New hire, brought on board comes to a Monday meeting.

The company Quality of Worklife Balance survey has been returned, and it's awful. It's just after the 2008 crash, and we're barely treading water, but the company held on. The CIO brought everyone into the largest conference room, meant for hundreds (there's a couple dozen of us standing around, the chairs weren't setup) and we stand around her as she procedes to tell us "Why is your QWL so low, you should be talking to your managers about this! I don't wanna see another QWL survey this bad ever!" In a very yelly tone.

One of the managers raised their hand, and asked, "Folks feel like they're not being listened to and that they're not getting enough leeway to make decisions."

CIO: "Well they need to get over that."

And that was the first meeting a bunch of developers and IT folks got to see at that company.

Many other shenanigans occurred there, but my personal favorite was the quarter million dollar genset system all setup and tested multiple times -- fueled and ready to go, failed in a major power outage because someone left the key in the "test" position on the generator.

-- That CIO thought they led people, they did nothing of the sort.

Come on people you're all staring at flashing LEDs distracting you and you're ignoring the giant spolight of Riccitiello's ownership of over 400,000 EA shares.

He moved the EA stock price by 2 dollars the day they announced the Unity deal.

It will look like that scientific knowledge survey they did in subsaharan africa. People won't know that the earth orbits around the sun.

This isn't hyperbole, they won't teach science if they can avoid it.

I got to experience evangelical science indoctrination as a child, and they literally do not want science taught. It contradicts the pop up books.

I think it's important to remember how this used to happen.

AT&T paid voice actors to record phoneme groups in the 90s/2000s and have been using those recordings to train voice models for decades now. There are about a dozen AT&T voices we're all super familiar with because they're on all those IVR/PBX replacement systems we talk to instead of humans now.

The AT&T voice actors were paid for their time, and not offered royalties but they were told that their voices would be used to generate synthentic computer voices.

This was a consensual exchange of work, not super great long term as there's no royalties or anything and it's really just a "work for hire" that turns into a product... but that aside -- the people involved all agreed to what they were doing and what their work would be used for.

The ultimate problem at the root of all the generative tools is ultimately one of consent. We don't permit the arbitrary copying of things that are perceived to be owned by people, nor do we think it's appropriate to do things without people's consent with their "Image, likeness, voice, or written works."

Artists tell politicians to stop using their music all the time etc. But ultimately until we really get a ruling on what constitutes "derivative" works nothing will happen. An AI is effectively the derivative work of all the content that makes up the vectors that represents it so it seems a no brainer, but because it's radio on the internet we're not supposed to be mad at Napster for building it's whole business on breaking the law.

Kotaku failing at even being a sensationalist rag:

Top Chess Competor's Sex Toy 'Anal Bead' cheating buzz comes quietly in the end.

For a 200 year old law, it's pretty straight forward. And for all it's flaws, the Nth revolution didn't like the Catholic church for ... reasons, so they wanted to make a law to get them out of politics and make them liable for their shenanigans. Thankfully they didn't discriminate when they wrote the law.

https://www.gouvernement.fr/...

1. PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF “LAÏCITÉ”

 The principle of secularism means that the State and religious organisations are separate. There is therefore no state-run public worship. The State neither recognises, nor subsidises, nor salaries any form of worship. Exceptions and adjustments to the ban on funding are defined in the legislation and case-law; they concern in particular chaplaincies, which are paid for by the State1

 No religion can impose its prescriptions on the Republic. No religious principle can be invoked for disobeying the law.

Wow he only had to tank the company before his 50m worth of EA ownership became a problem...

Y'all is the best pronoun.

It's second person can be used singular or plural, and the difference is all contextual.

It's ungendered and it's makes almost anything feel "more fun."

It's almost like the CEO of the company (John Riccitiello) supporting the most Indie game developers holds 53 million dollars in EA shares or something....

Even, and most likely especially, if Unity does poorly does EA benefit... I bet ya Riccitiella knows all the features of Frostbite, but couldn't tell you if you can do native reliable UDP networking in Unity...

I hope they like their strict editorial control they're enforcing.... I'm sure that doesn't do anything to affect their Section 230 protections.

Of course Florida would do this, they're part of the "Mark of Cain" south.

That is: Southern Preachers maintained the horrific canon that black slaves would only survive as subservient to their white masters, because god had marked them. This is a big part of all the separations of churches during the civil war.

If the people living in apartments had a say in how they were built... yeah

Nobody chooses to live in a fucking tin can hanging from suspension wires that is so poorly insulated you can hear every bird flying into the windows as though you're inside a bass drum.

The sounds of my neighbors at 3 am snoring are not a feature you can call part of the "shared experience."

The prospect of being trapped together because the elevator went out and there's a fire... oh so joyous. Not to mention all the people's pets that get left at home throughout the day and I can hear crying with desperation to be let out as though they're in the next room...

I'm quite happy not to live in a fucking modern apartment thank you very much.

Never had a parking ticket spiral eh?

$85 + $50 dollar waiver fee if you pay and just say you're guilty. OOOOR

$85 fee if you go to court and lose.

Only $95 in the bank.

Well shit, $50 bucks lets you pay rent, so you take the time. But you have to get exacty $10 of gas, you get to the courtroom, do your best and lose. You gotta pay $85 dollars, and so you do -- except the bank fucked you when you went to got gas, they haven't processes that yet, and the courtroom requires a mandatory $2.95 "convenience fee" so they don't have to take a check... So you pay, and the bank processes your payments dutifully, smallest to largest, but now you're in the hole for $105.

Rent is still coming next week, and you're lucky it's only $300 cause you share a 3 bedroom and sleep on the couch.

To make the $300 dollars you gotta work 2 jobs, because Wallmart makes sure you don't get the full 35 hours each week to qualify for benefits, and McDonalds only calls you to pick up the teenagers shifts on Fridays.

But wait, you're -105 in the bank, so you gotta go call up a bunch of people you know and bug everyone at McDonalds to see if you can cover their shifts. Finally you manage to scrape together 55 hours to pay your rent... but you get dinged on your mobile bill in the middle of that week, and you're out another 40 dollars. You can't cancel the mobile phone since it's your only phone, and hell entertainment, you can't afford a TV or a Netflix plan, that shit's for the rich. You can't even afford to eat where you work...

Finally you get home, after working 7 days of 8 hour shifts you managed to scrape together (4 at wallymart and 3 at mcdonalds) and your bank account is empty, you don't have any money for food, and your snap benefits keep getting denied because you live in a red state...

So you watch youtube shorts, and tiktok doom scroll and try and forget you're hungry....

(I hope my landlord will let me give them 260 until I can cover the rest...)

Take one people and take their homes away, take another and call them "the chosen people or Judea" and tell them they can take the homes of the other people.

Now one group has been told by the "world" that this place is theirs because God said so.

The other is literally kicked outta their homes and is told it's their fault. Also they're walled in and can't leave.. and then they're told they're gonna get fucked unless they leave... but they can't leave..

Because there are sadists in every field.

If GoT had "ended" over privacy at the end of Season 7 it would still have a following. People would still wear their hair like the characters in the show... It would have created a pop culture sensation that lasted at least a generation. Now we have a funny reminder occasionally since so and so named their daughter Khaleesi in the middle of the "Breaker of Chains" season...

I was always told "The Stupid Tax" wasn't a real thing... but then Elon goes and does another thing...

It doesn't go far enough. For monthly payments you should have to confirm them at least annually with a positive assertion. When your card number changes, you should have to assert it as well.

The "convenience" of automatic payments and automatic updates of card numbers has let AOL and their like bilk millions and millions from people that forgot they were paying them.

So he must have definitely did it. Elon is anything if not consistent, he's gonna back the contrarian horse if someone tells him there's a race.

There's a really simple one. All the VCs and funders have been double dipping in REIT and in business real estate holdings. They sit on the boards of companies with no interest in maintaining offices, but have financial backers who veto those decisions.

The language and excuses are all a smoke screen, it's to give them time to get out of commercial real estate without crashing the market.

Just before the pandemic the LARGEST commercial leases EVER were being signed in SFO and NYC... those same interests are just one giant ouroboros of funding and they saw their margins dwindling in their real holdings.

Blackrock is the most obvious, but there are lots of board level holdings in the same situation, they're of course going to advise and demand that the commercial real estate be maintained... They may even be able to get a discount on next lease... just gotta be nice and keep paying those bills!