Yeah, it’s incredible how the ‘seethe and cope’ crew never get called out on being shit-stirrers and directly attacking liberals, but the minute you make a joke about convicted felon Donald Trump, all of a sudden cries for ‘unity’ and ‘civility’ come out of the woodwork.

Almost like they’re massive hypocrites who never gave a flying fuck about unity and use crocodile tears and both sides-ism to avoid accountability for the things they say and do.

Fucking ghoulish.

It was slim, but I had hoped that we might get an Arx Fatalis 2 what with the Fatal Fortress easter egg. No more, I guess.

I don’t know what that is - I’ll have to look into it on Monday.

I actually found a file format that VLC won’t play, .MJP, yanked off of our network’s security camera system. It requires the security company’s proprietary video player.

No discredit to R.E.M. but my world’s been ending for over a decade and I feel like dogshit constantly. Nobody told me the apocalypse would be heralded by the dumbest fucking cryptobros and AI prompters the world’s ever seen.

Meta acquiring Oculus

As someone with industry experience working with VR, I can tell you it’s a mixed bag. I think there’s certainly no way Oculus (and consumer VR in general) takes off the way it did without Facebook’s dollars behind it, and it’s certainly paved the way to the outstanding quality of standalone HMDs that are on offer today. However, it killed the initiative for PCVR hardware with the non-consolation that Meta, Pico, and HTC offer “Link mode” on all their headsets and it’s iffy on good days, which makes B2B PCVR very difficult to facilitate without some serious legwork on lowering latency over the air connections. Would that we could revive the Rift S, that headset was perfect for our needs.

I’m thinking I might switch, I’m only a casual user (Literally just for shitposting) but they changed how the brushes work as far as I can tell, and it’s thrown me off.

Palestinians are literally starving to death because this administration gave your tax dollars to the AMIC to arm Israel for a genocide. The entire world sees what we’re doing and abhors it. I don’t pretend it would be somehow better under Trump, but this is not good by any definition.

Cerveza Cristal!

I like it, thank you!

Oh man, where to begin? So there was an event advertised as an ‘immersive Willy Wonka’s Wonderland experience’ with all sorts of AI art and marketing:

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/27/glasgow-willy-wonka-experience-slammed-as-farce-as-tickets-refunded

The long and short of it was that the event, not officially licensed by WB (quelle fucking suprise) hosted in a dirty warehouse with little more than cheap props, tacky holiday ornaments and shower curtains, ended up being a complete shitshow. They gave each child, I shit you not, a couple (literally 0-3, dependent on how early your time slot was) jellybeans and half a cup of Tesco lemonade. No actual chocolate to be found in the entire chocolate-factory-themed event. The actors, including this poor woman, were hired and briefed literally the day before the event, handed 15 page AI-generated scripts that, predictably, made no fucking sense, including original characters like “the unknown,” and basically had to just wing it in poundland costumes. And like, in spite of it all, they really did give it their best effort, and from what I understand still haven’t been paid for their work.

Predictably, the event organizers ended up having to refund people for this sham of an event that they claim “failed to materialize.” Well of course it did, the people who were responsible for putting it together cooked up a dozen AI images and shat out a “legally distinct” script and thought it would all come together. Much like Fyre Festival, it’s another failure on the part of hucksters who do not understand that events require planning and don’t care to understand because they’re just trying to make a buck.

Thank you. I really hope the other photo of her gets some traction because it seems much more indicative of her experience working these sorts of functions:

I feel like I should point out, this woman did not lie on the resume. She teaches yoga to kids and does events for schools, she would absolutely have been qualified had this event not been the shitshow it was.

I mean, I think Mattel probably would have hard vetoed that. I’m honestly shocked they got the fascist line in.

Without even clicking the link, I’m going to bet it’s the stupid fucking double hack scene.

I know exactly what I want, but I can’t have it because I don’t have money.

I’m glad someone else said it.

Worth noting this is all a byproduct of capitalism as it exists today. Not nearly enough competition or regulation means every major change these days is really just “How can we put more ads in people’s devices? How can we instill FOMO? How can we charge more money for less service?”

Look at how bad mainstream UX/UI has become, even on the biggest platforms with the most industry experience. Windows 11 is a fucking joke and everyone is certain the next one will be worse. We know Microsoft can design a good UI, but they choose not to because they don’t care about the consumer except as it pertains to getting clicks and ad revenue. They shove Edge back in your taskbar after every update, they make finding your own shit on your computer impossible so you’ll use Cortana. Who asked for icons to be centered by default? Who asked for them to fuck around with the start menu for at least the fifth time in two decades? Nobody. But everything they do is for the benefit of the shareholders.

Actually, I do tend to buy my games when they’re available (and affordable) on the platforms I already use, but I’ve also sailed the high seas just because I didn’t feel like paying $70 for a game that I didn’t think was worth $70 and offered no demo for me to confirm my suspicions, or that was platform-exclusive on a platform that I don’t use.

I think the thing is, if I could buy a file and know that I would own it in perpetuity, and while the company that sold it to me still existed, would offer the best support they could for it, I’d be a lot more amicable to the prospect of curating a legal digital library. But the way it is now, with exclusivity deals, licensing terms, intrusive DRM, Fomo bonuses, and the implication that pirating old unsupported software is a crime just because whoever owns the rights might decide to repackage it and lease it to you again and again, if they feel like it?

And keep in mind, these are the same ghouls who insist on making live service games, adding loot boxes and micro transactions, just to prey on the most susceptible people. They’re responsible for good talent leaving or retiring just because they get in the way of people who want to make good games, which would be profitable, but maybe not as profitable as the shareholders want them to be. ZA/UM got eaten from within, Arkane withered down to nothing because they were forced to make a live service game, I can’t count how many studios got tanked or cannibalized by EA and Blizzard/Activision. Corporate is a cancer.