Eh, you're not wrong, but management failures tend to be a bigger issue. On the hierarchy of ways software projects fail, developer ego is kind of upper-middle of the pack rather than top. Delusional, ignorant, or sadistic leadership tends to be higher.
Working on AI that helps to manage IT shops that learns from failure & success might be better for both results and culture than most IT management roles, a profession (painting an absurdly broad brush) that tends to attract a lot of miserable creatures.
LLMs themselves don’t learn but AI systems based around LLMs can absolutely learn! Not on their own but as part of a broader system: RLHF leveraging LoRAs that get re-incorporated as model fine tunings regularly, natural language processing for context aggregation, creative use of context retrieval with embeddings databases updated in real time, etc.
Tbh making Roblox illegal feels like the same moral panic that our parents had around metal music, hip-hop, and arcades.
My kid plays Roblox, I prevent her from talking to others, and I police the Robux purchases. It really is a fun platform. The problem is for parents that aren't technical, or are negligent and don't know how to police it.
- You cannot prevent your child to login and play at least 15mn (without manually resetting the password in the kid account)
- combine this with the fact you cannot prevent changing the password reset email on the child account, and in practice you cannot prevent your child from using roblox
- You cannot prevent gift card to be used
- There's no way to trace gift cards usage at all
- Roblox will remove controls at some ages without warning you
- Deleting your kid account is a fight (it's been two weeks and roblox is asking me proof of ownership I cannot give since they don't exist)
- You cannot prevent fear of missing out
- You cannot control pay to win games
- You cannot prevent your child face to be scanned and shared for "age control"
- Same for your own face
- Probably more...
Oh and don't forget there's absolutely no way to prevent your kid to have multiple accounts, and have a parallel life you know nothing about.
You cannot prevent someone from robbing and killing you either. That doesn't mean the law has no value. It sets a standard for conduct and creates a psychological expectation. If violated, it enables punishment.
well sure I was a blue boxer, software pirate, talked to lots of creepy people on IRC, participated in online sexting, x.25 and tcp/ip network hacker, with a stack of stolen credit card numbers, and root access to a bunch of university labs ... when I was 13. that was 35 years ago. what were my parents supposed to do?
determined resourceful kids will do what they want. so long as I talk about the risks and dangers and put up a modicum of effort to police it, I'm fine if they figure out ways around it. some people have to learn the hard way.
I mean to a degree this is true of any kid who is that determined to go against their parents’ wishes. You can’t prevent a kid from making friends with the bad kids while at school, you can’t prevent a kid from playing the asphyxiation game, you can’t prevent a kid from sniffing solvents (they’re everywhere). At some point you just have to do your best and hope things turn out ok.
I think parents (not fully unfoundedly) expect more of a playground experience from something advertised as a "game for children", so for them it follows that they should precisely not have to manually police it.
> Tbh making Roblox illegal feels like the same moral panic that our parents had around metal music, hip-hop, and arcades.
I feel like this argument has become a cliche in itself. Sometimes things are worth panicking about, and limiting access to things like cigarettes or gambling for children has been a real benefit to society. The same could be true for the dark patterns listed above.
It goes beyond that though. There are games and in-game content that aren't being reviewed. There are claims of player skins where the characters are wearing a t-shirt with an actual photo of Charlie Kirk's death (the shot to the neck).
Anyone can make a Roblox game and publish it, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of moderations or verification going on. And you don't need to "talk", voice or text. You can emote, type on signs, and communicate in other ways.
> And you don't need to "talk", voice or text. You can emote, type on signs, and communicate in other ways
I had blocked chat on my kid's account and thought I was ok. Then I see her playing one game and ask her what she's doing. She says she's updating her character status (description etc) to talk to other players.
Apparently, for all the "free speech requires us all to tolerate nazi" logic I hear here all the the time, a mere rumor of maybe someone being jerk toward fascist is enough to go all the other way.
Roblox do actually takes down violent content, in reality. But that is never the important part.
> There are claims of player skins where the characters are wearing a t-shirt with an actual photo of Charlie Kirk's death (the shot to the neck).
Gambling and facilitating sexual predation is probably worth regulating, but I don't find tasteless jokes a sufficient cause for intervention.
Nor is this even a remotely new phenomenon. I was on Newgrounds as a pre-teenager when people were making wacky flash games about school shootings and 9/11.
That is where content rating should come in, and games should be reviewed by Roblox staff before being approved. Then, Roblox age restrictions could play a role in keeping a 7-year old from a seeing photos of a murder.
Honestly the voice comms have been a nice upgrade and I find I mind it a lot less than text. It's a lot easier to confirm the person on the other side is not some middle aged creep. It's also a lot more ergonomic for talking with friends (though they already tend to use facetime calls in the background)
I used to work at the local after school club a few years ago and we had to have several interventions when the 8-10 year old girls were talking about the grown men they were talking to through Roblox.
The grooming going on there is a real problem. At least more awareness for parents would be a good thing.
I mean, gambling for underage children is already illegal due to a myriad of reasons. I'd argue the psychological design of gacha games should be limited. Building patterns that get adults addicted, and advertising them specifically to children is the problem.
In the same way if a casino advertised child roulette wheels, I'd want legislation to step in.
I would not be against banning sale of any type of mystery or lootbox mechanics to those under age of 18. Including all digital and physical products. Yes, some things will be lost, but I think it will be for better.
It’s tough to put into law because this could easily cover innocuous things like gas station gashapon machines, school raffles, and Pokemon cards. Most people aren’t going to support a ban on those. And when you try to try to target the law too narrowly, you can run into problems with loopholes or legal precedent that prevents discriminatory and targeted legislation (there is precedent around equal protection).
I do think people should push for voluntary limits on gacha mechanics, because they are awful when overused and are probably harmful for a small percentage of the population that’s prone to gambling. Steam would probably be fine with rating/age gating games that heavily rely on these mechanics, the hard part is getting Google and Apple on board. Micropayments from “whales” (high spenders) provide a lot of revenue for them.
I’m also not entirely sure that gacha mechanics alone are that bad, it’s when you combine them with currency (virtual or real) that it becomes a huge problem. Absent currency it’s usually a self-limiting problem, because overuse of the mechanic makes the game worse.
Looking at many of these markets when you get to older demographics that have capital they start to look lot less innocuous. The amount of money and rampant speculation with random toy boxes and card games is something I question as much as actual gambling. There is lot that needs to be done to change general public opinion on this. At least when kids are involved.
I think in general movement to direction where you know exactly what you will get is significantly more healthy. There will still be lot of people who cannot control their spending. But removing the chase sounds desirable to me.
If you think DOOM and CS aren't brain rot, you might be just falling into nostalgia. Shooting demons and other players and spraying bloody gibs is absolute brain rot.
I play Roblox with my 9 year old, and no, they're not anymore brain rot than DOOM or Quake deathmatches were. Capture the flag or tower defense was almost never the point. It was being first in a deathmatch.
Quite frankly today's Roblox games tend to be a lot more enlightening, innovative and entertaining. Not all of course but many.
> We have a culture where we’ve been told for decades that market forces and the profit motive are sufficient for running a society. That the market will find a way to give everyone what they need efficiently without problems.
I don't really think that culture has existed lately, it kind of died out with the 2008 financial crisis. Now it's about naked use of power, whether political or economic.
The problem with constraints on individual freedom (which is essentially what happens when you constrain capitalism) is that no one agrees on what they should be, and therefore a segment of society will not be happy with them, and claim them as tyrannical oppression. Sometimes this is hysterical nonsense, sometimes it has a point.
Ultimately the antidote to unfettered capitalism is sensible policy crafted through political compromise. But largely Western politics itself has skewed towards extremes lately, few have the patience or understanding for this process, they want a quick fix.
