thebradbain

They’re demanding that a studio cannot classify something AI-generated as “source material” in the same way a book, movie, play or another WGA script is. They want things generated by AI to be classified as “background material” (e.g. a Wikipedia article, newspaper clip, etc).

In a nutshell (but also, I’m not an expert), this gets down to how studios can pay or hire writers:

A studio CAN hire a writer at a day-rate (think, as a one-off gig rather than stable job) to “touch up”/“rewrite”/etc source material such as other scripts. This is usually at a lower rate than if you hire the writer in full capacity.

A studio already CANNOT hire a writer on a day-rate, give them a Wikipedia article, and claim that a writer making a story off of it is simply a “revision”. They must be hired in their full capacity, often with a writers room, to flesh it out.

The WGA’s demand is that ChatGPT and similarly generated content be placed into the second category.

A writer could still “use” ChatGPT themselves, and a studio could also provide writers with a ChatGPT-produced script, but the writers would need to be paid as if they were working “from scratch” (though, conceivably the studio still saves money in this context, as the room could be less weeks than otherwise).

It seems like a very sane middle ground.

So regardless of who ends up in charge after or if that regime succeeds, you can’t say revolutions themselves are not frighteningly effective. After all, every existing country on earth is the result of a revolution against the leaders of its past.

I guarantee you that will change in about 10 years, if not sooner.

Ironically, as a collective bargaining unit we have the most negotiating power right now — when we don’t need it.

It seems foreign to us in the US, but being an employee should be no different than a tenant at a nice apartment building: both types of corporations extract value from the individual. Both find a way to make profit. However, as a tenant you have some legal rights (Europeans would still laugh at them in comparison). As a tenant you’re legally entitled to some basic day-to-day guarantees (though maybe not always in practice): a light breaks, plumber is needed, common areas kept in order, tenant disputes? A landlord has to fix that. I’m not saying a corporation needs to hold our hand, but it absolutely should be responsible for providing a comfortable environment, work-life balance, etc.

It’s really not too crazy to demand the bare minimum from our jobs, considering how much of our lives are spent working on them.

I just don’t think that it’s politically feasible nor practical— like most everything at the federal level, including things as fundamental as the IRS tax code or debt ceiling, it would be subject to large changes every year.

“We won’t approve this tax code unless no new housing in California is allowed but also multi-family is banned in many these states” would now be a possible (even likely) debate.

At least California/Texas/whatever representatives are beholden to their own state enough that they won’t actively sabotage their constituents to gain political points. We saw this with the SALT tax repeal under Trump as a specific way to hurt populous blue states and do essentially nothing to rural red states (except Texas, which ironically was a big benefactor of that policy due to its high property taxes). Why wouldn’t federal zoning fall into the same trap?

Furthermore, from a constitutional perspective, there’s no way barring an amendment for the federal government to control how non-federally-owned land is used. The whole purpose of states is to govern matters within their borders, and the federal to govern matters which exceed any one state’s borders. Even the Federal Highway Administration, arguably the closest analog, is not in charge of building or planning highways directly— it just funds plans it approves, but it doesn’t dictate what those plans are, instead leaving it up to the states to grapple with routes and ROW.

Even aside from that, most employers for hourly jobs — restaurants, retail, factories, whatever — will still need to operate the same amount of hours, so they’ll either hire more people or have to pay overtime.

This wouldn’t cause a competitive disadvantage, because just like the original shortening from 12 to 8 hour workdays, everyone is in the same boat. Companies will adapt to higher costs and lower profit per employee, in the same way modern workers have adapted to automation+a decreasing real dollar pay per hour (i.e. inflation).

Not that all of this wouldn’t cause a shock to the system, because it would, but there is absolutely nothing magical about the 40hr/week threshold.

The 8 hour workday was itself a shortening from the 12 hour workday. I think we can all agree society as a whole, including hourly workers, is better off in every regard working less than 12hrs/day— even if technically an hourly employee would make more if they worked 12 hours.

However, I don’t see any reason why Atherton gets to have a different zoning than San Francisco, or Santa Monica/Beverly Hills an entirely different code than Los Angeles.

Theoretically, it would be amazing to have a singular state zoning board pooled from all of the resources of smaller municipal offices, with one standard application and one process.

Right now it’s crazy that Los Angeles and Beverly Hills have two completely different zoning codes with two completely different processes— so much time wasted on two different bureaucracies (and sometimes, both! If the project is big enough) based on if something is one block over or not.

State level DOTs have shown, in a way, how effective this approach can be (though rather than encouraging sprawl, we do the same for density). If we built housing anywhere as fast as we do highways, imagine how much would get built.

The only real “change” was that now Venmo/Cash App will be required to, too— and even that got delayed.

Those were the people who were previously verified? I.E. they were notable enough to a _large enough cross section of twitter users_ in some way shape or form.

Sure, members of the media were given a check as a directive of public-facing policy and thus over-represented, but considering they actually _reported_ on events happening (including things that wouldn’t be so unfiltered on cable news or newspapers, but live feeds and videos of events in real-time, like the 2011 Egyptian Revolution), I personally thought it made sense they too were boosted by the algorithm.

Now every other blue check I see is someone shilling an ICO (in 2023?) or someone I don’t follow responding something transphobic/racist/whatever to someone else I also don’t follow.

I’ve been on Twitter since 2011. I’ve seen it change even under the old ownership. I thought the blue check feature was flawed in the past (in fact, it should’ve been MORE stringent), but now I just find it actively diluting the entire experience.

I really don’t care what ANON1234 with 8 followers thinks about covid vaccines just because they paid $8, and I don’t think most other users do either.

Anecdotal, yes, but based on how popular Roblox has become, I would guess that its a fine enough intro language for even the next generation of software engineers

100 years ago, you could argue this country was fundamentally different than it is now — aside from rights (pretty much all of civil rights) and liabilities we now take for granted (the concept of federal income tax was just 10 years old, and not even fully implemented for another couple of decades), we were still two states shy of the 50 we have now.

The country will absolutely change in the next 100. No telling which way, though.

Not that it’s the same, but have you looked at either of these countries’ pasts? Even relatively recently— the Marshall Islands, or still ongoing, in Mauritius/Diego Garcia.

The US/UK didn’t do anything to save Hong Kong’s democracy, so I don’t know how much I’d buy the tired “protecting democracy everywhere” approach. Is it just because we have military bases there?

Don’t Look Up was — after all was said and done — a glaringly stupid movie, but Mark Rylance’s portrayal of a clueless tech billionaire ”thought-leader” who unwittingly brings about the end of the world before blaming the media and his employees and sheltering with other billionaires was right on the money.

The judicial is there to decide if a given law should be enforced (and if a given enforcement method is valid)

This is why I’m not a big fan of originalism: that is almost always a subjective decision.

Otherwise we would just have a legislative and an executive.

At most it would be replacing one licensing middleman for another.

“Enough” is likely the key word. But if you have business or personal accounts with over a couple million (and certainly $10+ million), I would be shocked if someone higher up than a clerk hadn’t personally reached out to you, tried to take you out to coffee, and let you know the perks applicable to your personal situation they can provide you that you can’t find on a website.

Sure, they likely weren’t as enticing as SVB’s perks nor as willing to lend to an account that had $0 yesterday and millions the next, but they absolutely will offer personal loans/mortgages against stock compensation on the guarantee you keep your account with them above a certain threshold, etc.

Aside from the fact that most kids can’t tell when they’re being exploited, why should kids be the stopgap for corporations that not even adults want

According to the rules of the “free market”, these jobs should either provide better conditions or working conditions or both in order to attract talent, because there’s plenty of workers— they just don’t want to work for the lack of return.

Aside from the fact that most kids can’t tell when they’re being exploited, why should kids be the stopgap for corporations that not even adults want

According to the rules of the “free market”, these jobs should either provide better conditions or working conditions or both in order to attract talent, because the issue is not an oversupply of capable workers, it’s less.

http://www.wata.cc/forums/archive/index.php/t-16001.html

> they will _probably realize_ years later that they were abused.

There’s a whole swaths of science and research behind this. It’s why domestic violence can continue for years unknown to anyone, even from friends, until it’s not.

OP isn’t saying they’re being abused as a fact, but if they are — at a workplace that seems as objectively toxic as Twitter right now — many who are still there won’t likely realize they were until afterwards.

So even if a household “could” afford increased payments, good luck getting something as risk-averse as a bank to fund you.

Maybe if banks started offering 40 year (or even 99 year) mortgages, like they do in some EU countries, that would push the DTI threshold lower (though of course, you end up paying much more interest in the end)? But right now the US Government/Fannie Mae won’t underwrite loans which offer those terms, so here we are.

We "stop" where it is natural to, like any other place in human history: lack of resources, lack of space*, there's better places to move to, etc. And if the only thing holding back the Bay Area's development is artificial zoning laws -- we are certainly not at its "natural" equilibrium.

While CA has had its generational water supply issues, only 10% of it is used for residential purposes; 90% of it is used for agriculture. Adding more people in SF, or Palo Alto or Berkeley, does not put special strain on CA versus anywhere else. Not to mention, single family homes often consume _much_ more water per family than those in apartments or condos (yards, many bathrooms, etc).

*Lack of space, for what is a _city_, is not "it's too populated here for me to have a backyard without paying a ton of money"

Even if AGI itself was “good”, that does not mean it will be used or deployed fairly and equitably. In fact, I’d posit without major regulation it will just increase the wealth gap

Why does the class portion of the day _need_ to be 8 hours long? My school is still considered one of the highest-ranked in Texas, if that matters, where it’s not uncommon for 25%+ of a graduating class to go on to Ivy’s, so I question if it’s really necessary to be sitting in class for longer than that in the first place.

The guilds do still have objective criteria to get in, and pay scales so that regardless of if you’re a director’s child or not, you’re getting the same pay as everyone else with your title.

Yes, nepotism in Hollywood is a well-known issue, but it’s also an issue in pretty much every industry that’s been around for multiple generations. I imagine we will see the same thing happen in tech— just as it has in healthcare, politics, sports, law, finance, and all manner of highly desirable skilled professions