Hacker Cinema
VICE
2013 · TV series · documentary · 30 min episodes · 6 seasons
Created by Shane Smith
A documentary news series with a taboo-breaking team who deliver incredible news stories from around the world.
9 positive2 negative1 mixed5 neutralfrom 17 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
17 comments on Hacker News
> I think the cards should just be what the post is, not a description of it.
This would make the blue look-into-it-more button useless
> the creators value judgments are inserted (for instance “ethnic slur” is ambiguous in many real cases, eg negro could be legit in a spanish-speaking or referencing context, or “white trash” which could both be a slur and the title of an edgy Vice documentary).
You’re supposed to use the blue look-into-it-more button to figure this kind of stuff out
English channels:
https://www.youtube.com/c/ItchyBoots
https://www.youtube.com/c/TomScottGo
https://www.youtube.com/c/hihokids (the artist section, and food section is good)
https://www.youtube.com/c/britishpathe
https://www.youtube.com/c/JayForeman (typical British :))
Documentaries from Vice, Vox, Journey Man Pictures, Al Jazeera and DW TV are very good and available on YouTube.
Non-English channels:
https://www.youtube.com/c/Raanvata07 (the guy treks various unmaintained ancient "forts" in the Indian state of Maharashtra; photography is good as the guy himself is a photographer)
https://www.youtube.com/c/TribalPeopleTryOfficial (some tribal people, may be from Pakistan, try western food for the first time)
I replaced "normal" TV with occasional documentaries, news, educational programs, TED talks, etc. If I'm feeling lazy and don't want to read a book, something like Vice on HBO is pretty legit.
I didn't mind vice media until I watched their 'documentary' about crokodil in Russia. The whole thing was dramatized around the idea of a new horrifying, skin melting drug that was killing people. Throughout the whole thing there was one very small mention about the fact it's actually codeine with the solvents used in production improperly purged and no real mention about the flesh melting being caused by red phosphorus not being completely removed.
The entire focus was on this 'new terrifying drug' when it really should have been about the abject poverty leading those desperate junkies to shooting up cheap, solvent laced opiates.
The whole thing really bugged me and honestly, the attitudes of their journalists when they go into places like that is really just terrible sometimes. Though I guess it did lead me to research more on the subject and learn enough to know what a poor documentary it really was...
Netflix takes the shotgun approach, put out as much programming as possible and something will stick. Amazon has yet to provide anything but a bad UI/UX on top of tv or music I can find from a much better competitor.
Silicon Valley, Westworld, Vice, and Game of Thrones are worth it plus a steady stream of new movies. Not to mention their older shows. HBO’s quality is much higher than Netflix and Amazon doesn’t even compare.
This is exactly how I feel.
I have no interest in what vice has become (except for the fact that a small fraction of their content is still very good) but it doesn't erase how good they used to be. Many of the documentaries from maybe 2009-2013 where exceptional. Yeah, it isn't journalism, but it isn't trying to be. Some of the narrators are pretentious but they presented content in a format that was frequently much more interesting and relatable than some stuffy, detached doc and they clearly went to the ends of the world and into some very dangerous and uncomfortable situations to get that footage.
I learned a lot about the world watching old Vice docs.
In VICE HBO Season 5 Ep 7 "Plastic Oceans," Jeanette Garcia, a PhD polymer science researcher at IBM's Almaden Bernal facility in San Jose, discussed chemical recycling of plastic.
http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/61-life-under-sharia-and-plastic-oceans/index.html
(PS: I went to a dark matter conference at that enormous facility in the mid-90's and was offered a job but couldn't get a work permit being 15 requiring parental and school approvals. Bernal Road is also an awesome, steep road bike route.)
I couldn't find a youtube video of it but here's the HBO.com link http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/57-when-the-earth-melts-and-the-displaced/index.html
I think the problem may be that people will have more and more binge watching alternatives in other platforms too. For example, right now in HBO and AMC I could watch The Brink, True Detective, Vice, Halt and Cath Fire and Humans, a few weeks ago I could add Silicon Valley and Games of Thrones, so I'm definitely consuming less Netflix right now, actually I'm considering joining only when House of Cards or Lillyhammer have a new season.
The Vice documentary of ISIS is very informative without having to view said LiveLeak videos.
You could also say that TV is increasingly for the young. Vice, House of Cards, etc. are great but they're targeting the 20+ crowd. There's an explosion of new shows and programs for kids on cable. Some of them, like Adventure Time, are so well done that I enjoy watching them. In fact, you could call this a bit of a "golden age" for this sort of thing.
Watching shows on the internet is great. The acting talent and quality there has really improved. But, I see this less as taking away from cable, and more as taking away from the box office. Kevin Spacey was doing great movies 10+ years ago, and now he's headlining Netflix's service. Honestly, I think these long running tv shows are a better format for a lot of actors. Breaking Bad just can not be done in a 2-3 hour movie, or in a syndicated format where each episode needs to be treated more or less independently (e.g. Law and Order). However, Netflix didn't really start that trend, cable did.
Also, cable/tv "owns" the coax cable running through the house: the fastest and most reliable way of moving information around the average US home. There's new technologies like Moca that are going to make a lot of things possible that currently are very flakey with current wireless/alt-ethernet solutions.
TV has always been (mostly) about mindless entertainment. I think the shows that are successful outside of a traditional cable package succeed because they were probably inappropriate for the cable programming format anyways. Services like Netflix are filling a new niche, but I don't think they can significantly take away the core value of cable for most people.
I know this is a little off topic, but I always wonder if Cannabis becoming legal in more places, like the US, would result in more innovation with regards to the actual smell of cannabis. Perhaps more convenient ways of ingesting/inhaling that don't result in such a strong odor? Maybe biological manipulation of the strains to specifically eliminate the aspects of the plant that give it such a strong smell while maintaining the effects? You have to think that the primary providers of Cannabis to date have not had much incentive to tackle this problem, but like you said, the more and more prevalent it becomes in society, the more necessary it may become.
I found the recent episode of the tv show VICE that focused on the booming entrepreneurship in Colorado around cannabis to be really interesting and it will be interesting to see what comes of that test environment within the US.
It is absolutely worthy of attention -- my point was: what are the editorial guidelines of HackerNews? There are guidelines, as was pointed to me. Those guidelines are not exactly followed by the chunk of the community who confused my open question with a complaint and downvoted. I was curious how people read those guidelines in those two cases: are both up-voted by the same group? If human interest is key, why isn’t every Vice documentary here?
To my biased cultural sensitivities, this is some fucked-up bullshit.
But beyond that: it feels like this gender unbalance simply can't be stable in the long term. At some point, women become a scarce resource and thus more valuable.
Maybe there are some hints of that happening already. For example, this episode of Vice shows that dating in China has started to become more and more difficult for men. http://hbo.vice.com/episode-four
I can't imagine what these countries will look like if this gender disparity persists for 100 years or more.
> Vice is nothing but quality <
Like their waragi episode, where they spent a few scant minutes on the topic of the endemic drinking problem (which is very prevalent) and the entire rest filming drunk people and trying the brew themselves... oh and they sent a person that couldn't pronounce the name of the drink properly. Well done Vice. Quality
Careful here. I recommend you watch an episode of Vice on HBO. I had my doubts as well, but the reporting on that show is great and my only criticism is that its too short. The article you posted is just an opinion of that person and she doesn't provide specific examples or lay it out objectively. I just recommend checking it out and then judge it for yourself.
"Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. "
I always wondered if the North Koreans interviewed really have no idea what is going on or just acting that way out of fear. I highly recommend watching the Vice guide to North Korea to understand what I am talking about.