[false claims that] journalists gave the recent PS5 game Stellar Blade (pictured below) bad reviews because its female characters are too hot

That seems an inadequate way of summing up the Stellar Blade controversy which on the whole was considerably more ridiculous than that.

Good artists copy. Great artists sabotage free software in order to steal crypto wallets and credit card numbers.

I don’t think they’re likely to do a better job than humans any time soon. We can hope that it won’t be extremely misleading too often.

Before there was ChatGPT to blame, we had the “50 cent army.” The fully automated bullshit generators are a cheaper but also a less effective way to do what was already being done. I expect the real problem is somewhere closer to the design of mass social media and the human weaknesses it has evolved to exploit, not so much the super-human powers of generative AI which have been so greatly exaggerated.

Sorry, you have been blocked

Instantly blocked by Cloudflare without even the usual cumbersome javascript probes. The web is getting worse so quickly that it’s difficult to read the articles about how the web is getting worse.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240523104932/https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

This future may not have much going for it, but there is at least the consolation that all the sarcastic bullshit I posted on reddit will be taken too literally by Google’s machines and be given as earnest advice to its remaining users.

The end of the web as I knew it happened 28 years ago, and 20 years ago, and 12 years ago.

He’s probably right about Israel and Palestine and all that, but I think he underestimates the willingness of a rational player of Sid Meier’s Civilization® in analogous circumstances to spend a turn taking out the obsolete unit that can’t do any damage to their modern infantry. Those musketeers can still pillage your mines, slow down and spy on your troop movements, blow up your roads and railways, and of course kidnap your workers. In this instance the game reflects the cruel reality of war slightly better than it’s given credit for. Its more salient departure from reality is in mostly failing to depict the suffering of all the non-combatant civilians who we must imagine living in the lands where the wars take place, a failing it shares with for example the game of chess.

From the looks of the first episode, one thing it’s definitely not is low budget. It’s well-crafted and probably very expensive. The sex is perfunctory and the violence is lovingly detailed at great length. There are no real surprises, good or bad, in how they’ve handled things.

Personally I probably would’ve preferred low-budget and camp, but I imagine it will succeed in achieving the goals that its producers had in mind. I will probably watch some more.

Well, that’s one more small group of people learning not to trust Discord. I hope someone is on hand to show them how to set up a matrix server in a jurisdiction not affected by the DMCA.

Obviously the bots do not share in our human fondness for the number 69.

So basically Steam is fine, has been for 20 years, and has competitors waiting to step in and take over the market if Gaben and co ever succumb to the temptation to cash in for a quick boost to corporate profits for a few years at the expense of ruining the business forever after, as impatient shareholders might demand if it were a public company, which it isn’t.

It’s true though, it could fall apart at any moment. So could anything. I expect piracy will be the big winner when it happens.

They’re active on mastodon. I recommend asking them there.

Vladimir Putin’s landslide reelection

He gets so much good press about it around the world, I wonder why he doesn’t have himself elected more often. Once a year perhaps, on Vladimir Putin day.

It prominently features a quote from Gavin Schmidt. Readers who prefer to get a more scientific view of the story can see his thoughts on the topic directly at realclimate.org.

Reddit was great in some ways. It’s been on the decline for a while and I expect the IPO can only accelerate that. Unless we’re all very lucky it’s not going to explode in flames and crash into the ditch. It will just shamble on, gradually disillusioning all the people who still cling to it long after it’s lost its soul.

At last, the surveillance cameras will know it when I give them the finger.

That’s one way to spread the message to the world that you’ve given up on freedom and democracy. It’s as if TikTok is a monster that eats the brains of our children, and the problem they have with it is that the wrong person is holding its leash.

Things were much better back in the good old days when the social pressure to buy lego bricks and action figures was reinforced only by a constant barrage of TV advertising.

It seems weird to describe it as a “limitation.” Isn’t it just the main thing they do? Hallucinations guided by whatever we all typed on reddit, untouched by any lived experience. If this approach occasionally gets near the truth I’ve seen nothing to suggest that it’s by design.