> If you doubt this, ask yourself the work of which contemporary novelist, poet, composer, or painter you are eagerly awaiting. I’ll pause here a moment while you fail to find any.
I don't want to use the term "gatekeeping" here, but this type of posture on a topic as subjective as personal preferences is quite odd. While the author thinks they're "making a pause while you fail to find any", I'm here coming up with examples of contemporary creators that I can't wait for them to release their new stuff. (In painting, writing, and cinema).
I don't consider we're in a "low state" as described, but I think we may be coming at this from different definitions about what low state means.
"But just now the novel of every century is in search of readers. For more than two centuries the leading literary genre, the novel at the moment seems to have a dim future. No other literary form engages so directly with human nature, none at its best rises above all other modes of thought in its engagement with humanity in all its variety, and none deals so deeply with the truths of the heart. The significance of its loss would be inestimable."
And get off my lawn.
There are plenty of new novels. Visit a bookstore. Most of them will be forgotten, but some will be read a century from now. Novels face more competition from other forms of entertainment than they used to.
But they still sell in volume. It's not like books of poetry.
Young adult novels have become much better over the last decade or two. Teenagers are willing to read multiple volume novels now. That wasn't the case before Twilight and Harry Potter. Yes, there have been multiple volume young adult series for a century, such as "Nancy Drew and the ...". But they were pretty bad.
Knockoffs are a problem. About fifteen years ago, "Teen Paranormal Romance" filled six bookcases at Barnes and Noble. That didn't include the vampire content in Romance, Fantasy, and Best Sellers. I remarked to one of the store staff goths that if they shelved all the vampire books together, they'd be half the sales floor. She said the Hunger Games knockoffs were starting to come in and would be pushing out the Twilight knockoffs. She was right.
> "America's global brain drain might have been the single most effective strategy"
The website has a section titled "Bring your AI Skills to the U.S.", and then a button with this label "Learn about pathways to work in the U.S.".
This is very encouraging. And it reminded me of Eric Schmidt's recommendation on this topic [1], which was published on the final report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence:
Chapter 10. Page 178:
"Nations that can successfully attract and retain highly skilled individuals gain strategic and economic advantages over competitors." [...] "Unfortunately, international students in the United States are increasingly choosing to study in other countries or return home. One reason is the growing backlog of green card petitions. Indian immigrants face a particularly long wait. Many will spend decades on constrictive work visas waiting to receive their green cards, hindering both the technology sector’s ability to recruit talent and Indian immigrants’ quality of life."
The report recommends to focus on building better Immigration Policies. Maybe this .gov initiative listened to the advice from the report.
Yea I think it's more that Schmidt believes that AI is the force-multiplier of any existing system of power in the world today, and whatever it takes the US needs to continue to fuel it.
But he also seems to understand the labor/intelligence relationship to get there better than anyone else. I really missed him when he left Google, Sundar is a pail shadow.
I find that very interesting given Eric Schmidt took citizenship in Cyprus, and to my knowledge, not because he has any prior tie to that country. If he really believed in the U.S. then he shouldn’t be getting late-in-life (post-billionaire) citizenship elsewhere.
Certainly. In our case we were simply consolidating finances, so we got a joint HYSA. The bank account we used was with UFB Direct which is a neobank backed by Axos Bank. They've got the usual FDIC coverage and stuff. The reasons I went with them:
1. 5.25% interest rate
2. Can pay cheques out of the HYSA (some x times / month I think, but it didn't matter because my target was 1 time).
Effectively, that means I don't need to pay rent out of a different account. I can leave the HYSA in place and set my rent cheques to go out of there. This means I can run pretty lean on my other accounts. I only have to cover the credit card bills.
The interest rates they're providing also make total sense considering current rates: they have to be rolling short-term treasuries and skimming the spread. Seems fine to me for a HYSA.
TL;DR: One blog post I wrote had a big impact on me getting a job opportunity in the US.
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I grew up and lived in México most of my life.
Back in 2014 I was a consultant working in Accenture México. One weekend I wrote a UX analysis of the "Settings" screen in mobile platforms, and I posted it on my personal site. (Long lost, but reposted [here](https://72mena.com/the-ux-of-mobile-settings/)).
I don't know how it happened, but after a few weeks of no traction, it suddenly got a ton of traffic and my site went down.
One year later I was interviewing for a contractor role that required relocation to the US. My last interviewer (and decision maker) mentioned to me something along these lines: "hey, I saw your name and it reminded me about your "UX of Mobile Settings" article, I remember reading it and I liked a lot the analysis you did."
I suspect this article (with all its flaws and broken English) had a big impact on me getting the UX position I was applying for, which made me relocate to the US.
From an engineering perspective, the entire project is genuinely useful:
It serves as a fantastic example of applied ingenuity. It's inspiring in fun ways, especially for the younger audience. It shows the value of prototyping, craftsmanship, DIY skills, and not taking things too seriously (key for trying new things).
Not to make this sound too grandiose, but I'm confident some children watching this guy will become engineers because they were inspired to build stuff. It is educational, and thinking "I'd love to see him put this much effort into something genuinely useful" seems to be missing the point on how useful this type of content is.
Question related to this:
Is there a tool out there that let's you spin a Medium-like text editor for your personal site? Curious to hear about HN's recommendation about whether a tool like this exists or if someone has considered building one.
> Once they figure out how to animate this stuff, it puts the movie industry out of business.
I'm also intrigued about the potential of AI-generated animation.
However, I don't think the industry would be "out of business", but rather they would simply evolve into a new phase. The established movie industry will most likely have access to the most expensive and performant AI models to make short and long form animations, which would be time and cost prohibiting for hobbyists.
Agree, the movie industry won't be out of business overnight.
Like IBM, the rumors of "company X" demise are greatly exaggerated, and this tech is far from mature. But my god at first I thought this was real. The clock is now ticking, fast forward several generations, and what are we dealing with here?
To me this is a Napster moment. If your job is related to the movie making industry at all, you should be sitting up and taking notice. The industry is a massive/slow behemoth that is a ripe target for this kind of disruption. What's the point of building sets once these tools become photorealistic? Yes we're still in the Uncanny Valley, but that's just a matter of time to solve these kinds of problems (deepfakes anyone?).
CGI killed the traditional animation industry. Even Disney shuttered it's traditional animation department. I think we're looking at the same kind of disruption here on the live action side of things. Why have a studio lot at all ? Equipment rental, prop rental, stunt actors, logistics, food service, you name it. Talk about the end of brick and mortar.
My guess is it will look a lot like the music industry, which has essentially become all Marketing and Promotion, where the actual production of music has almost become an afterthought. The Marketing arms of the industry may be the only thing that survives the transition in some recognizable form.
There will always be a demand for "live action", just like traditional animation is still being done in some niche corners. [1] But that's the exception, not the rule. You'll continue to have enthusiasts using traditional methods for the sake of it. But I think the clock is now ticking. It may be in its primitive infancy, but add time and the tech stack will eventually mature.
Lately, more and more, I feel like I'm actually living in the future.
There won't be a sea of new young faces trying to break into a role anymore, or be an extra, or work on the stage crew, since they just won't be able to compete with the AI alternatives. Hollywood thrives on a human pyramid of desperately motivated individuals trying to get noticed and willing to do anything. This might shatter that base, and could have knock on consequences: agent-star exclusivity, entourages, glam mags, production crews. Celebrities will be the same ones we see today, the door for new talent is closing fast.
This. The trend has already started, tech like this will (eventually) accelerate the transition.
People don't go to movies to see movie stars anymore. They go to see Marvel characters. [1]
I think we're at the bookend of a transitional era for movies (and for many other things). Transition started with Napster, iPod, Netflix, etc. and ended with the "mainstreamization" of Marvel. Traditional movies are dead, what's left is something that really doesn't look anything like the movie industry I grew up with. Like other art forms (opera, theater, orchestras, etc) traditional movie story telling just isn't where it's at any more, the "masses" have moved on. The industry used to be full of passionate creative types. Now it's full of people working their butts off to get their name somewhere in the 20 minutes of credits at the end of a film, for the prestige of being able to tell their friends they work in the industry. It's a self-sustaining business at this point, full of nepotism, cronyism, and people happy just to stay employed doing whatever it is they do (digital work, setting up lights, renting equipment, managing the logistics).
I've asked my cinemaphile friends if they can name a big up and coming director? Who is the next Tarantino? No one has any real answer. At best I get JJ Abrams, who (at 56) is on the tail end of his career, and if anything he's a symptom of the problem (mom and dad worked in the business). It's a group of insiders churning out jobs for their kids and a steady stream of income. Hollywood is nothing more than a brand now.
Whatever the "future" is, it's here. More Marvel, less relevance.
Villeneuve! Bladerunner and Dune were both beautiful and highly stylized, and his work is enough to sell me on Cleopatra and Rama. Yes he's also in his 50s,but at least that means he's getting huge budgets to do what he wants now.
Wes Anderson is a similar story, though he's been doing it for longer because his films don't need as big a budget. Most people I know would go to see "the new Wes Anderson" sight unseen.
Although I haven't seen his earlier acclaimed work, Bong Joon-ho certainly does not seem to be at "the tail-end of his career".
I think the reason these directors are all in their 50s is that studios aren't willing to trust younger directors as much, but that just means there ARE up and coming directors in their 20s and 30s who are making low-budget short/art films, who have not yet found public appeal.
Expanding to TV series, Alex Hirsch is not technically a director but his name is a major stamp of quality assurance.
Edit: Ari Aster is 36. Jordan Peele is 43 but just beginning his directing career. Roger Eggers is 39. Damien Chazelle is 37. I'm using age here as a metric for being at an early point in their career.
I have no problems with Villeneuve... he's more than competent, definitely interesting. But (to me anyways) directors like this aren't the same league as the giants that came before them. I'd trust him enough not to mess up an interesting picture, but he's not really pushing the envelope as much as before. I'll take another Tarantino or Rodriguez, and I doubt we'll see the likes of Kubrick, Welles, Fellini, Tartovsky, Leone, etc. ever again. Heck I'd settle for another Spielberg, he may be a bit saccharin, but he has a killer instinct for the art based on his mastery every single aspect of filmmaking.
> I think the reason these directors are all in their 50s is that studios aren't willing to trust younger directors as much
That's sort of my point... Until recently, every generation had it's great young directors. Seems that is no longer the case. Now you have to play the studio game before they give you a film, and by the time they do you're such a predictable and "safe" player that you can't make (or don't want to make) an edgy / important / risk-taking statement-making kind of film.
Sort of like punk rock, it takes a young and angsty person to take the kind of risks needed to push the envelope in interesting or artistically important ways. Once a director grows up, has kids and hits middle age, well they get a bit more boring, and it comes across in the toned down films they deliver. Lucas and Ridley Scott come to mind as two very capable directors that have "matured" enough to see that what matters is popular appeal and profitability. They start out as artists and end up as producers.
> but that just means there ARE up and coming directors in their 20s and 30s who are making low-budget short/art films, who have not yet found public appeal.
Absolutely! A24 films come to mind of course. They are about all that remains of the old way of making movies. Guys like Ari Aster come to mind. The sad part is I doubt we'll ever get a "mainstream" picture out of him. Hollywood and the masses have moved on from this kind of storytelling. So the "old way" of doing things has been relegated into some niche corner of limited commercial appeal.
Honestly I'm not quite sure how A24 manages to stay in business. They take a lot of chances for the limited budgets they are working with. Not all of their films are great, but all of their misses are interesting. At the end of the day what matters are they making enough money to keep going?
I don't understand how is A24 delivering the kind of high quality pictures that they are, while studios like Band/Empire/FullMoon (which seem to be in the same league, same small/mid budget arena, also seem to be taking the same kind of risks that have limited commercial appeal) can't deliver anything beyond direct-to-video and MST3K quality films? I mean is A24 really profitable? Or is this a labor of love for them? If A24 was profitable you'd think someone in Hollywood would take notice.
Thank god for A24! Any film they produce is an automatic "goes on my watchlist".
Lastly, Jordan Peele is another name that comes to mind. I'm not quite sure how he's crossed over to more mainstream appeal, but I'm glad it's there, his films are great.
Anyhow my 2 cents, I understand this is all a matter of opinion.
To be fair both Kubrick and Tarkovsky probably felt dwarfed by the likes of Vertov, Eisenstein, or even Chaplin. Specifically in terms of pushing the envelope. These were different times with different envelopes.
Villeneuve innovates in a different space, maybe not as philosophical as Tartovsky, and not as symbolic as Fellini... but I don't think that language and that storytelling would work nowadays anyway. There is also Nolan with his very sophisticated world building. Yes it's all pretty mainstream, but so was Kubrick and Tarkovsky (at least in the USSR).
You mention Tarantino (which I personally don't like), but there are many lesser known directors from the 90s-2000s with a fantastic filmography. Kim Ki-Duk and Noel Gaspar come to mind. The world of cinema has not stalled, maybe we need to look outside of Hollywood more eagerly (but then again, neither Fellini nor Tarkovsky where Hollywood).
I love the interesting stuff coming out of South Korea. It's great to see foreign directors getting their due again.
I get why Tarantino divides people. He's sort of low brow, lowest common denominator cinema. But he loves spectacle, and he knows how to make things cinematic. In my mind, he's America's answer to Leone. Flashbacks and non linear storytelling, larger than life characters with larger than life conflicts, and use of music as a central part of the film experience. In many ways you could argue he's been copying Leone's style his entire career.
I miss Leone. We got so few films from him. But what films! No one other than Tarntino/Rodriguez (maybe Coen brothers) has really carried any of this kind of cinematic storytelling forward. Tarantino at his best has Leones sense of timing, subtle wit, conflict, and ability to suprise. But they miss most of the subtleties Leone brought, the subtext of humanity and tragedy hiding just below the surface of his films. Tarantino is simply spectacle, Leone was something greater.
I think perhaps your friends need to expand their circle of interest when it comes to film. The film industry is full brilliant up-and-comers with very distinct voices doing original works:
Ari Aster,
The Safdie Brothers,
Robert Eggers,
Daniels,
Greta Gerwig,
Rose Glass
I love this list... especially fond of Aster.. these are some great young directors, when given the opportunity they'll deliver something worth watching.
Notice there is a lot of overlap with A24 here.
As important as these voices are, they aren't "up and coming" directors in the classic sense. The studio system isn't interested in giving anyone here the chance to do something larger with more mainstream impact. These directors seem to be relegated to indie films, as Hollywood is no longer interested in risk taking.
To clarify: I'm not saying these aren't great directors, they are. I'm saying Hollywood doesn't want to work with this kind of talent, is no longer capable of developing this kind of talent, and wont take the kind of risks necessary to deliver the kinds of films they used to be able to using this kind of talent.
Spielberg and Tarantino are household names, because of the studio films they made. These other directors will likely never have that much mainstream appeal.
I suppose another thing that the people on my list have in common is that they're all writer/directors.
You could also say that most of them also fall into the category of "auteur" as well. Though that can be a little bit of a loaded term, so the individuals might reject that designation, even if they do embody it.
One director who does stand out as doing well-regarded indie stuff and now blockbuster films is Chloe Zhao. I haven't actually seen any of her films and couldn't comment on the content of her work, but she seems to check your criteria, if only on a surface level (nothing against Chloe).
What about Christopher Nolan? He seems to be winning all fronts as someone who is in bed with major studios, has wide critical acclaim, commercial success, and makes bold, creative movies. I guess he's not up-and-coming, though.
I like how this rule sounds, but am wondering whether you live in a high-cost area or not. Having two incomes at the level of the fast-food industry seems somewhat limiting, but this depends on where you live and how frugal you are.
In other comments I'm also noticing that having a mortgage is part of the need to stay in a high-paying job, so maybe renting can alleviate some of that pressure and be more flexible to adjust to live below your means?
Sure, I'm in WNY right now, planning to move to Knoxville or Memphis this year. Not super frugal in general, but I save about half my paycheck, wife invests most of hers. We have a house, two cars (only one of them is "nice"), and no kids. We own a house in the suburbs, bought it almost a year ago and have been fixing it up since.
Renting is pound-for-pound far more expensive than owning. We couldn't find an apartment we liked within our budget, so we bought a starter home instead. Owning also lets us recoup value when we sell. Buying an expensive house isn't something we want to do, so there's no need for us to pay $2500 a month for a McMansion with a quarter acre of golf course outside.
> Renting is pound-for-pound far more expensive than owning
This may very well be true for your scenario, so I'm not addressing that. I just want to poke at the myth that owning is always cheaper than renting. The real answer is: it depends on a lot of things.
There are costs associated with achieving a purchase (and later, a sale), there are costs associated with paying rent for extra cash (ie the mortgage), there are property taxes, and there are both time and money costs in maintenance work (that is obligatory for owners, a savings if you are renting).
If you move more often than once every 5 years, the math probably works out for it being cheaper to rent than to own. Committing to 5+ years decreases your flexibility to do things like: take higher-paying work, let go of real maintenance needs, move out of a bad neighborhood, etc.
Question about your last statement (I may need this clarification because English is not my first language). The statement might mean that he makes 10x more money than you, or that his output is 10x greater than yours (or both!). Based on the context of your reply, I think it means his output is 10x greater than yours. Is that correct?
One of my friends who worked there as an engineer made $500k cash and my other friend who works there makes $3M/yr. The latter is pretty high up, but those are serious numbers.
Netflix famously doesn't offer stock based compensation as part of their comp arrangements. They offer you a non-trivial cash salary though, that would easily be the sum of cash and equity at a similarly situated company. At least, that's my understanding, anyways.
Now, if they opted into the ESPP and stock options programs with a $1M TC, remember NFLX has 5-6X'd in the last 3 years. Someone who allocated a lot of their TC towards equity could easily be making $3M/yr today.
Probably not. The SWEs top out around $600K a year. $3M/yr is on the high end for a VP.
Unless they're counting stock gains. In which case that could easily be a SWE. Netflix lets you choose your stock/cash ratio in your comp, and if you went stock heavy you could be at $3M a year if you've been there a while.
Usually if you're making that much, you're fairly mid to late career. That means you probably have kids. Which means you probably want a house in an area with good schools.
That house will cost $2M at least if you want to be near the office, which means, assuming you can collect the $400,000 down payment, will leave with a mortgage/tax/insurance payment of about $9,000 a month, or $108,000 a year. The tax man will also take about 1/2 of your earnings.
That leaves you with less than $200,000 a year. You'll spend probably at least $50,000 on food, clothes, activities, etc for the kids and yourself.
So now you're saving $150,000 a year, if you're super frugal.
Let's assume you're ok with retiring out of the Bay Area. You'll still need a couple million to retire on. At that rate, it will still take you decade to do it.
All that being said, I have a friend who did exactly that. He worked as a senior/principal engineer for about a decade, was single the whole time, lived super frugal, and retired back to Kansas. I hear he just sits at home working on open source, going to the bars every night.
a large amount of this is taxed away. California's top tax bracket is an additional 13.3% per year. High cost of living here also. Although I generally agree with your sentiment, it may not work out to as much money as you think in the end.
Your confusion is understandable especially if English isn't your first language. That leads me to believe you don't live in the Bay Area. But no, the parent is really saying that the friend makes ten times more money. That's not literally true but Netflix is known for paying extremely generously. The tradeoff is that you give your lifeblood in return.
No, OP means that their friend at Netflix has a salary that is 10 times greater than their own. This is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but with the stock compensation, probably not much of an exaggeration.
> The stock program was based on options you purchased with a strike price 2x the current price.
Unless they changed it, the option price was 40% of the strike and the strike was the current price on purchase day, which was monthly. Gave a nice dollar cost average. But you could only put in up to 50% of your salary, plus you got an automatic 5% of your salary put into the stock program.
When I worked there the price was 20% of the strike and you could do 100% of your salary. I had friends who did 100% of their salary, which are now worth tens of millions.
I don't want to use the term "gatekeeping" here, but this type of posture on a topic as subjective as personal preferences is quite odd. While the author thinks they're "making a pause while you fail to find any", I'm here coming up with examples of contemporary creators that I can't wait for them to release their new stuff. (In painting, writing, and cinema).
I don't consider we're in a "low state" as described, but I think we may be coming at this from different definitions about what low state means.