Kichae

And yet it still has a bunch of ads for PC+ littered throughout it. Despite being grandfathered in, I abandoned it earlier this year for Podcast Republic, which hasn’t spammed me or locked me out of any features I’ve tried to play with despite not having paid them anything.

Honestly, I’d take a woody window to replace the clear glass overlooking the scenic parking lot outside literally any of the apartments I’ve ever lived in.

Self checkouts tend to have a hand scanner too

I’m going to guess that this is regional or vendor specific, because I’ve literally never seen a self-checkout with a hand scanner. And if I ever did, I would expect it to transform into a broken, dangling cable within a few months.

Meanwhile, stores all but stop manning existing checkouts, forcing everyone to line up to check out their own stuff.

In business, all data are vanity metrics. If they make you look good, you slap that shit on everything; if they make you look bad, you “don’t have it”.

It’s just that sometimes you can use negative data to make decisions that look good to those above you, and sometimes you know that you can’t.

their value comes from them being relevant

The news’s value should be to society, though, not shareholders?

People spending more time with fewer games is not a reason, in publishers’ minds, to reverse course. It’s the intended outcome.

Having the same number of people (or near the same number) playing fewer games, and filling those games with monetization features is cheaper and easier to maintain than having a broad and growing library of titles.

Remember, the ideal for publishers is to have one game that everyone plays that has no content outside of a “spend money” button that players hit over and over again. That’s the cheapest product they can put out, and it gives them all the money. They’re all seeking everything-for-nothing relationships with customers.

He was “forced” to buy because he, uh, signed a contract saying he would. I’m sorry, but “voluntarily signed a purchase agreement” is only “forcing” if you believe people above a certain wealth level can do whatever the fuck they want with impunity.

He could have backed out and paid the fine he agreed to pay in the case he backed out, but he didn’t want to do that, either.

He’s not being investigated by someone else.

He can’t win because he’s a fucking idiot.

It’s litigation around what a machine can freely use in its learning model.

No, its not that, either. It’s litigation around what resources a person can exploit to develop a product without paying for that right.

The machine is doing nothing wrong. It’s not feeding itself.

Here’s a google prompt for you: “raspberry pi police”

Now do 1985.

Never mind, I’ll do it myself: NES games were $50, which today is about $185.

Are they still playing apologetics for the cops? Because if so, no thanks.

Everything I need to know about the new Raspberry Pi: https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/09/rpi_maker_in_residence_police/

“Laid off” has always been a euphemism for “fired.”

Not in communities where seasonal labour is a significant part of the local economy. There, ‘laid off’ often comes with the implicit “temporary” modifier, while ‘fired’ does not. And while tech work is not usually seasonal employment, if you grew up in an area where seasonal employment is common, the distinction kind of stick with you.

VR is Guitar Hero if Guitar Hero was $500.

VR continues to make more sense as an arcade-like attraction than as a consumer product.

Except for the part where I would have to wear a headset that 5000 other people have also worn. (And except for the VR sickness that, it turns out, I’m very sensitive to).

“If you want me back, you value me,” Sucher told Insider.

Wow, I know business schools are filled with out of touch simps for the ownership class, but I still wasn’t prepared for this line.

Like, what was the message that was sent with the layoff? And how does it colour the interpretation of everything else? What good is being “valued” by the ownership class today when it means absolutely nothing for you tomorrow?

It speaks volumes, really, that she thinks being valued by a business - whose goals are explicitly to siphon wealth that workers create into the hands of owners - is something we should feel good about.

Accurate. I’d like to go home now.

just someone using the term to mean “young people”

Rude. How dare they stop using “Millennial” to mean “young people”. They weren’t supposed to recognize that some of us are in our 40s now!

People keep claiming this this, and yet it does little to explain hmthr large number of smaller companies that have no real estate holdings.

Also, it totally overlooks what the actual purpose of money is to the wealthy, namely control. It’s not money for money’s sake, nor is it control for money’s sake, but rather money for control’s sake.

Meanwhile, WFH is a big shift in worker autonomy. Many employers have treated employees working from home with extreme suspicion, going so far as to accuse us of theft just because they can’t directly watch us sit at a desk. They installed computer input trackers on remote hardware, they got belligerent over the idea that people maybe - just maybe - they were doing laundry or soemthing on company time, and they’re nettled over the idea that people were sitting on their couches.

This isn’t the behaviour of people concerned about their stock portfolios, or of landlords upset that their renters may not renew their lease in 5 years. These are not rational actors making rational decisions about long term consequences. These are people who have lost their fucking minds over having given up just the slightest, insignificant amount of control over their employees lives and, importantly, having handed it over to those employees.

They’ll happily take a productivity hit, a revenue decline, or even a massive loss in institutional knowledge if it means clawing back these miniscule gains in worker power.

And if we’re lucky, it’ll cost them significantly more control over workers in the long run.