Spyke

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gamedev

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Unreal Deprecating Blueprints and Actors

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You're not forced to upgrade to a new version, is the saving grace. Downloading old versions of Unreal is easy. But this is literally just diagramming code, but my understanding is at least some people prefer this. Though apparently not enough for Epic to keep it in.

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X is reportedly selling inactive usernames for $50,000 — The move is the platform’s latest attempt to raise revenue

Seems like a good time to remind everyone just a few months ago he took two active usernames from their users without warning. Both @x and @music were in use and taken by Musk with no warning and no recompense.

At this rate I see it as completely possible that someone buys one, and the first time they don't update within whatever Musk feels like is "too long" that day, he takes it back with no warning.

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Mastodon's official stance on Threads

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The fear is a practice called "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" (or EEE). It's been used by tech companies before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

It, in theory, could work like this:

  1. Meta embraces ActivityPub in its tech in an attempt to garner good will and make it easy for users to transition to Threads.

  2. Meta extends on ActivityPub by saying "oh we're just adding a few things that make this better for our users (on our service) but we're still supporting ActivityPub!

  3. Meta then extinguishes ActivityPub support, and severally hobbles AP, after they secure enough users to be happy and think AP offers no real competition anymore.

Then the enshittification process begins, by moving the focus from users to other interests (usually advertisers) at the expense of users. And eventually to the platform owners, at the expense of advertisers. Though I guess they'll skip the middle step, being a public company?

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

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Those of you that have negative sentiments towards AI: What would you want to happen right now?

Like a lot of others, my biggest gripe is the accepted copyright violation for the wealthy. They should have to license data (text, images, video, audio,) for their models, or use material in the public domain. With that in mind, in return I'd love to see pushes to drastically reduce the duration of copyright. My goal is less about destroying generative AI, as annoying as it is, and more about leveraging the money being it to change copyright law.

I don't love the environmental effects but I think the carbon output of OpenAI is probably less than TikTok, and no one cares about that because they enjoy TikTok more. The energy issue is honestly a bigger problem than AI. And while I understand and appreciate people worried about throwing more weight on the scales, I'm not sure it's enough to really matter. I think we need bigger "what if" scenarios to handle that.

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*Permanently Deleted*

Like I said in another post:

Seems like a good time to remind everyone just a few months ago he took two active usernames from their users without warning. Both @x and @music were in use and taken by Musk with no warning and no recompense.

At this rate I see it as completely possible that someone buys one, and the first time they don't update within whatever Musk feels like is "too long" that day, he takes it back with no warning.

news

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Bad Bunny Says He Didn’t Include U.S. in Tour Dates Due to Fear of ICE Raids

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In addition to being an insanely popular musician he's also been in several WWE matches (and actually did great,) has been on SNL, and played the waiter-turned-caddy in Happy Gilmore 2 in a guest spot. So he's pretty well known. Not to be aggro or suggest that's the creme de la creme of celebrity, just to let you know the level he operates on. He's pretty well recognized at a glance to a lot of people.

games

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A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again

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There's plenty of better deep dives on YouTube, but basically it's a system in Shadows of Mordor (and moreso in Shadows of War) that would take a random NPC you were fighting and were joined by (or almost killed,) and elevate them thematically. If one knocked you down there's a chance they would pick up your sword and break it, smack talk you, and walk away. That guy, of his name was Doug, became Doug the Sword Breaker. Never time you saw him, he'd get a short introduction and a quip or two to remove you of who he was.

If you died, since you were a spirit they'd just mock that they already best you before. But if you were killing them, they might get a scene where they manage to get away to amplify the story. Or maybe you'll just kill them. It was random and happened with random NPCs, elevating them in the enemy army.

I believe in the second one you could even mind control someone, and take out the people above them, and have a spy in the upper ranks.

Imagine an action game with some Crusader Kings plot drama happening.

Honestly I think there's probably enough prior art to get away with using whatever you wanted from it. But a) I'm no lawyer and b) I'm not risking millions of dollars making a game.

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YouTube's ‘War’ on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

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You're obviously right. But it's funny to me; I find it easy to imagine a world where staying independent and hosting your own stuff was seen as cooler. Instead of YouTube and Google Buzz, we ran RSS clients akin to Outlook and Thunderbird. They torrent and seed media we're subscribed to while we're at work or class. It's saved on a home server. We walk in and simply toss it up on our desktop or TV. (Or maybe a mobile client streams from your home server over the Internet or over your home Wi-Fi if you're at home )

And if you visited the website instead of YouTube's recommendations, The creator just adds a few RSS feeds on the backend to pull thumbnails from, of other creators' sites they enjoy.

Crazy how easy it is to daydream though, when I'm not the one putting the work in.