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Ilandar

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Has Facebook Stopped Trying? (www.404media.co)

In spring, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg invited more than a dozen professors and academics to a series of dinners at his home to discuss how Facebook could better keep its platforms safe from election disinformation, violent content, child sexual abuse material, and hate speech. Alongside these secret meetings, Facebook was regularly...

Ilandar OP ,

Really great article, and thanks for posting the text of it.

You’re welcome. It was their daily free article to email subscribers. I can’t afford to pay a subscription fee for full access but I find the combination of their mailing list + podcast is a good way to keep up to date with their investigations.

Ilandar OP ,

I found this article quite interesting, as I deactivated my main Facebook account around the time the article asserts Facebook was still “trying” and only recently created a new account under a generic pseudonym to access all the community and small business information that is still locked entirely to the platform. Because I have basically nothing in my feed on this account, Facebook backfills it with “recommended” posts and I was pretty shocked at how universally terrible they are. I guess the algorithm uses my location and gender to generate these recommendations, since I’ve provided very little in the way of alternative information or interaction for it to use. As a result, my default feed is basically just a wall of misogynistic and highly sexualised slop and even the few genuine recommended posts (like backpackers looking for travelling buddies) are clearly being recommended because they feature young women with a bunch of older men thirsting over them in the comments.

Ilandar ,

Safe and official are not the same thing. I’m not sure there is any pirate site that is 100% safe when downloading applications. You are always taking an educated risk based on the history of the site, the moderation, the users and the application in question. It is not a good habit to think of things as clean or unclean, safe or unsafe, because circumstances can always change and you need be actively on the lookout for warning signs.

Ilandar ,

Smartphone camera systems have been using AI for many years. It’s only recently that companies started adding the buzzword to the marketing material to make it seem like there has been some massive leap forward. It’s likely this camera will function like any other.

Ilandar ,

The Fairphone 4 also has a possible 5 years of warranty (2 years standard + 3 years complimentary extended).

Ilandar ,

SolidTorrents is a pretty good aggregator. You can also search on non-English sites (I use Korean ones).

Ilandar ,

The article is only based on a handful of accounts from reddit, but it would be quite funny considering how many people I’ve encountered who do this and think they are geniuses or morally superior because they don’t use an ad-blocker. Let’s see how they feel after a fee hike. :)

Ilandar ,

That’s a poor reason. Google takes a big cut, just pay the YouTuber(s) directly through their favourite donation service; most have at least one these days. This is like when people claim they pay for Spotify because they “care about supporting musicians”. It’s delusional at best and a straight up lie at worst.

Ilandar ,

There’s probably something in the terms about it

2.3 Geographic Restrictions

The Paid Services, and certain content available within the Paid Services, may only be available in certain countries. You agree that you will not present any false, inaccurate or misleading information in an effort to misrepresent your country of residence, and you will not attempt to circumvent any restrictions on access to or availability of the Paid Services or content available within the Paid Services.

Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube

YouTube reserves the right to suspend or terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service if (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or © we believe there has been conduct that creates (or could create) liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates.

I don’t understand these surprise pikachu reactions from some people. If you break the terms of service you are running the risk that the company in question will terminate your service or account at some point in the future. There is nothing controversial or surprising about this, other than the fact that Google has taken so long to get around to it.

Ilandar ,

Stremio is pretty easy to setup. You will need to make use of the community add-ons, found here.

Ilandar ,

In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems.

Hopefully this doesn’t go the Apple direction where “security” becomes the catch-all defence for anti-consumer business practices.

'LLM-free' is the new '100% organic' - Creators Are Fighting AI Anxiety With an ‘LLM-Free’ Movement (www.theatlantic.com)

As soon as Apple announced its plans to inject generative AI into the iPhone, it was as good as official: The technology is now all but unavoidable. Large language models will soon lurk on most of the world’s smartphones, generating images and text in messaging and email apps. AI has already colonized web search, appearing in...

Ilandar ,

Yes, I always get the feeling that a lot of these militant AI sceptics are pretty clueless about where the technology is and the rate at which it is improving. They really owe it to themselves to learn as much as they can so they can better understand where the technology is heading and what the best form of opposition will be in the future. As you say, relying on “haha Google made a funny” isn’t going to cut it forever.

Ilandar ,

From the article:

The Atlantic has a corporate partnership with OpenAI. The editorial division of The Atlantic operates independently from the business division.

Ilandar ,

But even if you don’t, have some respect for the AI artists out there who put time and effort into their craft.

What kind of time and effort? How is AI art a skill that is comparable to real art? I am genuinely asking here, I’d like to understand your work process.

I am not a visual artist, but I have composed my own music and the amount of time and/or effort needed to create a comparable piece using generative AI is not even close to being the same. I think there is a place for AI tools that assist artists, but people generating entire pieces using AI and then referring to themselves as “artists” is honestly delusional and sad. I hope that’s not what you are referring to here.

Ilandar ,

You see where I’m going with this?

No, I’m sorry but those are terrible examples. Synthesisers still require full creative control and an understanding of sound production techniques to create a custom sound. Some musicians rely on presets and samples, but even then they still need to be capable of actually composing a piece of music. Also, the debate was largely about whether synthesisers could be considered real instruments, not whether the music created by synthesisers was real music. The Hip Hop comparison is completely irrelevant and an even worse attempt at conflating genuine criticism of AI “musicians” with “old people are just mad”.

I don’t know anything about AI music generation

It’s literally just prompts AFAIK, so the people making it don’t require any musical talent, ability or creativity. They are just asking someone/something else to make them music that has a certain sound. It’s the equivalent of a monarch commissioning a piece of work from their court musician and then claiming they are a musician too.

visual art can be generated by AI models on local machines with a great amount of fine tuning and depth.

Are there specific pieces of AI art software people use? Any popular ones you can recommended to help me understand the process better?

Ilandar ,

You keep using the word “vision”, but I have a hard time understanding how an AI artist has a vision equivalent to that of a traditional artist based on the explanation you’ve provided. It still sounds they are just cycling through AI generated options until they find something they like/that looks good. That is not the same as seeing something in your mind and then manually recreating that to the best of your ability.

Ilandar ,

It was a terrible and irrelevant point, as I explained. Thanks for the links though, I will check them out.

Ilandar ,

You’re sort of stepping around the issue here. Are you confirming that AI art is about cycling through options blind until you stumble across something you like?

Ilandar ,

They’re not just typing in “make me a pretty image” and then refreshing a lot.

The only explanation I’ve received so far sounded exactly like this, just with more steps to disguise the underlying process.

Ilandar ,

I’m not sure equating AI art to sand bucket man is the glowing endorsement you think it is.

Ilandar ,

Err, you admitted yourself that you are absolutely clueless when it comes to AI music generation. So yes, your “point” was a bad one and clearly came from a place of complete ignorance.

Ilandar ,

How is stacking 10 buckets of sand and letting them fall in an art gallery, comparable to real art? Dunno, but they call it that: “real art”.

Your insinuation here was that AI art is “real art” because someone once stacked 10 buckets of sand and called it “real art”. It comes across as pretty desperate that you relied on a comparison with something as questionable as this to argue that AI art is the equivalent of traditional art. As you said, there will always be artists and “artists”. Sounds like AI “artists” fit in quite well with the latter group.

Ilandar ,

If you’re explaining every single joke in the same sentence as the joke (which is what /s is), it’s not funny. Humour is not, nor has it ever been, about inclusion. It is about being funny. Not universally funny; just funny to people who understand and appreciate the joke.

Ilandar ,

Focusing on the people and communities, since takes like “Lemmy has no ads” or “reddit has more content” are so obvious that there is zero point in sharing them, I would say Lemmy is better. I think the quality of discourse is a lot higher and people are more likely to type longer, thought out and educated (or well intentioned) comments. If I were to put it really simply, I’d say Lemmy’s community is more centred around discussion, whereas reddit is centred around reaction.

However, one issue with Lemmy is that fringe groups and views are overrepresented (particularly left-leaning ones), which can result in an echo-chamber effect in many discussions. I find pile-on attempts, or accusations of fascism, Nazism and right-wing trolling, are a lot more common here towards users who don’t immediately join in with a far left circlejerk or attempt to bring a little more nuance or critical thinking to a discussion. Dylan Marron, host of the podcast ‘Conversations With People Who Hate Me’, once said in an interview that social media pile-ons from people who are actually on your own side hurt a lot more than pile-ons from people who fundamentally disagree with you and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It frustrates me that some Lemmy users shutdown and try to “other” people the moment they have a minor or semantic disagreement with them, instead of taking the time to hash it out or just politely agreeing to disagree. It’s kind of ironic that federation allows communities to isolate themselves, yet instead these people remain federated with everyone and then get really offended and outraged when they’re confronted with world views that even slightly differ from their own.

But anyway, that type of person is still a minority and Lemmy is, for the most part, a significantly better environment than reddit for polite and intelligent discussion.

Ilandar ,

There is no such thing as “universally bad at being funny”, as I explained. Humour is subjective.

Ilandar ,

True, too many people treat phones like a status symbol or fast fashion instead of a tool that should be maintained and used for many years.

Ilandar ,

Yes, I completely agree on the complicity of reviewers parroting the same PR buzzwords in every single review. It definitely feels like they have played their part in normalising many of these objectively bad and anti-consumer design decisions.

Ilandar ,

Very cute phone!

Ilandar ,

What do you mean by track? Unihertz is a small Chinese manufacturer - it makes no guarantees around support and barely delivers any updates to its devices, as is the norm within much of the non-Google, non-Samsung Android market. It’s really only within the last couple of years that the industry has actually made a bit of progress in this area.

Ilandar ,

I was being a dick and asking a rhetorical question there, because I thought it would be pretty obvious that the support for a small Chinese manufacturer would be abysmal.

Ilandar ,

Sounds like the ads are limited to a couple of nonessential applications that can be disabled or uninstalled, so I don’t think these are contradictory statements.

Ilandar ,

The one holdout among the console makers is Nintendo, whose PC strategy is still to threaten fan projects with lawsuits. Perhaps I do not have to hand it to Nintendo for this, but as a result of its obstinance, the Switch is the only console I’d consider buying as a PC gamer. Nintendo remains a one-of-a-kind gaming company, whereas Xbox and PlayStation feel less and less distinguishable from gaming at large—aka PC gaming.

I’m not sure about this analysis of the Switch’s success. The “lawsuit” argument is pretty irrelevant; the console would sell regardless of whether emulation existed (as it has, for most of the big titles and for much of the console’s life). I think the “one-of-a-kind” argument is accurate, but I’d also suggest that the very wide library of games is a major reason why Nintendo has performed so well in this generation. The Switch appeals to almost every single type of gamer - there is so much variety there. Additionally, the portability is clear point of difference: for many, the Switch is more like a handheld that they can occasionally play on the TV, rather than a traditional home console. And finally, the Switch is just a more affordable option and that has mattered a lot since 2020.

Ilandar ,

One politics student tells me they “don’t worry about misleading people because the parties mislead others with their opinions about other parties”.

This is a bizarrely careless attitude for a politics student to have towards elections in their own country.

Ilandar ,

Did you read the article? The student in question is guilty of the exact thing they criticise politicians for. “Well they did it first/more so it’s okay if I do it too” is the argument of a 4 year old.

NewsBreak: Most downloaded US news app has Chinese roots and 'writes fiction' using AI (www.reuters.com)

Last Christmas Eve, NewsBreak, a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States, published an alarming piece about a small town shooting. It was headlined “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.”...

Ilandar ,

Where is the xenophobia?

Ilandar ,

“Chinese roots” was a sub-heading. Did you read the paragraphs underneath? As for why it matters that the application and its employees are from China - pay closer attention to international relations between the US and China. The US banned Huawei because it was concerned about the influence of the CCP on the company and is in the process of banning an extremely popular mobile application currently (TikTok) because it has links to China. The US and China are major foes within the Pacific region: look at America’s behaviour around the issues of Taiwan and AUKUS. That is the important context you seem to have overlooked here.

The most popular news application in the US having links to China is highly relevant when the two nations see each other as antagonists on the global stage, when the US has a recent history of banning popular Chinese products and services because of a purported or real link to the CCP, and when the services themselves are being used to spread misinformation and, potentially, disinformation.

Ilandar ,

I think you’re imparting your own biases on the article here. The reporting on the “Chinese roots” of the company is provided as context for the reader because, as I explained above, China’s alleged influence over American society and politics is very relevant at the moment - regardless of whether you agree that it is happening. As far as I know, there was also zero evidence provided by the US government of CCP-guided interference by Huawei or TikTok, yet it moved ahead with bans anyway. Particularly within the context of the reasoning for banning TikTok, NewsBreak’s connections to China are extremely relevant. Note, in particular, this line from the article:

In February, IDG Capital was added to a list of dozens of Chinese companies the Pentagon said were allegedly working with Beijing’s military.

You accuse the outlet/journalist/editor of xenophobia and quote their findings of zero links to the CCP as evidence of this, but I would argue that this is actually evidence of the complete opposite. They are doing their best to provide a balanced view of the situation by reporting the lack of connections in contrast to the allegations or implications. If they actually had a genuine xenophobic intention with this reporting, there would be absolutely zero reason to include that line.

It is not an outrageous thing to say: being Chinese does not make you a CCP operative.

The article doesn’t state or imply that, though. What it does do is provide information to the reader that is, again, relevant because of the current situation in US politics where you do have politicians alleging or implying that being Chinese, even ethnically, equates to being a CCP operative.

I just wish they would stop saying “China” or “Chinese” as shorthand for “CCP”.

This is standard in the field of international relations, though. We always use the name of the country or the capital city of the country when referring to it on the international stage. You are suggesting that we should refer to China as “the CCP”, the USA as “the Democrats”, Australia as “Labor”, etc. That is obviously an extremely confusing and illogical way of presenting information to a global audience.

I think the fact that you are so concerned about how Trump might hijack this type of balanced reporting is a massive tell that you are not reading it impartially. You are approaching it from the position of “the West has an anti-China bias” (a position I don’t necessarily disagree with) and are then trying to link the dots between the information provided in the article and your world view. You need to understand that reporting facts, that may be parroted in bad faith by political groups and their supporters to reach an inaccurate/unsupported conclusion, is not the same as an opinion piece where the objective is to emotionally manipulate the reader or lead them to a particular conclusion. Reuters has an extremely good reputation for highly factual and unbiased reporting and there is nothing in this report to suggest otherwise.

Ilandar ,

There is not a single attack on your character at all in that reply. If you don’t want to engage, fair enough. Just be honest about it instead of trying to smear others so you look like you “won” by default due to some imagined moral high ground.

Ilandar ,

I don’t think they’re likely to do a better job than humans any time soon.

Sure, assuming the human is actually putting effort into the task. But we know that able-bodied society is generally, at best, dismissive of the needs of the disabled and, at worst, discriminatory. I very much doubt that the majority of fully sighted humans working in this area are taking the time required to view the problem from the point of view of the visually-impaired minority and then putting in the effort required to deliver the best possible solution for them. Not every website is run by some massive company with employees specifically dedicated to this task. For many it will be an afterthought, and that’s where AI descriptions will shit all over the lazy human ones. Additionally, alt text contributes to SEO which means many will be tailoring it to their search ranking instead of the needs of the user.

Ilandar ,

Yes, it’s very concerning and frustrating that more people don’t understand the risks posed by AI. It’s not about AI becoming sentient and destroying humanity, it’s about humanity using AI to destroy itself. I think this fundamental misunderstanding of the problem is the reason why you get so many of these dismissive “AI is just techbro hype” comments. So many people are genuinely clueless about a) how manipulative this technology already is and b) the rate at which it is advancing.

Ilandar ,

That you can straight-up comment “AI doesn’t get better” at a tech literate sub and not be called out is honestly staggering.

I actually don’t think it is because, as I alluded to in another comment in this thread, so many people are still completely in the dark on generative AI - even in general technology-themed areas of the internet. Their only understanding of it comes from reading the comments of morons (because none of these people ever actually read the linked article) who regurgitate the same old “big tech is only about hype, techbros are all charlatans from the capitalist elite” lines for karma/retweets/likes without ever actually taking the time to hear what people working within the field (i.e. experts) are saying. People underestimate the capabilities of AI because it fits their political world view, and in doing so are sitting ducks when it comes to the very real threats it poses.

Ilandar ,

Some people might prefer the design of the Motorola. Larger screen, lighter weight, thinner profile and a grippier texture on the back. Personally I think the camera module’s design is at least as good as the Pixel’s too (I like the way it slopes into the rest of the back). In terms of technical advantages, the Motorola has a larger and faster charging battery and the Ready For desktop mode.

Realistically, though, a Motorola phone will never be able to compete with a similarly priced Samsung or Pixel because, as good as the hardware may seem on paper, it will always be undermined by significantly worse software support. The camera software is worse, there are less proprietary software features (which I think most people see as a negative, even if I don’t) and the update frequency, longevity and stability is worlds apart.

Ilandar ,

Yes, I use a razr 40 currently and the chop motion to activate the torch is very useful.

Talking Tiananmen with a Chinese chatbot: Chinese developers hope to build the AI of the future. What, if anything, will it have to say about the past? (chinamediaproject.org)

As China strives to surpass the United States with cutting-edge generative artificial intelligence, the leadership is keen to ensure technologies reach the public with the right political blind spots pre-engineered. Can Chinese AI hold its tongue on the issues most sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party?...

Ilandar ,

Pretty interesting read, thanks for sharing. People often use China as an arms race bogeyman in discussions about western AI regulations, but this is an example of why the US should not be worrying so much about “losing to China”. They have to be more careful, and thus move at a slower pace, by default to ensure their AI doesn’t threaten the CCP’s level of control.

Ilandar ,

rEdDiT iS uP iN aRmS

Did anyone else click through to the supposed evidence of this? It’s a thread with like 40 karma and 30 comments lol

Ilandar , (edited )

It has been available in some form since Android 11. It’s no longer limited to Pixels - my Motorola has a similar feature caller optimised charging, which doesn’t even require alarms. LineageOS also has like 3 different ways to limit charging. In short, you definitely do not need root.

Ilandar ,

Agreed. There’s lots of great stuff on YouTube if you take the time to do a bit of searching and curating.

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