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> But find a voice that works for whoever is presenting

That's much much easier said than done. Sometimes the very rehearsed voice is as good as you're going to get, without the person being a professional lecturer.

> or get different presenters

It seems as though Apple is prioritizing having actual team leaders speaking about the products instead of just having hired actors do it. I'm perfectly happy with this.


So what are you saying? Because there are cheaper earbuds made by someone else with this feature, Apple _shouldn't_ add it to their earbuds? I'm not sure why that would be the case.

Where exactly do I say "Apple _shouldn't_ add it to their earbuds"?

I'm saying as an "incentive" to get to the new version of airpods 5, it's a lame one, since the feature existed in all kinds of cheaper earbuds for years, and Apple should have added it in already, not leave it for the Pro models all this time.


You seem to be saying contradictory things. You're saying it's not a good incentive, but you're also saying Apple should have added it already. Why should they have already added it if it's not a good incentive? Why should they add it now if it's not a good incentive?

My argument is that adding it makes their product better, so they should add it. And if they add something that makes their product better, that's an incentive to buy it.


Why is that area non-trivial? Do you use anything that has important content in the very corners? I've never seen anything that has important content in the areas this cuts off. I'm really curious about your use of corners!

It makes this area unusable if you want to show a page in a book reader, for example. Or a movie/video.

I also like to spectate games on Twitch/Youtube, and corners are often used for important stats.


The corners aren't rounded enough to impact those things though.

They absolutely are. Or they make things uncomfortably cramped, e.g.: https://www.apple.com/v/iphone-duo/a/images/overview/product...

You can look at other examples of controls that are way too close to the edge because they need to work around the bloated corners.


I don't think I agree that anything's cramped in the photo you linked to. If you were attempting to point out down at the bottom where it says "Size" that's not a fixed control. That's a webpage, and that's scrollable content on the screen. And if you were attempting to point out the little orange circle in the top-right corner, it's closer to the edge than other things, sure, but that very much looks like it was intentionally put there, not like they put it there because they had nowhere else for it. I've looked at other photos too and haven't seen things that are "way too close to edge", unless it's scrollable content that by its very nature goes right the edge when scrolling (or any phone that doesn't have a software bezel, mind you, not just this one).

It's all over the place. E.g.: https://www.apple.com/v/iphone-duo/a/images/overview/highlig... - the bottom left corner, or the search icon here: https://www.apple.com/v/iphone-duo/a/images/overview/product... , https://www.apple.com/v/iphone-duo/a/images/overview/shared-... and so on.

Of course, some of it is just the usual Apple stupidity and ineptness in the UI design (that infected the whole industry): https://www.apple.com/v/iphone-duo/a/images/overview/shared-...

But rounded corners certainly did not help.


I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

And I'll admit that there's chance I'd notice what you're talking about if I saw/used it in person instead of relying on promotional photos.


Ignoring your other criticism and focusing just on one: How do you justify your claim that it arrived too late? What have people moved onto past foldable phones, in your view?

In case you haven't seen it, Imitone's patent is US20170098112A1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170098112A1/en). This one's from 2017 and is still active, and it's for a periodicity analysis system. Hopefully it's not directly relevant to your synth.

That patent is about a particular way of implementing a low-latency pitch tracking algorithm. My tool uses a different pitch tracking algorithm based on zero crossings. It's much simpler and far from novel.

A big difference is that Imitone works well with singing, whereas my algorithm only does a good job with whistling. On the other hand, my algorithm is lower latency when given a whistle as input.


The raid being due solely to music copyright infringement is really the most likely situation. There's no need to imply it was anything else.

For example, in 2009 I worked at a record store that got raided due to such claims. The RIAA's informant claimed he had seen people selling hidden bootlegs, which absolutely wasn't happening, and that was all they needed to have cops raid the store, arrest several people and cart off boxes of not-bootlegged, sold-by-major-CD-distributors CDs. Court dates followed and the case was eventually dismissed (or settled due to being more convenient than continuing the case? I can't remember), but it still took time, money, and lawyers. And this was in 2009, when the recording industry wield less power than in 2001.

(I was running late for work that day or else I would have ended up arrested too, since I was one of the managers scheduled then. Thank god I was running late!)


As a procrastinator, I applaud you.

Tomorrow.


Was it even possible to register just a second level .name domain name? It sounds like it wasn't, so therefore no one would be using john-doe.name and there'd be no ambiguity.


It was initially not possible, then later opened up, though a large collection of known surnames and personal names are reserved and cannot be registered as 2LDs. As far as I know the list of reserved names is unavailable, but you can run a whois query on any one of them to see it is reserved. E.g. check whois baxter.name and you get a response saying, "Not available for second level registration. Third level registrations may be available on this shared name."

I have the .name zone file and can confirm that no records for baxter.name appear therein, so it is not reserved only because a 3LD registration has ever taken place, it is reserved proactively just in case someone with that surname might want to register a 3LD under it.


Not at the very beginning, but then it became possible.


Yes it has been. I have had a second level .name for 20 years.


It was, I have one.


Might be dating myself by not being up to date on the latest slang or abbreviations, but what is "sovl"?


It's largely 4chan "look what they took from you" cultural panic newspeak, either ironically or unironically.

"sovl" has been variously used to describe LaserDisc, summer camp, bench seat trucks and the McRib.


It's used to describe things that have soul.


Surely there must be more to it than that? At least some sort of connotation that "soul" lacks? Otherwise why use "sovl" instead of "soul"?


soul but using the roman v, I think. I've seen it before with cvlt that way


Minecraft was very fun and was selling like hotcakes when it had "no tutorial to speak of, no on-ramps for new players". Even nowadays there's no tutorial as far as I know and much of how to play is left to discovery. The achievements tree is a bit of a guide, just by telling you some of the things that are possible, but it sure doesn't tell you how to do anything.

I think having an official tutorial or an on-ramp for new players is not a requirement for a good game. In a broader sense of the word "game", a game is separate from a tutorial, so a good game can exist without a tutorial. Chess has no official tutorial or on ramp for new players, and yet it's widely considered to be one of the greatest games.


As soon as I bought Minecraft I opened the Wiki and used that to figure out how to craft stuff.

It was the first mainstream Wiki-based game. Now, every game does it that way.


>It was the first mainstream Wiki-based game. Now, every game does it that way.

the wow wiki was from 04, the minecraft wiki is from 09.

... and wow was very documentation based for people pre-quest-helpers.


That's impressive. I thought the NetHack wiki would be older, but it dates to 2005, although I suspect there was an earlier version somewhere else.


You cannot be serious! That comparison is a joke. There's worlds between the complexity of Minecraft and DF.


How would you suggest someone make a good tutorial for DF that doesn't leave the player exhausted by the time they start a new game?

That's my core complaint w/ strategy games. By the time I'm done with the tutorial i have to do other things only to forget everything I learned the next time I get to sit down with it.

At best "hints" or a glossary/help menu is the best way imo.


Several people have given the opinion in this thread that DF is basically immune to having a tutorial; I am trying to figure out why. I don't see a tutorial as an end-to-end blueprint of everything the game is capable of. It's just a series of info, hints, and follow-along instructions, possibly with railroaded / simplified UI. I mean, the first time I booted up DF with no context circa 2013, it took me a few minutes to figure out that we're seeing a top-down view. I certainly would have appreciated a hint or a tutorial (though I do not necessarily fault the game for not having one; it's _not_ a game that is aimed at onboarding heaps of fresh newbies by the truckload each week).


Why you ask me that?


Because this is a discussion about tutorials and on-ramps to new players, and their necessity in games, specifically in Dwarf Fortress.


He changed the topic with his questions and you fell for his cheap trick. Hahaha


Regardless of the difference in complexity, I think the fact that it became the bestselling videogame of all time despite the fact that it essentially "has no tutorial to speak of, no on-ramps for new players" makes it a valid example for showing why tutorials and on-ramps for new players are not as important as the comment I replied to made it sound.

If you disagree, I'd like to hear your thoughts on where you think the threshold in complexity is when games should start including a tutorial and/or on-ramps for new players.


I don't know where the threshold is, but the comparison lacks in the same way that a coloring book doesn't need a tutorial, but a blank paper that has HANGMAN written on it does need one or people don't know how to play it.

You can't say because minecraft doesn't have a tutorial, dwarf fortress doesn't need one either. That's just retarded


Unlike dwarf fortress, minecraft is fun and engaging from minute zero, and exposes its systems to you naturally over time. Terrible comparison.


Minecraft's early game is relatively boring. Empty busywork like punching trees, village raids and strip mining are vestigial gameplay loops that neither Mojang nor Microsoft had the confidence to fix.

I'd agree that they're a bad comparison though. Despite Notch's inspiration from DF, Minecraft has worse bosses, biomes, trading, mining, diplomacy, cooking, innkeeping and NPCs.


Back in my day, villages weren't even in the game. My highschool classmates and I still found something compelling about it.


I had a good number of hours in Minecraft Classic's browser version, mostly in online servers though. Solo wasn't much fun.

Modern Minecraft is still not much of an appeal to me without mods. I'm happy to see more block games like Vintage Story push the medium forward while Microsoft... wraps up post-production on A Minecraft Movie: Squared, I guess?


It depends what you mean by "early game." The first night cycle happens within minutes of starting and it's very interesting.


It also has effectively zero physics. I still remember being annoyed at how water worked in Minecraft when playing with my kid, and the fact that trees don't collapse if you cut 'em down.

(Yes, yes, mods exist.)


Yeah, I think this actually supports the idea that Dwarf Fortress is needlessly bad at onboarding players. Every time I try to get into it, I end up confused by why people enjoy it and unable to figure out how to play it. Whereas with Minecraft, exploring how to play it was actually fun, with Dwarf Fortress, it felt frustrating and unnecessarily obscure.


That's because the UX/UI is utterly awful. It's cargo cult: the game. (And BTW my complaints have nothing to do with the controls. The actual UX is just... not thought out at all).


> minecraft is fun and engaging

It depends, for me it is boring and has pretty dim graphics. I wanted to love it, but it is not fun. It looks like a Sims game, it lacks what e.g. factorio has, that "spark".

DF sounds like it might have that "spark", but I'm afraid to touch it.


Even though I'm a big fan of the game and have been playing it for over a decade now, "fun and engaging from minute zero" is not how I'd describe it. I've seen a number of people (both kids and adults) become frustrated with it almost immediately, and that's with someone experienced nearby to answer questions and let them know what they can do. Without such guidance, they'd definitely have quit and never played it again.


I think the old adage from film industry applies, in that you shouldn't underestimate your audience.


I think the fact that "thick" can mean "dim-witted" is proof that the author did not in fact choose their words carefully.


I think it's made obvious that "thick" can mean many different things. Personally, I've never heard "thick" to mean "dimwitted" or it ever used as such.


The full term is "thickheaded" but it can be abbreviated, as in "He's a bit thick, isn't he?"


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