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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 23rd, 2023

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  • I worked at Starbucks back in like 04-06 or something like that and it was a great job for what it was at the time. The pace was reasonable, the hours were genuinely flexible, the pay was decent, and the benefits were actual. I was in the highest volume store in the metro area I was living in and I loved working there. It was busy, but the line kept it reasonable, we’d mark drinks ahead of time on cups, and half the time by the time people got to the counter we’d have their drink ready.

    After unemployment ran out from COVID I went back for about a year, and it was a completely different beast. Where one line used to create a bottleneck at the register and allow us plenty of time to mark and make drinks, we now had to deal with the drive-thru and mobile ordering all at the same time, which shifts the bottle neck to drink preparation by a wide margin. Working at Starbucks now is essentially standing in the middle of the narrow point of a labor funnel. They’ve also added a lot more tasks and spread them out all over the place, so the footwork is way more than it used to be. Floor mat coverage also tends to be insufficient because of this, and there isn’t really time to slow down to a reasonable pace. Doesn’t help when you’re scheduled until 15 minutes before the hour in order to avoid having to give you another break.

    Pay is basically what it was the last time I worked there plus a couple of dollars. Benefits and stock options are still left dangling as bait, but management seems to try to ensure that as few employees as possible actually get enough hours to qualify. Where previously corporate, in my experience anyway, supported positive managers who had their crews backs, they now seem to love slimy corporate boot-lickers who will rake back every bit of benefit and extract as much labor as possible.

    With the drive-thru model it’s hardly surprising to see it getting worse, but it is disappointing. What was once a boon to the working class has become just another exploitative company. Not only that, but an exploitative company that’s taken their market share and has moved on to cost cutting and labor squeezing. Replacing nice little local cafes first with a polished corporate cafe and slowly turning it into an expensive McDonald’s.

    I do hope the nice little cafes see the opportunity to capitalize on selling a better product and treating their employees better and take back a bit of that market share.




  • The thing is, this could change at any time. The problem with enshittification is that it spreads. A company that’s doing great work today could be bought out by corporate profiteers and leeched of its actual value at any point in the future. We’ve had plenty of companies that started out with a vision and a set of strong principles who’ve been reduced to predatory business practices that are bad for everyone. You can’t assume that because a company seems to have integrity now, that integrity will remain.

    Remember Elon Musk 15 years ago? Wasn’t quite the same, was it?

    To me, sitting in a position of getting started in game development, that makes me want to sink my time and effort into an engine that I know can’t be enshittified because it can’t be bought out. I want to know that in a few years I’m not going to completely scrub every asset and mechanic that I make for the engine because somebody’s pulled some Darth Vader shit.





  • Literally every seeder is part of that archive. You can look at individual trackers in the microcosm as individual archives and indices, but it’s the culture of piracy that causes the wide scale collection and preservation of media.

    We’re actually at this kind of interesting cross-generational point of guerilla archival where it’s become easier to find certain obscure pieces of media history. I suspect this is in large part due to things like bounties, where suddenly a forgotten VHS of a 35 year old HBO special that aired once or twice could be a step toward a higher rank and greater access to a wider range of media.

    Modern piracy has a strong incentive toward finding lost material that’s no longer readily available. Zero day content is great, but have you seen the RADAR pilot or both seasons of AfterMASH?

    They belong in a museum. Indie would be proud, even if Harrison wouldn’t. Not that I know his perspective on piracy.


  • I think in general people would have an easier time interacting with the system and just existing in proximity to it if the stakes weren’t so artificially raised.

    Honestly, I’d argue that raising the stakes via the penal system as well as through things like corporate culture and work ethic have more to do with many of our problems than anything else. We’d probably be a lot better off if we took the time to try to teach people patience by not demanding constant impossible perfection and by giving them the room to exist.

    So many people get so stressed about literally nothing. I’ll pick people up driving my cab and they’ll literally apologize for needing to be picked up or apologize for paying with cash or a card or a thousand other things. I spend more time reassuring people that everything is fine and it’s completely acceptable for them to call a taxi than nearly any other endlessly repeated interaction.

    It’s not a big deal. We’re all going to die. Just take a second and let yourself enjoy your life instead of subjugating yourself to assholes and apologizing for it. Part of that is minding your own damn business and not locking people up for dumb shit.





  • millie@lemmy.filmtoTechnology@lemmy.worldUnity apologises.
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    1 year ago

    The real question is whether or not people will continue to use Unity. Apologies mean less than nothing in a case like this regardless of whether or not they’re sincere. This is a company that’s shown their cards. Why give them business when you can go elsewhere?

    Personally, this has made me start looking more into Godot. I’ve got a project I’m going to be working on that I was going to do in Unreal, but this Unity stuff has made me skeptical of tying my creative output to any one company that can’t be easily replaced. Getting that wrapped up with a proprietary platform that comes with licensing that might change just seems like a bad idea now. Maybe Unreal is okay today, but what about down the road? Why start building into a system that there’s no guarantee won’t enshittify a few years down the road?

    I’d like to get my major mechanical stuff squared away and develop a visual style and then tell more stories without reinventing the wheel every time. Once I’ve got my assets built on top of an engine, I’d rather add to it over time than arbitrarily scrap it every few years. Updating and refactoring is all well and good, but I’m not in it to code the same system over and over.

    That makes Godot look pretty appealing, and any closed source corporate offering look pretty shady.


  • Why does the use of AI to modify art require justification?

    We seem to have this general culture of people who don’t make things coming after those who do. Every decision of design, methodology, or artistic preference treated as though the creator has an obligation to please every single person who posts their opinions on the internet.

    The reality is that this simply isn’t true. Art that spends all its energy fretting about whether people will like it ends up being some bland bullshit produced by committee. Art that allows itself to be what it is doesn’t need opinions and suggestions to flourish.

    If the author of that article were remotely interested in their process or what the actual practical implications of using AI on a project are, they could have had something worth reading.

    Instead they went into the interview looking to push a position and badgering without listening rather than making even a passing attempt at something resembling journalism. Because ultimately they don’t care about AI, or art, or games; they care about rage clicks.


  • They can be binding in the sense that they can govern the licensing or potentially ownership of submitted assets. So like, for example, a ToS could have a bunch of clauses that carry no legal obligation for you, but could also include a clause that grants the company licensing to use your likeness or things submitted to the server or interaction with it. The same way any ToS can license the use of your metadata for sale to 3rd parties.

    That doesn’t have any particular legally binding requirements of you, but it can serve as a shield in the event of a lawsuit if, say, Facebook uses your profile photo in some advertising materials.

    It can also be useful if you’re running a small project like an independent game server. Even if there’s literally no money in it, it can be helpful to clarify who owns what in the event of something like a false DMCA. If a developer who once was doing work with you suddenly decides to take their ball and go home, some sort of agreement that outlines your ownership or usage rights surrounding code submitted to your mod can protect you when they turn around and send Steam a DMCA.

    But yeah, nobody’s going to get sued for using a service in a way that the ToS prohibits unless it’s already illegal, like theft.


  • Artists aren’t lawyers and don’t want to be. Except for the ones that are. But that isn’t most of us.

    Artists make art. If you want to look for the people who like to make policy, look to the jackasses in suits who sit around having meetings about meetings all day to justify scalping the work made by actual artists. The same kinds of people who fund stories like this blatantly uninformed hit piece.

    Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

    At some point the line will have to be discovered, because the use of AI for art isn’t going away. Suits can whine about it all they want. Art doesn’t really care.