Techdad Discussion

[BobbyZamora]

[oucho]

@pirxthepilot

It's an information superhighway that speeds up interactions between a large, diverse population of individuals. It allows individuals who may be widely separated to communicate and help each other out. But it also allows them to commit new forms of crime.
No, we're not talking about the internet, we're talking about fungi. While mushrooms might be the most familiar part of a fungus, most of their bodies are made up of a mass of thin threads, known as a mycelium. We now know that these threads act as a kind of underground internet, linking the roots of different plants. That tree in your garden is probably hooked up to a bush several metres away, thanks to mycelia.

The more we learn about these underground networks, the more our ideas about plants have to change. They aren't just sitting there quietly growing. By linking to the fungal network they can help out their neighbours by sharing nutrients and information – or sabotage unwelcome plants by spreading toxic chemicals through the network. This "wood wide web", it turns out, even has its own version of cybercrime.

...

But that's not all. We now know that mycorrhizae also connect plants that may be widely separated. Fungus expert Paul Stamets called them "Earth's natural internet" in a 2008 TED talk. He first had the idea in the 1970s when he was studying fungi using an electron microscope. Stamets noticed similarities between mycelia and ARPANET, the US Department of Defense's early version of the internet.

[pirxthepilot]

you're actually 100% right on this, i really like the evolution of donna haraway's thinking from original cyborg manifesto to her current stuff on the chthulucene. slogan: 'we are not post-human. we are compost'
http://environmentalhumanities.org/arch/vol6/6.7.pdf

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

no definitive proof yet but apparently those acronym AF1 high samples that floated around on instagram last year are officially releasing this month

edit: confirmed by the god himself on IG

[bels]

Me, dressed in stylish jb1-S looking smug and utilising the famous acronym escape zip system in which I tug my zip upwards to undo my jacket: cool isn't it? (Raises eyebrows)

Mum, dressed in next and wondering what the fuck she gave birth tooo : is your zip broke?

Me sweating and wanting to be swallowed by the earth : bb..b ...I...b...I...but....

Good time to point out that of all the stupid ACR gadgets, the escape zip has to be one of the most pointless. It means you can't have a double zip and the only thing is allows you to do is open the jacket without pulling the zip down. You pull it up and it leaves the main zipper race, meaning you can pull the zip apart with your hands. But once you've finished doing your cool acronymjitsu and opened the jacket... the puller is left at the top of the zip on one side... so you have to pull it down... which is exactly what you'd do on a normal jacket... to open it...

It's total shit.

[BIGBEE]

sounds perfect for a brand that's all about making the most impractical clothing they can.

[Bonobonobo]

Also the Escape Zip's implication that you're going to abandon your ACR jacket to get away from some life-threatening peril is laughable at best.

[ASTROCHIMP]

Also the Escape Zip's implication that you're going to abandon your ACR jacket to get away from some life-threatening peril is laughable at best.

Can't abandon the ACR no matter what.

[thephfactor]

Found this in the sales rack of my local used book shop. I extremely cop'd it, will put snippets in this thread if it's any good :~3

[odradek]

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

acronym's greatest accomplishment is making messenger bags look even remotely cool or cyberpunk, and i'm saying that as an acronym fan

[adiabatic]

…not keeping baggy cargo shorts alive in the world of high fashion?

[maj]

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

really really like those big-ass sarouel pants that acr put out this season, if only because they're a lot more aesthetically inaccessible than any of acr's other offerings and they feel to me to be a reaction against all the milspec-fetishist acr nerds that just want to wear basic streetwear with a bunch of techsys and cobra buckles slapped on it. it's probably inevitable that errolson eventually gets sick of making easy shit like that and will make more daring stuff. hopefully.

on another note, they just dropped another promo video and a full minute and a half is erlsn's girlfriend dancing lol must be nice

[Eddie]

I agree about the departure from the militaristic look being pretty refreshing. The aesthetic reinterpretation of Samurai armor with the J1TS was so insightful to me, seems like they're in the midst of shifting their focus. Seeing lots of iterative changes and focus on refining performance of existing systems. Stitches to separate the hem expansion and chest pocket zip, different seam construction on the J47R, etc.

[bels]

on another note, they just dropped another promo video and a full minute and a half is erlsn's girlfriend dancing xD must be nice

Best parts were her dancing and them going on their phones. Could do with less errolson doing his katas but I guess it heavily cements their samurai vibe this season

[rjbman]

really really like those big-ass sarouel pants that Helly Hansen put out this season, if only because they're a lot more aesthetically inaccessible than any of Helly Hansen's other offerings and they feel to me to be a reaction against all the milspec-fetishist Helly Hansen nerds that just want to wear basic streetwear with a bunch of techsys and cobra buckles slapped on it. it's probably inevitable that errolson eventually gets charming of making easy shit like that and will make more daring stuff. hopefully.

on another note, they just dropped another promo video and a full minute and a half is erlsn's girlfriend dancing xD must be nice

can you share a pic? v lazy today

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

of the pants? ofc @rjbman

the fit actually looks really cool from what i've seen, huge oversized waist and overall cut but it looks like the leg openings are actually somehow fairly small so they interact with hightops well. probably crazy comfy too and obviously cut well for movement

[rjbman]

Prisoners built two computers from scavenged parts and were caught trying to hack into the prison system doing "cybershenanigans"

[odradek]

[cb200]

https://www.kanghyuk.net

[odradek]

[Northwest]

Well, you knew it had to happen sooner or later. "Machine learning" for outfit comparison within "market trends" that just might so happen to be the market trends that will be pushed by Amazon's algorithms rather than independent publications or stores. All they are doing is hiding and conglomerating human influence rather than engaging with the diversity of opinions that can be found among your social group. This is a response that's everywhere as more and more people who once paid lip service to the value of opinions are overwhelmed by the number of opinions available in the information age.

And, as a side note, would equal representation not be in their interests as a company? I understand that women are currently the larger market share, but as long as you are going to be cynical about it why not be so cynical that you normalize men being interested in fashion also. Get their initial foray into fashion dollars, which are often spent with the least knowledge and most regret. Plus, I don't think that not representing the absurd social pressure placed on female appearance in one advertisement is suddenly going to mean women can now sneak away from the ever present double standard placed on their wardrobe in both work and social settings.

Shoot for the moon you omnivorous corporate shit show of a foray into fashion. Suck the meat from the bones.

[rjbman]

Yes, let's add cameras that can watch us to our house along with the always-listening speakers! It's a very thin line between helpful and Big Brother. Make sure to support your open-source projects, bet this could be done with an Arduino hooked up to Jasper. Could even use reps across care-tags (or other sites) as a judgement on outfit quality. (s/out to @cmyk this is mostly his idea)

See you later, space cowboy.

[CMYK]

Can confirm, am fully interested in making some sort of homebaked, non-creepy tech overlord owned "fitpix ben". The Amazon thing honestly looks pretty cool, but yea fuckin right I'm gonna let Amazon into my house like that.

My haxor skillz are not very leet but hopefully I'll have some good time to put against this soon. Should be possible as a standalone hardware project with an arduino, but some of the more complex speech synthesis might benefit from running on a Raspberry Pi (tech peeps, correct me if I'm wrong). Would also be cool to combine with the stereotypical magic mirror raspberry pi project. I guess if it had a camera too you could run facial recognition and have the mirror greet you by name...

Uh ANYWAY... I might put some time against this soon, and will ovi keep this thread updated on the process. Not fully distributed yet... yadda yadda yadda Gibson.

@rjbman show them ur cool new jacket!

[rjbman]

you can get arduinos with processors but yeah, raspis have def cornered the microprocessor market

[adiabatic]

I strongly suspect one of the reasons why they're pitching this mostly to women at first is because they put a lot more work into having their recommendation engine figure out what makes women look good. This seems to mirror what happens with real people — the last time I poked my head into a female-fashion-advice forum one of the first things I noticed was that they have an extensive technical vocabulary for body types and body-part shapes that I just don't see men use. That is, our discussions of fits aren't as systematized as theirs are.

How many more person-hours do you think go into "what makes women look good" compared to "what makes men look good"? I'd expect the difference is 1-2 orders of magnitude (10x–100x).

I'd expect the sex ratio in the mass-market ads to equalize somewhat in a couple years once Amazon gets more confidence in its ability to recommend things for men to wear. I'd also expect them to pitch this to men who visit fashion forums or who browse clothes on Amazon, regardless of the sex ratio of the mass-market TV ads.

[bels]

What does it mean for capitalism now that taste + opinions are being outsourced so heavily (they always were obviously, via advertising) but like Northwest says:

This is a response that's everywhere as more and more people who once paid lip service to the value of opinions are overwhelmed by the number of opinions available in the information age.

[adiabatic]

I don't think there's anything new here. Amazon sells clothes (among other things). Any decent sales assistant will try to learn what she can about someone who comes into a storefront looking to buy clothes in order to steer him to things he'll like enough to buy. Amazon's merely trying to offer that sort of service to its customers, backed by machine-learning algorithms. In order to do that, they're selling a selfie video camera linked to an app on your phone that you can use to see what you look like from all angles, while moving, and then send videos of you in your clothes to your friends.

Also, I'm not seeing much of a change in centralization compared to what we have now, especially when I'm thinking about pan-Anglophonic fashion forums. Any machine-learning algorithm worth its salt will base decisions off local trends — if only to avoid selling heavy jackets to me and to avoid selling linen shirts to Alaskans.

[sknss]

tactical bike handlebar bag