I had a thought a couple of days ago about the flood of emails and notifications that we enjoy the privilege of these days and came to the conclusion that, the value of the notification has a direct relationship with he amount of effort that went into creating it and the number of recipients it's destined for.
The effort that goes into a bulk email is divided by the number of recipients, and therefore its value to me rounds down to zero.
The value of an email that's manually written by management (or an assistant at the direction of management) that goes to all staff or my team is divided by the size of it's distribution list. Higher than zero value.
An email sent to me by a friend or colleague to ask a question or organise a meeting or get together has a high value because I'm the only recipient; it was specifically for me.
We need a method to rank these things, and then we need to personally choose some minimum floor at which notifications will 'ping' on our chosen device.
Normally not the University. NSF has a "Broader Impact" aspect of the grant applications (for as long as I can remember), and the DOE started to require a Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) plan during the Biden administration. Grant reviewers (typically people from the research community) are asked to take these into account for the review of the proposals.
I suspect the father mentioned above means the latter.
I do not know, but could imagine it's possible, that HBCUs might have their own requirements. But normally, universities do not regulate the proposal writing except for financial aspects (salary windows, IDC+fringe rates etc)
Regarding your last sentence- they also ensure that the grant proposals don't propose to do anything illegal, or that the university is not resourced to carry out.
To a degree, yes. But the grant management personnel are typically not researchers, so it's very hard for them to fully vet the main text of the proposal.
>> At my previous job if something went down on our site, it was a four alarm fire, war room, and all hands on deck to get it resolved or heads would roll. It was so dysfunctional to work somewhere when something broke or stopped working, nobody was in any hurry to fix it. Several times I just thought, "Is this what they mean when they say "the inmates are running the asylum""?
That's funny, because reading your first sentence I was thinking that was the dysfunctional place. I had a boss that would take problems from 0 to 10 in a flash, when the problem was really a 4 or 5, and it really was not a great environment.
Yea, nobody seems to be able to handle problems that require solid, but moderate, non-urgent effort. The problem is either a 0, where nobody even knows, let alone cares that it's happening or a 10, where it's treated as though everyone's chair is on fire and the company is losing $10M per millisecond.
"The dash display is almost completely digital—strangely, they left an extra analog speedometer and tachometer"
This is common even today, even on 100% digital screen dashboards, they'll have fake analog speedometer and tachometer displays. My 2023 Mazda CX5 is 50/50, half the dashboard is analog and half is digital. And I like it that way.
I’m never a fan of digital speedometers. I still have to think about how far a number is from my target. I’m sure if I used them long enough instead of only seeing them in rentals I’d get used to it.
One of the first things I learned during my electronics apprenticeship was that changes in a value are much more intuitive to read with an analog pointer (or a digital replication of one).
B&H (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/) is somewhat like this. Super popular business, but you can't order online on Saturdays. You can browse the website, just not place an order. Their physical store is also closed on Saturdays, and closes early on Fridays. They also close for days/weeks at a time for Jewish holidays.
For decades now, when I enter a bar or restaurant I turn down the volume of my hearing aid. Not because everything is too loud, but because it allows me to hear spoken speech much better. It doesn't work quite as well on modern digital hearing aids as it did on older analog, and I don't fully understand the mechanics of it, but it's what I do.
I for one would love to see us drop the fractional frame rates (29.97, etc). They're an archaic technical relic that cause trouble when working with timecode. At Sphere we debated standardizing on 30/60/120fps but ultimately decided it was a battle we didn't want to fight in an already complicated building.
FWIW, I truly hope 24fps never goes away entirely. Something about it is the key to making movie stars look like legends and regular people look like a stars, imo.
Yeah, agree on 24fps, and I don't think poster above you meant to remove 24, just those annoying NTSC/PAL rates that are close to integers, but aren't and are stupid as hell in an all-digital 2024.
I too have a similar subjective sense from being in and around film and video production over the last couple decades about that "cinematic something" look we associate with film. However, I'm not sure we're being accurate in thinking it's entirely the frame rate. Certainly that's part of it but I think it's entirely possible we'd view 30fps as every bit as good - if all other things were equal.
I think very few people (including myself) have ever seen a true side-by-side test where everything other than 24fps vs 30fps is perfectly identical. This is because correctly engineering such a head-to-head test is surprisingly difficult. In addition to having identical (or nearly identical) content shot in cinematic style, there are several other variables which each have to be technically correct. These include having the same signal chain from camera shutter speed, capture, compression, edit and grading to distribution format, playback device and display.
One thing that's especially tricky is whether the 24fps content ever goes through a 3:2 pulldown conversion (or similar). A significant amount of high-quality big-screen-film-sourced content originally made in 24fps goes through this sort of pulldown when viewed at home - even when the source is 24fps (whether Blu-ray, Netflix, Amazon or Apple). This pulldown process definitely imparts a look many associate with being "cinematic". Yet what we see in an actual theater is native 24fps so that's what we need to match for an accurate comparison.
Having recently upgraded my dedicated high-end home theater I was surprised that every device from playback source (streaming box or Blu-ray), AVR and 4k HDR projector - while being native 24f capable - defaulted to having the native 24f turned off in settings (thus silently applying a real-time 3:2 pulldown to the native 24f source). This was only discovered during detailed calibration using test signals. This means many people's impressions of 24fps may actually have been formed watching 24fps content automatically converted to 30fps with 3:2 pulldown by their source, AVR or display.
I suspect associating my subjective sense about "cinematic" with the label "24fps" may not only be erroneous but unfair to 30fps. Technically, 30fps has advantages in reducing motion judder on fast-moving objects and camera pans. A good example of this is the Hollywood-produced pre-digital 24fps Oliver Stone football movie "Any Given Sunday" which was shot entirely on film. They did the best they could with 24fps but some of the fast, ball-tracking camera pans are extremely distracting - something 30fps would have definitely helped if it had been an option back then. Nowadays, for the first time, the industry has some freedom to choose frame rates and I wonder if, done properly, 30fps might be a better option in which us film-look purists would lose nothing of what we love but gain in reducing some unavoidable artifacts from 24 frame's limitations.
Yeah, what qingcharles says. I personally can't say I've seen what's special about 24fps artistically, but it doesn't bother me from a technical perspective (as much).
As someone who lives more on the artistic side than the technical, but appreciates both, that’s honestly reassuring to hear.
And for what it’s worth: I think 24fps is partially why people of frankly similar talent and beauty look untouchable on film, but just like some dude on social media. My personal back-filled theory is that it’s something to do with the fact that 24fps creates more gaps for your imagination to fill in with whatever burns inside your personal subconscious — those “missing” frames let you “see” in Russell Crowe or whomever just a little bit more of yourself than is possible in gapless, real-time reality. Sort of like how old photos with lower resolution feel comforting and organic, because they’re cloudy like dreams, unlike the stark reality that can be achieved by modern lenses.
It would also somewhat explain why high FPS works better for things like sports (where most of the awe is that you’re watching real people do these amazing things) and video games (where the awe comes from actually embodying the figure on screen and existing in their full framerate surroundings).
I'm severely hearing impaired and enjoy going to dance classes - swing, salsa, etc. If I'm standing still, I can easily tune into the beat. But once I start moving, I quickly lose it on many songs; dance studios aren't known for having large sound systems with substantial bass. I don't know that this specific setup would fix anything -- it would need some way of syncing to the instructor's iPhone that is connected via bluetooth to the studio's little portable speaker. But it's a step in the right direction.
While on the topic, I can hear music but almost never understand lyrics; at best I might catch the key chorus phrase (example: the words "born in the USA" are literally the only words I understand in that song).
A few months ago I discovered the "karaoke" feature on Apple Music, in which it displays the lyrics in time with the music. This have been game changing for me. I'm catching up on decades worth of music where I never had any idea what the lyrics are (filthy, that's what they are. So many songs about sex!). It has made exercising on the treadmill, elliptical, etc actually enjoyable.
> A few months ago I discovered the "karaoke" feature on Apple Music, in which it displays the lyrics in time with the music.
JSYK Spotify has had this for years too, its just under the "View Lyrics" button but it does highlight the sentence/word karaoke style. It used to be a "spotify app" back in that genre of the service.
That doesn't surprise me too much. I never really used Spotify or any music app much in the past. This discovery was a convergence of things - switching from Android to iPhone, a renewed exercise routine, and most importantly a new iPhone and hearing aid combo that allowed the iPhone to stream directly to my hearing aid, removing the need for bulky headphones. Phone calls are also streamed directly to hearing aid. Game changing!
I had a Deaf friend who had dual cochlear implants about 10 years ago. I was blown away to learn they had Bluetooth at the time and she could beam music directly into her brain.
Guaranteed that marketers are salivating at the idea of eye tracking on apps and website. It's an amazing feature that absolutely needs to be gatekept.
I wonder if it'll use the same architecture as visionOS; where the vision tracking events and UI affordances are processed and composited out-of-process; with the app never seeing them.
That's probably how it'll go because it's the path of least resistance. A button will already have a listener for tap, so the OS translates the vision tracking into a "tap" and triggers the relevant code. There's no point telling the app about vision tracking because apps wouldn't already have a handler for that event. And for privacy reasons, there's no need to start now.
Though maybe it's different because back then, then meant someone I wanted to interact with was now available.
Today, a chat sound means someone I probably don't want to, but am required to, interact with is now available.