It’s all fun and games until the scammers use AI themselves to massively scale their operations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Michael_Fay

He absolutely deserved it.

Because many signing up for war are doing it for money due to the severe poverty they’re experiencing:

https://youtu.be/dVZjvOrJ0aM

I can only recommend what I’ve owned, so this is primarily a “here’s what I’ve used before and how I’ve used them”.

I started with the Fuji XT2 and absolutely loved it. It was compact enough so I was always encouraged to take it around with me wherever I went. Fuji’s out-of-the-box color profiles are awesome too especially if you don’t do any post-processing.

The physical dials feel great and really make the camera - it felt like it was made by photographers. The Fuji lenses are optically some of the best around, but can be a little pricey. The upside is that Sigma and Tamron make lenses for the X mount now (they weren’t available back then), so you have a lot more options these days! The autofocus was generally pretty slow, but the newer XT3, 4 and 5 have substantially improved on that if you’re concerned about it.

I eventually switched to a Sony A7III because I needed better quality portraits and headshots with a full frame sensor, and I’ve also come to love Sony’s mirrorless system so far. Sony’s FE prime lenses are really good value for what you get, and are really compact for what they are.

Sigma and Tamron also make excellent glass for E mount at a much more affordable price than Sony’s GM lenses (some at nearly equivalent quality).

My current daily driver is a Sony A7CII (but the A7C is also really good if you want something more affordable). The reason I picked this up over the A7III was because I found myself not wanting to carry it around as much. I love street photography and the A7III’s screen didn’t articulate in a way that allowed me to shoot in the incognito way I did with the Fuji XT2.

So far, I’ve been really surprised at how good the A7CII is, especially for how compact it is. I’ve also started using it for my portraits and headshots and haven’t missed the A7III at all.

It’s quite an investment for any camera system (cameras and lenses), so make sure you spend time looking at the range of lenses that you want/need, and if possible rent them for a little bit to get a feel for them.

Fuji will be the more affordable option purely because of the smaller sensor size and the lenses that go along with it, but if you’re interested in full frame quality (especially for better low light shots), then I’d recommend looking at Sony.

Good luck with your hunt and I hope you find something that fits you perfectly!

Street value.

You’re welcome and I hope things work out well for you!

Relationships are hard, both platonic and romantic. Maintaining them in a healthy way is really difficult and no one can give you a map for how to navigate the issues.

Sometimes, you’ll find that despite your best efforts, relationships can wane or end over time. Your best friend might suddenly have to move halfway across the world for a job - while they’d still be your best friend, you won’t be able to get coffee/beer like you used to. Or a close friend could unfortunately lose their life at the drop of a hat, and you’d never see them again.

I’ve learned to focus more on and appreciate the time that you do have with a person, however long or brief it may be, because you never know when it’s the last time that you spend the most time with them.

It’s hard to understand the full context of your situation because there’s a lot of details missing, so I’m going to make some assumptions based on what you’ve said.

I think your mistake was to go straight to running when you haven’t even started crawling.

You’ve described yourself as not having been a very sociable person over the years, so planning a massive party of 30-50 people for people that you haven’t had regular contact with was likely to never have worked out the way you expected, regardless of how much effort you put into planning and setup.

My advice to you is to start small and take it in steps.

Firstly, don’t bog yourself down with thinking about how a) badly the party seemed to have gone, and b) how many relationships you’ve let erode.

Second, instead of focusing on those that didn’t show up, celebrate that you had 5 people who cared enough to come to it. Spend time cultivating relationships with them, because those were the ones who bothered to be there.

Lastly, for those you felt were important and let you down, you have to understand that people tend to treat big parties as optional. If someone is important to you, inviting them to a large party where they’re just one-of-many doesn’t really tell them how important they are to you does it? I know I’d feel a lot more important if someone invited me to their small and intimate party!

Additionally, you should reach out to them and let them know how you felt - no one can read your mind. You have to communicate how you feel and give people a chance to respond. If they respond positively, great - you’ve kept an important friend! If they don’t, then you’ve learned that your relationship with them wasn’t a healthy one.

You don’t have to pretend like it didn’t hurt you, but the onus is on you to communicate that to those you felt slighted by.

Also, don’t plan massive parties for yourself with over-the-moon expectations, especially not for your first birthday party!

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Because the truth is worth knowing

This is the defacto argument that gets pulled into reporting, good or bad.

What is the in the point in the truth in this article’s reporting? What about this story told you anything, or anyone, about what’s ravaging the industry? What message does a supposed $400 million cost tell you other than Concord failed? Do you think 160 developers worked on this project over 8 years with the intent to ‘chase the trend’? Do you think they spent 8 years of their lives building a bad product they didn’t believe in? Or was Sony and the entire leadership team able to fool all 160 people that they were building something special when all they really wanted was a trend chaser?

If this article has enlightened you in a way that has somehow eluded me, I would very much like to learn what you’ve gleaned.

Unless someone from Sony AND ProbablyMonsters confirms the real numbers, I would have nothing concrete to add to the validity of the claims, other than I think it’s bullshit.

But even if I did have this bulletproof info, why would I do what you suggest? So that games journalism can continue to beat a dead horse?

News like this doesn’t do the industry and the people who work in it any favors other than to serve the masturbatory curiosity of people who claim “I can’t believe they spent this much on a game that was clearly going to fail!”

All this kind of reporting does is continue to pull money away from investors who are willing to take chances on new teams making new games (regardless of how derivative they might seem), and cause anguish for the passionate developers who poured their lives into what they believed would have succeeded.

The games industry is in absolute shambles now thanks to years of psychopathic ravaging from large corporations with milking profits, studio shutdowns and layoffs.

Contributing to unconstructive reporting will only worsen it, and I would instead encourage you to ignore news like this.

Try and visit one of the underground city tours while you’re there: https://www.beneath-the-streets.com/ http://www.undergroundtour.com/

The first link is the newer tour company, which I haven’t tried myself, but I hear it’s the better experience.

Either way, it’s worth doing it at least once!

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This is absolute bullshit.

Firewalk, the studio that made Concord, used to be a part of a parent startup called ProbablyMonsters. Firewalk was sold to Sony last year, in April 2023.

ProbablyMonsters only had a total Series A investment of $250 million, and Firewalk was not the only studio that it was funding - it had multiple.

But let’s just say all $250mil went to Firewalk (of which is impossible because ProbablyMonsters still exists and has other studios). In order to hit this mythical $400mil figure, Sony would have had to spend $150mil in ONE YEAR.

The most significant cost of making a AAA game is paying for the developers, of which Firewalk has about 160 of them. In what world would Sony pay over 900k per developer to see Concord through to the finish line?

The more likely figure that each developer got paid on average is about 180k, that’s still just short of 30mil for 1 year.

Firewalk didn’t start with 160, so you can’t extrapolate that cost to its 8 years of development.

Don’t believe this horseshit.

obviously not Trump but what does Harris bring to the table, Walz?

As @Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world has succinctly pointed out, your choices are: vote for Trump, or vote for Harris.

Asking inane questions like “what does Harris bring to the table?” is both-siding bullshit that detracts from this simple fact: If you care about the environment, Trump is the absolute worst choice. Vote Harris.

There is no resolution to your straw man argument worth having and quoting a Wikipedia article doesn’t change the reality of your choice.