Joined the Mayqueeze.

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  • 114 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Back pay is not helping that much when your mortgage is on the line today/next month after you have exhausted all your savings. Of which I’m gonna guess post covid there aren’t that much. Your soldiers are going to suffer bad. Your go fund me idea is honorable; I don’t see it making enough of a dent. That would presuppose a level of knowledge among the general public, an awareness of these issues, and I don’t see that either. In a way, it’s that lack of awareness that gave the world Orange 2.0.

    The Republicans have the stronger arm in this arm wrestle. I don’t like it either. Their people don’t care if you chop off their fingers if at the end they can say they owned the Dems. If education works here, go for it. I don’t think the time frame is long enough for this to work. They’ve already swallowed veterans getting less health care and that their favorite valet José has been sent to El Salvador. Are grocery price increases not outpacing inflation? They aren’t issue-based, they are vibe-based and the vibe is own the Dems.

    In theory I agree with you. I’m not parroting anyone, I’m trying to look at this realistically. This is not the first shutdown rodeo. And it sucks if your team feels a certain level of responsibility to the country and all its people, which is more than I can see coming from the clown car load of people currently in charge. At some point the leadership of the Democrats will feel the damage to continue is going to hurt them more at the ballot box than to package a turd of a compromise in shiny wrapping paper. I want your vision of the Democrats but I think we’ll get mine unfortunately.



  • There is a process called reconciliation that gets triggered in the senate in a budget impasse situation. I would say it typically involves a whole lot of horse trading but at the end is a bill that can pass with a simple majority. So I don’t think either party will be able to drag this out indefinitely or just to the midterms.

    Dragging this out generally is a bad idea for Democrats. The cult following of stable genius is going to accept the negative consequences longer as long as they get fed a narrative along the lines of “we prevent immigrants from getting health care and drain the swamp of lizard people.” Or whatever. The Democrats will feel their feeble support dwindle when unpaid government workers are done with their savings, which will happen before the cult runs out of patience. The whole battle is mainly fought on the backs of people whose only fault was choosing a career in government. The Democrats will take pity on them and eventually agree to the least dehumanizing compromise you can negotiate at the “12th” hour.


  • If you care about things beyond the operations, the Proton boss came out in support of 47’s adminstration with regards to regulating big tech IIRC. I’m not aware the Mullvad chief did something similar.

    Proton works well. But it’s designed to be the basket for all your eggs (VPN, office suite, email, etc.). They want you to use all their services and push for upgrades to the highest tier. I found their customer support you be … very … slow.

    If you need port forwarding, AirVPN is another option. I think they’re cheaper than Mullvad but it’s held together by dedication and duct tape. It works okay but read their website first to see if you’re okay with how it’s set up.





  • There are at least two discussions going on here simultaneously. Is the process of a beefed up spell checker sucking up all the data the same as an artist looking at what had come before, before either of them churn out new art? I’m inclined to agree with you; the process does seem similar enough. The difference remains that one is a statistical model and the other is a human being. So even if the process appears similar enough, they are two different types of player and I can also agree that we should not treat them the same. One is able to throw constant massive amounts of spaghetti at the wall as long as there are chips and power and the other is limited by their health and more limited processing power. So where the compromise lands in this discussion simply isn’t clear yet. And while you and I can discuss this, I can say for myself at least I’m not smart enough to see where this goes eventually.

    The other discussion is how all of it collides with existing copyright/trademark law, which is essentially different in every country. Constitutional rights, like freedoms of expression and the arts, are given to real people, not computers. But at least one supreme court in this planet has made corporate money a form of free speech. So eff knows where LLMs end up.

    This is new territory we’re in. And I fear that’s why it will take another decade until we get a legal landmark decision or a political compromise that will be similar enough all around the world.


  • The law mostly disagrees with the memes = theft. A lot of it is covered through freedom of speech and fair use. If you have taken a bit of content, changed it a bit, recontextualized, and reposted it, you are most likely in the clear. Especially if the original content was publicly posted. This gets less clear if you are using the likeness of a private person but this will also depend on context. Where in the world you are, if this content was captured in a public space or from something published - the list goes on, like some stuff can be trademarked as well, and I’m no lawyer. A lot of these things run under the legal doctrine of “no plaintiff, no judge.” I feel artists in general have accepted that anything they post online is just potentially gone. And if no one steals their content to make money off it, they’re not going to hire a lawyer, whom they cannot afford.

    And I’m not saying any of this is great but that’s an established status quo.

    The reason why so-called AI generated art gets decried is twofold. It’s new and we don’t like new things. And in order for it to be created, the models have to suck in all the training data they can. And they don’t tend to pay for it. So that’s where some people see theft happening. But that’s not settled law yet because it’s fairly new, there are plaintiffs but not enough judges have passed judgement yet. Do they have to pay for stuff that’s publicly available? Where is the line, if any? Is imitation of a style okay if there is more to the work than just copying something from Studio Ghibli or Disney? These questions are going to keep a lot of legal professionals in bacon for a long time still.

    This shit is hard. It’s more gray than black and white.


  • I’ve been thinking about strategies to get Google to back down on this. And I think the most viable strategy is to let them know that we will all move to iOS if they go through with it. If they lock down their OS, then we might as well use the OG locked down OS and turn to Apple. We only have to make this convincing enough.

    I don’t want to go to the dark side either. But as the light is going out on this side: I’m gonna need a new phone within the next 12-18 months. For the first time since ditching my blackberry I’m thinking about switching again. And for the first time ever I’m seriously thinking about an iPhone. All my purchases and what not be dammed. LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, GOOGLE!



  • YT and TT are platforms that breed weird quirk uniformity. They all grab your attention with the same phrases (“you’ll never believe …”, “what about [insert something outrageous]? Let me explain …” etc.) For a while, everybody had the same Ikea shelves behind them crammed with shit. Then I think we moved on to neon signs. It used to be fashionable to show off your expensive big microphone, probably much to the delight of its manufacturer. And that’s why I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the manufacturer paid some influencers to hold the tiny mike prominently in the shot like they would hold a dog poop bag filled with poop from a stranger’s dog. And then it was copied.