Sam
@acertainsam.bsky.social
craveable and creative. varied, on-trend and artisanal. hand-pressed, sog-resistant. now in a more snackable format. ph.d. political science, for what it's worth.
I’m really fascinated by the failure of ai video in China. Over two hundred thousand ai generated vertical dramas were lunched and 99% of them lost money. That’s incredible. It’s so bad the government is now looking at ways to incentivize more human-made dramas note.com/eichan_sh/n/...
The Reasons Behind the Collapse of the Chinese AI Short Drama Bubble｜上海在住のえいちゃん
News that "approximately 220,000 AI short dramas were produced in China in the first half of the year, yet 98.7% failed to recover their production costs" has been garnering significant attention. ...
note.com
numerous White House officials have dodgy Russian proxy software installed on their personal machines, potentially allowing foreign intelligence services and hackers access to sensitive White House systems for far less than the cost of a single cup of coffee:
White House Network Possibly Exposed to Hackers Via Proxy Services
Evidence has emerged that White House staffers are using an app loaded with residential proxy services, which often sell IP addresses to anyone, including hackers.
pcmag.com
Doing my election doomscrolling on the CBC because the presentation on American news outlets is completely out of control.
absolutely wild that canada is still on single-member fpp when closed list pr would leave the center-left governing alone or in coalition with center or left parties basically 100% of the time
voting in Portland elections: I have to vote on fifteen ballot items. they are accompanied by a 150-page booklet. voting on fourteen of them is completely trivial. the remaining office has twenty-one indistinguishable candidates and requires ranked preferences.
here, the phrase "birthday cake empanada from taco bell" for you
Taco Bell and Milk Bar Announce New Birthday Cake Empanada
Taco Bell and Milk Bar are back for another sweet collaboration, folding Milk Bar’s iconic Birthday Cake flavor into the all-new Milk Bar Birthday Cake Empanada. The two treat-obsessed brands are serv...
qsrmagazine.com
!["If the reported budget of $2 billion for GTA is true, they will have to sell over 28.5 million copies at $100 a pop in order to break even," he explains. "For FFF [cozy strategy game Flame, Forest and Flood], that number is well below 10k copies at a much lower price. Even if every single owner of a current-gen console bought GTA 6, their ROI will barely reach 5x. FFF gets there with around 30k copies sold. This raises serious questions about the sustainability of budget-blown AAA as a whole. How many games out there can confidently bet on selling 30 million copies? Elden Ring would barely recoup. Assassin's Creed does half of that on only some entries."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ijgpxgxpgbgteep7wqxx7gz6/bafkreie3evgirqjuhvtc6pc2a2h2e5wmpina75jjl2r6uot5tbj5soyszm)
A lot of my job involves thinking about what players are going to do when presented with a mechanic or a choice. Even if players wouldn't consciously articulate why they would blast locks with a shotgun rather than invest in Lockpicking (admittedly a skill tax), they would veer toward that behavior.
Cohen is a Ghost@skullmandible.bsky.social · 2mo agoI still quote your explanation for not letting players attempt to blow open locks in NV (with a high chance of destroying the contents) being that metagamers would just endlessly reload and never put a single point into lockpicking. changed how I thought about incidental incentivization
discord quietly removing the ability to turn off quests so they can stick ads all over my chat windows legitimately ruining my whole day
somehow I became the kind of adult with multiple kinds of flour and multiple kinds of tea and, for my sins, multiple kinds of seaweed in my pantry, and, god help me, I do kind of resent that.
the thing is, as far as i've seen the whole theranos thing mostly affected investors large investors like the murdochs and waltons and some pharmacies and clinics that put money in to test the product and find out it didn't really work. its almost a classic case of regulatory success -
you cannot make me learn anything more about Elizabeth Holmes. please seal her an oubliette. thank you.
On July 8th, we published a piece on AI in Heated Rivalry fic fandom. On July 30th, the New York Times ran a piece on the same subject. We weren't surprised—because we knew a Times reporter had read our coverage. A tale of two fandom articles, part of a longstanding dynamic in the media industry:
Lessons From a Heated Media Rivalry
How we learned that the New York Times has a Fansplaining account.
fansplaining.com
One thing these shows have done is really clarify how painstakingly narrow the visual style of games that need to persuade the audience they're for real has become.
Blue Eye Samurai (season 1) thread: It's... pretty deece. Massively overlong, overwritten, and self-indulgent, not quite as smart as it thinks it is, and often overboard in bad taste, but it has intentionality and well-built bones.
