10.7M views · Jul 18, 2012 · 3:55 · 0 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2021–2022
The final scene of Blade Runner (Final Cut) in which Roy Batty delivers the Tears in Rain monologue. It is a short film clip.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN mostly quotes or links it as a cultural reference, often as a joke or tribute, rather than recommending it.
Tribute quoting the iconic monologue
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die." this video
“I hate that VO with a passion.”
The version with the VO? If so, that literally treats the audience like they're incapable of understanding blatant metaphor. Contrast the theatrical cut: link (VO at 4:13) with the director's cut: this video The theatrical version is punchier because it's beating you over the head. For a film that's so heavily into metaphor (I mean, Rutger Hauer's character releases a dove at the end, maybe he just likes birds, we will never know since the VO doesn't explain it) it's quite boring to just be outright told what you're supposed to think. And even if you like your scenes explained in the most anodyne manner possible, it's well known that Harrison Ford was phoning it in for the overall performance but particularly the VO, so it's not even a well-done VO in terms of literal recording. Hardly a 'diehard fan', I like the aesthetic but it's an incredibly slow film, but I hate that VO with a passion.
Syonyk >"Talking on the phone didn't used to be painful - but it is now." This. I ceased using a cellphone when I retired. Three days ago was conscripted into a cellphone conversation that had terrible audio and communications drops. If anything, cellphones have grown worse IMO. My landline has ISDN to the local office but the audio quality drops b/c of the other party's cellphone. Good news: it worked through the recent Texas cold weather power blackout. Wishing for the old days, when not only could speech be understood but also the emotions and inflections of the speaker were transmitted. All those nuances are lost "like tears in the rain": "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Blade Runner - Final scene, "Tears in Rain" Monologue (HD): this video
I've pretty much given up on these new OSes. I tried to run OS/2 and Plan 9 (whatever that relatively recent open sourced version of it was) and I just feel like... maybe I haven't developed the appropriate context to be able to even know what to do with it. Sure, Kali I know I can use my AWUS036ahw network card on, Ubuntu I know I at least have some sensible defaults, Alpine for containers (goddamnit why don't you have vim by default, so annoying to quickly debug stuff), but overall it's just not useful to know these little pieces of computing history. I suppose there are computing archaeologists that benefit from it, but I just get left with a sense of dread that everything I know and have mastered more or less is going to be left for dead and I just get a sense of exhaustion. I'd say my initial experience of playing around with distros/burning to CDs, etc were instrumental to my learning about what different terminology meant, but overall right now, it's just such a time sink with no real benefit. Same reason why I don't just stop what I'm doing to learn Zig or Objective-S or whatever. There are so many tools to do the same damn thing and while it may be useful for self-learning or potentially a very specific problem set, it's just not worth the mental investment to accomplish any real goals. It sucks to think about things in this context but it's a real constraint. this video
