This is great news for the Barbie Movie

Well, the article (at least in the free part.. I'm not making an account just to fact check this site) mentions two studies right off the bat and claims that they shed light on the impact of corporate trolls on Reddit.

"Two significant studies, the Pew Research Center study conducted in 2018 and the Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020, have shed light on the prevalence and impact of corporate trolls on Reddit."

If you look up these studies, the Pew Research Center has a survey they conduct and although the article claims they interviewed 2500 americans who use reddit the actual study had only 2,002 adults. It was also a study about what sites they used. It had nothing to do with Reddit. In fact, if you switch over to the Detailed Table, Reddit wasn't even mentioned as a response. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/03/01/social-media-use-2018-methodology/

I could not find a "Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020" that matched the article's description. I did find a study published by them in 2020 about selfies and body image and especially snapchat. Once again, no reddit. But I can't say I found the article mentioned.

Then again, I can't say the articles mentioned exist at all. ChatGPT almost certainly hallucinated this.

Dang, this is such a cool project and it's a shame this is happening to it. It's understandable that Valve wants to be nowhere near Nintendo's proprietary libraries though. I hope this isn't the end of the project full stop.

Does the Fediverse have more of a mental health problem than other social media sites? Or is it just more visible and more likely to be hidden away?

"Privacy features like user-agent reduction, IP reduction, preventing cross-site storage, and fingerprint randomization make it more difficult to distinguish or reidentify individual clients, which is great for privacy, but makes fighting fraud more difficult. This matters to users because making the web more private without providing new APIs to developers could lead to websites adding more:"

Ohhh it's fighting fraud that they want to do! And here I thought it was entirely for the much more profitable goal of maintaining advertising revenue. Well, I'm SO GLAD to be wrong on that one. Slash S.

"Tracking Protection" just means they are protecting their exclusivity in tracking you.

Yes Louis Brennan designed a gyroscopic monorail in the early 1900's but there's a reason it didn't work out. Every car needs its own gyroscope which is a lot of dynamic components that need maintenance. A regular two rail train is much simpler and cheaper to operate. The idea these techbros have that everything is made better with individual pods is pretty wasteful when we already have better and cheaper solutions to virtually every problem they have tried to invent for us. Are we even super concerned about rural folks taking transit? By definition they are a small portion of the population and have the greatest need for personal transport. Where we need transit adoption is in urban areas with large populations who all want to drive their personal 2 tonnes of plastic and steel right into town and park it (for free obviously) in their own little parking space.

A gadgetbahn like this will only serve a limited population and won't be able to tie into the existing transit network. There might be niche situations where it's not a terrible idea but it is not a good generalized solution.

You will own nothing.

That's it. That's all they promise.

It's precisely ChatGPT's inability to link the sources that is the concern.

Isn't fun just defined as "a period of user base growth followed by extracting every last dollar possible in an exponential growth pattern forever and ever because that's totally possible mhm it totally is!" to them?

Once again I am reminded of Hank Green saying "A lot of people who say they want "free speech" actually just want to be the one in charge of which speech is free."

sigh I guess it's just cool to claim to have found room-temperature superconductors this month. I wouldn't trust anything coming from a blockchain company regardless but making such an outlandish claim would be comical if the intended purpose of filing this patent wasn't almost certainly to patent troll anyone they can while people are interested in trying to replicate the claims of the Korean paper

Market share doesn't equal irrelevance as others have said. I use Librewolf and without Firefox it wouldn't exist. It likely wouldn't exist at the quality it is without Mozilla taking Google Cash either. But it's super important to have an alternative even if most people don't use it. It DOES provide a limited check and balance against google doing whatever they want with the web because if the right people make the right noise then people will move over to something that's easy, convenient, and free of whatever pain in the butt google puts in chrome that sends people over the edge. See Linux desktop and Valve for an example of how a software with very few users comparatively can force a larger company to play ball. Remember in Windows 8 when MS basically banned 3rd party software stores on the OS.. or tried? And Valve made the "Steam Machine" and SteamOS? Everyone says the steam machines failed but they 100% did everything Valve wanted them to do. It was enough to have MS go back on their walled garden and allow Steam to keep operating as it had been. And now we have the steam deck on top of it.

So, it's ok if Firefox has a small market share as long as it remains a worthy competitor.

I'm 100% for more regulation and more caution but I don't understand using the "robots" terminology unless you are trying to conflate it with AI.. which absolutely does need regulation and caution. There's a lot of harm that they can do. But early on in the article to prove "just how long robots have been killing humans" they describe an accident at a manufacturing facility that uses those robotic arms. And a man was told to enter the machine to adjust something while it was running. You know, they did that back in the cotton mills too. Had children run under the running machinery to collect fallen cotton. And children died in the mills when the machines would come smashing into them.

Did we come to the conclusion that cotton mills are a menace? Yes. Well, not because the machines were out of control right? The people running the mill and telling people to move into the dangerous machinery were the menace. And it's the exact same for the opening argument in this article. Someone was instructed to do something dangerous that they should never have been asked to do, and they died.

So yes, let's be careful about new tech. But let's be more careful about how business owners will abuse the people around the tech. Please.

Note to self: That does NOT say TickTok

The don't be evil to you must help us commit genocide pipeline

Ok so first, my biases. I'm going to write my best guess and then I'll read the article. So.. is it that Portugal helped people instead of simply trying to arrest them or put up anti-homeless architecture so that those better off wouldn't have to see addicts in the streets? Let's go and read now...

WELL. I'm shocked!

"Portugal's leaders responded by pivoting away from the U.S. drug war model, which prioritized narcotics seizures, arrests and lengthy prison sentences for drug offenders.

Instead, Portugal focused scarce public dollars on health care, drug treatment, job training and housing. The system, integrated into the country's taxpayer-funded national health care system, is free and relatively easy to navigate. "

Ok, I'm not that shocked.

That's an inefficient way to spell lied

If it were anyone but Musk's company I might be excited at the prospects of this tech.

Nooooooooo. Reeaaaallly?

Fasch's ankles as they trip over themselves crying about wokeness

"fax machines are at odds with a world embracing artificial intelligence." So bring on the fax machines! MORE fax machines!

Can't wait to watch the steam charts. I'd be especially interested once they put the other blizzard titles on Steam as well since then we can estimate the number of players per game out of the "monthly active users" they report in their quarterly.

Blizzard is desperate here. And if there's one thing about the internet it's that people are good as sharks for smelling blood in the water. It's the objectively correct move, but it could still end up backfiring if people can actually SEE just how dead the game is, and leave negative steam reviews.

Also, who exactly is going to install it through steam? Almost everyone who was going to play Overwatch already has. There's going to be a minimum of people who just don't want to have any game launcher but steam on their pc and really wanted to play Overwatch but couldn't stomach the battle . net client. If it gets steam deck certified that is the only draw I can really see aside from a smattering of casual new sign ups.

Sad days. This was my favourite game for a very long time and it feels like potential squandered on a level not seen until Musk came along and bought Twitter.

Edit: spaced out the battle net to not be recognized as a link

For profit companies and medicine cannot co-exist.

It was always an empty gesture designed from the start to put the onus on the general population so that plastic could still be produced and sold at ever increasing rates without any responsibility for its outcome. This is also why the least effective part of reduce, reuse, recycle was always emphasized.

Bets that they do actually know.

While I think it's funny that the tough on crime crowd is rallying behind a convicted felon it's important to remember that sometimes there ARE people who have been politically suppressed. Eugene Debs ran in 1920 for the socialist party. He'd been convicted for speaking out against WW1 at the time. He didn't win, but he did run.

What I hope is that Trump just doesn't win. His support goes way beyond simple constitutional rights or freedom of speech. These GOP voters are not REALLY saying convicted felons should be allowed to become president. They are saying TRUMP should be allowed to become president. It's populist, slightly cultish, and entirely frightening. Due process means nothing, personality and whatever they personally view as "strength" are what matters to them.

We do have sound cards in the form of DACs at least

This. It's only legal for GOP. If Dems try it, it's treason.

PAY YOUR WORKERS

So.. what happened here? The publishing director at Larian said that they "must launch with feature parity" and that they would be unable to remove the splitscreen for series S. Then Phil Spencer says "No, that's not a thing. You can totally do it." But only after a big delay has already caused some media buzz around one of, if not the, biggest game launches of the year. And now they can remove the splitscreen from series s.

So was it a misunderstanding on Larian's part? Or did they themselves not want to launch without feature parity? I don't see a world where they wanted to delay launching the product so late behind the other platforms.

Or is Phil Spencer being disingenuous by claiming a requirement to the devs, but then walking it back in public spaces?

I feel like the revelation to gaming studios is not that people like a good product, it's that Larian was allowed to make one without investors demanding it be the shittiest thing since shit sandwiches.

I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you. I really hope Valve comes along and provides an updated non-meta vr experience.

Here's a non-chatgpt article on it. https://www.eurogamer.net/gargoyles-remastereds-spruced-up-16-bit-platform-action-gets-october-release-date

Ain't no way I am giving Elon Musk $1.

"dedicating the equivalent of 34,000 full-time engineers to what has become the single largest cybersecurity engineering project in the history of digital technology,"

What does this mean? Are they having it done by 50,000 part timers? Or are they just asking bing chat to churn out security solutions for them?

Is this really any different than pc gaming? Am I not really hanging out with my brother and friends as we coop our way through Baldur's Gate? It's "not real" and we are not face to face. VR Chat feels even more real. Real enough to trigger my social anxiety and prevent me from having any fun or joining in. It's too much like face to face contact. (This is a personal problem but it makes me question this guy's take on how fake that kind of socializing is.)

I really, truly, do not believe the world is in danger of people in general preferring to strap these devices to their face over physically hanging out. The tech is cool but it never really took off. The reason noone is talking about this problem, Hugh, is that it's not really a concern.

I have no problem with FOSS having a monetary cost. Devs have to eat too. The dev on Google Play store does seem to be on the core team for the app. (https://github.com/OpenTracksApp) I would hope the money is going to the project and not just that one guy but I don't see anything transparent about it. That being said it would really not be hard for any of that team to notice that the app is on the g play store and for money with that person's name attached to it. So it's most likely on the up and up.

Edit: Other people have noted that the play store version is essentially the donate to project option. I need more coffee since I didn't find that link lol

It is great to see support for the devs here though!

My opinion on it is, I don't particularly care if they spend what I give on drugs. If I have money to spare and give it to someone who's asking for it on the street, they are a human in need and this is the most direct action I can take to make their day better. If what they really need is a hit of whatever, that's not my business. I do hope they are getting help from organizations as well. I do hope they are able to find a way out of their situation. But once the money is out of my hands and into theirs, it's THEIRS to do with as they see fit.

Remembering the good ol' George Carlin bit about thinking about how dumb the average person is.. and then realizing that half the people are dumber than that.