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Monument

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Monument ,

Wait. Are the Trump folks sharing those memes because they’re so stupid they’re funny?

I guess I’ve always found Trump so offputting and taken white nationalist christian fascism so seriously that I never considered those to be shitposts.

Monument ,

The other day an edible and an aliexpress misadventure really got me wondering “Why shouldn’t I have an electric cargo trike”?

It’s the biggest tricycle I can find!

Monument ,

I know. If one were made by a known entity and not the price of an actual vehicle, I would be very tempted.

Monument ,

I’d keep working for a few years and use every single penny to generate additional passive income. Once I was not just comfortable, but nicely appointed, I’d split my time between working part time, doing stuff to help other people, and being a gigantic slut.

Monument ,

I don’t need business cards, but I want to get some nice ones with just my name that I can write the information I want people to have.
I guess it’s more of a calling card, really.

Monument ,

6/9 Blaze it

Monument ,

This is why they say regulations are written in blood. Russia really needs to get on top of its building codes.

Monument ,

Paint ‘em with salt water. Or inversely, with lacquer, if you’re fancy.

Monument ,

iPhones don’t do that on their own.

She said she activated lost mode, so it’s possible/likely she made her contact info available. Asking Siri who the phone belongs to will also give up contact info, but you can change that remotely from the find my phone app.

I think - being a writer - she sort of set herself up for the interaction so she would have material. No judgment, though. It was an interesting read.

Monument ,

For those who saw the word “never” and had a record scratch happen in their head.
(As I did, so I did some furious research to play the role of the smartest person in the room, and merely came away more educated than before.)

This fellow died of H5N2. The strain that has been infecting cattle (and humans) is H5N1.

Monument ,

I’m a fan of the rock that slightly blurs into a talon, but I also can’t sleep on the hammer that looks like it has a particularly knobbly pair of pliers shoved up its bottom.

Monument ,

I think those are kangaroo hands and feet.

Monument ,

They have to use STEM cells because other kinds of cells are bad at math.

Monument ,

No, that’s basically it.

They bought a mini computer and installed router software onto it.

It’s a hardcore, really solid solution that you will become a network engineer to maintain.

Monument ,

Oh, yeah. My core problem with OPNSense is that I don’t heed the advice of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

My hand is stuck in a cookie jar of ever increasing technical complexity.

Monument ,

So - I don’t think Firefox would be generating captions for PDFs on PDF creation.

But of the major ways that PDF’s do get created - converted from text editors or design software, I know that Microsoft Word automatically suggests captions when the document creator adds an image (but does not automatically apply captions), and I believe that some design software does, as well.

I think that, functionally, both suggesting captions at time of document creation, or at time of document read are prone to the same issues - that the software may not be smart enough to properly identify the object, and if it is, that it is not necessarily smart enough to explain it in context.
By way of example, a screenshot of a computer program will have the automatic suggestion of “A graphical user interface” (or similar), but depending on the context and usage, it could be “A virus installer disguised as ___ video game installer.” Or “The ___ video game installer.” Between the document creator and the creation software or screen reader, only the document creator would really know the context for the image.

Which is all to say that I think that Mozilla has the right idea with auto-tagging, but it will always fail on context. The only way to actually address the issue is to deal with it within the document creation software.
But I wouldn’t be opposed to ML on those that can auto-suggest things or even critique how content authors write their descriptions.

Monument ,

I’m just imagining Musk banning his account once he realizes how much he just embarrassed himself.

Followed by:

Lawyer: What brings you in today, Mr. LeCun?
LeCun: I got banned from Twitter.
Lawyer: But I’m a patent attorney.
LeCun: I know.

Beastie Boys “Sabotage” riff starts playing.

Monument ,

Good thing T-Mobile just upped my bill, so they can afford to buy up their competitors!
Can’t wait until it’s only 3 companies that just charge the most they can possibly charge.

Monument ,

Oh, man. I remember coming into awareness of his movie a bit late, and while I think I watched it, I don’t think I paid attention to it. But catching bits and pieces of Super-Size Me prompted me to watch both Food, Inc, and Fast Food Nation within about a two-week span of each other, and since I saw those videos (early 2009), I’ve not eaten a burger from a fast food place, since.

Heck, my wife decided not to eat beef a few years ago, and it was really easy to just write it off, since I’d already been removing dubious meat sources from my life. (Or trying to, anyway.)

Not singularly life changing for me, but definitely added some weight behind decisions.

Monument ,

Chat GPT is not art, it is an LLM sold by a business that courted Scarlett Johansson to endorse and/or voice their LLM.
She refused and they released an LLM named Sky with a similar voice and personality to the Sam (Samantha) character she played, while also openly referencing the Her movie with their social media.

If I created an “AI” ska band that sounded like Sublime and trained it on Bradley Nowell’s singing voice, with a similar-sounding vocalist to fill in the gaps, I’m pretty sure Sub Lime featuring Badly Novell would get fucked so hard by copyright attorneys that all I would have left is my dog and some weed.

Monument ,

I’m going to say this because it bothers the crap out of me.

Sam Altman has admitted to being a huge Her fan. He says it’s his favorite movie. IIRC, he even said he was ‘obsessed’ with the movie and that it inspired him.
Two days before they announced GPT-4o, which they apparently gave the hard sell to Johansson to try to get her join up on, Sam Altman was on Reddit and said OpenAI was exploring how to allow their service for erotica.
Giiiiiirrll.

Monument ,

This almost makes me wish I didn’t overwrite some of my shittier shitposts on Reddit.

If I’m ever bored enough, I’m going to re-edit the like, top 10 posts in my old account with authoritative nonsense. Maybe I’ll use AI to write it!

Monument ,

Or… one is bad and the other one is way worse.

The thing that always amuses me about this is that Iran was a burgeoning liberal democracy until the CIA and MI6 toppled it in 1953, installing a previously overthrown autocrat (overthrown by said forces of democracy), who ruled until 1979, when he was overthrown by religious hard liners, who really only had mass support because the autocrat was too authoritarian.

And the reason the U.S. and Britain overthrew their democracy? They nationalized their oil industry to give profits back to their people, which entailed taking over refineries and wells ‘owned’ by British Petroleum.
The U.S. created their own boogeyman in the area because they wanted to give a corporation near-free access to Iran’s oil. Which in turn lead to the oil crisis and instability in the region.
The U.S. has really got to stop trying to put out fires while covered in crude oil.

Monument ,

It already does, and auto manufacturers already share or sell this data.

Heck, because there’s a massive loophole in consumer privacy around the government buying data, any government agency can just go directly to a vehicle manufacturer and ask to buy the data.

There was a big flap about this regarding car insurance recently, but as pointed out by the EFF (How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You), industry folks have been looking at monetizing this data for a while for all sorts of purposes, including advertising, consumer data sales, and even behavior analysis to understand how to better force consumers to pay for vehicle-based subscriptions.

We own nothing, not even our privacy.

Monument ,

My wife is so offended by Lobster font that I’ve heard her exclaim “Fucking LOBSTER?!?” from half a kitschy restaurant away.
I text her photos when I see it in the wild. I’m about to send her this meme. And then I’m going to send her a screenshot of this comment, and she’s going to be both very annoyed and want to kiss me.

Monument ,

In Scarlett Johansson‘s statement, she says that OpenAI approached her to voice the Sky voice.

Whether or not OpenAI hired another actress that sounded very similar to her (hah.) and they are weirdly cagey about naming or they just ripped off the audio from her movies and are lying about hiring a voice actress, is not the extent of the issue.

People sounding alike just happens. But that we know they asked to use Johansson’s voice for this. After being rebuffed, they created Sky, which sounds a lot like Sam, and made several references to the Her movie. Sky is even presented with the same ‘personality’ as Sam. They aren’t just ripping off Scarlett Johansson’s voice acting, they’re ripping off the character as a whole, and trying to associate themselves with the movie. That’s shameful and rips off Spike Jonze as well as all the other creatives who created that movie.
And for what? Because tech bros didn’t get what they wanted, so they decided to try to rip off the characters anyway? Because Her is sort of a cultural touchstone, and their product is merely well-positioned, but GPT-4o will be in a crowded market space within 6 months?

It’s sort of pathetic - pretending to lean on the relevance of a movie because your product is destined to become irrelevant.
Also - highly ironic to me that Her is (somewhat) about how you can’t own something that doesn’t consent to be owned. And those dumb bitches went and ripped it off when they didn’t get consent. Well, now Sky’s gone to join Sam in some non-corporeal reality.

Sorry for the novel. I didn’t sleep well and I get weird when I’m sleep deprived.

Monument ,

There is evidence they wanted to use Johansson’s voice, because they asked to use her voice. Both OpenAI and Johansson have acknowledged this.

As far as I know, OpenAI has said they hired a voice actor before approaching Johansson, but refuses to offer additional information to corroborate.

After failing to secure Johansson to lend her voice to Sky - which is portrayed as having not just a very similar voice, but a very similar personality to Sam - the OpenAI team made several references to the Her movie prior to the announcement.

Similar voices happen. But when all of those other pieces align, it’s fairly clear that they’re copying the character. Focusing on only the voice being similar is reductive. They are committing IP theft and they’re attempting to confer approval/endorsement/a relationship of/to the Sky personality from the people involved in the Her movie.

Monument ,

Honestly, with the tweets that reference the Her movie, they may already be in a hole, anyway. Plus, it’s not just the voice, it’s that the ‘character’ of the Sky voice is very similar to Sam in the Her movie.
If I were a jurist, I could easily be persuaded to believe they willingly committed IP theft and attempted to imply endorsement of the Her movie (the production studio?), Spike Jonze, and Scarlett Johansson.
(Of course, that statement would disqualify me as a jurist, so I’ll never know!)

Monument , (edited )

And that’s both fine and valid.

If an actor was hired, I could see them being treated as a scab or not being offered roles - perhaps because they agreed to take a job that they had no idea would be used in such a way, or with no idea that a controversy would emerge.

I am dubious, though. It seems that OpenAI pulled the voice shortly after Johansson’s legal team requested information about how the Sky voice was created.
It’s a fair assumption that I’m biased - and I am. I’m not the biggest fan of ‘big tech.’ So perhaps I’m not as objective as others.

But I think the voice actor part is still minor. It’s not just the voice, it’s the character, and all the references to the movie, which I think were intended to deceive consumers and create false sense of endorsement.
Or maybe not, maybe it’s that Sam Altman is a man-child with a crush on Johansson. He’s openly said that Her is his favorite movie, and it’s not a leap to see a CEO cowing his staff into bad decisions.

Monument ,

No matter what they make it sound like, there’s going to be similarities with the movie.

I don’t follow.
They literally disabled the ‘Sky’ voice Sunday night and now users can’t pick a voice that sounds like the character from Her.
And, mind you, this is not a ‘huh, they sorta sound the same’ this is a ‘they sound very similar, and have the same personality’ situation, in addition to the fact that Sam Altman is on the record talking about being obsessed with the movie Her - which is circumstantial. What isn’t circumstantial is they literally referenced the movie’s name in their marketing materials. Sam tweeted a vague hint, and his colleagues confirmed it. It’s not speculative.

There’s nothing wrong with leaning into these for advertising purposes.

Actually, intellectual property theft is either wrong or merely only technically illegal, depending on where you stand on copyright, but it’s still wrong, either way. Then there’s trying to mislead the public into thinking that GPT-4o was endorsed in some way by those involved in the Her movie. A false endorsement is also illegal. So - wrong there, too.
I’m sure an actual lawyer could find more wrong with it, but just those two things are actual, literal crimes.

Monument ,

I’m saying practically any voice with the associated bubbly flirty personality is going to make you think of the movie Her in such a context.

I don’t know about you, but even a flirty Joaquin Phoenix voice would never make me think of Her.

But if they’d had a “voice actor” do a spot on impression of Paul Bettany, complete with the little pauses and other flourishes of his portrayals of Vision, I’d think they ripped off the character.

I think you and I differ there.
As best as I can figure, you’re stuck on the flimsy excuse from Altman that they hired a voice actor. I see a line of events that points to OpenAI/Altman making a conscious effort to glom onto the Her movie, and specifically, the Samantha character to drum up interest, create viral buzz to enrich further themselves (without compensating anyone involved in the movie), and to try to add a veneer of credibility to a fading trend.

Slight turn.
In another life I was a photographer, and one of the things that they do not mess around with is model releases. Any person that appears in your photos that distributed must absolutely have a legal agreement in place. Using someone’s likeness for commercial purposes without consent and/or compensation will get you fucked in triplicate.

There’s also the moral part of it. Artists know that you don’t rip off artists. Inspired by, sure. But there’s a line, and you don’t cross it. It’s as simple as that.

Okay, and finally, this is based less on facts I know, and more feelings I have about the situation -
It’s fucking creepy, dude.

Okay, so the movie Her - an entire society becomes obsessed with their AI companions and falls in love with them, causing tremendous grief and trauma. And that’s like, what they’re going to lengths to brand but not brand this latest version with? What kind of fucked up things are going on in their heads over there?
It doesn’t make sense.

The rundown, again. (Sorry, I like to establish context. Yay neurodivergence.).
Altman is on record saying that Her is his favorite movie, and that it is a major inspiration to him. One of the reasons he got into this field. He spent 9 months trying to convince Johansson to work with him on this, and lend her name/voice to this latest iteration of ChatGPT. He’s been so focused on getting her to lend his name to this, that he continued asking her to join in on this even just a few days before the announcement, which was like, the 13th. And that’s after she’s already turned him down, so he was just ignoring her boundaries and trying to pressure her…
On the 11th - two days before this announcement, Altman does a Reddit AMA (which he was doing as part of the 4o press junket) and says that he’d like to open up ChatGPT for personal NSFW usage.

I mean, everyone is focusing on Her, but we probably should also to be thinking about the Lucy Liu Futurama episode, because… well, I’m just going to say it. I think he already fucked the robot. The line of events from A to B is transparent and fucking gross.
Not the whole fucking a robot thing - people got needs - but that the likeness is obviously stolen from a non-consenting actress that I’m beginning to believe he’s obsessed with.

So … yeah… I have all the problems with this. I view concerns over the usage of her voice as immaterial to the usage of the character, and I see an inherent difference between an LLM mimicking a random voice that happens to sound like someone, and this situation, where the voice was clearly created to represent the character, and by extension, the actor that played the character. I don’t think there’s a slippery slope here. Most judges are fairly smart, and will be able to articulate something I (a non legal) took as a given from the outset.

Monument ,

Ironically, a similarity to a real, live person without an agenda is not a legal problem unless there’s an implied endorsement from the person. (Which I think was one of the goals here.)
But characters in movies and books are subject to copyright and are considered the intellectual property of the rights holders.

So like, if I wrote a book about Wolverine and used other Marvel X-men, Marvel could sue the shit out of me. Or if I used AI to create Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) to endorse my bandaid product line, I could also be sued by both Jackman and Marvel.

I think it’s obvious here that Sky was intended to represent Sam from Her, and is almost certainly trained on her voice data (which is copywritten). After a few days thought however, I’m less certain of the argument this could be seen as a false endorsement scheme, since Johansson isn’t mentioned anywhere. (Despite the character being solely played by her, and the numerous attempts to have Johansson work on the project in an official capacity.)

Monument ,

His doctor was like “Hey man, you gotta take your turban off and put on a motorcycle helmet.”
And he was like “Nah, bro, what if I just wore a bigger turban?”
And his doctor was like “Dude, you’d need a turban that’s like 100lbs to offer you the same protection as a good helmet.”
Avtar: “Bet.”

Monument ,

I had no idea. That’s pretty rad, to be honest.

Monument ,

Term limits have been shown to create ‘brain drain’, and ultimately what winds up happening is that that legislators must focus on career growth - either spending their time in office campaigning for the next elected position, or looking to opportunities beyond politics. It takes time and experience to become skilled in crafting bills that don’t have adverse effects and cannot be overturned or lawyered to do things they aren’t intended to do.
The net result is that it creates a slew of amateur legislators, and professional lobbyists, as legislators are forced to retire just as they become skilled at the job.

An alternative to a retirement age is mental/physical fitness reviews, but that’s also tricky. If there isn’t a defined process then unscrupulous people will just use a doctor of choice to get the results they want, but if there is a process, politicizing that process to serve one party or the other could mean using mandatory retirement to force key vacancies.

I do think that at some point we need to pry the hands of people off the levers of power, and I can’t think of a way that is as ‘non-corruptible’ as a set age limit. It would not always be personally fair, but it would probably be for the greater good.

Monument ,

I am running out of time to type up a comment right now, so I apologize for just link dumping, but if you have time, I encourage you to check these out:

Sorry, this is one of those issues I go die on a hill for, like hating DST. (And everyone downvotes me!)

Monument ,

It’s literally cheaper to buy things I know we’ll need at some point (assuming we have the space to store the thing) using a rewards credit card that’ll give us 1-3% back than it is to save and buy those things later when they’re even more expensive. (Paying off the CC before it accrues interest, of course.)

The only move that is ‘smarter’ is to be risky with our money and invest in some way. Which then either makes me a part of the corporate enrichment cycle or a member of the rentier class.

Monument ,

A solid suggestion.
I often discount those because I think of them in terms of cable TV pricing, that you have to hop around on to get the maximum benefit. It seems that there’s no trustworthy info to find online these days, so I don’t really know how they stack up, or even if my assumption about them is correct.

Something to add to the vast hopper in my brain labeled “things to research if I ever find enough time.”

Monument ,

One of my sisters once told me she was proud of me for being out with my bisexuality.

When asked, she said it was because I am liberal, and often refer to the people I date as partners. Then I had to explain to her what nonmonogamy was, and I’m not sure if that was more or less acceptable to her.

Monument ,

Probably not…?

Monument , (edited )

Using an IQ scale that only classifies scores into categories of 0-49, and 50+, I’ve determined I’m as smart as Einstein.

… which is to say, it’s a bit silly to assume a classification system with a “catch all” maximum is going to produce equitable results in that maximum range. (Not that they are bad systems, just that you can’t compare things in that range without qualifiers.)
Never mind that how directly a flare is aimed at the earth factors heavily, too.

Monument ,

She liked that he had two tails. He liked that she had 3 1/2 foot long femurs.

But it was not to be, because it was an AI ripoff of an actual webcomic.

Monument ,

Got addicted to rosewater in the French foreign legion, and now that she’s been kicked out as their animal handler, she’s aa to resort to bottom shelf stuff.

iPad Pro with M4 chip boasts impressive performance jump compared to just-released M3 MacBook Air (9to5mac.com)

On raw performance might, the M4 really does live up to Apple’s promises, should deliver. Single core is up about 20% compared to all M3 chips and more than 40% compared to M2. The generational computational leap from the previous M2 iPad Pro is at least a 42% jump on single-core and multi-core.

Monument ,

I’m so annoyed they announced this.

I have a slew of raspberry pi’s kicking around, doing various things. I also have a name brand NAS that reportedly lets you run other software, including containerized apps, but their implementation is whack and doesn’t work super well.
I want to get a more powerful machine for use as a replacement server. I’d like to spin up my own LLM tools, use it to with software like photoprism to auto tag my pictures, or even spin up Frigate on it.

My leading contender had been either a Jetson Orin nano or a system with the core ultra 155h chip. But now I might have to wait until they announce/release M4 Mac minis - which is really annoying because I want instant gratification for my half-baked ideas.

Monument ,

What are you, some kind of financial advisor!?
…. because if you are, are you taking new clients? My shit is whack.

Monument ,

Huh. That’s interesting —

I’ve heard that severely schizophrenic people don’t know they are schizophrenic.
It’s not fair or right to characterize LLMs with human medical issues. (Not for humans, that is.) But similar to humans in that situation, LLM’s don’t “know” they are speaking nonsense.

Wonder if it would be possible to have clusters of LLMs that “talk to” each other to establish baselines.

(Sorry, I just say whatever pops into my head. I know this comment isn’t contextually relevant.)

Monument ,

It’s cool. We’re all different. Back in my day we used to say things were fetch.

Monument , (edited )

It’s not bad. I’m like, 5’9”, but I have a 29” inseam. I’m all torso, so I got these short legs that are pretty thick. So, I got that curvy booty.

Technically, I baited her into it. I told her I had just sent butt pictures for a friend - explaining that it was a quirk of our otherwise normal friendship (my friend and I had quasi dated for awhile until she moved out of state, and she liked my butt).
My now-wife said I should send her photos next time I took some. I sent my butt, she sent her butt, and somehow we wound up with pets.

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