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Comment Re:Shortage? (Score 1) 192

The risk is it could lead to shortages of critical skills that end up harming Switzerland's competitiveness.

The chance of someone capable of learning critical skills being born in switzerland is the same as anywhere else, if the swiss are not training their own citizens to perform these critical roles then that's already a failure on their part.

The Swiss aren't exactly an industrial powerhouse, nor scientific. The largest sectors employing more Swiss are the banking, finance, trading and insurance sectors. Chemicals and pharmacuticals are their main physical exports, which means they're pretty much competing with most of Europe. So local universities will not struggle to meet demand and there's a load of British/German/French institutions they could use as well, also remember that they're smack bang in the middle of western Europe with open borders, so already a lot of people work in Geneva but live in France. A commute from Germany to Zurich wouldn't be difficult either.

That being said, even though Switzerland is a very static country, it would still be a mistake.

Comment Re:The Game Awards Can't Support "Luster" (Score 1) 24

"The biggest night on the video game calendar" was never going to be The Game Awards. There are very, very, very few industry awards ceremonies that people care enough about to watch unless they're personally involved in that industry and video games are not one of those industries.

Movie and TV awards are chock full of beautiful people, charismatic personalities, popular music, haute couture, comedy, and themes that span generations. Gaming, by comparison, is significantly more niche and (as widespread as game-play is) there isn't enough emotional investment for the people **who otherwise go completely unseen** to attract an significant and enduring audience.

In regards to the complaints about the lack of recognition of layoffs and other issues: "What the hell did you expect?" No one builds an awards ceremony around the airing of dirty laundry.

The only reason anyone knows about them is that the BBC had an article about them this morning.

I suspect it's very much a circle jerk like the British Sandwich Awards (called the Sammies, I'm not making it up) and at best a well paying job for a mid-level commedian-slash-light-entertainer to host.

Gaming in general has always struggled to get any kind of gaming centric event on the social map, E3 before it collapsed and maybe PAX but even that seems passe now so the best we can hope for is a mention in a TV and Film award ceremony suich as the games category in the BAFTAs.

FWIW, I think Clair Obscur cleaned up.

Comment Re:It's a shake down (Score 3, Insightful) 40

Disney is already licensing their content to OpenAI.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fbusiness%2Fm...

This isn't an AI vs Art showdown. This is just a licensing deal shakedown.

Yep, but the last thing Disney wants is for copyright to be weakened... They'll have everyone doing to them what they did to the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, et al. that were never copyrighted.

Comment Re:States rights? (Score 4, Insightful) 122

Bahahahahaha America is eating itself. Vote in a fascist, get fascist shit.

As much as I agree with the sentiment, I think we should be careful with too much crowing. European fascists like le Pen, Farage and AFD are trying as hard as Russia possibly can push to get voted into power over here.

Comment Re:Okay. (Score 1, Insightful) 122

but they can't do anything about AI?

They can. There's no order Trump can sign to stop them legally- which is why that's not what he did. The headline makes it seem like that, but it didn't.
What it does is much more insidious. It orders the Government to engage in lawfare and withholding of whatever funds are considered legal to withhold to any state that doesn't follow the Executive policy on AI.

i.e., he can't legally order them to stop "doing something about AI", but he can take their money away until they decide it's not worth it anymore.

You're making it sound like Trump cares about the law. The republicans are too scared to speak up against him, the tame SCOTUS won't do anything... Your country's legal systems are effectively toothless.

Trump gets to rule by fiat and the Republicans and their backers have spent much of the last 8 years ensuring that their loyalists are in key positions.

I mean there are military troops in several US cities which are there on very dubious grounds (read: obviously there to punish and intimidate those Trump perceives as enemies and by enemies I mean people who didn't vote for him) above the express wishes of state governments or the local population.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Feu.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2F...

So why do you think Trump will care about any other law? There's no-one to stop him.

Comment Re:Say 'me too' or perish (Score 1) 79

every single day here there are posts the reference content posted on "X" ... just because you have removed yourself doesn't mean a god damn thing.

Here's the thing, I was never a part of Twitter... definitely not a part of the TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter.

My entire exposure to it from go to woah was via thrid parties... most notably reputable news agencies. As said news agencies care about their reputation, they've stopped quoting it as a source and social media in general. Twitter used to be very well cited, barely a BBC article used to go by without a section of "this is what some random twat on Twitter had to say about it" but that is all gone now.

Pretty much everyone I've spoken to has stopped using TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter because it's just become a cesspool of hate. You might not like that, but it is quite significant.

Comment Such a lack of commitment... (Score 2) 192

It's unsurprising; but I see that the law has several stages of dealing with foreign overcrowding if the 10 million line is breached; but nothing about how locally produced human resources will be stack ranged for headcount reduction should the population remain above the target. Surely anyone who really cares about crowding needs to have a contingency plan for endogenous losers as well?

Comment Re: Ah yes (Score 1) 194

You are a fucking idiot. The US military fought against fascism. Antifa is short for anti fascism. Fascism is anti American, and any true American is anti fascist.

Whilst I agree with the first, second and third sentences wholeheartedly, fascism is as American as selling glass beads to natives and stealing their land.

Up until the Pearl Harbour there was a sizable fascist movement in the US, organisations like the German-American Bund had tens of thousands of members right up until December of 1941 when the US declared war on Nazi Germany and pretty much banned them. Not that we were entirely innocent over this side of the pond with the BUF (British Union of Fascists) but we did see the writing on the wall sooner rather than later with membership falling off a cliff in the late 30s (notably with the BUF becoming openly racist, which is poisonous to the British character, so there was no need for an outright ban until after the war). I'm hoping that Europe can follow that example again before one of our nations falls into Fascism.

Make no mistake, there will be a significant number of Americans openly supporting Fascism, in particularly they will be vocal in saying things like "don't call it fascism" and calling people they don't like "left".

Comment Re:I laughed (Score 1) 56

This is the most American thing I have seen this year.

Sadly it's infecting the rest of the world.

A lot of things that you get quoted will change price depending on location, time, browser/OS (user agent), IP, et al. I'm thinking specifically of flights, accommodation, insurance, and other things without a strictly advertised price which would mean they become subject to advertising laws and consumer rights.

Comment Re:Economic terrorism (Score 1) 202

And yet it's the Democratic leadership in the Congress forcing the issue on releasing all the documented evidence about the Epstein mess,

Cute, you act like Democrats were somehow prevented from releasing the Epstein documents under Biden, and insist that Trump isn't prevented from releasing them like Biden (apparently) was...

Why didn't Biden release the documents in 2021? 2022? 2023? Or 2024?

Because SCOTUS had sealed the files and blocked the release until just a few weeks ago.

So yes, they really were prevented from releasing the Epstein files.

Comment Re:Say 'me too' or perish (Score 0) 79

Translation: No-one can compete with the Twitter (now X) market-share because of legacy users but we plan to cheat by re-using their former name, logo and trademark.

As always, the big question is: What can BlueBird offer that is different to Mastodon and BlueSky? What's their market USP? They have to obey the same censorship laws and (eventually) age-restriction laws. They'll be manipulated by the same bots and disinformation networks as Twitter, unless their subscriber's down-vote the propaganda. The only advantage, is a 'guaranteed' user base (via brand recognition) allows them to monetize their product quickly. Since X (formerly Twitter) has market share, they're depending on those legacy users to change to BlueBird for no real benefit.

For me, mentions of TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter have pretty much disappeared. News sites no longer quote tweets, friends no longer mention them. The only time I hear about them is when they get another fine for breaking the law or Musk does something else incredibly stupid.

Social Media itself is dying, but TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter is exemplifying why. Social media has now become beholden to rich people who are using it to try and drown out voices they don't like. Hence people are switching off. It's for that reason that new social media networks don't really have a chance. The things we used to use Social Media for, aren't really being served by social media (mainly it was used to communicate with friends, families or like-minded people, now it's being used to push someone elses agenda)

Comment Re:Does not require the pentagon to sign up for it (Score 1) 88

You literally have a police force operating with impunity and immunity grabbing people off the street.

You have a president that is openly ignoring the law... I mean trying to ignore or handwave that away must have become very difficult last night as he literally became guilty of piracy.

The only one being misleading here is you... and the only one you're misleading is yourself. You can lie to yourself, just don't expect it to fool anyone else.

Comment Re:Wrong superstars (Score 1) 27

At least in the current climate (and quite possibly indefinitely; depending on how prudent their investments are and whether they have any uncontrollably expensive hobby) there's not really any reason for the 'AI' guys to take such a servile attitude.

If you actually need the job, or are invested in the company's mission for some reason, it's a good idea to care at least slightly about how your paycheck doesn't bounce; but that's not really the position these guys are in. Exceptionally in-demand skillset and reputation; existing net worth almost certainly already enough to at least keep them comfortable indefinitely if they feel like quitting the rat race or get fired. Why settle for doing sordid adtech if you think that, best case, your boss in the sort of dumbass who would lose billions of dollars on the idea that Second Life would totally have the GDP of western europe, because reasons, and you can keep him paying you a handsome salary and providing you with the GPU compute time and dubiously sourced datasets that you find personally interesting; and worst case, if you lose the fight, you'll just be told to go sling ads, not fired and blacklisted.

Facebook isn't running a charity; but neither are these guys. Why wouldn't they try to take what they can get? Especially when the actually-profitable business units are fat enough that there's plenty of room for boondoggles, so long as you can sell them, rather than there being fairly tight constraints on how much you can waste before the company starts bleeding out.

It would honestly be more surprising if they signed up with facebook out of a genuine willingness to do adtech swill and sordid 'engagement' hacking; rather than on the assumption that there's enough desperate dumb money sloshing around in Zuckerberg's fear of missing out on the next big thing that they can get paid to pursue their pet projects without much concern for having to deliver short term impact on the bottom line.

Comment Re:All of the above? (Score 3, Interesting) 27

I assume that at least some of the tension here is that facebook hired these guys to be the hotshot golden boys of sucking less at AI; so it isn't just an it's-only-money thing. I don't know whether or not this belief is accurate; but Zuck and friends certainly hunted down and paid for the various new AI hires as though they were capable of things that in-house or more readily available alternatives are not, so the battle over where their attention will be focused is presumably being waged on the assumption that having someone else do what they aren't doing isn't really a substitute.

What I would be curious to know is why the 'build god-machine' goal isn't being treated as the obvious winner just because you can have the god machine make facebook more addictive and better at serving ads. Do they think that the AI guys are drinking the kool-aide and the only thing they'll actually be able to deliver is incremental improvements; so they want those churned directly into products? Some degree of confidence that they will eventually manage it; but fear of missing out on some sort of short term advantage means that they don't care about what is achievable in 5-10 years? Genuinely zero interest in anything except making social media more of a hellscape; so they simply don't care?

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