t3rmit3
@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
- Comment on TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban 2 days ago:
So what are you referring to, then? Inflation-adjusted wage growth?
Purchasing power, which was not shit in the 90s compared to today. That’s what really matters; what can you get with the money you have.
You’re ascribing way too much rationality to the average voter here.
I think you’re ascribing too little. The average voter is not a political philosopher, but they’re also not comatose. They understand simple economic principles like tax cuts being given to other and not to them, or subsidies for certain industries and not others, or the lack of government action to curb rising prices, etc. They may not have all the proper labels to describe what they’re seeing vs what they want to see (and indeed, the US has spent so long demonizing Socialism and propagandizing Capitalism that most can’t describe either properly), but polling proves that most Americans (hilariously, even most Republicans) don’t want cutthroat neoliberal everyone-for-themselves economic policies.
- Comment on U.S. FTC Surveillance Pricing Study Indicates Wide Range of Personal Data Used to Set Individualized Consumer Prices 2 days ago:
We’ll see how long it takes for the government to put a stop to US companies actively data-mining, profiling, and discriminating against our citizenry, before congress takes action. I’d say we need a Chinese company to come in and do it, but clearly they’d just ban that one company instead of the actual problematic actions, and allow US companies to continue exploiting us.
- Comment on TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban 2 days ago:
bull market
The stock market is not the economy. The economy on the ground has not been bullish. The US stock market doing well benefits the wealth-holders, not workers.
people primarily care about their own life, and just aren’t motivated by big abstract concepts
I agree, which is why the DNC’s attempt to allow a leftward shift only in its social policies has fallen largely flat with connecting with voters. Voters see that they’re not actually moving Leftwards on economic policies that would help their own lives. Sadly, it seems the DNC is taking this as a message that the Leftward shift on social issues was a problem, rather than the lack of economic change. Sanders has been talking about exactly this ever since election day, but the DNC leadership is already signaling they don’t believe that or care. I am worried we’re in for several Presidential election losses before they all die out or get the message.
- Comment on TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban 2 days ago:
Passion isn’t felt towards everything equally, it’s specific, and Democrats can’t figure out how to make people passionate about their candidates without compromising on their leaders’ neoliberal economic policies and their so-called “rules based order” of American hegemony, so they keep losing. Obama ran as a populist candidate, and he blew away previous numbers even though he turned out to be a staunch neoliberal. Biden barely managed to eke out a win in 2020 (“Despite his relatively comfortable 74 vote margin in the Electoral College, Biden only won the decisive states of Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona by a combined 43,000 votes.”), and it was only because he was coming straight out of Trump’s term. Harris had 2 months to try to turn around Biden’s dumpster fire of a campaign, and she made too many missteps.
Ultimately, candidates have to earn votes, and the DNC’s anti-populism and pro-neoliberalism clearly aren’t doing it for people. Maybe in the '90s when people’s salaries were booming, Clinton was able to win on it, but we’re not in that economy, and most Millennials and younger have only seen recessions and stagnation. Even after Trump, we’re in for more losses if Democrats only allow for Progressive social policies, and not economic ones.
- Comment on Biden’s TikTok Flip-Flop: President Rushes To Undo Ban He Championed As Backlash Grows 4 days ago:
The fact that Congress could come together so rapidly and so unanimously to do something so stupid, at a time when our country is falling apart, says so much about their priorities. They work for the Capitalist class, not us.
- Comment on TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban 4 days ago:
I hate to link to Reddit (and I’m too old to know how to get to the original video), but this also seems pretty relevant: reddit.com/…/if_tiktok_being_banned_doesnt_radica…
- Comment on TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban 4 days ago:
In the beginning, sure. But all the TikTok users actively choosing Chinese alternatives would seem to disagree with that, now.
- Comment on TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban 5 days ago:
You’re argument is basically that you should have the right to to ruin yourself.
Look, I agree with you that TikTok is bad, but… YES, freedom means the ability to choose, good or bad. If you want someone to blame for this, blame the US government for allowing US tech companies to become so predatory and gross that young people literally prefer a foreign product that may be profiling them. It’s not like data collection and censorship isn’t rife on Xitter or FB, and the reality for most Americans is that the US government has more ability to use their data to directly harm them than the CCP does. No one is worried that the Chinese government is going to show up in Alabama with CPS in tow because a teen revealed they’re trans online.
- Comment on ‘It’s Total Chaos Internally at Meta Right Now’: Employees Protest Zuckerberg’s Anti LGBTQ Changes 1 week ago:
Zuckerberg is just cynically following the political winds to avoid Trump going after Meta at Elmo’s behest. He doesn’t care any way about anything other than getting and keeping (not) his money. The second Democrats control all 3 branches, if that ever happens again, he’ll make another 180. Don’t give him the credit of saying these are his true, “mask off” morals or beliefs; he has no morals or beliefs.
- Comment on The Great Decentralization: What happens when sprawling online communities fracture into politically homogenous, self-governing communities? 1 week ago:
Starting into the article, I got the impression that it was heading for a “centralization ultimately better” argument, so I’m glad it concludes on decentralization and federation. There are no issues that exist on federated and distributed channels as individual nodes that don’t also exist on centralized ones, differences only emerge when you try to treat or exercise control over distributed systems as a group. Facebook is completely centralized, but they still have to deal with third party content making its way onto their platform via bots, API posts, integrations, ads, etc. The big difference is that with a centralized platform, you have a Single Point of Failure, and that’s bad all-around. There is literally no advantage to a centralized platform that I can think of (though I’m sure that people less opposed to authority/ hierarchy would disagree).
- Comment on Automation Should Be Like Iron Man, Not Ultron 1 week ago:
Wasn’t part of the point that the mindset necessary to create Iron Man would inevitably lead to Ultron?
- Comment on TikTok tells LA staff impacted by wildfires to use personal/sick hours if they can't work from home 1 week ago:
9 hours a day, 9 days a week, 6 years a year
- Comment on The Extreme Disconnect between Game Journalists, Developers, and their Audience 2 weeks ago:
I didn’t really want to have to watch any more of this dude, but I wanted to make sure I gave him a fair shake… and hoo boy.
Just look at it for what it is, and realize it’s going to fail. And then plan accordingly.
This is just victim blaming, bruh. Even if a developer sees a project is going badly, it’s not like there are infinite jobs out there that need filling. Changing jobs is not fast and easy, some of the workers are likely on work visas that don’t allow them to just change employers, game companies aren’t all in the same small area such that it won’t require moving homes which is a huge expense, and there’s no guarantee that the project you’re moving to will be any better.
This is a failure of worker protection laws. Framing it as workers just needing to hustle smarter, while executives run companies and families into the ground, is peak corporate apologism.
He’s literally reading off one of this articles, that goes off on a tangent that a few people on Twitter said something about games being “too woke” and tries to counter that.
If you don’t think that alt-right-lite is a huge problem in gaming circles, I don’t know what to tell you. Go play literally any multiplayer game and you will find plenty of gamers spouting anti-DEI/ anti-woke/ right-wing talking points in no time flat. And yes, they absolutely do avoid games based on it. And the problem with just ignoring this is that you’re ceding the narrative to them. Young white men have seen a shift rightwards precisely because alt-right-lite chuds like JonTron capture them via gaming-focused content, and then shift them over to politics-focused guys like Tate/ Shapiro/ etc. It’s a pipeline, that often starts in gaming spaces.
Ideological soapboxes are very real things that games “journalists” push on a daily basis.
He wasn’t talking about ideological soapboxes in reference to journalists, he was talking about developers. And he is using that as a direct euphemism for “DEI”/ “woke” content. Why do you think the video thumbnail is from BG3, coupled with “It’s all lies”? Cause’ Larian didn’t have layoffs, so it’s not that part of his criticism.
And yes, the comments are agreeing with him, that’s the point of a dogwhistle. There are a bunch of comments being anti-diversity/ anti-woke, referencing another video of his about game companies hiring people who supposedly despise gamers.
Here is a video of his called “The Real Impact of DEI in Gaming”. He has a lot of good points about rainbow/pink-washing, but then ultimately ends on it being a net negative that he (no joke) BLAMES ON OVERREGULATION. He then goes on to suggest that DEI actually is about dividing people in order to (also not a joke) feed a DEI-consulting industry.
“They’re hiring in people that don’t have the merit, that don’t have the skill” (8:40) Classic. He then goes onto blame “DEI hire” developers for games being buggy or releasing too early, as though that is their choice (once again, he clearly doesn’t understand what developers do or do not control).
It’s frustrating seeing these chuds get wiser about the number of levels they couch their ultimate anti-diversity rhetoric in, because clearly it’s working on some people. Instead of saying, “diversity in gaming companies bad”, he says, “regulations force execs to hire diverse devs who lack merit (which is bigoted bs on its own), who then over time lower the quality of games, ** and also** evil DEI consultants intentionally push devs to make diverse games without being sincere about the portrayals and stories… so in the end we should stop pushing devs to be diverse and make diverse games, and just let each group of people make games for themselves (which is back to square one where big companies just hire white guys).”
He’s literally just taking all the Republican anti-DEI rhetoric and applying to to gaming.
- Comment on Tencent: US designates the firm a Chinese military company 2 weeks ago:
businesses it says work with China’s military
So for the battery company, is the work… selling them batteries? Like, is this list supposed to be a list of companies actually directly performing military work for the CCP, or just vendors?
Also, unless they’re in violation of e.g. the ban on use of forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang (like tons of US companies have been caught being), why would they be sanctioned? We’re not at war with China, nor actively sanctioning their military just for existing.
- Comment on Mecha Comet is a modular Linux handheld coming soon to Kickstarter for $159 2 weeks ago:
Exactly, this will go in my ‘cool tech I don’t use’ pile immediately. :P
- Comment on Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI 2 weeks ago:
For those interested, the reason it’s not the same as a backdoor is that the result of the computation done on HE data is itself still encrypted and readable only by the original owner. So you can effectively offload the work of a certain analysis to a server that you don’t actually trust with your keys.
Do iPhones have a BYOK system for people to supply their own keypairs? Or is their OS open-source so that people can see how the keys are being handled? Because if not, it just sounds like all it takes to break this is for Apple’s OS that it controls to ship the private keys that it generated up to its servers?
- Comment on Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI 2 weeks ago:
Where there’s object detection there’s csam detection.
This is not true at all. A model has to be trained to detect specific things. It does not automatically inherit the ability to detect CSAM just because it can detect other objects. The method it previously used for CSAM image detection was killed for bad privacy implementation, and the article specifically notes that
Tsai argues Apple’s approach is even less private than its abandoned CSAM scanning plan “because it applies to non-iCloud photos and uploads information about all photos, not just ones with suspicious neural hashes.”
So even images that the local detection model doesn’t match to CSAM would be being uploaded to their servers.
- Comment on Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI 2 weeks ago:
I would be interested to see what lines you read between, because “identifying landmarks and points of interest” doesn’t sound like anything capable of identifying CSAM. I think you’re giving a big corporation a bunch of credit there is no reason to suspect it is owed, for an excuse they never professed.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione Content Is a Challenge for Social Media Moderators - B… 2 weeks ago:
Social Media Moderators working for billionaires struggle to alter narrative around Luigi Mangione at behest of scared billionaires
ftfy
- Comment on The Extreme Disconnect between Game Journalists, Developers, and their Audience 2 weeks ago:
I will be honest I stopped after about 12 minutes, so perhaps he says something of value later on… but I doubt it. :P
- Comment on The Extreme Disconnect between Game Journalists, Developers, and their Audience 2 weeks ago:
This guy makes several key mistakes, and doesn’t understand the relationship between (or difference between, for that matter) developers and publishers / executives. He pivots in one sentence from talking about number of layoffs to talking about failed games, but those are not direct corollaries. Big publishers and large studios laid off teams with games that performed incredibly well. Lots of teams that were mid-development were killed. Remember Tango Gameworks? The studio that everyone liked, and didn’t have any flops? That was completely laid off? It had nothing to do with their games, and was entirely about Xbox forcing its 1P studios to release on Game Pass, which doomed their sales. It was bad executive management at MS, not bad games, choosing to buy Bethesda and Activision at the expense of budgets for its existing studios. Obviously Redfall and Concord were huge flops, but they were a tiny fraction of the layoffs across the industry.
He correctly points out that Gaming is a subset of the software industry, and that the trends and decisions being made by executives across the industry are the same, but just sort of hand-waves that away by saying it’s not just gaming, and that “people are facing economic challenges right now” in general. Yeah! And guess that those challenges are? Short-term P&L gains via mass layoffs, in order to claw back money from acquisitions, stock buybacks, and executive pay-gouging. But it’s not developers doing that, it’s publishers and executives. No one writing code is like, “I’ve decided to make live-service schlock”. But they’re the ones losing their jobs, not the dorks who did decide that.
“What is unique in gaming, is that this is largely self-inflicted.” My brother in Christ… stahhhhhp.
He then turns this into some kind of attack on game journalists, who have been rightfully calling out the game industry layoffs, as though they’re… supposed to only report on things happening uniquely in gaming, and not also in other industries, even if it’s also happening in gaming? The narrative that “if a studio is laid off, it was their fault, or just the economy forcing them to be laid off”, is the false narrative of the publishers, and this guy is (whether he realizes it or not) helping bolster that narrative.
Lastly, this dude is dropping right-wing dogwhistles left-and-right. Listing “ideological soapboxes” alongside “bloated projects” and “garbage games” tells me everything I need to know.
Here’s his brilliant take on thousands of line-level developers being laid off for decisions made above their heads by millionaires:
“As a customer I’m going to be honest, I just don’t care or feel anything for any of these internal struggles that these companies go through.”
Big “stop picketing and deliver my Amazon package I paid money for” energy right here.
- Comment on Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI 2 weeks ago:
It allows processing data without decrypting it, which is great in terms of preventing someone else from snooping on it, but doesn’t change that Apple is retaining the ability to analyze the data content, which is the actual issue here.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione Content Is a Challenge for Social Media Moderators - B… 2 weeks ago:
the concept of the social market economy… in the late 1940s
I feel like we’re glossing over important parts of 1800s European history, and it being the literal birthplace of Socialism and Anarchism as philosophies, to just go to the 1940s emergence of the postwar Western Europe economies. The backlash against Monarchism and mercantile economies saw a lot of support for all sorts of new forms of government in the 1800s, and various forms of Socialism were chief among them and incredibly well liked and influential among citizens.
That it took 2 world wars shattering the remaining vestiges of the mainland European monarchic powers (who were very anti-Socialist for obvious reasons), and allowed Socialist ideas about the responsibilities of government to its peoples to actually take hold at a government level, is a story about Monarchism clinging to power, not about citizenry being anti-Socialist.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione Content Is a Challenge for Social Media Moderators - B… 2 weeks ago:
Sure, but the difference is that they (European countries) do not profess to be staunch Capitalists, whereas by large America does. That is a big difference, because it informs policy drastically. There’s a reason we’re much much closer to a corporate oligarchy than European nations are, and it’s our idealization of a system that literally is based around Corporatism.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione Content Is a Challenge for Social Media Moderators - B… 2 weeks ago:
So, still not Capitalism tho
- Comment on Discussion: Cybertruck involved in attempted bombing in Las Vegas auto-locked after explosion 2 weeks ago:
Teslas always are, not even joking. It’s supposed to ensure the drivers are “attentive”.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 10 comments
- Comment on Tech worker movements grow as threats of RTO, AI loom 3 weeks ago:
They think they can make it up with H1B workers they will underpay and abuse, and to some extent they’re right, but it’s just selling their futures down the river. Eventually the H1B employees will dry up or start demanding better wages as well. To some extent this is already happening with India, and some companies are now shifting their outsourcing and H1B hires to Pakistan. Anything to avoid paying compensation that actually reflects the contributions to the org’s success.
- Comment on Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market? 3 weeks ago:
Most executives at large publishers aren’t gamers. Pretty pictures are more likely to entice them than deep mechanics. They could assign 5 people to make a game like Balatro or Stardew Valley, but they never would because they don’t work like that, they came up through the MBA route and think in terms of enterprise software development lifecycles.
- Comment on favourite gameboy family games? 4 weeks ago:
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance FF Tactics A2 Rebelstar: Tactical Command