Of course a person is going to be better than AI. The whole point of having voice actors is they know how to actually act, to bring some kind of clear intention and emotion into their roles with all their own little personal voice quirks. You don't get that with generating fake AI voices.

Well said.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: pb

Quoting: Cyril

Quoting: pbMy son is on manjaro and his system breaks on every update. But apparently arch is "too complicated". 😆

You're exaggerating, don't you? ^^

Maybe a bit. 😇 But he's updating 1-2 times a year and there are always some conflicts and I need to help him fix it. ;-) Last time I rebuilt the mirror list so hopefully the next update will go more smoothly.

That's probably part of the problem for him. Manjaro needs to be updated more frequently than once or twice a year. Also, turning off the AUR prior to updates also helps to prevent breakage, I'd found.

I used Manjaro for about two years before I left for Pop!_OS (and later, Linux Mint). Support for legacy Nvidia GPUs was very poor and management had a very crappy attitude towards its community/users. For me, the proposed opt-out telemetry was the final straw.

I think the big part of the problem for me was not realizing that a rolling or semi-rolling distro is not really all that ideal for legacy hardware. Old hardware needs a more stable, less cutting-edge, environment, in my opinion.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: CaldathrasThe misnomer "AI" is just a marketing label used to inaccurately promote LLM. In my opinion, when the backlash began against LLMs and their objectionable social, legal, economical and environmental impacts, it was convenient for the spin doctors to confuse the issue by throwing translation, grammar checking, spell checking and other older technologies that pre-date LLMs under the same label. How could we object to these uses of "AI"? We don't. We object to LLMs and how they are being promoted and presently utilized. Personally, I also object to the label "AI" because LLMs are any but intelligent.

My two cents.

Thanks, Liam, for your determined stance.

Spell checking alone isn’t enough. As a Czech speaker, I find that having an LLM correct Czech works much better. Czech is a stupidly complicated language with many illogical exceptions, so we at least need the ability to guess the context for a correct correction. Spell‑checkers were terrible before LLMs.
The same goes for English when you can’t formulate a sentence correctly. My English is terrible, so using an LLM to correct it is very useful. Can a spell checker do that for me?

No, but a "grammar checker" can.

I know I'm just getting technical on you but a "spell checker" is not the tool you are using. What you are using is a "translator". This would be a much more complex tool that utilizes "grammar checking" for both Czech and English. Spelling would be a minor component by comparison. I doubt there would be much need for an LLM in a spell checker.

Word processors, in my experience, had also been doing a pretty good job with grammar checking (with English) before the advent of LLMs. I can't speak to translation, as I've rarely had the need in the past. I haven't really looked into it, so I don't know how much of an impact LLMs have had on grammar checkers and translators.

Whatever tool you are using as a translator is doing a brilliant job.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: Liam DaweOpenTTD has had free graphics and music available for a very long time. Using content from TTD is entirely optional.

That's what I thought. This definitely smells of Atari going "make people buy our game to play yours, or we'll DMCA you off of Steam and GOG".

Oh, I don't know about that. It's certainly plausible but not the only explanation. The OpenTTD team may have chosen to do so preemptively to avoid any potential complaint from Atari. Another possibility is that Steam & GOG may have asked them to do so, as well. The norm with these open-source executible projects (and total overhaul mod bundles) has been to offer them only to those that own the original game on the same store. This change puts OpenTTD in line with that approach.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The misnomer "AI" is just a marketing label used to inaccurately promote LLM. In my opinion, when the backlash began against LLMs and their objectionable social, legal, economical and environmental impacts, it was convenient for the spin doctors to confuse the issue by throwing translation, grammar checking, spell checking and other older technologies that pre-date LLMs under the same label. How could we object to these uses of "AI"? We don't. We object to LLMs and how they are being promoted and presently utilized. Personally, I also object to the label "AI" because LLMs are anything but intelligent.

My two cents.

Thanks, Liam, for your determined stance.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: CaldathrasYou are assuming that most people even care or know what operating system is on the device.

You’re putting words in my mouth. What I’m assuming is that if their devices annoy them, they will complain to vendors, and the vendors will lobby against the law when the customer service it requires or the bad press it generates become too much of a burden/liability.

Not at all, you did write

Quoting: SalvatosLinux runs virtually everything that's not a PC.

I simply pointed out the most people are not going to care about the underlying operating system on those devices. The discussion, after all, was that Linux and Linux alone would inspire a voter uprising.

I'm not saying that a voter uprising won't happen, just that if it does, it won't be Linux that inspires it. They won't care about the operating system, just the inconvenience the law is creating in their lives.

I can't see complaints to vendors initiating such political change. If the vendors had that much influence, the bill never would have been tabled in the first place. I don't think the vendors will care -- such laws are rarely retroactive.

Myself, based on the acceptance of the Microsoft Account requirement for Win11 and everything else the Tech Giants impose on them, I'm guessing that the California voters will just roll over and accept it. I could be wrong.

Do voters in California have the ability to initiate a mandatory referendum, that, if successful, the politicians are required to implement?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: g000h

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.

This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users. Linux is not significant enough to overturn this law. Besides, the majority of eligible voters are indifferent sheep ... they are more likely to just accept or ignore the overreach.

Well the alternative is just giving up and result in Linux dying. Is that what you want? BTW California state includes Big Tech utopia Silicon Valley. Love to see Google and Meta trying to run without access to open source.

It appears that Meta is responsible for causing this political upheaval - Lobbying politicians in these areas. (Meta gets to avoid big fines if it passes age verification onto operating systems and app stores.)

I'm not sure how we went from Linux not likely to be the tipping point to inspire a voter uprising to Linux being gone forever if it doesn't. What does Silicon Valley or Open Source have to do with it? Linus Torvalds lives in Portland. The Linux Foundation can be moved out of California if necessary. For that matter, so could Google or Meta. Many Linux distros are not even developed and maintained in the US. Arch Linux is Canadian by origin. Linux Mint is based in Ireland. Canonical (Ubuntu) is based in the UK. Debian appears to be truly global. Almost every country has its own unique flavor of Linux. California is hardly a threat to the future of Linux.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Meta was involved.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.

This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users.

They are. Linux runs virtually everything that's not a PC. What types of devices will fall under each law's purview? Smart watches? Routers? CCTV systems? Car entertainment systems? The farther it reaches, the more it hurts people's convenience and risks overcoming their complacency.

Certainly, the broader its effect, the more frustrating it will become. But it is not Linux that will be the tipping point. You are assuming that most people even care or know what operating system is on the device. Some of those devices likely already have age-gating tools built-in. From what I've read, M$ is already age-gating Windows 11 via their Microsoft Account requirement. When I set up such an account for my employer to enable extended update support on Windows 10, providing her birthdate was required. My employer wasn't the least bit fussed. If they've already accepted it on Windows, why would they object to Linux? Don't underestimate voter complacency, is all I am saying.

FYI - incidentally, I am not in support of this becoming law in any way, shape or form.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Defender of the Crown is an absolute classic originally released on the Amiga

I remember this game! I played it on my Amiga 500. Good times.

Of course, I was legally an adult, not a child, then ...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: JarmerAs a father of two very small children I absolutely love this and hope they push it even harder. I have absolutely loved games my entire life. I want my kids too as well. But: I have no patience or tolerance for these predatory parasites that attempt to prey on children with dark patterns and outright gambling.

This is really no different than the North American Saturday Morning Children's Shows from the eighties and nineties. They were just half-hour long commercials designed to teach children to be good consumers. Almost all the shows had toys and other collectables that they pushed on children. Nevermind the cereal commercials run by the networks between the breaks. The exploiters just shifted spheres when their target market did.

Fortunately, my parents had a hard heart regarding this kind of manipulation and were not moved by their children's pleadings.

View this comment - View article - View full comments