Amy Webb? I’ve just rewatched her latest appearance and I didn’t think she was that bad. If anything, Kevin Rose (the other guest that episode) was far more willing to accept the near-magic claims about AI than she was. She does call herself a futurist and has some of those techbro vibes at times, but I thought most of her AI comments on that episode were fairly measured. My biggest criticism might be the same as that quote you posted: that they’re not very profound or actionable.

Slightly off topic, but I don’t find her anywhere near as annoying as Alex Lindsay and his constant defence of big business and criticism of even the mildest of pro-consumer regulation. And he’s a regular co-host, not an occasional guest…

Can I play it in front of my kids?

It’s been a while since I played, but I think the answer is mostly yes. There are sex scenes, but they’re pretty well-telegraphed ahead of time and I don’t think you can get into them by accident.

how long from startup to the next save point?

What’s a save point, to you? The game allows saving at any point (except maybe during combat?), but this may or may not be a satisfying experience to you. For the most satisfying experience you’d probably want to consider your camp the save point, and that can go a couple of hours between occurences, depending on the quest and how good you are (/the difficulty level).

Is it a lot like Mass Effect?

A very similar narrative style with the focus on your relation to the NPCs. Gameplay is very different. Much more about tactics and less about action. Personally I found that balance really awkward and not enjoyable: I’d rather lean more into the action like a Skyrim (or, indeed, ME) style game, or do tactics properly in a turn-based manner like BG3 or Lord of the Rings: Tactics. But I stuck it out for the story & characters which were great, though I couldn’t bring myself to keep going with the big DLC once I lost momentum thanks to finishing the main story, or to pick up either of the sequels.

Fantasy series with a very D&D-esque world and a combat system that feels a bit like an MMO or a turnbased tactics game. It’s real time with optional pausing, and you operate your whole party at once, with the ability to pause to give each of them precise orders, or to pre-program them with specific responses to situation.

I think it mainly became popular on the back of its characters. The story was good but nothing special, and personally I found the combat in Origins to be absolutely terrible. But building up your party, getting to know the characters and making decisions that affect them was amazing. At least on par in this respect with the original Mass Effect trilogy.

Yeah but at least we (millennials) exist in popular culture and the public discourse. You never even hear about gen X unless it’s someone pointing out how you never hear about them.

It seems to me that 90s kid millennials and their young children are the current “mainstream”. And boomers have just shifted out of dominance in the past 5 years or so

Once again, poor Gen Xers get ignored.

Perhaps, but that would still mean Sanderson is wrong here in attributing the blame to straight-to-streaming, when it’s actually due to the rise of social media. Which has meant that for my age group (young millennials, going through teenage years through the mid-to-late ’00s to early ’10s) it’s been true the whole time we’ve been paying our own way to the movies.

deleted by creator

I think the change in business model from theatre-exclusive for a long period of time to direct-to-streaming or fast-tracked streaming is related, which IIRC he/Dan mentioned in the full podcast. But I don’t think this theory about trailers is correct. I’ve never known someone to get excited for a movie based on seeing the trailer before another movie. They find out in the news or on social media, and see the trailer on YouTube.

Streaming is just not as profitable as theatres, but it’s a much more convenient way for people to watch. I’ve seen some people make suggestions on how to make the theatregoing experience better to entice people to go, but the biggest thing IMO is just the fact that it’s on streaming early at all. From a personal perspective, I hope they don’t do this, but I do think it would benefit movies’ profitability to lock in much longer theatre-exclusive periods.

But also, less crappy studio-run films pls? Almost nothing Disney is putting out these days is worth seeing, because it’s all lame remakes and sequels. We need studios to be brave and just trust good filmmakers to make good films, not constantly try to chase industry trends.

Here’s the exact same clip on the standard YouTube Watch page. (Just change the /shorts/ to /watch?v=, or use the YouTube-shorts block extension to do that automatically.)

They either get stuck in a loop or lead to a dead-end page that doesn’t have any outgoing links.

my reading of the post is the other way around

To be honest, one of my sources of confusion is that the second paragraph suggests Wattpad users are trying to make AO3 allow their type of content, but the third paragraph/second post implies AO3 is too permissive for Wattpad users. The two messages seem opposite each other in what they get across.

One possibility that had occured to me was that AO3 is too permissive for Wattpad users in terms of classification, but that AO3 was a fanfiction site and Wattpad maybe has a mix of fanfiction and OC and that they were annoyed at the OC not being allowed. That would seem to reconcile the mixed messages. But honestly there’s nowhere near the evidence from these posts and what little I already knew about the sites to be even remotely confident in that conclusion.

Wait, am I not understanding what AO3 is? I thought it was a site for fanfiction. This makes it sound like it’s something more than that?

What are the policies that AO3 is enforcing that Wattpad doesn’t? I honestly have so little context here.

Your attempt to use spoiler syntax didn’t work. You need a space between the opening three colons and the word “spoiler”.

What is the difference between a hesitation and a censure?

Honestly censoring it like this just calls more attention to it. Had it not been censored I’d have just read the word and moved on. Had it been censored but using the same colour as the background I’d have read it, spent some time thinking “I hate this trend of censoring benign uses of language to bypass big social media companies’ filters, but I guess it’s necessary” (because I’d have assumed you grabbed this from a Twitter or Facebook post).

But censoring with a big red squiggle, the first thing I read was tits. All the downsides of the subtle censoring, but then it also gets seen over and over again because it visually stands out so much.

I’m just a well-read interested amateur, not a lawyer, let alone an American contract lawyer.

Leonard was a case where Pepsi advertised, basically, that they’d sell you a Harrier Jet for $700,000. Leonard sent them a cheque for that amount and tried to get them to honour the deal. There was nothing explicit in the ad that made it a joke, but Pepsi refused, and ultimately won the lawsuit because it was absurd. Likewise, in my opinion, giving away a multibillion dollar company on the basis of three tweets, one of which is describing the possibility of a mysterious death, and another which is literally just “Ok” is very similar to that situation, in that it’s played straight, but is obviously a joke because of the content.

You’re right that a lawsuit could be brought. I suspect it would even pass summary judgment, because whether or not it’s a joke would be a finding of fact, not a simple finding of law. And I don’t know what’s hypothetical Musk Estate would do, but if it were Elon himself in charge there’s a good chance you’re right, he’d try to settle it. Not because he’s afraid of losing or concerned about the cost of the lawsuit, but for the same reason he hurried to buy Twitter when he did: to avoid going through discovery. He obviously doesn’t want details of his finances made public, for whatever reason. And his estate might very well inherit that shyness.

But all that would rely on Mr Beast being stupid enough to press his claim in the first place. I only know about him third-hand as a famous YouTuber with a history of doing some rather silly stunts, but surely this would be beyond him. The case might make for good Content™, but entering into it would be very expensive with almost zero chance of proper success and nowhere near a guarantee of even a favourable settlement.

There’s plenty of criticism from the “normal” left. It’s only the far-left tankies on certain instances of Lemmy that play dumb. Anyone from the centre-left mainstream political parties to non-authoritarian leftists (e.g. those aligned with Greens, Socialist, or Left parties in their respective countries) is far more likely to be opposed to this than supportive.

but it absolutely does

I get why you would say that, because verbal contracts are definitely a real thing that can be binding, and this basically takes the form of a verbal contract, with the added advantage of being written down so it’s easy to prove what was said.

But I don’t think any court would ever find that this constituted a binding contract. No reasonable person would believe that this was intended to be taken seriously, and an offer made in jest does not constitute a binding contract. See Leonard v Pepsico.

edit: With Twitter, as far as we know, he had actually signed a more standard contract in which he waived his right to due diligence. It was rash and stupid, but not really comparable to this at all.

This constitutes a legal binding contract. No I will not be taking corrections.

Actually long desks are no longer considered best practice. At my work, some devs have a lazy suzan, while others prefer a circle that they can pivot around to face the right computer.