"Bobby's KoTiktok | Castle Super Beast 260 Clip"

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(Warning: They don't start talking about Bobby Kotick and Tiktok until almost 8 minutes into this. The other stuff before that is still pretty good if you like hearing two guy shitting on modern video game industry horseshit and/or AI horseshit, though.)

About the only """""good""""" thing I could say about Bobby Kotick potentially buying Tiktok is that at least that would be marginally better than Trumpublican Steve Mnuchin buying Tiktok? Probably? Maybe?

Speaking of Trump and Tiktok... well... Donald Trump, one of the ones who started all this "Tiktok is evil Chinese spying and should be banned" stuff, has suddenly flip-flopped and thinks that Tiktok is now pretty great actually? I mean, I don't fully know or care what Trump's stated reasons for suddenly not wanting to ban Tiktok are (some horseshit about wanting to punish Facebook for "cheating" in the 2020 election that he lost, even though he was obviously hunky-dory with Facebook "cheating" in the 2016 election that he "won"[1]). I don't give a single solitary shit, because whatever shart-noises that come out of Trump's lying face-anus don't actually matter (and never have and never will). You can rest assured, though, that it is not because Trump actually gives a flying fuck about Tiktok now, one way or the other; it's because it's the Democrats (oh, and a bunch of Republicans, too, but let's keep that on the DL, okay?) who apparently want to ban Tiktok now, and Trump's default political policy is "if the DemonRats want a thing, then that thing must be bad, so I will oppose it, even if what they're trying to do is the exact same very thing I was trying to do five minutes ago." (See also: border security.)

Oh, and also apparently some billionaire asshat with a stake in Tiktok gave Trump a fuck-ton of moneyhad a "meeting" with Trump, which rather conveniently coincided with Trump's sudden about face on banning Tiktok. Hmm, well golly gee willikers, I wonder if that had anything at all whatsoever to do with why Trump suddenly doesn't think Tiktok should be banned. *purses lips and taps index finger on chin and stares at ceiling thoughtfully*

Anyway, all that Trumpish dogshit aside... on the one hand, China pretty much bans every Internet thing not made by China, so turnabout would be fair play if China stuff is banned here. (Not that any of that matters, mind you, because VPNs exist.) On the other hand, I think the brouhaha over Tiktok is silly, regardless. Like Pat says, Tiktok spying is apparently only finger-waggle-worthy because it's China, whereas Facebook/Twitter/Google/etc. spying is totally fine because those are US companies. I don't personally use Tiktok and I will never knowingly and willingly use Tiktok, either way, so Tiktok being banned wouldn't directly affect me at all. But still... I just think the whole Tiktok tumult is mostly nothing more than dumb and pointless and annoying political theater.

[1] - And I still maintain that if there was any "cheating" done in either 2016 or 2020, then the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of it was done in favor of Trump, and that Trump's loss in 2020 was despite that, not because of it.

"Air Canada chatbot promised a discount. Now the airline has to pay it."

"Air Canada argued the chatbot was a separate legal entity 'responsible for its own actions,' a Canadian tribunal said"

The above was something talked about briefly by Woolie and Pat in that video in the previous post, and I didn't mention it there because I was too busy ranting about Trump again. However, it's interesting and stupid and kind of funny, so I decided to give it its own post here.

As Pat said in that video: "We're really far away from AI being able to do your job, but we're actually really close to your boss thinking AI can do your job."