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) 290
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."
Comment Bit of trivia (Score 1) 139
Where is one of the last places you'd expect a rear-view mirror?
The SR-71 had one.
The practical use case was checking the deployment of the landing parachute.
Comment Re:Shitty Extrapolation (Score 1) 34
Speaking of forensics, if you're a law-abiding citizen who just wants to keep private information private, iOS lockdown mode will reported halt the Coruna forensics tool in its tracks. Source, Eva Galperin at EFF. It's a royal PITA to use though.
Comment Re:Big picture problem (Score 1) 34
Or, as Robert Morris Sr. said about breaking confidential communications, "Look for plaintext. It comes up in the darnedest place", or words to that effect.
Comment Malus means Apple (Score 1) 120
Comment Dumped Grok over this (Score -1) 72
Grok was constantly say it was doing something that it had ZERO ability to, and I kept calling it out and it kept apologizing and then immediately doing it again.
As a guy who spend 5 figures a year on Ai, the last thing I want is that. I know Claude and ChatGPT also do it, but Grok was doing it CONSTANTLY.
Comment Audiences want vertical doom scrolling (Score -1) 41
This will not end well.
Comment Re: i believed it's called (Score -1) 93
Why is this a problem?
I do not want my software censoring anything I make.
Comment Re:Fuck this administration (Score -1) 393
Neoliberalism and liberalism are two totally different things.
