megopie

I suspect that they’ve been pressured to keep it out of public by turbo tax lobbyists, but with the straight on attempt to kill it lately, they decided just to ignore that pressure and push it out to spite those lobbyists.

If it was from 10-20 years ago, top down from an angle with modeled 3d units, it might be one of the Wargame titles from Eugen, or if it was WW2 setting maybe Combat Mission: beyond overlord, Company of Heroes, or Men of War.

If it was straight on top down 2D, it might have been Mud and Blood, which was a WW2 wave defense flash game.

Was it top down in the sense of looking straight down or from above at an angle? Were the units modeled as individual 3d models or just 2D icons?

Also, roughly what time period was it set in? Like, Napoleonic, WW2, Cold War, Contemporary?

Was it single player or multi player focused?

Could you get additional units as the game went on or were you locked with the units you started with? How could you get additional units? Points? Timer?

This group will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai.

Don’t worry, the hen house guard force will report directly to the fox.

And of course this is all definitely worth it so checks notes we can become dependent on a handful of private companies to move us through our highly car dependent society and dismantle what little public transit is left.

Yup, totally a good idea and definitely worth it.

They’re assuming that just because they can bullshit legal authorities to get the things on the road, that’s a fait accompli. Once the services is operating and generating income it’s untouchable.

Thing is, they’re going to cause problems that will affect people, they will cause traffic jams, they will piss people off, they will cause accidents. These vehicles are, by design, unattended, sure they have cameras, but, anyone with nondescript clothes and a face covering can sabotage these vehicles without much risk of legal consequence.

The cost of maintaining a fleet of these vehicles in the face of road rage induced sabotage will sink these companies even if they are able to bribe every politician in every major city.

Butt why?

Enclosure of the digital commons. An attempt to at least. I do think that it’s ultimately doomed.

Fundamentally, the internet is an open thing, by the very nature of how it works, thus it is difficult to enclose. Google is more likely to destroy its market share than to fully gate off its user base.

But when all is said and done, the average person will be left to pick up the pieces of the fractured web they leave behind.

There is a very interesting dynamic occurring, where things that didn’t used to be called AI have been rebranded as such, largely so companies can claim they’re “using AI” to make shareholders happy.

I think it behooves all of us to stop referring to things blankety as AI and specify specific technologies and companies as the problem.

There is a difference between opting out of a default feature and having the option to install a plugin.

I can go replace the horn in a car with an air raid siren, but that’s very different than every car coming with an air raid siren you have to turn off.

Maybe some of the obviousness is a sort of camouflage in that if it looks like a fishing scheme, people at YouTube won’t look any deeper. I think the actual goal of the bots is to manipulate the algorithm. Like, most of the time, the obvious bots just get ignored, especially on videos from bigger creators, no reason to put effort in to making them believable.

Like, maybe they comment on video A to show “engagement” with that content, then they go and comment on video B. Fool the algorithm into associating people who engage with video A as the same kind of audience who would engage with Video B. Thus getting the algorithm to recommend video B more often to viewers of Video A. For something like that you wouldn’t need the bots to look real to other commenters, and having them seem like innocuous fishing scam bots might reduce the scrutiny on their activity.

I could see a lot of different reasons to do that. Could be as simple as some shady “Viral marketing consultancies” trying to boost a client’s channel in the algorithm. Could also be something more comprehensive and nefarious, like trying to manipulate social discourse by steering whole demographics towards certain topics or even away from specific topics. I do wonder how much the algorithm could be nudged by an organized bot comment spam ring.

I don’t think you sound paranoid at all, at least not compared to me. Bots are everywhere on social sights and there is a well documented history of different groups using various tactics and strategies to hide the bots or distract from what the bots are doing.

I think there is a pretty big difference between an optional plugin and it being built in by default.

Often times reviewers will get cards before release day without going through the manufacturer, as cards will ship to wear-houses and stores in preparation for launch day, and reviewers can get access to buy the cards early through contacts at those places.

One of the things nvidia did this time was they blocked reviewer’s access to drivers until release day, despite them having the cards through third parties.