So Funko issued a non-apology blaming Brandshield.

Brandshield issued a non-apology blaming the registrar (Iwantmyname), and saying their AI tool definitely had nothing to do with it

And Iwantmyname hasn't even put out a statement.

Fucked all around, yet it seems nobody will be facing consequence for this except Itch.io who got their website nuked out of nowhere.

Though if I were Itch, I'd get a new registrar ASAP.

I don't know about "STEM Influencers", but in this age of rampant misinformation, we NEED science communicators in as many formats as possible to reach as many people as possible!

I'd rather too many than not enough.

Of all the things to target, did they really have to go for the IA - the organisation that literally got into trouble with the man for helping children get access to books during the pandemic.

Does this hacker kick puppies and steal sweets from babies too?

What?? But the FBI called dibs on that backdoor! /s

It's almost like putting backdoors into software as a whole is a bad idea cause anyone who knows of it can use it, not just "tHe GoOd GuYs"

Man that bird was living a straight up nightmare.

And from the comments I saw it gets worse for this bird - apparently after the bird flew off, the scientist who captured this call played it back to check they had recorded it properly, only for the bird to come back and start calling again.

These scientists accidentally played the cruelest prank imaginable on this poor bird, and it was likely not smart enough to ever realise it.

Like imagine living years of your life desperately calling out to someone, anyone, and you finally hear someone - you desperately rush over, but there's there's nobody there. You're sure you heard someone, but there's nothing, except you.

To be fair to the developers, they do elaborate a little further in the comments:

Hey everyone, We appreciate the sudden enthusiasm for our game. When we launched it in 2015 into early access and 2016 into full, we were at the vanguard of asymmetrical games. It was exciting, but it was also our first step down the Dunning Kruger curve. QL has bugs that we cannot fix, shaky net code and overall sloppy design. We left the game up for this long so that players who had friends that wanted to play, could still get a copy. However it has been 9 years with minimal to no activity. So we felt it was right to remove it now.

I don't know enough about this game or it's community to comment much, but the devs don't seem to be bad guys - seems like a story of naive developers making a mistake, but doing their best for their community with what they had. For a niche online game with no DLCs, 9 years is hardly a bad run.

Who knew all you needed to make yourself above the law was appoint your own judges... The level of corruption going on in front of our eyes is astounding, they're barely even trying to hide it at this point.

And that is why you should always test newfound superpowers on a small scale before blowing your load on freezing time for 6 months you depraved Anon

I too am absolutely pumped to live in a world where human artistry is all but confined to the wealthy, and we all get AI generated pseudo-art instead! Woot woot!

So HR left us with just two choices, assured us they were the best of the best, and of course it's two geriatrics.

... one of whom is a rehire that tried to lynch us when we laid him off the first time. Good job HR, you wonder why people hate you.

It really saddens to me see how many managers out there treat their subordinates terribly, and then act surprised when their subordinates do the same - as though employees are meant to greatful for their terrible treatment

The idea of AI automated job interviews sickens me. How little of a fuck do you have to give about applicants that you can't even be bothered to have even a single person interview them??