Andrew Sayman @gnu_lorien@ourislandgeorgia.net

"The Netheads were right: Technological self-determination is at odds with the natural imperatives of tech businesses. They make more money when they take away our freedom—our freedom to speak, to leave, to connect."

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

Listen, if you watched "The Patriot" and didn't complain about how fictionalized it was I don't want to hear from you about "Hamilton."

"Notably, however, none of the Big Tech company CEOs now overseeing layoffs appear to have been hit with any change to their compensation or title."

Probably the most important line in the article.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/22/tech/big-tech-pandemic-hiring-layoffs/index.html

I'm really annoyed that these headlines are saying "revocation" and "de-authorization" as if they have the same meaning. The text of the article at least gets into the difference: de-authorization is meant to prevent downgrade attacks whereas revocation is something they have no right to do in the 1.0a license (in the US at least).

What I find interesting is that the only part of this license people seem to like actually expands WotC's ability to terminate the license. In particular, they add three new ways that WotC can terminate your license that didn't exist in 1.0a:

• Illegal conduct. For instance, if you have gay characters in your content and release it in Russia they can terminate your license.
• No hateful content or conduct. "We have the sole right to decide what conduct or content is hateful, and you covenant that you will not contest any such determination via any suit or other legal action." Gives them sole power to terminate and you explicitly waive any rights you have to contest it.
• The Madison Square Garden clause in section 7bi. Basically, if you take WotC to court over something like the -- extremely common -- way in which RPG companies claim rights they don't have, your licenses can be terminated.

So even the parts of this new license that sound good are constructed as traps. "No hateful content sounds great! Giving up my legal rights to contest contract termination? Absolutely not."

https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-creative-commons-licen-1850008294

The sad truth is that the least important lie George Santos is told is that he never performed as a drag queen. That's going to be the one the Republicans finally care about. Thus exemplifying why people lie about that and keep it a secret.

Only 1.61 million dollars? What a joke.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/13/1148379013/the-trump-organization-has-been-ordered-to-pay-1-61-million-for-tax-fraud

"But that sort of thinking was in tension with my work. Over the years, I have helped leaders in business, politics, and other fields learn to lead on sustainability. These leaders can then change their organizations’ and constituencies’ cultures and practices to embrace sustainability. Even though corporate and policy choices matter more than those of any individual, I was still curious to see if I could make my own practices more sustainable. Personal responsibility matters to me, so polluting less motivates me; it's a small thing, but one I can control, even if it's important to make policy and political changes, too."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/i-disconnected-from-the-electric-grid-for-8-months-in-manhattan/

The OGL is a contract. Both sides have to agree to the severability of a contract. In general, one party cannot simply declare a contract you have agreed to invalid.

Section 9 doesn't grant Wizards the right to do this either. That clause is about updating the license. It's a way to opt-in to a new contract, not a way to sever the one you've already agreed to. If Wizards were to make OGL 1.0a an unauthorized license, it would mean that you couldn't relicense other OGL versions into that one anymore. Each of those things are still licensed under their original terms.

The reason they want to do this is because they screwed up and didn't say that you can update to a later version. I was shocked to see that the upgrade section didn't contain this. Saying it that way is how the GPL gets around the idea of people "downgrading" the license in order to do something the original licensers don't want.

Having said all of that, RPG companies regularly claim all sorts of rights they don't really have. They often pull a sort of "protection racket" move where they coerce you into a contract with them by threatening to sue you in a way that will not hold up in court. It's not really surprising to see them trying to do this with a new version of their license.

https://opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html

Republicans are such clown-shoes.

"You can't go after Trump for having stolen documents from the White House! It's not even a crime!"

"Oh Biden stole documents from the White House? That's a crime! Where's the special council!"

My god do you guys remember when these people at least pretended they believed in equal protection under the law?

Just finished watching The Menu and I thought it was amazing.

Oh goody... it happened where I live... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/facial-recognition-error-led-to-wrongful-arrest-of-black-man-report-says/

Since the current conversation is about ChatGP3 I realize I forgot to explicitly put writers on that list of those whose jobs are already at risk. Writers get cut out of a lot in games, especially in procedural games. One of my favorite websites to play on is all about transforming that sort of writing job into more of a programing job: https://perchance.org/welcome

I know it's not exactly the same because the quality of some of these tools has improved a lot in both a short time period and in spaces that most people don't see.

It's interesting to me to hear the opinions of people that see AI as an emerging threat to their jobs. I work in games where the threat is way beyond emerging. There's an entire genre of game named for how it uses AI to generate more content than originally created: Roguelike. If that really goes all of the way back to its namesake -- Rogue -- then maybe I've never been alive where AI wasn't an emerged threat to employment in my industry?

It's interesting to compare and contrast though. One way of looking at procedural content is that lots of LDs and other artist types didn't get hired. Another way to look at it is that procedural content enabled the rise of indie games to the prominence they have today. I think the difference in perspective does go back to a persistent thesis I've had here: The problem is capitalism, not AI. As in, nobody feels ripped off that two programmers in their basement hit it big on a game. People feel ripped off when two-faced corporations steal their copyright works with the left hand while building AI systems to enforce their "own" copyrights with the right.

The major, terrible tech walled gardens have done such a good job of convincing people that things shouldn't interoperate that it's hard to explain to people what federation is. For my generation it's easier to explain it as "like email." That's because most of us still care about email and have used email enough to find the idea of non-federated email ridiculous. We accept that sort of garbage all over the place though.

For the next gen nobody really used email enough for them to use that as an anchor for how things could be. They have no concept of a world where the data is there's and communication is federated by default.

Gotta remember that there's a season 2 of Leverage Redemption

Today is the day I go through my email and archive everything. I think the stack is about two thousand deep. Wish me luck...

Christmas is spooky time!