Comics! I recently finished Wanted (which made for a shitty movie, but a decent comic) and Watchmen (I despair I hadn't gotten around to it sooner).
Now I'm planning to read V for Vendetta, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, and some more. I've finally come around to comics as an art form, and I couldn't be happier!
If you're getting into comics, I can strongly recommend Transmetropolitan, The Invisibles, Saga, and the original Sandman books (there are a tonne of new ones now, and none have really clicked).
I'm also part way through Supergods by Grant Morrison. It's not a comic, but an autobiography-cum-history of the superhero genre. Worthwhile.
If this article interested you then I'd highly recommend checking out TVTropes (https://tvtropes.org/) (trope roughly means any convention of fiction), if you've not already!
For this year, mine was Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
TL;DR - the book explains how humans are predictably irrational and how seeming cognitive ease in decisioning is simply laziness in action since the brain will substitute a tough decision for a similar but easy one! It has made me reflect upon why I think the way I do, helped me to remove most bias from my actions, and also has a great suggestion that you should ask others to check you if you sound stupid, which is not great for your ego but is necessary nonetheless.
Writing is one field that I think won't be able to achieve the 'human' touch anytime soon. Art? Sure, as we have already seen with DALL-E and the like. Music? Doubtful (look up Kandrake-Z for an example), but not sure if it will expand beyond plunderphonics and noise. But writing? Meh.
I don't know if anyone even uses content-generating AIs like this for writing - but I'd be glad to change my mind by seeing some hard numbers. I mean, except for incomprehensible content-generated articles that pop up on searches only because of PageRank's flaws.
There's no need of putting this as a separate post - you can paste the same text in your profile, your Keybase and HN accounts will get linked perfectly fine.
Haven't used Spotify in years, but back then the ads were much louder than music. I'm not sure if that's still correct, but I've read about this issue multiple times.
You could argue that you should just get a subscription, but intrusive ads defeat the whole idea of a free version. Might as well remove it, if you're going to make it tedious to use.
Tangential, but I've recently noticed that due to huge fragmentation in the streaming industry (Netflix, PrimeVideo, Hulu, Disney+ et al.), I'm only using two - Netflix and PrimeVideo, and a third torrent streaming service (PopcornTime) when I can't find a specific movie/TV series.
I prefer to use the third option as few as possible, but I find myself having to use it more and more often as the years go by - geolocked content, huge swathes of content being removed on the whims of providers (The Office comes to mind), and 'originals' that are beyond even the so-bad-it's-good category that cannot even begin to fill the void left by the good content leaving.
I cannot ever see myself subscribing to a plethora of services - the best case is subscribing to a service when it's absolutely necessary (HBO/Hotstar) and then unsubscribing when you're done, which is not at all conducive to fulfilling long-term revenue plans of such services.
So what is the endgame of such services? Is it simply to build a huge catalog of content that you'll mindlessly devour whenever you're bored? Or something else?
They also have interlaced two seasons of some shows together (noticed this on a couple kids shows for my daughter). So it would go season 2 ep 1, season 3 ep 1, 2-2, 3-2, etc. In general it wouldn't matter for a kids show that doesn't have a continual storyline, but when you only pay for season 2, it then stops at the end of each episode instead of continuing on automatically, and you have to go back to the UI and skip one.
That 'feature' of Amazon's service really annoys me as well - presumably it's to make it look like they have far more content available than they actually have?
I don't know where you are but Netflix streaming in the U.S. has the first three seasons of "Lucifer" as well as the 4th season sold directly to Netflix.
I used to watch a lot of Monty Python sketches on YouTube, and in the past few months they've been removed. Last time I looked it was impossible to find the super popular Parrot Sketch!
They're not on Archive.org, no decent results on alternative sites such as DailyMotion, just disappeared.
That's absolutely shocking to me, a huge piece of popular culture is unreachable unless you specifically go pay for it or are lucky to find a collection on a torrent site.
If you live outside of the US and use streaming services you 100% still need torrents to get access to a lot of popular shows and movies you might randomly hear about.
Even content that is constantly marketer directly to me by ESPN is US only (ESPN plus) despite my Canadian geo. It’s annoying.
I want something simpler: to pay for a movie or show when I want to watch it. From the one spot (e.g. Google Play movies and it's ilk). Shouldn't be too hard. I don't understand why studios don't licence things to get a direct payment for them, instead forcing a subscription that I don't want and won't use.
Reliable recurring revenue is better for long term stability of a business. Joe Average on subscription is better for their overall "health" than the ups and downs of "no-one's buying this month because something amazing is coming out next month".
This is only possible in a world where nonsensical bullshit is rewarded with a big pile of money.
In a world we'd all want there would be ONE SERVICE on earth that has EVERYTHING. As long as they don't get that I'll be a pirate.
At least the big companies don't suffer from the loss of my money as a little band would do. That's why I still buy vinyl and visit concerts but I have no choice to do that with movies/series I'm afraid.
To the people who always argue for the "free market": Is this what you meant by "competition is good for the consumer"?
I wonder how many content providers see the popularity of old shows and think they can pull in the audience, without realising that a big part of the appeal is having all the shows in one place with one subscription?
> 'originals' that are beyond even the so-bad-it's-good category
Couldn't agree more. Besides a very few "tentpole" features, and a small number of standup comedy specials, that Netflix Originals logo up the top left may as well mean "do not watch". If I could exclude them at the UI level, I would. I pay to see top-range feature films and high quality productions, not an endless bargain bin of third-rate filler.
I suspect the "endgame" is that after all the studios have tried out their little walled garden plan and most have failed, they will band together and finally create some kind of unified system, same as the RIAA has done. It'll probably take a good few years, though.
I think this is one reason Disney is going to make money hand over fist. Almost all of their shows and movies are at least OK and often very good. You won’t have to wade through heaps of trash looking for something decent.
I find myself watching less and less content, which is not available on Netflix. I even gradually dropped some tv-series I liked, because they were not on Netflix. Everything else (pirated or not) just seems so clumsy in comparison.
Goodreads is the most flagrant violator of most, if not all, of these rules. Searching for a book, author or a user is a PITA, and has been that way for a long, long time.
The best autocompletion I've seen is on Wikipedia - no frills, and extremely accurate. If only all services were like this.
Now I'm planning to read V for Vendetta, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, and some more. I've finally come around to comics as an art form, and I couldn't be happier!