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Hilarious Unused Audio From 2003 Baseball Game Rediscovered by Video Game History Foundation

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After popular arcade games like Mortal Kombat and Spy Hunter, Midway Games jumped into the home console market, and in 2003 launched their baseball game franchise "MLB Slugfest" for Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. But at times it was almost a parody of baseball, including announcers filling the long hours of airtime with bizarre, rambling conversations. ("I read today that kitchen utensils are gonna hurt more people tonight than lifting heavy objects during the day...") Now former Midway Games producer Mark Flitman has revealed the even weirder conversations rejected by Major League Baseball. ("Ah, baseball on a sunny afternoon. Is there anything better? We've been talking about breaking pop bottles with rocks. I guess that is...") The nonprofit Video Game History Foundation published the text in their digital archive — and shared 79 seconds of sound clips that were actually recorded but never used in the final game. ("Enjoying some smoked whale meat up here in the booth today...") Their BlueSky post with the audio drew over 5,500 likes and 2,400 reposts, with one commenter wondering if the bizarre (and unapproved) conversations were "part of the tactic where you include overtly inappropriate content to make the stuff you actually want to keep seem more appropriate." But the Foundation's library director thinks the voice actors were just going wild. "We talked with Mark on our podcast and it sounds like they just did a lot of improv and got carried away." He added later that the game's producer "would give them prompts and they'd run with it. The voice actors (Kevin Matthews and Tim Kitzrow) have backgrounds in sports radio and comedy, so they came up with wild nonsense like this." The gaming site Aftermath notes the Foundation also has an archive page for all the other sound files on the CD. Maybe it's the ultimate tribute to the craziness that was MLB Slugfest. Years ago some fans of the game shared their memories on Reddit... "The first time my friend tried to bean me and my hitter caught the ball was so hype, we were freaking out. Every game quickly evolved into trying to get our hitters to charge the mound." "I just remembered you could also kick the shit out of the fielder near your base if he got too close. Man that game was awesome." "You could do jump kicks into the catcher like Richie from The Benchwarmers." "Every time someone got on base we would run the ball over to them and beat their asses for 30 seconds. Good times." Six years after the launch of the franchise, Midway Games declared bankruptcy.

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InShaneee
8 hours ago
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Japanese Volunteer Translators Quit After Mozilla Begins Using Translation Bot

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Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Linuxiac: The Japanese branch of Mozilla's Support Mozilla (SUMO) community — responsible for localizing and maintaining Japanese-language support documentation for Firefox and other Mozilla products (consisting of Japanese native speakers) — has officially disbanded after more than two decades of voluntary work... SUMO, short for Support Mozilla, is the umbrella project for Mozilla's user support platform, support.mozilla.org, that brings together volunteers and contributors worldwide who translate, maintain, and update documentation, tutorials, and troubleshooting guides for Firefox, Thunderbird, and other Mozilla products... According to marsf, the long-time locale leader of the Japanese SUMO team, the decision to disband was triggered by the recent introduction of an automated translation system known as Sumobot. Deployed on October 22, the bot began editing and approving Japanese Knowledge Base articles without community oversight. The article notes marsf's complaints in a post to the SUMO discussion forum, including the fact that the new automated system automatically approved machine-translated content with only a 72-hour window for human review. As a result, more than 300 Knowledge Base articles were overwritten on the production server, which marsf called "mass destruction of our work."

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InShaneee
1 day ago
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You Can't Leave Unless You Buy Something

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: At the Safeway on San Francisco's King Street, you now can't leave the store unless you buy something. The Mission Bay grocery store recently installed new anti-theft measures at the entrance and exit. New gates at the entrance automatically swing open when customers walk in, but they're set to trigger an alarm if someone attempts to back out. And if you walk into Safeway and change your mind about grocery shopping, you might find yourself trapped: Another gate that only opens if you scan your receipt blocks the store's sole exit. During my Monday visit, I purchased a kombucha and went through the check-out line without incident. (No high-tech gates block the exit if you go through the line like normal.) But for journalism's sake, I then headed back into the store to try going out the new gate. While I watched some customers struggle with the new technology, my receipt scanned immediately. The glass doors slid open, and I was free. But if, like this person on the San Francisco subreddit recounted, I hadn't bought anything, my only means of exit would have been to beg the security guard to let me out.

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InShaneee
1 day ago
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Read this: A new report shows X is amplifying far-right accounts

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Today, in “Yeah, that just about figures” news: A new report from Sky News shows that Twitter—or X, if you insist—appears to have an algorithmic bias toward showing users right-wing and “extreme” content.

Specifically, the Sky News team ran a study where they created nine new Twitter/X accounts, three left-wing, three right-wing, and three politically neutral, and then tracked what content got dumped into their “For You” tabs on the Elon Musk-owned social media service during a one-month period in 2025. (Working with political analysts and data scientists to determine whether content was coming from “extreme” accounts on either end of the spectrum, and whether they were left or right-leaning in nature.) And, wouldn’t you know it: While the experiment’s right-wing accounts got almost exclusively right-wing material, all accounts got more of it than left-wing or neutral stuff. (Notably, the three “politically neutral” accounts got about twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content.)

And, before you ask, yes, the study worked to correct for the idea that the posts being shown were simply the most popular or engaged with: Sky News demonstrated that despite having equal or higher levels of engagement (and significantly higher follower counts), some left-leaning political figures had their posts dropped in front of users’ eyes way less than, say, Rupert Lowe, a far-right independent MP who’s gotten a lot of direct interactions and support from service owner Musk. (Being a British news organization, the Sky report is mostly focused on Twitter’s impact on U.K. politics.) The findings show that, given similar levels of popularity and engagement, the X algorithm is more likely to show a user right-wing content than from an author on the left.

Which is all pretty grim, if not necessarily surprising. (See also the finding that at least 50 percent of all content shown to users comes from authors who were determined to employ “extreme” language, on either side of the political divide.) Musk has been very aggressive in recent months about trying to put his thumb on the scale of U.K. politics, in a similar way to how he remora eel’d his way onto the body of the 2024 United States presidential campaign. Despite a lot of high-minded talk about buying Twitter in order to turn it into a free speech-loving, sink-filled paradise, the new findings suggest the far more obvious conclusion that he’s spent the years since the purchase turning the once-vital social media network into an incredibly expensive propaganda machine.

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InShaneee
1 day ago
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Condé Nast, union employees battle after "illegal firings"

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Following layoffs at Condé Nast and the news that Teen Vogue would be folded into Vogue, the company has kicked up a fight with unionized staff. Four employees, including journalists at The New Yorker, Wired, and Bon Appétit were fired after approaching management on Wednesday about the recent changes at the company. As you might imagine, the company and the union have very different perspectives on the situation.

In a statement, Condé United and the NewsGuild of New York characterized the move as “illegal firings,” saying that the company immediately terminated the four employees “for engaging in the protected concerted activity of gathering in their 1 World Trade Center office to demand answers on this week’s abrupt layoffs at multiple brands including Wired and the consolidation at Teen Vogue.” (The company has denied that there were layoffs at Wired this week, per Variety.) According to reporting from Semafor, more than a dozen employees gathered outside the office of the company’s head of human resources, but the four who were fired appear to have interacted with the HR head most directly. 

The union statement calls this a “flagrant breach of the Just Cause terms of our contract” and an attempt “to intimidate and and silence our members’ advocacy for the courageous cultural and political journalism of Teen Vogue.” Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild of New York, added, “Management’s attempt at union-busting, using intimidation and grossly illegal tactics to try to suppress protected union activity, will not stand.”

Condé Nast, meanwhile, has filed an Unfair Labor Practice Charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the NewsGuild of New York “for their repeated and egregious disregard of our collective bargaining agreement,” per the company’s own statement. The media org claims the four firings were “due to conduct that violated company policies, following an internal review.” Condé Nast described these employees’ behavior as “extreme misconduct,” which includes “aggressive, disruptive, and threatening behavior of any kind.” 

Bon Appétit’s Alma Avalle, one of the four fired employees who helped organize the union there, posted about the situation on Bluesky. “I am, to my knowledge, the only trans woman in our union and the only trans woman on editorial who doesn’t work at Them. I was acting as a union member and concerned employee when I questioned Stan Duncan, well within my legal rights. I don’t love pointing to my identity, but the company saying that I was behaving ‘aggressively’ when I was calmly asking questions feels like a clear transphobic dog whistle,” she wrote. Noting that she loved her job, coworkers, and union, she went on to say, “More important to me than my identity, I am also the Vice President of the NewsGuild of New York, and targeting me with a blatantly retaliatory termination like this feels like an egregious shot against our union and against media workers as a whole.”

“We have a responsibility to provide a workplace where every employee feels respected and able to do their job without harassment or intimidation. We also cannot ignore behavior that crosses the line into targeted harassment and disruption of business operations,” Condé Nast said in its statement. “We remain committed to working constructively with the union and all of our employees.”

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InShaneee
2 days ago
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One of the Greatest Wall Street Investors of All Time Announces Retirement

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One of the Greatest Wall Street Investors of All Time Announces Retirement

Nancy Pelosi, one of Wall Street’s all time great investors, announced her retirement Thursday.

Pelosi, so known for her ability to outpace the S&P 500 that dozens of websites and apps spawned to track her seeming preternatural ability to make smart stock trades, said she will retire after the 2024-2026 season. Pelosi’s trades over the years, many done through her husband and investing partner Paul Pelosi, have been so good that an entire startup, called Autopilot, was started to allow investors to directly mirror Pelosi’s portfolio. 

According to the site, more than 3 million people have invested more than $1 billion using the app. After 38 years, Pelosi will retire from the league—a somewhat normal career length as investors, especially on Pelosi’s team, have decided to stretch their careers later and later into their lives. 

The numbers put up by Pelosi in her Hall of Fame career are undeniable. Over the last decade, Pelosi’s portfolio returned an incredible 816 percent, according to public disclosure records. The S&P 500, meanwhile, has returned roughly 229 percent. Awe-inspired fans and analysts theorized that her almost omniscient ability to make correct, seemingly high-risk stock decisions may have stemmed from decades spent analyzing and perhaps even predicting decisions that would be made by the federal government that could impact companies’ stock prices. For example, Paul Pelosi sold $500,000 worth of Visa stock in July, weeks before the U.S. government announced a civil lawsuit against the company, causing its stock price to decrease.  

Besides Autopilot and numerous Pelosi stock trade trackers, there have also been several exchange traded funds (ETFs) set up that allow investors to directly copy their portfolio on Pelosi and her trades. Related funds, such as The Subversive Democratic Trading ETF (NANC, for Nancy), set up by the Unusual Whales investment news Twitter account, seek to allow investors to diversify their portfolios by tracking the trades of not just Pelosi but also some of her colleagues, including those on the other team, who have also proven to be highly gifted stock traders.

Fans of Pelosi spent much of Thursday admiring her career, and wondering what comes next: “Farewell to one of the greatest investors of all time,” the top post on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets community reads. The sentiment has more than 24,000 upvotes at the time of publication. Fans will spend years debating in bars whether Pelosi was the GOAT; some investors have noted that in recent years, some of her contemporaries, like Marjorie Taylor-Green, Ro Khanna, and Michael McCaul, have put up gaudier numbers. There are others who say the league needs reformation, with some of Pelosi’s colleagues saying they should stop playing at all, and many fans agreeing with that sentiment. Despite the controversy, many of her colleagues have committed to continue playing the game.

Pelosi said Thursday that this season would be her last, but like other legends who have gone out on top, it seems she is giving it her all until the end. Just weeks ago, she sold between $100,000 and $250,000 of Apple stock, according to a public box score.

“We can be proud of what we have accomplished,” Pelosi said in a video announcing her retirement. “But there’s always much more work to be done.”

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InShaneee
3 days ago
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