A lot of those things list, especially around deletion, seem like issues with federation in general. I’d love if they suggested an alternative, because quite a few of these are just general issues with encryption/privacy in any system.

Yeah, I don’t want to discourage anyone from trying, but tech jobs are a long ways away from having unions be the norm.

I’d love to have one in my job, since the only kind of job security you get in software is becoming a specialist in some niche area where you’re the only one who knows how anything works, which isn’t exactly a low-stress position either.

It’s a rough world out there for people trying to unionize…
https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-halifax-shutdown-unionized-rainbow-six-mobile-2000657752

I’ve seen some horrendous systems where you can tell a bunch of totally separate visions were frankenstein’d together

My experience has been that using AI only accelerates this process, because the AI has no concept of what good architecture is or how to reduce entropy. Unless you can one-shot the entire architecture, it’s going to immediately go off the rails. And if the architecture was that simple to begin with, there really wasn’t much value in the AI in the first place.

This sounds like it takes away a huge amount of creative freedom from the writers if the AI is specifying the framework. It’d be like letting the AI write the plot, but then having real writers fill in details along the way, which sounds like a good way to have the story go nowhere interesting.

I’m not a writer, but if I was to apply this strategy to programming, which I am familiar with, it’d be like letting the AI decide what all the features are, and then I’d have to go and build them. Considering more than half my job is stuff other than actually writing code, this seems overly reductive, and underestimates how much human experience matters in deciding a framework and direction.

What improvements have there been in the previous 6 months? From what I’ve seen the AI is still spewing the same 3/10 slop it has since 2021, with maybe one or two improvements bringing it up from 2/10. I’ve heard several people say some newer/bigger models actually got worse at certain tasks, and clean training data is pretty much dried up to even train more models.

I just don’t see any world where scaling up the compute and power usage is going to suddenly improve the quality orders of magnitude. By design LLMs are programmed to output the most statistically likely response, but almost by definition is going to be the most average, bland response possible.

This is based on the assumption that the AI output is any good, but the actual game devs and writers are saying otherwise.

If the game is too big for writers to finish on their own, they’re not going to have time to read and fix everything wrong with the AI output either. This is how you get an empty, soulless game, not Balders Gate 3.

Have you heard of the concepts of Internet bandwidth and compression? This article isn’t talking about poor quality microphones or cameras. You could have the best camera and microphone in the world, but it won’t do you any good on dial-up, low speed “broadband”, or unreliable connection to the Internet.

AI has had very measureable negative effects on society in the last several years. Someone’s race doesn’t have any relation to if they’re good or bad, which is why being racist is irrational and stupid. It’s not the same argument.

In terms of art, it’s the difference between being critical of all art because AI slop is common in general (what I’ve been talking about as rational paranoia) vs only being critical of one specific style because you don’t like it and label all of it as bad AI (maybe the analogy for racism you’re talking about).

Ironically AI doesn’t have perfectly recall either, and that’s kind of one of the main problems with it and hallucinations. It can easily get poisoned by a handful of data points in it’s training set. But even then, it can only really blend 2 data points together, it’s got no ability to extrapolate and think outside the box.

I think you’re missing the point here a little. This bias towards being critical of where something is from is entirely justified. The reality is, there’s more gen AI content out there than ever before, and if you’re not questioning things constantly, things will slip past.

I’m viewing this kind of like a “phobia” vs a “fear”. If you’re genuinely in danger of being mislead by AI slop, then having a paranoia about it is perfectly rational.

Bring back Optane! I’m still using a couple PCIe cards in raid as my boot drive on my home server. The RAM versions of Optane were quite interesting too.

It entirely depends on what you’re doing with the computer. Sure people won’t notice a difference between a game running at 60 vs 70 fps, but that card is going to struggle with modern games. From a quick search it sounds like it will barely hit 60fps in Cyberpunk at min settings 1080p.

I’m sure your 10 year old card will have no problem playing 10 year old games. If that’s all you play, then you’re right, you don’t need to spend any more.

An RX 7600 vs RX 480 could be the difference between something running at stuttering 25 fps and something running at smooth 60 fps. Or it could be the difference between running on min quality vs high settings, it all depends on the workload.

Well, you get what you pay for. A $100-300 PC and a $500-750 PC are not really competing with each other when what you get is an order of magnitude faster with one of them.

A useful comparison would either try and match performance at a lower price, or match price at a higher performance.

rx480 8gb

Based on the news saying the Steam Machine should be roughly equivalent to an RX 7600, it’s going to be 2.5x faster than an RX480. I don’t really think that’s a comparable PC at all.

Considering they built the whole steam machine around the fan and cooling design, and they’re using the very latest CPU tech, I doubt any other mini PC would be able to complete on performance per volume. If the tiny size isn’t a requirement though, I’m sure there are slightly bigger builds that would be equivalent.

By the same argument, why not just play last year’s CoD? It’s not really fun playing the same campaign over and over unless you’re a speedrunner or something. I want new single player experience, just like I want new TV shows and movies. I don’t have time to stay competitive in any online multiplayer games, and it seems like the only ones making single player games anymore are indie devs.

As far as I know, Microsoft has no patents related to linux and how it can run Windows games. Everything has been reimplemented from scratch on the linux side, there’s no shared IP or patented techniques being used.

I did hear about the remake/remaster. I’ve never actually played it though. Maybe I should find it on an emulator. The remastered music is definitely nostalgic

This one wasn’t signed, but I have fond memories playing “Thexder” on an Apple IIgs in my grandparent’s basement growing up. You can guess where my username came from.

That game sure was hard to play with all 4 arrow keys in a line on that keyboard…

And history repeats itself with OceanGate

the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes

They absolutely aren’t. Fair notice would be telling them how long it will last before you take their money.

I’ve adopted this same strategy. I’ve bought maybe 2 games in the last couple years. I haven’t been hyped for a Steam sale in over 5 years

Wanderstop

Ooh, I’ll have to check that out. I loved The Stanley Parable and Beginner’s Guide

I adopted this philosophy a few years ago and have bought maybe 2 games since. I played them immediately and had fun. Meanwhile I have no interest in playing my backlog games anymore. I don’t have time for them.

There must be at least one scenario where it’s improved 26%, otherwise it’s a lie.

Most of those are legit, but I do take issue with the pregnancy test one. Replacing the original electronics with entirely new hardware doesn’t really count. A pregnancy test screen only has 3 or 4 LCD segments.

The smart bulb one at least partially counts, since it’s using the original processor from the bulb just with a display and buttons added.

They could easily block the APIs the gambling sites are using to operate, but they’ve just sent some cease and desist letters to a few instead and have continued to take their cut of all trades.

I’m generally a fan of Valve (at least historically), but at least recently some stuff has come out about them propping up a billion dollar gambling industry via CounterStrike skins. It’s full of legal loopholes to avoid being classified as actual gambling, thus allowing underage users to get addicted to casino mechanics. This might actually be Valve’s current biggest profit center in recent years.

He left Microsoft almost immediately after Doom 95 was released specifically because he didn’t like the direction Microsoft was going.

Somehow I feel like the cloudflare one is not in the same category. This is the first I heard about it, and end users don’t care about logs at all. I doubt there’s many businesses that even noticed or cared that they lost 4 hours of logs.

One or two models have increased in accuracy. Meanwhile all the grifters have caught on and there’s 1000x more AI companies out there that are just reselling ChatGPT with some new paint.

GTA 5 released over 10 years ago, and I don’t like the direction GTA Online has gone with micro transactions and pay-to-win mechanics. I don’t think Rockstar is the same as they used to be.

And here I thought you were just rating the title a B-

Except the original pregnancy test screen would have been something like a 2 or 3 segment LCD. They don’t need to display anything but yes or no.

5.26 minutes per year*

Just useful enough to become incredibly dangerous to anyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Isn’t it great?

GTA is filled with parody ads, which are actually fun content and not intended to make you buy something. The second they become real ads, you’ll have brands complaining about being displayed next to gun violence or prostitutes, and all the fun goes away.

There’s a reason there’s no real car brands in GTA, because none of them want to be associated with running down pedestrian and drive-bys

If you remember what battery powertools were like in early 2010s, it’s super obvious how far we’ve come. The higher end things like battery powered lawn mowers didn’t exist, and if you wanted real power, you needed a cord.

I’ve chatted with a few experienced web devs, and from what I’ve heard, there’s a whole group of “web programmers” out there that just learn React and other fameworks, but don’t actually know how to code anything themselves. So many places won’t even consider you if you don’t know React.

And here I am still thinking jQuery is an excessive amount of page bloat.