This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Mar 18, 2023:

• Disco Elysium gets a supercharged photo mode, free for everyone — I keep forgetting to play this on the stream… it’s just weird enough to go over well with my weird audience.
• It’s too late to stop deepfake tech — so we all need to adapt — I agree with the sentiment, but it’s too early to even know what to adapt, much less how. The earth is moving beneath our feet, and it’s going to take years before it starts to feel like solid ground again. (Assuming it ever does.)
• Modders use AI to give Skyrim’s Dragonborn the voice of Master Chief, and I am once again asking if this is actually legal — To answer the question: almost certainly not. But that never stopped people from doing cool shit.
• Evil Dead Rise is a movie for sickos by sickos — I’ve never been a Sam Raimi fan, and I don’t believe I’ve watched any of the Evil Dead movies. So they’re going to need to really change things up with this one to get my attention.
• Sony wants to help low-vision users enjoy photography by shining lasers in their eyes — The price point —and Sony’s stated intent— is as close to corporate do-goodery as you’ll find in this world, right up there with Microsoft’s accessible controller gizmo.

• It’s on sight between Ali Wong and Steven Yeun in Beef’s first trailer — Okay, you’ve got me. I’m in.
• OpenAI co-founder on company’s past approach to openly sharing research: ‘We were wrong’ — Or put another way: “Holy shit, we’re way ahead of everyone, far more than we ever thought we’d be, and if we don’t seize this moment to secure our leadership via obscurity, we’ll end up like Tesla.” (By which I mean the actual genius steamrolled by Edison, and not the shitty car company run by Apartheid Clyde.)
• Razer would very much like you to not set fires or bash anyone over the head with its ‘first-ever glass gaming mouse mat’ — I have wanted many dumb, needlessly luxurious things in my life, but I’ve never wanted anything this stupidly indulgent.
• Netflix’s Pornhub documentary is out to radicalize and weaponize porn fans — I love porn, but seriously… fuck PornHub.
• The ‘BlackBerry’ trailer looks funnier than you’d expect — Glenn Howerton is virtually unrecognizable.

• TikTok’s refresh feature is for when you’re sick of your For You page — So if I get tired of watching dozens of tiny-waisted sluts in bikinis dancing to the exact same song clip, I can reboot my recommendations and… watch dozens of slightly different sluts dancing to the exact same song. Plus parkour!
• What Thief has in common with submarine combat, and other tales from iconic but short-lived developer Looking Glass Studios — The first Thief was a passion of mine, and despite their obvious differences —first-person vs. third— it’s the game I always wanted Assassin’s Creed to be. I spent countless hours learning enemy patterns, figuring out weird ways to reach objectives, and manipulating the game’s physics… outside of Halo: Combat Evolved, I’ve never loved an FPS to the same extent.
• Help, My Friend Wants To Sleep With A Married Man — I don’t care about the actual article here. What I find amusing is that it’s an advice column written by The Eve 6 Guy, who is apparently at utter peace with being The Eve 6 Guy for the rest of his life. I admire your chill, my man. Also, Inside Out was an awesome song.
• Go behind the scenes of the disastrous Spider Man musical in Brian Michael Bendis’s new comic — I’ve enjoyed Julie Taymor’s work in film —Across The Universe was great and The Tempest was an interesting exercise for Helen Mirren— but I’ve always been curious how Turn Off the Dark turned into such a disaster.
• Asking GPT-4 to quickly build a lucrative business on a $100 Investment — Stupid LLM Tricks will be with us for quite some time.