Not using Threads, but does anyone know if it requires a distinct new or account, or if you can login via your Instagram account? I'd imagine if the latter is the case, then this explain the high usage, if the barrier to entry is low (provided you already use Instagram). Also, I would be curious to see how many of the users remain active on the platform in the coming months.
The main reason, in my opinion, comes down to how Go as a language was designed. I have written some follow up posts to that, specifically this one: https://andrewpillar.com/programming/2022/10/24/a-simple-cru... wherein I explore creating an ORM-like library via generics in Go, this may be of interest to you if you want a better understanding of how some of these things would work in Go.
I consider the advent of this technology as whole, with the current state of Hollywood, to be concerning. It will ultimately lead to a world where actors will have their autonomy stripped away from them, even more so than they do now. Consider the status quo, whereby an actor's autonomy is somewhat determined by their start power. If you're trying to break into the industry then you have to put up and shut up with what you're given.
With the advent of motion-capture like this, actors will be reduced to a marionette of flesh to be puppeted around as the producers see fit. Perhaps Hollywood will be going towards a future where actors no longer act in movies, instead their likeness is simply licensed to a studio for a certain number of movies. Anyway, I'm a cynic when it comes to this, the industry itself is already plenty abusive and exploitive, and this could further that.
Is that what happened to musicians after music production gear became cheaper and democratized?
Arguably this is the golden age for musicians. Lowest barriers to entry ever, if you have talent. You don't need anyone's permission to be a star ... just talent.
Why would it be different for actors?
I feel like you are not thinking about the full implications of this kind of democratizing tech.
As a self-admitted lousy musician and marginal-at-best amateur filmmaker, the last two decades of technological progress have unleashed a veritable Disneyland of capability I can access anytime 24/7. As amazing as the tools are, the ability to collaborate with other amateurs around the world and to instantly publish content to a global audience with no gatekeepers is equally transformative.
Perhaps I appreciate just how much we live in "the golden age" of personal creativity because I'm >50 yrs old and lived through saving from each paycheck to afford renting a high-quality camera for a day or an edit suite for a few hours (only between 12a-6a for the reduced rate). I'll just come out and say it, "Kids these days have no idea how amazing their world is." Now, excuse me while I go outside to yell at some clouds...
The article says that there are similarities between the two industries, I see these similarities too between how the workforces are treated. Whereby Hollywood VFX workers are overworked and underpaid, and some even end up going under, and the Academy is always there to stomp out their protest during the few minutes they get at the Oscars [1]. Much like with game development, where waves of contractors are hired, then subsequently fired [2], or being just subjected to endless crunch [3]. I think it's fair to say that game dev companies are the sweatshops of the tech industry, and I feel for anyone who wants to break into what otherwise could be a creative industry.
"and the Academy is always there to stomp out their protest during the few minutes they get at the Oscars"
Hm, I have no knowledge or connection to the events, but "stomping out protests" made me expect a bit more dramatic events, than stopping someones speech, after his time was up.
"But Westenhofer’s speech was cut off mid-sentence after he used up his allotted time"
The academy awards are literally nothing more than any other industry group awards: it's just people in the industry telling each other how awesome they are.
They are, and always have been, utterly meaningless.
To be fair, of the nominations that year, I’d have given it to Jack Lemmon for The Days of Wine and Roses. So it’s not like it’s uncontentious that O’Toole was snubbed.
I'm not sure that game dev as a gig economy would be the worst thing. Make a thing, get paid, move on. Especially since a traditional game (not MMO or "game as a service") has a natural beginning, middle, and end of development.
Plus I assume if you're an independent contractor (not working in an outsourced sweatshop) you have more leverage to stand your ground against nonsense like crunch. But I'm fantasizing that because I've never done contract work so I don't know if that's really the case.
Your assumption is 100% wrong and I couldn't imagine what on Earth gives you that idea. In fact, I am not convinced you actually believe that yourself. I don't believe you've thought about this at all.
Being able to earn money whenever you want so you don't have to build your life around your work would be huge even if it makes you earn a bit less. Developers earn a lot already, many would take that trade.
Edit: That would make game development much more palatable, since gig work implies no overtime unless you want it. Just do some game development and earn money rather than doing it for free on a hobby project. And since it is just a gig you can easily try it out and do something else if you don't like it.
> Being able to earn money whenever you want so you don't have to build your life around your work
And yet, every instance of gig economy pushes wages way down, pushes all the externalities (like health insurance, travel, equipment etc.) onto workers and makes their life revolve around work.
> That would make game development much more palatable, since gig work implies no overtime unless you want it.
As others already mentioned: then you'll be out of the job, because there will always be people willing to work overtime for the same money.
And since it's "just a gig", you can be let go even faster than it is now for workers in the US.
How would gig economy not result in game dev being more exploitative than it is now? Oh, you dont want to do overtime making those car models? No problem. We have contact to 10 other people just waiting to do it in your place. And we will pay them less than we pay you, and then we will pay even less to those who will replace them.
Keep system running for decade or two and you have another area where people work to don't die from hunger. Because thats how gig economy worked for every other market.
And what is your retirement plan? Keep working until your health prevents you from working anymore and then die on streets?
The OP's words were 'independent contractor'. Someone switched the words to 'gig economy' and started beating on the straw man.
The OP is actually right - contractors have much better treatment than employees. Not only in law, where you can't be told your hours - etc, but also just by the nature of your employment where you have to sell yourself and they desire to work with you or they wouldn't have paid your fee. This isn't the case in industries where they have fake contracting - employment in all but name, but as an actual independent developer or whatever you make more and get treated better.
> you dont want to do overtime making those car models? No problem. We have contact to 10 other people just waiting to do it in your place.
This isn't how contracting works. They give you a deadline for the work and you accept it. They don't know if you're fast or slow as long as you meet the deadline. They don't demand you do more, they offer it.
As an employee you're a machine for them to use? Have you heard the phrase "Drive it like you're renting it"?
> And we will pay them less than we pay you, and then we will pay even less to those who will replace them.
Then they aren't in that first artists range anymore so they take other work.
At some point the work is "Click on all transparent segments of the SpongeBob character, applying to correct color for that body part from this design document." Why would that employ the same artists who, from an empty page, designed those characters and their looks?
Independent contractors would have no leverage because there are too many people who will do the job. Also, companies won't like someone paying per hour when they can push 80+ hour workweeks on salaried employees.
Even for Amazon warehouses they churned through people faster than they could find new ones and that were jobs where you basically have to be healthy enough to carry things so not requiring much.
Development or working on game requires quite some knowledge of specialized tools. Then that toolset in game industry varies a lot.
I don’t think there are that many Unity developers one can hire on the spot.
There is a lot of domain specific knowledge for sure. There is a huge difference between, "I made a flappy bird clone/shitty side scroller in Unity" vs someone who actually knows how to make a triple-A level game. The former requires, can you spend 4 hours watching youtube videos on a saturday night and literally just mimicking the video. And there are people who become the latter developer starting as the former. But there is a lot that has to happen in between.
I think that movies and videogames industry need to get the hell out of America. Wages are too high. Making a triple A game takes a staff of 500 these days.
This is something they do, Marvel rely on outsourcing and using ununionised labour [1], and it shows in the recent films and TV shows they've made. There's a drop in the quality of the VFX. Wages for VFX artists aren't too high, as I've said, they are some of the most underpaid workers in the industry, and their protest against this is always stomped out. For a VFX worker it must be highly frustrating working in an industry where other workers are unionised, but they aren't.
Can you point me to a clip on YouTube that you would consider to be good Bollywood VFX? I've mostly been exposed to the most comically bad Bollywood VFX.
VFX artists can definitely make a good living. Their salaries are comparable to tech if you remove the stock portion. They also work crazy OT and are paid hourly which means big money. That's true if you're more senior of course.
Read the credits at the end of any CGI heavy movie from Disney, or AAA game like GoW and notice how many Indian names show up. It is a highly outsourced biz model, and most of the grunt work is humans doing repetitive tasks over and over for $1 to return $1.01
I cannot speak for videogames, but I have a family member who was in the movie industry doing CG stuff, and it is already heavily outsourced to other countries than the U.S., particularly Canada, India, and Australia. I’ve been told that the movie industry is essentially dead in the U.S., besides having rights holders/production managers/etc.
Actually, the peeve is that capital (and profit) is now permitted to be mobile, while labor is generally not. The EU trade zone is the one, shining notable exception.
That is: we move our money into whatever markets we want, we withdraw our profits as we choose, but heaven forbid that labor should be allowed to move as it pleases.
> Pitting one workforce against another is an old trick used to control them all.
It's not a trick, it's the same as you choosing the cheapest product on a shelf between two competing brands. It's the foundation of a competitive market that puts high incentives to produce products the most efficiently and most cost effectively. Which is a huge boon to consumers and has lead to us all having a better standard of living than anyone else in history.
Being in country A and able to choose products made in country B is the result of specific political and legal choices made by the power structures of both countries.
Historically, there was nothing inevitable about the free movement of capital, goods and profit, but over the last half century or more, this has come to be seen as "normal".
Your argument is the classic one in favor of removing restrictions on the movement of capital, goods and profit (not labor!), and has been the justification for almost every free trade agreement over the last 75 years.
The evidence of it being a net benefit to everyone is now starting to skew against that claim. The distribution of negative environmental externalities to poor countries in particular argues against it (i.e. country X can make your widgets cheaper because they have less regulation about waste and pollution).
We're all consumers, it is true. But we're all citizens and employees too, and we spend more of our lives in those roles. Global free trade may be a boon to our lives as consumers, but it's been fucking over our lives as citizens and employees for too long alread.
Either allow labor to always move as freely (or a un-freely) as capital & profit, or move back towards less international trade, certainly between countries with highly disparate income levels and legal systems.
When you use the word "labor" do you mean literally it has to be people who work or do you think any human should be able to move about freely?
I ask because international trade, capital, etc. don't move around without rules & regulations. For instance, I can't just move all my wealth between countries without scrutiny, fees, taxes, etc.
This is the "RETVRN" that I would love to see. Make the USA pre-1882 again (year of the first immigration-related law in the US: the Chinese exclusion act).
Let people live where they want, everywhere in the world. Good places will draw population and prosper, and bad places will stagnate until they change.
Well that may be true, but they get to work on stuff that is legitimately cool.
I know a guy that worked on StarTrek for years as a VR architect and general 3D modelling type of work. He worked longer hours than your average Torontonian, but nothing absolutely crazy. I've worked longer weeks.
He loved his job.
I'm not saying it is this way for everyone, but part of life is deciding if you want to work hard, have impact on things that matter, work on cool stuff, earn a lot of money, etc.
There are places where it truly gets exploitative, but in my humble opinion that's usually places where the people involved have almost no options other than to move to another town or country. I'm not against industries or companies where the up front expectation is hard work. Some people want that, at least some of the time.
>I'm not saying it is this way for everyone, but part of life is deciding if you want to work hard, have impact on things that matter, work on cool stuff, earn a lot of money, etc.
VFX people in Hollywoord are some of the most underpaid workers in the industry. Sure, it's cool that you can be a part of a team that helps make a movie. No doubt it must be pretty cool to see your work on the big screen, or even the small screen, and know that you played a part in bringing it there. But I think something the workers would also value is having some autonomy over their work, and being paid for it.
I'm not easily convinced by the argument of, "you get to work on cool stuff", working on cool stuff doesn't make up for risking povery, debt, or unemployment when you're underpaid. Furthermore, there's a difference between hard work, and exhausting working. And being put under crunch is exhausting work, not hard work.
Working on “cool stuff” is for people in their 20s or the perpetually naive…
The perpetually naive usually come to their senses when they’re old and recognize they don’t have any savings, don’t have a home to live in and can’t retire.
I’ll take a fair wage, health insurance, and balanced work hours every time. I can find cool things to do on my own time when not putting in 16 hours a day.
Ok great good for you! You're (presumably) in the West and can choose what you value, and you value a life with balanced work hours and, well, you call it fair, but in global standards it is high.
Either way, for people with the skills to choose between working for Google and making $400k a year or working for Hollywood and making $70k a year, then they go and work for Hollywood and complain about the hours and pay, I just don't really know what else to say other than it's a choice.
You get to see your work on the big screen, hang out at cooler parties, etc. Google people, generally speaking, do not get the same thing in life. Unions have their place, of course, especially with monopsonies or mining towns, but when it comes to a whole industry I just think some things naturally come out that way due to the motivations and dynamics.
> Well that may be true, but they get to work on stuff that is legitimately cool.
So? How does that justify being exploited and treated badly?
I've seen the same arguments made against teachers, nurses and other people who get to do "meaningful" work whenever they want fairer wages, and I do not see the logic. Do they need to be punished for doing a job where the result of their hard work doesn't make them hate themselves?
I see the reverse logic: pay jobs that nobody wants to do well to make them attractive. But the need for carrots does not imply the need for sticks.
Nobody is being punished. It's simple supply and demand. If you don't want to work on marvel movies there are millions of young men and women that would do it for pennies. Why is Disney going to pay them more if they don't have to?
they get to work on stuff that is legitimately cool
Like most things, working on the cutting-edge, successful, top-tier stuff is cool, but most people in the industry aren't doing that. If you look at something like https://steamdb.info/upcoming/ you'll see a small number of "Yeah, it'd be cool to make that" games, and a lot of "Who the hell buys this crap?" games. Most people employed to build games are working on the second type of game.
It's alright and quite frankly understandable to be motivated to work on a "big project with big cash and big name".
The problem is when the producers use it in an exploitative way to have people work insanely longer hours than billed, or to lower the costs of labour so that the workers can have the "pride" of writing "big name" on their resume.
On the contrary, I much prefer the fixed date of "2006-01-02T15:04:05" for formatting time strings. I find it much easier to write "Mon 02, Jan 2006", than what you would usually put for the strftime equivalent, "%a %d, %b %Y" (had to look it up, and at a glance it's not that obvious what it formats to). With Go, all you need to memorise is the date itself. Granted, coming from other languages it can take a bit of getting used to.
systemd, in my opinion (one that doesn't seem to be widely shared), really does make administering a Linux server easier. No longer do I have to wrangle with shell scripts for the process control of daemons, or worry about the dependencies between them, instead I can organise that logic in a nice and neat .service file for systemd to worry about. The templating feature as this article demonstrates is also incredibly handy for DRYing up some .service files you may write.
Another feature of systemd I really like are the timers [1][2] it introduces. It offers a much more sane approach to handling scheduled jobs, and allows for an easy overview of which jobs are running and when the next job will fire via systemctl --list-timers.
I despise the amount of random stuff that's tied to it and journalctl data format is still an abomination (and my bug with it trying to search thru entirety of log dir to show single app status is still open)
...but we did remove few thousands lines of fixed init scripts (anyone that tells you sysv scripts are easy and simple is lying to you, multiple projects fail there) *and* an bunch of Monit instances thanks to the features the base service management has. And simplified a bunch of other cases.
So yeah, overall even with issues it is a huge benefit.
The process control in systemd I think is unambigously good, but it would be nice if it wasn't as tightly coupled with journalctl and all of the other random stuff it's gobbling up.
Well, to be fair you can't exactly ask typical syslog demon "give me log files of an app" but the way journalctl implemented it is just fucking terrible.
It takes 4 whole seconds [1] for systemctl/journald to tell me it has no logs for the daemon on my NAS and it opens 985 files while it is doing it
If it just used sqlite as a backend it might've been useful for analysis (on top of way faster...) but Lennart wanted to have a go at implementing binary DB format badly so we're stuck with it.
If it at least kept a pointer to last file the app's logs were written to the lack of proper indexing also wouldn't be a problem.
But nope, it's just entirely worse than text format. And I do mean that in entirety, acking thru text files is faster than systemctl trying to find log files for the app...
My favorite experience with journalctl from many years ago was when an application kept spamming the logs till there was no space left. Once that point was reached, the binary logs got corrupted so couldn't be opened to investigate the cause. Don't remember how many turns it took me.
systemd is a significant improvement over script-based inits (and upstart, which I always found buggy). Nobody sings its praises because they don't have to: it "won" a long time ago.
