There have been few modern versions of the DK genre with the same thematic consistency, sense of humor *and* meaningful improvements.

I guess DK2 was consistent but that was the equivalent of XCom Terrors of the Deep to XCom so I remember it as the same game tbh. DK never got its "Firaxis reboot" and I've probably bought and abandoned halfway-through any remotely similar game I can remember. Evil Genius was meh. Overlord made an attempt I guess but fell flat. Fable promised to allow something similar in a narrative style but ended up as D&D-alignment cosplay.

Following the xcom metaphor, I'm cautiously optimistic but at the least I'm glad to hear DK got its own "Xenonauts". Even if its a loyal homage to its detriment (like Xenonauts), it speaks to a demand in the market that might spark interest for a modern fresh take on the concept (XCom-EU).

At worst, the fact this exists is news to me, and its probably the "news for nerds" where I heard the *news* from slashdot in... 10+.years at least.

Crap, do I need to check if somethingawful is still relevant now?

Yep, there are twenty thousand solid technical reasons AI+CGI can, will, and should be used for better movies, etc.

That's incremental progress and hardly controversial - audiences may have complained about (bad) CGI oversaturating high budget movies. But the actors were not complaining about not having to do 20x more shots or spending less hours on makeup, etc.

What is disruptive, whether realistic or not, is a perceived possibility to industrialize what remains today an old-school "artistic" endeavor.

This is not about the extras / background actors... though being consistent in those demands probably didn't hurt for the unions to keep the strike going.

No one was complaining two years ago about CGI making it possible to remake Ben-Hur or Matrix without hiring a ton of extras. That was pretty much universally seen as a good thing.

The scenario that is a concern here is a studio hiring an actor for an "extra" or minor job, then using their likeness as a main character going forward. Think Agent Coulson on the MCU, if you want to be charitable.

More cynically, think about studios building libraries of "character actors" from everyone who ever worked for them for minor roles, until you reach the point where the tech is good enough and the library big enough you can cast your production with digital models as we already do with videogames. It ain't cheap but it would be peanuts compared to never having to hire for starring roles *ever*, and having full IP and brand control with no pesky "creatives".

That's not just licensing the likeness from a famous actor for adequate money... that's killing the pipeline that allows actors to move from starving extras to character actors to top-billing starring roles. They'd have to be crazy not to worry about this as an existential threat.

I don't know what mushrooms did you take while binging Two and a half men - those were two different characters and there was no "surgery". I barely watched a couple episodes, but from what I saw they couldn't write more than 5mins of script before making a joke/exposition to explain the absence of the charlie character. Not sure if they had such little faith in the audience, or they just couldn't stop throwing shade at Charlie Sheen by proxy.

If anything that hallucination is a standard example that it *is* complicated to replace a main character actor in the middle of a running show / franchise. Even for a middling show w/ an actor who had alienated his own audience for years... there was neither surprise nor sympathy, but the show still became irrelevant and faded into the background of blandness one might remember from a dentist waiting room.

As usual, most people overestimate the strategy behind these moves, and underestimate how many resources will be spent, and how many insufficiently obsequious courtiers will be fired, pretending every joke that falls flat is some visionary strategy.

To be fair, it is possible and arguably common to be a fan of both Heinlein's and Douglas Adams' work. It's even possible to enjoy them and consider their works important as cultural references without reading them as political manifestos.

Americans "don't take advantage of these programs" because there are no advantages to take - US citizens do not need permission to accept a job during or immediately after their college education. Or, you know, anytime they want.

There is literally no "special benefits" on OPT other than extra bureaucratic tax to beg for conditional permission to accept an entry-level job for a limited time... with no guarantees (to the person or the business) that will accrue to an H1B and long-term career, for that matter.

Unless you mean US citizens don't take full advantage of the internship and job placement opportunities offered by their universities... which is probably true, but unrelated to the OPT program.

For most corporate meetings, absolutely. For most government meetings, probably.

But for *political* meetings, that would make no sense. The point of such meetings is part gut-checking the trustworthiness of the other party in negotiations and part symbolic public theater - none of which translates well to a zoom meeting.

The "real work" you seem to allude to always happens between aides and professionals long before anyone meets the executive

The amount of chaos over the last few years whenever Britain replaces the Prime Minister (even clearly incompetent ones), clearly says otherwise.

You can disagree with a government leader policies, competence, efficiency, character, etc. But the fact their time is a scarce resource than 99% of their constituency, because of their position, is an obvious and verifiable fact. The impact of their actions, and opportunity cost of their inaction, impact far more people.

The same applies to Gore, or your typical (and sure, often ineffective) CEO. You may rightly complain they're inefficient on their professional endeavors, or hypocritical on their personal ones - but if instead of traveling to strategic meetings 3 hours by air they traveled several days by ship, train or air balloon that's not a solution. That's political posturing and virtue signaling at best, egregious negligence at worst and either case grounds for losing that leadership role - because fundamentally their time is not their own.

Fwiw I think the author means "at scale" here running it as a service for other people

After the merger, they wanted to have a single streaming uber-app, but they didn't want to dilute the benefits of market segmentation and decades of premium content and brand recognition.

So they moved the separate brands/apps into channels on their new uber-app - except no one wants to download yet another streaming app from a brand with no recognition.

So they force all subscribers on their premium brand to replace their streaming app with the new uber-app - to get a guaranteed starting subscriber base.

Thus guaranteeing the brand identity is mixed up for consumers and loses the benefits of market segmentation...

Oh, wait - there's the decades of premium content and brand recognition, that can keep some customer attachment and perhaps get those viewers engaged with other Max content. Right?

No problem!

Just remove half the content archive, and cancel projects already in progress to send the message the quality and quantity or premium content will only go down. Oh, and make the app crash constantly for the first two months of the relaunch. That will fix it.

Phew! That was close - if we didnt catch that on time, it might even have worked.

If the scenario is even remotely covered by fair use, then this is judging by existing law. Even adjudicating this is not within fair use scope in the current law is a judicial act that belongs in the court. Not an act of legislating.

Now you can make the case current law is insufficient and the legislature needs to step in and revise and evolve the law. You might even argue they should get ahead of this and act now, instead of waiting for bad outcomes (or bad precedents) to force their hand.

But the system depends on both branches playing their part, and if necessary force the others' hand. Abdicating that responsibility does not help, because legislatures are sloooow and reality does not wait - inaction effectively becomes a precedent.

This has happened in the past, where the courts hand a judgement that basically says "this is incredibly stupid, but the current law says this is legal / illegal - and its up to congress to redefine this". And the public embarrassment can move the wheels of the legislature that previously refused to budge.

That's an even more inaccurate analogy...

This is pretty straightforward, by their logic:

Landlords are expected to report suspicions of illegal behavior on the premises.

Some landlords upgraded their units with noise isolation and private entrances - and promoted "privacy" as a market differentiator.

Therefore - henceforth landlords are responsible for 24x7 surveillance of their residents and expected to submit recordings of any criminal behavior.

If they are unwilling to setup surveillance cameras and microphones covering every unit or public space, they are clearly willingly blinding themselves and should be liable. Because obviously.

The balance of power between governments and private business, capital and labor, bureaucrats and elected politicians are all different in europe.

Doesn't mean there is no corruption, or some officials driving policy based on personal ambitions. But the mix of incentives is different and most often pushes them in the opposite direction.

I don't know what you have read, but pretty sure there was No Real Person Involved