wampus

@wampus@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take-Two CEO Responds to Stock Price Drop Following Google Genie Announcement: 'I Think People Are Confusing Tools With Hits' - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, take it however you want I guess.

  I still find games that I enjoy these days. Two that my friends and I have played through for a while are Valheim and Abiotic Factor. One reason those are more enticing, is that the proc gen on a game like Valheim means you can’t as easily stumble across a post saying “Go here to unlock bear porn scene” or whatever. And while Abiotic is less random, it’s less well known/saturated by marketing shit, so there’s plenty of “wait wtf was that?!” and “oh neat, I can do something new that we hadn’t realised we could do before!” as we play.

  So given that I still find games currently that fall into my preferences from way way back, it’s still something some games are capable of accomplishing. BG3, I’ve basically never made it past Act 1, as I get bored with it and its pseudo predictability and mundane mechanics. Like even the Divinity series from Larian, I found more engaging from the tactical fight POV just because the way they did elemental combo attacks on enemies and interaction with world components far better than in BG3, from my perspective in terms of player engagement – like there’s still ‘traces’ of that stuff in BG3, but its neutered. Plus they were less known games, without a constant stream of marketing shit showing you exactly how to min/max those events.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Quietly Withdraws Under Fire MMO Ashes of Creation From Sale As Fans Wonder Who's Left to Maintain the Servers⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Agreed. I’ve seen PE take overs of other software firms, and a big part of those take overs is the human capital / access to a team of skilled professional developers. PE typically doesn’t just ‘fire’ everyone en masse, but rather chops the shop up and resells parts of the org as it scavenges the remains.

  So this smells like something more fraudulent, and connected to SS – especially as there have been notes that the intrepid ‘board’, on paper in filings, was just SS, the CEO. The messaging that came out from their comms director (I think that’s what she was?) yesterday seems to generally support this, in that the Senior Management team was completely in the dark about anything that was going on – they had practically the same notification of events, as everyone else. A board wouldn’t normally do that, as the senior management team would each have a relationship/reporting obligations tied to board meetings (eg. c-level HR managers working out HR policies/budgets, Accountants providing audited monthly financials to the board, etc). I mean, a company that size would likely have an accountant, who would report out the financial state of the org at senior manager meetings – so they’d all see the layoffs coming way in advance, not suddenly get a WARN notice that they aren’t getting paid for the last pay period. The CEO is ‘always’ at board meetings as managements rep, but other SMs show up / attend based on agenda items/topics. Long and short, a shift like this wouldn’t come out of nowhere at that level.

  All that said, the comms director also noted that initially they’d thought it was just going to be 100 developers let go, but a day or two later found out it was everyone – and it sounds like these were all ‘local’ developers, given that she was setting up an in person job fair to try and help x-staff find work. AoC having over 100+ developers at ~100k salaries is an absurd carrying cost that would likely be impossible to make work longer term financially. The sub costs for the player count just wouldn’t support that spend, let alone licensing/server costs where they were already in the red pre-steam release (they had about $800k in hosting debts they were gettin sued for, from what I recall). So I really don’t know what Intrepids business case generally looked like, but based on information available it seems pretty clear that their business model was unrealistic, hence pumpy dumpy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rent is theft⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you worked in the industry, or are you basing all this on bullshit and memes you’ve done “self research” on?

  Cause I’ve been adjacent to the CU industry for decades, and your points are just irrelevant. Like your comment about wealthy members is baseless in my view, as the vast majority of CUs I’ve audited have policies that prohibit member wealth concentration – ie. they actually CAP how much money a person can have, and tell that person to take their money elsewhere if they go over that cap. This is done in part because the lending practice at CUs isn’t like that at Banks, they can’t easily leverage things like stock market share sales – it’s risk management at all CUs to have caps, enforced by most regulators. Put slightly differently: If you only have Peter Thiel and his buddies as customers at SVB, and they all pull their money at once, you’re fucked. CUs have been aware of that risk, and mitigating it, for decades. And because the ultra-wealthy can’t have that sort of leverage, they typically don’t tend to use CUs.

  You may not like loans / credit. That doesn’t make the process of loans/credit inherently slaveholder/slave, and implying as such is just ridiculously childish. You aren’t going to convince any sane adult with that sort of semantic stupidity.

  Again, the approach of this trope to villianize all landlords, is not that dissimilar to the sorts of things you see coming out of racist shops. Treating any demographic as a monolith is prejudice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rent is theft⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s pointing out situations where the trope/stereotype falls apart. And your response is basically a troll response, so I’ll offer this one reply and then ignore you.

  I likely know more about how small credit unions operate than you do, I also likely have more familiarity with regular “mom and pop” type landlords than you do, given that I’ve worked in the Credit Union industry in the past, and have audited many of those loans. Typically, CU board of directors don’t get paid shit compared to banks, the CEOs typically don’t earn many multiples more than the rank and file employees (unlike banks), their profits generally go back to the membership, though those “profits” are not the target of most of those orgs, as the people they’d be profiting off of are their bosses (in that their Boards are elected from the membership – so you piss off members with fees, they just go on the board and direct you to remove / reduce those fees). So for example, in Canada, CU members generally enjoy no-ding ATM withdrawls from all Credit Union owned machines – there’s a whole campaign about ‘ding free’ banking with CUs. The board of most CUs are often just working class people, with a few specific ‘professional’ types required by regulators to ensure things like accounting oversight.

  People often default to thinking banks are the only option for mortgages. They’re not. Credit Unions provide mortgages to large segments of the population, and they’re cooperative organisations in structure – which is in pretty good alignment with progressive ideals.

  It’s not a bad faith argument to point out stereotyping in these sorts of threads. Just like it isn’t bad faith to point out when a racist post is made about a visible minority.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rent is theft⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And if the person’s got their mortgage from a Credit Union… then its… all those evil working class credit union members profiting?

  The trope that landlords are all evil, profiteering off of the poor, is an over-simplification / stupid stereo-type. Yes, there are shitty landlords. Yes, there are more corporations involved in renting places these days, and those corps are pretty exploitative. But there are lots of landlords who are just regular locals looking to try and gain some financial security.

  Stereotyping an entire demographic of people based on some negative trait of a particular subset of that demographic is not helpful. It’s not helpful when it’s done to portray racial minorities in a broadly negative way, nor is it helpful when its done to portray landlords in a broadly negative way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rent is theft⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Lotta people chiming in on the profit rates for landlords – and while I admit that there are shitty landlords out there, I think it’s worth considering the ‘standard’ individual-owner landlord situation (which is historically the ‘norm’ for landlord situations). Ie. Someone who’s a bit older, has an ok amount of savings from working, and wants a second income stream from ‘somewhere’ to hedge against layoffs.

  What they typically do, is take out an interest only mortgage with a 30-35 or higher year term. They add in the cost of tax on the property, and any maintenance/condo fees involved, to the cost of paying that interest only mortgage. They use that income to pay off the carrying costs of the property, and hold on to it for a few years assuming that housing prices will always go up – and after 5-10-15 or however many years, they can sell the property for its higher valuation. These deals are often done as Variable mortgages, as they offer lower interest rates, but also expose the landlord to greater risk with interest rate changes (which they pass on to renters).

  And as properties in the area increase in cost, the cost of the above formula also increases, prompting the landlord to increase their profit from ‘carrying’ slightly over the years, assuming it can offset the increasing maintenance costs of the unit.

  I’ve periodically looked at rent prices in my area, and done the above, and they seem pretty much in alignment. It’s one of the likely reasons you’ll often hear jokes/stories about landlords freaking out at tennants because a bank’ll yell at them if they’re late on payments – because yes, the rent is basically paying off the interest part of the mortgage on the unit. It’s also one of the reasons ‘new’ home owners (who are actually living in their homes) will typically initially pay ‘more’ than renters, but over time they pay less in terms of monthly carrying costs (not even looking at the principal pay down - just the fact that they get a rate that doesn’t get ‘readjusted up’ every year to align with increasing house prices).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take-Two CEO Responds to Stock Price Drop Following Google Genie Announcement: 'I Think People Are Confusing Tools With Hits' - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, I’m not trying to say there aren’t some gems around. It’s just that the quality options vs the garbage is already at a really bad ratio, and to find something like a ‘quality’ indie game, you gotta sift through a lot of junk. And with marketing blitz’s, and the pervasive use of things like influencers who’ll steer conversations on various social media (including reddit, not sure about lemmy yet but wouldn’t surprise me if it was happening here too)… they’ll hype garbage, or they’ll inundate you with so much marketing stuff that it basically spoils parts of ‘good’ games.

  Easy example: the thing I liked most about the old BG games, was discovering/exploring etc. That style of gameplay was obliterated for me by how much marketing / comments / noise there was about that game – noise that was basically impossible to avoid if you’re online at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take-Two CEO Responds to Stock Price Drop Following Google Genie Announcement: 'I Think People Are Confusing Tools With Hits' - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, the gaming industry generally feels pretty dry/dead these days to me, even with record numbers of games available. There’s just so many crappy half made ‘alpha’ or ‘early access’ things around. The very small number of ‘better’ games are often marketed so heavily that I find them boring and don’t even bother to finish them – like BG3. And a lot of the “triple A” content often trades engaging/fun gameplay for rent-seeking features without regard to actual player enjoyment.

  A new tool from Google won’t fix that. So I guess I’d sort of agree with the take-two guy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would we be seeing these emails involving Epstein if they were all using E2EE email service?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Many ways people implement that E2EE email service, is smoke and mirrors that still puts your data on to foreign servers – and if it touches/remains in a cloud space, even encrypted, I’d say there’s still the opportunity for the leak to occur (encryption algorithms require updates periodically for very good reason!). However, back around the time period this stuff was happening, I imagine that if they’d used a properly setup E2EE service that they controlled, the comms would not have leaked in this volume. Like it used to be common for even smaller/medium sized businesses to maintain their own Email and Blackberry messaging service servers in the 2005-2015 period, which kept comms internal to the company (barring hackers of course).

  If they had that setup properly and with retention periods set for things like backups / old messages and so on, this sort of leak, I imagine, would not have happened.

  IT Operations type roles in companies are less common these days, as most just dump things into the cloud (and options like BB went poof!), but there is a reason that such departments exist, and why some industries place a high premium on things like data retention (and getting rid of data when you legally can, to minimize this very sort of risk). Most of the people involved in these scandals, appear to be incredibly wealthy / business people etc – I mean, Bill Gates should’ve known for sure that this shit was highly leakable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For me personally, yeah, it wouldn’t work. As others noted, it needs to be reciprocal attraction for sex to really feel good / get you that endorphin hit. Based on the number of replies noting it, it seems fair to say that men’s needs aren’t just a matter having an orgasm.

  Prolly better off looking for an asexual guy to partner with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Update: Clinton says that Trump tried to stick finger in his butt during trash felattio extravaganza. (Read more)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Clinton ought to just put this rumour to bed, and tweet out: “I did not have sexual relations with that Man”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨She is making a GREAT point⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, this isn’t a great point at all… even at face value really.

  Put slightly differently, if we’re assuming people sleep around as much as the text implies, if we focus on birth control solely for men, then one ‘failure’/non-controlled man would result in a ton of pregnancies. If the onus is on women, then one ‘failure’/non-controlled woman would result in one pregnancy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Corcoran Group CEO says Gen Z’s housing market struggles mirror what boomers faced 30 years ago: ‘Stop buying Starbucks coffee,’ she advises⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, I wouldn’t say ‘anyone’, but rather ‘most’. There are gen z in tech who made ridiculous salaries for years, salaries that dwarf the salaries of most in older generations. I mean, as an easy example I’m sure Big Balls and the DOGE boys made a killing fucking the government for Elon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Corcoran Group CEO says Gen Z’s housing market struggles mirror what boomers faced 30 years ago: ‘Stop buying Starbucks coffee,’ she advises⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, read the first little bit of the article, and bailed as soon as she was noted as saying stuff along the lines of “back then it was harder, because there were fewer desirable areas people wanted to live!”.

  In other words, back then you had cheaper options in the other areas, which have since become unaffordable for starter homes. Nowadays you gotta move out to the middle of nowhere, where there’re no jobs.

  So idiot/detached CEO confirmed from my pov, her appearance at least matches her apparent personality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  idk, I’d say it’s more of a problem now because people have easier ways to liquidate their wallets for those sorts of trash purchases, without realising it on a physical / rational level at the time. Like when you had to go in to a store to buy those blind-box card games, it took effort to be an addict, so much that it was more a hobby.

  Now, someone’s kid can accidentally wrack up thousands on a credit card online buying lootbox shit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re in the minority on lemmy, sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s accurate to describe it as abnormal – something that’s less common deviates from what is normal, is abnormal. There’s often a connection to abnormal things being ‘worrying’, and lgbtq+ stuff falls into that category for many as well – case in point, Snoop. Few parents ‘wish’ their kids to be lgbtq+, it worries them, even if many will (hopefully) love their kids regardless. I reckon lemmy has a significant number of lgbtq+ people on it, which presents echo chamber bias. I still think it’s important to voice dissenting opinions / views, even if it triggers a bunch of people – so long as it’s done in a generally neutral fashion. My communication skills feel ok to me, though some groan that I write longer posts. Sure, I often have people post ad hominem type insults / personal attacks against things I post, but I rarely respond back attacking the personality/character of those folks (admittedly, I’ve been more lax lately).

  Sorta like how there are seemingly a lot of FN people in many of the Canadian subs. Most/many of the articles that get posted there are primarily about FN topics, with FN bias. While I know my views on FN issues are not “in line” with the FN narrative, I still think it’s important to highlight things in a mostly neutral manner, so that there’s a diversity of opinions presented to the broader community. Without more diverse opinions displayed, it gives the wrong impression to readers of the general public opinion about various topics – I doubt I really need to go on about the risks of echo chambers on social media.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I know about ancient greece, and as I’ve said I don’t care personally what people do / who they love. Don’t assume just because I consider homosexual behaviour to be abnormal, that I’m somehow opposed to it / think it inherently “wrong” or anything. I also don’t have a personal issue with it in movies, particularly more adult themed movies – though I do think it’s massively over-represented at this point, as almost every movie/show I see has heavy lgbtq+ themes wedged in haphazardly, often to the detriment of the plot.

  Younger generations claiming to be lgbtq+, or being on the gender spectrum, doesn’t really impact my view, I admit. First, it’s still a minority, which makes it abnormal. Grouping all abnormal types together also inflates the perspective of how common it is for any one subset. Young people are also more inclined to be affected by perceptions of benefits / “going along with what’s approved in media”. Even the stats on that site generally support this, noting that the breakdown between men/women is hugely lopsided amongst Gen Z, and with the bulk of the change seemingly being women identifying as bisexual. That fits quite a bit with how its presented in media – so I’d still question whether it’s kids being ‘genuine’ in their experiences/feelings, or if it’s media pushing certain messages and kids reacting to those messages. Media can clearly influence peoples world views / perspectives, at times in ways that aren’t authentic – we’re all keen to recognise as such when we talk about the negative impact of fox news – so it’d seem strange to pretend like it can’t have a similar reality-distorting effect in this area, given the level of over-representation of lgbtq+ themes. Particularly bi-sexual women, as media likes to treat women as sex objects desired by “everyone”, and wedge in some lesbian sex scenes to boot. Almost every series/movie has lgbtq+ stuff in it these days, which is one reason Snoop is uncomfortable taking kids to movies – it’s gotten pretty rare to see a same-race healthy relationship straight couple in media.

  To approach it from a slightly different angle: it’s like trying to find non-emo edgelord male characters in anime (which, in its space, feeds the indoctrination of alpha male sorts) – or the negative male stereo-types pushed by people like Tate. If we accept/recognise that certain media representations can “make” young people more extreme in that sort of space, then I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to say that media can “make” young people more gender fluid on the flip side. Part of being young, is lacking critical objectivity.

  Also, in terms of the polling and benefits, hell, I personally identify as “other” on all government polls, because “other” gets preferential treatment/hiring options, while “male” gets rejection letters. That isn’t an authentic response, but it’s a necessary response to get past certain hiring criteria – I’ve literally had rejection letters stating “you’re not part of an equity group” in the past, when I answered male (in Canada, literally the reason the federal government rejected my application). Workplaces have no business blocking people from employment due to their preference, even when it comes to us CIS folks.

  As for seeing things in public – a kid could see a horrific car accident by chance, corpses everywhere. That doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to show a 6 year old graphic death scenes. Or to use a less extreme example, and a fairly common one, they could walk in on their parents fucking – it still wouldn’t be appropriate for a movie for kids to have a bunch of sex scenes. Content involving adult stuff should have an adult rating, even if “some” kids may encounter those things earlier in life by happenstance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Me personally? I wouldn’t care either way. I’ve seen a woman on the street fingering the ass of a muslim dude before, and just sorta walked by. But I don’t have kids. I imagine if I had kids, I’d be opposed to public ass-blasting.

  A parent that I work with has had awkward conversations with his kids, after they came to Canada and saw guys kissing / making out in public. I can appreciate that such PDAs can prompt similar ‘awkward’ conversations, but also that they’re much less ‘common’ than encountering them as part of a big budget movie – and encountering them in public is often an easier way for parents to broach the subject. Kids noticing that stuff is unavoidable as they mature, but having it forced to the front by media / schools is questionable, and I can appreciate the parents’ concerns on that front.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Poor word choice perhaps, wasn’t intending it to be taken as ‘hard core’ graphic sex bdsm, but more hardcore bdsm as in a couple clearly into that lifestyle - like a dad that wears a collar or whatnot. The latter would still be inappropriate as it would prompt questions difficult to answer for parents, and topics that are reasonably beyond a kids maturity level. It’d be fine in a pg-13, but not in a G.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s an abnormal relationship type with a dom and a sub. Just like homosexual relationships are abnormal relationships with non standard partners involved. One is just more abnormal than the other. Both raise questions about sex, as was the point with Snoops clip – his kid explicitly asked about sex stuff, because he encountered the abnormal couple on screen. Snoop wasn’t comfortable discussing that with his grandkid in a movie theatre, and felt put out. That’s a valid response, no matter how many lgbtq+ people scream in nonsensical rage.

  You may not like the point, but it doesn’t make it invalid. Just like you may not like hetero people’s reaction to homosexual content in kids media, but that doesn’t make their reactions “wrong”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you put a bunch of hard core BDSM content into a movie for kids, it’d be considered inappropriate. Even if the BDSM community argued we have ‘no problem’ exposing kids to other kinds of relationships. It’d prompt similar uncomfortable questions for adults, and I reckon could lead to negative interactions that could damage the parent/child relationship.

  No matter how you spin it, lgbtq+ gender stuff is abnormal, and applies to a relatively small minority of people in the overall population. Forcing those conversations onto hetero couples is inappropriate. Children of lgbtq+ couples may/can have those conversations earlier, as their households will likely encounter the questions regardless – just like a family of hard core BDSM practitioners would need to explain to their kids why mommy and daddy have a dungeon in the basement. That doesn’t mean every kid, and every family, should go through the same crap. Especially if, as a non-member of that community, your response will almost definitely be “wrong” according to that community.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This thread seems so triggered.

  He’s not expressing an uncommon opinion. Lots of parents/grandparents dislike overtly lgbtq+ content in kid-focused media, because it results in kids asking questions the adults aren’t prepared / comfortable answering. They’re basically just saying that discussing “adult” relationships is an “adult” topic, and shouldn’t be something coming about as a result of a little kid movie.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t help but laugh at the note about small start ups lead by 19-20 YOs succeeding with millions of dollars by ‘partnering well’ and so on.

  The success or failure of these AI companies seems almost entirely driven by the amount of Venture Capital thrown at them. A company like Perplexity, with practically zero product, having been formed less than 5 years ago, but being able to put up $35 billion in an offer to buy google chrome… I can’t help but suspect that a big part of it is google handing perplexity a pile of money via “Venture Capitalist” screens, to help offload Chrome to mitigate their regulatory monopoly problems. But whatever the details, them having that pile of money is sure as shit not a matter of having a good product / partnering with other industries well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If there's a sort of "apocalyptic" event but there are still surviving communities, will people be able to make eyeglasses again, or are people with vision issues gonna be fucked?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Eye glasses started showing up around 1300 AD. Implies the basic tech / processes required to make them is relatively simple, given that they’ve been around in some form ever since the middle ages. Granted, they wouldn’t be as sophisticated as they are today, and many people with very niche issues would suffer.

  Anything more modern, requiring microchips or heavily integrated international supply chains would go poof. Personally, I’d worry about dental and medical stuff we diagnose with x-rays. Like it’s not too uncommon for people to have a root canal these days… but it didn’t become a more ‘common’ thing until around the 1800-1900 period. Hell, getting your wisdom teeth pulled in a post-event world would likely suck some serious ass.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SEC says it will deregulate cryptocurrencies with 'Project Crypto'⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a really good way to bribe politicians and public figures.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Welcome to the new world of risk: Microsoft cuts off services to energy company without notice⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In many cases, I’d say it’s because they aren’t IT or IT Security focused businesses. A pizza shop, clothing retailer, or whatnot, needs IT stuff to function, but that’s not the focus of their business. Hiring an IT team at IT worker rates is expensive, especially as a support/tertiary role for your business.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China exports state propaganda with low-cost open source AI models⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  America / Trump’s EO’s on AI basically say they need to tune their models to be as racist, or more racist, than Grok currently is. So, I mean, Pot meet Kettle.

  At least with China’s approach they seem to be ‘saying’ the right thing with regards to open sourcing it and having a more collaborative approach internationally. The USA and Trump is just “NO DEI AT ALL!!! MAKE IT SUPPORT DEAR LEADERS RIGHT THINK OR NO GOVT CONTRACTS FOR YOU!!! THIS IS NOT BIAS, THIS IS US REMOVING BIAS!!!”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Women are anonymously spilling tea about men in their cities on viral app⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Outside of the crap going on in the US fascist resurgence, women are generally defined as a minority that requires equity / special benefits and protections. Making an app to “protect women” by crowdsourcing information about potentially predatory / negative men is viewed as ‘good’, and would likely be ‘ok’ by many western country standards.

  Making an app about women, with similar ‘experiences’ reported by guys, would be considered predatory, and would get shut down.

  We can already see plenty of related things out and about – like “women only” companies getting applauded by govt / media, while the same sources shame any business that doesn’t attempt to get 50%+ women on staff. We shut down gentlemen’s clubs for being discriminatory, but we cheer women’s only spaces. Genders are not treated equally in the public’s eye, and it generally skews in favour of benefiting women at this point, especially once it hits media/govt/courts.

  I think this is the more realistic take on how it’d play out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yup. Lack of game support is a big roadblock – having just one or two friends on linux makes finding games your group can play together a real headache.

  Another weird-ish hiccup, is the lack of good/cheap/trustworthy tax software. Installing windows once a year to do taxes is bonkers. Some solve it by having a VM that runs windows that they only use for taxes, but that isn’t really a fix. You’d still be a microbitch.