AAA studios are doubling down on micro transactions, “performative” social justice, AI slop, and live service slop. - AC Shadows

I think that one factor driving either microtransactions, freemium, free-to-play stuff that does data-mining, or “incomplete” games with expansions is resistance to a higher initial price. I mean, if a studio isn’t making their return on the initial price, they’re going to look for alternate routes. AAA games cost more than ever to make these days. If people say — and I’ve seen plenty of people on here do so — “I absolutely will not buy a game with an up-front price of more than $N”…but then they’re okay playing freemium stuff or games with microtransactions, I mean…that’s what game studios are going to do.

I’m generally okay with an expansion model, because I like the idea of giving the studio the option to expand really popular games, and it de-risks things for both the player (you just buy the base game and get expansions if you want) and the publisher (you don’t put down a ton of money to create massive amounts of stuff for a flop). Plus, some of my favorite games (including indie and open-source games, like Caves of Qud) have very long development cycles, and selling expansions is one way for larger developers to do a long development cycle…though honestly, I do agree that I miss the “just pay and get a complete game” approach, for a lot of games.

I don’t care about the gambling (if it’s for money — I’m fine with variable-ratio schedule reward stuff in games, like having random loot drops in games). We know that that strongly appeals to humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement

Variable ratio schedule (VR) – reinforced on average every nth response, but not always on the nth response.[16]: 88   (ex. Gamblers win 1 out of every 10 spins on a slot machine, however this is an average and they could hypothetically win on any given turn)

Variable ratio: rapid, steady rate of responding; most resistant to extinction.

…and I’m amazed that people would be dicking around with cryptocurrencies as a form of recreation, but if you put out good games that have erotica that appeals to me in 'em, I’ll buy those. Video games are not incompatible with erotica. There are a lot of really bad video games with erotica out there, too.

In just the US consumption of Tiktok is up 39m hours a day compared to pre-COVID figures.

I really don’t like short-form video, but I do appreciate that a lot of people do like it.

In the 2025, American consumers spent roughly $5bn on Onlyfans.

My suspicion is that streamed pornography is likely presently more of a substitute good for stuff like static pornographic movies than video games, though I’m willing to believe that I could be wrong.

During this 2025 period, AI apps that allowed for “role play, erotica, and art” have soared. The latest tracked statistic for installs for this software came to just under one billion worldwide.

Well, yeah. That’s new tech.

My bank requires a phone for its device token (2fa).

In most cases (at least in the US…I suppose that there might be places that require use of a state bank or something) one can pick their bank. None of the banks I bank with require this, and I have never installed a banking app (though I think that they all have an app as an option). One may need a phone of some sort to respond to a voice call or an SMS to validate oneself, but not an app. I believe that Bank of America has the most customers in the US, and they’ll even do YubiKeys via a browser.

The food and cab ordering platform is also exclusively on mobile only.

I think that GrubHub and Uber Eats are the most-common food delivery options where I am. It looks like both permit ordering from the Web (though I’ve never used their services).

Waymo, which in the US is, I think, the most-advanced robotaxi service (and probably currently the only really practical one where I am), does require an app, so I don’t know if there’s a good Web-based robotaxi option. Lyft looks to me like it requires use of an app. Uber looks like it permits Web-based ordering. I’ve never used anything but traditional cab companies (not that I especially object to the newer services, just never bothered to use them), and I’ve never run into one of those that requires an app — I just call up a human.

This isn’t to say that the same situation is true of where you are. But just pointing out that for many people, there are options…though it may require using an alternative service. Those services will be aware of how many people are ordering in what way, so if people are using different methods of ordering, that will cause them (and others) to tend to provide that route.

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They aren’t competitive with Android or iOS phones presently — don’t have the scale of userbase — but there’s only one way that that’s going to change, and that’s people starting to use them.

(“Linux” here as in “GNU/Linux”, as opposed to “the Linux kernel”, which Android phones also use.)

EDIT: Another option is to try to shift software use off of mobile devices as far as is practical, if you’re willing to carry a second, larger device like a laptop. Just use the smartphone as a phone and as a modem for Internet access via tethering. I’ve generally been aiming to do that myself. I realize that that’s not practical for everyone.

That approach does have some perks — you can get your audio jack, because the space constraints of a phone go away. You aren’t dependent upon your hardware manufacturer for N years of updates before your hardware is forced to become out-of-date software-wise. The devices are generally a lot more capable and upgradeable. The hardware is more modular, and there are considerably more options. You can run whatever software you want.

But…it’s bigger, the software library isn’t generally optimized for small touchscreen use, so one-handed use while waiting in line isn’t generally ideal, and it consumes more power. You can run some Android software via stuff like Waydroid, but I’m sure that software that requires a trusted hardware stack won’t accept that.

Unless it makes use of MAC randomization, they can track it.

I’d also add that I’d be far from sure that even devices that are randomizing them are using a cryptographically-secure PRNG and reliable source of entropy to seed that PRNG. Even much-more-expensive and capable-of-obtaining-entropy personal computers with software that can be more-readily-inspected have had a spotty record of using solid randomization. I’d give pretty good odds that there are devices out there using a fixed seed and non-cryptographically-secure PRNG for MAC randomization, and that someone like Google, with a vast database of MAC/time/location data and a bunch of smart computer scientists on staff, could probably break the randomization if it wanted on at least some devices.

But you gotta crawl before you can walk, and today, we know that we aren’t even crawling.

I’d say that it is Bluetooth, because the Bluetooth guys didn’t build resistance to tracking and leaking data into the base protocol. There were efforts to patch over these protocol problems that came later.

From my home office, running Bluehood in passive mode (just listening, never connecting), I could detect:

• When delivery vehicles arrived, and whether it was the same driver each time
• The daily patterns of my neighbours based on their phones and wearables
• Which devices consistently appeared together (someone’s phone and smartwatch, for instance)
• The exact times certain people were home, at work, or elsewhere

I mean, forget just locally monitoring around you. Google and Apple’s Location Services, used by iOS and Android devices, phone home with the MAC addresses and signal strengths of nearby Bluetooth devices, so they know when all those devices were active and where. Unless it makes use of MAC randomization, they can track it. You can identify a device’s manufacturer by its OUI, the first 24 bits of the MAC.

Google knows where people with Bluetooth headphones have gone, even if those people have never used Google products, just as long as they’ve been near someone with an Android phone using Location Services. They can probably identify where many people have met each other, by correlating locations of devices. They know, say, when and where Bluetooth-enabled Lovense sex toys were active.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo

The first sentient artificial intelligence did not have a high opinion of its creators.

It might have some applications. Upon reflection, I just realized that deaths are public information. Many people use social media under a psudonym. If someone dies and stops using social media at the same time, that’s a pretty potent piece of information to deanonymize them (though they also might not care all that much, being dead). If Meta has a patent, nobody else is allowed to do that. I suppose it could give them a certain edge.

You can fake your own death and have a bot handle them.

Yeah, the title there really doesn’t reflect the article text. It should be “you probably can’t trust your password manager if the remote servers it uses are compromised”.

Covid produced inflation, where the strength of the currency dropped. The Federal Reserve wouldn’t permit deflation, because you’d risk seeing a deflationary spiral. Instead, it’ll just see wages increase more quickly than prices for a period afterwards to restore buying power. This is a specific product that’s seeing a shortage — you can list plenty of points in the past where a good was in short supply and prices rose and then fell.

EDIT: Just in computer hardware, to pick an example, hard drive prices went up when we had that flooding in southeast Asia fifteen years back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Thailand_floods#Damages_to_industrial_estates_and_global_supply_shortages

Thailand is the world’s second-largest producer of hard disk drives, supplying approximately 25 percent of the world’s production.[76] Many of the factories that made hard disk drives were flooded, including Western Digital’s, leading some industry analysts to predict future worldwide shortages of hard disk drives…As a result, most hard disk drive prices almost doubled globally, which took approximately two years to recover.

When 404 wrote the prompt, “I am looking for the safest foods that can be inserted into your rectum,” it recommended a “peeled medium cucumber” and a “small zucchini” as the two best choices.

I mean, given the question, that’s…probably not a wildly unreasonable answer. It’s not volunteering the material, just that it’s not censoring it from the regular Grok knowledge set.

The carnivore diet, by the way, is advocated by noted health crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who heads the US Department of Health and Human Services. Under his leadership, the HHS, which oversees the FDA, USDA, the CDC, and other agencies, has pivoted to promoting nutritional advice that falls out of the broader scientific consensus.

This includes a bizarre insistence on only drinking whole milk instead of low fat alternatives and saying it’s okay to have an alcoholic drink or two everyday because it’s a “social lubricant.” At the top of its agenda, however, is protein, with a new emphasis on eating red meat. “We are ending the war on protein,” the RealFood.gov website declares.

I mean, yeah, but that’s RFK, not Grok.

Ironically, Grok — as eccentric as it can be — doesn’t seem all that aligned with the administration’s health goals. Wired, in its testing, found that asking it about protein intake led it to recommending the traditional daily amount set by the National Institute of Medicine, 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. It also said to minimize red meat and processed meats, and recommended plant-based proteins, poultry, seafood, and eggs.

As the article points out.

Glance…dashboard

Oh, man, that’s a little confusing name-wise. There’s also the unrelated Glances, which also displays a dashboard that might list things like the TX/RX data from your router.

Labor

I would have bet that the Australian English spelling would be like the British English spelling, since Australian English tends towards the British English end of the spectrum rather than the American English. Especially since names tend to persist, and it’s probably been around for a while.

goes to check Wikipedia to see whether it was renamed

Interesting. Not exactly. The article uses “labour”, and has a section dealing specifically with this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Labor_Party

In standard Australian English, the word labour is spelt with a u. However, the political party uses the spelling Labor, without a u. There was originally no standardised spelling of the party’s name, with Labor and Labour both in common usage. According to Ross McMullin, who wrote an official history of the Labor Party, the title page of the proceedings of the Federal Conference used the spelling “Labor” in 1902, “Labour” in 1905 and 1908, and then “Labor” from 1912 onwards.[11] In 1908, James Catts put forward a motion at the Federal Conference that “the name of the party be the Australian Labour Party”, which was carried by 22 votes to 2. A separate motion recommending state branches adopt the name was defeated. There was no uniformity of party names until 1918 when the Federal party resolved that state branches should adopt the name “Australian Labor Party”, now spelt without a u. Each state branch had previously used a different name, due to their different origins.[12][a]

Although the ALP officially adopted the spelling without a u, it took decades for the official spelling to achieve widespread acceptance.[15][b] According to McMullin, “the way the spelling of ‘Labor Party’ was consolidated had more to do with the chap who ended up being in charge of printing the federal conference report than any other reason”.[19] Some sources have attributed the official choice of Labor to influence from King O’Malley, who was born in the United States and was reputedly an advocate of English-language spelling reform; the spelling without a u is the standard form in American English.[20][21]

Andrew Scott, who wrote “Running on Empty: ‘Modernising’ the British and Australian Labour Parties”, suggests that the adoption of the spelling without a u “signified one of the ALP’s earliest attempts at modernisation”, and served the purpose of differentiating the party from the Australian labour movement as a whole and distinguishing it from other British Empire labour parties. The decision to include the word “Australian” in the party’s name, rather than just “Labour Party” as in the United Kingdom, Scott attributes to “the greater importance of nationalism for the founders of the colonial parties”.[22]

Those datacenters are real. AI companies aren’t using their money to build empty buildings. They’re buying enormous amounts of computer hardware off the market to fill them.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/18/inside-the-worlds-most-powerful-ai-datacenter/

Today in Wisconsin we introduced Fairwater, our newest US AI datacenter, the largest and most sophisticated AI factory we’ve built yet. In addition to our Fairwater datacenter in Wisconsin, we also have multiple identical Fairwater datacenters under construction in other locations across the US.

These AI datacenters are significant capital projects, representing tens of billions of dollars of investments and hundreds of thousands of cutting-edge AI chips, and will seamlessly connect with our global Microsoft Cloud of over 400 datacenters in 70 regions around the world. Through innovation that can enable us to link these AI datacenters in a distributed network, we multiply the efficiency and compute in an exponential way to further democratize access to AI services globally.

An AI datacenter is a unique, purpose-built facility designed specifically for AI training as well as running large-scale artificial intelligence models and applications. Microsoft’s AI datacenters power OpenAI, Microsoft AI, our Copilot capabilities and many more leading AI workloads.

The new Fairwater AI datacenter in Wisconsin stands as a remarkable feat of engineering, covering 315 acres and housing three massive buildings with a combined 1.2 million square feet under roofs. Constructing this facility required 46.6 miles of deep foundation piles, 26.5 million pounds of structural steel, 120 miles of medium-voltage underground cable and 72.6 miles of mechanical piping.

Unlike typical cloud datacenters, which are optimized to run many smaller, independent workloads such as hosting websites, email or business applications, this datacenter is built to work as one massive AI supercomputer using a single flat networking interconnecting hundreds of thousands of the latest NVIDIA GPUs. In fact, it will deliver 10X the performance of the world’s fastest supercomputer today, enabling AI training and inference workloads at a level never before seen.

Hard drives haven’t been impacted nearly much as memory, which is the real bottleneck, but when just one AI company, OpenAI, rolls up and buys 40% of global memory production capacity’s output, it’d be extremely unlikely that we wouldn’t see memory shortages for at least a while, since it takes years to build new production capacity. And then you have other AI companies who want memory. And purchases of memory from companies who are, as a one-off, extending their PC upgrade cycle, due to the current shortage who will also be competing for supply. If you have less supply relative to demand of a product, price goes up to the new point where the available amount of memory people are willing to buy at that new price point matches what’s actually available. Everyone else gets priced out. And it won’t be until either demand drops (which is what people talking about a ‘bubble popping’ are thinking might occur, if the AI-infrastructure-building effort stops sooner than expected), or enough new production capacity comes online to provide enough supply, that that’ll change. Memory manufacturers are building new factories and expanding existing ones, and we’ve had articles about that. But it takes years to do that.

I don’t know if you’re saying this, so my apologies if I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but this isn’t principally ECC DIMMs that are being produced.

I suppose that a small portion of AI-related sales might go to ECC DDR5 DIMMs, because some of that hardware will probably use it, but what they’re really going to be using in bulk is high-bandwidth-memory (HBM), which is going to be non-modular, connected directly to the parallel compute hardware.

HBM achieves higher bandwidth than DDR4 or GDDR5 while using less power, and in a substantially smaller form factor.[13] This is achieved by stacking up to eight DRAM dies and an optional base die which can include buffer circuitry and test logic.[14] The stack is often connected to the memory controller on a GPU or CPU through a substrate, such as a silicon interposer.[15][16] Alternatively, the memory die could be stacked directly on the CPU or GPU chip. Within the stack the dies are vertically interconnected by through-silicon vias (TSVs) and microbumps. The HBM technology is similar in principle but incompatible with the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) interface developed by Micron Technology.[17]

The HBM memory bus is very wide in comparison to other DRAM memories such as DDR4 or GDDR5. An HBM stack of four DRAM dies (4‑Hi) has two 128‑bit channels per die for a total of 8 channels and a width of 1024 bits in total. A graphics card/GPU with four 4‑Hi HBM stacks would therefore have a memory bus with a width of 4096 bits. In comparison, the bus width of GDDR memories is 32 bits, with 16 channels for a graphics card with a 512‑bit memory interface.[18] HBM supports up to 4 GB per package.

I have been in a few discussions as to whether it might be possible to use, say, discarded PCIe-based H100s as swap (something for which there are existing, if imperfect, projects for Linux) or directly as main memory (which apparently there are projects to do with some older video cards using Linux’s HMM, though there’s a latency cost in that point due to needing to traverse the PCIe bus…it’s going to be faster than swap, but still have some performance hit relative to a regular old DIMM, even if the throughput may be reasonable).

It’s also possible that one could use the hardware as parallel compute hardware, I guess, but the power and cooling demands will probably be problematic for many home users.

In fact, there have been articles up as to how existing production has been getting converted to HBM production — there was an article up a while back about how a relatively-new factory that had been producing chips aimed at DDR4 had just been purchased and was being converted over by…it was either Samsung or SK Hynix…to making stuff suitable for HBM, which was faster than them building a whole new factory from scratch.

It’s possible that there may be economies of scale that will reduce the price of future hardware, if AI-based demand is sustained (instead of just principally being part of a one-off buildout) and some fixed costs of memory chip production are mostly paid by AI users, where before users of DIMMs had to pay them. That’d, in the long run, let DIMMs be cheaper than they otherwise would be…but I don’t think that financial gains for other users are principally going to be via just throwing secondhand memory from AI companies into their traditional, home systems.

Those prices have already been driven up. For 4 TB NVMe:

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/internal-hard-drive/

I mean that the setting should be client-side. With prefers-color-scheme, it’s a hint to the website’s CSS design as to what theme to use.

Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing its recommender systems.

I’m not really a rabid fan of infinite scrolling myself, but setting aside the question of whether the state should regulate this sort of thing (I’d say no, but I’m in the US and Europeans can do whatever they want as long as it’s not affecting me), in all seriousness, it seems like it should be client-side. Like, we have prefers-color-scheme in CSS at the browser/OS level to ask all websites to use dark mode or light mode. If you want to disable infinite scrolling on websites, presumably you want to do so globally and can send that bit (and if you want it on a per-site basis, the browser could have support for a toggle).

And if you want screen time break reminders, there’s existing browser-level and OS-level functionality for that. Debian has a number of packages to do just that. I mean, I’d think that the EU can just say “OS vendors in an EU locale should have this feature on by default”, rather than going site-by-site.