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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Not to “well actually” you, but…

    long periods in the Florida sun

    This is Disneyland in California, not Disney World in Florida.

    And more to the point, Disney World in Orlando is already represented by the Actors Equity Union, and has been for years, for all the good it does them.

    All that’s happening here is Disneyland performers will now be repped by the same Union as Disney World’s.

    Should also be said, not every performer you see at Disney World is in the Equity union. Basically, only the ones that perform and/or have scripted lines. That does include many of the costumed actors, particularly the ones that participate in shows or do the meet and greets on Main St and such.

    But not all of them. There are loopholes Disney exploits to hell and back in Orlando (assisted I’m sure by weak labor laws in that deep red tumor of a state). I’m sure they will in California too.

    The good news is, the union opened up their membership rules recently (probably why Disneyland is now joining) which may lead the way to more employees being able to join and close those loopholes.



  • My partner works in historical archiving for science and medicine. Museum work, basically. He’s told me so much of the archives are donated collections of notes, letters, journals, and so on from important doctors, researchers, scientists, etc. Donated by the subject themselves in their later years or by their families.

    He’s told me there is a growing issue with those people starting to donate entirely digital collections, but even worse than that, are all the documents that are not being stored on a physical hard drive, but on web services and clouds. By the time these people are willing to start donating their things, so much of it has just been deleted forever without them realizing it. Or worse, they die, and their families no longer have access.

    Working in IT, I told him about Microsoft’s growing push to eliminate Outlook and PST files, make it all web based email, and he wasn’t surprised, but he was still bummed to hear it. Apparently a not insignificant amount of those donations are locally stored emails.





  • Only if the people that pirate the shows are able to obtain those higher quality downloads.

    As these platforms become increasingly hostile to users, they’re going to be well aware of the subsequent increase in piracy, and implement even more methods of preventing their content from being pirated.

    It will always be impossible to stop piracy completely, but you can make it increasingly difficult to obtain best quality.

    Keep in mind all of the various things that are starting to be implemented or suggested to ensure device/environment “integrity” in recent years. I promise a day is coming when Netflix and other streaming services will only allow streaming to “approved” browsers and devices, i.e. the ones that allow them to scrutinize every single bit of the stack down to the hardware.


  • “While downloads will no longer be supported, you can continue to watch TV shows and movies offline on a supported mobile device,” the Netflix document says

    So essentially Windows devices are no longer “supported” wrt this particular feature.

    If I had to guess, it might be because the people that pirate Netflix shows may be doing it from the Windows app using the download feature. After all, you have full access to the file system on Windows.

    Meanwhile, iPhones have always been locked down to prevent the user from accessing the file system, and Android in the last couple versions has locked its file system down too, while Google continues to become increasingly fierce in trying to detect and block anybody with a rooted device.


  • People have been making this comment for so long, with every anti-consumer change, and it’s never been true.

    Killing VPN usages didn’t do it, canceling shows didn’t do it, the splintering of offerings across multiple platforms didn’t do it, killing password sharing didn’t do it, raising prices didn’t do it, including an advertising tier didn’t do.

    And this will not do it.

    Hell, this is barely going to tweak the dial. The overwhelming majority of people don’t watch Netflix on the desktop app, why should they fear kick back from the few that do? All they’ll say is the mobile versions will still let you download (because those file systems are sealed away from the user).

    Consumers will accept anything if there’s no where else to get what they want. It’s why the “free market” has no power in the tech space: consumers are so addicted to their chosen platforms, apps, devices, and services that they will accept literally anything before they entertain the idea of using anything else.

    That’s partially why enshitification is getting so bad: there’s no punishment for it. Users will not move.








  • The technology was created to replace voice actors. That’s the actual purpose. Its very existence hurts their profession and benefits studios. You can not be a studio, use this technology, and claim to care about ethics, anymore than Amazon can claim to care about the workers as it invests in the machines to replace them.

    No one is holding a gun to their head forcing them to us AI. They made a choice. There is no “ethical” way to cripple the livelihood of working class people for the benefit of your business. Just stop using the word.

    It doesn’t matter if you compensate or get their approval, because the fact is the existence of the technology in the industry effectively compels all voice actors to agree to let it use their voice, or they can’t get work. It becomes a false choice.

    If there was no financial benefit, if it truly made no difference in how much a studio pays in labor or the amount the artists make, there would be no reason for studios to want to use it.