Infinite Regress

The new Apple Vision Pro immersive video is fine

Both Ben Thompson and Jason Snell had reservations about Apple’s only immersive video to come out since Vision Pro came out. It is a 5-minute highlight reel of the Major League Soccer Cup and after seeing it myself I kind of disagree with both of them. The video is fine!

There are some limitations of the technology: you can’t have the camera panning around the pitch so you have to be in a fixed position, and a soccer pitch is so vast that there is no way to watch a game from the same spot while being close to the action, while at the same time being close to the action is the whole point of immersion. So, to square that circle Apple, or whomever they chose to produce the video, opted to cut to the most interesting bits of action from the most interesting spots.

I don’t know how much soccer Snell, Thompson and other Apple commentators have seen in their lives but I would wager that it’s not a lot. I am far from being a super-fan, but I’ve seen enough games to know where to look and the cuts in the video were fine — for those who know the game. Moving from spot to spot was logical and it was clear which games you were watching.

But what did Apple intend with this? To have an immersive video for the fans? Or was it a tech demo? Or maybe a vehicle to get more Apple whales — and let’s face it if you own an AVP you are an Apple whale no matter what you tell yourself — to get into MLS? They’re three different things with different tradeoffs and it seems like they went for the fans here first, but how many of them are there who also have a Vision Pro?

Now with basketball you actually can be close to the action and have a good overview of the game, and this is where everyone, fan or not, would probably prefer a single court-side position over quick cuts. So I hope Adam Silver is working on that. I don’t know or watch baseball, but I assume it’s somewhere in between basketball and soccer. At the only baseball game I ever watched I could clearly see every part of the field, I just didn’t know what was going on or where I should look.

The optimal version for every sport would of course be to have a choice between several spots around the court, pitch or field and I do hope we’ll get that for some of the upcoming NBA playoff games. I already have a League Pass and would happily pay extra for the experience.

📺 3 Body Problem

📺 3 Body Problem (The Netflix version) was a great introduction to the topic for my non-science-fiction-reading spouse, but of course couldn’t even begin to approach the depth of the original. Some unordered observations:

The first season of the show encompasses the entire first book and a part of the second. I didn’t mind that as much as I thought I would, though huge chunks of the parts I liked were cut out.
The plot had more handwaving then I remembered from the book, which I believe was the result of the above cutting but I’ll have to re-read the books to be certain.
The signature blandness of Netflix shows works in its favor for the VR scenes and is muted in “the real world” for a net positive effect.
Several key (Chinese) characters from the book were combined and re-sliced into an unlikely team of five Oxford buddies who have an oversized role in the future of humanity. I hope that’s the worst we see of the show runners' interventions.
I liked the intro and loved Ramin Djawadi’s theme song but Netflix decided to show the whole thing only in the first episode and cut it down to 2 seconds in all the subsequent ones. Thumbs down for that.
The first season was the easy one. I hope technology catches up to make Death’s End feasible to film.

April 1, 2024

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April is here, and so starts the season of family travel! Two years ago this month we visited Epcot for spring break, saw this plush toy and realized that between the name and the September birthday Doraemon closely resembles a junior member of our family.

Doraemon plush toy in a museum case. Text next to it lists a September 3rd, 2112 birthday.

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Some questions about biotech that Alex Telford finds interesting. The last one was my favorite.

This is from Alex’s blog. He also has a newsletter which doesn’t overlap, so best to follow both.

March 31, 2024

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You can view an essay as you would an organism. There is the skeleton — a through-line going from paragraph to paragraph that forms a coherent message. Then there is the meat — mostly facts, one would hope, and at least one original opinion. And of course the connective tissue — turns of phrase and flourishes of style that bring it all together.

LLMs are good — occasionally brilliant — at this last component and serviceable if a bit pedestrian at the first, but the meat is all on you. (ᔥThis day’s portion)

March 30, 2024

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We finally got tho see The Great Zucchini of The Peekaboo Paradox fame (first mentioned here) in action. He was indeed as marvelous as they say. If toddlers were automatons he’d be the Master Engineer, knowing exactly what button to push to get the desired reaction — be it wonder, awe or delight.

March 29, 2024

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From McSweeney’s SELECTIONS FROM H.P. LOVECRAFT’S BRIEF TENURE AS A WHITMAN’S SAMPLER COPYWRITER:

Chocolate Cherry Cordial: You must not think me mad when I tell you what I found below the thin shell of chocolate used to disguise this bonbon’s true face. Yes! Hidden beneath its rich exterior is a hideously moist cherry cordial! What deranged architect could have engineered this non-Euclidean aberration? I dare not speculate.

Toffee Nugget: Few men dare ask the question, “What is toffee, exactly?” All those who have investigated this substance are now either dead or insane.

There are others as well and they are all outstanding. (ᔥAlex Wiltshire in a footnote of a rather excellent blog post which I don’t want to spoil here but is also to do with Lovecraft)

April 3, 2024