sohois
14d ago
It is (or was, before the "safety act") trivial to arrange over the internet, so not sure theres any barrier to scale
sohois
20d ago
A quick Google bought this up immediately:
The franchise has raked in an estimated $46.7 billion, with merchandise sales at an estimated $29.057 billion.
So not quite 90%, but still a majority of earnings.
Whether this means Disney has made profits or a return on their initial investment I don't know, although some of the other Google results suggested merch was still bringing in around 1b per year for them.
sohois
21d ago
Merchandise is the biggest earner for IPs by a huge margin, indeed the value of Star Wars was probably 90% merch sales when they bought it
sohois
24d ago
As others have already implied, this study seems to be a vehicle for attracting media attention, rather than a serious attempt at evaluating the impact of LLMs on productivity. "Rapid revenue acceleration"? So we're already excluding anything that is merely cost-saving by replacing employees?
The actual paper is not freely available, so I don't actually know how rigorous their research was. At the very least, it is described as being enterprise only - historically the slowest and least agile when it comes to adopting new technologies. There are basic bitch wrappers that already have billion dollar+ valuations! And if it is focused solely on revenue generation as the benchmark, you will be cutting out a huge swath of projects that involve LLMs.
One might also wonder at timing. While LLMs will seem old news to rats and SSC readers due to familiarity with GPT-2, ChatGPT has only been around since November of 2022: not even 3 years old. And that was GPT3.5, GPT4 only came out in March of '23. Any other technology would be incredible if it drove rapid revenue acceleration in ~15 enterprise deployments after such a tiny amount of time. That's not to mention the yuge problem of AI studies becoming out of date simply because the whole thing moves way too quickly for academia. When was this study completed? Autumn of last year, if we're being generous?
Again, without reading the primary source it would be harsh to jump to conclusions, but based on the article linked this just screams "proactive title finding to get attention" rather than something important to learn about business adoption.
sohois
27d ago
I recall something similar in another web novel. It was otherwise quite an interesting story, blending cyberpunk with a fantasy litrpg: earth was a cyberpunk dystopia, but got visited by aliens who gifted them access to a shared litrpg world.
Now, you expect some progressive politics to insert themselves in cyberpunk just by it's nature, but it was the fantasy litrpg part which embarrassed the novel. One of the aliens was from a race which was agender until a certain age, when they would become male or female. This was a great excuse for the author to show his MCs progressive bonafides, referring carefully to "them" and acting shocked when other characters - including other alien races - didn't.
But this was alien race. Calling a woman "sir" or vice versa is insulting for humans with a large amount of sexual dimorphism, but it makes zero sense that this race would have the same issues. To them, it would be completely "alien" to worry about someone using different pronoun.
Even worse, they weren't even speaking English. Every race had their own language filtered through a perfect universal translator. Did their language even have pronouns? Would the translator not just switch anything to the correct pronoun? It was a complete failure of world building
sohois
28d ago
The UK has failed to build any new reservoirs for, IIRC, several decades. This despite the fact that the population has expanded considerably in that time.
sohois
28d ago
I wonder how much of the lack of chemistry is driven by the simple fact that Johnson and Evans are not good actors. Perhaps Song thought she could get something interesting out of them once they were taken away from comicbook crap?
sohois
1mo ago
The two episodes were fine, nothing special, but their ability to rile up conservatives and the administration itself is by far the funniest thing they've done in a long time.
If I were to just look at episodes in isolation, my main concern would be the fallback on old jokes. They did member berries just under 10 years ago now (coincidentally when they first started doing Garrison as Trump) but have now resorted to "remember Saddam Hussein" and "remember that bank guy"
sohois
1mo ago
enshittify
This verb implies a movement from a good state to a bad one; the language was previously not shit. Except, the people using LLMs in this way already can't communicate. The original english translation you posted below is incomprehensible. You suggest
the English they do write will be worse
but I can't see how anyone would suggest the AI translation is worse than the original. It might screw up some of the meaning, but that comes with the tradeoff of being more readable.
Or are you just using this example to push your point that native speakers are going to degrade the quality of their communication? This seems far more to reinforce the argument that smart users of LLMs will use them to leap forward, while poor users will get left behind. As I write this post I am using the Grammarly add-on; it's a useful spelling and grammar checker. It will also pop up "writing improvements". Almost without exception, these improvements are shit, and they've been shit long before ChatGPT came along. However, it hasn't changed the way I write, because I am capable of judging the quality of its suggestions. Do you think that Grammarly has been degrading the quality of English for years because some users implement everything it says?
It's the same story with translation. 15 years ago, a non-native speaker might go to babelfish.com and pump out something completely useless. 10 years ago, they would have switched to Google translate, and got something better, but still missing a ton of meaning. 5 years ago, DeepL was the standard, but still a long way off human translation. Now it's LLMs. When learning any language, one of the first lessons a student learns is not to blindly trust any machine translation.
sohois
1mo ago
There's a farm on the Isle of Dogs that is probably the closest to the average Londoner, but even outside of that are quite a few farms inside the southern boroughs
sohois
1mo ago
Made in Abyss
I watched the first season of this after seeing numerous recommendations along this line (are all of these reviews based on single seasons or entire series?), and my ultimate feeling was "meh". Made in Abyss presents a world in which there is a big creepy hole, and ooh, what could be inside the big creepy hole? Turns out it's big and creepy. Wow.
While it is nicely animated and soundtracked as you say, the dull approach to the story and particularly unpleasant anime degeneracy left me with little desire to continue.
Mob Psycho 100
So much better than everything else on your list I honestly have no idea
sohois
1mo ago
I wouldn't say the above argument relies on HBD; integration, decentralization, and excessive welfare would still be problems even with high quality immigrants. Observe the furore in many countries over high levels of indian immigration, despite a high average IQ.
sohois
1mo ago
I've read a few times that hiring has become a mess because loads of applicants are using LLM agents that can apply to jobs and adjust your CV per job, and thus rapidly apply for hundreds of suitable positions with custom applications.
Is this true, do such systems exist? My wife is returning to the job market soon but is a bit lazy when it comes to applications, so this would be a lifesaver for her
sohois
1mo ago
I'm not 2rafa, but I would argue similarly on immigration. The advantage that the US has with immigration is that all their illegal immigration is Hispanic. They're not all people you would want in your nation, but the US has already integrated a huge number of them. There aren't big push factors coming that will massively bump numbers up in future, and in legal immigration the US system works pretty well, largely creaming off the best from the rest of the world. The US has relatively limited welfare which means most illegals are in some sense productive, or at least not active drains outside of the criminal elements. The US is also massive and very decentralized. Some states and cities will become swamped and turn into third-world entities, but there will still be dozens of productive urban areas with low levels.
In Europe, illegal immigration is coming from Africa and the middle east. These immigrants are much lower quality. They are poorly integrated, many going into ethnic enclaves and reigniting old tribal conflicts with other groups of immigrants, to say nothing of the dangers of Muslim immigration. They are attracted by generous welfare which they are increasingly exploiting, adding nothing to the host nations. Numbers are large and likely only to grow larger as their home regions increasingly destabilize. I can't speak for legal immigration for continental Europe, but at least in the UK they've somehow ended up importing millions of terrible unproductive immigrants in addition to the illegal flows.
Structurally, each individual nation is also poorly positioned to weather these floods. Productivity is often focused in a single primate city, and once you lose a London, Paris, Brussels, Milan, etc. you've lost most of the nation's growth. Individual areas can do little to fight against the waves. And all this is to say nothing of the respective strengths of the economies
sohois
1mo ago
It did not! Impressively, not only did the developers preserve most of the existing bugs, they somehow managed to introduce new bugs as well. The game remains janky as fuck and you can effortlessly break the game.
They were a few casualties though like the ominous dark brotherhood entrance being replaced with a boring texture, but pretty minor in the scheme of things
sohois
1mo ago
Using regular dashes is fine, one of the reasons that em dashes are so indicative is that no human ever bothers to use the proper type of dash
sohois
2mo ago
Assuming Epstein didn't kill himself, why does it have to be Mossad or another intelligence agency that did it? All kinds of powerful people used his jet and were possibly involved in paedophilia through him, there are hundreds of people with motive and means. One of his more high profile connections was the 4th in line for the British crown, is it hard to imagine such people wouldn't be able to arrange a death?
sohois
2mo ago
London
Sadiq Khan is really more a typical Blairite Labour man than socialist. He's a lot more progressive on cultural matters, but that's par for the course for the wider Labour party these days.
He is also indescribably inept, but I'm not sure his chronic uselessness will open the door for an actual socialist to grab the mayorality of London. They already had that more than two decades ago, with full-blown Trotskyite Ken Livingstone.
sohois
2mo ago
I didn't claim that China lacked historical sites, rather that the cities themselves were somewhat lacking. The issue is that all the sites are dispersed throughout a continent-sized nation, making it very difficult to plan a trip - as you've discovered. Personally Suzhou, Luoyang, and Chengdu did not stand out as markedly different from the tier 1 cities in being composed of vast sprawls of communist blocks and a small handful of proper history. At least everyone likes Xi'an, but that seems to be the exception to the rule.
I lived in Harbin for a short period, so it's more that I passed through while the ice festival happened than I visited. Certainly it's very unique, and Harbin isn't a bad city as some of the Russian influences have still remained. But I recommended it more because much of China is quite grim to visit in December, particularly further south: I moved from Harbin to Shanghai in January, and found it worse in the 0-5C of Shanghai to the -20C of Harbin just because so many places lacked proper heating.
sohois
2mo ago
Don't focus too much on the cities. The cultural revolution destroyed a ton of history all across the nation, and the development boom finished the job on a lot more. They all have a lot less to see than equivalent cities of their size and history in other nations. You can go to one big city - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. - and you'll have seen them all.
Since you're going in December, how much does weather matter to you? You might be able to catch Harbin Ice Festival if you're willing to bear -20 or lower temperatures.
sohois
2mo ago
For the ones I've played:
3 - Only played the DS remake; it was ok. I kind of agree with your description, it wasn't terrible to play, but really felt like it had been left behind
4 - This the good shit
5 - Meh, didn't grab me much. Another one where I probably left it too late like 3
6 - Yeah pretty goated
7 - Same
8 - I appreciate a game that tries new stuff but it was just fucking weird
10 - personal favourite
12 - As I posted below, yawn
13 - Can't believe I actually beat this piece of shit instead of giving up
15 - Really a lot like 8, they threw all kinds of shit at the wall but forget to bring it together into a cohesive product. Some of the stuff in here is my favourite in all of the games, but it feels like the designers spent all their time deciding on new foods to carefully render and making fishing minigames instead of completing what they set out for.
16 - Story reminds me of 15, they do a lot of setup then about 2/3rds in I guess they ran out of time so they throw it all away and just rush to the end. Otherwise competent.
FFT - Not as good as tactics ogre
sohois
2mo ago
I did find I was constantly tweaking my gambits, most on account of status effects. Another difference I remember was that with the OG license board, I could give all my characters some low level spells, like Protect or Shell, so the whole party would work together to keep those protection spells up. In Zodiac Age, you tell your single white mage in the part to keep everyone protected, it's virtually all they do it takes so long to cast 3 times in a row, and then it's nearly worn off! Meanwhile they aren't healing or curing status effects.
This was what really put me off the game back when I played the original. IIRC, I had every character basically playing as a red mage, never bothered with skills, and just unlocked the strongest weapons available whenever I found new ones.
sohois
2mo ago
FFXII was such an incredible disappointment after X. Starts off really well, but after 10 hours you realize the only gambits you need are low health > heal and attack, and there is absolutely nothing of interest when it comes to building a character. The licence board was entirely pointless. All that was left was the story, which as you say became incomprehensible very quickly
I'm a bit confused by this post; you open by stating that
but your evidence just appears to be that mid range hotels are better than low cost hotels, and national carriers are better than low cost carriers.
You do realise that Thailand also has low-cost airlines that nickel and dime you for everything and provide a very basic service? And high income countries all have airlines providing similar service to Thai airlines at similar prices?
It's the same with hotels. Your $20 a night hotel in Thailand is mid range but you can easily find much more basic hotels with similar service to the low end hotels you use in the US. The US is just a more expensive country, and prices reflect that.
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