Huh. I'd have assumed that Fortnite was one of those things that was just gonna keep on making All The Money, but I guess not. Really sucks for all those devs; that's a fairly staggering amount of people to be left without a job, into a market which doesn't seem replete with other options. Like other folks here, I'm not especially fond of Epic the company, but as always it's a shame that the people bearing the brunt of stuff like this tends to be the feet-on-the-ground devs.

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Quoting: CorbenIRC was never gone... it's now libera.chat after the freenode takeover

Yeah, I still use IRC actively on a very regular basis, and I've still got a not-quite-disingenuous opinion that no other internet chat system has managed to eclipse it. Though with less rose-tinted glasses I'd have to acknowledge that IRC still has many problems of its own compared to the kind of administrative capabilities available in its newer competitors (not to mention its essential non-"richness" of the text it shuttles around the system). Still, the fundamental service remains, IMO, one of the best.

That Freenode -> Libera thing is actually a wonderful example. Freenode got shitty with a sort-of hostile takeover thing, and within a week or so it was Business As Usual at Libera. Folks had to re-register nicks, some channels got renamed a bit, some channels jumped ship to places like OFTC, and not everything was perfect, but the sysops still all had their familiar tools they'd been using for years, and mostly all users had to do was update a hostname. In the end, everyone's day-to-day experience remained virtually unchanged, just on a different network.

Anyway, I also feel compelled to point out that Libera is hardly the only bastion keeping IRC alive, though it's one that Linuxfolk are likely to be familiar with.

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Quoting: JarmerOMG I love this so much because it will destroy discord. YESSSSSS I ragehate discord so much so anything that takes measures to destroy it is the best thing ever.

Heh, while I don't hate Discord with the same fervor as you, I am certainly not a fan. Perhaps this'll end up encouraging more people to start adopting open platforms for online discussion, over corporate-controlled walled gardens! Though through the cynical eye of historical observation, I think it's more likely that the majority will just grumble about it and acquiesce anyway. Alas!

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Quoting: KimyrielleNot sure if you are working in the industry, but mandated AI tool use is pretty much the norm now.

Heh, I'm certainly aware of the zeitgeist, but I admit that I'm not really up on the kinds of requirements frequently popping up in job listings at the moment. Though I still maintain that, norm or not, the wording in that job posting points to a disturbing prioritization. CI/CD should be a requirement. AI Tools should be a bonus. If the tools are as good as they're supposed to be, they should sell themselves and people will just naturally use them. Requiring their use ahead of proven-useful development methodologies is just bizarre to me.

I'm fortunate enough to work at a company which is staying reasonably cautious about LLMs / generative systems. If a tool proves to be useful then it'll get used, for sure, but we're not mandating the use of something just because it's the current buzzword.

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Quoting: TechnopeasantIn this particular instance of a banner ad that goes up for only two weeks, spending ten seconds is objectively more productive than spending an hour, even if the results are worse and it is not great branding.

Right, but as I said earlier: a banner image on a site is just the tip of the iceberg. Their recent job posting for a Senior Software Dev required active use of AI Tools and internal advocacy to increase adoption of AI Tools across the whole organization. While only listing familiarity with CI/CD as a "plus." If it were just a banner image I'd just roll my eyes and move on, but IMO it's just another indication of more insidious changes going on.

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Quoting: suchI disagree in that not paying for a few pieces of art isn't a proper saving, just one you report to particularly... challenged management to get them off your back. That goes triple if you're generating this much negative sentiment. That can have more of a sales impact than your sales banner.

Oh sure, I was honestly more referring to the other indications that they're going all-in on AI (such as that quote from the job posting that I'd pasted above). Having generative images as banners on the site is, I'm guessing, just the tip of the iceberg.

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Quoting: suchIt's GOG. What profits?

I mean honestly it's possible that's at the root of the issue here. I actually have no idea what GOG's financials are like, but if they have historically struggled to turn a profit, latching onto the "AI" bandwagon is an unsurprising move, at least. The suits tend to see modern generative systems as a shortcut to Increased Productivity™ and they might just be assuming that this is the magical tech that's gonna turn a struggling company into a thriving one.

Whether that's true or not in either the short or long term is another question entirely, but if that's the thought process over there, then it's at least an understandable pivot.

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Let's not forget that that job posting for a Senior Software Engineer included the requirement "Active use of AI tools in daily development workflows, and enthusiasm for helping the team increase adoption."

Use of AI Tools was listed as mandatory, whereas familiarity with CI/CD was only a "plus."

There have been a lot of complaints levelled at gog.com over the years and I've always felt compelled to defend them. I'm feeling an awful lot less likely to do so lately, though.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ElectricPrism☑ Removable Batteries on Laptops and Phones

Not true. Have it in my phone I bought this year.

Quoting: ElectricPrism☑ Removable MicroSD Storage on Phones

Not true. Have it in my phone I bought this year.

I'm not quite as inclined to a Total Doom prediction as ElectricPrism, but those two points up there specifically are at least extremely strong trends over the past, I dunno, five years or so? Sure, are are phones available with removeable batteries and MicroSD cards, but those have been becoming increasingly rare. I'm hoping the zeitgeist will turn back around eventually re: MicroSD in particular, but even brands and product lines which have historically been really good about that kind of stuff have ended up dropping it on their more recent models. Saying that features like that are entirely "gone" is probably overstating things slightly, but I know that my own phone selection pool has drastically shrunk since ten years ago.

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Quoting: XpanderWLets hope everyone who has their current PCs, don't run into any issues that they need to buy new SSDs/nvmes or RAM before the prices will get back to normal levels.

Yeah, that's the main thing that worries me. My PC's pretty ancient by now, and I've been thinking about doing some upgrades over the past few years, but I've had a string of family emergencies which have prevented me from even really having the brainspace to consider it. Now that things are stabilized the prices are just awful. Fortunately there's really not much that I'm even interested in which would necessitate PC upgrades, but eventually a component's gonna go. Ah well, c'est la vie! I suppose when we're all jockeying for a position in the water riots, system upgrades will be the last thing on our minds. :D

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