So conspiracy probably isn't the right term, although there are common factors that are causing - or at least influencing - a lot of these trends.

With inflation being a major issue, central banks are reacting by increasing interest rates. These rate hikes have the effect of making credit and borrowing more expensive.

This is significant because central rates had been low (nearly 0%) since basically 2008, with quantitative easing (cash printing) pumping billions of additional dollars into the stock markets in particular.

The effect of loaned cash being effectively free is an explosion of activity from investor hedge funds who were willing to take huge risks on speculative projects. This fuelled the massive boom in tech startups across the 00s.

The trouble is, many of those startups weren't profitable, they were 'potentially profitable' and fuelled by credit. Or they had the underpants gnome model of profit where the means and mechanism of the '????' stage would be figured out later (WeWork).

Investors were happy to fund those losses to create products that controlled markets (Uber) or amassed huge userbases that could be flipped from potential to profit in the future (Reddit).

Only now the rates have gone up, and credit is suddenly expensive. Business models that rely on running at a loss suddenly aren't viable, and those startup investors that owns chunks of those businesses are now insisting on actual returns on their investments.

You can see the effects all over social media and tech, but Reddit (urgently need to get profitable for a stock launch, need the stock launch for funding) and Twitter (basketcase debt load at the worst possible time for debt) are the most obvious examples.

Techbro austerity means worse products for consumers or aggressive monetization policies which users will likely dislike. So not a conspiracy, but decades of reckless investment by hedge funds that have been caught with their pants down by interest risk.

It's an unmoderated kbin magazine. Nothing to be done but block it and move on.

See you in 200 hours, enjoy!

Also, if you're playing for the first time maybe don't watch those videos until you've completed at least one run for spoiler reasons.

It looks like the TLD was sold off to a private business by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority in 1997, with those rights subsequently being sold on to other corporations.

The British government have issued an FOI response advising that they recieve no funds from .io domain registrations. The Chagos Islanders still don't benefit, but it looks like that'd need to be squared with a hedge fund rather than a government.

...It is weird that territorial domains can be auctioned off in the first place though.

Data Protection shouldn't be a relevant issue - at least not in the sense that it forcss them to delete accounts. When you process data under the GDPR, you have to identify a lawful basis.

I assume that transactions through the eStore would be handled under the contract basis, with the hosting of the game in the library forming part of the contractual relationship. That would enable them to maintain an account for as long as the contractual relationship persisted.

That basically means GDPR doesn't force them to close an account, they close an account based on their policies because they choose to. That'll be based on their T&Cs, so things will fundamentally circle back to whether their T&Cs are legitimate and lawful.

It is possible that a data subject could potentially raise a claim for damages under the GDPR, on the grounds that the deletion of their account is a breach of contract that amounts to an availability data breach.

Those last few seconds were absolutely hair-raising, even if we already knew how it was going to end!

I'd just suggest that this is a defacto ban based on the current requirements.

If bots are going to be command triggered and require pre-approval by individual community moderators, I think it would be prudent to include an index of registered bots + commands in the community info pages.

Currently I can't think of any reasonable way for a Beehaw user to know which bots are operational and what their commands are. If bots need to be command triggered but there's no way to find out which ones are functional, why approve them to begin with?

1. It'll be funny if Georgia also gets off the pot and indictes too.

2. Could this go in US News instead? Lemmy is broadly very US-centric already, so posting US politics here too drowns out other global stories.

Bots can be extremely useful and the flexibility of where and how bots could work was one of the things that made Reddit popular. Before, well, y'know.

Bespoke bots can also allow particular communities to develop local features or functionality. I assume Lemmy's mod tools are fair bare bones right now too, so I suspect someone, somewhere is probably working on an automod toolkit.

Bots should be allowed, but must be flagged. I don't know if it's a default lemmy option, but the app I use has a toggle to hide bot accounts if you don't want to see them.

That said, I would very much prefer if bots were restricted to just making comments rather than posts. Certain communities have bots that automatically post article links and they completely blanket feeds sorted by new until you block the account.

The two YouTube links from Haelian in my summary set up the context for why this is really hard, and then commentary on the actual run itself.

since C2PA relies on creators to opt in, the protocol doesn’t really address the problem of bad actors using AI-generated content. And it’s not yet clear just how helpful the provision of metadata will be when it comes to media fluency of the public. Provenance labels do not necessarily mention whether the content is true or accurate.

Interesting approach, but I can't help but feel the actual utility is fairly limited. For example, I could see it being useful for large corporate creative studios that have contractual / union agreements that govern AI content usage.

If they're using enterprise tools that build in C2PA, it'd give them a metadata audit trail showing exactly when and where AI was used.

That's completely useless in the context where AI content flagging is most useful though. As the quote says, this provenance data is applied at the point of creation, and in a world where there are open source branches of generation models, there's no way to ensure provenance tagging is built in.

This technology is most needed to combat AI powered misinformation campaigns, when that is the use case this is least able to address.

Oof

BBC Good Food is quite good. The website is basically a big book of recipes, but tailored to all levels of experience.

When they ask you to do something, there'll usually be a hyperlink to an article covering that particular thing.

Often there will also be demonstration videos as well, which can be handy.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/

Wait... why doesn't the USA have a system like this already?

I always found cryptobro preaching about instant cash transfers perplexing, but this explains a lot.

When the ICO recieve a complaint they usually send an initial notification email to the data controller to advise that a case officer will be assigned in due course.

Well, unless it relates to a serious or ongoing data breach, which tends to be triaged immediately into an active investigation.

Initial notification letters do usually recommend trying to resolve the issue with the data subject in the interim though.

That probably spooked Reddit into moving your case up the priority list as I imagine they've got a pretty substantial backlog of SAR, erasure and objection requests, considering the circumstances.

The response window for most of those rights is 30 calendar days + extensions if applicable, so they could also have just been responding as late as allowed, accounting for aforementioned probable backlog.

Do let us know when the ICO gets back to you though, will be fascinating to hear what they have to say.

UK district and borough councils have a homelessness prevention duty which also applies to refugees. Unfortunately said councils are also largely falling to pieces and social housing stock hasn't met demand since Thatcher eviscerated it in the 80s.

This basically means that a bunch of them are going to end up living long-term in 'emergency' B&B placements due to a lack of available social housing, unless they can find private arrangements themselves.

That's a hell of a nostalgia trip. Freelancer is probably my all time favourite game, and I had literally a decade of fond memories of Disco before I eventually drifted off.

What's it looking like these days? The pop count and surviving factions were looking a little sad the last time I checked in a year or two ago.

You can host your own server too, although there's a few steps you need to follow to get FLServer working properly. There's instructions on the Discovery forums for that.

Why would blockchain be necessary to do that? Honestly, 99% of the time blockchain is just a highly inefficient buzzword.

Usually there are better ways to achieve the same outcome, with the added bonus of not automatically attracting a cavalcade of Web3 con-artists and grifters.

Don't know if you've tried this before, but there at a few guides for getting the mod working on Linux. This might help?

https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=147190

Freelancer is 2003 Microsoft abandonware which still has an online mod community. Most prominent is probably the Discovery mod, which hosts a 24/7 RP server.

https://discoverygc.com/

The mod has been consistently going since 2005, so they've had a lot of time to build up assets! There's a lot of snazzy new features, but everything still aims to integrate with Freelancer's original setting and lore. Mixed success, but it works more often than not. There's a community Discord if you wanted to take a look around or ask questions.

Is that a Space Marine Chapel Barracks I see there?

Make rhino and then blow it up with TNT. Take away their metal boxes...

Maybe Amnesia: The Bunker is something to look into. I've not played it myself yet, but the reviews I saw made it sound like it might meet most of your criteria.

So... was this intended as suicide by border guard? I imagine whatever his original plan is he's going to end up regretting it.

I'm convinced that Musk is involved in some kind of Brewster's Millions situation with Twitter.

I also feel sorry for the CEO (well, not really) as they're clearly being set up as a scapegoat for the inevitable failure that Musk's erratic and short-sighted behaviour will cause.

Thanks for sharing - interesting to see a breakdown like that. Very much interested to see what next month looks like too, accounting for the Reddit migrations.

In the event that the runway did end up shortening for whatever reason, do you think it's likely that registrations would be put on hold as a way of capping expansion until more funding could be secured?

It does seem nice here. The only thing I'm a little uncertain of is the restriction on Community creation, but the staff seem to be very responsive to requests so that's probably okay.

Yep! Discovery alone has been going since 2006, and has had a 24/7 multiplayer server running consistently that entire time (barring minor outages from faults and attacks). Pretty incredible really.

I also don't like thinking about it because I first registered an account on their forum in 2007... really puts the inexorable march of time into perspective.

One of my all-time favourites is Freelancer, 2003. Just a really fun arcade space sandbox with an engaging campaign and great multiplayer and modding scene.

We've got a Discord server if you want to drop by and take a look around. :)

Do you know where that link happened to be? I'm wondering if it could be dredged up with the Wayback machine.

You might want to take a look at Shadows of Doubt. It's a sci-fi noir game where you're a private detective in a procedurally generated dystopian city. You're supposed to solve murders but usually just end up causing more of them.

NPCs have homes, workplaces, acquaintances and routines, and you have the ability to interact with (and disrupt) all of it. It's an Early Access game so expect jank, but there's a load of really good let's plays on YouTube if you want to see if it's your kind of thing.

https://youtu.be/FdI98aZ1xYc

https://youtu.be/lFwdf-hohoI

https://youtu.be/geno9G-EhYE

In what context?

Who'd be doing the identifying, how would they be doing it, and what would they be using that information for?

'Should' is a question of desirability, so the above is really critically important.

Well, one context I'm already familiar with is the counter-terrorism duty in the UK. There is a program called Prevent that is designed to tackle radicalisation risk that could result in terrorism or non-violent extremism.

These programs basically work by placing a duty on certain types of organisation to report concerning behaviours that could result in radicalisation. An example would be a teacher or social worker overhearing a teenager espousing violent ideological positions that they'd been exposed to online.

This then results in a referral to the local counter-terrorism police unit, who carry out an assessment to determine the level of vulnerability and risk. Far-right ideologies including fascism can be accounted for here. Depending on the outcome, this may result in the referral being closed, or a multi-agency support plan being developed for the individual.

In that narrow band of circumstances, determining someone's susceptibility to fascism as an extremist ideology is warranted. That's in the context of a reactive specialist law enforcement assessment, when there is a justifiable national security interest in the prevention of terrorism.

That said, this is very different to indiscriminate profiling on a population level. If everyone in the UK was subject to mandatory fascism assessments, that would be massively intrusive and disproportionate, and an enormous infringement of civil liberties - even if the government attempted to justify it on the same national security basis described above.