US government uses Halo images in a call to 'destroy' immigration, Microsoft declines to comment
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/us-government-uses-halo-images-in-a-call-to-destroy-immigration-microsoft-declines-to-comment/Open linkView original on infosec.pub711
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Whenever theytry to make Pvt Bonespurs look “manly” it always looks so sad and desperate
It serves nicely as an opportunity to remind onlookers that Trump avoided military service using his supposed 'bone spurs' as a reason he was unfit, though. Nothing like reminding these idiots that their tough guy is that tough
Flooding the zone too stronk
Even if I support the message: Fuck AI
Firework isn't consistently in front of the letters or in the background and switches between the two.
I was just noticing this before I read your comment.
They are literally trying to turn Americans into the Covenant tho. Religious warriors.
The Covenant might be religious fanatics but they're actually capable of working with other religious fanatics, in mutual cooperation.
MAGAs are more like Species 8472, utterly hostile to anything that doesn't conform to their very narrow and ill informed worldview, even to the point of being hostile to potential allies, thus alienating them.
Nah. They showed the capacity to change and grow from their experiences and interactions.
Yeah, the Boothby 8472 was pretty chill. They just wanted to be left the fuck alone.
Time to give the Covenant their bomb - The real master chief
Also the SPARTAN program was pretty fucked, so this just looks bad in every way IMO.
He would probably approve of their crimes against children.
Unexpectedly good political commentary from checks notes PC Gamer
Also if Trump is any Halo character, he's the Prophet of Truth
Nah truth was actually well spoken and was a decent leader. He'd be regret.
In Contact Harvest, Truth learns of a new species that has been discovered, and apparently the old Forerunner scanners say the humans have a lot of holy Forerunner artifacts that are indicated by this symbol:
Truth goes to talk to the old Forerunner AI kept prisoner in the basement and says "You guys didn't provide a legend with your scanners, what's this thing?"
Mendicant Bias the Forerunner AI explains, "Oh, that's the symbol for Reclaimer. Reclaimers are the people my old bosses chose to inherit our empire after they all kicked the bucket."
Truth says "Wait, you're saying this is a planet full of demigods?"
Mendicant Bias is like "Yeah, haha, I guess if you insist on worshipping my creators as gods, then you'd better start worshipping these people instead from now on. They're supposed to be your new bosses."
Truth says "No, absolutely not. I worked much too hard to become a space pope and I'm not letting the second coming of Jesus get in the way of my plans. I'm going to declare a space jihad against these new aliens so nobody finds out they're demigods."
Anyway, the new species were humans and the Covenant declared a holy war and nearly wiped humanity out. Truth also ordered a genocide of the Sangheili after the Sangheili generals started asking a few too many tricky questions like "why are we having a space jihad against the humans they seem nice"
Honestly PC gamer has been pretty solid lately. Not sure why. Almost makes me nervous.
Staff shake-up last year. Phil Savage and Tyler Wilde have really stepped it up and let their writers sound off.
Like any of the major sites though, the news side still has its share of articles generated from one-liners sourced from interviews ran elsewhere.
Good to know! I've just been having regular encounters with high quality content from there, rather than being a regular reader, so I haven't had any awareness of anything in the background. In a world full of "gaming journalists have no place in an era of AI" this is really heartening to hear
Microsoft is a criminal organisation that thrives on corruption (no real action being taken with respect to anti trust proceedings is still relevant today).
Crime isn't only about someone stealing your phone, extracting many billion of dollars via oligopolistic methods of limiting competition and leaving people with no other option than to use their products (irrespective of price or feature considerations) is also criminal activity.
They are not going to fight the US administratorion on this.
How many Microsoft executives are on the Epstein files?
Gates is on it for sure, i believe melinda split over something similar. and his shitck of trying to reinvent his own image, so the epstein files dont bite him in the end. his vaccine iniative is nothing more than scheme, since african countries has considered the vaccine as part of vaccine colonialism.
They said Microsoft executives though, which Gates is not.
... Did they not realize that the UNSC is an authoritarian fascist organization, and the Spartan program was originally aimed at fighting "rebels" who wanted to have control over the planets they lived on?
Literally the MC was kidnapped and experimented on to become a killing machine for the military junta for the express purpose of murdering colonists. No pay, no benefits, no end of contract.
Just like with Starship Troopers, satire like this goes flying over people's heads so low and fast, it breaks the sound barrier and loosens dentalwork.
Yeah. I'm waiting on them to show ICE agents as helldivers or something. That IP could not be more clear about it's parody of the far right "freedom" quislings.
I'm actually starting to think it's on purpose. Just like with spam email with misspellings and the kind of ear-marks that warns off smart people, the only ones left to click on "win a free iphone" are easily duped. Going after people that are drawn in by iconography and optics, but fail to understand nuance and the substance behind them, may be entirely the point.
I've been saying it for months, but fascists are "stupid" for the same reason Nigerian prince emails are always poorly written, and full of spelling and grammar mistakes....
Trump's tweets make a lot more sense if you view them in this contey
One of my most surreal gaming experiences was playing helldivers with a player I didn't know. They said they liked the game because it "wasn't political". I was just fucking flabbergasted.
Some people just obediently blow up the illegal broadcasts without reading them.
I mean there was some guy at a military event (a YouTuber or smthn I think?) that literally did the helldivers recruiting intro but replaced it with marines
(Forgive the shorts link, it's just what was shared with me about it) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MZ8dhiNHbTk
In a different timeline, that would be funny.
Beneath the layers is Microsoft allowing a fascist regime, that Microsoft donated money to, to use their IP in facist promoting material.
I look forward to the day Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Apple get broken up.
I'm here for it. Is it okay if I throw Facebook and Twitter/X on the pyre? I've long considered them to be horsemen of the apocalypse.
also in-lore the UNSC nuked an entire planet because they couldn't stop a rebellion on it
https://www.halopedia.org/Far_Isle
Too bad the Arbiter wasn't around to council on that one.
Yes, Halo is what they believe, the plot of Halo is just standard 2000s South Park conservatism. Fascism is bad I guess but you libs will come crying to the SS for help when the space Muslims attack, so is it really bad?
I hate this fucking timeline.
I used to be a Halo fan, Microsoft ruined it.
I used to want to travel to the US, MAGA ruined it.
I used to have ambition for the future, a bunch of crusty old fucks ruined it.
I used to enjoy life. This incessant hatred and uglyness ruined it.
Find your thing, mute the rest.
Big wisdom in this.
Don't assume it is "checking out" from society or taking the easy way out. The news will find you, don't worry. Plus maintaining focus on your thing is something that can take significant effort.
I have noticed that the smaller I make my world, the happier I am. My free time goes into my family, friends, hobbies, and pets (which I guess is a big subset of the hobbies). I think a big part of the benefit is not just focusing on the people who can have the biggest effect on my life, but focusing on the people whose life I can improve the most with my involvement.
Our brains evolved to keep tabs on our clan or our village, not to monitor the events of the entire Earth in near real time, as if we're going to do anything with that information. In fact, I think that "need" to be informed is often just an addiction manufactured by the need to drive engagement to validate 24/7 news as a business model.
Agreed. My self-critical side used to argue this was constructing an echo chamber for myself. But now I'm realizing that unless I'm going to completely refocus my life on deconstructing the first-past-the-post de facto two-party duopoly then I'm just taking on unnecessary anxiety.
Instead I figure as long as I'm still discussing my political or philosophical values on here those who do wish to pursue politics will have access to the statistics of what their constituents actually want (e.g. via LLMs focusing on political language). Whether we actually get such a leader is another question.
And let's be honest, this is one of those many contexts where giving a shit and putting forth ANY amount of effort puts you ahead of 80% of the population anyway.
Feel this 100% as an American though.
I was about to rebut the "visit the US" thing, but people really should wait until immigration no longer looks at peoples' phones or social media. I think I can still refuse as a citizen on 4th amendment grounds, but until that's extended to visitors, I recommend holding off.
Slight clarification to your last sentence: the Border Search Exception that allows the searching of non-citizens' digital contents equally extends to US citizens re-entering the country. (see: US v. Ramsey 1977, US v. Montoya de Hernandez 1985).
Whereas the 4th amendment does protect those within the US regardless of whether they're here legally or not (see: Wong Sun v. US 1963; INS v. Lopez-Mendoza 1984).
More like 'Microsoft approves of this imagery'
Silence is consent, be it from approval or cowardice, the outcome is the same.
I understand your outrage but silence is not consent. It is fear. Apply that phrase to any other situation where consent is required and that would be considered victim blaming.
Now M$ COULD be fine with this, we truly don't know, but they could also be afraid of how the administration would retaliate against them if they spoke up. I do agree with you when you say these companies are cowardly.
Lol, they willingly work with this fascist regime and others around the globe. Their silence is implicit consent, because a multi billion dollar company doesn't get to cry fear in the face of the governments they willingly work with.
Stop defending corpos, they'll gladly sell you to the government and tell your family they're suuuuuper sorry you got nabbed but there's nothing they can do.
They provided some insight to why they think MS didn't comment. Then agreed with you. I don't think they were defending MS.
long past the point of continuing to extend the courtesy they constantly deny everyone else
Microsoft are a bunch of pussies also release the Epstein files!
Microsoft declined to commentMicrosoft was completely OK with this
of course they are. they aid genocide abroad, why wouldn’t they do it at home too?
...So you separate children from their parents at the age of six and abuse them? Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate.
Instead of Mexican Joker we'll have Mexican Chief
It's piss colored, and that makes it accurate.
lmao they didn't even try to color correct the piss filter
The current government strategy of illegal use of copyrighted materials, often with the full understanding that the artist/IP owners will not consent to it should really have a harsher punishment to it. The DHS social media pages in particular keep using songs without artist permission because they know it will be taken down but by that point it doesn’t matter and they just steal another song. Given that the use of these songs implies tacit approval from the artist, this should absolutely count as the rights of the artists to free speech are being infringed upon.
Yeah it almost reads like Microsoft has endorsed the Trump administration and its marketing. Like a forced brand crossover. These things aid in the far right pipeline. Has young men thinking hating immigrants is as cool and mainstream as Halo.
Not almost, it is exactly that
Microsoft could have issued a note to the tone of "we were not consulted" but their vaporware spine did not amount to even that little
It's quite literally the least bad thing they've done across two terms in office.
Who seriously believes that? We're so beyond "Death of the Artist" at this point. FFS, I can't count the number of times I've heard the chorus line of Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA" played full on patriotically, without a tinge of irony or self-reflection.
If an artist consents to the use of their song in a specific way, it’s not a matter of belief at all. It just is tacit approval. So when the government does this without consent, until the moment the artist responds, the implication is that the artist has approved it. Which isn’t as big a deal if a private entity does it, but it’s a much bigger deal when the federal government does it.
Lmao that fat fuck could not fit in that suit.
Doesn’t matter. They’re cultivating and growing the alternate universe for far right suckers to live in.
Draft dodger say what?
Also, that flag would only have been valid for a week in 1889.
Homelander-ass post
I would threaten to not buy any more Halo games but I haven't bought one in like a decade so I recognize there's not much bite there.
Lawsuit incoming....?
From who? They funded the Epstein Ballroom.
Microsoft declining to comment may as well be a confession that they gave this shit the go-ahead
I don't know what's worse, that Microsoft may have given them the go-ahead or that they did it knowing Microsoft would be too scared to say something.
We all know they didn’t ask permission.
Can you imagine if MS did say something, and Trump immediately decided to replace all their products in government with Apple alternatives? You know he would.
Equally disgusting tbh. Boycott for life for sure.
Probably. Trump will probably sue Microsoft for stealing his battle suit for video games.
It's another form of kissing the ring. They know it's bad for business but there's the implied threat that if they retaliate the FCC will grind the company to a hault.
So it's a way of reminding them of their loyalty and extending the president's influence beyond it's legal limits, very common tactic during the 1940's of a particular country's history.
Considering how dependent on M$ servers and products the 'murican government is, Microsoft could easily push for a MAD standoff against them
Master Queef
Always has
The CEO of Microsoft is deep throating Trump regularly. The company won't do anything.
Bootlicking cowards.
I'm sure if Satya Nadal were to become a target of ICE he'd have a comment.
But that would never happen because, you know, money.
I don't think so. It's unlikely, but not implausible. I don't think ICE have a list of "don't arrest" people, and not everyone knows what every CEO looks like. They might run into him randomly and just act on it.
I don't think Satya Nadal is going out in public like regular people, but it could still happen.
He may have security... Like one might expect a high level antifa cartel member would ^/s^
That'd be funny as hell
Probably because Trump gave them a $12 billion dollar tax break…
Edit: Billion
And all it cost them was $1,000,000 donated to the inauguration fund
Whenever you think the Turd Reich can't get more stupid and ridiculous they actually go and do it.
https://youtu.be/WlWmCXihec4
Reminds me of this...
Spartans were originally made to fight rebels.
also in-lore the UNSC nuked an entire planet because they couldn't stop a rebellion on it
https://www.halopedia.org/Far_Isle
Uh let's be honest here, the UNSC was straight up losing the war against the covenant. The only way they survived was to ally with them.
This is why while I love 40k, I have mixed feelings about there ever being a mainstream movie/show about it. I can already imagine MAGA wearing shirts saying "Purge the xeno scum"
So, not just mafia style monopoly anymore. Now also supporting facism.
Oh my god, theyre gonna activate the ring!
Come to think of it, the Covenant have a lot in common with American brand millennial Evangelists. Leaning really hard on immanentising the eschaton.
There is still time to stop the key from turning.
The Master Chief needs to finish the fight. Fuck up the (Trump) covenant
Damn, now I want a mod that replaces all Covenant enemies with these fascists, and replace all their voice lines with actual quotes they've said.
You could do Stephen Miller for the Prophets, Trump for the Elites, and maybe Alex Jones or something for the Grunts.
You kill a grunt and it screams “they’re turning the frogs gay”
The DHS equating people being arrest &OR deported to fighting the flood was surreal. I had to do a double take.
Donald J Trumps Mjolnir armor would require a XXL waste system.
Kinda out of topic, but why do all of those AI images have those yellowed filters?
Yeah all AI images have a bend towards warm yellow hues. So much that If you keep feeding the output of AI back into AI it just gets more yellow over time. It’s probably something to do with training sets taking in movies and social media posts where people prefer to show themselves in “golden hour”.
AI-caterpillar effect.
Its called the piss filter.
Generative models (what is often referred to as AI) are opaque and it's almost impossible to understand exactly how something got added or why it's happening. But somewhere along the way models started to use it and no one looking at the output thought it was bad enough to not post.
I assume that part of the prompt is tying back to WW2 era propaganda and a lot of those posters have yellowed with age by the time they made it into the dataset.
Same question. It's weird and instantly recognizable. I guess training data but I have never seen a real explanation about that.
Guaranteed, he's going to count the Console Wars in his list of wars he's ended.
The suit is jacking him off
Xenophobia is out of control.
It gets worse. This is a bit further down on that article=
Jesus fucking Christ.
Trump can barely stand upright in real life.
I wish somebody did shove that old cunt into that suit like somebody trying to stuff a sleeping bag into the carry bag it can't in. the trauma would be unreal.
I feel like one of the covenant prophets would have been more fitting what with how racist they are. (And sexist, I read the books)
I've been a fan of Halo since CE, so many memories and custom games, I got legendary editions and autographs from chief and cortanas va's, in no way are the white house' shit posts diminishing all of that, after all this is just the churned SLOP of some intern. I sure as shit won't be buying anything Halo or XBOX, spineless corporation..I saw this one post DHS about Destroying the Flood??
Fuckin hell
so if you want to be a pedophile, senile, racist with a full diaper, play Halo… got it Microsoft
Yoy mean Microcunts declined to comment
Trump demands a time machine to go back and keep his ancestors from coming over.
Confused, it was a reply to celebrating Halo on PS5, where does the ‘destroy immigration’ part come in?
Weird not to include that image, thanks.
The image and text are both in the linked article
Oh, I thought related articles was the end of the article.
Yeah, that's an odd choice for the page element to be.
Can't be any shittier than the TV show. Probably will have Milltana as the AI.
FYI this is supposed to be shitty AI, not actually cool looking.
We do have to hold Microsoft to a very slightly different standard, because they're a Military Contractor. They're not going to risk hundreds of billions of dollars to take a stance and make a statement. In that sense, this should not surprise anybody.
No, we really don't have to hold them in a different standard. It makes sense they are kowtowing to the fascist regime though
Yes my entire point is that what they're doing makes sense. It would actually be strange if the did anything differently given their position.
Right, so no need to say anything about different standards
It is, though. It's one thing for some random artist to condemn the current admin, a totally different thing for a massive military contractor to. That is a different standard.
If Trump made himself an AI Trump Mickey Mouse video and somebody specifically asked reanimated Walt Disney for comment, that would be shocking. If a similar circumstance happened to Boeing or Northrop Grumman, then... No shit no comment.
Not when it comes to fascists
Fuck that shit. Standards are called standards for a reason. MS can eat shit or comment.
Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck. I have SOOOOOO MUCH SHIT BLOCKED and I still have to see this invasive fucking shit fucking EVERYWHERE IN FUCKING LEMMY. fuck you fuck everyone fuck all this endless fucking fellatio you give this fucking twat. Just shut the fuck up and stop sharing the images and name and giving it attention. Holy fucking shit it's god damn inescapable.
Get so fucking fucked fucking assholes!!!!!
Then don't click on it, asshole! There is plenty of shit on here that I don't care about, but I don't bitch about it. I just scroll on.
Fuck you!
I scroll on 99% of the time and/or hide it.
Fuck you.
Man. I'm sorry you are experiencing reality. But like, maybe you should be aware of what is happening?
The fact that you are more mad about reading an article from PC gamer than that hundreds of thousands of people are being abducted says a lot about you.
Some of us used to care and the endless exhaustion is too much. I simply am a person trying to exist, and I only continue to shrink how much bullshit I consume more and more and more since it infects everything.
Not wanting to see horrible shit constantly doesnt equate to not caring.
Get fucked.
Dont worry. I'm getting fucked hard. By my government that hates me and by people like you who think they don't need to even be informed of current events.
The apathy and inaction from you and your ilk is fucking me hard, and has killed many.