I useto have a video up on how to quickly keyhole flap skin a barramundi, purely to show a former apprentice of mine how to do it.
I posted and completely forgot about it, then randomly checked it a few years later and it had views in the over 500,000 range.
My other videos(similar things for the same reason), were on 10-15 views haha.
It was very confusing to me, and I always wondered what would happen if I'd made a decent try at making instructional videos, in the end I just deleted the account in one of my anti-youtube moments.
So hopefully that gives you insight into a similar reaction from someone in a similar position.
I was an early backer and played since the first playable teasers. For background, I played EVE Online for 10+ years, and have played almost every single space-based open-world game other than Star Citizen.
Unlike the game talked about here, it's actually a technically impressive game with some properly unique ideas and some really fun aspects. It's also a total buggy mess and half the time I can't even get through a half hour session without it either hard crashing, or coming across game breaking bugs. Plenty of people seem to be having a fine time, building huge bases and impressive ships and running some pretty decently sized operations, but that's not me. Whether it's my hardware combo or just bad luck, I've struggled to ever get a solid session in at all. I still don't give up on it though, and check back every few months, as I think they ARE building something awesome, it just needs a lot more work.
I saw the same thing when working at the docks in Melbourne (forklift driver for 6 months). The check-in had a few cards for people who I had never met, but we're on my schedule (less than 50-100 onsite per day and I was involved in warehouse organisation which required me to pass out location sheets to other drivers).
Eventually I got to speaking with the site manager and I mentioned in passing the cards. He clammed up immediately and I shrugged it off.
A few months later after I left, the manager and I were having a beer and grouching about that site and he told me that those cards were for the local .. well mafia for lack of a better word. They were clocked in by a senior member every day, and clocked out at the end, the pay cheques were sent off and as a result we never had any break ins.
Crazy.
It opened my eyes up a lot and over the years since then I have seen similar things in a few other industries, eg in Japan and hospitality we had a very friendly grandpa style gentleman visit the restaurant once a month, hand over a receipt to the manager and she paid him some cash. Turns out he was Yakuza and that was our payment for the month
That sounds the same setup as Nice Guy Eddie has in Reservoir Dogs. Probably you don't want to meet the people who had those cards as they might have a penchant for chopping people's ears off and setting them on fire.
Lightweight sandboxed applications in the browser. No admin password needed since there's nothing to install.
Sure it may be bloated overkill for something that could have just been a plain text file, but it is nice to have real time and interactive visualizations.
Plus it is nice to have the choice to use mobile websites instead of using the access hungry native apps.
Figma, docs, sheets. All great apps I can use for any device with a web browser. No install needed, no updates needed. Easy to collaborate with. No "install this application" just "open this url"
Application delivery though the web browser is just hella convenient. It's really hard to give that up for some "native apps and static documents" utopian dream.
The idea of "web applications" is almost as old as the Web itself. Java Web Applets, Flash, Silverlight,... were all attempts to bring application functionality to the browser. Billions have been invested in this strategy.
Why?
Because desktop computing used to be a battlegrounds for commercial vendors in the late 20th century, and the goal was establishing market dominance. Being able to control who can run what on a platform was / still is part and parcel towards establishing that goal.
Web browsers changed the game. They are a threat and an opportunity at the same time. A threat because gave anyone a chance to escape from a native context and run whatever you want in a browser regardless of the platform your on. No more having to compile and distribute the same application for a dozen potential targets.
Microsoft was so adamant on having Explorer bundled with their OS in order to establish control over the future evolution of web applications on the information highway. And they got famously burned for it in that 1999 anti-trust case.
Application delivery as you know it today is convenient, but that came at a price. Vast amounts of resources have been poured into Chromium over the past two decades to bring that experience to billions. And it didn't happen out of sheer altruism on the part of Google.
The fact that web applications are so old indicates the demand for such a delivery platform.
> Microsoft was so adamant on having Explorer bundled with their OS in order to establish control over the future evolution of web applications on the information highway. And they got famously burned for it in that 1999 anti-trust case.
Totally. Microsoft was using it to try control the web as a Microsoft platform. Hence their push for ActiveX over flash/applets/javascript.
> Vast amounts of resources have been poured into Chromium over the past two decades to bring that experience to billions. And it didn't happen out of sheer altruism on the part of Google.
At the time Chrome was started it was a more or less altruistic move from Google, from the user's perspective at least. Google was heavily reliant on the web for income and existing browser were slow, had widely varying standard support, and lots of security issues. Chrome forced their hands, by showing that a web browser can be fast and "secure."
Also at the time Google have a significant platform of their own. They would be at the mercy of the platform gatekeepers. So pushing an open platform that anyone can publish on was in their own interest.
Since then Android has taken off and Chrome has morphed into arguable spyware, but at its inception it was a good thing for users.
> Application delivery as you know it today is convenient, but that came at a price.
A price to whom though. To those who would try to lock down our platforms and seek rent over application delivery? I guess I don't really care about how much it costs them ;).
You can disable JavaScript by default for some time and then look at the list of websites and apps where you enabled it again. It has been a very frustrating experience to me.
What I use to do as read through the newspaper to learn about issues and events that may not effect me personally.
Then I'd look up another source to get a counter point.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm older and more jaded, or news sources are becoming less information baring and more position pushing, but I am just cutting off my news now.
News aggregators can also just as well inform you as to whether something is bubbling into a major story. I think about any news source and whether they miss something that I want from aggregators, and the answer is often yes.
I posted and completely forgot about it, then randomly checked it a few years later and it had views in the over 500,000 range.
My other videos(similar things for the same reason), were on 10-15 views haha.
It was very confusing to me, and I always wondered what would happen if I'd made a decent try at making instructional videos, in the end I just deleted the account in one of my anti-youtube moments.
So hopefully that gives you insight into a similar reaction from someone in a similar position.