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deathbird

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deathbird ,

Haiku, but honestly I’m just happy to see the conversations here

deathbird ,

Dogs working contribute to society, but don’t talk. I don’t know why being able to talk would suddenly change things for cats.

deathbird ,

It would not need to be trained on CP. It would just need to know what human bodies can look like and what sex is.

AIs usually try not to allow certain content to be produced, but it seems people are always finding ways to work around those safeguards.

deathbird ,

the AI has to be trained on something first. It has to somehow know what a naked minor looks like. And to do that, well… You need to feed it CSAM.

First of all, not every image of a naked child is CSAM. This is actually been kind of a problem with automated CSAM detection systems triggering false positives on non-sexual images, and getting innocent people into trouble.

But also, AI systems can blend multiple elements together. They don’t need CSAM training material to create CSAM, just the individual elements crafted into a prompt sufficient to create the image while avoiding any safeguards.

deathbird ,

There are probably safeguards in place to prevent the creation of CSAM, just like there are for other illegal and offensive things, but determined people work around them.

deathbird ,

A person like what? There’s no connecting thread between morality, emotional maturity, and programming skills.

deathbird ,

i feel like he sounds like psychopath even now.

I think it’s rash to judge the tone of his writing like that. It can be a struggle to identify and admit one’s flaws, and it’s certainly a struggle for most people of the modern era to write elegantly with only pen and a few sheets of paper.

deathbird ,

Actually agree, generally.

Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme basically, but it’s not the only block chain in town.

Anonymous peer-to-peer financial exchanges can actually be good.

Cooperative ledgers can be good.

Public ledgers can be good.

theblockchainsocialist.com

deathbird ,

theblockchainsocialist.com

deathbird ,

No. Some of the worst politicians are young. Some of the best politicians are old. Age isn’t a problem. Undemocratic systems and bad politics are problems.

deathbird ,

Looks like it’s written by AI.

deathbird ,

Depends. Are you a Louisiana Republican legislator?

deathbird ,

It’s not a brilliant new idea, it’s a good old one. Jitneys are back baby!

deathbird ,

It’s so stupid. Like, if the protesters do something illegal (actually illegal that is) then even if they have a mask on you can arrest them and make them take it off for mugshots. Also medical masks don’t really cover enough of the face to prevent identification.

deathbird ,

So many folks at or just over the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid that even Forbes can see them.

deathbird ,

I’m sure grit + wealth is far better than either alone. It’s really probably grit + wealth + connections + luck.

deathbird ,

Xavier, Renegade Angel, biblically accurate? Maybe.

deathbird ,

Yeah, I don’t know that it would work well in these particular protests.

deathbird ,

Also mind that soon these new cars will be used cars with the same bullshit.

deathbird ,

Or at this point, the one whose tracking is easiest and safest to avoid or circumvent.

deathbird ,

Isn’t the old bit about organized crime how they always have a second set of books? After all they do want to be able to track their finances.

deathbird ,

Yeah. No one ever gave me AdSense dollars for nearly busting my fucking head.

deathbird ,

It is honestly impressive that with (presumably) only hard work, an education, a lifetime of business experience, and the kindness of strangers, he was able to work his way up to 6.4% of his goal.

A regular Ozymandias, that one.

deathbird ,

The more I think about it, the more I think he’s right about these jobs adding no value.

deathbird ,

But what if those coworkers sold my furniture instead of keeping it for themselves? Is that somehow dishonorable?

If you’re going to bring honor into it, yeah it can be pretty dishonorable. Your worker would be using his privileged position of access to people who are in a financial position to just discard valuable goods, and if he’s then reselling those at market rate rather than cost plus, then he’s not so much compensating himself for the work of reselling the products as he is exploiting the ignorance of his customers to maximize profit.

And if we understand honor be rooted in transparency, honesty, fairness, etc (which is what we immediately think of when we think of an “honorable” fight or dual, for example), then yes that can be very dishonorable.

deathbird ,

Don’t get me wrong, this is among the least offensive iterations of the phenomen, but middlemen can be pretty shitty in any transaction.

Sometimes they provide a useful service, acting as a sort of external sales and marketing department for producers who for whatever reason don’t have the mechanisms in place to get their products out to their would-be consumers.

But who likes a scalper? Who believes that a guy with an automated purchasing script is adding value to Taylor Swift tickets? Or that the people buying multiple PS5s during the early days just to resell them were providing a useful intermediary service? No one.

And likewise taking something you don’t want off of Craigslist before someone who actually wants it can get it, only to flip it on another site, doesn’t add value or provide a useful service.

Does anybody else feel guilty being suspicious of anybody in a black hoodie with the hood up?

Specifically because I live in a hot climate, I’m always fighting the feeling of being suspicious of anybody I pass in the streets with a hoodie pulled up. I feel guilty because of racial profiling associated with hoodies, but gotta protect myself and my family, especially because in many cases the perpetrators of assault and...

deathbird ,

I don’t feel guilty. It’s fair to be suspicious of someone who covers their face without context like cold weather or a medical mask (could be sick or concerned about getting sick). The trick or test is to ask yourself “Do I/would I become equally concerned if this person was in a different racial category?” If the answer is “No”, de-escalate yourself. If the answer is “No”, look for the other markers that are actually setting off alarms for you. It’s not just covering the face. As others have pointed out there can be a variety of harmless reasons why people might do that. But look for how a person carries themself: where they keep their hands how they move their eyes. Or maybe you are just paranoid about hoodies in general, in which case you should try to develop a more holistic way of sizing people up.

deathbird ,

I’d like credit scores systems to be fully public and developed by the government. It would be far better than the three private systems Americans deal with now.

deathbird , (edited )

Gab is for the fringiest of the right wing. And people often cluster disparate ideas together if they’re all considered to be markers of membership within their “tribe”.

Leftists, or at least those on the left wing of liberalism, tend to do this as well, particularly on social and cultural issues.

I think part of it is also a matter of not so much what people believe as what they will tolerate. The vaccine skeptic isn’t going to tolerate an AI bot that tells him vaccines work, but maybe generally oblivious to the Holocaust and thus really not notice or care if and when an AI bot misleads on it. Meanwhile a Holocaust denier might be indifferent about vaccines, but his Holocaust denialism serves as a key pillar of an overall bigoted worldview that he is unwilling to have challenged by an AI bot.

deathbird ,

They’ll tolerate arguments over precise economic policies that amount to discussing how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, but hold far tighter to what amount to cultural arguments. “USA bad” means “Russia good” because Russia is against USA so if Russia does bad then it’s good actually or else no it didn’t happen.

deathbird ,

My experience with LG/WebOS has been fine if I don’t try to get online. It doesn’t pester me to do so.

deathbird ,

To be fair, TVs from the 90s didn’t have apps, and I don’t actually use the apps on my LG, so it seems fine.

deathbird ,

When AirBNB first arrived, I think we thought it would be a tool to let people rent a spare room in their house short term to travelers, with a built in system for reviews and reputation building to ensure that it’s safe for both parties.

Turns out it’s a platform that enables wannabe real estate moguls to buy up housing and convert it into unlicensed hotels for a tidy profit.

deathbird ,

Why yes, cancelling, shunning, etc is bad.

deathbird ,

Wasn’t that AI generated?

deathbird ,

Generations are (mostly) made up. So of course they’re going to shift around a bit while we all try to figure out what major world event or collective experience defines a particular cohort.

deathbird ,

Yeah, give kids easy to use pocket computers to access social media curated by algorithms designed to increase anxiety/engagement and “games” that are single-player gambling simulations, all of which harvests their data just to better learn how to manipulate them, and wonder why kids feel anxious, isolated, or depressed.

This hurts the over-25s too, just to lesser degrees because their brains are fully developed.

deathbird ,

Saying ‘female’ to refer to a person who is female can sound overly technical or abstracted, and therefore a bit dehumanizing or depersonalizing.

That said, some people over-react, and sometimes it is more appropriate or at least fine to say ‘female’, for example if you were speaking in the abstract about something that spans between women and girls, or is specifically about biological sex.

But most of the time ‘women’ or ‘girls’ or even ‘ladies’ is going to be more appropriate.

What language are you coming from, out of curiosity?

deathbird ,

I would prefer RSS.

deathbird ,

And that’s fine, but why do gamers use it over any other VoIP option? And why the infinity chat channels over infinity servers?

deathbird ,

I miss pidgin so much. I tried to use it the other day with Discord and it was terrible. So God-awful.

Online vape seller has ‘no intention of stopping’ shipments to Australia, despite nationwide ban — ‘We have no intention of stopping just because of one twat in Canberra.’ (www.vice.com)

Online vape seller has ‘no intention of stopping’ shipments to Australia, despite nationwide ban — ‘We have no intention of stopping just because of one twat in Canberra.’::The New Zealand-based seller issued a notice to its Australian customers that shipments will continue regardless of the government’s vape reform.

deathbird ,

I seem to recall it being connected to Vitamin E oil being used as an adjunct.

AI-generated content and other unfavorable practices have put longtime staple CNET on Wikipedia's blacklisted sources (www.tomshardware.com)

In the wave of AI controversies and lawsuits, CNET has been publicly admonished since it first started posting thinly-veiled AI-generated content on its site in late 2022— a scandal that has culminated in the site being demoted from Trusted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia....

deathbird ,

Oh that explains a bit. Who’s decent these days?

deathbird ,

It’s not. Which makes this a particularly powerful indictment of a once-reputable mainstream news site.

deathbird ,

Wikipedia is aweful for anything controversial, of which geopolitics is merely a good example.

Probably fine for basic stuff like geology or the Napoleonic Wars or whatever.

deathbird ,

Only in a social context where “liberal” just means “polite”.

Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis (www.theverge.com)

Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis::Google says it’s aware of historically inaccurate results for its Gemini AI image generator, following criticism that it depicted historically white groups as people of color.

deathbird ,

It’s just the name of a racial category. There are no black people either.

deathbird ,

Yeah that’s not good.

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