One of my favorite programs was acting up, so I went to reinstall. Turned out this program that has been free for a decade, now wants $29 a month, to let me pirate movies. Da fuck? What a way to shit the bed, to offer the same free program but charge for it out of nowhere
I’m not worried about pornhub/redtube/xhamster/xvideos/chaturbate/only fans leaking info but more someone hacking in. There’s a potential goldmine of blackmail/sextortion material from seeing what fetishes someone has.
And this won’t even stop kids from finding porn. I think it is based on good intentions but they are too proud to say “yeha, maybe this has more cons than pros”
It’s obviously not based on good intentions… how can you be this naïve? If a conservative says “but think of the children”, you know fully well whatever they’re proposing is not for the wellbeing of children.
When a conservative says “think of the children”, what they mean is “think of the queer kids that will be outed to their parents and sent to conversion therapy”.
Also porn history is a really good clue to figuring out someone’s sexuality and gender identity. And useful to conservatives for demonizing queer people as sexual deviants. I 100% believe this is an indirect way of harming queer people by outing them and their sexual interests.
The fact that 200 years ago, Scotland had about 2 million inhabitants, all of whom were virtually exclusively ethnic scots. Up until about 40 years ago there weren’t even keeping track of that, with over 99% being ethnic scots at the start of the census in the 80s. (Source: Wikipedia)
Now this ai is obviously fabricating bullshit because it was trained to be diverse and inclusive.
Dude im just looking at demographics… am not even Scottish. Doesn’t change the fact that what this ai does is blatantly made up and could be considered falsifying history.
Why would you want to have inclusive history at the cost of accuracy? That’s literally blind adherence to ideology. You know, the thing religious zealots or nationalists are doing.
The point of history is that we can learn from it, and for that it must be kept as accurate as possible.
Accepting this in the grand scope of things somewhat irrelevant inaccuracy, just because you want the past to be wholesome and coherent with current beliefs, just opens the door to more critical areas of history being changed to fit the narrative.
Just look at the American republicans, who are in the process of banning slavery and black oppression as a topic kids are taught about.
OP probably assumes it’s impossible that a black person might have been born in Scotland in 1820 despite the Atlantic slave trade being in full swing for centuries by that point making this entirely feasible.
The frustration that we feel over bigotry can be expressed in so many ways. We don’t need to rely on ableist slurs. Alternative phrases are more descriptive, and more accurate; unintelligence is not the prevailing problem with right wing extremists, for instance, nor is it the cause of their actions. Ignorance, prejudice, and disregard for the rights of others are.
Conflating harmful actions with lack of intelligence does everyone a disservice. To suggest that “stupidity” that is what makes people act badly undermines any real accountability. The causes of problematic behavior rarely have anything to do with mental acuity, and we can’t properly address harmful behavior while being so reductive about its causes. Carelessness, bias, hatred, greed, closed-mindedness, indifference – these are the traits that lead to oppression. Our intelligence is not the issue so much as our sense of compassion and justice.
Apparently the National Library of Scotland has caved to the woke liberal agenda of acknowledging that black people exist and your post deserves to be downvoted!
Feasible? Sure. Pick 2 people randomly during that time? Unlikely. I have nothing against diversity. And I have nothing against an AI being encouraged to produce diverse outputs. I do think it’s a clear indicator of the internal prompts that guide the AIs choices.
I mean, sure. But it’s not like that’s the only bias. What are the chances it was going to pick two attractive, seemingly well to do people and not two plain farmers or shepherds or something like that? Or people of very different ages or different heights, etc.
It’s not choosing entirey randomly but it isn’t showing us anything that couldn’t have possibly existed.
It’s not choosing entirey randomly but it isn’t showing us anything that couldn’t have possibly existed.
No it’s showing us anything the creators of the AI want us to see. It won’t generate ugly people because the creators used much more attractive people to train the AI. Also, you won’t see what your typical Scot looked like in the 1820s, because the creators made the AI change the prompt to add diversity.
You guide the output to influence it.
Like making it “diverse” (include a black person), a person being attractive and free of blemishes unless instructed, a person being a specific age like 20-30 unless instructed.
In 1778, Court of Session judges ruled that slavery was incompatible with Scots Law. This ruling meant Knight could not be made to carry out tasks for Wedderburn or be taken back to Jamaica against his will.
No you see, they’re discovering that the world is fucked up. As opposed to us who have always known it’s fucked up, that’s how we get to enjoy our lives 😀
This is all true, but it’s interesting how people often forget another simple option: the software is commercial - it is simply sold on some website/store. Just like you can buy the game Mindustry on Steam, but it is Libre Software and even though you can get the build for free on GitHub and its itch.io page, people still pay for the Steam version. I wonder why people forget about this option, since it’s probably the simplest one.
Of course, Steam is a proprietary, unethical platform, so I’m just using it as an example - I’m not saying we should sell there.
Is it? On GOG you can download games without installing their proprietary client (there is also a libre alternative called Heroic Games Launcher, but that’s made by the community). Itch has a libre client and it’s also optional. Both those platforms don’t put DRM in games, unlike Steam.
Steam has forced updates. This means that game developers can push an update that for example deletes content from your game and as far as I know, you can’t really refuse it.
On a page of every game that is sold on Steam, you will see text that says “Buy”. But I’m pretty sure their ToS says that you are only renting games from them. So they are misleading their users.
That’s why I said “one of the fairest” and not “the fairest one”. There’s a whole lot of what steam does and other companies won’t ever do, for instance, Proton. I am forever thankful for it especially, since it motivated me to give linux the second chance. Not to say, that this particular technology turned the whole OS table around.
Steam is not perfect by any means, but people behind it offering quite a fair deal both for the devs and especially for customers. There’s basically no alternatives, bc steam has so much more to it than just storing your game library and being a game vendor.
On a page of every game that is sold on Steam, you will see text that says “Buy”. But I’m pretty sure their ToS says that you are only renting games from them. So they are misleading their users.
Not actually owning games sucks, but find me a digital marketplace that doesn’t say that you’re only “renting” them or some other bullshit. Steam doesn’t call it renting, rather, I quote, “As a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content available to Subscribers or purchase certain Hardware”, where the subscriber is the word to call any user that has a steam account, nothing less nothing more: “You become a subscriber of Steam (“Subscriber”) by completing the registration of a Steam user account.” store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#1
Basically, this wording is a backdoor for them, in case their servers will be shut down and they won’t be physically able to provide any game files. Yes, it opens some ways to exploit this, but unlike some other companies like Ubisoft, Valve never seem to use it this way. Also, torrents do exist, and guess what, they’re DRM free, just as you like it, I assume. That’s actually exactly why they should exist, imo: to preserve things.
Valve didn’t invent Proton. As far as I understand, it’s just a fork of WINE. I think the only difference is that it contains fixes for Steam versions of games. For non Steam games everyone uses WINE. I’m sure Proton is convenient for Steam users, though.
Not actually owning games sucks, but find me a digital marketplace that doesn’t say that you’re only “renting” them or some other bullshit.
Since GOG and itch.io give you DRM-free offline installers of games, I believe that you do own the games that you buy there. I haven’t read their ToS, though. It is possible that they say the same thing.
Steam doesn’t call it renting, rather, I quote, “As a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content available to Subscribers or purchase certain Hardware”, where the subscriber is the word to call any user that has a steam account, nothing less nothing more: “You become a subscriber of Steam (“Subscriber”) by completing the registration of a Steam user account.” store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#1
Thanks for finding the exact quote. They didn’t use that word, but to me it sounds like renting. You have access to software as long as you are a subscriber. But I probably wouldn’t mind this if their games didn’t have DRM. Then, if at some point you stopped being a subscriber, you would still be able to play your games (at least the ones you’ve downloaded). Another interesting thing is that they can ban you for selling your Steam account. But before Steam became popular, it was usually possible to sell used games.
Also, torrents do exist, and guess what, they’re DRM free, just as you like it, I assume. That’s actually exactly why they should exist, imo: to preserve things.
The point is that DRM is unethical. I refuse to pay for anything that contains DRM. Breaking it is illegal, requires special skills and sometimes it’s very difficult even for experts (Denuvo). If those games were Free Software, any programmer could remove DRM from them and distribute such modified copy. That’s exactly why we need to get rid of proprietary software - so that developers don’t have power over users. I also think that piracy should exist, but it doesn’t solve our issues with software freedom. Nobody should restrict what people can do with their software and their computers.
Oh no, Proton is not just “WINE with extra steps”, Proton is the directX to Vulkan translator, and unlike previous attempts, its so good that some games perform better than on Windows. Not to mention that Valve managed to solve the problems around anti-cheats and all of this works with minimal tweaking. If it were as simple as you say, somebody should’ve already done their own proton before Valve, also, in this case there were no community forks of it, that allows to use its power without the need to launch Steam (github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom). And yea, Proton is FOSS. Nice of them, to make a revolution and then just let the people actually have it, don’t you think? If, for example, Take Two were like this, most of modern games could’ve had beautiful procedural character animations powered by Euphoria engine.
The point is that DRM is unethical. I refuse to pay for anything that contains DRM. Breaking it is illegal, requires special skills and sometimes it’s very difficult even for experts…
DRM is unethical indeed, yet, to use them or not is the choice of the dev. Ban modern DRMs today and what you’ll achieve is that companies will try to squirm around and use something even more dirty. Also DRMs are already not the shittiest malware big companies trying to install on your machine, it would be anti-cheat. Why noone talks obout them? There are methods to detect cheaters without installing a rootkit spyware on all the end-users PCs.
…That’s exactly why we need to get rid of proprietary software - so that developers don’t have power over users. I also think that piracy should exist, but it doesn’t solve our issues with software freedom. Nobody should restrict what people can do with their software and their computers.
Lol. Sorry, but the games and DRM are not why. The most important reason to it is that we’re losing proprietary software’s technologies. Technologies that might help advace our modern day of living. Also because what they’re restricting is basically a knoledge, and knowledge shoud be free, not because your poor ass can’t own their games.
And Proton is the example that Valve contributes to FOSS community, unlike literally every other major game company, even CDPR.
Thats not even all of it to why i stand on my point, Steam prices are also the most humane, especially if we mention all this bunch of sales steam is famous for. They were there from the beginning, even though they could’ve done something similar to PSN in terms of pricing policy, given that steam was and still kinda is de-facto monopoly, since other game stores on pc have only the fractions of steam’s profits at the most.
But WINE does exactly that, it translates different Windows APIs. I’ve been using it to play games (including Steam games) way before Proton was released. It has existed for 30 years now. Proton came 25 years later and according to Wikipedia:
Proton is developed by Valve in cooperation with developers from CodeWeavers.[2] It is a collection of software and libraries combined with a patched version of Wine to improve performance and compatibility with Windows games. Proton is designed for integration into the Steam client as “Steam Play”.[3] It is officially distributed through the client, although third party forks can be manually installed.
You can see for yourself that it uses WINE and other software that WINE also uses, like DXVK: github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
Not to mention that Valve managed to solve the problems around anti-cheats and all of this works with minimal tweaking.
If this is truly their achievement, then it is impressive.
Nice of them, to make a revolution and then just let the people actually have it, don’t you think?
If there is a revolution, then it seems that it’s mostly an achievement of WINE, DXVK and other developers. It is great that Valve contributes to Free Software, though. But that doesn’t change they fact that they also make proprietary software, which is unethical and they are doing it to attract people to their proprietary platform. WINE is licensed under a Copyleft LGPL license, so it’s also possible that Valve had no other choice in this case. Since last I checked even SteamOS was proprietary, there are good reasons to doubt their intentions.
Also DRMs are already not the shittiest malware big companies trying to install on your machine, it would be anti-cheat. Why noone talks obout them? There are methods to detect cheaters without installing a rootkit spyware on all the end-users PCs.
I talk about it, but most people don’t care about stuff like that at all.
Lol. Sorry, but the games and DRM are not why. The most important reason to it is that we’re losing proprietary software’s technologies. Technologies that might help advace our modern day of living. Also because what they’re restricting is basically a knoledge, and knowledge shoud be free, not because your poor ass can’t own their games.
My argument was that people deserve to be able to control their computers and to do that, they need to be able to control the software. Your reason is very important too. You can watch Richard Stallman’s talk for more: youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM
And Proton is the example that Valve contributes to FOSS community, unlike literally every other major game company, even CDPR.
That is true.
Thats not even all of it to why i stand on my point, Steam prices are also the most humane, especially if we mention all this bunch of sales steam is famous for. They were there from the beginning, even though they could’ve done something similar to PSN in terms of pricing policy, given that steam was and still kinda is de-facto monopoly, since other game stores on pc have only the fractions of steam’s profits at the most.
What you are saying is true, but before Steam became popular, it was possible to buy used games on physical media for cheap. Now even physical copies of PC games have Valve’s DRM, so I blame Valve for destroying the used games market on PC (on consoles it still exists).
Maybe you’re right and I’m romanticizing the evil there. I will remain thankful to Valve tho. I never managed to view proprietary saftware as something particularily evil, tbh, but rather as an annoying obstacle we should eventually overcome.
It’s not easy to have freedom when you are a gamer. Steam and Epic Games Store are both proprietary (but for Epic you can use Heroic Games Launcher) and so are most games. There aren’t that many libre games and maybe around 10 of them are good. I hope that will change in the future.
thanks. I forgot about that. But I’d like to add, that this models kind of feels like “donations with extra steps” to me. i.e. you can get it for free, but you choose to pay the developer even though you have to.
People can get proprietary software for free too, if they don’t mind pirating it. It might be illegal and the risk of getting malware increases, but many people do it anyway. Sometimes it’s even better than the original, because the pirated version won’t have DRM.
So in practice nobody has to pay for any software, any movie, etc. People just choose to do it. In case of Free Software getting it for free is just easier and safer. In theory this might mean that there is less incentive to pay for it, but some projects that I’ve seen seem to be successful. Maybe people don’t know they can get it for free, or it’s too much effort, or they are simply fine with paying.
The best example that comes to mind is Ardour, a FOSS digital audio workstation that charges for binaries. Their FAQ says
If you want the convenience of using our ready-to-run version and/or for support from Ardour developers and experienced users, we ask that you pay something for this.
If you don’t want to pay for a ready-to-run version, then you’ll need to get the source code and build it yourself. We do not provide assistance with this process and particularly on Windows and macOS this can be challenging and take a long time. Also, for Windows, there are no instructions.
It’s a bit mixed in with the “pay for support” model, since you’re basically on your own if you build it yourself. Which probably makes support a lot easier, since there are fewer supported configurations. This seems like a pretty workable model for something as complex as Ardour, but idk how well it would work for simpler projects.
think it also helps that Ardor is used directly by individual users, and its proprietary competitors are often quite expensive. If you’re making something that already has a lot of “free as in beer” competition, this may be harder to pull off.
That is interesting! I had no idea, since it’s packaged in Debian, so I was able to easily install it for free, without even knowing there is a paid version.
Ironically, Steam is one of the platforms with the most free games, but yes, I hate it with all my heart, since many years ago I bought the game Portal on CD, to realize that it required a Steam account to be able to play it. Furthermore, the same thing happens with the other games they provide, adding that they require downloading the client, which is loaded along with the game, unnecessarily spending resources, apart from the fact that it is slow as hell to open. With GOG more of the same, apart from the fact that it bores you with spam emails, the worst EPIC, which also requires complete personal data for registration. I miss the old days, when you went to the store, bought the game CD and in peace.
I bought The Orange Box, so I had the same problem. All physical copies of games are like this now and Valve is the reason. That killed the used games market on PC. You used to be able to sell your game after you got bored of it, but not anymore.
GOG’s client is proprietary just like Steam and Epic, which is bad, but the difference is that their client is optional. You can get offline installers of games directly from the website, because games there are DRM-free. So that makes GOG better than those platforms. There is also a Free Software alternative client developed by the community - Heroic Games Launcher. It works with Epic Games Store as well.
Another store is itch.io, which sells DRM-free games and their optional client is Free Software. But this store only has indie games.
We recently had a presentation covering burnout and strategies to overcome it.
It was sort of hilarious.
They correctly identified that burnout is rooted in excess responsibilities, but neglected to mention that feeling a lack of control plays an huge part. They also covered that people can feel unrecognized for their efforts but weirdly seemed to skip over any mention of how an insufficient reward for efforts plays a part, too.
Their suggestions to address it were all employee-focused: Stay away from negative people. (What, so you all can’t talk about how much the job sucks?) Mediate. Practice gratitude. Set boundaries in your home life, so you’re not so stretched thin. (But not your work life?)
They clumsily and quite obviously avoided the question of what role the employer plays in workplace burnout.
It was a bit sad to watch the poor trainer in action. I know they’re just trying to make sure the gleaming maw of capitalism remains unblemished by the flesh of those it consumes, but woof.
I actually walked away from the presentation with a less positive outlook on my employer than I had before I attended.
When up is down, and left is right, and black is white, and in is out, and rich is - well we don’t talk about that - it’s no wonder that people feel all twisted inside. It’s like everyone in a position of authority is trying to lie to them!? (probably b/c everyone in a position of authority is trying to lie to them)
Which causes people to turn towards religion. Which causes them to vote for Donald Trump. Which causes the downturn of society, which causes… dayum, can this ever end in anything but death?
Sadly, I think not. The golden era of 50s & 60s are gone, and they are NEVER coming back. Plan to have a roommate, I guess, for the rest of your life…
Absolutely, and I think it gets skewed even further by e.g. many TV shows and movies not even showing the presence of minorities at all. It’s a collective blanket that gets pulled over people’s heads.
But also, certain parts were legit better too (even as other parts were much worse), like there was an extremely brief period where the USA was not in one of the variety of forever wars, and supposedly a minimum wage really was a living wage somehow, at some point? (I’m not sure how many people got paid the *minimum" though, certainly fruit pickers would not be).
As I listen to people like the comedian George Carlin, who was talking about it before it happened and yet managed to lay it all out for us in advance, I realize that things were always going to head in this direction, and it was never going to be any different.
Therefore, for the sake of our own sanity, I think we need to let that go: it’s never going to happen. The USA might not even survive the decade (imagine Trump winning, but even if he doesn’t, is there any doubt that a GQP member will take the one after that? historically speaking, Dems never win successive elections), and if it does then the Dems will just cite how Congress blocked them at every turn, blaming the other side for why even with a majority they won’t pass any laws related to e.g. school shootings.
Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler and judged him based on their one-on-one conversation. Chamberlain trusted Hitler based on this personal meeting and infamously predicted “peace for our time”.
Winston Churchill had to judge Hitler based only on his actions, because he never met Hitler personally. Churchill did not trust Hitler.
Less than a year after Chamberlain’s one-on-one meeting with Hitler, Hitler invaded Poland and began WW2.
Sometimes it’s better to judge people based only on their actions as seen from afar.
Reminder that even if Hitler had decided not to invade Poland, Chamberlain “trusting Hitler” abandoned Czechoslovakia, one of the most fortified and industrialized nations in Europe.
It is not simply possible, it is a certainty that Britain, Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia could have defeated Hitler’s Germany in 1938, a year after the opening of the first concentration camp.
Yeah there were multiple times when the allies could have pushed Germany over before they started steamrolling. When they remilitarised the Rhineland, as you said when they occupied the Sudetenland, and even when they invaded Poland.
France started pushing into Germany once war was first declared and there was basically nothing in front of them. Most of the tanks etc were in Poland. If they had continued pushing then it might have all ended there. Instead they pulled back to the Maginot line and the rest is history.
It would have been effective in ww2 too. However they trusted that the Belgian will defend their short borders, and not surrender like in ww1.
Belgium however did not even really notice the Germans running through their country. Then Belgium surrendered since the Germans were already going through their country and they had no chance of winning any fight (also France did not give them any real support against Germany).
Once in France the Germans mainly ignored the Maginot line or attacked it from the back where it was almost not inforced.
PS: this is what I remember from school history. Probably got a few things wrong.
How on earth have I never seen a Mr Beast video? YT has never even suggested it that I can remember, and I’ve been on the lookout for a few months ever since I heard about him on–and this is peak irony–the radio.
The meme is just as good without the word niche. You don’t need to enforce meme accuracy on the internet. Everyone will survive if we talk about YouTubers who aren’t niche
It’s been reported by several people, both reporters and those close to Johnson, that his wild hair is an affectation, he intentionally roughs it up before he does anything in the public eye.
Is there some sort of strategy going on here? Like, these dudes looked at Trump and whatever the fuck is happening on his head and went, “well if it worked for him it’ll work for me?”
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