ntSean

Typically game/media studios run on contractors because of this. You'll be hired for maybe 3-6 months on a repeating contract, so that you can be let go at a moments notice.

For businesses the labour entry point is crowded, wages therefore are low. We find it more common to hire students and pay minimally, use exposure as the negotiating tool.

I know multiple publishers who advocate for that model; outsourcing, not so much. Unless they have a trusted partner, but at that point, they're essentially acting as an arm of the publisher.

15 years here of game development. Hoping to add some nuance to your viewpoint.

1. Yes. Every studio is optimizing for a different set of problems.

2. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel. There is a lot of value to the consumer in good engineering, and value to the designers. Adding content isn’t free.

3. The median “developer” is good at what they do and will meet the technical proficiency needed. If you’re a writer, or a 3D artist, I’m not going to expect you to be coding - but they all use Version Control, are in Engine, and are familiar with tooling.

4. AAA relies on content to reduce risk, but it is an active conversation on gameplay innovation. It’s hard to take a risk when you are on the hook for repaying millions of dollars to investors.

5. Nintendo sell hardware based on their “exclusives”. Sony know this and invest heavily, they are no longer supporting PC releases (see: GoW).

6. If this was true, every team would be a startup flipping assets. This isn’t the case, not just because new studios don’t have pipelines or internal/external infrastructure.

The business of games is in part the game product. But it’s much more than this- it’s relationships with vendors, platforms, other studios too.

As someone in the industry, I have not seen this across studios.

If you farm out art, you end up with a confused set of props / designs. If you farm out code, you end up with a mess of different assumptions and patterns.

If you’re designing and considering everything, then you’re essentially running a studio but now remotely from another country.

https://odowd.co

This is not true. Its users suspected to be underage which will be asked.

Additionally, the law makes no judgement on the technology used to identify age, just that social media companies need to make an effort. I suspect that companies will not want to deal with the data security issues (very illegal to share pictures of underage people without consent), and will not be "sharing" with 3rd parties.

Each company was required to put a statement to the eSafety commission explaining why they should be exempt from the law, even GitHub. The eSafety commission also have an open monitoring period where they'll repeal the law if it isn't working as intended, and will release research.

I don't think it's just corruption, there are people who are trying to do the right thing, even if flawed.

I feel as though the whole story isn't here, as there's one key detail that seems suspect from Wise's email: "Additionally, the reason behind our decision is because your activities exceed our risk tolerance."

It seems as though Wise had noticed payment patterns that seemed outside of what Wise is comfortable facilitating. I hope the author can get their funds, but this behaviour is consistent with all banking services.

EVs have an initial higher carbon footprint after production than ICE vehicles due to their battery.

However, the initial CO2 footprint is dwarfed when compared to the operational footprint of ICE vehicles. Takes a few years for the scale to tip in EVs favour, to which then there's a substantial difference.

BNEF studied the US, Chinese, Germany, UK and Japanese markets. It determined the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a medium-size BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.

Kurzgesagt mentions that their explanation is an over simplification; generally they are well researched and cite sources.

The video discussed is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPrjP4A_X4s

I enjoy your perspective on this topic!

That does sound ridiculous. They have market dominance because of the value that they offer. IBM is a great example of a company falling from grace; it happens all the time and can happen to Apple.

Rent-seeking is a seperate issue, but no different to the Industrial Age and how Railway providers would do the same. We have inadequate governance.

Great news for the Australian Government. Independents are representing more of the composition and will enable Labor to push harder on an ICAC and Climate Change.

For example, Labor's NBN original proposal would have been great. However, after the Liberal party gained power, Fibre NBN was reduced to a Mixed Technology Model where Fibre and 40 year old copper lines would be used in conjunction. Completely shortsighted and has been plagued with issues.

There's speculation that Rupert Murdoch campaigned to kill Fibre internet so that Netflix and platforms couldn't eat into his services such as Foxtel. Decisions like this have become completely normalised. Business moguls (or "mates") are constantly put before good policy.

Now, Australia has recorded its worst ever score on a key measure of corruption after a long-term decline equal to that of authoritarian Hungary.

This new government is a welcomed change!

Used Git with Unity for over 10 years. What problems have you run into?

LFS is of course a must. No one should be diffing audio files via text haha!

The Unity Editor is moving towards being the container for extensible packages. There is source code provided for rendering pipelines, input handling, UI, and code compiling. This is a lot better than the Unity 4 days where everything would be bundled into the monolith.

But, Unity is not an IDE and neither is Unreal.

Unity has changed their tact with features. Dogfooding with Animation, Game Development, VR/AR. You name it, they have an open source project to start from: https://github.com/UnityTechnologies/open-project-1

New features include source access through Github, have QA testing statuses (Preview vs Verified), and have automated upgrade paths. I recently went from Unity 2019->2022 and it was seamless. Source code access is ubiquitous too.

This is all very different from the Unity 4 days where a patch version would break your project!

The downsides are that the Editor is mostly single-threaded, so in large multi-year projects, iteration time and navigation can be difficult. Unity have a “task-force” that are working to resolve these issues, but their communication is really lacking.

Unreal devs by comparison are much easier to get ahold of and have more open roadmaps. I’m hoping that Unity moves in this direction, but they’ve been burnt by this before: promising features in timelines that weren’t feasible (i.e nested prefabs)

Studios already reuse a lot of assets to cut production costs. No use remaking the same rock so it can be sentimentally "unique".

"Dall-E 2, show me Keanu Reeves emoting towards a celestial pigeon" is far fetched enough that an AI will fall over by itself. The technology is very exciting, but I see this akin to a bicycle - not an unmanned vehicle

For consumers: YouTube is essentially infinite in scope, and allows you to follow your interests.

For creators: Marketing is as important as ever

7 year vegetarian. Recently found out I’m low on iron. Probably because I don’t eat fortified cereals. As a male, I’ve been told not to worry about my Iron intake- but that’s bad advice.

Best is not to generalise and instead get a blood test to check vitamin levels. Talk to your GP.

I did a lot of stationary exercises using my own body weight to keep up my level of fitness. Nintendo's Ring Fit, Apple's Fitness+, even YouTube, there are so many avenues to explore.

The other commenters are right in saying that there are excuses, and you seem to be full of them.

I have both a 13 Pro and an X. They have changed the computation performed, but I hesitate to say it's worst- just different. Halide has become my app of choice for when I want more control over that factor.

The Apple thread you linked highlights how small changes can really make a large difference on quality.

This is a very dumb check, but I had a screen protector that was the full screen into the camera module and made my pictures blurry at times. When I removed it, photos were perfect.

They definitely optimise for user engagement. At first words, then sentences, then passages and short stories.

This pathway has been effective for me, I've been doing Duo for a few months now! Which leaves me lost in your premise of "true comprehension"?

But maybe that would mean this conversion is about semantics rather than us having a "true conversation"

Ironically I don’t understand why my critique must be framed in an extreme context to be valid!

Must have been because I read this comment from my mobile device. Time to get the printer going ;)

This has a fundamentally faulty premise that smartphones and paper are equals in delivering reading material, or that their format is preferable.

Learning platforms such as Duolingo, Brilliant, or Khan Academy very infrequently give you a wall of text to parse. This suggests, that it isn’t a necessity or preferable for comprehension.

So to me, this feels silly. As if someone is complaining that a bike hurts your ability to leisurely move at a walking pace through a park.

Why was there an expectation that it would be more ideal?

Use tools are that are appropriate for the context.

For long form text, use a context that allows you to consume slowly, whether than be an e-book or hard copy.

Am I supposed to practice driver minimalism to prevent a slew of tray icons from occupying my screen?

It is poor design by having that be the form of which quick access to settings is provided. The tray icon paradigm simply invites clutter.

I think we agree in parts - my point being in the Gig economy? Contracting? You are not guaranteed retirement. If you work hard to become the best Uber driver, you are not simultaneously campaigning to be rewarded a 401(k). It is important to know your class, and where you need to be in the future in order to have a retirement.

It means always working, regardless of circumstance.

This might not seem like a problem while you're young and healthy, but as you age and enter the cohort of those who would like to retire, you start to be on the receiving end of discrimination, health issues and less work opportunities.

Hence why in many countries, there are mandatory retirement investments (in Australia we call it Superannuation). This catapults many workers (and would-be retirees) into the investor class. But, this is not a guarantee for all, and requires forethought.

There is no single logical justification to say it is not robbery

It is the cost to you living in society; a society which provides infrastructure such as roads, education, sanitation, and food. A society which provides customers and a marketplace to trade in.

The roller coaster of watching you add and edit this comment was truly an experience. Have a great day.

Your experiment speaks to how we interpret transgressions, and for that, it is true- taxes are seen as robbery.

Does your nephew now own the sand he used to build that castle? I would hope not, as I think we’d agree, many kids would suffer!

And likewise, many people believe so strongly in their ownership of money, that they don’t mind if others suffer.

I suppose if I were to suggest a 70% tax - you might think that too would bordering on a Soviet policy?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/high-income-earners-tax-ra...

Taxes are so nominal, that the haircut is almost non-existent. Beyond theory, I’m very well aware as my close friend inherited a property portfolio, and is now set for life.

Unfortunately, most are not as lucky, and therefore we should not rely on the inheritance lottery to act as our social security.

If you’re working for someone else, the term for what you’re participating in is “hope labor”. If you’re okay with that structure, then I hope you’re okay with always being a proletariat.

If you’re talking about working for yourself, you can be sure hard work is involved, but it is unlikely to economically enrich you.

But, in the rare case you become rich from hard work; I’m glad the fiction for many became your reality!

Thanks for sticking to it!

My mum is a nurse and so I’ve heard a lot of stories of this being common - as if being physically abused is a part of the job.