Except the U.S. is not a party to the ICC and therefore not subject to its jurisdiction. It should be, but it’s not. This is bullshit fear-mongering over something that literally cannot happen, in order to distract people from the thing that will and should be happening.
This is how we ended up with Q and anti-vaxxers.
It also has a 1v1 mode (player vs computer or PvP) that is just fantastic. I actually spent most of my time playing the 1v1 mode way back in the day.
I’d probably be the person in my group being very skeptical of the gift economy idea. Functional gift economies are exceptionally complex. The ones that aren’t very quickly switch to representational value exchange (aka money), because they can, because that’s exponentially easier. A realistic gift economy wouldn’t just be “doing favors.” It involves a whole web of social conditions, obligations and organizations that, frankly, would take the most galaxy brained DM to implement effectively.
If I’m not mistaken, a “militia” was understood to be an ad hoc, non-standing armed group, supplied by the resources of its members. The amendment was added so that if a militia were ever needed (again), it could be formed, because the pool of potential militia members had their own firearms. Laws limiting citizen access to firearms would hobble any new militia.
Given that armies at the time were only recently becoming “standing” (permanent) armies, and the U.S. didn’t really have one, their best option for making war was militias. They were acutely aware that the revolution began that way, and only later developed an actual (organized, separately supplied, long-term) army.
But very quickly, the U.S. developed permanent armed forces and never had to rely on militias again. At that point the 2nd amendment really should have been obsolete.
Or free Black people.
They weren’t quite the sharpest tacks in the box.
It doesn’t help that the sentence makes no sense. The second clause requires that the first be the subject of the sentence, but then the third clause starts with a new subject, and lastly there’s that weird “German” comma after “Arms.”
There’s more than one way to interpret the meaning, but strictly speaking the only syntactically accurate rendering comes out roughly as:
[The right to] a well regulated Militia shall not be infringed, as it’s necessary to the security of a free State (security meaning the right of the people to keep and bear arms).
…which is also meaningless.
It’s a stupid amendment for lots of reasons, but the big one is that it’s just shitty English.
Wow, right up front, they’re being disingenuous:
“The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear.”
…No? Apple won’t bear that burden because they’re going to keep using WebKit. Firefox can keep using WebKit. Not using WebKit is a choice, with pros and cons.
I’ve been an Apple fanboy for years, too, and I still am. The alternatives aren’t exactly better. And anyone who is surprised that Apple is dragging its heels and trying to do the bare minimum to comply, well, get back to me when you’re no longer twelve. Companies aren’t your friends, even when they look like they are. Hell, Google’s sudden about-face regarding Right to Repair is 100% intended to fuck over Apple. It’s not about the consumer, it’s about the money. Always, with every company, every time.
Developers want alternate app stores because they want to make/keep more money. There’s no other reason. Every other reason given just comes back to more money. Is that a more valid argument simply because they’re smaller?
I’m in favor of Apple opening up iOS to alternate stores. I think it’s going to be a privacy and security nightmare, but the horse is pretty much already out of the barn and the barn is burning, so… whatever. But I’m not so naive to think Apple’s going to fully embrace the ideal concept of alternate stores unless somehow it’s a way to beat Google’s or Samsung’s face in, and take their money.
This deal solves the problem you’re encountering, because it allows game companies to use real voices to generate dialogue. It will sound a hell of a lot better than the 100% AI generated voices you dislike.
And it will protect voice actors’ jobs because the deal effectively requires new contracts for each use out of scope of the previous contract (i.e., the “opt out” language), and it encourages game companies to continue to rely on voice actors rather than switch to 100% AI generated.
Without this deal, game devs will just go 100% AI (and the tech will improve dramatically), and within a year or two, game voice actors will have no jobs to contract.
This is especially important in light of the trend toward dynamically generated dialogue in RPGs, etc. Without allowing an AI to train on real voice actors, dynamically generated dialogue will have to be 100% AI generated (no human voice involvement).
Voice acting in all fields is already a diminishing market because of AI generated voices. One of my coworkers had to get a job where I work because his VA jobs basically dried up. This agreement stanches the bleeding by permitting the use of AI trained on VAs (but only allowing use on a per-contract basis). Without that permission, AI would just be trained on open source / freely available voice samples, and there would be no contracts, and VAs would just … not exist anymore.
If Kbin defederates from Threads, I’ll just leave Kbin, and stay with Threads. Defederating over vibes is not how the fediverse is supposed to operate. And for everyone advocating for this dumb idea, I’m just using this thread as a honey pot.
It’s fish and children, isn’t it?
Welcome back to the 1980s!
Bots aren’t a “problem” for Twitter unless the advertisers think there are more of them than there are real users. But if you can convince advertisers that you’re reducing bots, while also not actually reducing bots, you’ve got a winning formula. Bots are reliable posters, they contribute a lot more than a regular user, and they make high-engagement tweets/posts/tweex that end up getting a lot of views, aka advertising opportunities.
In other words the idea might have the opposite effect - keeping potential new human users out, but allowing the bots in
The galaxy brain shit here is that I suspect the bot problem actually doesn’t concern Musk in the way he claims. If he can make it seem like there are fewer bots (because of these policies) while at the same time not actually getting rid of them, the engagement level stays up and the advertisers are happy in their ignorance. Bots are better users: they’re not fickle, they don’t go to sleep, they can be reliably expected to be posting more regularly than normal users. The trick for Musk is convincing everyone they’re gone.
@JohnnyCanuck is right in a bunch of important ways, but there is one additional factor to consider. The reason the Hollywood guild system works the way it does is because no one is contracted to any given studio. It used to be that actors and writers were required to have locked-in contracts - they couldn’t work for anyone else - but that hasn’t been true for a long time. (There are exceptions: writers and actors can choose to have multi-picture/script deals, in exchange for an up front wad of cash, but it’s not the norm outside of the really heavy hitters.)
A standard union protects a worker’s existing job, and helps that worker negotiate terms for an existing job.
A Hollywood guild protects a worker’s future jobs - because the one they have now will absolutely not be the one they have in 2 years, a year, maybe even in 6 months. This is the nature of the Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA): it dictates minimum terms of employment. It’s not designed to give writers/actors the best deal, it’s designed to give them the least shitty deal the studios will agree to.
Why does this matter?
It matters because what most people think of as “Hollywood” is all the extremely pretty, extremely powerful, extremely prolific actors and writers who make lots of money and show up on magazine covers and in media podcasts. (No writer is showing up on a magazine, I don’t care how pretty he is.) But the MBA is there for the day players, the low rung people, the staff writers, the gal who had one spec script produced in her career so far.
What the WGA managed to achieve recently with its negotiations is an absolutely phenomenal success. But it still only really impacts the MBA - the minimum basic agreement!
So… uh… why does this fucking matter?
The game industry doesn’t really have superstars. It doesn’t have the equivalent of Tom Cruise and John August. At least not at scale. And the ones who are that shiny are usually studio heads or creative directors, not “employees.” So they wouldn’t be covered by a union anyway (which cannot apply to managers - i.e. anyone who has authority over other workers).
Suggesting that the game industry adopt the Hollywood guild model is to suggest forcing a pear into a box shaped like an apple. The MBA protects low level employees in their future employment, and isn’t really all that great - at least not the way most non-insiders think. It still results in a ridiculous number of workers making poverty wages.
Is that what you want a game voice actor to have? A minimum basic agreement for their future employment? A programmer? A graphic designer?
No. You want them to be in a union.[1] Which will protect their current jobs and create conditions for advancement, sufficient income at the lowest tiers and long term stability. None of which the Hollywood guilds really do.
[1] The distinction between a union and a guild isn’t a “real” one in modern U.S. law, strictly speaking. But conceptually, as above, a union is for people in regular employment with a single employer, and a guild is for (effectively) contract workers. The terminology of “guild” came from the older, pre-industrial idea of “the X workers guild” (masonry, carpentry, bricklaying, etc.), which were really just social organizations that sorta kinda acquired enough power to flex their muscles against the people who were contracting them by having minimum demands in solidarity within the guild (does that sound familiar…?). Guilds eventually “became” unions in the modern sense, once people were working with single employers over a long term. Put simply (and a bit stupidly), unions make contracts between workers and companies; guilds make contracts between workers and their industry. Part of the reason gig workers (Uber/Lyft/etc.) in California have been more active about getting better terms is because that state is super familiar with how guilds work, which is exactly what gig workers need, since their employment is with the industry as a whole (they can work for more than one company), not so much with a specific company. (It’s also why they’re having a much harder time - because California employers are super familiar with all the shenanigans Hollywood studios use to suppress the guilds that feed into them.)
Yes but also no. The U.S. isn’t a party to the ICC. It’s not under ICC jurisdiction regardless of the ASMPA. The function of the ASMPA is mostly to serve as political theater.
The U.S. should be a party to the ICC, but it’s not and it likely never will be.