The Fourth Step of Enshittification
We already know that AI is ruining the internet and if this trend continues, it’ll turn into a vacuous space with 90% bots posting shit and then replying to each other with other shit. But even without AI in the mix, After watching Jenny Nicholson’s video on the Star Wars Hotel I have become painfully aware of the fourth step of Enshittification. After pandering to the investors at the expense of business partners and actual users of the platform, corporations create groundbreaking, disruptive bullshit NERPS that are only there to entice more investors to invest more so they can grow their market share and capitalization without actually releasing anything that people actually want.I think that’s what all this AI bullshit is doing now, just like the Metaverse bullshit last year or the crypto-nft-blockchain bullshit two years ago. They’re just riding the wave of what’s hot in the industry so speculating assholes with too much money and too little sense give them a higher evaluation and a year or two from now it’ll all fizzle out with nothing to show for it except some die hard fans who’ll swear by it, some gullibles who lost their money, and C-Suite dipshits retiring with a golden parachute.
Posted in Humanity, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.
Cause and Effect is Learned
Simon Sinek’s guests always have interesting insights about society and practice and Dr. Michael Muthukrishna is no different. What caught me most about this episode is what he said about the most basic function of human fourth-dimensional thinking. I thought the ability to see a series of events and expect the next is just something you get used to. It’s how you teach your automatic motor functions to catch a ball when it’s thrown to you. Apparently, it’s a much more learned phenomenon and not something just inherent to the human existence. I did, in the past, work for an auto-safety initiative in teaching young drivers how to be better faster. The most important thing on that curriculum is the biggest difference between new drivers and experienced ones is the depth and breadth of fourth-dimensional thinking. I explained to them how an experienced driver looks a lot further ahead, takes in the situation, and expects where dangers and obstacles could come from, adjusting their driving accordingly. This also explains the person looking at me as I was riding my bike towards them and their dog blocking the entire road and only clearing some space for me when I stopped and gave them a questioning look.
Posted in Humanity, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
Ten Out of Ten
In the gaming spheres, scoring is, for some reason, a really big deal. People often go to shaming campaigns if the game they really loved gets a 7 out of 10. First of all, that’s stupid. 7 out of 10 is pretty good. For me, it means mostly fun with a few caveats. 5 is not atrocious but decent if it weren’t for some flaws that should have been fixed. Then there’s the 10 out of 10, also a very fought over score. Because it looks so final. It’s saying, this is the best there is and can ever be. The point is, it’s not. 10 out of 10 is the best that reviewer thinks things can be right now. But then something new comes along that is better. So, consider this: Every time something gets full marks, 5 stars, 10 out of 10, it actually makes every previous 10 out of 10 in their category slightly less 10-ish. It might still count as a 10. If you go back to it at that time, it might be 9, comparatively. That doesn’t diminish its original value. It just means the scale has been expanded. This is true for anything that is an infinite game. A finite game like a school test can have a 100 and no more. But in art, the game is never over.
Posted in Gaming, Philosophy, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
The Loss of Nuance
I don’t want to harp too long about this but I felt I had to say something. I am definitely not the first to mourn the loss of nuance in today’s discourse, in everything. It’s all so polarized, when the only options that seem to be available are the two extremes. It’s ok to have a stance but it’s not ok to demonize the other side. It’s ok to hold two opinions that might seem at odds at the same time.
Posted in Humanity, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
Audiobook Narration and AI
Like everything related to AI, with the ability to mimic human-sounding voices coming to the forefront, audiobook narrators now also feel threatened and, while I understand being afraid of something new and misunderstood, I see it mostly as an extension of our existing abilities and doing more with less. First of all, I’m sad that the first thing I see in that article is “circling the wagons”. You can’t avoid new technology. It’ll come no matter what. Some form of legislation can be made to restrict research and development but if the technology is not immediately or excessively harmful (like nuclear weapons or engineered viruses), a lot of people will work towards it and, as a person affected, what you really should do is find how to adapt and where you fit in in the new order. Secondly, if we move towards an industry in which voices are largely AI generated, the voice templates will still have to come from somewhere. Those providing the templates will still be a part of the process. They will be licensing their vocal likeness, like you do with a visual likeness. It will be up to them and their agents to make sure the contract benefits them and that they may have some right of refusal on projects that might not align with their views. And those around the narration will still be required. A director will need to make sure the reading is what the client wants, an audio editor will be needed Continue Reading →
Posted in Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
News: Average User has no Concept of How Much Game Dev Costs
Recently, some clueless joe on Twitter said he will pay 10,000$ to the person who adds a multiplayer aspect to Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If he was going to donate to a modder who was working on it, that would have been fine but it seems like he was thinking that he could hire someone to do something like that for that kind of money. Here is a long, detailed response to this which you should read but here’s the summary: 10,000$ would pay for about two work months of the average+ programmer. Also, networking is hard. The hardest networking challenges in gaming usually arise in fighting games because they usually need to be exactly per pixel and per frame accurate and, probably over distances where network traffic takes more time to go back and forth than it takes pro players twitch reflexes to react. You can see how important this is if you go back and read about the network woes of Street Fighter V. Now, the demands of a PvE, open world, action RPG would probably be a lot less strict but these are still difficult problems. Especially if you’re talking about tacking on something like this onto a game that was definitely not designed for it. You want a more current example? On the one hand, Battlefield 2042 is out now and it’s buggy as hell. On the other hand, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is also out and it’s much better. Probably because the team is backed Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News, Practice, Programming, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
Portugal just became nicer to employees
Portugal recently passed a law they fondly call “Right to Rest”. It contains various measures to help employees have a better work-life balance such as the ability to work remotely when you need to take care of a child or companies contributing to household bills when an employee is working remotely a lot. But the nicest thing about it is indeed the ban on contacting employees after work hours. I’m guessing there is a stipulation about emergencies or people like server administrators and doctors who are supposed to be on call but the fact it’s enshrined in law is just amazing. Kinda makes me want to move to Portugal. :)
Posted in High-Tech, IT, Less Interesting News, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
Far Cry 6, PETA, and are Games Educational?
Recently, PETA criticised Ubisoft for including a cockfighting mini-game in their recent franchise title Far Cry 6. And that got me thinking about what is ok or not ok to include in a game. I completely understand why Far Cry 6, which occurs in a Cuban-esque island country called Yara, includes that aspect. Cuba, a country under heavy sanctions, makes due with whatever they have at hand. And, as far as entertainment goes, while cockfighting is a horrible practice in your regular western-aligned countries, it is not exactly frowned upon in Cuba. So, Far Cry 6 appropriating this symbol for immersion purposes is understandable. On the other hand, I also completely understand why PETA would criticise this. Far Cry is a very popular franchise. At the time of writing, it has sold poorer than its predecessor but that still puts it above 10 million units moved. That’s a lot of people being exposed to this segment, engaging with cockfighting in a way that might be unhealthy in the future. In the game itself, you do play the cockfighting mini-game in a fighting game style, as a animal encouraged to viciously peck, rip, and tear another animal, both of which were probably forced into this against their will. So, think about that 13-year-old kid who just got his hands on the new, popular AAA title all their friends are playing and this is the first time they sees something like cockfighting. If that’s the first time they engaged with that sort Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Humanity, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.