Err... im not sure everyone in this thread is getting the joke?

Was it? It was fine -- that thing you throw on because you've watched most of everything else that fills that kind of derivative political action conspiracy thriller. Not particularly intelligent, not particularly funny, a loose enough plot that you can be paying attention once every 5 minutes and get by. Some folks get shot. There's a conspiracy ooooOOOOoooh.

Maybe that's what defines good these days, when content is just a glut of mediocrity.

I was shocked it was up top the list in terms of 'quality,' but I watched it because, it was there... So, I guess that explains it?

The Recruit (similar vein) was a superior show in terms of quality. Recommend that if you need a quick fix.

Can you elaborate on the math here? (I believe you, I just want to understand the simulation parameters better).

You may want to check out tildes.net -- great community, totally text focused experience. I find that tildes complements lemmy well, and end up on both (in addition to a few other sites) to get a well rounded aggregation/discussion experience.

Pretty sure Elon was first to the key, and the rest have followed suit.

In seriousness, though, the primary driver is the VC tap slowing down significantly and forcing long term business strategy to lean much harder into its existing opportunities vs. planning for periodic cash infusion from investors. A lot of these businesses never had to set themselves up for success in the absence of that capital, and it's led to bad practices and product strategies.

I'm not sure I understand why intent matters (barring accidents, I suppose)?

Who cares what the intent was if guns were involved and people were hurt or died?

If a person is suffering from schizophrenia and thinks they are holding a magic wand, but actually shoot up a mall, they don't have intent but the gun violence still resulted in death. Would that not be a mass shooting in your intent-based definition?

Anything related to hamsters and/or the smell of elderberries.

Look...

Papers, please. This was dystopian but it still felt like it captured the banality of some of communism's negative side rather than just creating moustache twirling villains.

I'm not sure what kind of role you had in the industry, but I'm not sure what you're saying is entirely accurate... although there are some bits in there I agree with:

Lots of programmers and artists don't really care about the final game, they only care about their little part.

Accurate. And that's ok. A programmer whose job it is to optimize the physics of bullet ricochet against thirteen different kind of materials can go really deep on that, and they don't need to (or have time to) zoom out and care about the entire game. That's fine. They have a job that is often highly specialized, has been given to them by production and they have to deliver on time and at quality. Why is that a problem? You use the corrolary of film, and nobody cares if the gaffer understands the subtext of the Act 3 arc.... it's not their job.

Game designers and UX designers are often clueless and lacking in gaming experience. Some of the mistakes they make could be avoided by asking literaly anyone who play games.

Which one? A game designer lacking in gaming experience likely wouldn't get hired anywhere that has an ounce of standard. A UX designer without gaming experience might get hired, but UX is about communication, intuition and flow. A UX designer who worked on surgical software tooling could still be an effective member of a game dev team if their fundamentals are strong.

Investors and publishers often know very little to almost nothing about gameplay and technology and will rely purely on aesthetic and story.

Again, which one? Investors probably don't know much about the specifics of gameplay or game design because they don't need to, they need to understand ROI, a studio's ability to deliver on time, at budget and quality, and the likely total obtainable market based on genre and fit.

Publishers -- depending on whether you are talking about mobile or console/box model -- will usually be intimately familiar with how to position a product for market, what KPIs (key performance indicators) to target and how to optimize within the available budget.

This is why you have some indie devs kicking big studio butts with sometime less than 1% the ressources.

This has happened. I'm not sure it's an actual trend. There are lots of misses in the game industry. Making successful products is hard -- it's hard at the indie level, it's hard at the AAA level. I would estimate there are a thousand failed Indies for every one you call out as 'kicking a big studio's butt.' Lots of failed AAA titles too. It's just how it goes.

The same, by the way, is true of film, TV, books and music. A lot of misses go into making a hit. Cultural products are hard to make, and nobody has the formula for success. Most teams try, fail, then try again. Sometimes, they succeed.

Can definitely blame them... Several of the famines in their 'empire' were either engineered, caused through incompetence or arrogance, or ignored when preventable.

Ref: Any of bengal's several famines under British rule, frankly even after once you take Churchill into account.

Your explaining the difference but not explaining why it makes a difference.

To matters of gun regulation, of safety in public spaces, of trauma to the affected, of national reputation (pick any one, or all, or something else) why does the intent change anything?

I'll start off: To have the intention to mass-murder purely for the sake of mass murder could be worth isolating and studying because that is a specific and extreme psychological problem worth solving. However, not all mass killings (with intent, for your sake) will have that psychological trigger at root. A religious or racial extremist, for example, is different than a disaffected teenager.

In this circumstance, intent is interesting if one is interested in those other things (psychological issues in American youth, the spread of religious and racial extremism), but ultimately are secondary issues when it comes to measuring gun violence. A mass stabbing by a racial extremist, or a teenager blowing up their high school with fertilizer would still need to be measured.

You are complaining about this organization's yardstick, but I don't hear a compelling alternative from you for this specific measure. You are saying they should be measuring a totally different thing, which is arguably irrelevant to this measure.

I was gonna come in here like 'Phone with a physical keyboard' but then I realized I had greatly misread the room...

I love this sentiment, and it can be true, but it also creates this idea that 'heart' alone has a high bearing on whether or not a product of any kind (book, film, statue, game) will be successful in its market ambitions.

It doesn't always correlate. I would argue if often doesn't correlate. Any indie film or game fest is chock full of projects with a ton of heart. Few of them graduate to success in the market place.

I'm not saying heart is a bad thing. It's a damn great thing. But strong business fundamentals are a good thing too. And sometimes, you also just need that extra bit of luck or uncontrollable virality too. To find success, you stack the deck with as many good plays as you can, and heart is one of them.

Success is not a recipe, and if it was, everybody would be doing it...

Not enough shoutouts for Shrinking here...

Ted Lasso is definitely holding up the platform, no disagreement, but there's some other great content there as well. Prehistoric Planet, too.

Current Agha Khan founded the Agha Khan Development Network which has done a fair amount of good in the developing world.

A strong second for Weawow. What a great weather app.

Also, in this simulation are the customers arriving in equally spaced intervals or is random arrival time within the bounds assumed?

Thanks! This article really clears up a lot of the details that help the simulation make sense.

Where is the line?

We interact with hundreds if not thousands of chemicals in every ordinary act of life. This is not just unavoidable, it's normal and natural, and has been going on for centuries if not millenia.

Are you proposing we stop cooking food (which results in chemical alterations of the underlying food). What about soap?

You have a point, but you've oversimplified it and taken it to an extreme where it's no longer a sound or balanced idea.