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mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

getting owned while trying to become the owner
AI-Generated Art Lacks Copyright Protection, D.C. Court Says (1)

news.bloomberglaw.com posted:

Artwork created by artificial intelligence isn�t eligible for copyright protection because it lacks human authorship, a Washington, D.C., federal judge decided Friday.

Judge Beryl A. Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with the US Copyright Office�s decision to deny a copyright registration to computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who argued a two-dimensional artwork created by his AI program �Creativity Machine� should be eligible for protection.

The ruling is the first in the country to establish a boundary on the legal protections for AI-generated artwork, which has exploded in popularity with the rise of products like OpenAI Inc.'s ChatGPT and DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion.

Howell found that �courts have uniformly declined to recognize copyright in works created absent any human involvement,� citing cases where copyright protection was denied for celestial beings, a cultivated garden, and a monkey who took a selfie.

�Undoubtedly, we are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works,� the judge wrote.

The rise of generative AI will �prompt challenging questions� about how much human input into an AI program is necessary to qualify for copyright protection, Howell said, as well as how to assess the originality of AI-generated art that comes from systems trained on existing copyrighted works.

But this case �is not nearly so complex� because Thaler admitted in his application that he played no role in creating the work, Howell said.

Thaler, the president and CEO of Imagination Engines, sued the office in June 2022 following its denial of his application to register the AI-generated art piece titled �A Recent Entrance to Paradise.�

His attorney, Ryan Abbott of Brown Neri Smith & Khan LLP, said he plans to appeal the judgment. �We respectfully disagree with the court�s interpretation of the Copyright Act,� Abbott said.

The Copyright Office said in a statement that it believes the court reached the correct result and the office is reviewing the decision.

The office recently issued guidance on the copyrightability of works created with the assistance of AI, which attorneys said introduced additional murkiness in the AI authorship debate.

The Copyright Office in February granted a limited copyright registration for an AI-assisted graphic novel, which attorneys said could crack the door open further to protect such works.

Thaler�s motion for summary judgment, which Howell denied in the Friday order, argued that permitting AI to be listed as an author on copyrighted works would incentivize more creation, which is in line with copyright law�s purpose of promoting useful art for the public.

�Denying copyright to AI-created works would thus go against the well-worn principle that '[c]opyright protection extends to all �original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium� of expression,� Thaler argued in his motion.

Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who leads the office, defended the office�s decision to reject Thaler�s application on the grounds that it wasn�t created by a human.

�The Office�s conclusion that copyright law does not protect non-human creators was a sound and reasoned interpretation of the applicable law,� the agency wrote in its cross-motion for summary judgment, which Howell granted Friday.

The Department of Justice represents the Copyright Office.

The case is Thaler v. Perlmutter, D.D.C., No. 1:22-cv-01564, ordered 8/18/23.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 15:34

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 25, 2024 05:27

Nodelphi: Jan 30, 2004; We are all quite capable of believing in anything as long as it's improbable.; Ham Wrangler

mawarannahr posted:

getting owned while trying to become the owner
AI-Generated Art Lacks Copyright Protection, D.C. Court Says (1)

Well I�m glad there wasn�t a fad where people paid thousands of dollars for AI generated �art.�

# ? Aug 19, 2023 16:10

Lacrosse: Jun 16, 2010; >:V

The monkeys are free, you can just take them

# ? Aug 19, 2023 16:13

goochtit: Nov 2, 2021

SlimGoodbody posted:

Long ago, the by far most absolutely hosed up thing I ever did at a Costco was create a meal I had theory crafted for years called "The Godkiller." I finally made and ate one when I was probably 20 or so, after first conceiving of it at 14 on a Costco run with my mom.

The way it worked was, you got the polish sausage, the chicken bake, and the combo pizza slice. You bite a hole in the end of the chicken bake and stick the sausage inside it. Then you fold the pizza slice longways and put the chicken bake in it like a hotdog in a bun. Then you crank some onions over it. I skipped dinner the night before and ate nothing all day until the late afternoon, when I assembled my monument to degenerate American excess, the Godkiller, and dug in.

Hunger and momentum carried me through the first 75% of it, but the last quarter was an exponentially increasing act of will. With the aid of several glasses of Coca-Cola, I finished it, and was miserable, and didn't eat for almost another entire day. It was not particularly good, but it wasn't terrible either; obtaining one's idle caprices is often met with the bittersweet realization that reality can't live up to years of fantasy. God only knows how many calories were in that atrocity.

There's nothing to say about what I did in the restroom after I digested this monstrosity that couldn't also be said about pouring the foundation of a large building with a malfunctioning industrial cement mixer. I never attempted the Godkiller again, and no one ever will, because several of the components are now lost to time.

Also, so you can correctly picture what the few onlookers at the Orange County Costco cafeteria were watching with what must have been a mixture of revulsion and fascination: imagine a 6'4", 135lb babyfaced goth guy with smudgy eyeliner in a long sleeve tee shirt from the movie The Crow, sitting alone, slowly and silently housing The Entire Costco Entree Menu at once, groaning periodically. God bless America, the troops, and George W Bush.

doomsday gastronomics

# ? Aug 19, 2023 16:20

Gwyneth Palpate: Jun 7, 2010; Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

Nodelphi posted:

Well I�m glad there wasn�t a fad where people paid thousands of dollars for AI generated �art.�

Fun thing about that: apparently the original artists no longer get paid every time an NFT gets sold, now.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/17/23836440/nft-creator-royalty-fees-are-dead-opensea-optional

quote:

One of the big promises of NFTs was that the artist who originally made them could get a cut every time their piece was resold. Unfortunately, that�s not the case anymore.

OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace still fully enforcing royalty fees, said today that it plans to stop the mandatory collection of resale fees for artists. Starting March 2024, those fees will essentially be tips � an optional percentage of a sale price that sellers can choose to give the original artist. If the seller doesn�t want to hand over any money, that�ll be their choice.

The NFT ecosystem has been on a race to the bottom when it comes to fees. As the market for NFTs collapsed, marketplaces have lowered their own trading fees and stopped enforcing royalty fees in order to attract sellers. Blur, which has overtaken OpenSea as the biggest NFT marketplace by trading volume, only enforces a 0.5 percent fee on most collections, whereas creators typically set their fees at 5 to 10 percent.

OpenSea will stop enforcing royalty fees on all new NFTs starting August 31st. The marketplace will continue enforcing the fees on certain existing collections until March 2024, at which point they�ll become optional on all sales.

Judging by the responses to OpenSea�s X post about the changes, many in the NFT community are not thrilled by this. Critics say it will hurt small artists and undermines creators� ability to control their relationship with the people who buy their work.

OpenSea�s changes are �fundamentally wrong and hurts the entire NFT space,� Wildcake, the founder of the Posers NFT collection, tells The Verge in a DM. Wildcake said the change is particularly disruptive to creators who built a business plan around enforced royalties, like the Posers team had with a blockchain game they�ve been developing. �OpenSea decided to turn off this last opportunity to earn profit. As a result, we have been working for five months for free.�

Others, including OpenSea, are trying to frame it as a necessarily, positive change as the marketplace evolves. OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer criticized the fees� �ineffective, unilateral enforcement� and said that creators will find other ways to monetize their work.

�Our role in this ecosystem is to empower innovation beyond a single use case or business model,� he writes in the blog post announcing that OpenSea will no longer support the ecosystem�s primary business model.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 16:26

RealityWarCriminal: Aug 10, 2016

not copyrightable under law, but copyrightable on the blockchain :smuggo:

# ? Aug 19, 2023 16:36

LonsomeSon: Nov 22, 2009; A fishperson in an intimidating hat!

SlimGoodbody posted:

Long ago, the by far most absolutely hosed up thing I ever did at a Costco was create a meal I had theory crafted for years called "The Godkiller." I finally made and ate one when I was probably 20 or so, after first conceiving of it at 14 on a Costco run with my mom.

The way it worked was, you got the polish sausage, the chicken bake, and the combo pizza slice. You bite a hole in the end of the chicken bake and stick the sausage inside it. Then you fold the pizza slice longways and put the chicken bake in it like a hotdog in a bun. Then you crank some onions over it. I skipped dinner the night before and ate nothing all day until the late afternoon, when I assembled my monument to degenerate American excess, the Godkiller, and dug in.

Hunger and momentum carried me through the first 75% of it, but the last quarter was an exponentially increasing act of will. With the aid of several glasses of Coca-Cola, I finished it, and was miserable, and didn't eat for almost another entire day. It was not particularly good, but it wasn't terrible either; obtaining one's idle caprices is often met with the bittersweet realization that reality can't live up to years of fantasy. God only knows how many calories were in that atrocity.

There's nothing to say about what I did in the restroom after I digested this monstrosity that couldn't also be said about pouring the foundation of a large building with a malfunctioning industrial cement mixer. I never attempted the Godkiller again, and no one ever will, because several of the components are now lost to time.

Also, so you can correctly picture what the few onlookers at the Orange County Costco cafeteria were watching with what must have been a mixture of revulsion and fascination: imagine a 6'4", 135lb babyfaced goth guy with smudgy eyeliner in a long sleeve tee shirt from the movie The Crow, sitting alone, slowly and silently housing The Entire Costco Entree Menu at once, groaning periodically. God bless America, the troops, and George W Bush.

dropped my phone, stood up, and clapped despite desperately trying to regain control of my body

# ? Aug 19, 2023 16:42

AvesPKS: Sep 26, 2004; I don't dance unless I'm totally wasted.

Is Seth Green still developing that show based around his ape avatar?

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:05

Twerk from Home: Jan 17, 2009; This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

AvesPKS posted:

Is Seth Green still developing that show based around his ape avatar?

They had to pivot to publishing it on Elon Musk's X Video.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:06

Heck Yes! Loam!: Nov 15, 2004; a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.

AvesPKS posted:

Is Seth Green still developing that show based around his ape avatar?

No because someone stole it and now it's not his ape picture.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahemerson/seth-green-bored-ape-stolen-tv-show

No this is not a joke

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:06

Flavahbeast: Jul 21, 2001

Probably a good outcome for Seth not to have to follow through on the show. Force Majeure due to stolen apes

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:11

RealityWarCriminal: Aug 10, 2016

AvesPKS posted:

Is Seth Green still developing that show based around his ape avatar?

maybe. he paid 300k to get his ape back from the scammer but there's been no news in 2023. it was supposed to be called White Horse Tavern.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:12

Heck Yes! Loam!: Nov 15, 2004; a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.

RealityWarCriminal posted:

maybe. he paid 300k to get his ape back from the scammer

loving

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:21

AvesPKS: Sep 26, 2004; I don't dance unless I'm totally wasted.

Flavahbeast posted:

Probably a good outcome for Seth not to have to follow through on the show. Force Majeure due to stolen apes

Yeah almost makes me wonder. Sounds like a good story to kill a project you suddenly don't want to make.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:26

Morbus: May 18, 2004

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

No because someone stole it and now it's not his ape picture.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahemerson/seth-green-bored-ape-stolen-tv-show

No this is not a joke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Pbx9mvWPY

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:42

Glumwheels: Jan 25, 2003; https://twitter.com/BidenHQ

https://www.cnn.com/travel/outrageous-charges-targeting-tourists-in-italy

quote:

An Italian holiday may be a priceless experience for those who have enjoyed all this country has to offer. But the summer of 2023 will go down as one of the priciest in history after a slew of price gouging scandals at cafes and restaurants that have affected foreign tourists and Italians alike.

Take the couple charged 2 euros ($2.20) to cut their ham sandwich in half on the shores of Lake Como, or the young mother in the Roman seaside town of Ostia charged 2 euros to have her baby�s bottle heated in the microwave.

A pair of tourists were charged 60 euros ($65) for two coffees and two small bottles of water at the Cervo Hotel in Sardinia, although the owner told CNN the prices were plainly listed and the charge is mostly for the view over the expensive yachts of the nearby port.

Tourists were also charged 2 euros for an extra � empty! � plate near Portofino in northern Italy, and 10 cents for a sprinkle of cocoa on a cappuccino at a Lake Como coffee bar. Italian cafes rarely use cocoa on cappuccinos, hence why they justified the charge.

These cases, dubbed �crazy receipts� by local media, have been documented by the consumer protection group Consumerism No Profit, which reports a staggering 130% increase in prices in tourist areas in Italy this summer.

Easy targets

VENICE, ITALY - AUGUST 02: Tourists crowd the area near the Rialto Bridge on August 02, 2023 in Venice, Italy. UNESCO officials have included Venice and its lagoon to the list of world heritage in danger to review, along with Ukraine's Kyiv, and Lviv. The UN cultural agency deems Italy not effective in protecting Venice from mass tourism and extreme weather conditions. (Photo by Stefano Mazzola/Getty Images)
It�s not just restaurateurs driving prices. High fuel and energy prices have made it an incredibly expensive summer.

The prices have become so out of control�some 240% higher than other Mediterranean destinations �that many Italians are abandoning their usual local haunts for their August vacations, instead opting for coastal countries like Albania and Montenegro, which don�t quite offer the same Italian charm or cuisine, but are affordable.

Even Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni took a short beach vacation in Albania this year, her office confirmed.

The group Confcommercio predicts that only 14 million Italians will take their vacation at home around the traditional Ferragosto or August 15 break, around 30% down from pre-Covid figures.

�The very strong price increases in the air transport, accommodation and holiday package sectors has profoundly changed the holiday habits of Italians,� said Furio Truzzi of consumer watchdog group Assoutenti.

Video shows tourist climbing into Rome�s Trevi Fountain to fill up water bottle

Truzzi added that the prices won�t stop Italians from vacationing, but it will affect how long they stay.

�And the paradox is that despite the reduction in holiday days, spending will be higher: the 2023 summer holidays will cost Italians 1.2 billion euros more than in 2022, albeit with fewer nights away from home,� he said.

Foreign tourists have more than made up for the decline, with Italy�s tourism ministry predicting that 68 million tourists will visit Italy over the summer, more than three million more than pre-pandemic figures, making them the easiest target for price gouging.

Americans and Asian tourists have come in droves this year, Italy�s tourism ministry says, replacing the higher spending Russian tourists who tended to spend more and stay longer, but who are absent this year because of the war in Ukraine.

Worst offenders

Visitors swim in the sea and sit in the shade of parasols on Poetto beach in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy, on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. Temperatures in Cagliari touched 45.9C(115F), closing in on Europe's record of 48.8C. Photographer: Francesca Volpi/Bloomberg via Getty Images
One of the worst offenders are beachfront establishments which rent sunbeds and umbrellas.

In Puglia, daily rental for two sunbeds and one umbrella during the week averages 50 euros, and nearly double on the weekend, but further north, the price to sit in the front row on a crowded beach can be triple that, starting at around 150 euros ($163) a day during the week, especially in the more exclusive areas like Portofino�that is if the front row umbrellas aren�t already reserved by locals.

�Sharm el Sheik [in Egypt] costs less, which is why so many Italians are going abroad,� Paolo Manca of the Federalberghi (Hotel Federation) says, explaining that to get to traditional Italian vacation spot like the island of Sardinia, a family can pay thousands a day, starting with an expensive ferry or airfare, inflated hotel prices and expensive meals.

This American family opened a restaurant in Italy

When asked what they paid for two Aperol Spritzes at a caf� in Piazza Navona in central Rome, Americans Betsy and James Cramer said they were embarrassed to admit how much they paid. But they knew they would pay more to sit at a popular location.

�We�ve overpaid for gelato, for spritzes and for our hotel, but we knew it going in,� Betsy told CNN. �We had this trip planned before Covid and have been dreaming about it even though we read the headlines about expensive prices.

�You just have to read the menu and ask if there are extra charges. And if there are, then you have to either walk away or just eat it.�

�Year zero�

A view of the Pantheon on July 3, 2023 in Rome. From today the visit to the most visited cultural site in Italy with 9 million visitors a year is subject to a fee and the cost of the ticket is 5 euros but remains free for residents of Rome. From today the visit to the most visited cultural site in Italy with 9 million visitors a year is subject to a fee and the cost of the ticket is 5 euros but remains free for residents of Rome. (Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP) (Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images)
While high prices may be impacting the average tourist, luxury tourism has risen this year, according to Italy�s tourism ministry, which says a record-breaking 11.7 million travelers will stay in five-star hotels in Italy this summer, according to reservation records.

�In August, high-end tourism continues to grow, unlike normal tourism,� Antonio Coviello, a researcher with Italy�s National Research Center wrote in a report on luxury travel issued this week, adding that the risk of over-tourism in the luxury sector is a concern because it could drive up prices in the mid-range travel sector to accommodate the bigger spenders.

Italy�s tourism minister, Daniela Santanche, said that despite a season marked with bad headlines about price gouging and fewer Italians traveling, the summer has been a defining moment in Italy�s post-pandemic recovery.

�I would not speak of a failure, but neither of a success,� she said this week. �I would say that we can finally start discussing tourism again and plan our next moves. In fact, this is the first year without pandemic restrictions, and therefore, in a certain sense, we can speak of 2023 as �year zero�.�

Guess which sector of travel grew, luxury travel. What happens when only the super rich can travel and they won�t stay or eat at anything 4 star or less?

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:55

super sweet best pal: Nov 18, 2009

Vox Nihili posted:

how the hell can someone be 6'4" 135 lb, that ain't right

also, goongrats, hero

Slim Tallbody

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:57

19 o'clock: Sep 9, 2004; Excelsior!!!

my biggest goal in life is travel

I am passionate about vacations

# ? Aug 19, 2023 17:59

PawParole: Nov 16, 2019

Number

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:04

Taima: Dec 31, 2006; tfw you're peeing next to someone in the lineup and they don't know

The insane price hikes happening in the streaming media space are really interesting. I think it shows what the corporate world is feeling/strategizing about consumer habits going forward.

We have a couple of tangential things happening:

1) Password sharing crackdowns across the board, which everyone is going to end up doing because frankly consumers seem to have rolled over on it. Well, that might be unfair; what I mean is, the people who matter to these companies rolled over and the consumers who are angry are mostly the people who won't/can't afford it, so they don't care.

2) huge price hikes. Not $1 price hikes. Like, ongoing multi-dollar price hikes. Remember when D+ was like $6.99 a month? It's about to be $13.99 a month. They have doubled the price. Meanwhile if you want 4K Netflix its fuckin' $19.99 a month, and Hulu is also approaching the $20 mark. That's for the best plans though; everyone appears to be keeping their cheap (but not free!) ad-supported plans, for now at least.

Media conglomerates, like everyone, are beginning to lump consumers into three buckets:

- Extremely price-conscious users who are willing to put up with reduced features and prolific advertisements, and will pay (at least, a nominal fee) for the privilege.
- Users who are basically unconcerned about the price, will sign up for the top plan and never worry about it again.
- Users who will never pay (this is like 75% of all people) these users are becoming completely invisible to the corporate world, and even actively hated, hence the crackdown on password sharing. The internet will become a quickly shrinking place for these people as we move forward.

This is just my opinion, and probably a hot take, but I think service tiers that rely entirely on ads will largely disappear, and in their place will be this bifurcated model where you're either paying top dollar for a high quality, ad-free experience, or a low (but non-zero- this is important) amount of money for the service in concert with advertisements and less features/quality. Or you're just forgotten forever.

However, IF true free, completely ad-supported tiers do continue to exist, ad blockers will completely stop working. I'm looking at Youtube here as a primary example. They've been playing with requiring no ad block, and guess what, they can if they want; there are scorched-earth ways to force ads and it is well within the reach of a company like Youtube to implement those methods. They just don't, at the moment. People who think they can evade Youtube if they really want to kill ad block are fooling themselves though, imo.

This is a huge change in the landscape of the internet, obviously. There's a few places we can go from here, but what they have in common is that the majority of people will either be forced to pay some amount of money, will be forced to actually watch ads, or they will find themselves removed from the ecosystem entirely.

This isn't some far-flung future, it's the clear end game of all of the financial and demographic changes that internet media companies are implementing now. The quasi-free movement of users through ecosystems that they can essentially get for free via ad block (arguably the cornerstone of the internet since its inception) is coming to a pretty decisive end, the only question is exactly how it will play out.

And of course, there will always be ad-supported... say... news sites. But AI is ensuring most of that free content will be utter trash. AI generated super low-effort content will form the base of the "free" internet while any kind of human created or curated content will require, at the very least, actually sitting through ads, and maybe even paying money for even the lowest tiers.

nikosoft posted:

They'll just put ads in the high paid tiers, OP

strong misread of the situation imo, in fact I think this is the single least likely outcome of all possible outcomes.

We're seeing the internet become like airlines, frankly. First Class and Business class (top tier streaming tiers) will continue to creep up in price, and users in that tier will contribute the vast majority of the direct revenue to these services. Then there are the coach passengers, who are paying a lot less but still paying, and they're getting ads too. And those ads will become effectively unskippable.

You might notice that in this analogy there is no place on the airplane for the user who is not paying for the service in some way (even if that's via truly unskippable ads, perhaps), and my answer to that is, yup

Taima has issued a correction as of 18:30 on Aug 19, 2023

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:07

19 o'clock: Sep 9, 2004; Excelsior!!!

https://twitter.com/innesmck/status/1620933937433567233?s=20

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:12

nikosoft: Dec 17, 2011; ghost in the shell, but somehow much worse; College Slice

Taima posted:

This is just my opinion, and probably a hot take, but I think service tiers that rely entirely on ads will largely disappear,

They'll just put ads in the high paid tiers, OP

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:15

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Glumwheels posted:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/outrageous-charges-targeting-tourists-in-italy

Guess which sector of travel grew, luxury travel. What happens when only the super rich can travel and they won�t stay or eat at anything 4 star or less?

I hope those tourists never come back on account of their experiences

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:16

Dr. VooDoo: May 4, 2006

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

Fun thing about that: apparently the original artists no longer get paid every time an NFT gets sold, now.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/17/23836440/nft-creator-royalty-fees-are-dead-opensea-optional

Woah who could have seen this coming what a shock! :laffo:

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:17

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

help me. I was charged 2 euros ($2.20) to have a sandwich cut in half on the shores of Lake Como. it has to be there, the implied presence of George Clooney is the only way my wife can eat a ham sandwich.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:19

RadiRoot: Feb 3, 2007

Morbus posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Pbx9mvWPY

this movie owns

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:19

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

SlimGoodbody posted:

Long ago, the by far most absolutely hosed up thing I ever did at a Costco was create a meal I had theory crafted for years called "The Godkiller." I finally made and ate one when I was probably 20 or so, after first conceiving of it at 14 on a Costco run with my mom.

The way it worked was, you got the polish sausage, the chicken bake, and the combo pizza slice. You bite a hole in the end of the chicken bake and stick the sausage inside it. Then you fold the pizza slice longways and put the chicken bake in it like a hotdog in a bun. Then you crank some onions over it. I skipped dinner the night before and ate nothing all day until the late afternoon, when I assembled my monument to degenerate American excess, the Godkiller, and dug in.

Hunger and momentum carried me through the first 75% of it, but the last quarter was an exponentially increasing act of will. With the aid of several glasses of Coca-Cola, I finished it, and was miserable, and didn't eat for almost another entire day. It was not particularly good, but it wasn't terrible either; obtaining one's idle caprices is often met with the bittersweet realization that reality can't live up to years of fantasy. God only knows how many calories were in that atrocity.

There's nothing to say about what I did in the restroom after I digested this monstrosity that couldn't also be said about pouring the foundation of a large building with a malfunctioning industrial cement mixer. I never attempted the Godkiller again, and no one ever will, because several of the components are now lost to time.

Also, so you can correctly picture what the few onlookers at the Orange County Costco cafeteria were watching with what must have been a mixture of revulsion and fascination: imagine a 6'4", 135lb babyfaced goth guy with smudgy eyeliner in a long sleeve tee shirt from the movie The Crow, sitting alone, slowly and silently housing The Entire Costco Entree Menu at once, groaning periodically. God bless America, the troops, and George W Bush.

goldmine

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:32

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

Taima posted:

The insane price hikes happening in the streaming media space are really interesting. I think it shows what the corporate world is feeling/strategizing about consumer habits going forward.

the initial D+ pricepoint was to get people to subscribe in the first place bc it was significantly cheaper than netflix. it was a smart move in that sense.

but yeah, im out. you cant find like 80-90% of shows that these companies own on their services. whats the point?

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:35

Taima: Dec 31, 2006; tfw you're peeing next to someone in the lineup and they don't know

anime was right posted:

the initial D+ pricepoint was to get people to subscribe in the first place bc it was significantly cheaper than netflix. it was a smart move in that sense.

but yeah, im out. you cant find like 80-90% of shows that these companies own on their services. whats the point?

Yeah, kind of, but the economic realities hadn't really set in either. Disney is doing extremely poorly financially and free money went away in a way that no one was really expecting. The corporate world has been continually surprised by the fed's hard stance on rates. I totally agree that was a factor though! I just don't think it explains the whole story since streaming media as a sector is pivoting due to economic shifts.

But yeah, it's not worth it for people like us with the technical ability to figure out alternatives. I run a 110+TB Plex Server that has basically everything I could ever want and auto downloads anything I want, including grabbing any future or presently airing show that I want as soon as it airs. If I lived alone I wouldn't pay for poo poo.

On the other hand, my wife is an extremely normal, well adjusted person. She likes the Plex server and even figured out how to use Infuse, but she makes us keep the various streaming services because it's just way easier to log into Hulu and start watching stuff. So we still have them regardless of what I feel about it, or what I would do if I was single or whatever.

I think at the end of the day, the people who can afford to do streaming media will largely just do that, for a bunch of reasons. The people who have the savvy to exit the ecosystem and go their own way, probably will, I guess. That doesn't feel like a big demographic to me though.

The internet is just becoming a paid medium, unfortunately, imo. Like everything else. And the bottom 75% gets dropped out of the equation, like everything else. The days of going to Youtube and running ad block and getting everything for free feel over, it's just a matter of time. Welcome to the future :c00lbutt:

Piracy will definitely go up for sure but I think that's an extremely "priced in" situation and doing so requires ever-increasing privilege in the sense that technical accumen is going away over time now that people are being born into Smart Everything. Instead of having to tinker with a Windows 95 installation and poo poo like that. The Milennials might be the only tech-savvy generation that has ever and will ever exist; the conditions that arose during our upbringing were wholly unique, which is an entirely different, but super interesting topic if you ask me

The best and easiest way to navigate this landscape seems to be family plans, where they're available. I pay for family sharing and give it away to my friends and family. So, for example I pay for Youtube Premium family edition, and distribute it to friends who use Youtube a lot. I am on the Apple One family plan and my extended family is on that, some trusted friends and family use our Amazon Prime, etc.

Communities getting together to utilize these plans feels like an increasingly important part of how everyone should form their, like... "online infrastructure" such that it is.

Taima has issued a correction as of 19:09 on Aug 19, 2023

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:52

Nieuw Amsterdam: Dec 1, 2006; Dignit�. Toujours, dignit�.

mawarannahr posted:

help me. I was charged 2 euros ($2.20) to have a sandwich cut in half on the shores of Lake Como. it has to be there, the implied presence of George Clooney is the only way my wife can eat a ham sandwich.

That pales in comparison to when I was charged EUR0.10 ($0.11) for a shake of cocoa powder on my coffee during my $15,000 vacation.

Italy should go to the Bhutan model where you need a tourist permit that costs $350 a day and you have to pay special western rich guy prices for everything.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 18:53

palindrome: Feb 3, 2020

You get assigned a mandatory Italian guide that keeps track of you and steers you to only approved areas and experiences. He recommends two shakes of cocoa powder.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:03

Third World Reagan: May 19, 2008; Imagine four 'mechs waiting in a queue. Time works the same way.

19 o'clock posted:

https://twitter.com/innesmck/status/1620933937433567233?s=20

IRC is coming back baby!

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:10

PoundSand: Jul 30, 2021; Also proficient with kites

Wait till these people see how much it costs to add 1/4th an avocado to your sandwich in america.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:21

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

Taima posted:

Piracy will definitely go up for sure but I think that's an extremely "priced in" situation and doing so requires ever-increasing privilege in the sense that technical accumen is going away over time now that people are being born into Smart Everything. Instead of having to tinker with a Windows 95 installation and poo poo like that. The Milennials might be the only tech-savvy generation that has ever and will ever exist; the conditions that arose during our upbringing were wholly unique, which is an entirely different, but super interesting topic if you ask me

The best and easiest way to navigate this landscape seems to be family plans, where they're available. I pay for family sharing and give it away to my friends and family. So, for example I pay for Youtube Premium family edition, and distribute it to friends who use Youtube a lot. I am on the Apple One family plan and my extended family is on that, some trusted friends and family use our Amazon Prime, etc.

agreed. the digital conditions for millennials was extremely unique. there may be another future scenario in (hypothetical) post-societal breakdown wasteland scavanging technopunk future where we're no longer making new stuff and people just scavaging dumps and abandoned places to get motherboards and rebuilding hard drives and groups git gud at it. but not now.

it's actually impressive how bad zoomers+ are at computers and how little outside of the 30-45 demographic even knows how to do piracy or even understands how to like tinker and forcefully bend electronics to your will

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:32

Heck Yes! Loam!: Nov 15, 2004; a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.

Private torrent tracker accounts are now legacy heirlooms to be passed from generation to generation.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:35

Mr Hootington: Jul 24, 2008; I'M HAVING A HOOT EATING CORNETTE THE LONG WAY

https://twitter.com/LizAnnSonders/status/1692497678721048898?t=kmEemxgQJaI54vUHPJzPAg&s=19
https://twitter.com/C_Barraud/status/1692968417383305284?t=tyrH7YDDvZ6Je_akHmC2cQ&s=19

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:36

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

Taima posted:

The insane price hikes happening in the streaming media space are really interesting. I think it shows what the corporate world is feeling/strategizing about consumer habits going forward.

We have a couple of tangential things happening:

1) Password sharing crackdowns across the board, which everyone is going to end up doing because frankly consumers seem to have rolled over on it. Well, that might be unfair; what I mean is, the people who matter to these companies rolled over and the consumers who are angry are mostly the people who won't/can't afford it, so they don't care.

2) huge price hikes. Not $1 price hikes. Like, ongoing multi-dollar price hikes. Remember when D+ was like $6.99 a month? It's about to be $13.99 a month. They have doubled the price. Meanwhile if you want 4K Netflix its fuckin' $19.99 a month, and Hulu is also approaching the $20 mark. That's for the best plans though; everyone appears to be keeping their cheap (but not free!) ad-supported plans, for now at least.

Media conglomerates, like everyone, are beginning to lump consumers into three buckets:

- Extremely price-conscious users who are willing to put up with reduced features and prolific advertisements, and will pay (at least, a nominal fee) for the privilege.
- Users who are basically unconcerned about the price, will sign up for the top plan and never worry about it again.
- Users who will never pay (this is like 75% of all people) these users are becoming completely invisible to the corporate world, and even actively hated, hence the crackdown on password sharing. The internet will become a quickly shrinking place for these people as we move forward.

This is just my opinion, and probably a hot take, but I think service tiers that rely entirely on ads will largely disappear, and in their place will be this bifurcated model where you're either paying top dollar for a high quality, ad-free experience, or a low (but non-zero- this is important) amount of money for the service in concert with advertisements and less features/quality. Or you're just forgotten forever.

However, IF true free, completely ad-supported tiers do continue to exist, ad blockers will completely stop working. I'm looking at Youtube here as a primary example. They've been playing with requiring no ad block, and guess what, they can if they want; there are scorched-earth ways to force ads and it is well within the reach of a company like Youtube to implement those methods. They just don't, at the moment. People who think they can evade Youtube if they really want to kill ad block are fooling themselves though, imo.

This is a huge change in the landscape of the internet, obviously. There's a few places we can go from here, but what they have in common is that the majority of people will either be forced to pay some amount of money, will be forced to actually watch ads, or they will find themselves removed from the ecosystem entirely.

this is basically what I was arguing with croup about a couple months ago is that "the masses" are no longer relevant for economic "growth". what used to be converting the spoils of the imperial periphery into core-consumed profits is no longer needed hence we can dumpster the bottom 70% percentile.

the interesting material dialectic to keep a Sauron-eye on is going to be the contradiction of when 70% are just ignored, homeless because rents are $4k a month for shittsburg, illinois studio, and services are unaffordable with no more free treats.

the airline analogy is a very good one.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:37

sonatinas: Apr 15, 2003; Seattle Karate Vs. L.A. Karate

Xaris posted:

it's actually impressive how bad zoomers+ are at computers and how little outside of the 30-45 demographic even knows how to do piracy or even understands how to like tinker and forcefully bend electronics to your will

they�re practically the same as Facebook grandparents

when they haven�t been trained in the IRQ conflict mines you gonna get people who don�t even know alt tab.

my team has a new college grad and lol the computing knowledge is about 0 from my perspective.

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:44

Lacrosse: Jun 16, 2010; >:V

19 o'clock posted:

https://twitter.com/innesmck/status/1620933937433567233?s=20

I was trying to figure out how to use Netflix with a projector and the answer is 'you can't' unless you have your own :filez:

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 25, 2024 05:27

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

sonatinas posted:

they�re practically the same as Facebook grandparents

when they haven�t been trained in the IRQ conflict mines you gonna get people who don�t even know alt tab.

my team has a new college grad and lol the computing knowledge is about 0 from my perspective.

i feel like zoomers are selectively very good at computers, and some are very, very good, but the average amount of computer literacy is lower (but still not boomer bad).

my impressions are like, they're bad at understanding the underlying functionality of things sometimes, but if you need them to actually Do A Thing on a Computer they can do it on average bc they at least know how to search for poo poo

# ? Aug 19, 2023 19:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Doomsday Economics] Home of Kirbeh's FREE SLICE ($25 delivery fee)

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