#and the software industry at large

[i-am-the-oyster]

You'll Be Hung Like a Ham

You'll Be Hung Like a Ham (865 words) by arewetheoysters Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: The Beatles (Band) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Yoko Ono Characters: Paul McCartney, Mary Mohin McCartney, Jim McCartney, Mike McCartney (mentioned), John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jane Asher (mentioned), Francie Schwartz (mentioned), Linda Eastman (mentioned) Additional Tags: Young Paul McCartney, Wings song 1882, Angst, McLennon, Paul POV, short fic, mild period typical homophobia, internalised homophobia, Bisexual Paul McCartney

[txttletale]

What I don't get is that other your support of AI image generation, you're SO smart and well read and concerned with ethics. I genuinely looked up to you! So, what, ethics for everyone except for artists, or what? Is animation (my industry, so maybe I care more than the average person) too juvenile and simplistic a medium for you to care about its extinction at the hands of CEOs endorsing AI? This might sound juvenile too, but I'm kinda devastated, because I genuinely thought you were cool. You're either with artists or against us imho, on an issue as large as this, when already the layoffs in the industry are insurmountable for many, despite ongoing attempts to unionize. That user called someone a fascist for pointing this out, too. I guess both of you feel that way about those of us involved in class action lawsuits against AI image generation software.

i can't speak for anyone else or the things they've said or think of anyone. that said:

1. you should not look up to people on the computer. i'm just a girl running a silly little blog.

2. i am an artist across multiple mediums. the 'no true scotsman' bit where 'artists' are people who agree with you and you can discount anyone disagrees with you as 'not an artist' and therefore fundamentally unsympathetic to artists will make it very difficult to actually engage in substantive discussion.

3. i've stated my positions on this many times but i'll do it one more: i support unionization and industrial action. i support working class artists extracting safeguards from their employers against their immiseration by the introduction of AI technology into the work flow (i just made a post about this funnily enough). i think it is Bad for studio execs or publishers or whoever to replace artists with LLMs. However,

4. this is not a unique feature of AI or a unique evil built into the technology. this is just the nature of any technological advance under capitalism, that it will be used to increase productivity, which will push people out of work and use the increased competition for jobs to leverage that precarity into lower wages and worse conditions. the solution to this is not to oppose all advances in technology forever--the solution is to change the economic system under which technologies are leveraged for profit instead of general wellbeing.

5. this all said anyone involved in a class action lawsuit over AI is an enemy of art and everything i value in the world, because these lawsuits are all founded in ridiculous copyright claims that, if legitimated in court, would be cataclysmic for all transformative art--a victory for any of these spurious boondoggles would set a precedent that the bar for '''infringement''' is met by a process that is orders of magnitude less derivative than collage, sampling, found art, cut-ups, and even simple homage and reference. whatever windmills they think they are going to defeat, these people are crusading for the biggest expansion of copyright regime since mickey mouse and anyone who cares at all about art and creativity flourishing should hope they fail.

[odoo2]

Odoo Integration Malaysia

Unlock the full potential of your business with Odoo - a powerful, flexible, and tailored ERP solution with us.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Gackt - Vanilla 1999

Gackt is a Japanese singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor. He has been active since 1993, first as the frontman of the short-lived independent band Cains:Feel, and in 1995-1998 the visual kei rockband Malice Mizer, before starting his solo career in 1999. He has released nine studio albums and, with forty-eight singles released, holds the male soloist record for most top ten consecutive singles in Japanese music history. Besides being established in the modern entertainment industry and a pop icon, Gackt's music has been used as theme songs for video games, video game films, anime series/films, and television series. In addition to his music career, Gackt has acted and voice acted, including characters inspired by him in video games like Bujingai and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. He also provided the voice samples for the Vocaloid software Gackpoid.

Gackt released his second single "Vanilla", from his first full-length studio album Mars (2000), on August 11, 1999. "Vanilla" is one of his most popular and commercially successful songs. It peaked at number four on the Oricon Singles Chart and charted for ten weeks. With 248,360 copies sold, it was the 89th best-selling single of the year, and it was certified Gold by RIAJ. The single was later re-released in 2002. It charted for six weeks, reaching number twelve. "Vanilla" is a favourite among fans, particularly because of a live performance from Gackt's Mars tour, which contained a large amount of fanservice with Masa, his guitarist at the time.

"Vanilla" received a total of 72,5% yes votes!

[everythingwaschocolateandsugar]

The Industrial Cloud Computing Market size was valued at USD 410.30 billion in 2021 and is predicted to reach USD 1,900.10 billion by 2030 with a CAGR of 16.2 % from 2022-2030.

[mitchipedia]

It's now legal to hack McFlurry machines and medical devices to fix them

Jason Koebler at 404 Media:

It is now legal to hack or otherwise bypass technical protection measures on McFlurry machines and other commercial food preparation machines in order to repair them thanks to a new rule issued by the Federal government.

Also, after a challenge, it remains “legal to circumvent manufacturer locks that prevent the repair of medical equipment.”

Bad copyright law combined with arbitrary software locks installed by manufacturers make it illegal for people to repair the devices they own, resulting in “both a huge number of McDonald’s ice cream machines and a large number of medical devices being broken at any given moment.” The beneficiaries of this bad law are the manufacturers of these devices, who have an unjustified monopoly on repairs.

This same monopoly, granted by Section 1201 of the the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is enjoyed by manufacturers of “everything from video game consoles to tractors to ventilators to ice cream machines, kitchen appliances, and trains.”

The US Copyright Office issued exemptions to the law.

But Kylie Wiens, CEO of iFixit, said the new ruls don’t go far enough. Industrial equipment is excluded and the rules do not legalize sale of tools that would bypass software locks.

“This exemption is helpful, but what we really need is Congress to solve this problem and truly legalize repair,” he said. 

[chengyouqing]

When it comes to PET Velcro Braided Sleeve, the first thing we think of is the shower nozzle, which is connected to a soft tube, and this tube is what we usually call PET Velcro Braided Sleeve. It is very important in our life. Has already occupied an important position, so what kind of physical properties does he have? Why do people just like it among so many types of materials? In fact, there are many reasons for this.

[headspace-hotel]

I went down the internet rabbit hole trying to figure out wtf vegan cheese is made of and I found articles like this one speaking praises of new food tech startups creating vegan alternatives to cheese that Actually work like cheese in cooking so I was like huh that's neat and I looked up more stuff about 'precision fermentation' and. This is not good.

Basically these new biotech companies are pressuring governments to let them build a ton of new factories and pushing for governments to pay for them or to provide tax breaks and subsidies, and the factories are gonna cost hundreds of millions of dollars and require energy sources. Like, these things will have to be expensive and HUGE

I feel like I've just uncovered the tip of the "lab grown meat" iceberg. There are a bajillion of these companies (the one mentioned in the first article a $750 MILLION tech startup) that are trying to create "animal-free" animal products using biotech and want to build large factories to do it on a large scale

I'm trying to use google to find out about the energy requirements of such facilities and everything is really vague and hand-wavey about it like this article that's like "weeeeeell electricity can be produced using renewables" but it does take a lot of electricity, sugars, and human labor. Most of the claims about its sustainability appear to assume that we switch over to renewable electricity sources and/or use processes that don't fully exist yet.

I finally tracked down the source of some of the more radical claims about precision fermentation, and it comes from a think tank RethinkX that released a report claiming that the livestock industry will collapse by 2030, and be replaced by a system they're calling...

Food-as-Software, in which individual molecules engineered by scientists are uploaded to databases – molecular cookbooks that food engineers anywhere in the world can use to design products in the same way that software developers design apps.

I'm finding it hard to be excited about this for some odd reason

Where's the evidence for lower environmental impacts. That's literally what we're here for.

There will be an increase in the amount of electricity used in the new food system as the production facilities that underpin it rely on electricity to operate.

well that doesn't sound good.

This will, however, be offset by reductions in energy use elsewhere along the value chain. For example, since modern meat and dairy products will be produced in a sterile environment where the risk of contamination by pathogens is low, the need for refrigeration in storage and retail will decrease significantly.

Oh, so it will be better for the Earth because...we won't need to refrigerate. ????????

Oh Lord Jesus give me some numerical values.

Modern foods will be about 10 times more efficient than a cow at converting feed into end products because a cow needs energy via feed to maintain and build its body over time. Less feed consumed means less land required to grow it, which means less water is used and less waste is produced. The savings are dramatic – more than 10-25 times less feedstock, 10 times less water, five times less energy and 100 times less land.

There is nothing else in this report that I can find that provides evidence for a lower carbon footprint. Supposedly, an egg white protein produced through a similar process has been found to reduce environmental impacts, but mostly everything seems very speculative.

And crucially none of these estimations are taking into account the enormous cost and resource investment of constructing large factories that use this technology in the first place (existing use is mostly for pharmaceutical purposes)

It seems like there are more tech startups attempting to use this technology to create food than individual scientific papers investigating whether it's a good idea. Seriously, Google Scholar and JSTOR have almost nothing. The tech of the sort that RethinkX is describing barely exists.

Apparently Liberation Labs is planning to build the first large-scale precision fermentation facility in Richmond, Indiana come 2024 because of the presence of "a workforce experienced in manufacturing"

And I just looked up Richmond, Indiana and apparently, as of RIGHT NOW, the town is in the aftermath of a huge fire at a plastics recycling plant and is full of toxic debris containing asbestos and the air is full of toxic VOCs and hydrogen cyanide. ???????????? So that's how having a robust industrial sector is working out for them so far.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cars bricked by bankrupt EV company will stay bricked

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

There are few phrases in the modern lexicon more accursed than "software-based car," and yet, this is how the failed EV maker Fisker billed its products, which retailed for $40-70k in the few short years before the company collapsed, shut down its servers, and degraded all those "software-based cars":

https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chapter-11-official/

Fisker billed itself as a "capital light" manufacturer, meaning that it didn't particularly make anything – rather, it "designed" cars that other companies built, allowing Fisker to focus on "experience," which is where the "software-based car" comes in. Virtually every subsystem in a Fisker car needs (or rather, needed) to periodically connect with its servers, either for regular operations or diagnostics and repair, creating frequent problems with brakes, airbags, shifting, battery management, locking and unlocking the doors:

https://www.businessinsider.com/fisker-owners-worry-about-vehicles-working-bankruptcy-2024-4

Since Fisker's bankruptcy, people with even minor problems with their Fisker EVs have found themselves owning expensive, inert lumps of conflict minerals and auto-loan debt; as one Fisker owner described it, "It's literally a lawn ornament right now":

https://www.businessinsider.com/fisker-owners-describe-chaos-to-keep-cars-running-after-bankruptcy-2024-7

This is, in many ways, typical Internet-of-Shit nonsense, but it's compounded by Fisker's capital light, all-outsource model, which led to extremely unreliable vehicles that have been plagued by recalls. The bankrupt company has proposed that vehicle owners should have to pay cash for these recalls, in order to reserve the company's capital for its creditors – a plan that is clearly illegal:

https://www.veritaglobal.net/fisker/document/2411390241007000000000005

This isn't even the first time Fisker has done this! Ten years ago, founder Henrik Fisker started another EV company called Fisker Automotive, which went bankrupt in 2014, leaving the company's "Karma" (no, really) long-range EVs (which were unreliable and prone to bursting into flames) in limbo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Karma

Which raises the question: why did investors reward Fisker's initial incompetence by piling in for a second attempt? I think the answer lies in the very factor that has made Fisker's failure so hard on its customers: the "software-based car." Investors love the sound of a "software-based car" because they understand that a gadget that is connected to the cloud is ripe for rent-extraction, because with software comes a bundle of "IP rights" that let the company control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

A "software-based car" gets to mobilize the state to enforce its "IP," which allows it to force its customers to use authorized mechanics (who can, in turn, be price-gouged for licensing and diagnostic tools). "IP" can be used to shut down manufacturers of third party parts. "IP" allows manufacturers to revoke features that came with your car and charge you a monthly subscription fee for them. All sorts of features can be sold as downloadable content, and clawed back when title to the car changes hands, so that the new owners have to buy them again. "Software based cars" are easier to repo, making them perfect for the subprime auto-lending industry. And of course, "software-based cars" can gather much more surveillance data on drivers, which can be sold to sleazy, unregulated data-brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Unsurprisingly, there's a large number of Fisker cars that never sold, which the bankruptcy estate is seeking a buyer for. For a minute there, it looked like they'd found one: American Lease, which was looking to acquire the deadstock Fiskers for use as leased fleet cars. But now that deal seems dead, because no one can figure out how to restart Fisker's servers, and these vehicles are bricks without server access:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/08/fisker-bankruptcy-hits-major-speed-bump-as-fleet-sale-is-now-in-question/

It's hard to say why the company's servers are so intransigent, but there's a clue in the chaotic way that the company wound down its affairs. The company's final days sound like a scene from the last days of the German Democratic Republic, with apparats from the failing state charging about in chaos, without any plans for keeping things running:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/07/east-germany-stasi-surveillance-documents/

As it imploded, Fisker cycled through a string of Chief Financial officers, losing track of millions of dollars at a time:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/31/fisker-collapse-investigation-ev-ocean-suv-henrik-geeta/

When Fisker's landlord regained possession of its HQ, they found "complete disarray," including improperly stored drums of toxic waste:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/05/fiskers-hq-abandoned-in-complete-disarray-with-apparent-hazardous-waste-clay-models-left-behind/

And while Fisker's implosion is particularly messy, the fact that it landed in bankruptcy is entirely unexceptional. Most businesses fail (eventually) and most startups fail (quickly). Despite this, businesses – even those in heavily regulated sectors like automotive regulation – are allowed to design products and undertake operations that are not designed to outlast the (likely short-lived) company.

After the 2008 crisis and the collapse of financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, finance regulators acquired a renewed interest in succession planning. Lehman consisted of over 6,000 separate corporate entities, each one representing a bid to evade regulation and/or taxation. Unwinding that complex hairball took years, during which the entities that entrusted Lehman with their funds – pensions, charitable institutions, etc – were unable to access their money.

To avoid repeats of this catastrophe, regulators began to insist that banks produce "living wills" – plans for unwinding their affairs in the event of catastrophe. They had to undertake "stress tests" that simulated a wind-down as planned, both to make sure the plan worked and to estimate how long it would take to execute. Then banks were required to set aside sufficient capital to keep the lights on while the plan ran on.

This regulation has been indifferently enforced. Banks spent the intervening years insisting that they are capable of prudently self-regulating without all this interference, something they continue to insist upon even after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

The fact that the rules haven't been enforced tells us nothing about whether the rules would work if they were enforced. A string of high-profile bankruptcies of companies who had no succession plans and whose collapse stands to materially harm large numbers of people tells us that something has to be done about this.

Take 23andme, the creepy genomics company that enticed millions of people into sending them their genetic material (even if you aren't a 23andme customer, they probably have most of your genome, thanks to relatives who sent in cheek-swabs). 23andme is now bankrupt, and its bankruptcy estate is shopping for a buyer who'd like to commercially exploit all that juicy genetic data, even if that is to the detriment of the people it came from. What's more, the bankruptcy estate is refusing to destroy samples from people who want to opt out of this future sale:

https://bourniquelaw.com/2024/10/09/data-23-and-me/

On a smaller scale, there's Juicebox, a company that makes EV chargers, who are exiting the North American market and shutting down their servers, killing the advanced functionality that customers paid extra for when they chose a Juicebox product:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/2/24260316/juicebox-ev-chargers-enel-x-way-closing-discontinued-app

I actually owned a Juicebox, which ultimately caught fire and melted down, either due to a manufacturing defect or to the criminal ineptitude of Treeium, the worst solar installers in Southern California (or both):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/27/here-comes-the-sun-king/#sign-here

Projects like Juice Rescue are trying to reverse-engineer the Juicebox server infrastructure and build an alternative:

https://juice-rescue.org/

This would be much simpler if Juicebox's manufacturer, Enel X Way, had been required to file a living will that explained how its customers would go on enjoying their property when and if the company discontinued support, exited the market, or went bankrupt.

That might be a big lift for every little tech startup (though it would be superior than trying to get justice after the company fails). But in regulated sectors like automotive manufacture or genomic analysis, a regulation that says, "Either design your products and services to fail safely, or escrow enough cash to keep the lights on for the duration of an orderly wind-down in the event that you shut down" would be perfectly reasonable. Companies could make "software based cars" but the more "software based" the car was, the more funds they'd have to escrow to transition their servers when they shut down (and the lest capital they'd have to build the car).

Such a rule should be in addition to more muscular rules simply banning the most abusive practices, like the Oregon state Right to Repair bill, which bans the "parts pairing" that makes repairing a Fisker car so onerous:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/27/24097042/right-to-repair-law-oregon-sb1596-parts-pairing-tina-kotek-signed

Or the Illinois state biometric privacy law, which strictly limits the use of the kind of genomic data that 23andme collected:

https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=3004

Failing to take action on these abusive practices is dangerous – and not just to the people who get burned by them. Every time a genomics research project turns into a privacy nightmare, that salts the earth for future medical research, making it much harder to conduct population-scale research, which can be carried out in privacy-preserving ways, and which pays huge scientific dividends that we all benefit from:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the-palantir-will-see-you-now/#public-private-partnership

Just as Fisker's outrageous ripoff will make life harder for good cleantech companies:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

If people are convinced that new, climate-friendly tech is a cesspool of grift and extraction, it will punish those firms that are making routine, breathtaking, exciting (and extremely vital) breakthroughs:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/10/08/norways-national-football-stadium-has-the-worlds-largest-vertical-solar-roof-how-does-it-w

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/10/software-based-car/#based

[metamatar]

everytime i post anti ip shit in the context of the moral panic around large language models and image generation people seem to accuse me of being a techbro who cares about ip restricting the technological progress of these models. no. i think large transformer models were interesting architecturally, but they have classic deep learning era weaknesses in terms of reliance on huge datasets which means a computation arms race, little reliability and limited explainability. i desperately wish the hype around them dies down so people stop asking me to use a transformer model in my hyperspecialised low data, high variance work. im waiting for a paradigm shift, and transformer models are not that. they have great results! but they're boring now.

i just think intellectual property rights are horrible for the world in general. authorial rights should be limited to attribution, not control over what everyone else does with it. the endpoint of giving everyone rights to control and restrict other people's engagement with ideas is a world that ceaselessly limits autonomy – it means poisoning our computers and software with DRM shit, it means the destruction of archives, it means nasty and pervasive surveillance and an industry of lawyers debating about the intellectual provenance of work instead of a world that actually engages with work.

[rboooks]

The Adoptive Son. Part 2

Dick tries his best to keep his smile as Danny Crowne fumbles with his laptop, attempting to show Dick all the fantastic features he programmed onto it.

Don't be wrong; he enjoys new software, and the stuff Crowne made was awe-inspiring. He just wished it wasn't being used for one of his most disgusting crimes.

Babs, who was recently super into coding, had been all but foaming at the mouth when she got access to the new writing application Crowne Industries put out.

Yes, she got access a bit earlier than most since she hacked into the system attempting to find evidence of criminal activity, but she had tested it out and wanted it for herself.

"This writing program has an automatic save option after a certain amount of time goes by." Crowne blushes a little, looking bashful when Dick sends him a winning smile. "I-ugh, I forget how often computers crash, taking with them hours of work, so hopefully, this will help tired college students. It even has a way to retrieve lost files, just in case something does get deleted."

"Wow, you made all this by yourself? That's so impressive." Dick purrs, allowing his hand to land on Crowne's knee. The other man jumps slightly, looking down at the hand like he's never seen one before. At least this mission was easy.

Crowne's had plenty of people flirt with him over the years of his adoption. Dick had watched him at galas, sidestepping any courtship attempts like a well-practiced waltz. He charmed so many would-be suitors simply by his prince-like mannerism, silver tongue, dripping good looks, and of course, very large wallet.

He had thought it meant that Crowne was experienced in this sort of thing. Imagine his surprise at the beginning of the mission; Crowne fumbled through his flirtations and seemed so awkward it was almost endearing.

Danny Crowne didn't make much sense to Dick in this way.

He quickly became one of Gotham's most eligible bachelors and one of the first openly bisexual ones. Despite his adoptive parents less than ideal views on the gay community, Crowne never hid that part of himself. Once he had taken over the company, he had even gotten charities set up to support the gay youths of Gothams. He practically funded the Pride Celebrations, even more than Bruce, which showed how he became the new head of Crowne Industries

In four short years, he had snatched the company from the jaws of bankruptcy and dragged it to the top again. Everything they made was so revolutionary, even Bruce had been tempted to ask Crowne to join him for the first two years.

Back then, Dick had thought Crowne was weird.

All the guy did was talk about tech, and when he wasn't, he was staring into space or attempting to get into different equipment so he could take it apart and figure it out.

Crowne had been invited to his birthday party a few months after his adoption. Dick had seen him arrive, but he vanished from the room not long after- at the time, he didn't blame the other. The rest of their classmates were snobbish and a pain to be around- he later found Crowne pulling out one of his light sockets to check the wiring in Bruce's house.

It may have been the cheap light he was using, but Dick swore he had seen the guy's eyes glowing while he muttered to himself in an unknown language.

The Crownes had been mortified, forcing Crowne to apologize profoundly for ripping Bruce's things. Bruce had to play his part of Brucie, so he had laughed it off, asking the boy why he had done it in the first place.

" I meant no offense. I apologize for allowing my curiosity to cross a line. I was only interested in how advanced your home is. I figured the Wayne's would indicate where the world's leading systems would be." Fourteen-year-old Danny Crowne had told Bruce with a sweet smile that was far too wide and eyes that were far too bright.

It creeped fourteen-year-old Dick out so much he actively avoided the adoptive son of the Crowne for the last four years.

Now he wishes he had paid a little more attention. Maybe then he would have caught on to Crowne selling street kids on the black market.

"It's nothing, really." Crowne laughs nervously, flushing read as Dick gently rubs his knee. He smirks inwardly as the other man fumbles. "I couldn't have done it without Tim so-"

"Tim?" That's a new name. Dick quickly pressed the recording device that Bruce had installed into his bracelet. He hated that he was working with his ex-mentor again, but this was too big of an issue to allow his hurt feelings to get in the way. There were so many kids at stake.

"Tim Drake. His parents are out of the country a lot, so I started babysitting him when he was eight. He's thirteen now, but I got temporary guardianship of him when I turned eighteen. He's my pride and joy. " Crowne clarifies with a growing smile. Dick wanted to punch his teeth in for acting so loving, so caring, so fucking kind when it came to children.

He swallows the urge with incredible difficulty. "He sounds great."

He did know Timothy Drake, actually. The boy was his neighbor for years but didn't stand out much. He always looked like a little doll at the galas, vanishing from sight once his parents' backs were turned.

Dick often thought the boy was out of the country with his parents, primarily when they enrolled him in homeschool when he turned eight.

To think the Drakes were working on making a good relationship with Crowne since he first showed up, and no one within the Bats noticed. It was a little troubling.

Were the Drakes involved with the trafficking ring? Were the world trips just a means to smother out poor victims? Were they using their son, or was Tim Drake part of the scheme?

More questions and not enough answers.

"Y-you could meet him if you want," Crowne coughs, playing with a specialized keyboard- it was so flat. Dick had never seen a slimmer design- his face was a lovely red hue. "I have him for this month, so he's back at my apartment with his babysitter."

Perfect an opening.

"Mr. Crowne, are you inviting me back to yours?" Dick asks, allowing his voice to turn husky with sinful promise.

Crowne face turns even redder. "I didn't mean to assume, but...ugh, are you hitting on me?"

Dick almost laughs.

"I am." He says even as he thinks If only you weren't a scum bag. You are not ever going to get this lucky, you disgusting pig.

"Thank the Ancients. I was worried I may have interpreted your intentions. I would be honored if you accompanied me home-but, not for sex! I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to sex at a later date-just dinner? I can cook." Crowne closes his eyes as if pained, and Dick wishes he was the person he was pretending to be.

Oh well.

They all have their own masks.

Dick just happens to be someone who was bestowed with a criminal. He slips it on as quickly as his NightWing one, throwing an arm over Crowne and placing a tracker on his neck. The bastard didn't even notice. Good.

"I would love that Crowne."

"Danny." The man says with a warm relieved smile. "You can call me Danny."

"Then you can call me Dick"

Dick will have this man rotting away in a jail cell soon. He swears it.

(Part 1) (part 3)

[mariacallous]

If you’ve rented an apartment in the US in the past several years, you may have had the sense that the game was rigged: Prices creep up not only at your building but at others throughout the city, seemingly in lockstep. A new civil lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice today alleges that in many cases it’s not just in your head—and that a single company’s algorithm is to blame.

That company is RealPage, a Texas-based firm that provides commercial revenue management software for landlords. In other words, it helps set the prices of apartments. But it does so, the DOJ alleges in its lawsuit, by effectively helping its clients cheat; landlords feed rental rate and lease terms into the system, and the RealPage algorithm in turn spits out a suggested price that enables coordination and hinders competition.

“By feeding sensitive data into a sophisticated algorithm powered by artificial intelligence, RealPage has found a modern way to violate a century-old law through systematic coordination of rental housing prices,” deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco said in a statement.

RealPage’s reach is broad. It controls 80 percent of the market for software of its kind, which in turn is used to set prices of around 3 million units across the country, according to the DOJ. It already faces multiple lawsuits, including one from the state of Arizona and another in Washington, DC, where RealPage software is allegedly used to price more than 90 percent of units in large apartment buildings. RealPage’s algorithmic pricing first gained broader attention when a 2022 ProPublica investigation detailed how the company’s YieldStar software works.

The DOJ civil lawsuit, which was joined by the attorneys general of eight states, is a significant escalation in legal action against the company. It’s also a first for the DOJ, according to officials speaking on background during a call to discuss the complaint. While the government had previously filed criminal charges against an Amazon seller for algorithm-enabled price-fixing, this is the first civil action in which the algorithm itself, the Justice Department official says, was effectively the means of the violation.

The complaint itself quotes RealPage executives allegedly acknowledging anticompetitive aspects of its product. “There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down,” one RealPage executive allegedly wrote.

RealPage has repeatedly denied any allegations of antitrust violations, going so far as to publish a six-page digital pamphlet that claims to tell “the Real Story” about its products, along with an extensive FAQ page on a dedicated public policy website. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Attacks on the industry’s revenue management are based on demonstrably false information,” one section of that site reads. “RealPage revenue management software benefits both housing providers and residents.”

“We are disappointed that, after multiple years of education and cooperation on the antitrust matters concerning RealPage, the DOJ has chosen this moment to pursue a lawsuit that seeks to scapegoat pro-competitive technology that has been used responsibly for years,” said Jennifer Bowcock, senior vice president of communications and creative at RealPage, in an emailed statement. “RealPage’s revenue management software is purposely built to be legally compliant, and we have a long history of working constructively with the DOJ to show that."

The DOJ disagrees. “Algorithms don’t exist in a law-free zone,” said Monaco in a press conference to discuss the case. “Training a machine to break the law is still breaking the law.”

In this case, the complaint alleges that those algorithms consistently drove rental prices upward. “RealPage’s software tends to maximize price increases, minimize price decreases, and maximize landlords’ pricing power,” said the DOJ in a press release. RealPage also doesn’t just recommend prices; in many cases, it actively sets them.

“RealPage actively polices landlords’ compliance with those recommendations,” said US attorney general Merrick Garland in today’s press conference. “A large number of landlords effectively agree to outsource their pricing decisions to RealPage by using an ‘auto-accept’ setting that effectively permits RealPage to determine the price a renter will pay.”

The DOJ also claims RealPage has created a “self-reinforcing feedback loop” with its data intake and pricing recommendations structure that also gives it an alleged monopoly in the apartment revenue management software industry. Any competitor who plays by the rules, the DOJ claims, is at a distinct disadvantage.

The Justice Department has spent the past several years staffing up with technologists and data scientists, better enabling them to “interrogate the code,” as multiple officials described the investigative process. While this is the first major algorithmic collusion case, DOJ officials suggested it would be far from the last.

[ballcrusher74]

I was gonna do a separate page for these guys, showcasing more design aspects of them but I genuinely don't feel like doing it now so erm

Introducing Incognito, Browser History, and User !

An undercover agent who likes to get his dirty work done, the unfortunate assistant who's the backbone of all operations, and the authoritative leader of it all.

( Also alt palettes aka "Light mode" )

More below is information stuff about them + their current storyline / world I'm working on vvv

Currently some stuff is not set in stone and subject to change, if I don't forget I'll update this post with any changes, but I have given it the name Code Breach !

Code Breach resides within The Motherboard, a VERY large cybernetic city with split districts that represent various parts of a computer. ( Example : Coolant district is a snowy, industrial part with not many people wandering it due to it's temperature, and large windmills that produce energy for the whole city ) The citizens of Code Breach typically consist of software, apps, and internet / PC features. They live about their own lives on the day to day basis, but there seems to be trouble on the rise. Criminals ( Viruses / PC worms ) have infested the peaceful streets of The Motherboard, and a secret agency / justice department have come out of the woodworks to put an end to the terror.

As with that out of the way, small fun facts about these guys !

All of these guys are REALLY old ocs, I decided to completely repurpose them as of recent and actually make them interesting lol

Incognito stands at 6' 7, History at 5' 9, and User at 6' 10

Incognito is 37, History is 26, and User is 48

As said on the images above, User is the father to History ( Incognito is not related to them in anyway and only met them when he signed up to Chromatic INC. )

The watch on Incognito is actually a disguise watch. With whomever he scans, he is able to transform into them in the blink of an eye ( Think of it as Spy's cloak watch cus that's literally what it is lol )

Incognito is a very quiet and gruff guy, History is a train wreck but managing to get by, and User acts really robotic in movement and speech

Incognito's voice claim, History's voice claim, and User's voice claim

and that's all i got rn lol

[aurahack]

If this goes through, which there seems to be no reason to think it won't, I will wipe this blog and any other blog I operate on here because frankly the traffic definitely doesn't justify having my data scraped with or without watermarks. I would simply just not exist on here if that's my option.

You can find me on Cohost, and if you aren't there already I encourage you to sign up there. It's a lot like Tumblr if Tumblr was made by people who despise capitalism and the software industry at large.

Art Account (@ aurahack)

Talk Account (@ erica)

I'm of course also on Patreon and any other place you might be on, which you can find on my website.

[sirfrogsworth]

There is an aspect to Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, and Weta that I don't think a lot of people know about. They sell their software and technology and training and workflows. Pixar movies started out largely as R&D and tech demos to help them sell software and services. Toy Story was a giant advertisement for their RenderMan software that ended up being a beloved box office success as well.

Creating The Mandalorian on The Volume was not just because it was the best technology to bring the show to life. It was also to sell The Volume to other productions. If you watch the "behind the scenes" all they talked about were those LED video walls.

They were selling something.

So, why did they do a de-aged Luke?

It's low stakes R&D in which they get paid to develop this technology. And once they get it perfected, they can sell this service or the technology behind it to others. I think Indiana Jones was ILM nearly perfecting it and the next time it is used they will pretty much have it nailed.

Perhaps this wasn't the best artistic use or implementation. But it was a stepping stone. And I think a lot of movie studios would find value in being able to cast an actor and make them any age while still maintaining the core performance.

I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing. I think it will depend on how it is done. But if you are curious as to the why, the answer is mostly technological development and money.

[lotusloveslotus]

here are my favorite video essays on games, in no particular order. these are not """analysis""" videos that recap the plot alongside development facts, nor entertainment journalism, nor reviews. these are videos which treat the medium of games as an art form worthy of both casual and academic criticism, sincerely examine narratives, and often acknowledge the real world politics which influence game development and developmental decisions

"In Search of Undersea Wildness in My Octopus Teacher, Abzu, and In Other Waters" and "What Is the Games Industry Missing?" by Pixel A Day. Kat at Pixel A Day is one of the sharpest in this field and these two videos show exactly why, in two very different ways. The former obsesses over both the beauty of oceans and humanity's tendency towards anthropomorphism, while the latter digs personally into the ugliness of both the games and games media industries.

"'Everything is Political' | Institutional Racism in Life is Strange 2" by Game Assist. Game Assist is one of few channels to delve so unflinchingly into intensely politic themes in games, as the title more than implies. From essays on ableism, misogyny, and racism in the Life is Strange series to de/colonization in Assassin's Creed III, they meet games where they are and examine their narratives earnestly while still acknowledging their shortcomings.

"The Most Abused Term in Videogame Criticism" by SolePorpoise. A very interesting exploration of the original "ludonarrative dissonance" essay.

"Prey - A Critique of the Mind Game" by Joseph Anderson. Joseph Anderson is one of the better known game critics, mostly owing to his extraordinarily popular series of videos on From Software's games and his propensity to have opinions. I don't always agree with him, but I find his critiques to be interesting explorations of games which are well-written and with good intent. He often has the effect of making me want to play a game (again) after watching his critiques — even the overwhelmingly negative ones.

"Phyrexia is Hell | A 30-Year History of Magic's Most Sinister Villains" by Rhystic Studies. Covers the design and evolution in design of the cultish and body horrific Phyrexians, some of Magic: The Gathering's most important villains. Rhystic Studies makes some excellent videos on Magic, largely focused on art, and this is my favorite of his.

"Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft" and "Minecraft, Sandboxes, and Colonialism" by Folding Ideas. Another big hitter, Folding Ideas' videos on World of Warcraft and Minecraft are two of the better and more academically-minded video essays on games ever made.

"Why I haven't played Hades ⚱" by LambHoot. Probably the most personal essay on here, this one is about the complicated feelings a game like Hades stirs in its Greek Canadian host. This goes largely into contemporary Greek culture and identity and some of Hades' shortcomings regarding it.

"The Problem with Greek Myth Retellings" and "The Endless Reinvention of Greek Mythology" by Kate Alexandra. While not technically about video games, Greek myth's constant presence in games (as seen above) makes them pertinent. A fascinating look at Greek myth retellings/inspiration from someone with clearly deep knowledge and passion for the subject.

"Animal Crossing and the Ideology of Chill" by Yaz Minsky. An examination of what our view of relaxation reveals about our cultures via Animal Crossing: New Horizons. A great expansion on "Minecraft, Sandboxes, and Colonialism."

"The Indigenous Other in Endnight Games' The Forest" by Murley Media. Another more academic essay, this harsh look at The Forest and its racist tropes of Indigenous "savages" is as well-researched as it is cutting.