Notices by Bern (bern@aus.social)

Another day, another article citing studies showing AI decreases productivity, but makes people think it increases it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-25/did-ai-really-take-block-jobs/106478254

Here's a question. #askFedi

Kidlet plays Roblox, and there's a game he plays called "Anime Card Clash".
Seems like a fairly straightforward deck-building game (not my cup of tea, but whatever).

The thing that has caught my attention is that by playing the game, you earn card packs, and then you can open them to see what cards you get.

The problem is that you get *vast* numbers of card packs - we're talking at least thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands. You then 'open' these packs by clicking the "auto-open" button, and leave the game running for many hours while it churns through opening those packs and adding cards to your collection.

This is raising red flags in my brain. The player does absolutely nothing while this process goes on for hours on end (my kid usually watches youtube or TV while it's happening, and has sometimes left the PC running when they've gone to school, which I'm less than pleased about), and I'm left wondering what possible purpose this has in game design.

The thought occurs to me that it's hiding something nefarious going on in the background, that the developers want you to leave your PC on and running their code for such lengths of time. Crypto-mining was a thought, but the GPU isn't working super hard (going by audible fan speed).

A quick search online hasn't revealed anything. Can anyone suggest paths of inquiry to follow to figure out what's going on?
(It may just be bad game design, but I'd rather know for sure)

Ah, lovely... 😞
This is the fourth one in the past year and a bit. Don't you just *love* the way builders are always so tidy around their sites? 🤬

Well, you'll all be happy to know I passed my Anti-bribery and Corruption Awareness training with flying colours, so now I know exactly how to give and receive bribes. 😏
#CorporateLife

Come into the office, they said.
You need to connect with your team, they insisted.

Our office has hot-desking, and you have to book a desk.

A third of the area allocated to my team has been booked by people from a different team, and the nearest available desk is on the opposite side of the building. I may bump into one of my team members in the lift, but otherwise won't see them all day.

So, you know, I could be just as effective working from home, without the two hours of commute time. 😡

#corporateLife

Well, that was just over 35 minutes, door to door, including the short walk to and from the polling place.

So thankful we have a non-partisan electoral commission who take their job seriously.

#AusVotes2025

@johnquiggin @cstross I probably hit delete rather than post a few times a week, on average. Sometimes it's just not worth the energy.

Looks like half a century of neoliberal rule has delivered great results for the UK...

Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city, is being forced to dim lights and cut sanitation services due to bankruptcy - ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-17/birmingham-uk-bankrupt-cutting-public-services/103965704

@briankrebs is 10-15Mbps normal speeds for 4G mobile in the US? 🤔

I just tested my connection here (Australia) and got 122Mbps - which is about half the speed I usually see here at home, the network must be busy at the moment.

Ah, my day has brightened considerably after a delivery has arrived! ☺️

Thanks for writing this,, @ZachWeinersmith