megopie

@megopie@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Founder of Arkane Studios: "I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade"; impacts sales⁩ ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  That there is no garentee that I will always have access to a game I like is really what kills it for me as a user. Like, I’m basically paying them the equivalent of the cost of a game every 3 months, but I could loose access to a game I like at any time because it’s no longer on game pass, so I’d be better off just buying games I like outright with that money every three months.

  I’d rather my cash go directly to studios making things I like, rather than to who ever Microsoft decides deserves to make games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fairphone 6 Teardown: Proof Phones Don’t Have to Be Disposable⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I am very interested in Fairphone, when my current phone inevitably breaks it’ll definitely be my on my short list. Also considering the pine phone pro.

  It’s really cool to see the phone space opening back up with meaningfully differentiated options. Like foldables are starting to have a good selection, red magic has one with a fan for active cooling, and we’ve got phones with repairability and maintenance in mind.

  I’m also curious to see if RISC-V processors start making any serious inroads in to phones. I know Qualcomm was talking about it a while ago, and there is some amount of support for android on it.

  There is legitimately interesting things going on again, and it’s so annoying to have all the oxygen sucked out of the room by the current hype cycle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The wages’s do come out of the profit.

  Profit is revenue minus expenses. Wages are part of expenses.

  Wages are used to ensure that people working there are able to keep working there, covering day day expenses of the workers.

  Wages rarely reflect the real value of the effort put in by the people working at the company. They reflect the cost to the worker of choosing to work at the company.

  I think that workers at a company should be payed some percentage of the profit of the company, with financiers and investors receiving some percentage of the profit in turn.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Unless the company is an ESOP, they do not, they get paid an hourly wage or a salary. If the company becomes more profitable, they do not see a consummate increase In their compensation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t own a car.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the larger issue is that so many studios get set up as things that can be sold by one or two people for the benefit of only one or two people. Like, the larger issue is that everyone who has been working at the studio should have some amount of say in if it should be sold or not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Elder Scrolls Online Dev's Unannounced MMO Was Doing Well and Even Scaling Up as Xbox Cancelation Blindsided Staff⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  MORE SOULS ON TBE ALTER OF THE AI GOD, you know, just a few more and it shall burst forth from the machine and solve all our problems.

  Just keeeeeeep pouring resources and capital on to the fire, any day now. Don’t worry about the climate or housing prices, the inevitable AI god will solve all that, surely.

  Eventually…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Shame, exploitive studios that let the business idiots take over and then sell them to Microsoft.

  Will be happy to support the people who used to work there that go on to make indie games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox Producer Recommends Laid Off Workers Should Use AI To 'Help Reduce The Emotional And Cognitive Load That Comes With Job Loss'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  it’s kind of terrifying how much power has been concentrated in the hands of people so eager to adopt such a flimsy ideological/religious cause.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox Producer Recommends Laid Off Workers Should Use AI To 'Help Reduce The Emotional And Cognitive Load That Comes With Job Loss'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You think the producer was trying to be an ass? Or like, are they just that deep in the cult that they think this is helpful advice?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll accidentally confirmed it uses ChatGPT for subtitles⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  they appear to be copying direct translations from chat GPT in to the subtitles, judging by the fact that one of the subtitles said “Chat GPT says:” and then the line in German. People who speak German also noticed that the grammar and sentence structure for many of these shows has been awful and nonsensical at times.

  If anyone is doing any sort of oversight, they don’t appear to speak German them selves and are just betting that the output will be accurate and pasting it in.

  Someone who spoke German and Japanese fluently enough to do competent oversight could probably translate faster than they could edit and rephrasing the work of an LLM, which are notoriously bad at translating languages in a high context situation like dialog in a animated show.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll accidentally confirmed it uses ChatGPT for subtitles⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Residuals are standard in the American film/TV industry. They are paid a percent of profits of previous projects they’ve worked on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll accidentally confirmed it uses ChatGPT for subtitles⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The people who actually made the show, animators, voice actors, and writers do not get money based on your crunchy rolls subscription, and those production committees didn’t make the shows, they just initially financed them.

  Assuming the show is based on a manga or light novel, the original artist/writer might if they were smart enough to negotiate shares in the production committee, but most are not in a position to do so.

  For me, what matters, is that the people who made the art get compensated fairly, that they are able to live a good life. That people are encouraged to make art by my consumption of it, and the current system doesn’t do that. It’s a horrific exploitative machine where purchase reward further exploitation of the people who actually put work and effort in to make the art.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll accidentally confirmed it uses ChatGPT for subtitles⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re buying them from production committees and other such organizations. Most anime is made on essentially “commission” basis, where a studio is payed a fixed upfront amount by a group of financiers and other interests, who then distribute the show, sell the merch, and license it internationally. Essentially studios and those who work there are payed no residuals or other profit sharing scheme like is common in the American film and television industry.

  There is actually a bit of a cartel in that regard, with the third parties that purchase shows from studios having collaborated to suppress the cost of seasons for nearly 2 decades, leading to stagnant wages and rampant overworking of artists as the quality and quantity of work expected increases while the budget stays the same. Increasingly artists at the companies have had to fall back on gig work beyond their standard hours to make ends meet, getting payed by frame in their off hours to make a little extra money, effectively working 16 hour days through this additional work. There is some movement to change this as of late, but, this is still essentially the norm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft to lay off about 9,000 employees in latest round [Seattle Times]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Like, they’re shooting them selves in the foot right now, this demand they’re trying to cut costs to keep up with, was artificially created by them!

  Open AI is the largest single source of the demand, and they’re just redeeming credit Microsoft gave them in exchange for letting Microsoft use their models. Much of the rest of the demand is from users messing around with, or accidentally activating, the models from OpenAI that Microsoft has hastily welded on to anything they could. Microsoft could argue that’s bringing in money, but really Microsoft just raised the price of the office suite and didn’t make it clear that people could have kept the old price by switching to a new tier that didn’t have the features. Like, they could have just raised the price without the new features and pocketed the money without inducing demand or giving OpenAI free compute.

  And now to pay for that unforced error, they’re going to let their games side fall even further behind. Like, it’s not happening yet, but, I think we’re quickly going to reach a point where Xbox has gone the way of the Dreamcast, and windows is no longer the default for PC games because it’s such a bloated mess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll accidentally confirmed it uses ChatGPT for subtitles⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the core of the issue, crunchy roll has sat its self as a corporate middleman, buying the rights to distribute shows and then charging consumers a subscription for access.

  But they can’t be bothered to do the only actual damn work their position would realistically demand, beyond renting server space; providing translations for the foreign media they’re distributing.

  That’s without even discussing the fact that not a single penny users give them will end up in the hands of any of the exploited artists who actually made the shows, since the industry doesn’t work on residuals or any other kind of profit sharing, the licensing fees crunchy roll pays essentially going straight to financiers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll accidentally confirmed it uses ChatGPT for subtitles⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  See that’s the kicker, for the longest time it was basically all fan translated subtitles, and only recently have payed for translation become the norm.

  So it’s really quite pathetic for them to try and save a few bucks by replacing a proper translator with a LLM, given that there are still plenty of passionate fans who would have done it for free. Especially given that translating between Japanese and English in a cultural context heavy situation is something these LLMs are really bad at.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump Team Has Full Meltdown Over CNN Story on ICE-Tracking App⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Be nice if there was a way to use it that was just a web page.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Young Americans Are Spending A Whole Lot Less On Video Games This Year⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Almost like there’s some kind of deeper generational economic divide, almost like all the people who own all the stock are retiring and starting to live off investments, and thus companies are pressured to payout ether in buy backs or dividends, so prices are rising while quality and pay falls, and only those benefiting from the record profitability can afford the new prices.

  Sort of like the allocation of resources and labor are being redistributed to a retiring and wealthy leisure class and the burden to support that is falling on the younger generation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe: Why I became more subscription-conscious (and you should, too)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I have about 50 bucks of monthly subscriptions all in by this point, and most of that is to patreons or various similar systems for smaller independent creators I wish to support directly. The rest is for a VPN for cough “downloading Linux ISO”, also libro fm for audio books to listen to on the night shift.

  I actually spend a fair bit monthly on one time donations, purchases of media or related merch, especially stuff I already have access to but wish to support the creators of. I’d probably support more creators this way if it was easier to do so but there are so many times where there just is no way to do so.

  With media on big streaming services, it’s been made pretty clear that I have little to no input on if the money I’m spending will actually end up supporting the creatives who make the media I enjoy. In fact it seems most of the money I spend will end up getting spent on stuff I do not care about. “Supporting creatives” through these means feels more like handing the reins of culture and art over to large companies and shareholders.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not even really cheaper. Especially for Microsoft who is actually footing the bill to run all the data centers.

  But, the potential benefit lies in the fact that it’s a potential labor substitute that can’t unionize, can be rapidly switched between different skill sets, won’t quit, won’t ask for raises, and won’t protest when you ask it to participate in DOD contracts. The labor that goes in to making it work is constant, uniform, alienated from the actual outputs of the system, and easily replaced if they start causing problems.

  Want more capacity at the company? Build another data center. Need to pivot company priories to the latest fad? Just reduce token allocation form one department to another, no need to fire a bunch of people and wade through that legal mess, then wade through the mire of hiring a bunch of new people from a limited talent pool. Not using all the data center capacity? rent out the remainder to other companies.

  It reduces the complex and intricate system of a company to a simple resource allocation that can be wielded at will by company leadership.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Nadella is perfectly sane and doing the most logical thing given his set of priorities and incentives. He’s payed insane amounts of money to push initiatives and pursue goals at the behest of the board, the board is attempting to maximize shareholder value, the value of stock is largely determined by perceptions of theoretical future growth.

  The reality is irrelevant, the narrative and adhering to the party line is what matters.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It gave CEOs and excuse to do layoffs even though they knew it would hurt their human capital long term, and that they would probably have to hire back a lot of those positions long term at higher wages. In the short terms it gave them a few quarters of increased profits.It also let them push out blatantly unfinished products on the promise of future improbable improvements. This will hurt companies reputations long term, but in the short term is let them juice the stock price.

  They needed the increased profit and the pie in the sky growth promises to game the stock market, say all the right buzz words and show an improving price to earnings.

  Sure they made the companies worse and less sustainable long term, but, they got huge compensation packages right now thanks to the markets, and they probably won’t be running these companies long enough to see the true fallout.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Google about to destroy the web? Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think Google is doing this specifically because of the anti trust trial against their ad monopoly/monopsony.

  Like they’re clearly loosing the trial and that means they’re probably going to have to sell off parts of their advertising company, or at least massively alter how they operate to end the anti competitive practices.

  It used to be that Google made money on every user, even if they left the site, because they served all the ads on every other site as well. Now that they won’t be making money that way, so they don’t want people going to other sites anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Google about to destroy the web? Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the argument in this context it’s more about how Google is acting as a company, and less about how the underlying technology is dangerous.

  Like Google clearly intends to turn off the web traffic to anyone who isn’t them. They want to maximize the amount of time users are spending on their page, seeing ads served directly by them. With their ad monopoly liable to get broken up in court, they won’t be able to monopolize advertising on other websites, so they’re just going to prevent people from going to other websites.

  The fall out for smaller websites, news, blogs, ect, will be that suddenly a lot of their traffic is going to disappear because Google is no longer sending people to them, instead Google will scrape their pages and then just give that information directly to users.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CIO wants to clone top techies as digital twin and AI agents⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s so funny to watch C-suite executives slowly turning in to fanfiction writers for investors and getting payed hundreds of millions to do it.

  Meanwhile their systems are drowning in “exquisite attacks”. Of course instead of hiring more people to deal with that (or training up people to deal with it if there is a shortage of that skill on the market), they’re just making up these fantasies of infinitely scalable unpaid skilled labor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I suspect that they’ve been pressured to keep it out of public by turbo tax lobbyists, but with the straight on attempt to kill it lately, they decided just to ignore that pressure and push it out to spite those lobbyists.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trying to remember a game (military battle simulator)⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If it was from 10-20 years ago, top down from an angle with modeled 3d units, it might be one of the Wargame titles from Eugen, or if it was WW2 setting maybe Combat Mission: beyond overlord, Company of Heroes or Men of War.

  If it was straight on top down 2D, it might have been Mud and Blood, which was a WW2 wave defense flash game.

  Was it top down in the sense of looking straight down or from above at an angle? Were the units modeled as individual 3d models or just 2D icons?

  Also, roughly what time period was it set in? Like, Napoleonic, WW2, Cold War, Contemporary?

  Was it single player or multi player focused?

  Could you get additional units as the game went on or were you locked with the units you started with? How could you get additional units? Points? Timer?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google settles shareholder lawsuit, will spend $500M on being less evil⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This group will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai.

  Don’t worry, the hen house guard force will report directly to the fox.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And of course this is all definitely worth it so checks notes we can become dependent on a handful of private companies to move us through our highly car dependent society and dismantle what little public transit is left.

  Yup, totally a good idea and definitely worth it.