Starker on 28/7/2025 at 05:51
Quote Posted by Cipheron
The Little Mermaid did fine at the box office. The cost overruns were because it was being filmed at the height of the Covid pandemic.
So those were unforseeable events that lead to the budget being much higher than expected. If it was a "wokeness" issue then the initial budget would be normal but the box office would be bad, neither of which are things that are true.
Anyway these things have a long tail, making money for Disney for years or decades after their release. So you've got the fact that Disney makes LOTS of content and needs LOTS of content for their various streaming services and other outlets, and you can't predict hits ahead of time. They're going to make a lot of things, some will do better than other things ... so they make a range of things all tweaked to appeal to **different people** then they see what does well.
Also, Little Mermaid was made in large part in the UK and the UK government reimburses up to 25% of the cost of a movie made there.
Also, it was one of the most viewed movies on the Disney+ platform.
Also, there are many more ways to make money off of movies, especially with merchandising -- toys, clothing, and basically anything you can slap a picture on.
And the list of moneymaking opportunities goes on and on as movie executives have by now figured out precisely how to wring out every last cent of the "product" (as well as how to cut corners making them).
Nicker on 28/7/2025 at 20:03
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Is this evidence that white people are racially discriminated against by NBA teams?
No. It's evidence that certain phenotypes associated with certain genotypes (e.g. ethnicities) are physically better suited for certain, highly specialized activities. This visible difference does not translate to invisible qualities like intelligence, moral fortitude, creativity and such.
The problem is when people try to justify racism by jumping at will between the specific and the general (hasty generalization fallacy). It's like the Thief trick of using one box, stacked on the emptiness it left behind, to create a tower of self-supporting justifications based on a single obvious but dubious observation.
While it is true that certain genetics give certain lineages specific and obvious advantages (in certain sports, for instance) in general, all humans are statistically pretty much the same across all skillsets. Any differences are far more attributable to culture and environment than breeding.
But by all means, keep stacking those crates.
Azaran on 2/8/2025 at 14:29
(
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-cybersecurity-experts-react-to-uk-age-verification-law) THe UK passes a draconian internet law, ostensibly designed to protect children, but the real motivation is probably more nefarious
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It's been almost a week since the Online Safety Act became law in the U.K. The legislation aims to protect children and vulnerable internet users online and prevent them from seeing content deemed as "explicit material."
The law is well-intentioned but has led to some heated debates, with questions being raised surrounding the impact on our online privacy.
Age verification checks are required in order to access certain websites.
Submitting photo ID, having your credit card checked or AI scanning your face are some of the ways your age can be verified.People are understandably cautious about handing over this sensitive personal data to third parties. As a result, many have been turning to the best VPNs in an attempt to bypass these checks.
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Some people – such as those living under internet censorship – cannot afford to have their information leaked. Although this isn't the case in the U.K., it reinforces the risk faced by numerous internet users.
"Privacy is a fundamental right, not something to be traded for access," IPVanish continued. "The UK’s current approach sets a troubling precedent and fails to strike a balance between safety and individual freedom."
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At the time of writing, 450,000 people have signed a petition calling for the repeal of the Online Safety Act. The U.K. government has said it's not going to do this, and certainly not in the first week.
SD on 3/8/2025 at 15:09
I had to take a selfie the other day just to use Reddit.
We have a sort of illiberal consensus in the UK these days. The left and right are united in their belief that the people need protecting from these spurious threats.
They're also banning smoking - yes, literally banning it.
I don't recognise this country any more.
RippedPhreak on 3/8/2025 at 15:45
They don't want the native English discussing the excessive migration numbers.
Nicker on 4/8/2025 at 19:22
No need to export racism to the UK, Phreaky. They have an ample domestic supply.
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They're also banning smoking - yes, literally banning it.
(
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68825322) A tad hyperbolic and overstated. Its's a gradual phase out aimed at correcting the historical error of allowing tobacco to first extoll the (false) health benefits of smoking, then mounting a multi generational campaign to hide the devastating diseases smoking causes, not just for smokers but for everyone exposed to their habit. Now they are using vaping, initially a smoking cessation product, to groom new generations of nicotine addicted people.
Instead of banning smoking, they should ban the inclusion of nicotine in any and all consumer products.
Azaran on 7/8/2025 at 18:19
(
https://www.thewrap.com/amazon-invests-fable-ai-company-showrunner-streaming/) This arrived even quicker than I expected
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Amazon is betting on artificial intelligence being able to make great TV shows. That is why the tech giant on Wednesday invested in Fable Studio, the Bay Area-based company behind Showrunner, a platform that creates AI-generated TV shows based on what users type into its prompt.
Fable CEO Edward Saatchi has called Showrunner the “Netflix of AI,” believing it will be the next hub for not only creators but also for fans to come and watch their go-to programs. Amazon's undisclosed stake in Fable comes on the same day the company is releasing Showrunner widely to the public, after it had been available on an early access basis.
If Showrunner sounds familiar already, that is because the platform created an AI-version of “South Park” in 2022 (Paramount, as well as show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, did not participate). The AI “South Park” episodes Showrunner created have since been viewed more than 80 million times, the company said on Wednesday.
Showrunner allows users to create scenes and full episodes of series by typing in a few words about what they want to see; the platform then creates the voices, dialogue and different shots in the scenes, and is able to develop storylines; Showrunner also keeps characters consistent between scenes and episodes, which can run up to 22 minutes long.
Cipheron on 10/8/2025 at 09:22
Yeah I'm not really digging the concept the way they have it laid out there.
Firstly, the idea of "Showrunner allows users to create scenes and full episodes of series by typing in a few words about what they want to see" sounds good only at first glance, but fails to pass a "smell test" for good ideas:
- if it generates a show based on your input, then it can only generate stuff you could think up. The best shows are ones that combine unexpected ideas, have unexpected plot twists and break conventions. Same problem with asking ChatGPT for stories, it only mirrors what you asked for.
- if I can generate a whole show from a simple prompt, then I could enter the same prompt 50 times and get 50 different shows. Which version should I watch? Would there be any sense of completion if there are 49 other versions of the show I didn't watch?
- mixing "interactive" AI with sitting through a 22 minute show is basically a clash of new technologies and obsolete formats, kind of like when CD-Rom games had hours of FMV cut scenes. Basically for no other reason than the CD-Rom space was there, this might be similar. AI generated video may make sense, but not for generating a passive 22 minute show.
So I either want an interactive experience OR to sit through a pre-written show with 22 minute episodes, not both at the same time. if something is interactive, why would I then passively absorb that content? We're willing to do that *now* with human-written content because we trust that it's going somewhere and that other people already curated this content for us (through the production process but also through other users rating the content).
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Now, the alternative version of this isn't as sucky. In that, you have a few "creators" who use the AI tools to generate shows, and those shows are then consumed by other users on the platform. These shows would then be curated by crowd-sourcing - other users watching and rating the generated shows so people know which ones are worth checking out.
The other idea mentioned in the link is that they have some preset "world" that's basically a US-style animated sitcom, and you can make a character in that and it'll write episodes with your character included. So it's not scripting an entire story-driven show, this is episodic sitcom stuff. So it's basically one creator making a sitcom framework and you can get it to generate episodes within that format.
This makes more sense in perspective than the more vague idea of "push a button get instant show" however that also reveals a core limitation here - anyone who watches anime is going to be pretty unimpressed. Anime fans like shows that have an actual overarching plot that spans entire seasons. US style "Animated sitcoms" are already a legacy format that's losing out. Now, can this technology move beyond sitcom style plots and actually write a season of a show with a main plot, cliffhangers and a conclusion?
Nicker on 10/8/2025 at 17:58
Yeah you need that collision between familiar content and novel twists.
Cipheron on 11/8/2025 at 15:14
Yeah my initial comments were before i read the entire article, i was assuming you push a button and get e.g. a 13 episode series with 20 minute episodes and it scripts the whole thing for you.
However it's more like someone made a stock scenario, then they wrote a generator script that 'maintains the characters' because they're hard-coded into a database that only generates episodic entries of that specific show.
It's much less impressive then, as it's not much beyond things like that one that generates Seinfeld episode scripts. This thing isn't writing the next Star Trek, though you could code a scenario in which it generates animates Star Trek TNG episodes for you, with a stock cast you give it.
It "maintains characters" because it literally can't write anything except that cast of characters, but they turn that limitation into a selling point, as if they did a thing.
