I hate video "documentation"

What's New in Security - WWDC 2016 - Videos - Apple Developer - Leave feedback for videos.

I hate video documentation. E.g. this video about "What's new in Sierra security", referred to by a stackoverflow post.

OK, this is a bit unfair: it is great to have videos of WDC presentations. Especially if there is also some non-video format - slides, or webpages, or whatever - of about the same info.  And it is probably better than nothing.

But nevertheless, I hate videos. I avoid them when I can.  Both when looking for programming documentation, but also when shopping.   I have lost count of how many Kickstarter and IndieGogo projects I thought I might be interested in but did NOT fund, because they had little or no explanation of the project except for the apparently-now-mandatory video.

Why I hate videos:

• I can read faster than I can watch and listen
• It is hard to random access videos.

(Q: is there a good "video indexer", especially designed for slide presentations? E.g. that will show an index of thumbnails of the critical slides? E.g. that will recognize slides that are projected at a conference, and isolate them? Perhaps allowing jumping back and forth between the "static" view and the "dynamic" video view? E.g. that can work in my browser, for Youtube videos, and things like this WDC presentation? Heck, while we are at it one that does voice recognition, (a) with a text transcript cross-indexed with the thumbnails of slides (or particularly important changes of scene), and/or (b) since voice-to-text is not that reliable, that allows searches of the voice - so that you can search fr when the presenter says "delete".)

Basically, videos slow me down.

But, the thing that I hate most about videos right now, at this very moment:

• I am in a restaurant, working while eating breakfast - and I forgot my earphones (earbuds or headset). I don't want to annoy the people around me by playing a video out-loud.  Same thing applies at work.  Although at work I am more likely to have headphones, nevertheless it is a hassle, more friction, to have to set them up when I want to look at "documentation" presented as a video.

Steve Yegge tells us that Jeff Bezos hates PowerPoint - he outlawed it years ago. I wonder what Jeff Bezos would do if a project proposal were presented as a video?


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