"This will make life harder for GameStop. Good, fuck ’em."
Really? I can only assume this was written by a disgruntled game dev, because almost every actual gamer loved the secondary market where a 5-year-old game could be picked up for $10. That exact same game on the PlayStation Store is often still listed at $60. Wanting to say "fuck 'em" to GameStop is actively saying "fuck 'em" to the entire secondary market.
The secondary market exists explicitly because Sony and Microsoft refuse to lower digital game prices as titles age. When console manufacturers eliminate the disc drive, they eliminate the only price competition to their walled-garden storefronts.
If there were a reality where excluding $12 in hardware manufacturing costs and $25 in decoding royalties meant Sony would say, "Wow, we are making so much money now, let's cut the price of the console in half," then great. But I am highly dubious. Everyone knows the days of heavily subsidized console hardware are over. With the secondary market dead and buried, there is zero market incentive or financial reality in which Sony or Microsoft will ever pass those massive digital profit margins down to the consumer.
Can you have someone play a part they don't represent? Sure they are after all actors. I don't have a problem with a Kenyan/Mexican playing "Helen of Troy" any more than I have a problem with a Scottish/Swede playing a Odysseus. i.e. none. These are actors. If we are somehow offended by a darker than Mediterranean-Bronzed actor playing Helen then why are we ok with a lighter than Mediterranean-Bronzed actor playing Odysseus? Hell, there are plenty of talented Mediterranean actors out there. Why is the entire cast not them?
Let's not pretend though that there is some kind of historical justification here. It seems foolish to try to argue that Helen of Troy could possibly have been black in this fictional story. It's fiction and these are modern actors. Just say what you want and throw the justification away as it is stupid. Offering some sort of historic justification here is as much of a stretch as trying to claim Jesus was potentially a blue eyed white guy.
I think Lupita Nyong'o is a phenomenal, Oscar-winning actress, and I have zero issue watching her play Helen of Troy because theater relies on talent and imagination, not DNA. My issue is with the hypocrisy of the discourse. When people try to invent fake historical justifications like using ancient slavery to claim Helen could have been Black it is just as dishonest and wrong as Europeans pretending Jesus was a blue-eyed white man. Let's stop rewriting actual history to justify modern creative casting. Just admit it's a creative choice in a fictional adaptation and move on.
You wrote an app begging people for money and thought it was a good idea to post it here? Nice.
Oh I know your going to say "But wait an AI wrote all this code themselves without my intervention so it is cool".
LLMs write cool code all them time. If you want to write a post talking about what it's strategy was and the code it wrote, the problems and successes such how it figured out how to create an account then I would be happy to read your post.
However, posting a site that says: "Give me money" and do so because it is cool and I promise it was all written by AI.. No thanks. Take your beg-a-thon someplace else.
Let's take a concrete thing: Creating a web site is trivial but I would love to know more about how agent created these accounts.
Creation of a Stripe account usually requires:
- An email address (agent could plausibly generate/control one)
- Business/individual details
- A bank account or equivalent payout destination
- In many jurisdictions, identity verification (ID document upload, sometimes a selfie match) before the account can actually accept live payments, not just be created
Similar questions exist for Vercel. How did the agent create an account and obtain an auth token? Is the Vercal account tied to a git repo to push to but if that is the case how did the agent obtain a github token? Write a real post about that and I would love to read it!
I find this amusing as when I look at the internet I don't see libertarians, I see socialists (anonymous flame-baiters aside)
Just as a counter example, the author points out:
"The internet, seen through this cultural lens, is very libertarian. CJ demonstrates this in their video by showing an ad from the 90s for a computer with internet capability that appeals to individuality. It paints the city as something dark, inhuman and monstrous; endless queues through dark corridors; store clerks are living corpses that represent authoritarian bureaucracies."
Rather than this, what I see is a socialist internet that demonizes city sprawl and champions YIMBY movements. Talk about your suburban house or rural homestead or your car or your preference not to live next to a half way house and you will be vilified. Yet these lifestyle preferences are exactly the kind of things that make libertarians well libertarians. Can a libertarian support living next to a half way house? Sure, but these kinds of property rights and assertion of preferences are what libertarians are typically all about.
The internet is a product of state-funded military research and public university collaboration. The software that keeps the internet and well life as we know it running is open-source, relying on developers donating their labor to a digital commons. The internet is not a libertarian triumph (or dark dystopia) of private property; it is a socialist triumph of public funding and global collective sharing.
If what the author actually means is that the internet is libertarian because the pseudo-anonymous Eric Cartmans asserting "I do what I want" in online forums then sure. That is a long way off from actual libertarianism though. Free speech is championed in many corners of the internet and is not the exclusive purview of the libertarian.
Are they essentially destroying xbox in order to reduce the on paper value in order to sell it? With all the cuts they can save face as a result of the low price they will accept?
While I did not flag this, it is clearly a hit piece. Why write an article to publish in July that does not include June data? Unless of course one looks at June uptime and finds that does not align with their story.
So even the maritime super power of the USA is reluctant to enter the Strait given that the southern coast of Iran is heavily fortified and features Qeshm Island AKA "The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier" with it's underground "Missile City".
The USA has not risked an Aircraft Carrier transit through the Strait in like 6 years. They will risk a Destroyer every now and then such as during Project Freedom but that effort was not really a success. The Destroyers being more of a "I dare you to do something deterrent" than an overwhelming military presence.
India lacks the ability to force their way through the Strait to escort tankers laden with oil. India has sent warships to the area but they (like the American Aircraft Carriers) remain safely outside the Strait.
You assert: "if Iran is challenged, it needs to have the political will and military power to fight those who challenge it. You can't fight the whole world."
I would have thought by any objective read of the situation that Iran has clearly demonstrated both the will and the means to control the Strait. The war has taught Iran that they hold veto power over global trade through the Strait.
The recent 60 day framework essentially affirms this as if Iran returns to pre-war status quo the USA has agreed to $300 Billion aid and the release of frozen assets (though mostly not at the expense of the US tax payer). The individual Gulf States now want to negotiate directly with Iran rather than in concert with the USA and Israel. These are all tacit admissions that Iran holds veto power over transit through the Strait. At least until the USA gets through the mid-term elections after which they might be more inclined to return to attempts to break Iran's hold on the Straight.
The author asserts there is no legal way to force a toll as:
"Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait where all ships enjoy a right of transit passage that coastal states cannot suspend."
Except neither Iran nor the USA has ratified the Law of the Sea, which makes this weaker than the author presents. If the US wants to rely on "customary law binds non-ratifiers" to hold Iran to transit passage, that same logic applies to the US's own non-ratification. You can't invoke UNCLOS as binding custom on Iran while treating US non-ratification as irrelevant.
The author asserts there is no practical way to force a toll as:
"The scale of the waterway makes it far more difficult to physically stop, inspect and control vessels that refuse to pay a toll. Imposing a toll is one thing; enforcing it against unwilling ships is another entirely."
Except they don't. The Iranians don't need to inspect every ship. In fact, spot-checking is plenty, since they just need to threaten to destroy ships. International shipping insurers will force compliance on Iran's behalf as underwriters price the risk and shipowners route around it voluntarily.
I'm not a fan of the situation and certainly don't condone Iranian support for terror organizations, but let's not pretend they lack a legal and enforceable way to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, they've established/proposed a route through the Strait between the Qeshm and Larak islands that gives them even greater control over traffic.
I have the same pattern and same observation. No one wants a PR any more as far as I can see. In some sense, this has always been the case. People are happy to do their own thing but not so keen on integration with other people's code. Now though it is on a different level.
I can see maintainers are being overwhelmed by AI driven PRs but if we filter our new features and concentrate just on bug fixes, does it really matter where a PR comes from if it fixes a bug?
I do work on a very complicated agent based simulation. The data shaping and loading is all open source python. There are dozens of long standing bugs that prevent the simulation from loading some of the data correctly. I used to send PRs but they were always ignored so I gave up. Now, when there is a new release I need to spend a day reviewing the new code to see what patches I need to re-apply.
I'm a video game completionist so I can appreciate the idea that a badge or certificate saying you did something could give you joy or motivation. Just dont confuse your badge for some kind of validation that you feel others should respect. I'm not getting on any competitive video game team because I have picked up all the hidden tokens.
So, I would love me a single player space opera with over the shoulder mechanics. Like fallout crossed with xcom crossed with mass effect crossed with outer worlds. Give me 12 of those a year and while we are at it throw in a half dozen fantasy games with a similar vibe. I'll probably get them all if they are like 20 or 30 bucks a pop.
The thing is, it does not have to be massive or sell a million copies. From my perspective, it only needs to sell one copy (to me). If the art is AI even if the plot is AI, I don't much care. I really don't care one way or the other if the art is 100% AI. I don't care if the inventory system was developed by AI. In a future gaming utopia (for me) I would sit down at my console and just describe the game I want to play and AI would build it on the fly for me. I might pay hundreds of dollars a year for such a capability. Perhaps thousands if it truly worked.
I know than many people got irritated by nvidia's DLSS as AI slop but I could not care less. If it means that smaller studios can make games that I might like I say bring it on. If someone will not purchase a AAA game because it has an AI smell to it then I guess that is their prerogative. Seems to me to be cutting your nose off to spite your face though.
Facebook leadership is essentially a cat reacting to a laser pointer. There seems to be no shiny object they won't chase. Their own C-Suite admit their latest reorganization is a disaster. Their "all in" on virtual worlds was a disaster. Their billion dollar AI guru purchase was a disaster. Their influencer heavy connected glasses will be a disaster.
There is no leadership here. However, you can be sure when the next round of layoffs happen, there will be no "mea culpa" from the C-Suite, lots of golden parachutes and the unemployed will be the cogs in their wheel.