The hardware is already out there though.

Also it would be a terrible idea to have an entire new emerging technology only in the hands of the wealthy. That's just asking for trouble.

It would be like saying regular hardware shouldn't be allowed to run photoshop or a spreadsheet or word processor because somebody might do something bad with it.

People are going to have to learn than images and audio and video can be faked, just like they have to learn that an email from a Nigerian price is also a fake.

There's no wishing this stuff away, the cat is already out of the bag.

The thing with The Last of Us is it had an unusually strong story for a game in the first place - which was on par with prestige TV quality already. Most games, even great ones, do not have that kind of detailed story.

A lot of games, even great ones, the narrative in the game play is much more open to interpretation or there's no specific linear narrative and character development beyond the player's imagination.

Half Life 2 for example, an amazing experience, and the Half Life IP calls for an adaptation due to its setting and lore. An adaptation would require the invention of new characters, conflicts, character arcs etc even if characters from the original made an appearance.

Game series such as Fallout or Bioshock or Metal Gear Solid even - which beg for a series adaptation - their strength is more in the world, lore and setting than specific character stories, and any adaptation would practically require an entirely new story and additional characters created for the medium.

So to me the main lesson is to take the material seriously, be respectful to the game and the setting and the lore. But most future great adaptations of games are going to require a lot more new storytelling, TLoU game was kind of a stand-out exception, as the story lends itself to a very straightforward re-telling.

What a reboot means in fiction has a firmly established definition.

I agree that it isn't the ideal term, it should have been a better one, but it is the one that stuck.

The new show is definitely not a reboot or remake. Though obviously it's not a revival either. Whether it will be a re-imagining can't be ruled out yet, but everything announced about it so far points to a straight-up sequel.

But they literally aren't rebooting a franchise. It's a new entry within the franchise.

They aren't starting over with a new version from the beginning, as a replacement for original, which is what a reboot is. Recast roles doesn't make something a reboot.

This appears not to be a reboot, but a sequel.

I agree with that generally. Though a big part of that reason I think is most mainstream special interest communities established their main forum sites/communities long prior to the existence of reddit and "web 2.0" social media.

I would say that newer communities tend to coalesce around reddit / twitter / discord first now, because it's the path of least resistance. Communities focused on newer technologies / fandoms / arts from only the last decade or so seem much less likely to have dedicated high-traffic old-school forums now.

The bare-bones lightweight format of OG reddit was a major part of why the site took off over other message/image boards in the first place.

Nowadays it has the near-monopoly on web forum content to retain users despite newer horrendous layout design.

Companies hire a bunch of people who then need to find busywork to do all day to keep their jobs relevant. That results in continually redesigning UI that wasn't broken in the first place, usually for the worse.

Then you get "Make it look more modern" which ends up translating to "make the usability worse", by aping other companies' bad design that was generated by that very ludicrous process of unnecessary design worsening.

Sites and services that became popular in part or whole due to UI success, have a tendency to destroy that UI once they have achieved critical mass. The users become a captive audience and are stuck with it, and whoever runs the company by then time is usually completely clueless as as to how the site/service attracted users to gain any value in the first place.

It's a cancer that infects almost all of computing.

> and you and i can stand at the same spot and take the same photo with the same camera and it will turn out the same.

But both of our photos would still be protected by copyright despite being near identical to each other. Yet the AI image, created by giving it the exact same factors as input, down to film stock and exposure time, lens selection, time of day and weather conditions etc, would not be.

And there would be some differences in our photos, mostly random factors like the exact pattern of clouds, or visible lights on/off at the moment, passing birds in the sky etc.

And that random factor is something to consider, random imagery generated by nature is copyrightable in an image - like a cloud pattern, vegetation or natural landscape - but not if that random imagery is generated by AI.

> you and i can use the sample computer and provide the same prompts and we will get something different for the same prompt.

The more specific information we give the prompt, the more similar the results would be. I bet we could get pretty close by being providing enough information in the prompt, with the minor differences in detail being reasonably considered inconsequential.

That may sound convincing to somebody unfamiliar with the software, but how the process is characterized is misleading.

Certainly, the less information given to the AI, the more random the output. However if you sculpt your prompt to include all of the photographic and desired image factors, you can produce a very specific result. The AI model can simulate all of the photography factors, listed, if you instruct it to do so. Lens type, exposure time, lighting, film stock etc.

A person could take an actual photo. Then recreate that image from scratch through the AI by providing enough information to sculpt the output with all the factors involved in the photo's composition.

That would leave you with two nearly identical images created by the same person, but only one of those images able to be protected by copyright law. But both images required the same compositional choices on behalf of the image creator.

I recommend every play with software like midjourney or stable diffusion themselves and learn the basics about how AI prompting is done, and learn how specificity on the part of the artist/software user is always going to be necessary to produce the desired result.

Certainly with the comic book artist in the article, it should become obvious that the images in question aren't completely at random, but all done in a similar style that served to illustrate the story and in a specific order that matches and illustrates the written text. That can't occur at random, it required very specific decisions made by the artist for each image.

Art depends on the intent, does it not?

I think the concept of craftsmanship is what is the issue here. As in, somebody can spend years mastering a specific creative technique with a lot of study and practice, and now somebody else can just come along now and press a few buttons to generate a very similar result. It's a lot to think about.

Craftsmanship is not required for creating art, though it is arguably a preferred ingredient by many who appreciate art.

Ok but see why my example of photography in particular applies here.

A photographer can use a specific camera with a specific lens, specific camera settings, shutter speed, film stock etc. They can photograph a specific city skyline from a specific angle and distance and elevation at a certain time of day/night with specific weather and visibility etc. They could then take a unique picture.

The photographer has made all of those creative choices and hardware selection to compose the shot, which is a primary argument as to why a photograph is copyrightable and art.

The exact same photographer could also use a popular imaging-creation AI, and almost perfectly re-create the real photograph they took via AI by carefully using all of those same exact creative choices down to the lens type, in the software prompt.

So the same person would have created a nearly identical image from two different methods. Yet one is currently copyrightable and one is not - despite the same creator putting the same effort and knowledge into composing both versions of the final image.

Photos are a great example.

Somebody takes a photograph of a skyline, why should they be able to copyright that? All they did was press a button, the skyline itself was created by others.

If the answer is because of the compositional choices involved, then that's no different from a user giving specific prompts to an AI. Which is exactly what the comic book author was doing when creating their work.

Photography should not be copyrightable under the same standards held to AI in this case.

> don't understand art

Understanding art isn't a prerequisite for creating art.

well, it's not good.

What benefits does Windows 11 offer the user? It has similar performance benchmarks to 10, and just shuffles around the UI in ways that absolutely nobody was asking for.

It seems to solely exist for the benefit of Microsoft, not the user. So what's the point?

If I buy a new product, it's because it does something better than the old one, has desirable new features, etc. But if a product comes along with no discernible benefit to me, then what's the point? Why even make it in the first place?

It is very much top-tier prestige TV. Succession, Mad Men, BCS tier characters and performances, with some fantastic movie-quality sets and the occasional action sequence.

It is different from early GoT, but matches it in characters and intrigue. (Though to be fair, nothing could live up to Peter Dinklage's unique presence in the original.)

It retains the original show's gruesome and lewd edginess, but goes about it in a classier and less tawdry fashion.

And as far as a fantasy setting, it does not get bogged down in lore, and isn't dependent on knowledge of the previous show to understand it.

I was consistently shocked that it never had a single bad/sagging episode. It keeps moving and every aspect feels deliberate and carefully planned.

If the rest of the series is as artfully plotted and executed, it will be considered an all-time great.

Also a contender for some of the best costuming ever in a fantasy production, the occasional eyebrow-raising wig aside.

> because the 2nd half couldn't decide on whether it wanted Rhaenyra and Alicent to be aggressors or victims

That's kind of the point. They are nuanced characters, not one-note TV tropes.

William Gibson adaptation? I'm probably way more excited than the average person.

"From the creators of Westworld"? Nope, I'm out.

She was great, they totally wasted having her though, it would have been nice to have that character be able to show up in other series.