In the UK, the NHS website includes an excellent, regularly updated 'Behind the Headlines' section that scrutinises health stories reported in the press.
In fact the 'Behind the Headlines' site is a model of clear, factual, unfussy reporting - precisely what you won't find in the national UK press.
Sadly, the 'Behind the Headlines' site is probably far less read than the misleading newspaper stories it tries to debunk.
Looks like good work, but I'm thinking more of a rapid response system that will have something up within hours after "Gluten causes GMO in children" goes viral.
With the hope that the debunking can stop the growth before it's grown to full size.
It's a good idea. I suspect you will want this to be selectively applied though. Not that I know anything at all about your opinions or positions, but most people have holy cows they do not want questioned. Also, there is A LOT of BS being published these days. Very nearly all biomed papers can be torn apart and dismissed after a day or two because they contain the same statistical and logical errors over and over.
BBC Radio 4 has a show called "More or Less" I'd recomend to anyone interested in this topic. I remember an episode on the advise on drinking and how it's been a flip-flop sort of answer.
Ironically, today it's the national newspapers in the UK that play the role of the demagogue. Headlines that shriek at readers in hysterical tones. Foaming-at-the-mouth outrage deliberately manufactured to inflame public opinion. Lies, deceit, distortion - it's the stock in trade of newspapers both left and right (although our right wing press are particularly vicious and nasty). Honest, truthful reporting is barely to be seen.
This research is by the EBU (European Broadcasting Union).
Some interesting findings include:
- Overall, TV and radio are the most trusted sources of news in Europe (trust is highest in Nordic countries)
- The written press is least trusted in Southeast Europe and the United Kingdom
I'm from the UK and I'd agree with the general findings. The main TV and radio broadcasters in the UK do strive for accuracy and impartiality. They fall short at times and there is plenty of criticism levelled at them, but overall I do believe there is a commitment for the news to be accurate and informative.
In contrast, our national newspapers (both tabloid and broadsheet) have no commitment to accurate reporting. Instead, we have the most vicious, self-serving, partisan, deceitful, shrill, hysterical, nasty, racist, repulsive, ethics and integrity-free press in the whole of Europe. It's quite baffling that there is such a sharp contrast between TV and radio news and the anything-goes attitude of the national press.
A bit of a digression, but...I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.
First, you have the distracting mismatch between the actor's mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue.
Second, the way an actor speaks in their native language is an intrinsic part of their performance. A dubbed performance will be different, but can never match the original (unless we're talking about a poorly acted, poor quality production).
To give an example, the Scandinavian series The Bridge has won great praise for the performance of its lead (Sofia Helin). This has been a big international hit (in the UK it was shown subtitled). Can a dubbing actor really ever inhabit a character in the same way as the original performer? (Don't forget the dubbing actor also sits in a room performing the dub, not on location like the original actors).
There is one scenario where I understand dubbing is necessary: children's films. But even here, you can notice a difference. When Disney dubbed the Japanese animated movie Spirited Away, they did a very good job with the American voice actors. However, if you listen to the original Japanese soundtrack, you come away with a different impression of the film because the Japanese language has a very different tone and inflection to English.
> I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.
The problem is that often the original screenplay contains cultural references that are not known in the audience that the dubbing is made for. So you have to replace the cultural references by ones that are understood by them. The same holds for puns, word plays, songs etc. These have to be rewritten.
In this sense a dubbing (at least in Germany) is much more than a rough translation of the original spoken text, but often a reinterpretation. Thus I wrote that there are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original, since the translators are even more creative in the wordings than the original screenplay writers.
To give one example: In Finding Nemo, the German names of the two sharks (besides Bruce) are Hammer (hammer) and Hart (hard) (in the English original they are "Anchor" and "Chum"). Now you have to know that in German "Ich bin voll der Hammer" ("I am full the hammer") is a very plebby way of saying "I'm the greatest". If you now keep in mind that Hammer and Art were dubbed by some German comedians which have a very turkish-plebby image you will understand why the German dubbing of these scenes is much more funny in German than in the English original.
Also, the combination "hammerhart" is a colloquial word, maybe comparable to "smashing" (as in, great) in English. Those two names are just a great pun.
I have only ever seen animated films/series where things like that occurred (which isn't dubbing as someone else pointed out).
When it comes to live action movies, I stopped watching dubbed versions a long time ago, at least in situations where I'm not watching together with people who don't understand English that well.
I cannot enjoy dubbed films as much as originals for a number of reasons. First of all the voice actors rarely match the tone/behaviour of the original actor very well, which detracts from the experience.
Then there's the problem that there actually aren't all that many voice actors in major productions so I tend to instantly recognize the voice actors (or at least recognize that I have heard that voice many time before) within seconds. Finally I just don't think most dubs are very good - they feel forced, cold, detached, often times like the voice actor was bored; you just notice that they were recorded in a studio and not on the actual set.
It bothers me enough that if say, Amazon Prime Video only has the dubbed version and not the original of a movie I was going to watch, I'll just watch something else instead.
Edit: In case it wasn't obvious, German native speaker here
I have a strong dislike towards dubbed versions where I'm capable of understanding the original. I've only seen the dubbed (German) version of The Bridge and it was excellent. Very captivating and I thin the voice actress did a great job. Obviously I can't compare to the original.
Some English -> German dubs which are said to be very good include most of the Monty Python stuff (believe it or not) and The Big Lebowksy.
If you are using Firefox, you can disable referrer info without using a plugin. Here‘s how:
In the URL bar, type the following and press enter:
about:config
Now search for the following entry on the page:
network.http.sendRefererHeader
The default value is 2. Change this to 0. This disables the referrer header.
Note that some sites won‘t allow you to sign in or register if the referrer header is disabled (e.g. Pinterest), so you may have to temporarily enable the referrer header in those instances.
A final point is that this Firefox setting obviously has no effect if referral info is already appended to the URL (as is the case with Google search results).
The default value is false. Change it to true. This causes Firefox to instead submit the website being requested as the referrer; leaking no information, but breaking fewer sites.
Somewhat related: if you're in the UK, the BBC is currently airing a three-part documentary series called Art of Scandinavia. The series focuses on Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
It's available to watch on iPlayer (for UK residents only)
There's also VPaint, an open source animation program (currently in beta) for Windows and Mac.
The description on their site: "VPaint is an experimental vector graphics editor based on the Vector Animation Complex (VAC), a technology developed by a collaboration of researchers at Inria and the University of British Columbia, featured at SIGGRAPH 2015. It allows you to create resolution-independent illustrations and animations using innovative techniques."
"Animation is not 'extremely' important and never has been or how would we have survived all these years?"
Animation definitely has an important role to play in interface design and it's been used in applications for decades. For example, this video snippet of Mac OS 7 (released in 1991 - over 25 years ago) shows the animation that occurs when a new finder window opens.
Can you imagine minimizing and maximizing windows without some subtle effect to show the window shrinking or expanding? Without animation, the transition would feel clunky and abrupt.
Animation can be overdone of course (even for minimising a window). And that's the real problem with animation in UI design: when it's used purely for decorative puposes or if it slows you down, it quickly becomes irritating.
Previously, animations were subtle and focused on individual actions (and limited by what the hardware was capable of). Today, animations are smoother, faster but also longer (hence the term "Motion UI") and actions are conveyed with multiple, simultaneous animations. It means that sometimes the UI can feel too busy and overdone with movement.
But maybe it's also a generational thing? Taste and fashion change and perhaps users today aren't fazed or distracted by fast motion graphics?
> Can you imagine minimizing and maximizing windows without some subtle effect to show the window shrinking or expanding?
Easily. I work mostly on Linux, and have turned off all animations. The first time I tried Windows 10, everything felt as slow as molasses. When I turned off animations, I was stunned by how fast Windows 10 was. Opening small apps (terminal, basic editor, etc.) on Linux seemed instantaneous, until I spent some time on Windows 10. Now, Linux seems noticeably slow.
> Without animation, the transition would feel clunky and abrupt.
I tried it out a few times now. It was abrupt, but not clunky. I like it this way.
A lot of OS animation is async, hence doesn't detract from speed and usability in the slightest. Obvious exception for the OS X full screen animation, which is cute twice, then you google how to make it stop. I'd like fullscreen now, not in 2 seconds thanks.
How do the animations hold up when the machine is being hammered and running heavy CPU and GPU loads? (Or normal use when a user has filled it with malware) Windows holds up far less well than OSX in this regard, but does much better than it used to back in XP days where you could watch it paint the UI piece by painful piece often under surprisingly little load. In that case any animating is not helping anyone. Wireframing minimize/maximize etc mght have been more useful.
Much more phone app animation appears to be synchronous, blocking, so the pretty animation is making the app slower. Every time. It appears often to be there as gloss. That's fine the first day when you don't know the way around, beyond that it's just slowing everyone up.
> But maybe it's also a generational thing? Taste and fashion change and perhaps users today aren't fazed or distracted by fast motion graphics?
LOL please. It's not that I am fazed and distracted by fast motion graphics, it's when it's done badly. I'd hardly call material design fast motion graphics either. MD when done right can be excellent. There's some great material design apps on my phone. I do think they went too far with the current flatten all the things cargo cult, but that's my preference. At least they didnt go as far as W10.
Let's take an example of a delete as given in the OP. We'll ignore the asking "are you sure", OK? :) Can I tap my thumb as fast as I can three times and delete 3 records? Or will I have to wait for it to catch up because of the needless cute collapsing animation? Did you actually delete 3, or just 2 because the middle tap was lost during animation play? That's just bad design for any generation, no?
Make a fast app without need for latency animations, and give me animations that are async so if I've become expert within your app I never see them because my taps cancel them. Give me a latency anim just when the network connection is rubbish, and only as long as it's needed. Now test your cute anims on an older phone, or a phone with something greedy running in background, or latency with a horrible or intemittent net connection...
I LIKE fast motion graphics in games, where they're often not fast enough, and movies :p
"I always laugh when I see "fair trade coffee". Is it really fair trade? Do most people care about it?"
Some people do care. Enough for an ever-growing range of products that are part of the Fairtrade scheme.
In the UK, the Fairtrade logo is almost universally recognised by consumers because you can find fair trade products in just about every supermarket (obviously the number of products varies by supermarket, but even discount Supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi stock a few items).
One major supermarket in the UK (Sainsbury's) sources all it's bananas under the fair trade scheme.
Fair trade has its critics and perhaps the scheme fails at times to live up to its ideals, but it's still a scheme worthy of support. And I'm glad it's going strong (at least in the UK - I think other countries have their own versions).
Here's an excellent blog post from the Fairtrade foundation on some common misconceptions about fair trade
"Google uses HTTPS...Google is seriously helping to advance computer security as a whole"
I've always felt that Google sees privacy solely or largely through the lens of security. You can't have privacy without security, but privacy is more than just security. Online, it's about being tracked in the first place.
Google may have the best encryption and the most secure data storage, but that security and encryption doesn't stop Google from voraciously tracking and recording as much of your online behaviour as they can.
Google has it's digital fingerprints in every corner of the web: from analytics to CDNs, to online accounts that sync your activity on mobile, desktop, tablet, TV and no-doubt more gadgets in the future. They have an entire cloud-based OS that requires immediate sign-in on start-up (and which is heavily promoted in schools).
The amount of data they capture (much of it not even anonymous) is truly staggering. And yet on matters of privacy, they get a completely free ride from the tech community.
In fact the 'Behind the Headlines' site is a model of clear, factual, unfussy reporting - precisely what you won't find in the national UK press.
Sadly, the 'Behind the Headlines' site is probably far less read than the misleading newspaper stories it tries to debunk.
http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx