Comment Employment is voluntary and based on value (Score 0) 78
Merit should always consider strictly value.
Comment Ha. Old hat... (Score 1) 87
More than 35 years ago, well before the Internet, BBSes ruled.
One I was a pillar of was nothing but a wall where you would post anonymously (or not).
The software was written to verify the typing rate to make sure that no text was uploaded
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
I wrote a special terminal program that would randomize the time between characters to foil that BBS's rejection of uploads...
(Oh, it worked, and the dude running the show never found out).
Comment Cost (Score 3, Insightful) 73
Right now, we have AI models that are good enough, what we need is for someone to focus on making them affordable, because even the Enterprise level for Github Copilot doesn't let you do anything remotely resembling the level of usage I was at before they changed their business model. I used to talk to Copilot all day long and I didn't really do anything manually anymore, with excellent results. It coded a lot better than I ever did and since it freed me from mundane work I could focus on making an excellent OOP architecture with great performance and security. Including refactoring legacy code to bring it up to the level of quality you can get in minutes. Now instead of minutes everything takes me entire weeks. Ah the joys of old-fashioned artisanal coding. After 3 years I barely know how to code anymore.
Comment Re: Why do we care? (Score 0) 176
The $5K a year just gives you a $300 per person per visit discount. So pays itself back in 15 visits or so.
Comment Re:Why do we care? (Score 0) 176
Plenty of us nerds can afford this and want to see news about this.
Comment Re:Would a Spar be Repairable? (Score 1) 61
Woah... Dumb question, but would a wing spar be repairable or replaceable?
Coward said, because when the wing falls off at 30,000 feet, rest assured - it's okay, because Airbus has good documentation. All fixed.
No, of course a broken spar is A Very Bad Thing when it happens in midair.
Is this changing-the-timing-chains-in-an-Audi difficult, or is this replacing-your-spinal-cord-without-killing-you impossible?
Are these planes repairable? I think it's a reasonable question.
(Of course, with the Audi, if has anything more than a loose gas cap it's not economically feasible to repair, but that's what you get with European engineering.)
Comment Would a Spar be Repairable? (Score 3, Interesting) 61
Woah... Dumb question, but would a wing spar be repairable or replaceable?
Comment Wasn't it supposed to cool down? (Score 2, Interesting) 164
Scientists have been saying that Europe will cool down with the shutdown of the Gulf stream... as far as I can remember they've been predicting this for at least twenty years. What happened?
Comment lol statism ai the cause of monopolies (Score 0) 39
Garbage regulations like IP create these behemoths. If you want freedom, stop regulating monopolies into existence.
Comment Re: I don't want billionaires to pay their fair sh (Score -1) 295
Statism creates billionaires.
Comment Re:Game Devs are DEI and Marxist. Unions are Marxi (Score 1) 163
Correct, as anyone can see by looking at who they rounded up.
"Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist "
Comment Re:Unionisation requires a monopoly on labour... (Score 1) 163
But in the next state over, the next company will also treat you as badly as they can get away with.
The natural model for a programmer's union is the Screen Actor's Guild. That's another field with a wide range of talent. SAG members can get the best pay their agents can negotiate, lots for stars. But everyone is protected from exploitation.
Submission + - Bill To Block Publishers From Killing Online Games Advances In California (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A bill focused on maintaining long-term playable access to online games has passed out of the California Assembly’s appropriations committee, setting up a floor vote by the full legislative body. The advancement is a major win for Stop Killing Games‘ grassroots game preservation movement and comes over the objections of industry lobbyists at the Entertainment Software Association. California’s Protect Our Games Act, as currently written, would require digital game publishers who cut off support for an online game to either provide a full refund to players or offer an updated version of the game “that enables its continued use independent of services controlled by the operator.” The act would also require publishers to notify players 60 days before the cessation of “services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game.”
As currently amended, the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or after January 1, 2027, would be subject to the law if it passes. [...] In a formal statement of support for the bill sent to the California legislature, SKG wrote that “there is no other medium in which a product can be marketed and sold to a consumer and then ripped away without notice As live service games rise in popularity for game developers and gamers alike, end-of-life procedures are essential tools to ensure prolonged access to the games consumers pay to enjoy.”
The Entertainment Software Association, which helps represent the interests of major game publishers, publicly told the California Assembly last month that the bill misrepresents how modern game distribution actually works. “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance. The ESA also said the bill would impose unreasonable expectations on publishers regarding licensing rights for music or IP rights, which are often negotiated on a time-limited basis. “A legal requirement to keep games playable indefinitely could place publishers in an impossible position—forcing them to renegotiate licenses indefinitely or alter games in ways that may not be legally or technically feasible,” they wrote.
As currently amended, the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or after January 1, 2027, would be subject to the law if it passes. [...] In a formal statement of support for the bill sent to the California legislature, SKG wrote that “there is no other medium in which a product can be marketed and sold to a consumer and then ripped away without notice As live service games rise in popularity for game developers and gamers alike, end-of-life procedures are essential tools to ensure prolonged access to the games consumers pay to enjoy.”
The Entertainment Software Association, which helps represent the interests of major game publishers, publicly told the California Assembly last month that the bill misrepresents how modern game distribution actually works. “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance. The ESA also said the bill would impose unreasonable expectations on publishers regarding licensing rights for music or IP rights, which are often negotiated on a time-limited basis. “A legal requirement to keep games playable indefinitely could place publishers in an impossible position—forcing them to renegotiate licenses indefinitely or alter games in ways that may not be legally or technically feasible,” they wrote.
Comment Re: Now, this might strike some regulars as harsh, (Score -1) 175
Democracy is for retards.
Government did this. All of this. Government regulated so much that only a rare few can afford to compete.
This is late stage statism. Retard voters are to blame.
Like you.
Comment YouTube Audio Quality - Bad Production (Score 1) 100
It's just that the entire YouTube is appallingly bad.
A lot of the audio production in individual videos is really bad. This isn't anything to do with YouTube per se, not their compression algorithms or other features. A lot of YouTubers have absolutely no concept of microphone placement, of using audio compression, of reducing background noise. All of which are things which will drastically affect audio quality and the ability of a speech-to-text model to create subtitles.
It would be nice if YouTube would normalize all the uploaded videos to one set standard. Note I'm not suggesting that they compress the videos as that might change the intended presentation of professional audio productions. I just mean peak-finding normalization which could be implemented losslessly and without breaking existing video links.
Having said that, when I look at my own channel - and I am not claiming to have great audio; I have a host which would destroy a lavalier microphone in mere seconds. YouTube's subtitling is really good. It automatically switches between English and French and Hebrew, and even with a fair bit of background noise (welding, grinding, cooking, crowd noise, music) it generally gets the text correct. So I don't know what the original complaint is, except that it's not perfect. Well, guess what, neither is human hearing. How about that famous Jimi Hendrix line, "Excuse me while I kiss this guy."
