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>What happened?

Consumers' computers have more space. There was always a trade off between optimizing for disk space and all the other things that go into making a game. As demand for the former has fallen, developers responded accordingly.


I find that happens to me too (getting annoyed), but it's a good reminder to introspect when it happens. Clearly, there's nothing objectively wrong with actually using these words in their new meanings-- they're completely serviceable in their new usages, and clear too. There's some degree to which all people get annoyed with language changing and feel a conservative impulse to put a stop to it, but the annoyance with office jargon in particular seems to go beyond that. The source of our annoyance is thus revealed to be something else. I have a feeling it comes back to, like so many things, status games. Someone using new terminology that was just invented is (probably incidentally) asserting some kind of status one-upsmanship over you, demonstrating in passing they are more familiar with cultural norms. I wonder if my annoyance is actually stemming from insecurity that the other person is exactly right-- I am falling behind in the invisible status games. I can either accept my loss, try to adapt to it by using it myself, or remind myself of how little I really care about these status games.


Most of these words seem to be intentionally ineloquent. It's almost as though they were invented or first used by someone who is rich but illiterate. Or that the words were invented specifically to be "accessible" in some way.

Imagine getting a degree in English and then learning as an adult that an "ask" is modern jargon for a request, that a "learning" is a lesson, and an "add" is a differentiator. Business English always seems to involve a narrowing of the lexicon.


I feel like modern office setting gives us unprecedented linguistic situation. On one hand, you want to use complex language to sound official and very important. On the other, most likely your room is full of non-native speakers, so they might not be familiar with particularly uncommon words. This creates a situation where you're looking for words that are, at the same time, simple and fancy.


It just occurred to me that I use "ask" as a noun when talking about development/fundraising in nonprofits. And it's been used that way going back to when I was in high school (1978-1982), at least. (I went to prep school so development was a thing.)

Outside of nonprofit fundraising land, however, ask is a verb. And only a verb.


In a softly held defense of those words, they basically are an escalation level.

If someone asks you for something, it could be something with undefined scope or priority. An "ask" signals "this is official". Same thing with learnings: lesson is personal, learnings means ways things are changing.

Are there dumb business terms, absolutely, but these aren't bad IMO.


So you're saying that "an ask" is "an order" or "a demand", rather than "a request". Why not use those words?

I don't understand what "an ask" means. I don't know what the speaker intended with it, and I wouldn't know how a receiver would understand it.

It's just communicating badly, using words with no fixed shared meaning. Or somebody too afraid to be confrontational to phrase a demand as actually demanded.

And "learnings" is just somebody too lazy to say "lessons learned".


If it actually is stronger than a simple request, I could see saying "an ask" as a way of demanding using softer language. If your boss were to say "I demand ...", everybody is going to say they're a demanding jerk, but if they come to you with "an ask", that could carry the weight of the demand without sounding...demanding.

That said, I've never considered "an ask" to have any stronger meaning than a request. If I hear "an ask", I'm assuming I can push back the same amount I would to any other request.


I don't mind when language changes for a good reason. Maybe we're doing (or have) a new kind of thing and the old description of it was awkward. But changing the meaning or context of an existing word for the sake of _style_ is annoying and ought to be called out because it just adds the potential for utterly pointless confusion.


I think what grates on me the most -- deservedly or not -- is that these particular words only end up being used this way in "business speak". I find business-type people to be profoundly annoying (shallow, surface-level/transactional relationships, etc.). For me, the fact that this is a business-speak phenomenon automatically makes it eye-roll-worthy by association.


I've never been too sure how closely he's reading those papers he refers to in his informational vids; if he actually discovered a flaw himself from reading one that is highly indicative he's doing a good job!


Proudly use "y'all" frequently in my everyday conversation, despite having zero other attributes characteristically Southern about me. As the article says it's flexible, is impossible to offend anyone with as far as I can tell, and just sounds good.


I was a West Coast kid with absolutely no connection to the South when I added "y'all" to my idiolect as a teenager: I thought it just made more sense.


DC metro native here. I picked it up during college (UVA, in central VA, fair number of southerners on campus). Use it pretty regularly, mostly as part of a group greeting "how are y'all?"


>Do people reach 100 by surviving, delaying, or avoiding diseases?

Answer from the abstract: they avoid them.


I did always wonder how much of getting to a very old age is just luck.

Like you have two 85 year olds. Number 1 is healthy and has a .01% chance of having a stroke, number 2 is unhealthy and has a .05% chance, but 1 still has a stroke first just due to bad luck.

Maybe number 2 has such a good run of luck that they make it to 100 in spite of smoking and eating cake daily. In that world people over 100 would be more statistical anomaly, for whatever reason the combination of events that trigger a deadly event just never come together for them.


Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Schmidt#Personal_life who died at 96.

Of some fame because he ordered the first and successful GSG 9 (which was founded because of the failed Munich Olympics rescue operation) assault, despite many not agreeing with him at the time:

    In October 1977, he ordered an anti-terrorist unit of Bundesgrenzschutz policemen to end the Palestinian terrorist hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft named Landshut, staged to secure the release of imprisoned RAF leaders, after it landed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Three of the four kidnappers were killed during the assault on the plane, but all 86 passengers were rescued unharmed

He was an avid drinker and smoker.

    On 25 January 2008, German police launched an inquiry after an anti-smoking initiative charged that Schmidt was defying the recently introduced smoking ban. The initiative claimed that Schmidt had been flagrantly ignoring anti-smoking laws. On 6 April 2010, with a lifespan of 33,342 days, he surpassed Konrad Adenauer in terms of longevity, and at the time of his death was the oldest former chancellor in German history.


Seems their findings are that, to grossly oversimplify, some people just have a higher chance of getting sick than others, and that remains consistent from youth to old age. And given how many chances there are to get sick, making it through 'the filter' to get to 100 is only realistically going to happen to those who are both lucky and have that low base rate of disease going for them.


But restaurants in most places are in intense competition with each other on both taste and price, so this would only benefit the consumer? What model of the industry would indicate otherwise?


>But instant messages? Everyone expects instant responses.

My understanding is people don't expect instant responses, but that's never been made explicit. What do you base your understanding on? Do folks tell you?


Maybe you're thinking of "micromarriages"? [0]

[0] https://colah.github.io/personal/micromarriages/


>Everything is dog slow, not because poor performance but because of slow animations.

Did you try Accessibility > Motion > Off?

>Things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube

There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?


> Did you try Accessibility > Motion > Off?

There is no "Motion > Off" but there is a "Reduce Motion" toggle. Seems to be turning things that were slowly animated into even slower fade, like when you switch applications. Doesn't seem to actually affect much, animations inside for example Apple applications is still there, no matter if that toggle is on or off.

> There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?

I've browsed through it, but I don't think it's in no way extensive? I tried to find anything documenting the "Hold on spacebar and drag to move text cursor" in the Tips application (that I'm guessing you're referring to?) and found nothing, which is one of the features I "discovered" purely by accident.


There's a manual for iOS. Here's[0] the section about the onscreen keyboard (ctrl-f for trackpad to find the spacebar thing).

Expand the Table of Contents + at the top to see all the sections.

(Like others, not defending the state of things, just trying to help.)

0: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...

edit: if you want it in an offline format, you can find it in the Apple Books app by searching iPhone User Guide.


Yeah, with the helpful title of "Turn the onscreen keyboard into a trackpad", not even mentioning "move/moving" or "cursor", and also using "trackpad" wrong? A trackpad is for controlling a pointer, like a mouse, not to control the "insertion point of text".

Great that it is mentioned somewhere, in some manner, I guess.


Yeah that was quite hard to find, even though I already knew about the user guide. I searched for both cursor and spacebar and came up empty. Finally checked each section.

Not great.


Disclaimer: I'm generally fine with iOS and use it and macOS as my daily drivers.

> There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?

I posit that if one needs to load up the Tips app to figure out how to perform desired functions, that's a problem with the UX and not the human trying to use the device/app.

The ideas espoused in The Design of Everyday Things[0] pops into mind right now.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...


On the contrary I think it’s quite reasonable to gate functionality behind reading the manual. But one wonders why it’s a distinct application and not integrated throughout the system, such as through tooltips or a “question mark cursor”?


> The ideas espoused in The Design of Everyday Things[0] pops into mind right now.

the unfortunate reality of touch screens is that there are no affordances for things that can't be seen. design of everyday things goes over stuff like never put a pull handle on a push door kinda things. i think having to go to an app for some things is somewhat reasonable given the ui size constraints and only having so much touchable area... most of the functionality is there and self evident without an app.


Wow, for just a second I was excited. And then I looked in Accessibility > Motion and there’s no “off”. I tried “Reduce Motion” and deleted an old Wallet Pass, and it still did a ridiculous and obscenely slow animation.


I think you’re talking about iOS. If so, it’s Settings -> Accessibility -> Reduce Motion -> On


This doesn’t solve the problem. It just turns the animation into equally slow fades.


>the idea of paying for a subscription to ride a stationary bike

You're not. Like was said above, you can ride it as a stationary bike for free. You're paying for the video content put out by Peloton which is added to daily, like a tv station. I can't help sounding like a sales person at this point but I'd also point out you get access to all their old content plus the fact that all this content is tied directly to your bike and the social network of other peloton riders.


This is such a weird thing, paying to see scenery when riding your stationary bike and then post on the social network, when you can just go out with friends and bike for real in the nature.


Yea.. this kind of behavior seems everywhere. I once saw someone take the elevator to the gym and then he used a stair climber machine..

Just a week ago during camping vacation I saw someone use a Quad to fetch baguettes in the morning (<1km). Then these people go jog later.

It's all just some big WTF to me sometimes..


In an alternate reality where the opposite happened, a poster much like you just posted incredulously how you saw someone take the stairs to the gym, then hop right on a much superior stairmaster instead of just using the stairmaster the whole time.


> when you can just go out with friends and bike for real in the nature

"just"

What if you live in the city? What if you have a 10-minute window until your next meeting? What if it's raining? What if it's snowing? What if it's dark? What if you live in Arizona and it's the summer? Etc.

We all have different needs so I wouldn't write off people that want an exercise bike for their house.


If you have friends near you, and if weather permits. I would go to the gym in winter to cycle and run precisely because it allows me to exercise out of reach of the cold and rainy weather.


I've personally never taken a ride where I saw scenery-- and I don't think most people think of that when they justify their subscription to themselves. I take ones with a coach. I'm aware there's free coaching videos aplenty online I could download and rig up to some other stationary bike, but chose the Peloton anyways so it would all come integrated and at the level of quality I saw in the demo store.


In Northern Europe and the US, riding your bike outside is not a pleasant or optimal experience for about half of the year. It’s also just a lot easier to wake up, make a cup of coffee, and hop on the stationary bike than to drag my bike outside.


I agree that real is better, but "fake" scenery lets you explore and ride virtually in all kinds of natural and urban surroundings, which might be interesting to some people.


It's over 100 right now where I am. It's 72 degrees in the gym.


There's nothing unique about the "old" video content that makes it attractive other than the fact that their top "trainers" are leaving in droves.


Is there something worth leaving to? I have my old subscription limping along because I do like the trainers, the music especially, and use the non cardio programs, but would like to switch to something that isn't actively making the product worse to make money. Yt dl came in handy before their cardio money grab.


Zwift, maybe. But you need / should have a power meter to do that properly, and it works way better with a trainer that can adjust resistance on its own.


I have no idea how peloton works but I while ago I thought about “gamified” cardio machines, treadmill, bike, rowing where you follow courses which vary in difficulty (like uphill or against currents) and the machine varies the resistance according to the scenery.


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