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Deyis

@ Deyis @beehaw.org

Posts
14
Comments
103
Joined
3 mo. ago

  • There Are No Weird Blogs Anymore Cause It’s More Fruitful to Drive Them Out of Business

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  • In the case of online magazine equivalents though I really don’t get it. What is there to sell off? Shouldn’t any potential long term profits be priced in at the point they get bought out? If the company has tangible assets like offices, couldn’t they just sell those without firing anyone and have people work from home?

    Oh god no! The tangible assets like buildings and land only increase in value, you don't get rid of those. You sell it to a holding company and lease it back to the original company for a profit (and probably several other companies who want space, too).

    You then strip operations down to the bare minimum. A couple of writers at most and they're only really there to make sure the automated AI article generator doesn't accidentally publish a napalm recipe or some shit. You want to run it with as few people as possible to still generate enough content to run ads. Utilise your fanbase to submit content that you can run ads on because they'll do it for free or a chance to win a t-shirt or some shit. No fans? No problem! Rip everything off relevant subreddits or other sites doing the exact same thing. Make up unsourced slop to piss people off because it generates engagement like you wouldn't believe. More eyeballs, more ad revenue.

    And you make damn sure that the company never makes a profit on paper so you don't have to pay the relevant taxes. You made $50k more than you expected? Better pay a consultant (you) $40k to find out why. Then increase that rent by $15k.

  • Lionhead's secret best game, and one of the greatest ever abandonware games - The Movies - turns 20 today [Eurogamer]

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  • I occasionally feel like I hallucinated that whole game so it's nice to know that other people have played it.

  • The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft

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  • I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.

    “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”

    “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”

    “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”

    The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”

    “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

    “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

    He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

    I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.

    “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.

    “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.

    “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”

    It didn’t seem like they did.

    “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”

    Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.

    I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.

    “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.

    Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.

    “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.

    I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”

    He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.

    “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”

    “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.

    “Because I was afraid.”

    “Afraid?”

    “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”

    I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.

    “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”

    He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.

  • ‘I’ve never used it and probably never will’: Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu says he won’t use AI to make music [VGC]

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  • i have a hard time imagining a scenario where AI output is preferable to the alternatives.

    Oh that's easy, it's when you need the thing cheap and now.

    I used to work at a friend's start-up where, charitably, his approach to business was archaic. "We don't need to advertise because good word-of-mouth is good enough, and what's the point of having a website and social media?" kind of archaic. Without a doubt, he would be using AI for absolutely everything.

  • What is the most overrated game gamers hype up?

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  • Red Dead Redemption 2

    It's the same old Rockstar formula of having you travel back and forth over the map just to do a normal mission and falls short of giving the cowboy fantasy everyone touts it as being. They added enough detail that your horse's balls shrink in the cold but made it so easy to get money that whilst your merry band of outlaws are complaining about how little they have, I struggled to find more things to buy with immense hoards of cash. And the bounty system doesn't work. And the multiplayer was total ass. And part way through the fantastical cowboy simulator, it adds goofy sidequests of time travel and robots. Rockstar couldn't decide what to make the game so they tried to make it everything, leaving it lacklustre.

  • Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account

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  • It’s very easy, if a game doesn’t have invasive data thieving anticheat, then it will run on Linux, otherwise it won’t.

    Can you be clearer about this? The majority of games I play on PC are online multiplayer.

  • Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account

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  • So I'd need to check that site for every game I want to play? Presumably if there isn't a user report for whatever distro I'm using (how do you go about choosing one? Guessing from your comment that some work better with certain components than others) the only option is to buy the game in the hope of it working whilst preparing for X hours of faffing about to get it to work?

    Protondb also looks to be focused on Steam, I'm guessing it's like MacOS where if it's a game not on Steam then you're shit out of luck if there isn't a Linux specific version?

  • Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account

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  • Gaming on Linux is better than it ever has been, but there are some games that just won’t run on Linux.

    Is there any way of telling which ones will and won't run on Linux? How does running them on Linux differ from Windows?

    Avoid Nvidia graphics due to driver complexities.

    Well, I'm fucked if that's the case as both my machines have Nvidia GPUs.

  • RUMOR: 'The Future of Xbox is Software Publishing' as Next Console Generation Faces Doubts

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  • So you also like it? You disagree with everything I said… including the part where I said I don’t like it? It sounds like you just want to be antagonistic.

    If you're deliberately misinterpreting what they said like that, you're the one being antagonistic.

  • Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account

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  • I think more people, myself included, would be willing to consider Linux we weren't met with people being complete assholes when asking for help or direction.

  • Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs

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  • As ever, no negative consequences at all for Discord.

  • Imgur blocks access to UK users after regulator warned of fine

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  • They're not but there's no recourse for it.

  • Harry Potter TV Series Boycott

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  • I don’t want the kids not to get paid.

    That's the end result of ensuring that working on a project like this is a career ender, though. If you want to send the message of "I don't like this and won't watch anything with those people in it ever again", you're making sure they don't get paid again. They would need to find a different career.

  • Google's dev registration plan 'will end the F-Droid project

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  • A major roadblock would be making it user friendly enough for the average person to be able to use it as well as an online help community that doesn't treat newcomers like shit.

  • Imgur blocks access to UK users after regulator warned of fine

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  • These ads for VPNs are starting to get over the top.

  • JK Rowling dismisses Emma Watson as 'ignorant' over trans rights row

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  • Emma Watson is older than Joanne when she first published; it's so creepy that Joanne is desperate to infantilise her.

  • Harry Potter TV Series Boycott

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  • The child actors would have already been paid, boycotting the show isn't going to negatively affect that.

    What's far more important is the attention and subscription economy. Whatever platform is streaming it, unsubscribe from them and tell them exactly why. Don't talk about the show. Don't endorse watching it, don't discuss with people how it did XYZ different from the books or whatever, fuck the whole thing off. Don't even bother pirating it. Let it fizzle out like a fart on the wind. They're going to pump millions into trying to get you to watch it and you're going to spit in the face of all those executives desperate for your time by refusing to do so.

  • Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man

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  • Hang on, so I need to upload government ID and/or a selfie in order to access "adult material" in order to protect kids but Meta trying to bait men with pictures of girls under the age of consent is perfectly fine? What the fuck is happening?

  • Valve apologizes for ruining a Steam game's launch

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  • Valve should absolutely be doing more to fix their mistake.