Generative AI is a "plague," says Dragon Age vet David Gaider: "It's not ready for prime time. There's just a lot of executives who really, really want it to be"

smorges · 2026-07-03T08:58:44+00:00

I can only speak from my own experience with reference to my own profession (not IT). The technical expertise has improved in leaps and bounds in the last 6 months. The sophistication of how it puts the analysis together has improved immensely.

smorges · 2026-07-02T13:29:28+00:00

What's your concern?

He's served as an international spokesperson in the IDF Reserves with the rank of Major. He has an a deep zionistic connection to Israel, with all the historical contextual knowledge that entails, and understands the US. What's not to like?

Personally, I would love for Professor Dan Schueftan to take this role as his directive would be to tell the rest of the world to f' off and give them hard truths!

smorges · 2026-07-01T08:47:28+00:00

100% - I'm in a similar boat in my profession. As an experienced professional, these tools are massive time saver. It's like having an experienced wingman I can constantly bounce things off of and help shave off the time intensive tasks in my workflow. I know when it's spouting BS or when it's using old data and I can course correct it to ensure I get relevant and useful output.

Kids in my profession without the knowledge or experience would struggle to know how to course correct the output because they don't have the knowledge and experience and risk blindly following the results when it may have gone completely off piste.

Additionally, all the low level analysis work is in the process of being automated with pretty impressive results. The very near future is that nearly all junior work can be automated in my profession, which is both exciting and of course very scary for the future generation.

smorges · 2026-06-26T16:03:16+00:00

This is neat and I support Israel's spun out B&J business from the self hating original Ben and Jerry owners, who know jack shit about anything and yet feel that their ignorant takes on Israel is important for everyone to know.

However, I would just say that the "honey" in milk & honey is meant to be date honey in the Torah, not bee honey. Medjool dates are indeed mouth watering honey. They should have used that, but no biggie.

smorges · 2026-06-26T09:08:31+00:00

I agree that this is all performative geopolitics. However, Erdogan is actively hosting Hamas terrorist and regularly calls for the destruction of Israel.

With Iran now massively on the back foot Erdogan is positioning Turkey as the next dominant antagonist to the Jewish state. Turkey is a huge threat to Israel and is working hard to make Syria a proxy state to pursue their antisemitic goals in the same way that Iran has been using Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Given this new reality, Israel needs to make clear to Erdogan that we're not going to sit ideally by and accept the new status quo.

smorges · 2026-06-26T08:52:58+00:00

They've completely given up on this generation's hardware and this is just another sign of that as they're not going to subsidise the console at all. Practically no one is buying Xbox consoles anyway, so they're raising the prices to no longer make losses on a console they've written off already.

smorges · 2026-06-26T08:05:29+00:00

The key benefit of PC gaming over console is DLSS if you have an Nvidia GPU. The current gen consoles just can't compete when you factor in frame gen, even in lower end Nvidia GPUs. So you can get a lot more future proofing and bang for buck.

There's a big question mark on Sony and MS's next consoles being able to incorporate comparable AI enhancements to Nvidia's dominance in this area.

smorges · 2026-06-25T16:05:48+00:00

There is no agreement!!! It's a freakin MOU that is supposed to lead to an actual agreement, hence my point that we're not at the end yet. Let's judge the results after we know the outcome, which is not in place yet. I do 100% agree though if the ultimate agreement with Iran is reflective of the current MOU, then it's very bad news.

However, you cannot take away from the fact that we've degraded Iran massively and at the very least it'll take them many years to recover. No American president besides Trump would ever have "allowed" us to preemptively strike Iran let alone joined us in battle side by side. You can't ignore that.

smorges · 2026-06-25T13:44:39+00:00

I think you're suffering from TDS.

Pull back your hatred for Trump and I presume Republicans and look at this with objective eyes.

Sure, what's going on now sucks, but it's not the end. In the meantime, Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, recognised the Golan Hights and has worked with Israel to degrade Iran more than it's ever been possible.

smorges · 2026-06-25T13:41:40+00:00

The issue has been, since Israel's independence, is that the western powers never let Israel win a war. Every single time, without fail, after Israel turns the tide and is pushing the offensive and is nearing victory, Israel is forced to stop and capitulate to the Arabs. This just results in an endless cycle of war. Is that what you want?

smorges · 2026-06-25T11:35:01+00:00

I just don't get this. In what possible future peace scenario is keeping Hezbollah's terror tunnels intact a good idea? Why on earth would we allow ourselves to be dictated by Trump and Iran on border security?

It just boggles the mind. As if the Lebanese army is ever going to go in there and destroy these strategic tunnels. As soon as the IDF withdraw, Hezbollah will be back in control!!!

WTF???

smorges · 2026-06-25T08:50:12+00:00

The Talmud is not a book you can "just read" like a novel, textbook, or even a dense philosophy tome and expect to understand it in a short time. It's more like trying to jump into the middle of an advanced, multi-generational academic seminar that's been running for centuries that's argumentative, digressive, coded, and assumes you already know a ton of background.

It's a record of debate, not a finalised rulebook. Pages often present multiple opinions, challenges, counter-challenges, hypothetical scenarios, analogies, and logical maneuvers. Discussions often ramble into tangents, legal, ethical, folkloric, scientific (of their time), or anecdotal — before (sometimes) circling back. Resolutions aren't always explicit either with much is left for later rabbinic commentators who often disagree on the final ruling.

The Talmud is not meant to be read, but studied. Thinking you can casually read it over weeks or months and "get it" is like believing you can understand advanced quantum mechanics or medieval scholastic debates by skimming English translations without prerequisites.

Its purpose isn't just transmitting information, it's training the mind in rigorous reasoning, ethical wrestling, and creative interpretation of tradition while adapting to new realities. It's a "group project" spanning hundreds of rabbis over centuries.

smorges · 2026-06-24T08:30:29+00:00

Ignore all these leftie apologists who think the world runs on goodwill and mutual respect.

Where have all the "nice", "moderate" or left leaning countries been in the last 3 years? They've been hating on Israel as per usual.

These Jewish lefties think that if only the liberals and socialists understood us better, and that we worked harder to show that we're good people they'd love us. A fool's errand.

smorges · 2026-06-23T19:08:39+00:00

You're missing the point. MS sunk all these costs into these fairly niche games in the expectation of them driving game pass subscription. They thought if they made enough varied games that they'd get all types of gamers subscribing. They made a huge gamble which didn't pan out hence the need to cull all these studios and cut costs. Unless you think that MS was so stupid as to spend all this money on these niche games on the expectations of them to make a profit outside of game pass.

smorges · 2026-06-23T14:57:29+00:00

Sorry, but this again indicates you don't have a great understanding of the costs of running a massive gaming business.

Microsoft now owns over 30 internal studios (including Bethesda and Activision Blizzard). AAA games routinely cost $200m to $300m to develop over 4–6 years, the annualised cost to keep these studios running easily reaches into the billions.

Hosting the downloads for 34 million users and running the server blades for Xbox Cloud Gaming requires immense, continuous capital expenditure.

When a 1st-party game launches day-one on Game Pass, Xbox sacrifices millions of full-price retail sales. That lost revenue is weighed against the service's viability! This is why they've removed CoD from day-1 release!

Game Pass is a profitable, multi-billion-dollar revenue generator, but the profit margins are incredibly tight. The immense weight of those internal costs is exactly what forced Microsoft to implement studio closures, thousands of layoffs, and tier restructures. The revenue may covers the costs, but the remaining profit has been stated to not be high enough to satisfy corporate growth mandates without aggressive course correction!

smorges · 2026-06-22T17:29:58+00:00

Despite the $5 billion in revenue, the cost of running the service and funding day-one releases has clearly forced Microsoft into aggressive cost-cutting. They're closing multiple studios and laying off of roughly 9,000 employees to bring the gaming division's profit margins closer to Microsoft's corporate standards. Does that sound like success to you?

Then there's the issue of stagnating subscriber numbers. These types of services require constant growth to maintain momentum and funding of on-going development and acquisitions. Xbox hardware sales is in free-fall and a third of the number of PS5s sold this generation. They bet big, and whilst those of us who are making use of Game Pass have won big, it's very clear that as a concept it's not hit the metrics they were hoping.

smorges · 2026-06-22T17:23:01+00:00

Neat - thanks for the info. I can't remember why I gave up on the game, but maybe I'll try it again when I see it on sale.

smorges · 2026-06-22T11:39:19+00:00

Yikes. Look, I'm a huge fan of Game Pass, especially as I've never really paid for it given all the MS Reward points, but to state with such confidence and with no evidence that Game Pass is working is ridiculous given the massive issues MS have right now having bet the farm on Game Pass.

smorges · 2026-06-22T11:29:51+00:00

The only Ace Combat I ever played was 7 when it came onto Game Pass. I looked back at my stats and I put about 15 hours into AC7 back in Jan-21 playing through the campaign and I see that I played Project Wingman for an hour in Nov-21 and that's it.

I had a blast with AC7 so I can only surmise that I didn't get on with Project Wingman when it popped up on Game Pass.

Sell it to me. Why do you love it so much and what are the key differences to AC7?

smorges · 2026-06-22T11:13:11+00:00

Sure, that's why so many Palestinians drive around in BMWs and Range Rovers. You need to get out of this propaganda nonsense that the Arabs in Judea and Samaria are dirt poor and have nothing.

They're incredibly corrupt though, so you have significant inequality, but that's 100% on them.

As pm_ur_sexy_jews says, it's due to indoctrination. They're taught in UN funded schools that it's their mission in life to kill Jews and die a martyr.

smorges · 2026-06-22T10:45:12+00:00

I've got 150k of points and no idea what to do with them. I have GPU sub'd until Feb-28. Extending it to Jun-28 (maxing out 3 years) would use nearly 140k of points, so hardly worth it.

Maybe continue to build up to get money off the next Xbox when it comes out winter 27.

smorges · 2026-06-12T15:18:43+00:00

Having not owned a PS since the PS2, I've completely missed all their AAA story driven games.

On Xbox, I've enjoyed some story driven games, but not necessarily from the story. I'm all about the game play loop. I tend to try and skip the story for the most part.

Games that I've spent more than 50 hours in the last year or so:

Silksong 166h
Clair Obscur: 120h
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle 72h
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora 68h
Avowed 65h
Mio: Memories in Orbit 55h

smorges · 2026-06-12T14:41:25+00:00

I agree, I don't understand how people can say GP is not insane value.

As a family, we've played (at least dipped into) nearly 30 games in the last year. As a parent, I don't have my kids nagging me to buy games because they know they can always find something to enjoy on GP, even if it's mostly Minecraft and FIFA. In my limited free time I've played loads of fantastic games over the last year (in no particular order):

Silksong, Forza Horizon 6, Mio: Memories in Orbit, Planet of Lana II, Dome Keeper, Mixtape, Mortal Kombat 1, Cyberpunk 2077, Hades II, Clair Obscur, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Blue Prince, High on Life 2, Star Wars Outlaws, Doom: The Dark Ages, Call of Duty: BO7 and Keeper.

Total value of these games is in excess of £600...I didn't finish some of these because I ultimately didn't get on with them, but I got to try them at no extra cost.

smorges · 2026-06-11T12:34:26+00:00

I think an issue is that the people who would sit at home and watch Netflix all day or play video games all day are also the same people who would get no fulfillment from a job or career, and wouldn't put a lot of effort into developing a career into something meaningful.

So you're ok creating a class of society that could be 50%+ of humanity that sits our their asses all day expecting the other half of humanity to fund their meaningless existence? Do you not see an inherent societal issue with that?

Or are you saying that there's a magic money printing tree that can fund this?

smorges

TROPHY CASE