About the only thing the Chinese cars don't do better than American cars is meet our absurd addiction to cupholders.

Exactly as many people are listening to them as recording them.

And the evidential basis for the truth of this claim is...

hmm...

wait a second...

That sounds awfully like a completely unverifiable conjecture with literally no possible way to be based on observable fact, but conveniently explains away that you're totally wrong when presented with things that are observable facts.

Weird. I'm sure glad our entire political discourse isn't constantly centered around those kinds of claims, it'd be really tiring.

I'd argue the whole problem here is that they weren't hires at all. They were the cheapest employees that some third party could find to technically meet their terms of service to the government. Contracts for everything is one of the many trends poisoning the US's ability to function as a nation.

And it turns out that loyalty and law abiding are two of the parameters that might matter to a government but isn't a big deal to a government contracting service.

And I think it's also safe to say in 2025 that this approach hasn't saved taxpayers money either. Now we're paying for shoddy work, and the contracting business's profit, instead of just shoddy work.

No, sweeny does not believe in those freedoms. He believes in your freedom to give him money.

Specifically, Epic's financial interest here isn't their store. It's their engine. They want to sell ai features to developers. If you've ever heard Epic's pitch as to why you should use unreal, it's all presented in the form of having less employees do work. "Stop hiring shader developers, let the engine do it for you" "Stop hiring texture artists, let the engine do it for you"

Which, in and of itself isn't such a bad thing. But when the slop comes in, the quality goes down. And every damned one of us knows it. And he doesn't want us to know it, so his customers will pay for the new unreal features.

New version of Rectum now produces shit at 3 times closer to shit consistency benchmarks than previous versions of competitors Anus and Colon. Given that we've already decided that you just need more shit constantly and forever and will shove it into every aspect of your life, this must make you very happy.

We already have to cook our resumes for screening bots. There's going to be a lot more stupid automated systems crappily built on this shit we have to manipulate our output to please, and it will suck.

Unfair. It's modestly difficult to game.

Actual feature: it's got a reset button for dimwits with lots of money who are too stupid to learn how to solve one.

I don't personally understand it, thus it is magic is the defining logic of our time.

AI is the unmissable example, but pretty much everything about the current Secretary of Health and Human services seems to be another ideal case.

The only way to win is not to play.

I do think there is some tacit merit in the intolerably pretentious open source purist position. People find it annoying, but "If I don't control the exact source code running on my device, I don't really own it" does seem to be the resounding truth of 2025. And everything running in the cloud or a few specific social media websites just compounds the cost.

Every shitty business idea we could all see coming decades ago has come to pass.

The "minimum" spec is specified to run the game at 1080p low at 30 fps with upscaling.

The "recommended" spec is specified to run the game at 1400p medium at 60 fps with upscaling.

30 FPS isn't playable. It hasn't been for a decade. And at 1080p? What a clusterfuck.

Even unobservant parents don't deserve to have a child commit suicide, no matter how much you feel the right to judge them.

This is one of those recurring things in America where even things that already suck ass are proving themselves perfectly able to get worse to sell out what little value they have for pennies of extra profit.

AI is first and foremost about threatening people's jobs.

Not replacing people, it's not actually up to snuff to outright replace many real humans at work, but to say to your employees they'll be out if they don't stay cheap and productive? That's what the bosses love.