[HN Gopher] Better Living Through Algorithms (2023)
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Better Living Through Algorithms (2023)
Author : RafelMri
Score : 118 points
Date : 2024-08-16 07:06 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (clarkesworldmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (clarkesworldmagazine.com)
| RafelMri wrote:
| [1] https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2024-hugo-awards/
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Great! Really really reminds me of this little weird show called
| "Mrs. Davis" that came out somewhat recently.
| datameta wrote:
| Quality read. Don't want to give anything away but it was not
| what I expected.
| tgv wrote:
| I am not impressed. I'd categorize it as a nothing burger, with
| an ending that readers really love to read.
| NBJack wrote:
| I found it fun; reminded me of Manna. What do you recommend
| that you enjoyed more?
| squigz wrote:
| It won a Hugo award, so I would say there's probably
| something in that burger.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I have found the subset of humans who use nothingburger in
| their vocabulary to overlap highly with sad sacks that are
| no fun.
| dgritsko wrote:
| Great short story. Several times while reading it, I wished that
| I could download Abelique on the app store and try it out - I
| guess I'll have to settle for picking up my sketchbook instead.
| mikewarot wrote:
| That's a great story. Suddenly I feel the need to share that I
| like to take photographs[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/---mike---/albums/721777202964...
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I like the backgrounds of the lion pics!
| mikewarot wrote:
| The idea is to take a bunch of photos from the same area, to
| get a virtual focus when you align and average them (I used
| hugin to do the alignment and a simple python script to
| average them).
|
| The very first one, is a series of photos take as I walked
| towards the lion, which tends to very weird things to the
| background, compressing it.
|
| One day, I'd like to take a Raspberry Pi (or a few of them)
| and build a 16x16 camera array, so I can get a smoother look.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the art and techniques! PS I should buy
| some watercolor brushes.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| BTW, if you liked this, Clarkesworld is currently doing a
| subscription drive to recover from the damage caused by Amazon
| ripping up the kindle subscriptions program. [0]
|
| Please consider a subscription. It's literally 4$/month, super
| cheap, just reading one fun story a month makes it worth it to
| me.
|
| 0. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/amazon-subscribers/
| qingcharles wrote:
| +1 to supporting Clarkesworld. His anthologies are great:
|
| https://neil-clarke.com/the-best-science-fiction-of-the-year...
| commodoreboxer wrote:
| I'm pretty AI pessimistic, but I still found the more optimistic
| AI story refreshing and nice. A reminder that new technology is
| actually supposed to make our lives better, not just funnel a lot
| of money from a lot of people to a small number of share holders
| (ie. "create value").
|
| It's extremely believable that the downfall of some public good
| like Abelique would be primarily sales and marketing getting in
| and trying to steer it and advertise for profit, and it being
| otherwise gamed. It's so hard for something to just be good for
| everybody; somebody always wants to maximize their own benefit,
| even at the expense of everybody else (relevant example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40862865).
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Well that's exactly what happened to Facebook, and YouTube.
|
| People don't really tend to believe it but when I worked at
| Facebook inventing features for users, 100% of the time our
| discussions were based in "how do we improve community and
| happiness and squash divisiveness and hate?" and never about
| revenue. Until influencers took over the internet. Then more
| and more we started being told not to ship things that were fun
| or socially good because it would break viral loops or
| undermine the market dominance of Universal Music or some such
| shit. So I quit.
| justinl33 wrote:
| speculative fiction is the best. Naomi Kritzer is a phenomenal
| writer
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I wasn't paying close attention while starting reading and then
| the story sucked me in. I thought it was a genuine story, then
| doubt started to kick in, and then i saw the word --spoiler
| alert-- "fiction" at the end.
|
| Why would i think abelique was a real app, the story were a non-
| fantasy? These days so much new AI trickery is popping up, that
| it starts to amaze less and less. So Abelique and the whole cult
| around it, including reddit sub, can just as well be real. If the
| category were tagged non-fiction, I would have believed it.
| forkbomb123 wrote:
| I love speculative fiction! I've been more interested in it ever
| since I started reading Ted Chiang - he also has great
| speculative short story collections like Stories of your life
| (which arrival was based on)
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I actually scrolled up when reading the story to make sure if
| it wasn't new content by Ted. The man is antiprolific!
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