@UrLogicFails
@beehaw.orgThe amount the studios are losing from the strike could have paid for the WGA/ SAG requests easily, which makes the studios holding out feel even more ridiculous; but I think it's not about the money for them.
I think they want to send the message that they hold the power, not the workers, to disincentivize/demoralize future strikers. On top of that, I think they are salivating at the thought of never paying a "creative" again; and AI writers rooms and owning the likeness rights of every extra they ever use would certainly make it easy for them.
The studios are dreaming of the day they can ask a computer to generate Iron Man 7, and it'll spit out the script, generate CGI acting (including a rubbery PS3 looking RDJ), and it won't ever need to touch human hands.
The studios want to frame the strike about money (and that is certainly a big issue), but this could very well be a strike for the future of Hollywood's "soul"; which is why I think the studio heads are willing to take such a bath to keep it going
Honestly, I would hope for that as well; but it seems very similar to the enshittification of Amazon (Wired link, archive link):
Marketplace sellers reached huge audiences and Amazon took low commissions from them.
This strategy meant that it became progressively harder for shoppers to find things anywhere except Amazon, which meant that they only searched on Amazon, which meant that sellers had to sell on Amazon. That's when Amazon started to harvest the surplus from its business customers and send it to Amazon's shareholders. Today, Marketplace sellers are handing more than 45 percent of the sale price to Amazon in junk fees.
Basically the notion is once a storefront has captured the bulk of potential customers, they are able to extort their suppliers however they want, since it's the only way the suppliers can reasonably reach the customers.
Hopefully in this case, the publishers can explore other sales avenues; but it all depends on the reach of the subscription service.
Part of this article just feels like the capitalistic notion that profits should only increase and anything but that is failing:
"Expectations for Devolver this financial year were $115 million to $120 million, and they've had to go back to $90 million. The majority of that is the delay of big releases into 2024. I think those are decision for the right reasons, although investors won't like it in the short term.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the subscription model WAS actually hurting smaller developers. I remember hearing people hypothesizing that would be the case for a long time.
If you have Gamepass or PlayStation Plus Ultra, you can play almost any small publisher game for free. With that set up, there's a very large incentive to only play the games on the subscription service, instead of buying a full priced game to try out.
The problem is that once a small game is on the service, a large number of potential sales are going to be cannibalized by people playing on the subscription service instead of buying the game.
This leads to a scenario where your game needs to be on the subscription service and you have less sales because of it. This means that Microsoft and Sony have a large amount of power over the small publishers' vitality, since a lot of money now needs to come from deals with them.
As Microsoft starts tightening its purse strings trying to make Gamepass profitable, I wouldn't be surprised to see more small publishers suffering as a result.
I'm only peripherally familiar with this show (I knew people who tried to hate-watch it). What was the original premise of the show?
As far as I can tell, these supposedly protect you from facial recognition because they reflect IR. I'm not an expert in security cameras, but don't they only use IR at night? While they could technically run 24/7, that would burn out the LEDs in half the time.
These are also quite similar to the "anti-paparazi" reflective clothing. If you are interested in these as a statement piece, those might be of interest to you as well.
These seem like the developer came up with the function of the sunglasses after coming up with the sunglasses (after being inspired by the anti-paparazi clothes).
All in all, I don't really see much value in these sunglasses; and I suppose I wouldn't really be that concerned about facial recognition with proper masking safety, anyways.
Basically, I think it's exactly what @Gaywallet@beehaw.org was saying: these decisions aren't being made with any actual facts/ data as the basis. The decisions are solely based on "gut feelings" of the higher-ups. Attendance is the only way the higher-ups know how to gauge productivity, and that is going to trump any actual productivity data.
Remote work is such a boon to workers, and from my perception there is not a lot of benefit of mandating in-person work.
It really feels like the push to return to in-person is primarily driven by a combination of propping up the industrial real estate industry as well as managers not trusting their employees, and perhaps some level of maliciousness towards employees.
The return on investment on operating an office space for the nominal increase in productivity really makes in-person work feel like it's only for the managers' egos.
The fact that the Zoom CEO is pushing for this to me does not represent a lack of faith in their product, but a strong desire to squeeze every drop of productivity out of their employees regardless on quality of life and regardless of return on investment of the cost of operating the office.
Personally, I'm not a fan of studios re-releasing their movies for a second run with just a little bit extra. I saw someone compare it to DLC, which feels very accurate to me.
I thought the movie was fun, but this just feels greedy to me (though I suppose it is fitting, given the capitalistic nature of the movie's creation).
Jaboukie (to me) might be one of the people who understand the internet the best (maybe even better than Dril, though it's hard to say), so I washed to see what he had to say. I thought this was an interesting interview that looks at the relationship between music, comedy, entertainment, and the internet.
I think it has the reactive triggers too, but as you said, that doesn't feel like a 200USD feature.
I am hopeful they might introduce a WiiU style connection down the line, since if I recall correctly it just needed a 5GHz WiFi connection and I am fairly positive both devices have the appropriate antenna for that (though it would limit their 5G WiFi connectivity while in use). Maybe they could implement it through a wired connection, too. This would be less convenient than wireless, but would certainly have lower latency. Having said that, until they announce a low latency connection, I wouldn't count on it.