There is absolutely no reason to buy a Ubisoft game anymore, or from any large studio that is trying to appease shareholders first and foremost. They aren’t making games for you to have fun with; they’re making games to extract as much money from you as possible. Instead of giving you fun quests and characters, they are behind the scenes trying to figure out how to manipulate you. Fuck that noise. The last game I paid full AAA price for was Elden Ring because From deserves my money.

This dude is burning down his entire city just to prove some vapid point.

My wife and I rewatched Severance S1 in preparation for S2. What an absolute mindfuck that show is and I love it.

Had a boss years ago here in the US that told me I had used up all of my PTO during a time of mourning and funeral preparation. My dad was dying/died during that time and the boss was telling me this because I had to take 2 weeks off to spend time with my dying father who was in Hospice with cancer, as well as arrange the funeral and care for my mom.

The empire can’t burn fast enough.

He once told a friend he wanted to buy an old church. Puzzled, his friend asked what for, assuming he meant to live in like some weird rich recluse might do. Nope. He wanted to buy it so he could give sermons to people about his ideologies.

I recently took up lock picking as a hobby. It’s fairly cheap (you can get a beginner pick set from Covert Instruments for $25) and it’s fun. It helps me disconnect from screens and I slow down a bit. You can pickup a bunch of used padlocks and practice on those, or you can buy practice locks online for pretty cheap.

Ugh, thanks. Capitalism always sides with the fascists.

What’s the context of the “coward” text? The original said “pray” and it was about Apple making itself relevant again and not folding.

I’m looking forward to 6 because I like Anthony Mackie (Twisted Metal was awesome) and want to see how his story goes. The MCU has felt unmoored and that could be a good one in the mix.

Looking forward to 1, 2 and 6. The rest aren’t on my radar.

A lot of this stuff capitalizes on our desire for nostalgia. When shit is going bad, you reach for something you know and remember fondly. Capitalism banks on that. That’s why we have so many reboots and sequels. It’s not a bad thing if they’re not obvious cash grabs and you just need a pickup, but it’s also very lazy. It’s another sign that a cultural plateau is where everything is at.

The reality is that the majority of movie viewers want more of what feels safe.

They pushed these changes on Christmas Day.

Thanks lmao. Never thought I’d own the domain enjoying.yachts and I’ve owned a ton of domains. I initially tried to get sinking.yachts but it’s taken. I also own guillotine.club but am still working on a use for it.

Him being too wealthy to have conflicts of interest suggests that he’s comfortable where he’s at financially, and isn’t trying to further enrich himself through government channels. But we’ve all seen how capitalism works and it has zero ceiling. It continues to amass wealth regardless of anything, and Musk is doing the same.

This strikes me as just another bootlicker yelling “pick me!” from the sidelines.

I broke my wrist at the start of 2023 and the bill to me after insurance was $6k lol. I saw the bill the doctor submitted to insurance and it was $40k. The ambulance bill came in separately at around $800.

Hey at least it’s Minecraft and not Roblox I guess lol.

Artists are legitimately upset because their work is being sucked into a vacuum to train AI without them being compensated or credited. If this was to train a tool that would become a publicly-accessible and free utility to anyone that wanted to use it for non-profit purposes, that would be an easier pill to swallow, but that’s not the case. It’s instead being used for profit by companies that didn’t actually create anything. Whether the artist is “good” or not is subjective.

Copilot being forced into Windows is only one side of it. The other issue was their Recall feature that uses AI. These things are optional now and can be disabled through third party tools and settings, but how long until they’re no longer optional, or they make opting out so convoluted that third party tools and instructions have to change constantly?

The other side of it that I haven’t mentioned is the insane power usage. It’s so high that OpenAI can’t even accurately estimate how much capital they need just to run a business that is already not profitable. It’s the largest amount of funding any startup has ever had to ask for. So in the wake of climate change, AI is a blow torch in a bone dry forest.

An example of AI adversely affecting everyone, even non-users: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-ai-power-home-appliances/

For a field that is not profitable, it requires more capital than anything that has come before it: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/27/openai-needs-more-capital-than-wed-imagined-moves-to-for-profit.html

AI returns are dismal: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/10/so-far-ai-hasnt-been-profitable-for-big-tech/

It’s a multi-faceted complaint and doesn’t simply end at the user-facing experience. It’s a waste of capital, a huge weight on an already suffering environment, and it’s entirely out of the hands of the working class. It’s far too expensive for anyone outside of billionaires to run. And all of that for what? Summarizing articles? Making silly imagery and making artists and authors even poorer?

It’s the equivalent of sucking up entire lakes that have been around for thousands of years, all to fill some pools people use maybe once a year.

Edit: here is a new fresh level of AI hell for you. Edit 2: better link for the Meta AI story.

• It’s in DuckDuckGo
• It’s in Google search
• It pops up on tons of websites as a chat bot
• It’s crowbarred into Windows now
• It’s Apple Intelligence which is baked into iOS 18 (disabling it gave me 20-25% of my battery back)
• It’s in Arc browser (easily disabled)

If you’re able to avoid it altogether and not be forced to constantly disable it everywhere, I commend whatever you’re doing. I see it scattered everywhere and I consider myself a niche user that runs their own Lemmy instance and doesn’t actively use any of the big social networks.

People are complaining because it’s permeating everything while offering little to no value to the end user. The massive divide has arrived where the value to the shareholders is all that matters, and the tech companies doing it aren’t even remotely thinking about the user experience or benefit. I’ve been a dev in tech for 18+ years and I’ve never seen the field this desperate and stagnant when it comes to good ideas.

There’s also the fact that it’s being used to replace artists and it’s basically a massive plagiarism machine. OpenAI tried to claim that their AI is the equivalent of a learning human, but actual learning humans aren’t trying to convert every single thought and interaction into billions of dollars worth of profit for corporations.

Fucking brilliant. My wife burst out laughing.

It’s funny watching people do the same thing they did with Trump where they put him into imagery where he’s ripped and god-like. The reality is that Elon looks closer to fucking Baron Harkonnen.

That isn’t even enough to get context in an every day conversation, let alone an entire video game.