- 1 Post
- 13 Comments
The thing I find interesting about this image is that it oversimplifies the argument (like all internet politics), but contains the definition of the root of the problem from the side opposite that which the author is on.
See we live in a world where our livelihoods are based on us having things to do for income. Maybe someday a fantasy utopia will get built where everybody lives a life of leisure and can spend all their time focusing on what they wish to, but right now that doesn’t exist. So when everything is Made in China that means nothing is made anywhere else which means opportunities for work are reduced everywhere else. This is especially painful for people whose parents were well off because of the industry in the town they lived, only to lose those opportunities because the work went to China.
Now add to that the differences in approach between geopolitical Western and Eastern governments and you have the current argument.
Tik-tok is in the crosshairs because it’s convenient. Western Governments, most particularly the US, like to talk up the Free Market. Woo, Free Market, no government interference yeah! So just reaching out and legislating trade or manufacturing flies in the face of their ideology (not to mention that their campaign contributions might dry up if they piss off the oligarchs who are making big bank by manufacturing in foreign lands). Tik-Tok however, is perfectly situated. It’s run by foreigners who don’t fund political campaigns, and it has a practice that is politically palatable to oppose: Collecting data about Americans and storing that data within the reach of an ideologically different government.
Dog in a Hotdog car, all the way.
4·10 months agotrue that is
I use both interchangeably. With no pattern. Much like how programs will spell check “colour”. Lives are changed in equal quantities.
The arrogance lies in the claim of knowing the unknowable. I can’t know for sure how the universe formed. I can’t know for sure what happens when we die. I can’t know for sure that there is or is not a force guiding the world around me and the events that occur. But if you believe in a god (or any form of faith that has answers to these questions or questions like them) then you are saying “I don’t know, but I know who does”, or to simplify “I don’t know, but I know”.
On the other hand if you read a study, or a science article, that says it has found evidence of the big bang and you say “I read in an article that a research team has found evidence of the big bang.” well now you’re claiming that you know you read an article. That’s a claim that is easy to accept and contains no contradictions. It doesn’t take much convincing for me to say that I do think that you read an article. No arrogance, just a declaration of an action.
The nuance here is that there is a difference between reading a study about the big bang, and believing in the big bang. If you’re being completely scientifically honest, you know that there is a possibility it could all be wrong. It might be a slim possibility. But it is impossible for all of us to examine all of the evidence in all of science, so while it looks like belief, it is instead maintaining a perspective that the people who are studying it are doing their best, and so far their best is pointing in a direction. That’s all. No need to burn people at the stake, no need to write anything in stone. Just people looking for clues and reporting that the clues are all indicating a given conclusion. Or maybe the clues they’re finding are pointing all over the place. Or maybe they did the math and the math said that they needed nine spacial dimensions to make an idea work but if they had them, all the clues would point to a given conclusion. And then people living in reality said “how do we test something in nine spacial dimensions?” and all the shrugs eventually resulted in youtube videos that made me say “huh, that’s interesting, it looks like maybe nobody knows how that works”.
One last stupid question: Have you ever noticed how the faithful hate it, or at least express friction, when you bring up things that would bring their explanatory framework crumbling down? Meanwhile scientists are like “This poses fundamental questions about our theory of blabblegabble. I’m super excited, I might have some really serious questions to answer very soon, and we might need to really do some serious sciencing. Where’s my [insert stereotypical scientific tool here]?”
1·11 months agoI posted this above, but I really want to emphasize the point. The is not new, it’s not rare, but we need to demand it and be angry when we don’t get it. Dedicated servers should be the norm.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dedicated_Servers_List
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dedicated_Servers_List
Just posting this here. No Reason.
AKA dedicated servers. They exist now for games now, but are… well not rare, but very specific. Factorio has a dedicated server. Ark has a dedicated server. Valheim, Space Engineers (windows only), Satisfactory, to name a few that I’ve dealt with myself. Demand them. Punish devs who don’t accommodate them with your wallets. No user dedicated servers, no purchase. Fuck you and the distributed info-scraping service you rode in on.
I have a list of games I will never buy because they have succumbed to the lure of hosted services with no user control, no dedicated server support. Those devs want control; they want to control you, how you play and how you interact with those you play with.
No
OK. I’ve been browsing through the Lemmy comments here, and I’m drucking funk, fuck you.
Once there was a utopia. YOU Killed it. Fuck you. Um not really a utopia, but whatever, fuck you.
The beginning of the end was Gears of War or Halo. It wasn’t that they were particularly good, but they were easy. Anybody could just hop into a game. WOOOO! Game time. Then in came the corporations.
I need to give Epic a little bit of credit here. They’ve always been fighting against the establishment. So none of you remember the days of Unreal Tournament. You fucking mewling little pukes. The name Cliffy B means nothing to you. Once upon a time a game company made a FPS arena shooter game called Unreal Tournament. It was the sequel to their story based FPS called Unreal. It was amazing for its time, but who cares. They defined game engines in ways that are rippling to this day.
Blah blah blah, stuff, then they released a game called Gears of War. Ok, you’re new here. Epic was used to releasing amazing games and then engaging with their players. I know the name CliffyB for a reason. Oh, but Microsoft is a Company. They are serious business. This is a store. Epic would release MapPacks for the UT games, and they would contain some serious work, and they were available for free. Nope said MS. This is a Store. You buy things here. Fight fight fight. Don’t worry. The good guys (investment brokers) will win. Right.
But MS had Halo. Nobody here remembers the early source of Halo. The game that came before. I never played it myself, I just remember a high-school acquaintance talking about it. Something about Marathon. Yeah. Marathon, that seems like it was important. Hah ha ha ha, nothing.
Marathon becomes halo. Fuck. That’s a lot of shit to contain to one sentence. Oh Well, you’re dumb as fuck. Fuck you and your fucking modern ignorance.
“I can play Halo with my friends on my Xbos with such ease. I don’t need to smart.”
Begin the world of Consoles. This is way betterer. No brain need. Just two thumbs and some money.
“Oh, there is money here.” said the people who have MBAs and not much else to speak of. (So do you know what MBA is for? It’s for people who are fucking useless, but went to school anyways lol)
At this point, we need to lambaste Epic, because they took their success at game development and tried to turn it into power. “Fortnight FTW makes us have a store makes us infinite money!”
Ok, so now here we are. All the shitstains are in place, (including you lol, cough cough).
So now the people who are making decisions about games don’t actually know the first fuck about anything. Not about storytelling, not about non-linear storytelling, not about emergent gameplay, not about basic gameplay. They don’t understand what compels instrumental play vs free play. What they understand is that things “NAMES” sell, and you will buy.
And you’re buying. Look at all the dollars you’re spending on…
A game I’m not seeing mentioned here but for me it’s one of the top games is Ark. I have so many… Ok, it seems I HAD so many glamour shots of the world as I played it. HD death has lost me a bunch of largely meaningless micro-memories. Well, I still have the memories, but it makes it harder to share them. Here have this one:
I’ve certainly heard this said before. Lately I’ve been thinking more about it as ads seem to be infecting more and more aspects of my life and so I’ve started to question it.
I’ve started to think that the whole “it makes you subconsciously think about the product when you’re in the store” thing might just be made up by marketers. You know, the people whose jobs entirely depend on advertising being a good investment. That does kind of self-prove the point though, because if marketers just made it up and a bunch of people now think it’s true, it follows that people will just absorb “information” if it’s fed to them from the correct place.
I figured I’d see if I could find some science research on the subject. I managed to read through six studies (at least the abstracts and the methodologies) before my eyes glazed completely over and I needed to stop.
First I will say that none of them are able to draw links from advertising consumed to purchases made. The methodologies tend to focus on the immediate, how the ad makes a person feel in the moment. Generally this is done by asking people. Surveys and the like. The first one measured facial expressions and emotional responses. The PLOS one (fifth link) just asked marketing managers if their marketing was effective or not (and wow do they ever use a lot of words to say that, they turned their thesaurus up to 11). The second one is actually a bit of a side-bar in that it’s specifically looking at the effectiveness of gamified advertising, but it does investigate brand memory based on different exposures. Again, just brand memory, not actual purchase behaviour.
And all that makes sense. It would be extremely difficult to build a study that manages to track every motivation for purchasing a given product, especially if some of those motivations aren’t known by the purchaser. So what I’ll say is that while it’s likely that advertising can prod us one way or another, the wisdom that it’s an effective subconscious driver of sales is not evidence based.
Do with that what you will.