Agree that it's not going to be a binary shift. The tech does look promising for at least rotor sails, but that's an improvement which also demands use of traditional powerplants to drive the rotors ofc. Still worth investigating imo considering the shipping industry is the area of the world that still contributes highest to carbon output and is sort of an "untouchable" industry due to criticality. If cheap enough this could help while we wait for e.g. "greener" fuel or other things to develop. But yeah, to underscore further, not like shipping will look like my sailing yacht any time soon.
Somewhat absurd imo seeing two of these types of sites being the top posts. But as they say the market speaks. What would be more fascinating imo is to track the average article shift from removal over time.
Wow this is inspiring. I would love to see a very similar visualization for Stockholm, Sweden. I think there is a beauty in seeing a summarized history of expansion, and in reality I can't help but think this is a very fast population boom. One I am sure most metro areas would struggle with. Makes a lot of criticism of LA planning in hindsight feel very unfair.
Enforcement can be better, but I'm gonna give grace given how recently it was imposed. It's easy to point at extreme levels of enforcement being a key part of any regulation, but I have seen the breadth of the EU's scope and what needs to be balanced. Quite often I find that nonaction against compliance violations falls into the following:
- Lack of resources
- Lack of real consumer impact
- Awaiting legislation meant to clarify or strengthen impact of enforcement.
The article to me doesn't offer enough to justify any shout of doing anything different at the moment, rather it's just that they failed an audit. If they failed an audit and coupled this to swaths of consumer complaints, sure, but every EU member has a clear agency for consumer complaint, and I don't buy it that it is hard for consumers to report violations, it is far more likely in this case that they just don't care for the violations this particular group cares more about (like the links to Temu. I suspect a consumer doesn't care if it actually works still in practice, but we'd need surveys to confirm).
Consumer-replaceable batteries will be one area that WILL be a hot issue for consumers, so I would bet we will see much stronger reaction once that rule comes into effect.
> but every EU member has a clear agency for consumer complaint, and I don't buy it that it is hard for consumers to report violations,
The problem is the response is toothless. I reported Amazon for a violation to ICO in February 2019, received an automated email a month later asking for a swathe of information, replied to that, and 3 months later got an update that it would be assigned a Case Officer. That was the last time I heard from them on that matter.
Meanwhile, my local council will respond to pretty much _everything_ within 24-48 hours. I’ve reported all sorts of “small” things and when it comes up naturally friends are surprised that the council did anything. They’ve never actually tried reporting the issues, and assume it’s all fruitless.
The company that looks like a medieval food shop with meat warming in the sun and a big sign that says "caveat emptor" and manned by a slave with very dirty hands. The fact that it still operates in the EU is prove that more tough punishments are needed for corporations that push fraud, dangerous products, abuse of monopolistic position, etc. Amazon in a nutshell.
I do see some isolated improvements whenever I travel to Germany (mostly to Frankfurt, but what is pain other than Frankfurt am Main), but yeah I sympathize here, and do hope the pushes toward better systems continue
This sort of clarification to be quite honest makes alot of your prose ring very hollow around there being distinct classes. In the beginning I will say that you very much make it clear you believe parts of your experience were closer to art as a way to frame the rest of the points you think about.
You could have avoided the programmer classification entirely here while staying consistent, but instead seem to be distancing yourself from again, your own framing just because you chose a different path which I don't understand at all.
"Russian schoolboy chess" as Bobby Fisher would have called it, and while he detested this style of approach, it is far closer to how chess is played, where the moves come from rigorous analysis and application of engine discovery than by the beauty of the game (which is ofc why there is Fisher-chess because he felt it kept the artistic side)
I can appreciate the sentiments the author has to their own career, but personally it doesn't resonate with me. I'm a firm believer in the idea that systems you intend to be used by others (imo) must be driven by measurable, consistent, and constrained processes that are dictated by goals of the project. Sometimes this involves subjective judgements which are then later corrected as data is collected. If we are overloading the term art to mean anything where there is subjective judgement applied, or similarly where there is any enjoyment of a process, okay sure I can get behind it. But if we mean subjectivity in expression of logic and rule, then no I do not agree that this is the reason we should be more thoughtful of LLM-based codegen tooling (of which there are many more reasons to avoid it in many contexts which do not require going into the subjective aspects).
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> These are true programmers who write code regardless of income
I also - without any hesitation - detest this type of bullshit. Get off your high horse. Programmers are programmers, there is no reason to devolve arguments that divide into classes for the sake of adding emotional weight to one side.
Oh boy. So... I have some ties still to the FAA and its ATC staff despite living in Sweden and This article is just painting a picture I've seen time and time again when there are staffing woes.
I'm gonna ignore the gamer hype because that's just recruitment that has happened even in other admins (Level Up campaign was the last one in 2022 or so)
They got near to their quota in the training pipeline but it's not like training as most think about where someone can just study hard. Going to the Academy (there's only one in OKC and congress will almost always shut down ideas of opening another elsewhere) is not like a guarantee that someone intelligent or hardworking will pass like in uni. If historic stats are any indicator we will see a ton of washouts there (30%+) and then they need to qualify as a CPC (certified professional controller) in which time they may also wash out while training for their facility which the article didn't actually touch on. The bottleneck is still this process and until that 2000 converts to CPCs I'm not going to be raising hell or singing praises. Great that more are passing the ATSA and going to the academy, but that's step 0.
Not like any of this is Duffy's fault but as we say here: comes with the title man. I really would like to see more staff get there so best of luck to all the candidates, given the amount of OT I've seen (not just from facilities that game it mind you) the FAA needs all the controllers it can get.
Various reasons. A lot comes down to the individual facility requirements and there are special needs at each. LOAs to memorize, and unique challenges like with PCTs control of airspace around DC where they run extremely compressed finals to fit all the traffic.
ZHU is also notoriously hard for some (weather is a big factor) and then you do ofc have some not so great historic trends of intentionally trying to wash trainees so OT can be guarded for the CPCs (N90 was infamously known for this but seems to have quelled in latest years)
Shortly said the job is not cookie cutter even after the academy and you need to certify on all positions to be a CPC at your chosen facility. There's levels to each btw up to 12 being the busiest. When you wash there's a chance to retrain and go to another facility as well and there are NATCA (controller union) approved processes to transfer, but yeah many just change jobs after that.
I've worked in the industry and agree with the parent. This person hasn't worked in the industry.
AI is a bad for the industry for a few reasons:
Players hate it. You think the vitriol over "asset store flips" is bad? AI is seen by players as lazy and low quality.
Copyright is uncertain. IP matters a lot to studios. Until that's settled, it's caution.
Art is never the bottleneck in games. It's why so much DLC is cosmetic items. Artists finish and gotta be making more stuff, but the rest of the studio is still powering through the final feature list.
Games are perceived as expressive, artistic, and creative works. Everyone is working together to build something with their human identity stamped in it. This is what we're making, together. The moment you invite slop in, the product isn't art anymore. It's just a product. Sure, maybe shovelware titles will use AI, but audiences will know.
The quality of AI assets is pretty mid. They feel samey and tacky. No one wants to play games that feel like the average game. They want games that are novel or familiar in unusual ways.
It's expensive to even try. Studios run on razor thin margins and tight deadlines. You want to spend two months on some spike to see if AI might pay off? Good luck, we'll go bankrupt.
Production schedules have orders, estimates, and processes. People do stuff in a particular order and timeframe. Disrupting a machine that works and replacing it with a machine that may work is a risk. Best case it pays off, worse case it's development hell, worst case it's a canceled game.
Worker solidarity. It's thin in game dev, but it's growing. There's a sense that the top is keeping the profit, and AI is a management driven tool to keep the worker suppressed. It's not universal, but it's present.
There's probably a dozen more reasons. Cost of tokens, tracking provenance (did this artist copy another artists work is really really important to be able to prove), high degree of change in AI ecosystem right now disrupting tool chains, it's uncertain how the market will react in the long term to games with AI assets (gamedev is a conservative industry). Etc.
I've read 'Blood, Sweat and Pixels' and it seems that game dev is grinding for 10 hours days, 7 days a week for months to meet stupid deadlines and then having zero job security or profit share. Does that about sum it up?
LLMs are going to make meeting deadlines more obtainable (or just move the goal post on deadlines so you still have to do more while working the same hours).
This stuff is going to hit for indie devs, one or two man shows, working part time with no budget. The first one to get a smash hit, which will be because of the game play dynamic not the content, with 100% AI coding and be the proof of concept that will change the whole game. Its great for indie devs. No so great for AAA who will actually have to start having original ideas, not just "What if we make another FPS that copies X and Y"
After those indie devs start to make some cash they will spend it on original art. Not for moral reasons, but as you say, for originality, which even for humans is difficult these days.
AI doomers are looking at this wrong. Its the democratization of the game industry from the AAA monopolies. Platforms like Steam have made this possible.
No, game dev is not 70 hour weeks most of the time. When it is it's called crunch, and it's increasingly uncommon. Not as rare as it should be, but still, getting less.
Agree, there should be profit share and should be ownership and job security. Thats true in all jobs, tbh. Good things for a union to fight for.
LLMs won't change the ability to hit deadlines because the problem is that deadlines are being set without consulting the teams. And a lot of game dev is finding the fun - experimenting, basically. Am LLM cannot tell you if a game is fun, only playing it can. You need time to do that.
And indie devs don't need it. Balatro, Meccha Chameleon, Peak, Silksong, Megabonk, Yap Yap, etc. There's so many incredible indie games coming out and making waves, building the games their studios can build with the funds they have. They are making art, not slop. And people love them for it.
You think Vampire Survivors is technically or artistically difficult when it came out? The bottleneck isn't making the game. Indie devs with no skills but good ideas can already make their games with great tools and little effort these days. Games are already democratized.
Yeah, but a LLM can help you bang out 10 variations on a dynamic and figure out if its fun before committing to production code. You can iterate faster and your not tempted to get attached to the code.
If there is something smaller than indie, then LLM will allow them to get off the ground with a smaller/no team.
There is no practical argument against something that makes every aspect of a job easier.
The honest truth is that ppl are scared all their years of blood and sweat are for nought, but that just isn't true. The only way they will find that out is if they just give it a go and embrace it.
Thanks. It's hard as an outsider to evaluate the counters when you have nothing but vague criticism of the comment. I think you laid out the reasons clearly, thanks for taking the effort.
Making games is hard! All the flaws and limitations of AI can't be handwaved away like they can with business software, the CRUD app shovelware that gets posted here daily. Or with passages of text that look valid on the surface. There's a reason Amazon and Google failed to get meaningfully into gaming, it's because it's something that can't be bought. The more deeply hands on you've been with making games, the less optimistic you're likely to be about automating game dev. Surely individual slop assets are making their way into a game at a low level but that's different than the vague grand vision of "Player directed assets or procedural world creation, dynamic quests" etc.
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