebook's desperate attempts to catch up in mobile are a resulted of their short-sightedness. They didn't anticipate the rise in smartphones and the changing consumer landscape. The idea behind this acquisition is to not only avoid missing the boat again, but actually drive the boat into the future.

    Know why people use Facebook? Because all their friends forced them to.

I feel like you are mistaking where Facebook currently is with where it wants to be. Facebook, at its core, wants to be a social hub where people connect and come together.

I think your vision of VR as a gaming-only platform is extremely short-sighted. There are dozens of other applications that I can easily see completely shifting the way we interact and operate online.

Why Skype for a business meeting when you can sit in a virtual board room?

Why go all the way to a doctor's office if you can communicate face-to-face and have all of your vitals tracked through a bracelet?

    Figuring out a way to turn Facebook into a desirable location instead of an obligation is exactly what Facebook should be doing.

This is something we agree on, but I I think it is crazy to assume that because they bought Oculus, they are abandoning their main (and most profitable) value prop.

fir3drill  ·  3902 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

    There is nothing Facebook can do with VR that matches their goals and strengths even a tiny little bit.

I couldn't disagree more.

Zuckerberg's logic behind the acquisition is that he believes VR is the next major computing platform after mobile. Facebook was late to the mobile game and have been desperately trying to catch up. Owning and working with the Oculus team is exactly what Facebook should be doing to stay on the forefront of what many people perceive as the inevitable next phase in computing.

fir3drill  ·  3956 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Anyone have any rare game?

I have a First Edition Game of Thrones board game. It used to be pretty valuable because it was out of production for so long, but the popularity of the TV show caused Fantasy Flight Games to re-release a second edition with slightly different rules.

fir3drill  ·  3956 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Cold War Fought By Women - NY Times

Sex is coveted by every organism for reproductive purposes but not for pleasure which is what I believe she is referring to. I think the claim that men covet sex (for pleasure) more than women can be debated, but I don't think the quote was silly.

fir3drill  ·  3957 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, got a favorite map?

Map of the Internet. From reddit, but pretty awesome.

Reminds me of Godwin's Law.

fir3drill  ·  3957 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Start up in a Box

I'll agree with you about Jobs. I used him and Apple as an example because they're easier to grasp and everyone know about them.

I still think the point holds though; how can a computer or algorithm know what people want, before they want it? How can machines take a leap of faith?

fir3drill  ·  3957 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I LOVE MAPS: Internet Land

Really interesting map from The West Wing from a fake NGO called the Cartographers for Social Equality.
fir3drill  ·  3957 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Obesity Is Found to Gain Its Hold in Earliest Years - NY Times

Though I can't speak from direct experience (no kids), what you're saying makes sense and seems to be backed by the article.

The bigger issue, in my mind, is whether the responsibility shifts to the individual at a certain age. If you're in high school/college/post-graduation, does the onus shift to the individual to lose weight?

I tend to think not. Obviously, there are individuals who manage to lose weight, but I'm not sure that should be the expectation. I think it lines up much the same way poverty does: a kid born in poverty is much more inclined to be poor as an adult.

fir3drill  ·  3957 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Start up in a Box

One thing that I don't think this thought experiment considers is that Apple created a market. No one thought that computers would have value to individual consumers.

It took a leap of faith on Jobs' part to design, build, and market something that no one even wanted.

I have trouble seeing how a machine or algorithm can ever accomplish something like that.

fir3drill  ·  3957 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username

Here's an article on The Verge that claims Paypal is denying the reports, saying it didn't give away the customer's information. On the other hand, GoDaddy is reportedly changing its customer service policies to avoid issues like this in the future.

Props to GoDaddy.

fir3drill  ·  3957 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves - QZ.com

I agree. I also think it is easier to institute this type of environment when you have the means to pay kids for chores and fly your kids around the world or across the country.

One question I would love to ask him is whether he would be willing to help his kids if they needed it. If they got into financial trouble or couldn't afford the wedding they wanted, despite their "responsible" upbringing, would he step in and give them a hand.

Or what if one of the kids wanted to be an artist? Would he expect them to be completely financially independent? I don't have children, but I expect that I'd be somewhat lenient if my kid was pursuing his passion and needed some help every once in a while.

fir3drill  ·  3958 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The biggest land rush in the history of the internet begins on February 4

I don't know. .com is king because there hasn't really been a viable alternative. If an entire generation grows up with a MUCH wider variety of TLDs, I don't see why .com will remain on top.

fir3drill  ·  3965 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Bitcoin, explained like you are five.

I liked this explanation a lot. I've read quite a few explanations about how the protocol works and this one was the simplest I can remember.

As I understand it, the ledger is updated/downloaded every ten minutes and the miner who completes the has first hash or whatever gets his/her 10 bitcoins.

My question is: how are the transactions recorded and transmitted to others on the network between ledger updates? Is it all done continuously? If everyone is constantly alerted about all transactions, what are miners doing?

I think my questions are a bit beyond the scope of the article, but they are the points I'm hung up on.