Disagree with logic that most will sell. Many people will incur high tax bills (if the property appreciated) or transaction costs to move. People who bought in the 2010s have mortgage rates that don’t exist anymore. Many had a reason to live in the area to begin with.
- Many will rebuild to move back
- Some will sell their lots to investors
- Some will rebuild using insurance money to flip upon completion
You’re commenting on an article about reading, which is also a solitary passive consumption activity. I suspect you’re not trying to make the point that reading books destroys relationships and self construction, so this seems like a roundabout way of saying that your favored passive consumption activity is better than what other people choose.
Reading a book is not really passive. Especially if it's a good book. You have to constantly imagine the layouts and the connections the book is trying to draw. For me, after years of Internet, getting back to books made me appreciate my younger self because books need active imagination and follow-through in the brain. I was able to do that effortlessly when I was a child. In fact, if you read all the HN comments the way you read books, it will be challenging(if you have no book reading habits).
I don't use imagination when I read. The connections are instinctual, and the layouts are often irrelevant (which I can say because I've never attempted to consider them and don't ever find myself missing out on the story).
I'd like to say I'm astounded when I hear other people visit other worlds when they read, but really that whole idea is so foreign to me, it might as well be a complete lie. I have no thread in which to pull on to begin to imagine it. I chalk it up to aphantasia, but my point is that not everyone processes and interacts with the world in the same way you might.
So when a scene is described, what happens in your head? You take it all in as a sort of dry list of facts? If someone gets punched in the face that conjures an image of a fist connecting with a face for me.
> You take it all in as a sort of dry list of facts?
"dry list" was your description, not mine. But also, no. Take the common example;
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
You don't have to imagine a picture of shoes, nor of a for sale sign to go... "oh, shit...".
Or even even that's too far to grasp... consider the melody of happy song, or a sad song. I assume you don't imagine a piano to figure out which it is?
Yes, I was trying to figure out how that would work, describing how I imagined it as a starting point. Not saying that’s how you experience it (hence the question mark)
I don’t have to imagibe baby shoes to understand what they are, or what happened, but if I read ‘baby shoes’ there’s definitely an image of small shoes appearing in my mind (constantly morphing, because the description doesn’t give me anything to go off).
If I read ‘sad song’, some variation of a sad song will play in my mind.
Of course often you read many of those things in sequence, and the mental scene constructs itself as you learn more.
If you read quickly it’s a bit vague, not enough time to truly think about it, but it’s there. At least for me.
> “Bitch,” he repeated. The mallet came down. She shoved herself upward and it landed just below her kneecap. Her lower leg was suddenly on fire. Blood began to trickle down her calf. And then the mallet was coming down again. She jerked her head away from it and it smashed into the stair riser in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, scraping away the flesh from her ear.
Does your mind conjure no images while reading this?
Aphantasia is hard to explain, especially in a drive by comment.
I'm not the person you're replying to but the answer, for me, depends on what you really mean by conjuring images. Very technically no, I see no images for this but I don't know if that is truly the whole point of what you're asking.
I mostly understand what is happening but I also really struggle to get the angles right in my mind of someone swinging a mallet quickly and one time hitting a shin and the next aimed for the head so maybe I'm missing something.
There are other senses involved as well even though it isn't visual, including things like spatial reasoning or maybe even something like proprioception - like I said it's hard to explain.
I can imagine myself in this position better than I can "visualize" it happening to someone else.
Aphantasia is really annoying to explain to people, like trying to explain blindness to a person who's always seen. I can't "see" anything, but I'm able to reason about it and kinda trace what I imagine with my eyes.
Interestingly enough, I have very lucid dreams and have realized that I am able to visualize (with color!) inside of them. I can't imagine being able to do that at will while awake, must be amazing.
I also can "see" in my dreams! Aphantasia is so fascinating to me because it helps me think about all these senses in much smaller units. I think the more we study and learn about aphantasia the better we will understand the brain in general. It is kind of like a natural experiment where you can remove one piece of the system and reason about the whole because of what changes.
For example, I had never considered that there would be different processes involved with imagining something visual vs recalling it but now that seems super obvious to me! I love when something tweaks my perspective and suddenly a new world of possibilities is revealed.
This happens with all forms of art, it's not unique to the written word. With movies and TV you're imagining the world outside the frame borders. With paintings you're imagining the whole scene or story depending on the piece.
So there's a point here that TikTok is competing for leisure time that in its absence has a better chance of being imaginative but I think that undersells the creativity of social media to a degree.
I think that's the key thing. Social media bombards us with stimuli based on an algorithm optimizing for what will grab our attention best. It doesn't matter if it has value, or even if it can hold our attention, because there's always some new novelty in the pipeline.
Long-form writing ask us to choose a subject and then focus deeply and deliberately on it. It's more demanding and more rewarding.
You can have passive experiences via either medium. TikTok is really optimized for that shallow level of engagement though and books trend in the opposite direction.
I will say that it is different to me, but perhaps others consume things like tiktok or instagram like I do books.
To me, I do not reminisce or think about tiktoks / instagram posts having an impact on my life or how I think or how I interact with others. Five years from now I do not think I will fondly remember a post, but probably I'll think about the books I read. I kind of know this, as I'm thinking about books I read in highschool over 20 years ago at the moment.
I suppose they give me things to think about beyond the moment I'm reading them, they make me feel things I otherwise wouldn't etc. It's possible for these things in media like movies, and even tiktok too I would imagine.
The reverse is also possible for books to be junk that you read and enjoy in the moment but soon forget.
But I also think the algorithm / profit motive behind tiktok and social media in general tends to mean that it's more likely to be junk, and it's not the person's fault who gets pulled into that. They're brutally effective skinner boxes, imo. Just like some games (mmos and now live service for even shooters).
There's something missing in the current media landscape that the old one did have, which was finality. You read a book, it's over. Similar with older movies, but now we have a bit of the "keep up with the starwars or marvel" thingy which is a bit live service like if you think about it. A constant desire to make folks feel like they have to keep up. Yeah things had sequels before, so I'm probably just waxing nostalgic here.
I'm rambling, sorry, just wanted to share some of my current thoughts.
I'm sure if tiktok didn't exist, these folks would be putting on 24/7 soap operas instead. The desire for a background thing to passively consume has likely always existed. Be it radio, whatever.
The algorithm does seem to be ruthless these days though, god if I know what I mean by that.
> perhaps others consume things like tiktok or instagram like I do books
> Five years from now I do not think I will fondly remember a post, but probably I'll think about the books I read
Exactly what I was thinking. I can still tell you about the first novel I read, first trilogy, favorite books, least favorite, and also each of those per genre. I can tell you what was going on in my life at the time.
The only thing I can say about social media posts are that I have a handful of vague memories of times when someone I knew or knew of would post something that made me realize they had a side I didn’t know of, and not in a good way.
I’m reminded of a quote I read recently, paraphrased: social media connects limbic systems, not prefrontal cortexes. I might take issue with the pure dichotomous nature of that statement, but I think it holds generally.
A book sticks with you, but reels phase through you like light through a window. Once the book is finished, your mind races with ideas about the book; good or bad.
Instagram reels leave you with nothing. Once the next reel passes, the previous one is flushed down the memory, as if these last 28 seconds were nothingness.
While the humble reel only demands a vague trance-like state and your eyes turned to the phone, the books needs your full attention and mental capacity to be enjoyed completely.
Note that none of this is specific to books. Shows, movies, (solo) games. They're all about something. The point of instagram reel is being about nothing at all. Watching it to fill your head with void. A silent, temporary death. "Psychological obliteration" is particularly apt here.
It's a different sort of 'passive'. There is this thing called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network which 'lights up' in very different ways, depending on what you do, and how. One could argue that is to be expected, because different regions of the brain are exercised. But that's not all of it. Regarding exercise, think of 'Use it, or lose it'. It's mostly the imagination which is exercised while reading. If it isn't, it shrivels.
I wouldn’t consider reading as a passive consumption. You have to 1. Lead and follow a tempo, essentially moving your eyes at the speed of you thought 2. Using imagination to associate what you read with other knowledges.
TV and ticktock don’t need 1. You can interact with a remote or you scrolling-thumb but interaction is not required to consume.
2. Isn’t a necessity neither but people do use TV, ticktock or music to "empty their mind" by thinking to nothing else but the consumption flow. You can do that with reading, but that’s not an experience people usually like and they come back to the place their mind left.
Number two but in book form is "beach reads" which can include your favorite trash romance or the latest "dad book" Vince Flynn / Clive Cussler / Tom Clancy thing. And given the huge popularity of the two genres folks are reaching for books to turn off plenty.
Author of this article learned a lot about password hashing, missed the detail that this was in logs, not the database. Usually you try to avoid logging passwords, you don’t hash them in logs.
Yup. A bunch of coverage is understating this point, and the peanut gallery commenters are taking it hook, line, and sinker. Accidentally logging plaintext passwords, whilst concerningly incompetent, is not on the same level as explicitly deciding to store plaintext passwords.
Yea I’m not proposing to replace low security credit cards with low security debit card this is a silly strawman.
EDIT: I see the general problem of origination fraud. But that can be mitigated by imposing limits and requiring extra levels of authentication for bigger payments.
> EDIT: I see the general problem of origination fraud. But that can be mitigated by imposing limits and requiring extra levels of authentication for bigger payments.
Which are exactly the kinds of things credit cards do, but it can't be perfect so they still suffer losses, so they still have to charge a percentage.
(Of course a lot of the percentage can go to rewards programs, so we're talking about the percentage once those are accounted for.)
In the US you can take money from a credit card by just using the that’s plainly written on it. That’s not what I would call making an effort at origination fraud prevention.
You said you don't want the ability to do chargebacks, but chargebacks solve two different problems: 1) origination fraud (i.e. someone not you originates a transaction from your account) and 2) merchant fraud (i.e. goods not as described/unsatisfactory/undelivered).
It's fine if you say, yeah I can do without #2, but realistically you cannot do without #1 in any digital payment scheme that will have wide acceptance so a chargeback mechanism is required.
The only settlement methods we have that do without both protections are cash, cashiers checks, and wires. Setting aside cash the other two are a pain in the ass to originate exactly because they are non reversible.
This is something I find so fascinating about the American financial system... Home Depot in Canada has taken tap payments and Apple Pay for a long time now.
Yeah Home Depot is a bizarre exception, AFAIK they signed a contract with PayPal at some point long ago that prevents them from accepting tap-to-pay. Their checkouts have all the hardware for tap-to-pay, but contractually they can't turn it on.
Hopefully that contract ends soon, because wow did they shoot themselves in the foot on that one.
The story sounds appealing (members of congress know more than you do, so invest like they do) but this is just bait for retail investors. Expense ratio of 0.75% is crazy for a fund that holds 400+ stocks. Disclosure info on congressional portfolios is delayed 30 days, so you're missing out on cases they're trading on time sensitive information.
The math is silly, these numbers are made up. Says the average American drinks 28K cups and spends $120K in their lifetime. That’s 1.5 cups daily at $4/cup for 50 years.
It's a very strange price point - "Utility Coffee" like Dunkin or Tim's is usually around $2 for a medium, but "Specialty Coffee" like Starbucks or local cafes is $5 to $8. I'm not sure where they got their data, or what they qualified as "coffee" for this. The omission of the UK in their data is also quite strange.
I suspect based on the graphics that they're orienting this more towards the "specialty coffee" subtype, and getting this information from a supplier network rather than any sort of broad data "census".
Luxembourg with an average (!) of over 5 cups a day per person also seems extremely high. That’s over 10 cups of coffee a day for every person that doesn’t drink coffee over there.
Also, seems like different types of coffee have different amounts of caffeine, which I would say is important.
There’s a bunch of theory that goes into understanding why a tritone sub works for a Dom7 for the 5 chord, but it’s not something you think about when you’re using it. You learn how it sounds and you start using it instinctively.
Other people can probably figure out better analogies, but I’d say it’s something like the difference reading an article about generics or monads vs actually using them every day. To an outsider these seem like a ton to think about, but when you use them every day they’re just part of your toolbox.
This take makes sense in the context of the specific example, but falls apart for most other software engineering. You can't automate away defining business logic, but in many cases you can deliver it predictably.
- Many will rebuild to move back
- Some will sell their lots to investors
- Some will rebuild using insurance money to flip upon completion