• 0 Posts
  • 12 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 3rd, 2023

help-circle
  • This is correct. Real estate prices don’t mean anything to the vast majority of companies since most of them are not in the real estate business and likely even lease their office spaces. It could have a minor impact to the balance sheet if deemed impaired but it doesn’t amount to something that matters in valuation which cares more about P&L, cash flow, and working capital.

    Business leaders are human, they don’t know what the fuck is going on, or how to “increase shareholder value”. So for lack of better ideas they can just tell employees to go back to the office.

    Basically, if you don’t know how to stop a ship from sinking, you can at least change the curtains on the windows so you look busy on the way down.

    They first, make the decision to go back to the office, second, they tell their team to go find reasons to rationalize the decision. There isn’t a nuanced logic to arriving at the conclusion, they make these calls off-hand on gut feelings. The thinking comes in later from the direct reports trying to fill in the logical gaps, even if the decision wasn’t a logical one to begin with.



  • 2d art and pixel art survive well because of the inherent abstraction being part of it’s aesthetician. The greater the graphical fidelity, the less the game leans on abstraction, and instead on fidelity, and then a remaster adds more visual appeal.

    A game like slay the spire or katamari damacy gains very little from a visual remaster, but a game like Crysis would get a lot. Its worth noting that katamari damacy did get a remaster anyway…and its aesthetic is still what makes it look good, not the resolution. Crysis on the other hand had low aesthetic emphasis and heavy technical emphasis so refreshing the technical graphics does a lot for the game.


  • You might want to read about tooth to tail ratio on Wikipedia

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio

    In a sense, war is mostly logistics. It doesn’t matter how strong your unit is, how clever you tactics are, or brilliant your strategy is. None of those things matter if the unit is not where they need to be, with the supplies to be effective.

    Most countries have limited ability to project military force outside their country because the logistics become so hard to support. Russian military relies heavily on rail transport, which doesn’t extend into Ukraine anymore, and trucks what it can’t rail…but the supply depots need to be hundreds of km behind the line because of long range precision missile strikes. With long supply chains supported to heavily stretched trucking, guys at the front won’t get everything they want.


  • Came here to post this one. I saw that movie on the airplane without knowing anything about it, and immediately thought, “This movie was made by the guys who filmed the ‘Turn Down for What’ music video.” I didn’t even know their names, had to confirm my guess after landing.

    Because the music video and their directorial style are that distinctive and memorable. It was not surprising at all that they got showered in awards, those guys are creative AF.


  • Rapid development has led to stark differences within that country, parts are modern, affluent, well-educated…and they live shoulder to shoulder with tribal, impoverished, and practically primal apes. It’s the same issues every country faces when rapid development comes their way. It’s going to be incredibly challenging for them to develop a healthy middle-class and egalitarian society.

    It’s more likely that the rapid modernization just leads to increased concentration of power to an oligarchy, and exploitation of the most vulnerable. Also fascist tendencies are all the rage these days on the international stage, of course those in power are looking on with interest.




  • Lemmy hasn’t really expanded in it’s content umbrella to the point where it can really fill the same gap. I’ve instead just spent more time on other apps and don’t open Lemmy often.

    When I do open it and sort by all it’s usually the same kinds of topics on top, not simply reposts, but just really focused on metadiscussions about the viability of the fediverse. I’m not here to make a change, I’m just a consumer looking for mildly interesting distraction. The audience for discussions of the fediverse is incredibly small, while the audience for mild distraction is the majority of the internet.


  • Yeah, our company had hybrid available to everyone, so going remote was simply increasing the hybrid days to 100%. Our productivity skyrocketed because instead of having to waste 5-10 minutes per hour walking across a stupidly huge campus, or battling people for meeting rooms, we could just meet in virtual rooms, and instantly “teleport” to the next one. We had no commute, people would meet early or late, or during lunch.

    Nobody asked us to work more but we did because we COULD. We were already fully aligned on hitting our goals, and being in the office was an obstacle rather than an aid. We’re increasing our in-office days over the overwhelmingly negative feedback (why even ask for input if you’re just going to ignore it?). I’ll just have to mentally pull back on available bandwidth for the time wasted on in-office days, reject more meetings, and extend deadlines accordingly. I’ll need to free up all that extra time for the small talk and “networking” they want me to do instead of working.


  • It’s about ego. The boss doesn’t know how to make the company perform better, they’re all out of ideas. They have to change something to make it look like they’re doing something, so RTO is the low hanging fruit.

    There’s really no more justification needed than that. Looking at practical benefits to explain RTO pushes won’t get you answers because the practical benefits are so slim and conditional relative to the strain it creates.

    It’s all about ego. They self-identity as the hardcore alpha boss that deserves high pay because they “earn” it. So to massage that ego, they go into the office even though they dont need to, and are meeting with nobody there. It’s pointless but it feeds their ego.

    So they feel alone at the office…and in that worldview they are hardworking (an assumed condition), and nobody else is there, therefore everyone else is not hardworking (regardless of how much work they’re actually doing).


  • In the current state people can take classes on say Zoom, formulate a question, and then type it into Google, which pulls up an LLM-generated search result from Baird.

    Is there profit in generating an LLM application on a much narrower set of training data to sell it as a pay-service competitor to an ostensibly free alternative? It would need to pretty significantly more efficient or effective than the free alternative. I don’t question the usefulness of the technology since it’s already in-use, just the business case feasibility amidst the competitive environment.